She called her mother's name again and again, weeping, choking, "Mama, please help me, Mama, tell them I'm a good girl."
On the fifth day, she became feverish, and in her delirium she imagined that she was standing on an elevated train platform in a nameless city, waiting for the train to come in, holding only an umbrella in her hand and watching a horde of rats swarm up out of the ghetto gutters to climb the steel supporting pillars and scurry across the tracks.
Hundreds of them.
Thousands of them.
Swarming across the tracks.
She was standing on the platform, it was broad daylight there on the platform, and there were millions of rats coming at her. The rats were grey and brown and black, they had long tails that switched in the sunlight, they had long teeth that glinted in the sunlight, they seemed to glide in the sunlight. She tried to tell them who she was. She held up the umbrella. It wasn't raining, there was bright sunlight, but she held up the umbrella.
They were nibbling at her feet now, they were climbing up her legs, she tried to hit them with the umbrella. They chewed the umbrella, they chewed the black silk, they chewed the ribs, they ate the wooden handle. They were climbing up her chest, her chest burned, her chest was on fire, Stop, please, she said, where's my umbrella, what did you do with my umbrella? They were all over her now, they were attacking her face. She couldn't breathe. She clawed at them. They were chewing her face. They were ripping open her face, blood was gushing from her mouth. Stop, she yelled, stop! and awakened to discover the nightmare was reality, the dungeon was swarming with rats the size of alley cats, nibbling at her dried feces, crawling over her naked body, licking at the blood caked on her lips.
She screamed.
She screamed.
She screamed.
On the morning of the sixth day, Dominguez sent a matron to uncage her. The matron unlocked the grate and slid it back, and then grimaced and pinched her nostrils against the stench from below. She held out her hand to Marilyn and helped her to climb out of the hole. Marilyn tried to stand, and collapsed to her knees. She tried again, and again fell. "Wow," she said, and blinked at the courtyard sun.
Impatiently, the matron began walking toward the shower stall, Marilyn staggering along behind her. The temperature that morning was in the low fifties. There was only cold water in the shower, but Marilyn stood beneath the icy spray, washing from her body the blood and the filth, cleansing herself and feeling oddly victorious. Her lips were still swollen, her right eye had been blackened and was closed to a narrow slit, every bone in her body ached—but she had won.
When Luis came to her with the white caftan folded over his arm, she refused to put it on. She insisted instead that she wear the grey smock, like all the other women. Luis shrugged. On the way to Dominguez's office, he tried to put his hand on her behind, and she knocked it away, and the men in the courtyard hooted and laughed. Before he rapped on Dominguez's door, he tried to touch her breast, but she backed away from him and crouched as if ready to spring for his throat, and his face went white. Timidly, he knocked on the door.
"Yes, come in!" Dominguez called.
There were a dozen prison guards in the office.
She fainted before the fifth man was finished with her.
He would have to kill her next time.
She would force him to kill her. She would force him to beat her to death with the crop or with his hands. She had been a whore in Houston, but this was not being a whore. This was being owned, and she would not be owned by him or any other man.
He did not summon her to his office again until shortly before Christmas. Again, she would not wear the caftan even though Luis told her it was the warden's specific desire that she look particularly beautiful today. She said in English, "Fuck the warden," and then followed Luis across the courtyard, wearing the blue overcoat over the faded grey smock, the buttons gone from the coat, clutching the coat closed against the wind, her arms folded across her waist. The courtyard was silent. The men knew what had happened to her, and there was no more sport in taunting her with sexual jibes or innuendo.
A man was sitting in the wooden chair beside Dominguez's desk. The man was wearing a dark blue business suit, a grey tie on a striped silk shirt, highly polished black shoes. A grey hat was perched on his lap. He seemed to be in his late sixties, a dapper little man with a neat mustache under his nose, glittering brown eyes surveying her as she came into the room and stood before the desk.
"This is the woman," Dominguez said.
"Does she speak Spanish?" the man asked.
His voice was very low. Marilyn suspected he had never had to raise it in his life. He was watching her steadily. He had directed his words to Dominguez, but he kept staring at her. She thought If he tries to lay a finger on me, I'll rip the eyes from his head. She thought This time, they'll have to kill me.
"You heard the question, Mariucha," Dominguez said. She still said nothing. Dominguez shrugged. "She speaks Spanish, yes," he said.
"Will you not speak then, Miss?" the man said.
"Who are you?" she asked him in Spanish.
"Ah, very good," he said. "I am Alberto Hidalgo."
"Don Alberto," Dominguez corrected.
"You do me great honor," Hidalgo said, "but no, I am not what you say. No, no," he said, shaking his head and smiling.
"What do you think of her?" Dominguez asked.
"She appears thin."
"The closer the bone," Dominguez said, and chuckled. "Don Alberto is here from South America," he said. "We are trying to arrange your release from the Fortress."
"Sure," she said in English.
"Cómo?" Hidalgo asked.
"How are you going to manage that?" she asked in Spanish.
"Don Alberto has many friends here in Mexico," Dominguez said. "It may be possible for you to be released in his custody. To serve out the remainder of your sentence in his custody. The authorities may permit that."
"We are not certain, of course," Hidalgo said. "We are talking now about Argentina. There may be difficulties."
"Not for a man with your friends," Dominguez said.
"Well, perhaps. We shall see."
"But if it can be arranged…"
"Yes, I am interested," Hidalgo said. "But, of course, the young lady may prefer staying here."
"I do not think she would prefer staying here," Dominguez said, and smiled.
"Señorita?"
"What are you, a pimp?" she asked in Spanish.
"No, no, no, no, no," he said, smiling. "No, no, a pimp, what gives you that idea?"
"Just came to me out of the blue," she said in English.
"Cómo?"
"What are you then?"
"A businessman," he said, and shrugged. "A humanitarian perhaps. I would not like to see someone as beautiful as you languishing in prison." The words were particularly sonorous in Spanish, they rolled off his tongue mellifluously, "languideciendo en la cárcel." He smiled again. "Does she have a passport?" he asked Dominguez.
"Yes, I've been keeping it safe for her," Dominguez said.
"Well, that should make things easier," Hidalgo said. He turned to her again. "So," he said, "it's up to you, after all. If it can be arranged, would you be interested?"
She weighed her decision for only an instant. She did not for a moment believe he was anything but what she'd labeled him; he was a pimp and he was buying her. But if he could take her out of here, if she could accompany him out of this place into broad daylight and open streets, then there was a chance for eventual escape.
"Yes, fine," she said. "Muy bien."
"Si es asi, estáhecho," Hidalgo said. "In that case, it is done."