The Paper Swan(4)

I didn’t know if I’d been raped or beaten or hideously mutilated.

I didn’t know if I wanted to find out.

I didn’t know if he was coming back.

And if he did, I didn’t know if this, whatever hellish state I was in, was better, safer, easier.

Terror continued stalking me through the labyrinth of my mind, but there was one place she could never get me, one place I knew I’d always be safe. I turned into that corner in my head and shut myself off to everything but MaMaLu’s lullaby.

It wasn’t really a lullaby. It was a song about armed bandits and fear and danger. But the way MaMaLu sang it—soft and dreamy—always soothed me. She sang it in Spanish, but I remembered the meaning more than the words.



Down from the Sierra Morena mountains,

Cielito lindo, they come A pair of black eyes,

Cielito lindo, they’re contraband. . .



I saw myself in a hammock, blue sky above me, Esteban giving me an occasional absentminded push, while MaMaLu sang as she hung clothes up to dry. Those afternoon naps in the gardens of Casa Paloma, with my nanny and her son, were my earliest memories. Hummingbirds buzzed over red and yellow hibiscus, and bougainvillea spilled from fat, unkempt hedges.



Ay, yai, yai, yai,

Sing and do not cry,

Because singing cheers us up,

Cielito lindo, our hearts. . .



MaMaLu sang when Esteban or I got hurt. She sang when we couldn’t sleep. She sang when she was happy, and she sang when she was sad.



Canta y no llores

Sing and do not cry . . .



But the tears came. I cried because I couldn’t sing. I cried because my tongue could not form the words. I cried because MaMaLu and blue skies and hummingbirds defied the darkness. I cried as I held on to them, and slowly, one step at a time, Terror retreated.

I opened my eyes and took a deep breath. I was still engulfed in darkness, but I was aware of a constant rocking motion. Maybe my senses were starting to kick in. I tried to flex my fingers.

Please.

Be there.

Work.

Nothing.

My head was still pounding, from where he’d knocked me out, but beyond its boom-boom-boom there were voices, and they were getting closer.

“You pass through Ensenada often?” A woman’s voice.

I couldn’t make out the whole reply, but it was deeper, definitely male.

“ . . . I’ve never got the red light before,” he was saying.

My abductor’s voice, etched in my brain, along with his shoes.

“No big deal. Just a random check before . . . crossing the border.” The woman’s voice was fading in and out. “I need to make sure . . . vessel’s serial number matches the engine’s.”

The border.

Ensenada.

Shit.

The rocking motion suddenly made sense. I was on a boat, probably the same one he’d taken me out to. We were at Ensenada, the port of entry into Mexico, about 70 miles south of San Diego, and the lady was most likely a customs officer.

My heart picked up.

This is it. Your chance to escape, Skye.

Get her attention. You have to get her attention!

I screamed and screamed, but I couldn’t make a sound. Whatever he’d given me had paralyzed my vocal cords.

I heard footsteps above, which made me think I was probably in some kind of storage space below the deck.

“Just to verify, you’re Damian Caballero?” the woman asked.

“Damian,” he corrected. Dah-me-yahn. Not Day-me-yun.

“Well, everything looks like it’s in order. I’ll take a pic of your hull identification number and then you can be on your way.”

No! I was losing my window of opportunity.

I couldn’t kick or scream, but I found I could roll, so that’s what I did. Left to right, side to side. I rocked, harder, faster, not knowing if I was knocking up against anything, not knowing if it was making any difference. The sixth or seventh time I did it, I heard something grate above me, like wood scraping against wood.

Oh please.

Please, please, please, please.

I put everything into it, even though it was making me dizzy.

Something crashed. A loud thud. And suddenly it wasn’t so dark anymore.

“What was that?” the woman asked.

“I didn’t hear anything.”

“It sounded like it came from below. Mind if I take a look?”