He drove us there in the afternoon, parking in the guest parking lot, and then we walked in through the hotel like we belonged there. I’d felt so special, so much like royalty, walking across that white marble floor of the lobby, so shiny I could see my own reflection. I remembered the sound of my Mary-Janes hitting the floor, tap-tap-tap, and hoping that no one would see my shoes, for they held a layer of dust on them. They’d know we were imposters for sure.
Once we made it outside though, papa led me along the pool area as I tried not to gawk at the vacationing gringos, impossibly pretty people, reading, laughing, splashing without any cares in the world. We stopped at the bluffs, leaned over the fence, and watched for the whales.
I remembered how bright it was, that sun shimmering off the water. There were other people there too, guests, watching for them and talking excitedly in English. I wanted nothing more than to see these beautiful mammals break the ocean surface. The whales had always been a symbol of everything graceful and wild and free.
Everything I wanted to be.
We were watching for only a few minutes though, scanning the waves, hoping beyond hope to see them, before a woman in a white pant suit approached us. Her name tag said Gloria. She was Mexican too but at that moment she pretended she wasn’t.
She didn’t even ask if we were staying there – I guessed it was too obvious that we weren’t. She just told us we had to leave.
My papa nodded, not wanting to cause a scene, but I stomped my foot and held onto that railing.
“I want to see the whales. The whales are for everyone to see.”
“Not from here, they aren’t,” Gloria said snidely. “You must leave.”
“But why? We are not harming anyone. We just want to watch.”
“This hotel is for guests only, you are not a guest.”
“Let’s go, Luisa.” Papa grabbed my arm and I saw so much sadness and disappointment in his eyes that it only made me madder. Here he was, trying to do something nice for me, something free, which we could afford, and we weren’t even allowed to lay our eyes on the ocean that belonged to all of us equally.
“I will have to call security,” Gloria said.
“So you can throw us in jail?” I cried out and now other guests were looking at us.
Then some older gentleman, white skinned with a crippling sunburn on his nose, approached us and said to Gloria, “It’s okay, they can stay on account of me. They can be my guests.”
I could have hugged that man, a vacationer with a good soul, but Gloria was having none of it. “They have to leave, sir,” she said to him, blowing him off. “They don’t belong here.”
And though I’d grown up knowing how unfair life was, that was the first time I felt the pinch. Mexicans like Gloria and rich white people had rights that we did not. They had access to land and sights that should have been for everyone. They were privileged. They had power. They were the true royalty of the country.
I would realize, later, that they weren’t even at the top of our food chain. The narcos were the true royalty, more than them, more than the government.
If you wanted to be queen, that’s where you had to be.
I finally saw the whales one day when I was nineteen and driving to my waitressing job in Cabo San Lucas. But by then, the magic and everything they had meant to me, had long since disappeared.
And now, as I lay here in some bed, in a clinical, silent room somewhere, tethered between life and death, I saw the whales behind my eyes. Swimming, singing. They gave me comfort and kept me cool. They beckoned me to go under, to feel that silk water slide past my skin, to feel free and wild. They dove deeper and deeper but as they disappeared into the cobalt depths, I knew I couldn’t follow them. Not now. Not yet.
I raised my palm in the water to say goodbye, watching their flukes dissolve into the great blue and then slowly I made my way to the surface.
Evaristo was standing over me, observing me closely.
“Luisa,” he said. “Welcome back.”
I tried to speak, to ask where I was, what happened.
If Evaristo was here, then it meant the federales had me.
A landslide of horrors came flooding back.
Esteban.
The look in his atrocious eyes.
The torture.
The endless pain.
My mind shut down. I was pulled under again after that, back to that deep, deep blue.
I don’t know how much time passed before I felt myself coming out of it again. I blinked slowly, expecting to see ocean but only saw a white ceiling above me. The flecks on the ceiling came in and out of focus. It reminded me of when I was young and in school, staring at the cheaply-made walls to pass the time. I tried to feel my body from the inside out, working on moving my toes, my fingers, carefully. Everything felt tight, like a rubber band, especially my face and stomach where I knew I had been badly burned.
Horribly disfigured and scarred for life.
I closed my eyes and took in a deep breath, letting the air fill me, bring me life and strength. I had been ruined but I would survive. I would learn to live again, anew.
I heard someone shift beside me. I remembered seeing Evaristo. He must have rescued me from the house, perhaps the agency went back on their word and took Esteban down. Maybe he was in prison.
Maybe he was dead, killed in a gruesome, painful death.
I could only hope.