Border Crossings: A Catherine James Thriller (19 page)

A knock came at the door and Ceci opened it.  It was the little girl from the
caseta
.  “There’s a call for you,
señora
,” she told her.

“For me?  Did they say who it is?”

“She said to tell you it was your sister.”  The little girl disappeared down the hall and ran back down the stairs.

Yesenia? 
“Humberto,” she called to her brother-in-law.  “I have a phone call.  Can you watch the kids?”

“Fine,” he said.  “But be quick.  Alisa and I want to go out for a bite.”

“I will.”  She walked down the stairs and to the
caseta
where a woman gestured to the receiver sitting on the counter.  “Hello?”

“Ceci?”

“Yesenia!?  Oh, it’s so good to hear you.  I’ve been worried about you.  How are you!?”

“Ceci, listen to me very carefully.  You have to leave your apartment.”

“What?  Yesenia, where are you?  What are you talking about?”

“I’m in Texas, but listen to me, Ceci.  You have to leave quickly.  It was all a big trick.”

“Texas?  Where are you living?  Are you working?”

“Ceci, listen to me!” cried Yesenia.  “You have to leave.”

“Leave?  What are you talking about?”

On the other end of the line Yesenia was sitting on the bed trying to make her sister understand.  “The flier,” she told her, “That man, Ortiz, all of it.  You were right.  It was all a big trick!  They sent me to a whorehouse.”

“A whorehouse!?  Oh my God, Yesenia, are you okay?”

“Yes, I’m okay.  I ran away, but you have to listen to me, Ceci, this is very important. 
Señor
Ortiz made me give him your name and address.  I didn’t know what it was for, I swear.  He said it was in case something happened to me and I was so stupid I thought it made sense.  I don’t know what he’s going to do when he finds out I ran away.  He might send people to your apartment or something.”

“To our place?  What for?  Why would he want to know where I live?”

“I don’t know,” said Yesenia.  “I’m just scared for you is all.  They said I owed them the money for bringing me here and had to work it off.”

“Did they make you do anything?” asked Ceci.

Yesenia was quiet for a moment.  “Yes,” she told her sister.  “They beat me and locked me in a trailer where a man raped me.”

Ceci held her hand to her mouth in shock.  “He raped you!?” she cried.  The woman behind the counter of the
caseta
spun around with eyes wide but Ceci paid no attention.  “Yesenia, where are you?  You should call the police right now.”

“I can’t call the police.  You don’t know what these people are like.  They’re dangerous people, Ceci.  Please, I think you need to leave your apartment.  Go soon, all of you, and don’t tell anyone where you go.”

Ceci was horrified at what she was hearing.  “Yesenia, what have you gotten yourself into?  What have you gotten us all into?  Are these people going to come after me and Roberto for the money you were going to pay?”

Yesenia already felt guilt and shame for all that had happened, and to hear the fear in Ceci’s voice made it that much worse.  “Yes, Ceci.  I think they will.  They’re bad people.  Please, just leave that apartment.  As fast as you can.”

“What about you?  Yesenia, what will you do?  If you can’t call the police, then where will you go?”

“Don’t worry about me.  I’m safe.  I met someone who is letting me stay with him.”

“Who?  A man?”

“It’s okay.  He’s a nice guy, your age.  I’m much safer here than where I was, I promise.  But Ceci, there’s something else I have to tell you.”  Armando had helped Yesenia reach her sister, but then he excused himself to the living room so she might have some privacy.  Yesenia worried he might be listening in, though, so she cupped her hand over the phone and whispered.  “I saw the men who brought me here kill someone . . . a policeman.”

“What!?” said Ceci.  “Oh, Yesenia!”

“We got pulled over and they shot him in the street.”

“Oh my God,” exclaimed Ceci.  “Yesenia, you have to call the police.”

“I know, but it’s just not safe right now.  The police might arrest me for being there.  I don’t know what they’ll do.”

“Well, you have to tell someone.”

“I will.  I’ll figure it out, but you need to leave, Ceci.  Promise me.”

Ceci thought of her children and what her husband would think of all this.  She knew Yesenia was right, though.  Nothing might happen if she stayed, but if something did, she couldn’t risk someone hurting her family.  “I will.  I’m going to go home right now and tell everyone.  We’ll go.  I don’t know where, but we’ll go.”

“I’m sorry,” said Yesenia.  “I never meant for any of this to happen.”

“It’s okay,” said Ceci.  “Roberto’s going to have fits, but I’ll worry about him.  You just take care of yourself.  You come back home if you can, Yesenia.  I should never have let you go out on your own like this.  I knew it was too dangerous.  I’ll tell Lysette where we go so you can find us.”  Lysette was one of Ceci’s best friends.  “You come back home, Yesenia.  Come back safe.  And if you think you’re in danger, you call the police.  Don’t you wait until it’s too late.”

“I will,” she said.  “And I’m so sorry.”

“It’s going to be okay,” Ceci told her, though she wasn’t truly sure of that herself.  “Just be careful.”

“I will,” she said again.  “Take care, too.  I’d better go now.”

“Okay,” she said.  “I love you, Yesenia.  Be careful.  Come home.”

“I’ll try.  And I love you, too.”

As Ceci hung up the phone the woman behind the counter saw her wiping tears from her cheek.  “Is everything okay?”

“No,” said Ceci.  “My sister,” she started, but could say no more as more tears rolled down her cheek.

“Is there anything I can do for you?” asked the woman.  “Should I call the police?”  She hadn’t heard everything but she had heard enough to know there was trouble, bad trouble.

“No.  Thank you, but I think they’re already involved,” she lied.  Ceci started out the
caseta
but then a thought crossed her mind.  “There is one thing you could do that would help a lot, if you don’t mind.”

“Of course,” said the woman.

“Bad men may come here looking for us, some coyotes.  If anyone comes asking about us, will you tell them we moved to Cuernavaca?  And please, don’t mention to anyone I had a phone call.”

The woman was disturbed by such a request, but she’d known Ceci and her family for years.  “Yes,” she promised.  “If anyone comes looking for you I’ll tell them you all moved to Cuernavaca.  And if they ask, you didn’t have any recent phone calls here.”

“Thank you,” said Ceci.

“Are you really leaving?” asked the woman.

“Yes,” she said, “we have to.” 
But definitely not to Cuernavaca.

The woman came around from the counter and gave her a hug.  “You take care, Ceci.  I’m sorry for whatever is going on.”

“So am I,” she said.  “Thank you again,” she told the woman.

That evening she told her husband Roberto about the phone call, along with his brother Humberto and his wife.  It was a heated debate filled with curses and disagreements, but in the end they agreed they had to leave and find somewhere new to live.  “We all know how these coyotes can be,” said Roberto to his brother.  “I don’t like it anymore than you do, but we can’t have thugs breaking down our door demanding thousands of dollars from us.  We don’t have it and we have the kids to think about.”

“But why do WE have to leave?” asked Alisa.  “This is her sister’s problem,” she said, pointing to Ceci.

“If we stay here it might become our problem when men with guns show up.  Did you hear what I said about the American policeman?  Think about it.  Men who do that, what won’t they do?  Do you want to stay and find out?”

And that settled Alisa.  She stomped into the bedroom furiously and began taking their clothes off hangers and folding them up, ready for packing.

“I’m sorry,” Ceci told Humberto and Roberto.

Her husband hugged her, “It’s not your fault.  And it’s not Yesenia’s fault, either.  At least she was able to call and warn us.  It may be nobody comes around, but you’re right.  There’s no reason to take the risk.”

Yesenia had hung up the phone hoping her sister could forgive her, not only for bringing trouble on them but for what she told her sister she’d become since last they talked.  She sat for a moment, the phone in her lap, then took a deep breath and looked around at her new surroundings.

Armando lived in a dark green frame house with navy blue trim in a Dallas suburb called Greatwood.  It was modest as measured by middle-income America standards, but Yesenia thought it a little slice of heaven.  She had clean sheets for one, no more disgusting stains.  And roaches didn’t crawl over her as soon as the light was out.  She didn’t find their droppings all over her clothes and undergarments.  And best of all, the refrigerator was full of real food.  Except for the burger and coke that first day, she hadn’t had a decent meal since arriving in the U.S.  Miss Lydia kept the girls on a strict diet to keep them thin for the Johns.  She’d had her fill of raw vegetables and fat free cereal in skim milk.  And Armando had gone and purchased a treat.  She was too scared to go out with him yet, but after leaving for the store, he soon returned with several bags of groceries, including a few pounds of snow crab and sticks of butter with ice cold beer which he proceeded to make for dinner.  And as she sat down to the feast before her, Yesenia gorged herself.

“Hungry?” He asked her jokingly.

“This is so good,” she told him.

“You act like you’ve never had crab before.”

“I haven’t,” she said with a smile.  “It’s really good.”

Yesenia had told herself that once they got away from the brothel she would strike out on her own, but she quickly realized the benefit of staying where she was, at least for a while.  Armando was turning out to be a saint compared to what she had expected.  She had thought she was going to have to be some sort of servant for him, at least until she figured out her next step.  But he wasn’t like that at all. 
And where am I going to go?  S
he asked herself.  The little house offered her a refuge from her problems, a place to sit and think about what to do next.

There was one hiccup to the arrangement.  Armando’s younger brother sat next to them on the couch while they all went to work on the crab.  He held a meaty leg of crab in one hand and his beer in the other, staring at them both skeptically, “So, you’re Armando’s girlfriend?”

“Ummm, I guess so,” she told him.  “You could say that.”

He looked at his brother and then back at her.  “How come I’ve never met you before?  I’ve never even heard of you before.”  He looked back at his brother.  “Exactly when did you get a girlfriend?”

“What, I can’t have my own life?”

“Where’d you meet?” he asked Yesenia, who suddenly felt like a witness being cross-examined.

“I told you, she’s friends with one of the guys from school.  He introduced us,” interjected Armando.

“When?”

“A while ago,” his brother said flatly.

“How come I didn’t hear anything about it until now.”

“Well, maybe if you weren’t holed up in your room playing World of Warcraft all the time you might have known sooner.  Hell, maybe you’d have a girlfriend yourself.”

That settled him.  “So what, you’re moving in?”

“Hey, shut up and eat,” Armando told him.  “You’re being rude.  It’s a long story, okay.  I’ll tell you later.  She just needs a place right now, okay?  It’s no big deal.”

Ricky, who was about Yesenia’s age, merely shrugged.  “Whatever you say, I guess.  I mean, don’t get me wrong, you seem cool and everything, I’m just surprised is all.”  They finished their meal and afterward Armando brought out something else Yesenia had never tried . . . a bottle of Vodka.  “Oh, snap,” said Ricky.  “It’s about to get wild up in here.”  Armando played the bartender role and before long all three were drunk, yet another new experience for Yesenia.  She was prepared to get even more plastered as she began to realize its pleasant numbing effect to the swirling storm of thoughts and emotions going through her mind, but Armando cautioned her that another one would likely send her praying to the porcelain god.  The three of them talked and joked for nearly two hours . . . two blessed hours where Yesenia forgot about the rest.  She soon passed out on the couch in a heavy stupor, free for one night from having to deal with all the horrible new memories in her head as she snored loudly, much to the humor of the two brothers.

“She snores louder than you do,” Ricky said.

“Yeah,” smiled Armando, “but she’s cool, right?”

“Yeah,” Ricky said.  “And I hate to admit it, but she is hot, bro.  She’s gorgeous.  I still don’t understand why she’s dating you.”

“Fuck you,” his brother laughed, tossing a crab shell at him.

The next day Yesenia awoke to discover she’d been tucked in with a clean sheet and pillow.  After a good shower she settled back on the couch, a little confused as to what to do next.  She ended up spending most of the day watching television, none of which she understood except for the one Spanish station she’d found.  So when Armando returned that night, she asked if he’d help her pick up some more English.  They sat together on the couch and he began translating everything they watched.