KILLING SARAI(32)

I nod appreciatively and take the stack of bills into my fingers.

“Thank you.”

I start to walk away but I stop and say, “What about Javier? If he’s willing to pay that much to have me killed, he’ll send someone else to find me if you won’t do it.”

“He will be dead before that happens.”

“Are you going to kill him?” I ask, but then add, “I mean not for me, of course, but for that other man?” I want him to say that, yes, it’s for me, but I know that’s not the reason.

“You will be safe to live your life now,” he says simply.

We share a quiet moment and I get out of the car, shutting the door softly behind me. And then I watch Victor drive away, his brake lights penetrating the partial darkness at the very end of the road. And then he’s gone. Just like that.

What just happened?

I doubt I’ll ever be able to wrap my mind around the past nine years of my life and even more-so, the past couple of days. As I stand here at the end of a driveway of a place familiar yet so foreign to me, I realize that I can’t feel myself. At least the person I used to be, or the person I was supposed to be but the opportunity was taken from me by Javier. By my mother.

I have lived a life of seclusion and bondage, a prisoner of a Mexican drug lord who although treated me with a strange sort of kindness, abused me in other ways. I have slept with a man I didn’t love and who I didn’t want to sleep with for most of my young life. And Javier is the only man I’ve ever been with sexually. I have seen rape and kidnapping and abuse in every form possible. And I have seen death. So much death. My only friend died in my arms just hours ago. I watched the life leave her body as she looked at me.

After all of this, I feel like, as I sift through those memories casually as though scanning a hand of cards, none of it is affecting me the way that it should, the way it would a normal girl. And I know why. I just hate to admit it to myself: over the years I became used to it. It was how my life was. My mind conformed and adapted the best way that it knew how.

But now here I am back at home in Tucson, free to do whatever I want. I could walk a few blocks to the little store I used to go to everyday after school and buy a soda and a bag of Doritos. If I wanted, I could go to my old elementary school down the road and swing on the swings or lay down in the field that surrounds the building and just look up at the stars until I fall asleep. I could steal that bike in the front yard of lot number twelve and ride to my old friend’s house twenty miles away. But the trailer behind me at the end of the cracked concrete driveway is just as good. And it’s right there. It’s taking me longer than I anticipated to walk up to the door and find out if the only person I knew who could help me now still lives there.

I can do whatever I want, yet I find it eternally difficult to choose where to begin. Or if to begin at all.

I guess now I know what it feels like when a person has spent half of his or her life in prison and is released back out into the world. They don’t know what to do with themselves, they don’t know how to fit back into society. They constantly look over their shoulder. They can’t sleep past five a.m. or believe that they can choose what to eat and when to eat it. Violence and darkness and confinement is so much a part of them that half of them never learn any other way.

I don’t want to be like that. But right now, as I stand here staring at the blaring light on the front porch and letting it bring spots in front of my eyes, I feel like it’s how I’ll be forever whether I want it or not.

A shadow moves across the front window.

I shove the stack of money in the back of my shorts, pulling my tank top down over it and then I take a deep breath.

I walk up the wooden steps and knock lightly upon the door.

“Who is it?” a man’s voice asks from the other side.

I’m pretty certain now that she’s long gone from this place.

“It’s…Sarai. I used to live over at lot fifteen.”

The chain on the door shuffles and then the door breaks apart. A short, chubby man peers out at me.

“How can I help you?”

He’s shirtless and his round belly hangs over the elastic of his knee-length gym shorts. The smell of popcorn filters out the door and past me.

“Does Mrs. Gregory live here anymore?” It feels awkward asking because I already know that she doesn’t.

The man shakes his head.

“Sorry, but I’ve lived here for two years now,” he says. “And I never knew of a Mrs. Gregory.”

“OK, thanks.”

I turn my back on him and descend the steps.

“Are you alright?” the man calls out.

I glance up at him momentarily. “Yeah, I’m fine. Thanks for asking.”

He nods and closes the door as I leave, the sound of the chain lock being slid back into place is brief.

My bare feet move painlessly over the sand and rock-littered road of the trailer park. The street lights mounted high on the light poles begin to thin out and bathe me in darkness as I make it to the end of the road and leave the property. A car drives by and I’m instantly on edge, thinking it might be Javier here to kill me. But it drives on past and leaves me only with an erratic heartbeat and paranoid thoughts. At least I know that Izel is dead. I picture her last moment lying on her stomach in the sand with that gun in her hand. I didn’t flinch or recoil when I saw Victor’s bullet pass through her skull and her upper-body hit the ground face-down like a toddler falling asleep in his birthday cake. No, I felt only the satisfaction of revenge. I was glad to watch her die. Because she had it coming.