draperies had a view of the Chihuahua Desert and Tavio’s airstrip. She’d spent long hours watching the dusty two-lane road that led across the parched earth to the airstrips. Sometimes she’d watched huge dirt devils race across the barren, beige moonscape, and always she had wished she were free to whirl away.
She’d watched the birds, the vultures, hawks and the eagles with special envy because they could fly. In her other life, she had taken freedom for granted.
If I’m ever free again, I will treasure every single moment.
She had to get out of here.
“Oh, Shanghai…” She called to him, willing him to think of her, willing him to care, willing him to come.
Had she gone mad? Maybe she had if she believed Shanghai could hear her thoughts or that he would be moved by them.
She picked up her brush and sat down on her bed to work with her hair. Despite the thick adobe walls and floors, she heard telephones ring and more doors slam downstairs. She heard men come and go. When heavy boots stomped up the stairs, she cringed.
Tavio’s door opened and slammed.
The noise downstairs continued. Much was going on tonight. Trucks roared up to the compound. Planes took off and landed.
After a long time, most of the activity stopped, but still she listened to the silence, almost fearing it more, because soon Tavio would finish whatever he was doing in his own bedroom and come.
Finally she grew so weary, she lay down. At some point she must’ve fallen asleep because footsteps in the hall awakened her. When her door opened, her hand went to her throat. She sprang up, her heart pounding.
“Are you all right?” Delia whispered across the darkness.
“Delia! It’s only you. Come in! I’m so glad to see you! Turn on the light!”
“I know you are in that plane all day. I worry about you.”
Delia lit the lamp, and Mia forgot her own fears when she saw that Delia was limping. The poor girl had a cut lip and two black eyes that were swollen nearly shut. Her hands shook.
“Did Chito beat you again?”
Delia hung her head. “Tavio, he very scared and angry. The Cessna you hide in—it not return. He is afraid, it no going to. He is afraid for Marco. He ask everybody who hide you. Even me.”
Delia sat down beside her, and Mia clutched her hand, finding strength in her kindness.
“Everybody scared. Many rumors. Tavio, he think one of us betray him. He walk back and forth on the balcony outside his bedroom like a big wild cat. He listen for Marco’s airplane motor. He smoke too much. The crack make him mean tonight. Meaner than Chito even. He accuse everybody of giving information to the gringos. I ask him if he want more tequila, and he jump at me, his eyes burning me. He so crazy he scare me just by looking at me. I don’t go near him. Be careful when he come.”
Mia shuddered. “What about Chito?”
Delia shrugged. “So—they fight each other. Over you, no? It is not the first time they fight over a woman. Then Chito, he hit me. Now he feel better.”
Mia went to her and hugged her. Then she led her to the bathroom and gently washed her face with soap and water.
There were shouts from below. Her eyes large and fearful, Delia pulled away and rushed to the door.
“Stay with me a little while,” Mia pleaded, not wanting Delia to suffer more abuse.
“I have much work. The men, they are hungry…. You hear them….”
“I will teach you to read. Like before.”
Delia’s eyes lit up for the briefest moment, and then her face became dull again. She was very intelligent, but her family hadn’t been able to send her to school for more than a single year. As long as she was with Chito, she would have a life of dreary servitude and abuse.
“All right. For a little while,” Delia said.
When Delia handed Mia the cartoon page from the last newspaper Tavio had given her, Mia forced a tight smile. They sat down on the bed. Pulling the sheets over themselves, Delia began to read.
The gloomy atmosphere from down below seeped into the bedroom. Mia was glad that they had some occupation to distract them.
In between Delia’s nervous, halting words in Spanish and Mia’s gentle corrections, Mia heard the rising wind outside but no plane engine. In the passing of the next half hour, she began to feel Delia’s severely repressed uneasiness. The girl stumbled over words she’d read easily only yesterday. The men had grown silent downstairs, and again Mia’s own fears escalated at the thought of Tavio coming. But still they continued to read the cartoons until Tavio’s bedroom door banged again. When they heard his heavy-booted footsteps in the hall, Delia stopped.
Then Tavio burst into her bedroom, flipped his cell phone shut and stared at them with wild, unseeing eyes.
“Marco’s dead,” he said.
Delia gave a cry. Newspapers slipped to the floor, and she ran from the room.
“Why did Marco have to get out of the plane?” Tavio whispered, more to himself than to her. “He is the pilot. He never gets out. He should have taken off again. When the DEA agents pointed their guns at him, he panicked and backed into the propeller. He…”
“Oh, no….”
At the sound of her voice, his bloodshot black eyes focused on her face as if he realized she was there for the first time. His dark scowl was terrifying.
He’d been smoking, she knew. As a result his tense, vicious, grief-stricken mood was worse.
“I want you,” he whispered.
She sat up in bed shivering. “Please…no…Not like this!”
“Like how then?” he yelled as he strode toward her. “I want. I take. I’m a beast. A big rat!” He pounded his chest. “A criminal! That’s what you think! That is why you hide all day in that plane. I know you are burning up in there, but you won’t come out. I get scared you’d rather die than be my woman, so I send Chito. He nearly rape you. I save you, and still you say no to me.”
She didn’t look at him. Even so, his burning lust and her fear lit the air between them like a fuse. She could almost feel sparks rushing toward dynamite.
Wrapping the sheet around her, she got out of bed. She was shaking so hard she could barely breathe. “Rape me then. Be like Chito. Go ahead. Take me like an animal. What are you waiting for? I’ve heard those other women scream.”
“Would it be rape?” In two more strides, he was beside her, towering over her like an angry giant.
Not that she cowered.
His rough hand slipped under her hair. “Let go of the sheet. I want to see one of those nightgowns I ordered for you.”
“I’m wearing jeans.”
