Ramiro sat motionless on the nursery's rocking chair. The lights had long been turned off, and now only cars' headlights passing down the street outside the window and a pale beam of moonlight illuminated the walls of María's room. Said baby slept on through the night in the exact way every responsible person in the couple's life had promised the young adults that their first-born wouldn't. From his spot on the corner, he could see the slow rise and fall of the baby's -his baby's!- chest.
What were we thinking?' the father asked himself, running a hand through his slicked back hair, letting a silent sigh escape him. Just how was he supposed to raise the kid?! Laura helping him or not, the only experience the young man had with kids were the brats the cartel dumped on him to take up the mountain to train. At least those were verbal and potty trained! This one was days old and innocent. If it weren't for Laura's constant reassurances during the pregnancy that Yes, I want you to be there for her, and No, I don't think you'll fuck her up. Now, can you please pass the salt? he would have made his escape a long time ago for the brat's sake.
Or maybe not. Ramiro spared a thought to the many halcones that they'd 'sourced' from orphanages when they had a shortage. The more guardians standing in the way of María being taken into the system by force, the better. (Even though he himself was a one-way, fast lane ticket to it fuc-)
"Ramiro, come on. Get back in bed. I promise she'll still be here in the morning," his sleepy wife yawned from the doorway, leaning on the frame.
Ramiro loved his wife, he truly did, but Laura looked like shit. She was still recovering from the birth. Dark eyebags underlined her steely-grey eyes and her steps marked with a limp almost a month after the event. Nevertheless, once they returned home, she had carried on with running the household and taking care of María like nothing had changed.
Unlike you. You just follow behind her and stare like an absolute pendejo. Get your shit together. The dark brunette tried to hide his internal monologue from his wife with a strained smile, "It's alright. At least if she starts crying, I can take care of it, no? You, on the other hand, need to sleep. Let me do something for once." They both knew that was a weak defense at best. The baby had not done more than fuss silently since getting home, and those times were mostly to alert the new parents there was a diaper to change or some other normal baby issue to resolve.
Regardless, not a night went by where once Ramiro returned from his work, he would not make a stop by his daughter's room and sit and stare in silence.
Laura gave him a pointed look and raised a brow, clearly letting him know they were both on the same page in regards to his bullshit. He sucked at lying to her.
"Whatever. I need to wake her up anyways. She's due for feeding soon." Strutting into the room, the brunette reached into the crib and picked up their daughter.
Ramiro watched as the baby came back into awareness. For a second the father thought her muffled sobs would turn into a proper cry, but once her mother's unoccupied hand made its way into the still sparse-yet-thick locks of hair plastered to the baby's head, she quieted down. The man followed as his wife and daughter moved to the kitchen to warm up some milk for the drooling infant. He took a seat at the table, knowing Laura had it handled. With one hand holding María and the other prepping the bottle, she made quick work of the baby's… dinner?
"Here, can you please hold her for a minute while I get a towel?" Not waiting for a response, Laura dumped María on Ramiro and made a quick exit towards the hallway before her husband could complain. Looking down at the handful of baby he now had, the Sicario looked into his daughter's still sleepy stare.
Her droopy eyes remained the blue hue the doctors said would shift eventually to reveal her actual eye color, but he secretly hoped that the grey tone would stick. He much preferred his wife's grey eyes to his own brown.
The baby ignored his silent staring, however. She seemed much more preoccupied with trying to get comfortable enough to go back to sleep, if he was reading her wiggling correctly.
Sighting, he shifted the newborn to face him. "Sorry, but you have to eat right now," He chuckled at the indignant squeak she gave at his shuffling. "You're as loud as your Mamá, aren't you?" Carefully, he tucked one of the still sweaty locks behind her ear. "…for the better, I suppose." She sneezed.
From the doorway, Laura silently looked on with a satisfied smirk as the father and daughter bonded.
María Valeria Rodriguez Velasquez was born on January 31, 1983, on a chilly morning to Ramiro Bruno Rodriguez Rosas and Laura Xochil Velasquez de Rodriguez nee Ocampo. It was a six hour delivery with minimal complications.
Ramiro and Laura were young. Twenty-five and Twenty-two respectively. Both were without families one way or another, but they made do. They both agreed María Valeria, or just María as they take to calling her, was a peaceful child. This worked just fine for the first-time parents.
Their daughter seemed to rush through graduation from baby to toddlerhood to childhood, but she was a quick learner and seemed happy enough to the couple. So what if she suffered from nightmares chronically or spaced out when they left her to her own devices? Whenever they picked her back up she was fine as rain! And she was done with those by the time she turned one, so who were they to complain about a minor hiccup?
All in all, Laura and Ramiro loved their little girl and constantly shrouded her in their own brand of affection.
And as for María?
María was a normal toddler. Just slightly above average in the brains department, she looked like a little copy of her mother except for her eyes and skin, which were just a few shades off her dad's color. The girl liked playing with the other kids in their street -even if she was just as prone to getting into fights with them- and she petted strays despite her parent's best efforts. She was also surprisingly independent once things were shown to her clearly. She was a helping hand around the house by the time she turned 4 and by age 6 she was mostly in charge of fully cleaning up after herself.
Yes, María was a normal child with a particularly bright disposition. All in all, nothing out of the ordinary to be found by anybody who may have looked.
Two months before her fourth birthday, Laura and Ramiro sat her down. They tell her she's going to be a big sister. María mostly seemed confused, but gradually warms up to the idea. Yes, she'll be a good older sister, the couple thought. Already so dependable for her age. She'll be a great help once their second little miracle comes along.
Seven months and three weeks later, the pregnancy turned out to be a buy-one-get-two sort of deal, and the family of three-going-on-five are handed a set of fraternal twins. They'd only planned for one, but nevertheless, welcome the two new additions to the family with open hands and hearts. The babies are a boy and a girl. They named the boy Miguel Santiago and the girl Maite Ximena.
Besides coming to the realization of just how pleasant a baby María was growing up, the couple finds both babies also grow up normally. Miguel Santiago, the older one of the pair, grew into another mostly quiet child. While not being as quick to learn or independent as his elder sibling, he did not seem to suffer from the nightmares María had at that age, so the couple just made an observation of their differences and moved on. Maite Ximena, on the other hand, was a complete menace compared to her elder siblings. She cried over nothing and screamed whenever the mood suited her. The couple were bewildered by the moodier, louder child, but ultimately assumed it was too much to expect a perfect score in regard to their children's volume control.
The three siblings grew up close. The parent's unashamedly leaving María to handle looking after the kids after they hit three years. Really, nothing abnormal was to be found in their lives by nobody. After enough time, even the parents were lulled into a false sense of security at the lack of problems in their lives.
Truly, they should have known better. Shit always hits the fan when you're not looking.
María was seven years old and she walked her siblings back from the park.
There was nothing new about this. Her parents were busy. Papa at work, and Mama running errands downtown. Besides, somebody needed to get rid of the extra energy her younger siblings have if they wanted them to go to bed that night. María liked to sleep. If the twins didn't get put to bed on time, Mama wouldn't read her the next tale from the book of Aztec myths Papa had sent her the previous week from Michoacán.
Doing this was okay so long as Mama read her the next story.
The younger siblings walked quietly behind her. The silence was not new on Santiago's part. The middle child by far the shiest of the three. He hesitated to speak when not prompted and was rarely found in the company of people who were not his immediate family.
María's sister's silence, however, was incriminating. Maite had gotten another kid at the park to cry that day. María knew her sister wasn't even sorry. The youngest child's silence was not for herself, but for her sister, who had publicly scolded her after catching sight of her sister standing over a sobbing 4-year-old. At least despite not having witnessed the beginning of the abuse, María was confident her sister hadn't even touched the kid. Her sister only needed a little bit of time and some words to reduce her peers into messy tears.
María didn't really care about it personally, but she knew she had to scold the younger girl. If asked, she couldn't tell you why she had to. Her parents had never asked her to go out of her way to get her siblings to behave. Perhaps if the girl had never made it her business her parents would have intervened themselves, but she had and now her parents simply left it up to her. They had other stuff to worry about anyways, and María never felt burdened by her self-appointed job of pseudo parenting her siblings despite their short age difference.
The trio finally arrived at the entrance of their home. María dugs into her backpack for the set of keys to open the gate and front door and let her siblings into their home before her. As always, she locked the gate behind her and walked into the house. As she was about to yell to Maite to take off her shoes before entering, she hears footsteps inside their house.
Poking her head through the bars on the kitchen window, María caught sight of a muscled back in a dirty wife beater with a neat head of so-dark-it-was-almost-black brown hair on top. Rushing past her siblings, María ran into the house and straight into her father's arms.
"Papa! You're back early!" María's arms circled her father's neck like a vice as he picked her up. The man chuckled tiredly as he hugged her back.
From the corner of her eye, María spotted her siblings entering the house. As soon as they spotted their father, they each dashed to clutch a leg of their own.
"How was your trip?" Came the shy voice of the boy clutching the left leg. Ramiro smiled down at his son and ruffled the mop of black hair that mirrored his own.
"It was okay mijo, but due to some complications Papa got to come back home early, so it's all good." Slowly ripping off a child at a time from his person, the father set them all down. Quickly taking off his shirt and handing it over to the eldest child, he asked Maria, "Cariño, could you please pop this into the washing machine for me? Thanks."
Happy to help her Papa, María took the shirt and ran over to their washing machine in the backyard. Perusing the white fabric, she quickly spotted the darkening red staining the back left of the shirt. She fetched a pail and filled it halfway up with cold water from the tap. Taking the shirt, she dumped it inside and then used her hands to make sure it is soaked completely. Once that was done, she dried her hands with a drying towel nearby and headed back into the kitchen.
She would come back to chuck the shirt into the wash later. For now, the blood staining it needed to get loose.
María didn't remember the first time she learned what the family occupation was. It's most likely that she was never explicitly told by either of her parents about their profession. Rather, she read it in between the lines of her parent's conversations, in the words they used when there was a new murder in the news, in the handful of guns hidden throughout the house, in the way her Mama handles the kitchen knives when she's making dinner.
Yes, María was never told her parents are less than lawful. Rather, her world view was molded early on to the resemble that of the cartels rather than what a 'good' Mexican girl's should be.
Neither of her parents entertained the thought of giving her a chance at a normal civilian life, after all, in a place like Juarez that's little more than a myth. Where they live, it's easier to answer the question of who isn't involved with the cartels than who is.
So, no. María never learns to question the violence in her father's stories or the time her mother walked her through shooting one of the guns they had underneath the coffee table. Instead of hesitating, the girl took the information and slotted it right next to the lessons on doing the dishes and how to wash clothes. Dutiful as she was, she took to everything with the same eagerness and eventual pride as she did anything else her parents taught her. As far as she was concerned, being good at these things would make her parents proud, and that was all she needed to know before fully throwing herself at whatever they put in front of her with her short but intense span of attention.
But nobody bothered to tell her why she was learning these things so early.
That, perhaps, was her parent's biggest mistake.
María and her mother were driving down the highway on the way home. Mama had just picked her up from school for the day. They were on their way to pick up Santiago and Maite from day-care. As usual, María shared with her mother what she did in school that day.
"-and I don't know why the teacher says I can't go to the bathroom without asking her in English," complained the girl from her kid's seat in the back. Her mother chuckled and glanced back at her through the rearview mirror.
"It's important that you learn to speak English, María. We live right next to an English-speaking country. How are you going to speak to the gringos otherwise?" The little girl, however, didn't find speaking to the gringos like a good enough reason for her to learn English.
"But Mama, I don't need to learn English! They need to learn Spanish! English doesn't make any-" The girl's complains were interrupted by the crack of breaking glass. Before María had the time to realize there was now a hole on the windshield, Laura's had already floored the gas pedal.
"MARÍA! Get down right now! Where the windows can't see you! Quickly!" Her mother's voice had left no space for her to ask questions. With the feeble dexterity her eight-year-old hands had, she unbuckled her child seat belt and squeezed herself down on the car floor. She couldn't tell where her mother was taking the car, but she felt her make a sharp left and speed down a road they had never taken before.
"Mama, what about Diego and Maite?" her voice trembled to her mother over the sound of gunshots hitting the back of the vehicle. The woman didn't spare her a glance. Instead, gripping the wheel tighter while trying to crouch her own head as far down as possible while not losing her sight of the road.
"They'll be fine, María! For now, we need to get away. I promise Mama will get us away safely, alright?" One hand letting go of the wheel, the mother of three dug behind her own seat and pulled out a small handgun. "María! You remember how to use this, correct?" Not waiting for an answer, she handed the frozen girl the pistol without glancing back. She could hear the gunshots piercing holes on the rear of the car. "I need you to take this. If somebody shoots Mama or stops the car you need to use it, okay?" pointing to the seat next to hers, she told the eight-year-old, "Now I need you to get the other gun underneath that seat and give it to me!" Taking another sharp turn, Laura slammed her hand on the car's horn. "Where's la jura when you fucking need them?!"
Suddenly, María felt a pop resonate from the bottom of the car. The vehicle slowly came to a stop. María promptly handed her mother the much larger gun from underneath the seat. Laura didn't even get out of her seat, instead just twisting back and opening fire on the car behind them.
"MARÍA! Grab the gun and get out of here! Call your father!" her mother yelled over the sound of the gun, but María was frozen. She had tucked herself into a ball on the car's floor, her hands clutching the pistol her mother gave her like a lifeline. She couldn't move. She couldn't breathe. The fear weighted her arms down like lead and held down her legs like concrete.
Am I gonna die?! The sound of her mother's gun kept firing on above her. She sees as a bullet graces her mother's forearm, halting her firing for a second. The older brunette took a split second to adjust her grip and continues firing.
What about Santiago and Maite?! Shots had begun hailing from the front of the vehicle. They had them surrounded. Laura was still firing towards the back when a bullet buried itself into the woman's shoulder. Her mother's cry finally made María snap into action.
"MAMA!" As María stood up to reach her mother, the car door behind her opened. She turned to look back when a large pair of hands grabbed her. She looked up with blurry eyes at the faces of a man with a ring piercing his nose and another man standing next to him, cocking a pistol towards her. The meaty hands holding her in place tightened until they became painful.
"Let me go!" The second man pressed the barrel of the still-warm gun against the side of her head. The girl choked on a wave of utter fear at her powerlessness to escape them. Then, she felt something inside her snap.
María's world lit up in red.
The man with the nose ring who had grabed María hissed as he suddenly let her go. He fell to the ground, screaming and clutching his stomach with a pair of still-burning hands. His partner looked from him to María in fear. He made a move to repoint the gun towards her face, but as he pressed the barrel to her temple it caught on fire and disintegrated. María moved to push the gun away from her face when she grabbed the man's hand. He screamed. Although his hands were not scorched like the other man's were, he cried out and grabbed at his arms like they were on fire too.
Free from her would-be captors, María picked her gun back up and rushed over to the other side of the car. There, she saw her mother struggling in the arms of two men. Just as she was about to call out, a third man shot her mother in the stomach. The girl's blood froze.
María is there before she registered her body moving.
"LET MAMA GO!" She pushed at the pair holding her mother down. Beneath her hands, the fabric of the men's shirts seemingly evaporated. They both keeled over. As Laura struggled for her next breath, the woman turned her head and saw her daughter standing behind her. Her mother's eyes widen at the sight of María.
Meanwhile, the man who had shot her mother was also staring at her. Quickly, he snapped out of his stupor and shot María. The mother and daughter looked in a stupor at the reddening hole in the girl's stomach. María looked the blood rushing out, but couldn't seem to feel it. She looked back up to the man with the gun. He was raising the gun to shoot the girl in the face when he was tackled by Laura. The two of them grappled for a second before a shot rang out. Laura looked at the bullet hole in her assaulter's check and looked back at her daughter.
María was crouched next to the body of one of the two men who had held Laura down. In her hands lied a pile of ashes with bits of a quickly-dissolving barrel sticking out. Going by the ashes that covered the side of the corpse's pants, the gun had been his. The girl stared at the body of the man she'd shot with a glazed look in her eyes.
Laura has a second to wonder if her daughter was going into shock when María fell over in a dead faint.
The sound of sirens rang out in the distance.