Spiders in the Grove Read online

  “They’re going to come in this time,” I whisper, staring at the light underneath the door as it moves. I turn swiftly to look at Naeva. “Remember what I said—I won’t leave you.”

  Naeva nods; she’s afraid this time, I can see it, although faint, in her eyes. Be strong, Huevito. Be strong.

  Izabel

  A ring of keys jangles, and then the door to our prison opens; yellow light spills into the room, revealing the unevenness of the dirt floor, the holes and ridges rising up and down like little brown-capped waves; remnants of girls who had been here before us trying to dig their way out.

  A woman walks in; Mexican, with long, bleach-blonde hair pulled into a thick braid behind her, and lipstick as red as that flashy shit Nora usually wears. There’s a scowl on her face, and a worn leather strap in her hand.

  “Get up,” she says in perfect English.

  Feigning fear and intimidation, Naeva and I lean forward onto our knees and try to get up on our own, but it’s difficult with our hands and legs bound, and the floor riddled with cavernous holes.

  The woman jerks her head toward a man standing behind her. “Get them up,” she orders in perfect Spanish, and he moves in right away and comes toward us.

  “Cut the ropes on their ankles,” she instructs, and then she looks right at me, switching back to English again. “What’s your name?”

  I look up the rest of the way as the rope is cut from my ankles. “Lydia,” I answer.

  “And yours?” she asks Naeva.

  Naeva doesn’t raise her eyes. “Uma,” she says, a tremor in her voice that not even I can figure out if it’s real or not.

  The woman grabs Naeva’s chin, turns her head to one side and then the other. She does the same to me, her eyes sweeping over the scar across my throat. She looks back and forth between us, contemplating.

  “This one,” she tells the man about Naeva, “I’ll take with me to see the governess.” She looks at me now. “This one is damaged; she’ll never be sold. Kill her.”

  My heart stops; Naeva’s head turns swiftly to face me.

  “No, please!” Naeva falls to her knees beside me, reaches out her bound hands to the woman. “Please don’t kill her—please!” Is she faking the distress—honestly, I can’t tell. Surely Naeva knows I can get myself out of this. I think…OK, maybe I am a little scared. Fuck! I didn’t expect this moment to come so soon!

  Concentrate, Izabel…calm and concentrate.

  The leather strap falls across Naeva’s back with a sharp snap! that even stings me; Naeva falls onto her side, and groans in pain.

  I see the flash of a blade as the man pulls a knife from a belt at his waist. I don’t move. Shouldn’t I be on the floor like Naeva, begging for my life? No, I realize in the most crucial moment—that’ll definitely get me killed.

  The man approaches me, and I raise my head and round my chin and lock my jaw and look him right in the fucking eyes and it does exactly what I hoped it would do: it stumps them both. The man glances at the woman, and she at him.

  “Go ahead,” I say boldly. “You’d be doing me a favor.” I can hear Naeva breathing heavily at my feet. And I can hear my heart beating in my ears. And I can hear Niklas’ voice in my head: “It’s a bad idea, Izzy—”, and Fredrik’s voice: “I agree with Niklas—”.

  “Wait,” the woman tells the man, and hesitantly he lowers the knife.

  She steps in front of him, and she looks at me, long and contemplatively, and at first, I avoid eye contact. She circles me, and I stand firm, unafraid, though deep down, I admit, I’m a little worried. I swallow, and the motion hurts my throat it’s so dry. She makes her way back to stand in front of me where she stops and looks me right in the eyes.

  “You’re not suicidal,” she points out.

  “I don’t care either way,” I say. “I just want out of this filth. And to take a piss. Either show me the way to the toilet, or kill me—either one would be a relief.”

  “If you had to go so bad,” she says, “why didn’t you just piss on yourself? Or over there in the corner?”

  I look her right in the eyes this time.

  “I just said I wanted out of the filth,” I come back, “not to make more of it—toilet or knife.”

  The woman blinks; she really has no idea what to do with me, but she doesn’t want to kill me. At least not yet.

  She glances at Naeva on the floor at my feet.

  “You know each other?” she asks me.

  “Not really,” I say.

  “But she knows you enough to beg for your life; risk her own to stand up for you.”

  “Weakness does that to people,” I say. “I couldn’t care less what happens to her.”

  The woman raises a finely-groomed brow.

  “Then hit her,” she challenges.

  Without hesitating, I slam my knee into Naeva’s face; she falls over into the dirt.

  I look at the woman, as poker-faced and unintimidated as before. “Toilet or knife,” I repeat, getting irritated.

  The woman smiles, and I can’t tell if it’s because she’s impressed, or pissed.

  “Tie her legs back up,” she tells the man. “Let’s see how long the bitch can take it before she pisses herself.”

  The man comes at me again, and I know I could easily take that knife from him, kill them both, and get myself and Naeva out of here; but alas, getting out isn’t what I came here for.

  I pretend to struggle against the man; he thrusts the knife blade against my throat, threatening me so I’ll be still, and eventually I do. And in moments, I’m back to being unable to stand much less walk, much less squat in a corner somewhere and pee. The woman might get what she wanted, after all—I guess I’d rather pee on myself than die.

  Shooting her with a hard, piercing look, the woman smiles at me again in response, pulls on Naeva’s elbow and escorts her roughly out of the room. The man closes and then locks the door behind him, shutting out the light, and leaving me alone with my thoughts.

  And I just let the pee flow, shaking my damn head at myself. There’s no way I’m going to hold it any longer out of pride, or protest—doesn’t hurt anybody but me.

  1:00 a.m. …again

  I stink and I’m wet and I feel disgusting. No food. No water. No company. The woman is trying to prove a point—I get that; I’m five steps ahead of her—but if someone doesn’t come for me soon, I may have to—I hear keys jangling again, and the door opens.

  A long, blonde braid lays over a shoulder, and it’s all I can see in the limited light. “Finally taking me to the toilet?” I say, but I already know that’s not why she’s here. “It’s a little late for that.”

  She closes the door without a word.

  Twenty-four-hours later…

  Exhausted from no sleep, I can barely move when I hear the door open again. The same braid lays over the same shoulder.

  “Are you thirsty?” she asks from the darkness.

  “No, because then I’ll end up having to piss on myself again.”

  She closes the door, and this time I hear a small laugh just before the light blinks off.

  Another day…

  I’m seeing and hearing things that aren’t there—figures in the shadows, Victor’s face, Victor’s voice, Dina playing the piano—but when the door opens I know it’s real, and the voice I hear is real, and the suffering is real.

  “Are you hungry?”

  “No.”

  She closes the fucking door and I’m so thirsty, and so hungry, and so tired that I don’t know how long I can keep this up.

  Day four? Five?

  I hear the door open, but my eyes stay closed—they stay closed even as I drown myself in the bucket of water that was set on the ground in my reach.

  I pass out with my head inside the empty bucket.

  On the sixth day—maybe it’s the seventh, I don’t know anymore—I can barely move; I lay against the ground, one side of my face pressed to a mound of dirt, my muscles aching, and I’m so dehy
drated—maybe the bucket of water was only a hallucination—that my lips are stuck together, and I see spots whenever I try to sit up.

  I hear keys jangling outside the room again, and I force myself to sit up straight, to face her with the same strength and defiance as I have every day before this one. But when the door opens, it’s not the woman this time, but a man I’ve never seen before. Without a word or gesture, he grabs my elbow and pulls me to my feet.

  Finally!

  He yanks on my arm and I follow him out into the hallway, trying not to stumble, but I do anyway. My head is pounding; I can barely feel my legs carrying my body forward, but I manage to follow—my life depends on it. Entering a larger room, the size of a modest banquet hall, and then outside into the cool night air, I’m unsurprised by what I see. This isn’t the same compound I spent most of my young life, but it could be, the way it feels the same and smells the same and how the desert landscape that surrounds it stretches out for miles in every miserable direction. And the buildings are almost the same, made of concrete and aluminum and wood; unbarred windows dress the bricks with a very false sense of freedom; a great fence climbs high past the rooftops, wrapped by barbed wire and guarded by armed men.

  “Where are you taking me?” I ask weakly.

  The man never speaks.

  He escorts me across the compound and toward a truck; he opens the door and shoves me on the passenger’s seat.

  We drive for six hundred sixty seconds—I made sure to count every single one in case I need to find my way back for Naeva later—and pull onto the paved driveway of a stucco mansion perched amid the desert like an oasis.

  Before I’m taken inside, the man leads me to a side building that reminds me of a guest house, where a woman awaits. Older, abuela-type, with gray-black hair pulled loosely around her plump face; she’s wearing a long, blue dress that hugs her lumpy figure and drops to her thick ankles. She stands in front of an open shower, a long-handled scrubbing brush clutched in her hand.

  I fall forward when the man pushes me in the back toward her, barely catching myself before I hit the floor.

  The man leaves us, and without even introducing herself, the old woman gets to work, stripping me of my soiled clothes. And, to my disappointment, she undoes every braid, her rough hands pulling and yanking my hair; I watch the birth control pills I’d so carefully hidden within the braids, clink against the tile floor and disappear. My heart sinks. But then again, in the back of my mind I knew I’d never get to use them; I only brought them with me to make me feel better—the effort has to count for something, right? If I make it out of this alive, I’m getting the surgery I should’ve gotten a long time ago. No kids for me. A life like mine doesn’t need or deserve them. I accepted that fact even before I became what I became. I accepted it shortly after I met Victor. It was the number one reason I went back to Mexico the first time; why I killed Javier’s brothers…

  Scalding water blisters my skin as it gushes from the shower head onto my back like acid from a water-hose. I cry out, and almost hit the old woman in the face, but I refrain. I close my eyes and bite down on the inside of my cheek and let her wash me, scrub my skin raw with the brush; the soap stings and burns like vinegar poured into open wounds. And when she’s done, she dresses me in a plain black T-shirt and a pair of black cotton shorts. She combs the tangles from my hair and she sprays underneath my armpits with deodorant and she brushes my teeth—I wonder if she’ll wipe my ass, too.

  Afterwards, the woman takes me outside where the same man from before is waiting.

  As we approach the front entrance of the two-story mansion—it’s small for a mansion, but lavish and expensive—I feel strength somehow without water and food and sleep, returning to my neglected body. And more important, confidence returning to the rest of me. If the blonde-haired woman, who I know waits for me somewhere on the other side of those double-doors, was going to kill me, she’d have done it by now. I wouldn’t have been given a shower, or clean clothes to wear. This ‘plan’ that I made up on a whim, was nowhere in the realm of what I expected to happen; I thought for sure I’d come here and end up the same tortured slave girl I was when I escaped in the back of Victor’s car a couple years ago. I envisioned, and mentally prepared myself for all of the awful things I know, in my heart, Naeva is going through right now. But this, whatever it is, whatever it turns out to be, I never saw coming. And although I’m still unsure in which direction this is going, I can honestly say I feel better about it. I’m not sure why, but deep down, I know I’m in a better position to pull this off than I ever could have imagined.

  Izabel

  “You look better,” the blonde-haired woman says with a smirk as I’m escorted through the front door. “Probably smell better, too. How has your stay been so far?”

  “I’d give it four stars, at least,” I say. “But I wasn’t too impressed with the lighting in my room. Might want to have maintenance check that out.”

  A slim smile appears at her red lips, and it glows in her deep brown eyes.

  With the backward tilt of her head, she orders the man to leave; I hear his footsteps echo behind me and then the door shutting softly. I feel the woman’s eyes on me as I take in my surroundings: the high ceilings and Spanish paintings, the young women moving every which way, tending to chores, always silent and willing and broken. Like I once was. I’ve seen this same image too often in my life, been to too many damn ‘mansions’ filled with monsters, and after this I hope I never have to do it again. No, I take that back—I’ll do it for as long as I have to if I get kill more of the bastards that put these girls here.

  “Now, why don’t you tell me your real name, Lydia?”

  That certainly gets my attention; I break away from the scenery; she looks smug standing there in the center of the room, dressed in a black silk dress and a mysterious smile; her legs stretch for miles, even if she wasn’t wearing five-inch stilettos.

  “I don’t know what you mean,” I lie.

  She walks toward me slowly.

  “Oh, come on,” she taunts, “a girl like you—fearless, bold, with that I-don’t-give-a-fuck attitude—either you’re not who you’re pretending to be, or I really did strike gold when they brought you here.”

  I shrug, and raise both brows. “I’m sorry, but I don’t know why I’d be pretending to be someone else—what does it matter who you are in this place?” I laugh a little, shaking my head. “Strike gold? I can’t even begin to understand what that’s supposed to mean.”

  “One thing at a time,” she says; she stops in front of me, looks me over with the sweep of her painted eyes. “It’s just I’ve never seen any girl brought here that hasn’t cried and groveled for her freedom—everybody cries. Not only did you not cry or beg, even when you were about to have your throat slit, but you stand here in front of me now almost as if you own the place.”

  I raise my chin, pushing my scarred neck into view. “If you haven’t noticed,” I say, “been there, done that already. As far as my attitude, well, I think once you’ve had your throat slit and lived to tell about it, and you’ve killed someone who tried to kill you, and you’ve been kidnapped, shot at, and touched by disgusting men, you’d probably not give much of a fuck, either.” I open my hands and shrug once more. “Believe what you want, I don’t care. And my name is Lydia. And there’s not much more about me worth telling, really.”

  She smiles. “Oh, I doubt that. People like you, there’s always something to tell.”

  “What do you want from me?” I ask bluntly.

  “I’m not sure yet”—she circles me again, sizing me up—“If you’re a fraud: nothing. If you’re what I hope you are: everything.”

  I look over at her, and she stops on my left; I can smell her perfume, and feel the heat from her body.

  “What were you doing in Mexico?” she asks. “My men told me where they found you, and who you were with; how’d you end up with a coyote? White girl, English language, obviously far away from home. I�
�d say you escaped one of the compounds if I didn’t know better. That scar on your neck, your age; you don’t fit the profile of a girl soon-to-be sold. So, my only guess is that you weren’t trying to get out of Mexico.” She looks at me with expectation.

  “I told you,” I improvise, “I killed someone. In Arizona. Cops were after me, and I headed straight for the border—I’ll die before I go to prison. The man driving the van saw me walking, asked if I wanted a ride. I asked where he was going. He said Mexico so I got in”—I gesture my hands—“And here I am. Never expected to end up in this place, but it is what it is. What’s a coyote? I’m guessing you’re not talking about the animal.”

  The woman circles me a final time, and then stops at my left. “Follow me,” she says with the gesture of her hand; she never answers my question.

  I follow her into another room with couches and chairs and tables. I count eight slave girls, younger than me, all tending to separate duties: two are cleaning; three are sitting on a lavish rug against the floor with books and tablets and pencils; one stands near a hallway, her hands folded on her pelvis, her head down, waiting to be given an order; one is sewing; and one follows us wherever we go.

  “I thought these were just rumors,” I say.

  “What? The girls?”

  I nod. “So, Mexico really is as dangerous and…uncivilized as they say it is.”

  She smiles as if she’s about to burst my little bubble.

  “Oh, honey,” she begins, “you’ve been living with a blindfold over your eyes, like most of the U.S. population. Mexico and the United States are the same. In fact, the slave trade—hell, the gun and drug trade, too—is just as big in the States as it is here—bigger even. The only difference is that we aren’t as good at hiding it, I admit.” She points a finger at me. “But I can assure you, everything you see here, everything you think you know about this place, it all goes on behind closed doors and in rich men’s houses in every single state in that big piece of land you stole and came from.”