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She feels so far away,even when she’s next to me.
It’s nothing new. I’m the one she beats the most and likes the least, but it’s gotten worse since we started on this journey last night. Every stumble earns me a slap to the face. If I fall behind, she threatens me with a hiding. It’s like she’s trying to hit the boy right out of me, when all I want to feel is her love.
ButMamágot caught doing something she shouldn’t with one ofPapi’ssicarios, and now we all have to pay for it.
A red day is breaking over the trees. The air is busy with black insects. It doesn’t feel like a fresh start to me. It just feels old and stale. Temporary freedom fromPapidoesn’t taste as good as I imagined because death and fear bought it for us.
We hitched a ride in a truck from Bogotá. It wasn’t a taxi, but there was some sort of fee.Mamátold me to wait outside the vehicle for ten minutes while she sorted it out with the driver. He dropped us off near La Pedrera, calledMamáa bad name, and we’ve been hitch-hiking in cars and walking ever since.
The closer we get to Leticia, the more she’s acting like a stranger. If I wasn’t so tired, I’d slip my hand into hers and try and squeeze us back to life. I need something to spark and catch and make everything right again, but not like the match I threw at the church soaked in gasoline which felt so wrong.
Papitricked me. He told me the church was full ofsicarioswho needed to be burned for betraying him. I saw their faces at the windows as the flames took hold. They didn’t look like lyingsicariosanymore, they just looked scared.
I killed a hundred men yesterday, and I don’t feel good about it. Not likePapisaid I would. My hands stink of smoke, and the ash is still staining my skin.
Papisaid it was my first ‘atonement’ for what mama did. The second is waiting for us at our destination.
“Keep up,”Mamáhisses, wrapping an extra loop of her red rosary around her hand, the small beads jingle jangling. She never used to wear one, but she hasn’t stopped clutching it since we left Bogotá. It’s almost as if she’s protecting herself from me.
“How much further?”
“As long as it takes.”
I lose my footing, crying out as small rocks cut into my heel, and I get a vicious cuff round the head for it. My shoes were full of holes before we started, and I’ve been walking on bare skin for miles. The stinging pain turned to white-hot torture hours ago, and I’m too afraid to look behind and see the sticky trails of blood.
Instead, I keep my eyes on the rising sun, hoping it burns what I did to those men right out of my mind. I wish I could draw it and lose myself in it, and never come out again.
“My feet hurt,” I mumble.
“Stop moaning. We’ve all had to make sacrifices. If it were up to me, Nacio would be here instead of you.”
I stare down at her shoes, the ones that don’t have holes in, and hold my tongue. No good ever comes out of talking back at her. Besides, I’ve known for years that my older brother, Nacio, gets all her affection. Not me. He’s her favorite. Not me.
We turn onto another track. This one’s smoother and less painful to walk on. We follow it for a while until we see gates up ahead. There’s a line of men with guns standing in front of it and gray stone monsters resting on top of the walls on either side.
El Refugio
“Is this it?”
“Yes.”
As we draw closer,Mamágrabs my arm and yanks me to a stop. “Don’t forget what you need to do, Edier. Nacio’s life depends on it.” Her eyes water in a way that they never do for me. “Don’t you dare run and forget, no matter how long this takes. Hurtados will kill us all.”
Hurtados isPapi’sboss and cousin. He stinks ofQuesitoand surrounds himself with scary oldbrujawho smell even worse than him. He andPapiare sending me to Leticia to do something bad for them. They say it’s for ‘revenge’.
Just the thought of it turns my stomach. It’s even worse than the things they do to the women they keep chained in the barn. They make me watch sometimes and laugh when I vomit. They said if I fail at this, they’ll make me shoot every single one of them before they burn me,Mamáand Nacio alive.
My eyes seek out the sun again. Anything is better than looking directly at someone who hates you, but she slaps me hard across the cheek. “Did you hear what I said, Edier? To these people atEl Refugio, we’re runningawayfrom Hurtados. They won’t know any different unless you blurt it out to them.”
Over her shoulder, I can see shiny green grass and a big house through the gaps in the gates—greener and bigger than anything I’ve ever seen before.
“I won’t,Mamá.”
“We’re staying at this place until it’s done and then we get to go home to Nacio. Your father will forgive me, and we’ll be a family again.”
I don’t want to go home.
