Blood makes the grass grow, drilling soldiers used to chant.
Hitting back was going to hurt my not-yet-healed little finger, of course. I’d wrapped it and the ring finger with extra tape, but that wouldn’t help much. The impacts would do fresh damage. That’s why they call it the vida loca. Once you’ve committed to it, lots of things you do don’t make sense.
“You ready, Hailey?”
Serena’s voice brought me back to myself. I looked over and saw that seven, no, eight girls had crowded into the paddock and were waiting in a rough semicircle. Several others had climbed up to sit on the railing and watch. The young men leaned against the fence like farmhands. The one closest to the gate was smoking a cigarette. Its red eye glowed as he dragged on it. He stared at me openly, without animosity, but without any sympathy, either.
I walked into the paddock. Had this been a true multiple-assailant attack, my instinct would have been to get the paddock railing against my back. But in an initiation, that could be interpreted as cowardice, so I walked right into the center. The girls moved around me as I advanced, making the semicircle into a circle.
I had technique on my side, but eight was too many. I was going to sustain damage.
They had stripped off unnecessary clothes, like I had. They wore sports bras and strappy tank shirts or loose V-neck undershirts. They had taken off their earrings, but a few had heavy, chunky metal rings. Those were going to hurt.
Trippy was among them, of course. But also Heartbreaker, who I’d thought might stay out of it to protect her good looks, and little Risky, too. Other girls I didn’t recognize. All of them had faces like hard masks, appraising me from under heavy bluish eyeliner. Serena alone, outside the pen, was looking at me like she was on my side.
She nodded at me, and I nodded back. Ready.
Serena said to her girls, “Go.”
There’s no way to describe something like that unless you’ve been through it: bright stars exploding in the periphery of your vision, your vision itself shaking like an old filmstrip coming off the reel. You feel impact more than pain. The pain follows.
For a few seconds, I didn’t know how long, I was all right, rolling with it, striking back as best I could. But I’d known eight was too many. One of the girls landed a blow on my nose. I felt the nasal passages swell instantly, then tasted blood in the back of my throat. I fell to one knee, hands up to protect my head. It was instinct.
That’s the lie referees always have to say, in the ring: Protect yourself at all times. It’s a lie because you can’t. You came to fight. If you were really interested in protecting yourself, you’d get out of the ring and go home.
The sucias had closed in, raining blows.
Hailey, do not protect yourself. Get up. Fight back.
I shot for the legs of the nearest girl and successfully took her down. There was a mixed sound of surprise-you don’t see a lot of wrestling moves in these kind of fights. It bought me enough space to get to my feet. I no longer cared that I was outnumbered. I wanted to do damage.
There was howling and yelling all around me as we engaged. From the girls who were fighting. From above, the spectators on the railing.
Then the gunshot echoed into the night, and we all went still.
“I said, That’s enough.” Serena’s voice, calm. Her nine-millimeter was smoking. She’d fired into the air to make us stop.
It was as if we’d all been awakened from a dream. It seemed to take Heartbreaker a second to realize that she was holding on to a fistful of my hair and to let go.
I didn’t remember dropping to my knees, but the girls were extending their hands to me, lifting me up. “Stand up, Rubia,” one of them said, and there was no mockery in the old nickname.
Serena jumped off the fence and the girls parted to let her through. I fell onto her neck and we embraced.
“You did good, prima,” she whispered.
I’d hit one of the sucias, the fat girl with permed hair, hard enough to make her nose bleed, like mine was. She wiped it gingerly with the back of her hand. Then, sounding totally unconcerned, she said, “We need to party.”
All in a day’s work.
Fifteen minutes later, I was in Tio Sergio’s living room, sitting on the couch with a beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other. Throbbing beats from the sound system filled the air. Some of the girls and guys were dancing. Others were in small knots, talking.
To my surprise, the girls who’d looked at me so coldly before the initiation now wanted to know if they’d hit hard enough. Maybe it really had sunk in when Serena had told them about West Point and my boxing there. Now they wanted reassurance that they measured up. I wasn’t kidding when I reassured them that they did. I could already see the terra-cotta-colored marks where bruises would be by morning. Plus, I kept rubbing my collarbone where one of the girls, who obviously knew a thing or two about fights, had jammed her thumb down into the tender underside of the bone and squeezed. There’s no fat there to protect you. It hurts like hell.
Serena came over, holding a forty-ounce, and leaned over me casually. “Come on, Sig’s going to do your ink.” She tipped her head toward a doorway. “In the bedroom.”
“Are we going to give her her name?” Risky asked, sounding excited.
Whatever you called it-gang name, street name, moniker-you didn’t pick it out yourself. It was chosen for you, based on some facet of your personality.
Serena smiled, indulgent. “It’s already decided, thanks.”
Risky settled back into the couch cushions with a small frown, like she’d been left out of naming a new pet. I picked up my beer and followed Serena into the bedroom, which was blessedly dimmer and quieter.
Sigmundo, or Sig, was familiar to me from Serena’s neighborhood, a paraplegic with a racing-style chair with the wheels canted inward for stability. He was artistic before his shooting, a tagger as well as a banger. Afterward, graffiti wasn’t much of an option; good wall art requires a certain amount of flexibility, as well as an ability to flee venues ahead of angry property owners and patrolling cops. Sig’s days of sprinting down backstreets and jumping fences were over.
His work with the needle, though, was much in demand. I knew it was a gift to me that Serena had gotten him here.
“Thank you for coming,” I said.
Sigmundo merely nodded. “You can lie down on the bed,” he said, indicating the queen-size bed with a cheap chenille spread. “Where do you want it, anyway?”
“Um, lower back, I guess,” I said. My lower back had remained unscathed in the initiation, and there the tattoo would remain mostly out of sight.
Serena hoisted herself to sit cross-legged on the bureau, then spooned partially frozen pineapple juice concentrate into a half-full pint bottle of vodka.
I lay down on the bed and pulled my T-shirt up to expose my back, listening to the sounds of Sig’s prep work and the gurgle of Serena’s vodka bottle. I felt very peaceful. Tomorrow I would be hurting, but for now, the post-battle endorphins were flowing, giving me the feeling that all was well.
“So?” Sig was saying, not to me but to Serena. “What am I doing?”
Serena got up and handed him a folded slip of paper. He opened the fold and looked at the word she’d written. “Okay,” he said.
Serena smiled, dazzlingly, at me. “You trust me, right?”
“Right,” I said.
The truth was more complicated. Who knew what Serena was thinking? It seemed likely that she’d chosen something Latin. She hadn’t whispered it to Sig, she’d shown it to him, suggesting that he’d needed to see the spelling. What troubled me about that was the possibility Serena had chosen a name that defined me only in relation to her-gladia, for example, or dextra, which meant “right hand.” I was just proud enough to have my own loss-of-face issues about that.