Mercy
THE SUN IS just up when I peek out of our bedroom door and hear the low hum of voices from the kitchen. Esteban’s room is on the other side of the house, and he usually doesn’t show his face until well after lunchtime. I turn back to see Milo still sound asleep.
After he gave me the ring, he held me until I fell asleep. It was a peaceful, dreamless sleep—until I felt him slip away to get dressed in the closet and slide out of the room.
I dozed off to gory visions of children being hacked up for the muti. I was grateful to be woken at sunrise as Milo crept back into bed. I lay awake in his arms after he pulled me to his chest, and I watched as the sun slowly turned the sky from purple to blue, waiting for it to be light enough to go downstairs.
I tie my robe and sneak out, my socks making for a soundless escape as I move down the tiled steps. The scent of freshly baked sweet breads and corn tortillas becomes stronger as I reach the archway that leads to the kitchen.
Maria is wearing one of her many colored aprons while standing over the flat stove and flipping tortillas with her bare hand. Her dark hair is pulled back tightly, as it always is, and not for the first time, I wonder how long it is when she lets it down. If she ever lets it down.
I keep to the doorway to avoid sneaking up on her. I’ve learned my appearance can be unsettling when I show up unexpectedly. There’s also something sacred about Maria working in the kitchen. I can’t explain it, but I feel like I need to be invited in.
“Buenas dias, Maria.”
Her chocolate-brown eyes snap up from her stove, and she doesn’t seem surprised to see me. “Buenas dias, Mercy.”
“Gracias for dinner. Um . . . my cumpleaños. Thank you.”
She smiles warmly, and I hope I was clear enough for her to understand how grateful I am for the meal and dessert she prepared for Milo and me last night.
When she doesn’t say more, my gaze slides from her to the pantry door behind her. Right on cue, she turns, giving me her back. I scurry to the storeroom and slip inside, closing the door. The space smells of onions, garlic, and exotic spices. It’s mostly dark, but I find my way to the stool in the far corner. Reaching behind a large container of dry rice, I search blindly for the device, grip it between two fingers in a pincher-like hold, and pull it out.
El Jefe has instructed that I’m not allowed to have access to computers or phones. At first I thought it was unfair, but Milo explained his father doesn’t trust anyone on sight alone, that his trust has to be earned. It seems silly to me—after all, who would I call? The police? Chris and Laura? I wasn’t kidnapped. I don’t need to be rescued. I’m here of my own free will, even if at times it feels like a grander version of the cage I grew up in.
Boredom has hit me hard these last couple weeks. With Milo busy working for his father, I’ve been left on my own in the compound. I’ve read as many magazines as I could find—which were mostly in Spanish, so I just looked at the pictures. I helped tend to some of the gardening, but Milo doesn’t like it when I’m in the sun and I hate disappointing him.
Two mornings ago, while helping Maria clean the kitchen after lunch, I noticed her nine-year-old son, Julio, playing with a touchscreen device similar to the one I’d used in Miss Murphy’s class back at Washington High. I asked about it in my broken Spanglish and Maria acted as though she couldn’t understand me, but then she slipped it into the pantry and walked away. I recognized a spark in her eyes and the way her mouth turned up at the ends. What she was really saying was the device would be kept there, but if I got caught using it, I’d be on my own.
Since that day, when I come to the kitchen early, we go through the same show where she turns her back and I slip inside the storage closet to have my time with the device.
I open up the search screen and type in those four little letters that have become my obsession.
MUTI.
Multiple links to news articles and investigations pop up on screen. Dozens of stories about different children chased down by mobs and mutilated for their body parts. Some left alive. It hurts to read the recounts, to see the images of a child’s armless body or fingerless hands, to read the stories of the parents who bury what little is left of their mutilated children under their beds to keep their remains safe because even an albino’s bones have value.
I rub my eyes and blink to focus on the words. The combination of my weak vision and the dark room against the lit screen makes my head throb, but I push on to gather as much information as I can commit to memory. The whole time, I’m wondering what this has to do with me. Searching for some kind of connection to the life I knew.
Why was I raised to believe I was an angel while these poor children were treated like objects for the same condition?
I scroll through photos of bloody body parts. My stomach sours, and I swallow the thick lump in my throat.
A knock on the door has me scampering to shove the device away, but it’s too dark. I fumble, drop it, and bend down as light pierces the dark space. I spin around to see Maria’s silhouette in the doorway. I jump up and rush to leave, but she stops me with wide, terrified eyes.
“Maza?” she asks.
Maza. She’s asking for maza. I turn, spot the device on the floor, and shove it beneath the stool with my foot.
“Si.” I grab the first thing I can find and hand it to her.
She thanks me, pretending as though I handed her what she needed when in brighter light, I can see I handed her salt. I walk out to find Milo with a hip resting on the countertop, and he’s looking right at me.
“Buenos dias,” I say and nod my head low, hoping he won’t see the guilty color rise in my cheeks.
“Mornin’.” His voice is scratchy. He’s up much earlier than normal. “I’m surprised to find you down here.”
“Why?” I busy myself wiping down the already clean workspace, all the corn tortillas and sweet bread from earlier gone.
“Because it’s eleven thirty and you’re usually outside playing with the dogs by now.”
Eleven thirty?
Milo rambles something in Spanish. Maria shoots me an apologetic look from the corner of her eye then grins at Milo and answers him.
Milo’s eyes shine with pride and maybe even a little relief as he watches me. “Is that right? Mercy likes cooking, huh? Maybe if I’m nice, she’ll cook me dinner. What do you say, Güera?” He winks, and all the butterflies take flight in my belly.
Nope, because whatever Maria said to cover for me is a lie. I can’t cook. “Of course.”
He crosses to me in his baggy sleeping shorts and T-shirt and steps behind me to wrap his arms around my middle. His left hand grips mine and brings my ring finger forward. “I love seeing this on you.”
He brings the ring to his lips and kisses not only my ring finger but every other finger as well. I relax into his chest and hate the sinking guilt that presses against my chest. If he knew I’ve been breaking Esteban’s rules to research things that give me nightmares, he’d be furious.
With his chin on my shoulder, he nuzzles my neck and whispers, “How about we get out of here?”
My spine stiffens and hope blooms in my chest. “Really?”
“Sure.”
I spin around and toss my arms around his neck. “But I thought . . . I mean, where will we go? Maybe there’s a small village nearby and I wouldn’t have to wear my sweatshirt.”
His smile falls and his expression turns pinched.
“What?”
He presses a kiss to the tip of my nose. “I’m sorry, I meant get out of the kitchen. I have an hour before I meet with Esteban. I was hoping to take you back to bed.”
I don’t know what my face looks like, but I know that my disappointment must be easy to read in my expression.
Milo chuckles and says, “Okay, bad idea. How about we go for a walk around the compound? Get a little fresh air?”
I drop my arms from his shoulders and nod. “Yeah. Sure.”
He slides his big hands up my sides to my arms, pulling them high and placing my hands back behind his neck. “Hey . . . I’m sorry, I know this is hard for you. I promise it won’t always be like this. I just want to keep you safe.”
“From who? Mikkel is gone. Who else could possibly be after me?”
With his forehead pressed to mine, he whispers, “I don’t know. That’s the problem. You just need to lie low for a little longer. I can’t function unless I know you’re in the safest place possible, and that’s behind the walls of this compound.”
Nod and agree. I should nod and agree, but the images of hacked up children flicker in my mind’s eye and stir up a fire in my gut that I can’t control. “Freed from one cage only to be put into another.”
He steps back, his expression hard. “No, it’s not like that.”
My skin crawls and a force from behind my ribs wants to cry out that I’m a person, not an object and that people, kids, are out there suffering while I’m here picking fruit and playing with dogs. “You want to keep me safe but locking me up forever—”
“It won’t be forever. Just . . .” He runs a hand over his hair, leaving it to stick out at all ends. “I need a little more time and then we’ll go back to LA, okay?”
“How much more time because I’m going crazy in here.” My breath comes faster now. “You’re gone most of the time. Everyone else here is either working or ignores me. My only friends are dogs, Milo—”
His hands cup my cheeks and he presses a soft kiss to my lips, silencing my rage and calming my pulse a little. “I know.” Another kiss. “I’m sorry. There are a few more things I have to do in Mexico, then we’ll make a plan.”
Defeat weighs heavy on my chest as uselessness washes over me.
His thumb makes a slow swipe on my cheek to my lower lip. “Hang in there with me. I promise I’ll give you the life we talked about. Just hang on a little longer.”
What choice do I have? “I will.”
“Good girl.”
I melt into his chest and wrap my arms around his middle. I can hang on a little longer, but eventually I have to get out of here. To do what? I don’t know. I only know I can’t live this protected, pampered life while people like me are out there fighting for theirs.
Milo
“Estas listo?”
My shoulders bunch at the sound of Esteban’s voice at my back as I watch Mercy with the dogs on the front lawn. With a pocket full of stale bread, she attempts to train them how to sit, and for a moment, I pretend we’re in our own house in LA without the threats of gang life and her foggy past.
A past that, despite my best efforts, isn’t getting any clearer.
“Did you talk to your contact?” I don’t take my eyes off Mercy as she holds out the treat, her lips saying sit over and over while slobber slides from the pit bull’s jowls.
“Si, pero . . .” I turn around as Esteban, who’s wearing his signature black on black, frowns through his thick mustache and goatee. “You don’t want to mess with these cabrones. They’re bad news.”
“And we aren’t?”
He sucks on his front teeth and shakes his head. “There ain’t no we on this, mijo.”
I grit my teeth at how easily he can call me son in the same breath that he tells me he won’t back me up. I don’t care what he does or how much he helps me track down the people who might be able to give me some answers; he’ll never be blood to me again. I still believe he’s responsible for my mother’s death, and nothing he says or does will change that.
“You’re on your own,” he adds.
“Fine. Where are they?”
He pulls a slip of paper from his pocket. It has a scribbled address, and when I take it, he holds it tighter. “You get dead? I’m not keeping the girl.”
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
“Incentive for you to not fuck up. She’s worth nothing but pesos to me, ese.” He releases the paper and heads toward the door.
I watch his back as he moves through the house like a fucking prince of hell. With the address tucked tightly in my palm, I follow him and pray he’s bluffing.