Birds Sing before Sunrise

Finally, the car came to a full stop. The thugs swung open the doors. “You don’t move, or we shoot,” the shorter one, with the normal voice, ordered her. They got out and slammed the doors. The click that locked her up was like a brutal tug on a noose; the fading banter of her captors foreshadowed horror. The oppressive perspiration smell dissipated as eerie silence—and despair—took over. A few minutes later, two men came back, opened the back door and told her to slide out. As she stepped out and stood up she was unsteady. The stench of pig manure hit her. The thugs grabbed one of her arms each, walked her about twenty steps, and stopped. “Head down,” they both said in chorus. The sounds of their voices changed. The aroma of smoked meat met her. She thought she had entered a room or a dwelling. Soon, a woman’s voice muttering a couple of undecipherable words confirmed her assessment. “Left. Head down again. Lower.” They were guiding her into another room. The smell of excrement battled with a sweet scent of grass or hay. Rabbits? A door squeaked and closed. “Down. Sit.” A stiff tug on her right arm repeated the order. She gingerly squatted down and slumped onto an unexpectedly low stool. The room sounded tiny and full. The repugnant body odor had returned, mixing with the rabbit scent. She raised her folded hands and pressed her elbows into her chest—waiting, shaking, terrified. Her captors laughed. “Don’t worry. Too soon, chica,” the tall one mocked, his voice grating like a crow’s. “We won’t touch you. We don’t want our boss to find out that we got to you before him.” He ran his fingers over her cheek as he removed her blindfold and gag. “It’s too early in the morning, anyway. I’m running on empty after last night.” Her eyes woke up. Tiny cracks in brown adobe walls invited randomly dispersed morning sunrays into the room. It looked like a little hutch or sty, windowless, about fifteen by thirty. She stared at two men, who looked to be in their forties or fifties. The tall one showed a scar running down from his mask into his shirt. Breathing deep, she nervously tucked her hair behind her ears, licked her lips and tasted salt. She shivered. The semi-dark made her feel worse than her fading nausea. “Please let me….” She lowered her head and cried for her children, her man, all lost. No. This couldn’t be. “This is your place,” the short bandit said calmly, ripping her out of her daze. “Til we get paid.” Get paid? Her head shot up. “How much?” she asked, barely able to form the words. “We? We don’t know. Nothing, sometimes.” His snicker sounded like a cruel threat. “Nothing?” “Yep.” He shrugged. “We’re no bosses. Sometimes they get nothing. We keep you safe. But not if you try to flee.” Where would she run, anyway? The thugs certainly had picked a remote place to hide her. “Nothing” meant…she might die here? Deathly fear paralyzed her. “Don’t kill me,” she begged her captors, trembling, gums aching. “My children—” “We know.” The tall one laughed. She saw her entire life flash by. From her youth in San Juan to Cleveland, to Noredge, to Lowridge, with Frank, Jennifer, Kim…. They implored her not to leave them. “Let me help you.” The tall one untied her hands. “Get up, now.” He took off her jacket. “Let’s see what you brought us. Hands up.” He frisked her. Feeling violated but powerless, she didn’t resist. She forced herself to concentrate on her breathing. His eager hands, octopus tentacles, traveled over her body, lingering in places where she could not possibly be hiding a weapon or treasure. She didn’t offer him the pleasure of a complaint but released a tense, audible sigh. “If you make trouble, I’ll take off your clothes,” he threatened as his much quieter companion looked on. She stared down at the dirt floor. Little rodents, locked into four-by-four, corral-like spaces, their enclosing wire-mesh walls about two feet high, munched on what looked like alfalfa, grass, and orange peels. Cuy. Guinea pigs. The imprisoned creatures, furs freely mixing white, grey and brown colors, oblivious to the three intruders, looked happy and unconcerned that eating more would shorten their two-month average life span. Soon they would fatten their owner’s wallet. There were twenty or thirty to a cage and they occupied nearly half the room. There had to be two hundred of them in the seven or eight roofless confinements lined up against the left wall. My only friends here.