The Dead Women of Juarez

“I’m not so impressive here, I suppose.”

“No, you’re not.”

“I’m sorry.”

Enrique sat heavily on the couch and disturbed the quilt. Sevilla wanted to reach out and smooth the wrinkles, but he stayed where he was. “You should be sorry, but there’s no time for that now. We are in it. The decision is made.”

The clock ticked a hundred times before Sevilla spoke again. “We are in it,” he said. “And we’ll be in it until we have answers. That’s what we agreed to.”

“Who will you talk to? Who is this woman who knew Paloma Salazar?”

Sevilla sat back in the chair and gripped the armrests. The action steadied him. He did not have a headache anymore. “You know of Mujeres Sin Voces?”

“The women in black. I’ve seen them.”

“Paloma was one of them. This woman, Ella Arellano, she is also one of them. I knew them both. From before.”

“What? How?”

Sevilla took a deep breath. “Because my daughter is missing.”

NINE

THE HEADACHE OF THE NIGHT WAS gone, but the headache of the new day pounded against the back of Sevilla’s eyes and made him wish for a long sleep. He hid bloodshot whites behind sunglasses and drank water from a plastic bottle whenever his mouth suggested even a hint of going dry.

He parked a hundred yards from the colonia’s bus stop and watched the young women come and go in the unfettered sun. Some of the buses were from the city, but most came from the maquiladoras themselves. Once upon a time Ana Sevilla rode a bus like those, the lights doused before dawn or after sunset to save that little bit of power for the owners of the plants.

The regularity of them was hypnotizing, and Sevilla could have let the whole day pass with their comings and goings. Once he saw a black pick-up truck patrol along the unpaved road with two men in the king cab. They passed close to Sevilla’s car and were gone.

Sevilla watched for Ella Arellano among the women and the buses but she did not appear. He would have to go in.

In his time Sevilla had seen worse colonias, some so close to the maquilas that one could throw a stone from one to the other if there wasn’t a wall in the way. He had once been in a colonia in Baja built right along the tall hurricane fence that separated Mexico from the United States. The people there looked out their hand-cut windows at the land of opportunity.

Sevilla did not like the colonias: their closeness, their smells and the suspicious faces. As a uniformed policeman he knew officers who had been beaten or stabbed patrolling the colonias or collecting statements for some crime or the other. Not all were like those, but they were close enough and Sevilla stayed away.

His car was unmarked and he didn’t display his badge, but the people of the colonia knew Sevilla for a policeman. Word of him would spread from one side to the other within minutes. The close little half-streets cleared and children wouldn’t play where he stepped.

He knew without looking inside that Ella’s home was empty. The rough-hewn door stood open and the shadows within were still. A spider had already drawn a line of silk between the handle and the jamb.

Sevilla went inside anyway. Nothing was left but the swept dirt floor. A few stray nails carried wisps of paper from pictures torn down. The legs of a table left depressions in the ground that time would fill and fade until even these were gone.

“Mierda.”

Lingering did nothing. He found no hidden message or even a hint of where or when the exodus occurred. Sevilla licked his lips, found them dry and drank more water.

The girl waited outside, half shaded by the close roofs of the houses to either side. She was perhaps five years old and small for her age. The print dress she wore had the delicate look of much-used hand-me-downs. She had a smudge of dirt on one cheek and a beauty mark on the other. One day she would be lovely.

Sevilla looked at the girl without speaking. She didn’t flee on bare feet into the maze of the colonia. She had old eyes.

“Hola,” Sevilla said at last.

The girl raised her hand.

“Did you know the woman who lived here? Senorita Arellano?”

The girl moved one foot and Sevilla thought she might take to her heels, but she remained. She nodded.

“Do you know when she left?”

The girl shook her head. “Adios, senor,” she said in a voice as high as Christmas bells. She turned and vanished without leaving a footprint to follow. Sevilla exhaled as though he had just watched a deer bolt into the trees.

TEN

THAT NIGHT HE DID NOT DRINK. He cooked pork for himself for dinner and sat alone at the kitchen table to take the meal. He had only water with lemon to wash down his food.

He was not in the mood for television or reading or music and so he sat alone in Ana’s room with the picture from Parque Central in his lap as silent tears coursed down his cheeks. The drink would make the long hours better, or at least shorter, and he would tranquilize himself to sleep knowing that he could do the same again tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow until there were no more tomorrows to avoid.

“Where are you?” he asked Ana and Ofelia. His wife once said that God would answer if only the question came enough times, but even she grew tired of asking. Only Ella and Paloma and the women of Mujeres Sin Voces never tired. Justicia para Ana. Justicia para Ofelia. Where are you? Where are you?

For the first time in a long while Sevilla lay down on his daughter’s bed. He cradled the photograph to him because he didn’t have to look at it to know every color, every shape. He heard his wife humming a lullabye and then recognized his own voice carrying the tune.

Mira la luna

Comiendo su tuna;

Echando las cascaras

En la laguna.

And then he slept.

ELEVEN

SEVILLA CALLED THE HOSPITAL EACH morning and asked after Kelly. The nurses told him the same thing each time. Kelly slept and didn’t wake. His heart still beat. He was not ready to die.

He avoided going to the office for more than a few minutes at a time. The security around state institutions was more impenetrable than the city’s and the feeling of being trapped inside an armed camp was too much for him to bear. He did his work by telephone and promised written reports he would put in the mail when he had something new to say.

This latitude he was allowed because Sevilla came from a time before the black-clad army of federal police and the barbed wire and the ramparts of concrete and steel. His Juarez was a place of marijuana runners and petty theft and turistas coming south of the border to score a gram of something that would make the world go away for a little while. There was no place for Sevilla anymore, but still he remained. The young