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I was the reason for this possible melee, that was as clear as day, but I wasn’t sure why. I felt dizzy and things went blurry. Have you ever been about to faint? Well, those were my symptoms. That’s how I felt. I thought I was going to fall. I’m going to fall right here and they’re going to kick the shit out of me. No, don’t fall, goddamn it, I ordered myself, no matter what, don’t fall. As I advanced, the crowd of women opened the way before me. I put away my tray in that silence that precedes any great blow. But the blow didn’t come. As I passed by the bench where I had been sitting, I realized it was empty. My tablemates had disappeared and in the place where I had been there was a pool of blood. Fuck, they stabbed me and I didn’t even notice was the first thing I thought. They must have struck me with something, a makeshift knife, a blade, something so sharp I didn’t even feel it. I passed my hand behind me and realized my uniform was soaked in a warm liquid. I looked at my hand and it was red. The hemorrhaging. No one had stabbed me; the blood was coming out of me on its own.

Have you ever seen on TV how sharks go into an attack frenzy at the scent of blood? Well, here in prison, it’s the opposite. At the sight of blood, the instinct is to move away and remain as far away as possible. Me, alone with my blood and the others looking at me in disgust. And at that moment, who do you think shows up? The one they called Mandra X. At that time I thought of her as a kind of monster. She appears at my back and begins to walk behind me. And we left the dining room like that, me in front and her behind me, hiding my stained clothes from the others.

Maybe it’d be good to join her group, if they even accept me, or who knows what kind of favor I have to do in return, I thought when the fright had passed. Strange, my own blood made me a target and protected me. The reason? The horror most prisoners and guards feel at the blood of another. In this place that boils over with violence, where the inhuman rules, there’s nothing that causes so much dread as the sight of human blood. These women have lived through everything. There’s not a horror that’s unknown to them; the streets have initiated them under the worst circumstances, and what they haven’t learned about out there, they learn in here. They tolerate all sorts of filth, the vomit of drunks, the piss of the incontinent, the miserliness of beggars, prostitution inside the jail. Here, any disgusting thing is acceptable; filth is law. And rudeness, bad words, filthy talk, threats, insults, aggressions, lunacy, screams—everything is tolerable except blood. The blood of others is taboo. One single drop of blood is enough to become infected. But blood doesn’t appear drop by drop—it puddles in the middle of the yard or in hallways. Everyone has pints of possibly contaminated blood inside them, and it is the law to carry it protected inside the body. It is up to individuals if they’re consumed by their infections, their problem, nobody else’s business, as long as they don’t go around spreading infection. The plague is in the blood. In Manninpox, that’s what they call AIDS: the plague. They call it by its true name instead of disguising it in an acronym. So I inspire hatred but also fear; my blood is killing me, but it also protects me.

I realize that Mandra X has begun to sing a song called “Moonlight” with the voice of a man: “I want the moonlight for my sad nights.” Apparently it’s a sort of lesbian anthem, and since Mandra gives it a certain depth, everyone who listens to her sing it suddenly wants to be hugged. Some cry because the song reminds them there is a moon. We never see it here; by the time it comes out, we have long been locked in our cells.

Now I’m in solitary confinement again, with no way of knowing if it’s rainy or sunny out, if it’s day or night. Time only exists in the round clock that glares at me from the end of the hallway, and which may as well not be there, because nothing changes, everything is repeated, so what good is it to consult it? Better just to let it go around and around, because here time doesn’t exist, it’s no good for anything, time is only waiting for something that never comes. You might say that here time runs backward, toward the past, and that it is not the minutes that pass but memories.

All the memories pile in my cell, taking over my space, sucking in my air, stealing my peace. I either rid myself of them or get out and leave them there. Here in Manninpox, I have been forced to change, change so much that I have become another person. I’m not sure if better or worse, but certainly different. So what do I do with the hordes of memories of that other María Paz? In what corner of my mind do I keep them? Where do they fit? How should they be classified?

I’m referring, for example, to the memory of the day that Bolivia finally called for us to come to America. She had in her pocket that magic object we had yearned for, that passport to happiness called the green card, which when it comes down to it is not even green, but which these days is the Holy Grail. Years later, she told me how she had been able to get it, that greencita card of her soul. They gave her a Tuesday appointment and it took her hours to get ready. She bathed with her Heno de Pravia, put on her makeup more carefully than usual, dabbed perfume behind her ears and on the inside of her wrists where the pulse beats. She, who was full-figured and flashy, put on a tight V-neck sweater, letting her cleavage show a bit. Yes sir, my mother was short but voluptuous, something she always put to good use. Bolivia used her body to get ahead in America. She’d never admit that, but I knew it. Knew it and learned it from her, and I can tell you that I was an excellent student. She had a saying, “Necessity has the face of a dog.” I suppose that’s what I am, a dog who does what she can to survive, nothing more than that, or less. Why spin it? The truth is that whoever comes to America has to fight to the death and is good and fucked if she doesn’t use all the tools at her disposal. Bolivia did it. Holly Golightly did it. Why shouldn’t I do it? And speaking of, Mr. Rose, I have a question I never got to ask you about Holly. I’d like you to tell me plainly who she was. Sally Tomato’s lover, an escort, or simply a whore? Or maybe all three at once?

When Bolivia had a stable enough job, she put all her energies into legalizing her situation. She pulled together the thousand dollars she needed for the lawyer, and after a lot of paperwork and formalities, she finally had the letter to present herself. For months she had prepared herself mentally for this ultimate test, studying, reading, memorizing the list of US presidents and their first ladies, the ten amendments of the Bill of Rights, the fifty states of the Union and their capitals, the location and languages of the seven commonwealths and territories, and I don’t know how many other things that someone said they’d ask her. And in the end, they didn’t ask her. But there was one little detail about the meeting that should be mentioned. Before coming to America, Bolivia had been a fan and follower of Regina Once, a Colombian spiritual and political guide whom my mother found admirable, who had incredible powers, and was a master of many sciences. This Regina Once was a swindler in my opinion. She controlled people by the way she looked at them and made them vote for public causes she supported, using a strategy she called “running the lights.” Running the lights of a person consisted of looking at them intently, but not in the eyes, that was the key, because as she said to her students, looks cancel each other out. If you stare at someone and the other person stares back at you, the whole thing is a draw. That’s why the more effective technique is to fix your gaze right between their eyes, to overwhelm them with your power and make them do your will. From the moment Bolivia sat across from the immigration official, she fixed her eyes on the spot between his eyes, as Regina Once had taught her. She ran the lights on him, to nail him and win him over to her cause, because he had a folder with all her information in his hand, and on him depended the yes or no that would decide her fate and the fate of her daughters as well.

“How did you come into the United States?” was the first thing the guy asked.

“Illegally,” she responded directly, casting intense rays with her eyes.

“How have you lived all this time?”

“Illegally.”

“Have you worked?”

“Yes sir.”

“You do know that’s against the law?”

“Yes sir, I do know. But I had no other choice.”

The man asked these questions without any sense of commiseration, without showing any sympathy; rather, on the contrary, with the self-importance of someone who feels he has more rights in this land because he arrived earlier. But Bolivia held her own, not letting him intimidate her, conscious of her tight sweater and her pretty face, and of her inner force. She talked to the man in Spanglish. But you have to understand, Mr. Rose, we’re talking about Bolivia’s Spanglish, which when I was a girl made me blush with shame, and that wasn’t any more than Spanish with a few okays here and a few thank yous there, and ohs and wows, batting her eyes and gesturing with her hands. But look how Regina Once’s trick worked, this running of the lights. While my mother answered the questions from the man, she repeated one phrase, one phrase, my mother concentrating, resolved, gazing right between his eyes with the power of that single phrase, as if she were firing an arrow, so that he’d feel that he was receiving an order he had to obey.
Gimme the green card, sonofabitch, gimme the green card. Gimme the green card, sonofabitch, gimme the green card.
And the man gave it to her.

“From now on behave yourself,” he told her. “No more funny stuff or you’ll end up in jail.”

Bolivia left there to place flowers by a photograph of Regina Once, although I think more than any spell, what worked for her was the honesty with which she responded to the questions. Once her green card was official, she began to work more than she had worked without it. If you asked me why she died so young, I’d have to say that she imploded from working. Aside from the green card, she also had a somewhat stable job and a place to put us in, so she was able to buy the plane tickets and pay for the papers to get a visa. So much waiting for that moment that would never come, and suddenly Bolivia tells me that this is it. Finally, the moment had come to reunite with her in America.

“Right now?” I managed to respond.

She told me yes, right away, in a voice that sounded strange, I supposed overcome with emotion. “This coming Wednesday,” she said, whimpering. “This Wednesday I’ll be in the airport with open arms.” That’s what she said. “I’ll be waiting for you, my girls, my girls. Bless me, Lord, my two daughters at last. Can you believe it, María Paz, can you believe it?” And then she thanked God again.

“What about school?” I asked. “Can’t I finish the semester here?”

“Aren’t you happy with the news?” she said, noticing my lack of excitement.

“Yes, Bolivia, it makes me happy.”

“Bolivia? No more Mami?”

“Yes, Mami, it makes me happy.”

You have to believe me, Mr. Rose, up to that moment it had been the truth. Up to that moment what I wanted more than anything was to reunite with Bolivia. At any other time during the first four years, I’d have gone insane with happiness to hear such news, because I waited for it day after day, hour after hour, with that broken coin hanging on my neck, hiding in the garage of the Navas’ house to write endless letters to Bolivia while I cried. But lately, I’d grown more used to saying Mami to Leonor, the owner of the house where I lived; I hope Bolivia can forgive me for that, wherever she is. I also didn’t correct those in school who thought that Caminaba and Patinaba were my sisters; on the contrary, I encouraged the confusion. It’s just that there were things. Somebody came to me with the gossip that Bolivia worked cleaning houses in America, and I didn’t like that. Then they told me that she ironed other people’s clothes, and I thought that was shameful. I had imagined her driving her new car down a wide boulevard lined with palm trees, and now they were telling me that she was a servant. Meanwhile, Leonor de Nava was a woman who could hire a servant, or even two, one to cook and one to clean. Do you see the difference? She was also the widow of an army officer, had a pension for life, and on weekends, we could go to the military club, a reason for pride and prestige up there in Las Lomitas, the neighborhood where we lived. And then there was my mother working as a servant who ironed other people’s clothes. Humble jobs, but at least they were in America, you may say, but I’d respond:
Better to be the head of a mouse than the tail of a lion.
But that saying doesn’t paint the whole picture quite right, because the fact is that in America my mother was a tail, but a mouse’s tail. Maybe that’s why I felt more like a person calling Leonor de Nava my mother and Caminaba and Patinaba my sisters, and that’s why I was somewhere else when they handed me the airplane ticket to reunite with Bolivia in America. I had just turned twelve, gotten my period, was the best student in English class, had tons of friends, and although I still didn’t go to parties with boys, I practiced the steps to the merengue and salsa and was a fan of Celia Cruz, Fruko y sus Tesos, and Juan Luis Guerra y 440, and I spent all day straightening my hair with a dryer and a round brush and then setting it in big curlers. And I had fallen in love with Alex Toro, a boy from the neighborhood who paid for school by working at night as a messenger for a discount pharmacy. Leonor often screamed from the bathroom, Why do we need another bottle of alcohol? Or who takes so many aspirins? Who bought more Merthiolate? And it was me. I’d call the pharmacy and order stuff to be delivered just to see Alex Toro. He’d ride over on his bike and bring me Condorito comic books and I’d lend him Roberto Carlos LPs. And that was all we did, but I thought that was love, the love of my life, and that’s why I wasn’t overjoyed by the great news of going to America finally. That dream had slowly become just that, a dream, a distant dream. And Bolivia had become something like the Virgin Mary, and America something like heaven. But my solid ground was Caminaba and Patinaba, Alex Toro, English classes, the military club on weekends, and salsa and merengue on the radio afternoons after school.