Hailey's War

the hood to the ocean. Some of them have literally never seen it, even though they’ve grown up just about ten miles inland. She thinks this is going to be a beautiful life-changing thing for them. But they get out on the beach, and they start freaking. It’s windy, their hair’s getting messed up, they’re afraid the gulls are going to shit on them, they think the kelp smells funny. They want to go back into town, go to Taco Bell.” Serena grinned. “She gave up and took them.”

“Thanks for telling me that,” I said. “It was so uplifting.”

“I’m just saying, maybe your parents were white, but somewhere along the way a homegirl breast-fed you. You don’t like it up here any more than us.”

“It’ll be over soon,” I said.

“No, it won’t.”

“Sure it will,” I said, confused. “Nidia will give birth, and then at least she’ll be safe. Once Nidia and her child are two separate units, Skouras’s men won’t have any reason to chase her.”

“Insula,” Serena said, “have you really talked to Nidia about that? Giving up her baby?”

I said, “The baby’s going to have to be hidden somewhere, under a whole new identity. It can’t be living with Nidia. As long as they can find her, they can find her child.”

“That doesn’t answer my question. Point blank, have you told her that?”

I was silent.

“That’s what I thought.”

I looked out into the black shapes of the woods. “Why is it so hard to talk to her?” I asked.

“This is a difficult subject,” she said.

“No, I mean about anything,” I said. “Since we got her back from Gualala, you and me, we’ve both avoided being alone with her. Your girls like to kick it with her, but you and me, we avoid being one-on-one.”

Serena lifted a shoulder. “I just don’t think I have anything in common with her,” she said.

“None of us do,” I said.

When we’d rescued Nidia in Gualala, when I’d opened the bedroom door, I’d said, You’re safe, but beyond that I’d said and done nothing to reassure her. I’d tried to get her to kick the bound Skouras soldier in the ribs. Later, after we’d narrowly gotten away from the Highway Patrol officer, I’d spoken only briefly with her about her ordeal in Mexico and then Mendocino County, when Serena and I had reassured ourselves that she hadn’t been sexually mistreated or roughly handled, that she was basically okay. At least that’s what we told ourselves.

The truth was that what had happened to Nidia was difficult to think about, no matter how she’d been treated in Gualala. The extent to which Nidia had lost control of her own life, living with only Skouras’s guards for company- if I let myself think about it too long, it’d sicken me. I couldn’t stand to ask her how she felt, how she’d gotten through it. Because some part of my own psyche feared that I could still, despite all my training and toughening, be like her. It was as if victimhood were a catching illness and I couldn’t afford to get too close to it.

I didn’t have to ask Serena if she felt the same way. I knew she did. It had been Serena, before she’d even met Nidia, who’d called her a “vic,” or victim. I didn’t think either of us was proud of the way we felt about Nidia, but we were in a unique position. The guys felt comfortable around her because they’d always been guys; they’d simply never had to think about being hurt in such a deep psychological way. And the sucias, well, to them this whole thing wasn’t real. It was a movie: Serena and Payaso and I had walked into enemigo territory and taken Nidia back, motherfucking Trece style!, and then we’d made a fucking cop wet his fucking pants, applause, roll credits.

Nidia probably needed to talk to someone about what had happened to her, someone other than Serena’s homegirls, but apparently it wasn’t going to be Serena, and it wasn’t going to be me, either. I’d nearly gotten killed for her, and I’d gotten her back from Skouras, and since then the extent of my commitment had been to assure her that we’d keep her safe.

Somewhere along the way, I’d come to understand that there was no way that Nidia and her baby could live together, not for many years, at least. The baby was going to have to disappear into safe, anonymous hands. Skouras’s men were never going to be able to find the baby, not if they’d never laid eyes on it. Nidia was different. Her they would recognize. As long as they could find her, her baby wasn’t going to be safe in her care, and the opposite was also true: As long as she had her baby, she would be a target.

And now, as Serena pointed out, I had to make that clear to her.

“All right,” I said, “let’s go talk to Nidia.”

“Right now?”

“It’s not going to get any easier. I might as well get this over with.” I got to my feet. “Come on.”

“Me?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Please, even if it’s just for moral support, do this with me.”

One of Serena’s girls, Cheyenne, was in Julianne’s bedroom with Nidia. Serena said to her, “Insula and I need to talk to Nidia for a while.” She always referred to me by my street name in front of her sucias. She added, “In private.”

Cheyenne switched off the CD player and got up. Serena and I stepped into the room to let her pass.

Nidia looked from Serena to me and said, “Todo esta bien?” Is everything okay?

Serena sat on the bed. “Por ahora,” she said. For now. “It’s really Hailey who needs to talk to you.”

Nidia looked to me. Stalling, I moved over to the low pine dresser and lifted my hips to sit on its upper edge, putting my legs out and my feet on the edge of the bed.

“We really haven’t talked about what’s going to happen in the future,” I began.

“The future?” she said.

The easiest way to do this, I decided, was to make her do the reasoning. “What exactly do you see happening after you have the baby?”

Her green eyes were uncertain. “I don’t understand.”

“With Skouras, I mean.”

She didn’t exactly wince, but I saw his name prick her, like a dart. She said, “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?” I was playing amateur therapist, making her do the emotional and logical heavy lifting. “I’m not trying to be unkind here, but you have to think about it. Your baby is due in about a month. Then what? Skouras’s not going to stop looking for the two of you.”

She said, haltingly, “I-I have to hide, with the baby.”

“Where?” I said. “They know about your mother’s village. That’s off the table.”

She looked down at the deep-green bedspread. I waited.

“Hailey,” Serena interrupted. This isn’t working, her gaze said.

“Okay, look,” I said. “Nidia, I’ve been thinking about this a lot, and I just don’t think your baby is going to be safe from Mr. Skouras unless you’re in separate places, and even you don’t know where the baby is.”

“Como?” she said, her eyes wide and shocked.

Quickly, I explained to her the reasoning that I’d shared with Serena. Nidia listened, but I could see she wasn’t accepting it.

I finished by saying, “We’ll find your baby a good foster home. The best, I swear. And it’s not forever. Mr. Skouras’s an old guy. He’s already had one heart attack. He doesn’t have close family that’ll pursue this after he’s dead. After that, the two of you can be together, I swear.”

But Nidia said, “No.” She laid a hand on her stomach. “This baby is my responsibility. No one else’s.”

“I understand,” I said, “but making sure your baby is safe is the biggest part of that responsibility. I know it seems backward, but living separate from your child is the best thing you can do for it, until Skouras is dead.”

Falling silent, I waited for her to respond, but she didn’t, looking down, not meeting my eyes.

I was about to speak again, to push harder before she could think of another argument for keeping her baby. But Serena beat me to it. She leaned forward and said simply, “Hailey got shot.”

Nidia’s green eyes flickered, closed and then open, with an expression that looked like guilt.

Serena went on: “She took two bullets and nearly died down there in Mexico. It wasn’t your fault, but it was because of you and this baby. And after she got better, Hailey didn’t run the other way like most smart people would. She went and fucking found you and got you someplace safe.”