The Dead Women of Juarez

they came to Mexico for a party, women were dying.

Paloma used the desk closest to the office’s single window. She was here four times a week, sometimes alone, sometimes with another member of the group. When Mujeres Sin Voces marched, she marched with them. A dusty box fan turned in the window, circulating warm air. The group had one secondhand computer with an internet connection and a bulky, hideous IBM Selectric typewriter, the kind with a golfball-shaped element. Ella Arellano was the group’s typist, though she could only hunt and peck with two fingers.

The women looked up when Kelly entered. Ella was younger by a few years than Paloma and skinnier. Her sister was one of the dead women of Juarez, gone for more than ten years. She smiled at Kelly. She spoke no English. “Buenos dias,” Kelly told her.

“Buenos dias, Senor Kelly,” Ella said.

“What are you doing here?” Paloma asked Kelly.

“I thought maybe we could get something to eat.”

“We’re busy right now; the president’s coming next month. We have to be ready for him.”

The walls of the office were like the pink telephone poles, littered several layers deep with flyers demanding justicia, justicia, justicia. By tradition, missing women were never referred to as dead, but this was just a way of keeping the faith. Sometimes families kept on the charade even after the bodies were found. Some part of that annoyed Kelly, but he couldn’t say why.

“I just want an hour,” Kelly said. He sounded more irritated than he meant to, and the swelling in his nose pitched his voice up a notch.

Paloma frowned at him. “?Tu tendra todo razon sin mi, Ella?”

“I will be fine.”

“One hour,” Paloma told Kelly sternly.

She got her purse. They left the office. Out in the sun, Kelly saw she’d put dark red highlights in her hair. She wore a bright yellow pullover that blazed against the color of her skin. Kelly realized he loved her, but he couldn’t say so; Paloma wouldn’t want him to.

“You should call first before you come,” Paloma said.

They walked up the block to a restaurant popular with the locals. The place and the neighborhood were too far off the beaten track to draw tourists.

The restaurant had no menus for the big meal. The inside was too crowded, but they found a place outside in the semi-shade, sharing a picnic table and benches with a quartet of men wearing street-construction vests and hard hats. They talked to each other in rapid Spanish. Kelly and Paloma used English.

“I wanted to surprise you,” Kelly said.

“I know.”

“Sorry,” Kelly said, though he wasn’t.

“I know. Forget about it.”

A short, apple-shaped woman brought them deep bowls of pozole. Mexicans had plenty of different ways to make the stuff, but the base was always hominy. This cook prepared pozole with pig’s feet, slices of avocado and raw onion and a garnish of chilis. A wedge of lime took away the heat when the spice got to be too much.

They ate in silence for a while. The men at the table seemed to sense the tension and they left as soon as they could. No one took their place, though the restaurant bustled.

“You look better today,” Paloma told Kelly at last.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. But your nose isn’t going to heal right. I can see it now.”

Kelly resisted the urge to touch his face. He shrugged. “It was fucked up already.”

Paloma sighed and shook her head. Kelly didn’t have to ask what she was thinking; they had argued over it enough times.

Empty bowls were replaced by a serving of tortilla soup. The heat and the spice of this and the pozole made Kelly’s nose run and he could feel his bruised sinuses opening up. Food like this was good for the belly and good for healing. Watching Paloma eat was a pleasure because she ate heartily, but still like a woman. It was the same way she made love.

“Esteban wants to know what you’re doing tomorrow night,” Paloma said.

“I’ll have to check my calendar.”

“Don’t be an asshole.”

“Okay, I’m not doing anything. What does he want to do?”

“Get drunk. Smoke hierba. What else?”

“Weed pays the bills,” Kelly said. He used his napkin to wipe his lips. A fresh throbbing started in his nose, but it was the good pain of swelling going down; he’d been through this often enough to know.

“He should sell it, not smoke it.”

“I’ll tell him that.”

“I said don’t be an asshole.”

Kelly finished his soup. He changed the subject: “I saw a new flyer today.”

“Rosalina?” Paloma asked.

“You know about her?”

“We heard.”

“Do you think—”

“Kelly,” Paloma interrupted, “you don’t have to talk about that if you don’t want to.”

“I’m just trying to be interested.”

“I know, and that’s good, but it’s… don’t worry about it.”

A shadow passed over Paloma’s expression and Kelly realized it had been there all along, only he hadn’t noticed. She seemed distracted, but not by the food or his condition. He was angry at the office and the flyers all over again; Paloma was meant to shine.

“I was thinking about Mazatlan,” Kelly said. “Maybe next month we could go together. Get a room at that one hotel on the beach. You remember that one? It has those two swimming pools by the restaurant?”

Paloma reached across the table and took Kelly’s hand. Kelly imagined he could feel her darkness in her touch. “I remember,” she said.

“It doesn’t have to be too long. Just a couple of days if you want.”

“I’d like that.”

“You would?”

“Yes, okay?”

“Good.”

The little fat woman came to their table with the main course. The corrida comida wasn’t called “the big meal” for nothing. Paloma pulled away from Kelly and for the rest of their time together they were more concerned with eating than talking.

SIX

ESTEBAN CAME BY EARLY, DRIVING a dusty white truck with a flat bed. Kelly rode shotgun and they started drinking cold bottles of Tecate from a Styrofoam cooler before they got to where they were headed.

Kelly didn’t know whose idea it was to build a massive skate park in Ciudad Juarez, but it was built and the skaters came. It was a broad, open space at the edge of the city that looked like a moonscape of cement craters. A massive tower of concrete stood at the center, looming sixty feet into the air alongside a winding framework of metal and wood steps. All day long climbers mounted one side while others rappelled down the other to the echoing sound of clattering skateboards and shouting.

White concrete blinded and reflected heat. In the middle of the day Parque Extremo was punishingly hot. It was possible to lose pounds just sweating it out in the half-pipes and skating ponds.

Neither Kelly nor Esteban skated, but this was their drinking spot. The politicians who celebrated the park’s grand opening had a lot to say about health and safety and keeping kids off drugs, but the smell of