The Dead Women of Juarez Read Online Free Page A

better,
cabrón
!”
    “I know. I’ll go down for an hour when I’m better.”
    “If you got to do it more than ten minutes, you’re not doing it right,” Paloma said, and laughed. “Maybe that’s the problem.”
    “Oh, fuck you.”
    He was tired and the alcohol was working on him. His mind drifted and he fell asleep. When he woke up, the sun showed through the windows and he was alone. A quilt from the closet was draped over him from the waist down.
    Kelly showered and had beer and eggs for breakfast. Paloma didn’t leave a note, but she never did. Later he would call her, or maybe he would catch a bus and surprise her for
comida corrida
in the afternoon. Mexicans ate late and so did Kelly. In the meantime he walked. He had money in his pocket and nowhere to be.
    At the end of the long row of apartment buildings a telephone pole was painted pink halfway up its length. Black crosses of electrical tape were fixed to it and below them a forest of multicolored flyers stirred whenever the wind blew.
    Kelly saw a woman at the pole tacking up a new flyer. She was gone by the time he reached her and he stopped to see what she left behind. A photocopied picture of a teenage girl on green paper smiled out at him. Her name was Rosalina Amelia Ernestina Flores. She seemed too young to work, but that was the
Norteamericano
in Kelly thinking; in Mexico there was hardly such a thing as
too young to work
. Rosalina made turn signals in a
maquiladora
for a German car company. She had been missing for two weeks.
    ¡Justicia para Rosalina!
the flyer said.
    Other flyers overlapped Rosalina’s, other girls and other faces. Flyers were two or three deep. All pleaded for
justicia
: justice for Rosalina; justice for Yessenia; justice for Jovita. There were so many that the city had a name for them:
las muertas de Juárez
, the dead women of Juárez, because they were all certainly gone and gone forever.
    “
Excúseme, señor. ¿Usted ha visto a mi hija?
”
    Kelly turned away from Rosalina and her sisters. He saw the woman again. She had a fistful of photocopies on green paper. She looked old in the misleading way the working poor of Juárez often did; she was probably not forty.
    “
¿Usted ha visto a mi hija?
” the woman asked again.
    “
No la he visto. Lo siento
.”
    The woman nodded as if she expected nothing different. She walked down the block and stopped at another telephone pole. A flyer there would be torn down by the end of the day, but she had to know that and Kelly didn’t feel right saying so. Only the notices on the pink-painted pole were untouchable.

FIVE
    M UJERES S IN V OCES HAD A SMALL office on the second floor of a ramshackle building housing a pharmacy, a chiropractor and a smoke shop. Bright pastel-colored paint chipped and peeled from plain concrete walls. Signage was blasted white by endless days of sun. Somewhere along the line the foundation settled unevenly, so the whole structure leaned.
    The office door was painted bright pink and had three locks. The word
justicia
was stenciled at waist height in rough black. Self-adhesive numbers marked the address, but no sign or label announced the occupants.
    Kelly knocked once and let himself in. Two desks and a trio of battered filing cabinets crowded the small front room. The back of the office was used for storing paint and paper and wood and signs. Once a month the members of Mujeres Sin Voces – Women Without Voices – dressed in black and gathered near the Paso del Norte International Bridge crossing into El Paso. With posters and banners on sticks, they paraded silently along rows of idling cars waiting to enter the United States. They reminded the
turistas
that while
they
came to Mexico for a party, women were dying.
    Paloma used the desk closest to the office’s single window. She was here four times a week, sometimes alone, sometimes with another member of the group. When Mujeres Sin Voces marched, she marched with them. A dusty box fan turned in the