The man's name was Doyle or Boyle, they never give real ones, and it doesn't matter.
He had a wedding ring, sunburn, and hands like a man who'd never done a day's work in his life, and when he put those hands on my throat, I did what I've done a hundred times, which is nothing.
Which is go somewhere else, let him have the part he paid for.
Then he leaned down and put his mouth against my ear and told me he was going to kill me.
He wasn't lying. I know the difference now.
I've hadyearsto learn the difference between a man saying a thing because it makes him hard and a man saying something because he’s decided he’s going to do it.
His voice went flat, bored, and reasonable, like he was telling me about the weather.
The room went gray at the edges, and I understood with total clarity that I was going to die on a pale blue fitted sheet in a room with a saguaro print on the wall.
My body made a decision without me.
My nails are the only thing about me that's grown well in here.
Ten years of nothing and they still come in hard.
I got my thumb in under his jaw, and I opened his face from his eyebrow to his chin in four lines.
He screamed like a woman and let go. I was able to get him on the other side before he could get his hands up.
I regret one thing about it. Not the face. I should have gone for the eye.
"Get her down," someone says from the door.
That's Chuy. Chuy is the one who sleeps in the truck. Chuy is the one who is always,alwaysannoyed.
They cut the zip tie, and I go down onto my knees because there's nothing else my legs are prepared to do.
My arms come down and the blood starts moving back into my hands, and it's worse than the whipping was.
It's a hot, ugly howl from the elbow out.
"Ah, no, no, no," Rafa says, backing up, hands out. "Look at her. Look at that. I'm not carrying that."
"You want to leave her here? For Wes to find? On the carpet?"
There's a pause where nobody says anything.
Their hands come under my arms. Both of them, one on each side, and they lift me, and my feet drag.
Here is the thing about a woman whose back is opened up: nobody wants her on them.
They're holding me by the arms.
Not around the waist. Not over a shoulder.
By the upper arms, at a distance, the way you'd carry a bag of trash that's leaking, arms extended, faces turned away.
Chuy actually saysay, güeyunder his breath when it gets on his sleeve. They hate this. They want this to be over.
My head hangs. My hair is in my face, and it's wet.
I let it hang. Because from down here, with my chin on my chest, I can see everything.
