Ouch. “That obvious?”
She makes a face and shrugs, holding up a plastic bag. “Yeah. Can I come in?”
Stepping aside to make room for her and her belly, I shut the door and touch my forehead to it before following her to the quaint kitchen. “I had a craving for avocados so Tonk rode all over town to find me one.”
“We just got here.”
“Before they picked us up. Wasn’t riding on the bikes fun? I’ve never been on one. I’m sure he didn’t like going that slow.”
Sighing, I tell her, “Carmen, Tonk would go two miles an hour if it made you happy. He adores you. He makes no move to hide it.”
She blushes — not easy for an olive-skinned girl to do. Peeling away as she rambles on, “You and Jett were so tense and there was too much space between you.”
Don’t I know it. Riding on the back of his Harley and not wrapping myself around him was so, SO hard to do.
“I told you on the train, we need distance…”
“I know, but…it’s just sad to me, Luna.”
“Yeah, well.” Crossing my arms, I watch her cut the fruit with a plastic knife. Digging out the bulbous seed with it, she hands me one half and pulls out corn tortillas. “Want me to heat them up?”
“No, this is cool.”
We tear off pieces of tortilla and cut chunks of avocado to eat with them. The quiet is a comfortable one. We’re used to each other now.
When we left Los Angeles and were alone together for the first time, Carmen wouldn’t talk to me. Then I started telling her stories from my childhood, and she opened up. But she really is like a little bird. It doesn’t surprise me that she fell for the lies, when she agreed to take ‘the job.’
She was first generation American, brought over by a brother who smuggled her as a baby. When he went to jail, she had no one, and a nice white family took her in when they found the five-year-old girl on the streets. But the husband began sexually abusing her when she turned thirteen. It crushed her, of course. And her self-esteem.
She ran away when she was sixteen, but had no concept of money or how to take care of herself. One of Matias’s men told her all kinds of lies to trick her. When they got her ‘home,’ they drugged her. Then when she got pregnant the first time, they told her she was a whore and no one would ever love her, and that the police were in on it. Her baby would go to a ‘good family.’ Not be raised by a whore.
That baby didn’t make it.
She told me of how horrible it was for her and the others. The babies were fathered by the bodyguards, since Matias was too sick in the end to participate in his newfound commercial trafficking. And there was no structured conception. This child could be one of seven men’s, she confessed. When I asked her if she told Tonk that, she nodded, which surprised me. It was when we crossed the border of Arizona into New Mexico.
She said, “He hugged me and told me he would never let anyone touch me again.” Carmen stared out the window at the clay-colored mountains. “I thought you just said we were going to be in a new state now. It looks the same.”
I would have smiled at her random segue and innocence, if I wasn’t so sad by what she told me.
“Why aren’t you staying in his room?” Carmen’s brown eyes are as curious as they are patient.
To avoid the subject, I tease, “Why are you in mine?”
“Because I didn’t want you lonely.”
My smile fades and we eat in silence. There isn’t much and it’s gone too soon.
When she starts packing up, I blurt, “I thought I would be in his room.” She glances up from the bag. “I…spent the last twelve hours on that train wondering how I would handle sleeping in the same room with him and keeping my heart caged up. When we were in the lobby and you looked over at me? Remember?” She slowly nods. “It was right about then that I felt maybe I’d left the hospital too soon because my heart was beating so fast it hurt in my chest. I just…when I’m around Jett I feel like I’m not close enough to him. I want to press my body to his and just stay like that.”
Carmen blinks and walks to me with big arms.
“I don’t need a hug,” I object, stepping back.
She hesitates, but decides to ignore me. “Pretty Luna, come on.”
Her belly presses into mine as her arms go around me. She rubs my back and pulls away. “He cares about you.” Guessing that I’m not going to have a reply for that, she picks up the bag and heads for the door. “Tonk thinks we’re having sex tonight but I’m going to have to just blow him. I feel like a big fat whale today. Baby is coming soon.”