I couldn’t.
I stared at my mother’s earring, the small pearl earring that she always wore in her left ear because the other pair had been lost for years, and I felt that the bathroom was getting smaller, hotter, as if they were burying me alive in there.
Outside, the woman spoke again.
“Alma, open up. We don’t want to hurt you. We just want the girl.
The girl.
Not “the baby”. Not “your niece”. Not “Daniela’s daughter”.
The girl.
As if it were a thing.
As if it were a package that had been lost.
The little girl moved in my arms and let out a hoarse whine from the fever. I kissed her forehead, breaking out in a cold sweat. Then I looked at the little yellow blanket lying on the floor of the cubicle, the earring on top, the blood already dried on one bank, and something inside me suddenly settled.
The fear was still there.
But it wasn’t paralyzing me anymore.
Now he was pushing me.
I put the earring in my bra, hung up my backpack, placed the baby close to my chest and, without making a sound, climbed on the toilet. The cubicle had a crack above, attached to a tall window with broken glass. It wasn’t big, but it was enough.
Outside I heard boots approaching.
“We know you’re there.
I pulled myself up as best I could, one hand holding the girl, the other pushing the rusty frame. The glass scraped my forearm. I felt the burning, but I didn’t let go of the baby. I put the backpack first, then my shoulder, then my head. Outside was the back hallway of the terminal, where they took out the trash and unloaded boxes.
Behind me the bathroom door thundered.
I didn’t turn around.
I fell badly, on my knees, and the pain rose to my teeth, but I got up and ran.
I ran with the girl in my arms, my backpack bouncing off my back, my breath shattered. I crossed between drums, dodged a loader who shouted something at me, and came out onto a side street where I smelled of diesel and old roast meat.
I didn’t know where I was going.
I just knew I couldn’t stay.
I turned the first corner and went into one of those pharmacies that never close. There were two ladies in line and a boy dozing at the checkout. I went straight to the doctor’s office, begged the doctor to check the girl, told him that she had a fever, that I didn’t have insurance, that I would pay her with whatever I had.
He saw my face.
Blood in the arm.
Desperation.
And he asked no questions.
He laid her down on the stretcher, uncovered her a little and, when he pulled down her jacket to listen to her breast, he saw the mark in the shape of a crescent.
His face changed.
Very little.
But I saw it.
“What?” I blurted out, pulling back.
“Nothing,” he said too quickly. “The girl is dehydrated and has an infection in her throat. She needs antibiotics and a fever to be lowered.
He wrapped it up again, wrote me a recipe, and then hesitated for a second before tearing a leaf out of his cookbook.
He wrote a name and an address.
“I don’t know your problems,” he said quietly, “and I don’t want to know about them. But if someone is looking for that baby, go to this person. He’s trustworthy. Tell him that Dr. Salvatierra sends you.”
I snatched the paper from him.
“Parish of Santa Lucia. Mother Veronica”.
“Why are you helping me?” I asked.
The doctor held my gaze.
“Because twenty-seven years ago I saw that same mark on the back of another woman who came fleeing with a newborn. And because two days later she was found dead.
I felt the floor pull me.
“Who was he?”
But he was already opening the door.
“Run, girl.
I didn’t need more.
I bought the medicine, a bottle, a bottle of water and a thicker blanket. I left through the back door of the pharmacy and took a collective taxi to where he left my money. The parish was tucked between mechanical workshops and block houses, with a peeling blue fence and a patio full of flower pots.
I knocked until a short nun with very lively eyes opened the door.
He didn’t even let me talk.
He looked at the girl. Then at me. Then he slammed the door shut and dropped two pins.
“Come in.”
That scared me more than I trusted.
Entered.
It smelled of coffee, Zote soap and candles.
“Did Dr. Salvatierra send it?” he asked.
I nodded.
She saw the leaf, then beckoned me to follow her into a small office with a wooden crucifix and a fan that barely moved.
“Show me the girl’s back.”
“No.
The answer came to me by itself.
The nun sighed.
“Then show me the earring you have saved.”
I froze.
I slowly brought my hand to my bra.
I took it out.
The little pearl shone a little under the yellow light of the spotlight.
The woman closed her eyes as if it had hurt to see him.
“Yes, you are Elena’s daughter,” he murmured.
My mom.
Di un paso atrás.
“Who are you?”
She looked at me with a sadness so old that it seemed to come from before me.
—My name was Verónica Luna before I entered here. I was friends with your mother. And I met your grandmother.
My legs went limp. I sat down without asking permission, still holding the girl.
The nun served me coffee for me and boiled water to prepare the baby’s medicine. While the little girl was sipping down, half asleep, the woman began to talk.
Not like someone who tells gossip.
Like someone who finally opens a tomb.
She told me that my grandmother was not crazy, as we were always told in the family. That she belonged to a branch of women who had protected girls born with the crescent mark for generations, because around them ran an ancient belief, half superstition and half ambition, that the “heiress of the moon” had a right to hidden lands, deeds and jewels that several powerful people had been looking for years.
I wanted to laugh.
To tell him that that sounded like a cheap novel.
But I couldn’t.
Because I remembered my mom always swearing that the brand had been lost in our generation.
Because I remembered the strange fear with which he spoke of my father’s family.
Because I remembered Daniela, beaten, crying, throwing the girl at me as if she were giving me her whole heart.
“Your sister discovered something she shouldn’t have,” said Mother Veronica. “And the man in the hat works for those who have been tracking down the right descendant for years. They thought your mother was. Then they thought it was Daniela. Then they understood that the line was going on for the girl.
“Who is your father?” I asked.
The nun was slow to respond.
“That’s the worst. Maybe not even Daniela knows.
My stomach turned.
“No.
“They tricked her, Alma. They got close to her for years. They made her believe that she was love, protection, help. When the girl was born and they saw the mark, there was no way to hide it.
I felt a brutal urge to cry, but not a single tear came out. I was too tired to break.
“And my mother?” I asked. “Where is she?”
Mother Veronica did not answer. She only looked down at the bloody earring.
And then I understood.
Not complete, not pretty, not with words.
I understood it as you understand a fall.
No air.
I bent over the baby and then I cried. In silence, so as not to wake her up. I cried for my mother, for Daniela, for me, for that creature who didn’t even know in what world she had been released. The nun didn’t touch me. She just let it end.
When I raised my face, my eyes were dry again.
“Is Daniela alive?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “But he left something for you.
He opened a drawer and took out a crumpled envelope with my name on it.
My sister’s handwriting.
I opened it with trembling hands.
Soul:
If you’re reading this, it’s because at least I managed to buy them time.
Forgive me for not telling you sooner. I wanted to get you out of this years ago, but the less you knew, the safer you were.
The girl’s name is Estrella.
Don’t let them register it under that name just yet.
Do not return with anyone in the family.
And no matter what, don’t let me grow up believing it was a burden. It was the only clean thing that ever happened to me.
If Mom doesn’t survive, tell her I forgave her.
And if I don’t survive, tell my daughter that the first time I saw her open her eyes I felt that there was still something good in this world.
Below, folded inside the letter, was another sheet: an old copy of a birth certificate. Not the girl’s.
From my mother.
In the mother’s section she said a name that I did not know.
It wasn’t my grandmother’s.
Mother Veronica saw me read it.
“Your mom was adopted into the family itself to hide the line,” she said. “That’s why they lied to you so much. That’s why sometimes they didn’t even know the whole truth themselves.
That left me without a floor, but it also, rarely, gave me anything like clarity.
All our lives we had carried secrets that we didn’t even understand.
It was about time someone decided otherwise.
That night they hid us in a small room next to the sacristy. I gave the medicine to the girl, her fever began to go down and for the first time since Saltillo she slept peacefully, with her mouth open and her hand pressed on my finger.
I watched it for hours.
She didn’t look like Daniela.
He didn’t look like me.
She looked like herself.
Small, sweaty, stubborn, alive.
And as I watched her breathe, I understood something that broke me and sewed me up at the same time: maybe I hadn’t chosen any of that, but I could choose what to do next.
At dawn there was noise in the courtyard.
Voices.
A wagon braking afuera.
Mother Veronica ran in.
“They found us.
I didn’t think.
News.
I put the letter, the certificate and the earring in my backpack. I tied myself to Estrella with a shawl that I found hanging behind the door. The nun took me through a back exit to a neighboring house where a widowed lady lived with six dogs and a truck son.
“He’s going to Reynosa in twenty minutes,” he said. “From there he looks for Celia. She’ll know how to cross them to a safe place.”
“And you?”
The nun smiled with a peace that made me angry.
“I’ve already run too much in this life.
He pushed me toward the kitchen door.
Then a very hard knock was heard in the parish. Then another.
And a man’s voice.
The one with the black hat.
“We know he’s here.
My blood froze.
But at that very moment another engine sounded outside, louder, and then screams, and then something I never expected to hear:
“Soul!
Daniela.
I went out into the backyard just as I saw her jump over the fence of the neighboring house, disheveled, with a purple face, torn clothes and a gun in her hand that trembled horribly. She came with a skinny young man behind her, one of those boys who help in the workshops.
My sister saw me with the girl tied to her chest and burst into tears while still pointing towards the street.
“I thought I wasn’t coming,” he said. “I thought I wasn’t enough.
I ran to her.
We hugged like when we were children and the power went out in the house. Strong, clumsy, afraid.
“Mom,” I began.
Daniela closed her eyes for a second. Just one. And she nodded.
No more needed to be said.
Not there.
Not yet.
“Listen to me,” he said, grabbing my face. “The truck driver is good. His name is Toño. I’m going to distract you.”
“No mothers,” I said. “We’re going together.”
She smiled, broken.
“That’s what I wanted to hear.
And then, for the first time all night, something went right.
The boy in the workshop whistled from the fence.
“They’ve already gone in the front!”
The three of us ran to the trailer box at the back of the lot. Toño, a gray-bearded shoulder, opened the door and helped us climb up between sacks of croquettes and boxes of spare parts.
Before closing, Daniela turned to Mother Veronica, who had managed to get there.
The nun put a set of keys in his hand.
“Celia’s house,” he said. “I already told her.
The trailer started with a roar that made my bones vibrate.
Inside it smelled of cardboard and hot metal. Estrella woke up for a second, looked at me with huge black eyes, and then settled back on my chest as if, for some incomprehensible reason, she knew we were already leaving.
Daniela sat across from me, leaning against a box, breathing heavily. I saw dried blood on her neck.
“Who is the father?” I asked at last.
She looked down at the girl.
“I don’t know which of all her names was the real one,” he said. “But it doesn’t matter anymore. Because they’re not going to touch her.”
I approached and arranged her hair behind her ear, as she did with me when she was little.
“We’re going to Reynosa,” I told him. “Then wherever we can. We change names, jobs, our whole lives if necessary.”
Daniela looked at me for a long time.
Then she smiled, very tired.
“You were always better at running away than I was.
“I was always better at lying,” I replied.
We both laughed half crazy, half sad.
And in the midst of that laughter, the girl opened her hand.
Inside he had a golden thread stuck between his fingers.
The little brooch of the yellow blanket.
Who knows at what moment he grabbed him.
Daniela saw it and began to cry again, but now different, as if all the poison was finally being emptied.
Outside, the city was left behind. The workshops, the avenues, the terminal, the fear stuck to the walls.
I took out my sister’s letter once again and read it until I got to the name: Estrella.
I looked at the baby.
I no longer had a fever.
He slept with his mouth half-open and the crescent moon hidden under his clothes.
I kissed her on the forehead.
“We’re going to love you well,” I promised very quietly. “Even if we have to invent the whole world.
Daniela closed her eyes and rested her head on my shoulder. For the first time since I got on that truck, I felt the air enter my lungs completely.
Hours later, when the sun began to turn orange between the hills, Daniela’s cell phone vibrated only once.
Unknown number.
We both saw it.
We did not answer.
Only one message appeared.
One address. No more text.
But below, in the profile photo, you could see half of a pearl earring.
Daniela turned to look at me with her eyes full of fear and hope at the same time.
“Do you think that…?”
I looked at Estrella asleep between us.
Then I put the phone away.
“I don’t know,” I said.
And it was true.
I didn’t know if my mom was alive.
I didn’t know who else was waiting for us.
I didn’t know what was at the end of that road.
I just knew that we weren’t alone anymore.
And for the first time, that seemed enough to me.
