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Okay, I made that up … There is no Gerardo. I just wanted to add some romance to the story.
googled “abortion” and found a few clinics, all in Mexico City. Too far. I read up on a whole range of shady home-abortion methods. Stuffing parsley up your vagina. Using a mix of Coca-Cola, aspirin, and black sapote as a vaginal enema.
I wasn’t used to all that bullshit about makeup and boyfriends. I was used to hanging out with the sons of my old man’s associates, shooting bottles and dancing horses and playing Conquian with bets in US dollars on each hand.
Lots of people ask me if I feel disgusted or frightened or ashamed to be the daughter of a murderer. My old man’s no murderer. He’s never wasted anyone—he pays people to do that for him. Anyway, everyone sins. Some lie, others steal.
We’re tired of living with violence, poverty, and break-ins. That’s why it makes me sad to see fancy malls and gated mansions where our home used to be. It makes me sad that they evicted us for being dark-skinned and working class, because you know that’s why they did it, right? The government called it “revitalizing the historic district,” but the honest-to-God truth is they wanted us out because we were ugly and poor.
We held nine days of prayer for her and had everyone over at our humble home to recite the rosary to the Virgen Morenita. We also gave the girls their first-communion dresses for free and asked Saint Jude to put in a good word for us with Our Heavenly Father. Mijito, do you think He’ll forgive us?
When he finally announced his candidacy for president, I stood at his side in a black dress embroidered by Indigenous craftswomen from Guerrero. There I was, bronzed skin, chocolate hair, and
my Instagram, I focused on seeming down-to-earth, on showing my vulnerabilities and my flaws. I posted a photo of a cake I’d burned, adopted a stray dog, shared pictures of things I bought (all from independent artisans, of course),
You probably think this story sounds like something out of La Rosa de Guadalupe cause nothing like this happens where you live, with your green spaces and well-paved streets, but this shit happens every day, whether you moneybags believe it or not.
You clock that the gangster one block over who robs banks has a nice truck or that your neighbor the thief has a flatscreen TV or that the guy turned sicario started wearing designer shoes. Then you compare them with the doñas who work from sunup to sundown in the factory or cleaning rich folks’ shit-crusted toilets in their bougie houses or selling donuts and never catch a break. You compare what a burglar makes with what you do busting ass and, real talk, mijo, you get the itch to rattle the cage, grab the bitch by the scruff, roll the dice.
You know those coconut stands on the side of the road? Most of them are our people. You roll into a small town and tell any kid: “Listen, I’ll get you a sweet phone, set you up in a palapa slinging ice-cold coconuts, and pay you five grand a month to tell me what the pigs and the contras are up to.” That’s it, now you’ve got dozens of folks working for you.
I stopped feeding on the Word, became weak, and threw myself into earthly delights—yes, into the pleasures of the flesh.
That whole maternal instinct thing is just hot air.
The border isn’t what you think, or what people say it is. The border is a hungry monster. A bottomless pit that feeds on work, sex, drugs, and women.
brutal desert that devours women,
With cumbia, there was no death, only dance. The Colombian chick left me in Juaritos and went off in search of the American Dream.
masculinity is like marzipan: fragile as hell, queen.
