The Paper Swan(42)

Concha and the other guard pulled him into the courtyard. “Stop! Your mother contracted tuberculosis and died from complications related to it.” They held up the paper for him. “We notified her next of kin, her brother Fernando, but no one came. She was buried with the other unclaimed prisoners. This is her prisoner and plot number.”

Esteban wanted to shut their mouths. Every word they said made it worse. He wanted to shut his eyes and his ears. He wanted to go back, take Juan Pablo’s gun, and point it to his own head.

“No.”

“No.”

“No.”

He kept repeating.

He hated the way the women were staring at him from their dorms—some with pity, some with irritation at being disturbed, but most with blank, empty stares. They had seen it countless times. Prisoners had to buy their beds, their clothes, their privileges. If you couldn’t pay for the doctor, no one came to see you. And here, cramped in tight spaces, they’d seen it all: AIDS, flu, measles, tuberculosis. It was a breeding ground for all kinds of bugs and diseases, which, if left untreated, turned fatal.

Concha picked up the box Esteban had dropped and gave it to him. The tiny, rusted tin was all that was left of his mother. MaMaLu didn’t smoke, but it was probably the only thing she’d managed to scrounge up in this hell hole. He wondered how someone that took up so much space in his heart could be reduced to a scrap of red and green metal that smelled like tobacco.

“Mi madre está muerta,” he said softly, as he weighed it in his palm.

“My mother is dead!” he shouted, announcing it to the whole prison. His voice bounced off the bleak, gray walls that surrounded the compound.

No one cared. No one had told him. No one had asked what kind of funeral she’d like. Did they know to put flowers in her hair? Did they know her favorite color? Esteban hoped they had buried her in an orange dress, the color of tangerines. MaMaLu was just like that—full of zest and gold and sunshine and bite.

He held up her earrings. She always wore the same pair: two doves joined at the beak to form a silver circle. Esteban wanted nothing more than to hear the jangle of the small turquoise stones that hung from the hoops as she chased after him. He needed that because he’d been bad. Really, really bad.

Get your broom, MaMaLu. I promise I won’t run today. I’m sorry I didn’t make it to you in time. I tried. I tried so hard. I did bad things. I killed a man. You have to come after me, MaMaLu. Come after me because only you can save me. Only you can make it better.

But MaMaLu’s earrings hung limply in Esteban’s hands. She was not coming to save him or chastise him or love him or sing to him.

Esteban waited for the tears. He didn’t care if the guards manning the towers, or the women, or the children saw him. He wanted to release the sea of grief that was welling up in him, but the tears would not come. All Esteban felt was rage. He wanted to ram his fists into the tall, concrete walls, until big, gray boulders toppled over and buried everything. All of the helplessness and injustices and betrayal turned his heart into cold, hard stone. Esteban did not cry when it sank to the bottom of his soul like an abandoned anchor; he did not cry as he followed Concha through the tunnel, back to Cantina Man’s car.

“Did you see your mother?” he asked.

“My mother is dead.” Esteban’s voice was as hard and corroded as the metallic cigarette box he was holding.

“I’m sorry.” Cantina Man paused. “You have family?”

Esteban thought of the father who had abandoned him. He thought of an empty bottle of tequila, rolling from his uncle’s hand. He thought of the friend who’d left him in a cloud of dust. He thought of trampled paper animals, and three hundred and fifty pesos, and Juan Pablo, and Camila, and tangerine peels decaying in the dirt.

“I have no one,” he said.

Cantina Man was quiet for a while. “You saved my life today. I will take care of you. From now on, you are not Esteban. You are Damian—the tamer, the slayer.”

Dah-me-yahn. Esteban liked the way it sounded—like someone who didn’t give a damn. All he cared about now was bringing Warren Sedgewick and El Charro to justice, the kind of justice they wouldn’t be able to buy their way out of, the kind of justice MaMaLu had been denied.

Damian was going to make them pay for what they had done to his mother.

Cantina Man’s driver gave Concha a whack of bills. The other guards watched, eager for a cut.

“Where to, El Charro?” asked the driver, when he got back in the car.