Day of the Dead - J. A. Jance [7]
Arriving from Colima, Maria Elena and the two girls with her, Madelina and Lucia, were smart enough to figure out that the knife-wielding boys were interested in girls for one reason and one reason only. In order to avoid being preyed upon, the girls manufactured a story about how they had been sent away from their previous institution because all three had been diagnosed as HIV positive. To their amazement, the ruse worked. It turned out that the devil-may-care gangster wannabes who weren’t afraid of drugs or guns or knives or each other were deathly afraid of AIDS. The new arrivals were pretty much left to themselves. The three girls had survived by sticking together, by speaking only to one another, and by making themselves invisible.
Maria Elena tried hiding out in silence now, avoiding Señora Duarte’s question and piercing gaze with a simple shrug rather than a verbal reply.
“You’re wrong there,” the señora said, pulling her reading glasses down onto her sharp nose. She glared through them at a stack of papers on the desk in front of her. “You really are lucky. It would seem you have a patron,” she continued, “a benefactor in the States who has arranged for you to come live with him and his wife and go to school.”
Maria Elena’s jaw dropped. Once she had loved school. She had wanted to grow up and become a teacher, but the last time she had actually attended school had been three years earlier in the orphanage. In Colima, there had been a few classrooms, fewer teachers, and even fewer books, but at El Asilo Seguro no one bothered to pretend that they intended to reform or educate their charges. Maria Elena’s heart beat fast at this first tiny glimmer of hope. Perhaps her long-abandoned dream was possible after all. It was strange that she hadn’t been consulted about these arrangements in advance, but still…
“I have examined the papers,” Señora Duarte went on. “Everything appears to be in order. You are to catch the bus from Hermosillo to Nogales this afternoon. The ticket is right here, as is your passport and identification card. You’ll find some money here as well, enough so you’ll be able to buy food and water for your journey. You will be picked up at the bus station in Nogales and taken from there to your new home.”
Maria Elena’s head teemed with questions. She had heard some of the older kids talking about passports and identification cards. Legal ones were very difficult to come by, and forged ones were obtainable only by those with enough money to pay the price. What would happen to her if she reached the border and for some reason her paperwork wasn’t in order? And how would she know this person—this kind stranger—who was supposed to meet her in far-off Nogales?
“But…” she began aloud.
Señora Duarte’s disapproving frown silenced her. “Certainly you wouldn’t be so foolish as to turn down such an opportunity!” she declared.
“No, señora,” Maria Elena murmured in agreement. “I would not.”
“Very well, then.” Señora Duarte picked up the papers and stowed them inside an outside pocket of the knapsack, which she then zipped up. “Here,” she said, handing it over. “You can’t travel in your uniform. Go see Señora Escalante. She’ll give you something suitable to wear.”
As directed, Señora Escalante had outfitted Maria Elena with two sets of someone else’s cast-off clothing—one to wear on the bus and another to change into later. The skirt and blouse were too small; the shoes far too big. They flopped up and down