twenty-seven
SEPTEMBER 26
A Saturday night, after dark, Serena driving us east of the city, to a small ranch property where my initiation was to take place. The landscape around us was dry grass, pale almost to whiteness in the light of the full moon. The poles of power lines were dark silhouettes against the deep cornflower of the sky.
Gravel crunched as we pulled into a long driveway. Up ahead was a low, one-story house, and around us were split-rail fences, delineating paddocks, but I could see no livestock in them.
“Who lives here?” I asked.
“Risky’s tio, Sergio. He’s not here right now,” Serena said. “So we can use it.”
She pulled around back, parking in front of a small paddock with tubular metal railings instead of wood. The gate was held open by chain wrapped tightly to the nearest post. Inside, the dirt was hard and packed, dust stirring a little in the air displaced by the car’s approach.
Serena cut the lights, but we didn’t get out of the car yet. We were early.
She said, “They’ll be here soon.”
I nodded.
“You want a drink? I’ve got a bottle of vodka in my bag.”
“No. Maybe after.”
She’d offered me the choice: Fight one of the guys from Trece, or get jumped in the more popular way, by being beaten by her girls as a group. There was supposed to be a third option, fighting Serena herself, but we’d both known that wasn’t going to happen. If I won in front of her girls, she’d lose too much face.
A few more moments of silence passed before we saw lights on the road, traveling toward us like a comet or a meteor. The car turned down the driveway and resolved into an old Buick.
More cars were pulling in now. Thug cars: an old Monte Carlo, an Oldsmobile, a Chevy Cavalier. Then an Econoline van. With a slamming of doors and a mixed chatter of Spanish and English, the sucias acknowledged Serena, throwing up their signs to her.
Then I noticed that there were guys from El Trece present as well. It wasn’t typical for them to take interest in a girls’ initiation, but this was different. This was Warchild’s old friend La Rubia, the one who’d nearly become a soldier. This was, even for the guys, an event worth watching.
I shucked off my hooded jacket and began to walk in a circle the way I used to do before fights, rolling my shoulders, ignoring the guys who were watching me. I needed to loosen up. I wasn’t just here to get beaten. I was expected to fight back, to prove my mettle. I would honor the gang by striking back at my sisters-to-be, our shared wounds creating a bond between us.
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.
But it’d be another breach of etiquette to speak up now and make sure that she hadn’t. So I was going to trust her.
Sig began to prep me, tracing the letters of the pattern with his pen. I half tried to pay attention and figure them out but couldn’t.
The needle’s buzzing filled the air, not loud but pervasive. I rested my head on my forearm, eyes closed, barely flinching at the first pinpricks of sensation. After a moment, I got used to it, the needle nibbling away at my old identity to make room for a new one.
When he was done, Serena got off her perch and walked over, looking down at Sig’s handiwork. “Nice,” she said. “I like it. You want to see, Hailey?” She tilted her head toward the bathroom.
I got to my feet and followed. The bathroom was small and narrow, and the mirror was a small one, high over the sink. Serena handed me a ladies’ mirror, the round kind with a pearlized plastic handle, because only in the second reflection would the tattoo be in readable order, left to right. Holding the mirror, I turned and looked over my shoulder. No good. The mirror was still too high, and I was too close to it. I moved awkwardly forward, until I was standing over the toilet, legs wide. I said, “I guess it wouldn’t have killed me to have this done someplace more readable, like on my arm.”
“It’s good where it is,” Serena said. “Where it is, no one has to see it and hassle you about it, if you don’t want that.”
In the wall mirror, I could see the ash-gray Old English lettering, and so I held the hand mirror by my hip and tilted it until the letters came into view.
“Oh,” I said.
I’d guessed it was Latin. I hadn’t guessed this.
The new name Serena had chosen for me was Insula, Latin for island.
“Are you surprised?” She was looking closely at my face with an uncertain expression I’d rarely seen on her.
“A little,” I said.
“I know it’s funny, because this whole thing, getting jumped in, was about you becoming part of something,” she said, “but insula, that’s who you are. Even way back, when you were studying Latin while everyone else was doing Spanish and French, thinking about West Point—you were the only one of us who thought she was meant for something different, and that’s a lonely thing.” She paused, then smiled. “Did you think I was going to put something like ‘Fearless’ on you?”
I shook my head.
“So you like it?” she pressed.
“I do,” I said.
In the bedroom again, Sig gave me a salve to rub on the tattoo for the next few days. Then Serena poured me some vodka and pineapple juice in a plastic cup, and I knew the toast she was going to make before she spoke.
“Ad limina fortunarum,” I answered.
We’d invented that one, half Spanish and half Latin. How do we live? To the limits of our fates. It meant that we were going to push our luck, to live until fortune said it was time to die.