Day of the Dead

‘A la cárcel.’

‘What?’

‘Jail.’ The policeman barked out a laugh. ‘Tienes drogas, go to jail.’

‘Drugs? I don’t have any drugs.’

He shrugged fractionally, shoulders tense, hands gripping the wheel.

A setup, she thought, it was some kind of setup. A con, a way to extort money. ‘Look,’ she said. ‘This is a misunderstanding. Can’t we work this out?’

As soon as she said it, she knew she’d made a mistake.

‘What do you think, lady? You want to give me something?’

‘No, I, just …’

‘Money, maybe? Something else?’ He laughed again, all the while staring straight ahead.

‘It’s a misunderstanding,’ she repeated. ‘I’m not trying to insult you.’

‘You want to give me something, you want to stop right here?’

The squad car slowed.

On one side of the road, there were cinder-block buildings: apartments mostly, a few downtrodden businesses, peeling hand-painted signs, rusting cars, broken-down fences. On the other a steep hill, dirt roads, shacks interspersed among browning vines and palms.

‘No,’ she said. ‘No.’

The car sped up again.

The jail was in a neighborhood like the ones she’d seen from the road, cement-slab and cinder-block apartments, unpaved streets in places, hardly distinguishable from the surrounding buildings except for its iron bars and guards with machine guns.

There was paperwork to fill out. They searched her and had her take off her jewelry and empty her pockets – the pants she wore, thin linen, had only a rear patch pocket anyway.

‘I want to make a phone call,’ she said, but no one listened.

Then a guard took her back to a cell. Cement floors, a cement bench, and a toilet that looked as if it hadn’t been flushed in a week. There was a woman passed out on the bench, one stilettoed foot dangling off the edge at a wobbling right angle.

‘When can I make a phone call?’ Michelle asked the guard again. ‘¿Cuándo … teléfono?’

The guard raised a finger. ‘Espérate,’ he said.

Maybe that meant he’d come back.

She couldn’t sit on the bench because of the passed-out woman (a hooker? Michelle thought she looked like one anyway), so she leaned against the wall opposite the barred front of the cell.

From here she could see into the cell across the way. It was filled with men, five or six of them, who milled around and muttered things she couldn’t understand. One of them, a young guy, came over to the bars of his cell and pressed his face against them. ‘Hello!’ he said. ‘Hello!’

Michelle ignored him. She hugged her knees to her chest and rested her head on them. It was stifling hot in the cell. No breeze came in from the small barred window above her.

This couldn’t go on, could it? She couldn’t stay here.

But she’d never make her flight, even if they let her out right now. And they weren’t going to do that. Weren’t going to suddenly decide it was all a mistake, that she was free to go.

They’d taken her watch along with her necklace and bracelets, so she had no way of marking the time beyond the square of darkening sky visible through the window. After it grew black, there was no way to tell at all.

Her head pounded; her body ached from sitting on concrete. I shouldn’t have had those drinks, she thought. There was a barrel of water, a sort of Sparkletts bottle in a wrought-iron stand that tipped to fill a solitary plastic cup, in one corner of the cell.

One cup? Michelle thought. One cup for everyone who’s come in and out of here? And how clean was the water?

The woman on the bench stirred, moaned, and turned onto her side. She gagged a few times and threw up on the floor.

I should get up, Michelle thought, I should do something. Call for a guard. Make sure she doesn’t choke.

She stayed where she was. The woman rolled onto her back, one arm flung over her eyes, and was mumbling to herself. Obviously she could breathe.

Not my problem, Michelle thought, and her own problems at the moment were nearly too long to list.

How had the drugs gotten in her purse? The policeman, most probably, but why? He hadn’t seemed interested in a bribe.

Of course she hadn’t checked in all of those pockets when she’d packed. There were several she rarely opened. It could have happened before that.

What were the penalties for drug possession in Mexico? Weren’t they more serious than in the United States? And without a good lawyer … How would she find a lawyer? How would she pay for one?

Tears welled up without her even realizing. This was too much, too much to take in, too much to handle.

A fight broke out in one of the other cells. That was what it sounded like anyway: sudden shouts, grunts, thuds.

Michelle stopped crying and wiped her nose on her gauzy sleeve. I have to keep it together, she told herself. There’s no one to look out for me but me. Not anymore.

She’d get to make a phone call eventually, wouldn’t she? The American consulate, that was who you called in situations like this. I’ll call the consulate, she thought. They’ll help me. This will all work out somehow.

Guards came to break up the fight, barking commands, slapping truncheons against the iron bars. The woman on the bench stirred again, spoke a few words seemingly in her sleep, and turned over to face the wall.

I have to drink something, Michelle thought. Her mouth felt as if the surfaces had been coated with glue. She stood up, tried to stretch out the cramps in her legs and back, and approached the water bottle.

Don’t think about it, she told herself as she tilted the bottle and filled the communal cup. I’ll just have to get a gamma globulin shot after I get out of here. Better that than passing out from dehydration.

After that she thought she might as well pee. Don’t even look, she thought. Just go and get it over with. She squatted over the toilet, the backs of her thighs skimming the seat, willing her bladder to let go while she held the pose.

In the cell across the way, the young man had come back to press his face against the bars, watching her.

‘Fuck off!’ she spit, surprising herself.

The young man laughed and kept watching.

Whatever, she thought. What difference did it make at this point?