LITMIR.BIZ

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voice. The lawyer stands and smoothes the skirt of her gray suit.

      After Richard translates, Esperanza says, “Muchas gracias.”

      “I put twenty dollars into your commissary, Esperanza,” says the lawyer. “I bet that’s okay with you, isn’t it?”

      The prisoner thanks her again. This will buy her a couple of bars of soap, a stick of deodorant, some Styrofoam cups of, once hot water is added to their contents, noodle soup.

      “I’ve got to be going now, dear,” says Catherine. “Richard is going to ask you some questions. Please tell him everything he needs to know. Remember, he’s one of us.”

      He looks at Esperanza through the window, lurching awkwardly in the tiny stool. Catherine smiles at Richard. “Do your magic, buddy,” she says. “See you soon, dear,” she tells Esperanza, who watches the attorney leave, taking long strides in the gray skirt.

      Richard expresses regret for the discomfort of having to speak through the window. Usually prisoners can meet with their legal representatives in “contact rooms” where they sit together, but none is available that afternoon.

      “Let me explain who I am and what I do, Esperanza,” he says. She observes that his shoulders are broad, that he is slim, and that he has no woman to iron his shirts. “The system of justice is very strange in this country.” By retracing the steps of her life he hopes to come up with a narrative that will talk the prosecutor out of trying to give her the death penalty. He looks into her black eyes. “If you have any questions, let me know.” She nods.

      He removes the notebook from his knapsack. “Where were you born, Esperanza?”

      “Puroaire.”

      “That’s in Tierra Caliente, right?” She nods her head. She is surprised he has any idea where it is. “I’ve lived in Mexico City for the last six years,” he says.

      “You have?”

      “Yes. All of my cases involve Mexicans in trouble,” he says. “So far, none of them has been put to death.”

      She smiles out of the side of her mouth. “So many of us are trying to come over here and you went to live there,” she says.

      “That’s right.” He nods.

      “Why?” she asks.

      “I don’t know,” he says. “I like it there. People treat each other more warmly in Mexico.” She smiles, and then an expression of regret clouds her face. “How old are you, Esperanza?” he asks.

      “Twenty-six,” she says, reflecting that she has already had one birthday in jail.

      “Are both of your parents alive?” he asks. She nods in assent. “Are they both in Puroaire?”

      “My father is in Huetamo, and my mother lives with my sister María Concepción in Morelia.”

      “How many brothers and sisters do you have?”

      “Nine, licenciado. And the one who died.”

      “Do any of them live in Puroaire?”

      “My oldest brother, Joaquín. And my sister Elena.”

      “What was Puroaire like when you were a child, Esperanza?” he asks.

      Esperanza thinks of dirt floors and water carried in buckets, drawn from a hose outside the house. She was the youngest of the litter, and by the time she was born her mother was spent. Her father was more concerned with drinking than raising any more children. Esperanza was darker-skinned than the rest of her brothers and sisters, and although she matched his pallor almost exactly, he’d always had a sneaking suspicion that she wasn’t really his. Once in a while he would take a crack at her mother for her implied infidelity and the shame it caused him. Although he never said so, he had no doubts she knew why he hit her.

      Esperanza remembers her maternal grandfather’s homemade sandals, the soles fashioned from flat tires. His thick and hoary toenails, ugly as those of a rhinoceros. He used to squat on his haunches and stare into space. Esperanza would help her mother cook and wash clothes and sweep with a straw broom. Sometimes she played with the hairy black pigs that her grandfather kept in a dirt pen encircled by cinder block behind the house, until the day they were big enough to sell and slaughter.

      She conjures a picture of the sweeping view of the valley in the early autumn, sun-dappled but still wet from a thundershower. “It was beautiful, licenciado,” says Esperanza.

      “Beautiful in what way?” asks Richard. She stares at the hands in her lap. He runs his hand through his hair and looks at some of the words that other prisoners have scratched into the walls on her side of the glass partition. Esperanza has no idea what they mean: RAT. SHIT. INNOCENT. HELP. FIGHT. LA. KILLS. When she doesn’t answer his question, he tries another: “Tell me about the house where you grew up.”

      She has been unsure about most of her visitors, sometimes unable to distinguish between those who are defending her and those who are against her. Richard is one of the few people who has come who she feels certain is not a policeman. Still, she doesn’t understand why he is asking her all this. She knows he wants to help, but can’t fathom how talking to him about her childhood will do her any good.

      “How many rooms were there, Esperanza?”

      She is ashamed to say there were only two, plus the kitchen. She stares at the wall behind his head.

      “Esperanza, I know that I am asking you to tell me things you don’t usually talk about. Things that you might prefer not to remember. And I’m sorry about that.” He adjusts his seat so it is harder for her to avoid his gaze. She looks at the floor. “And I know that we’ve just met. I don’t expect you to trust me. I know I have to earn that trust.” She looks up at him and is surprised to find that his heavy-lidded eyes are a little wet. His sentiment annoys her. What reason can he possibly have to be sad or sorry? He’s not the one with a dead daughter. He’s not in jail.

      After taking a deep breath, he says, “I just want to say something about talking about yourself. I don’t usually talk about myself either. We all have armor, some kind of protection. Like these clothes we wear. They protect us from the cold, the rain, the elements. But if I walk out of here and I get hit by a car, and I have a wound, and the doctors have to dress the wound—even if it means stripping me naked in the middle of the street—I wouldn’t care. It would be all right, because they would be trying to save my life.” She imagines him, naked and bleeding, on a stretcher being led into an ambulance. “Louisiana wants to kill you. If you want us to try to save your life, you are going to have to expose yourself a little bit.”

      She imagines herself naked on her side of the glass. Unlike many of her other visitors, she is not afraid of the licenciado. She thinks he may desire her. When he averts his eyes, it is as if he has read her mind. For a moment she feels dominant, which in turn gives her a sense of freedom. The oddity of feeling liberated while inside jail makes her body tingle.

      “You don’t have to talk to me if you don’t want to. Just think about it,” Richard says in a stumbling voice. “I will come back and visit you again, but I can’t force you. No te hago manita de puerco.”

      Literally, that means “I won’t make you a little pork hand.” It is Mexican slang for “I won’t twist your arm”—an expression from her grandparents’ generation. Coming out of his mouth, with that impossible gringo accent, it sounds ridiculous. She bursts out laughing, and once she gets started she cannot stop. She covers her mouth, turns red. She cannot remember the last time she has laughed. She cannot remember the last time she has forgotten how miserable she is.

      He wipes his eye with a finger, smiles, and puts his palm against the glass that separates them. She stops laughing. She is not ready to join her palm in his.

       FICTION

      Gustavo’s pockmarked

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