The Witches of El Paso

Chapter 17

17

The next day at the office, Marta arrives to the news that Soto is suing the women for a million dollars each. This number is purely about intimidation, another version of sending armed men to birthday parties and churches to harass Marta’s clients.

Marta and Linda are on the phone with Belén Florez, whose voice is quivering. It’s scary to be handed papers by a process server, to see your name and next to it, a number with a lot of zeros, like you’re being handed a bill.

“You promised that he’d settle in six months,” Belén says. “It doesn’t seem like he’s ready to settle.”

“Have faith in God,” Marta says. Linda raises an eyebrow.

“Dios es grande,” Belén sighs.

Belén attends services at an evangelical church almost daily, and Marta’s not happy that she’s using Belén’s religion in such a cynical way. From what Marta’s seen, God doesn’t reward the faith of the oppressed, whatever it says in the Bible about that topic. What she wishes she could say is that Belén should have faith in Marta. She feels the hum of La Vista droning in her teeth, vibrating along the outside edge of her right hand, thumping through her body with each beat of her heart. La Vista is talking to her, whispering to her through her skin. When Marta mentioned Silvia Soto’s name to Soto at the fundraiser, she hit a nerve. The defamation lawsuit is because of her, and La Vista is telling her to hit Soto again.

“You OK?” Linda asks.

“Too much coffee,” Marta says, though she hasn’t had any. “You know what’s weird about the defamation suit? Sofia isn’t named as a defendant.”

“But doesn’t that make sense? She told you she was going to change her testimony, didn’t she?”

“I want to talk to her. If she hasn’t contacted the investigators yet, then it’s not too late to keep her from hurting herself and the case. The other women are extra vulnerable now. I don’t want her convincing them to withdraw.”

Linda leafs through her notebook, pausing on a page of schedules. “She’s working today at the packing shed, if you want to go see her there.”

At the Soto truck depot and packing shed, heavy-duty cyclone fence topped with loops of razor wire runs around the compound. Most of the space is taken up by warehouses with concrete loading docks sticking out from the mouths of the bays. It’s a busy place, eighteen-wheelers rumbling in and out of the gates. The only reminder that this used to be a pecan stand is the sign that used to sit on top of the old wooden building, now affixed to the side of one of the warehouses.

Inside, giant circular lamps beam greenish light down onto a large open space dominated by clattering machinery. The women in the facility wear boxy blue overalls and puffy white hairnets making them look very much alike, but even as Marta peers at the women more closely, she can’t pick out Sofia on the line.

A woman who’s been moving around the room, a supervisor, bustles over. “Can I help you with something?”

“We’re looking for Sofia Hernandez.”

“She doesn’t work here anymore.”

“Did she quit?”

“I don’t know nothing about it,” the woman says. Her eyes tilt up at a camera that’s pointing at the packing shed floor.

Since Sofia isn’t there anyway, Marta doesn’t need to make things more difficult for this forewoman, who has, without knowing it, given her something of value. These days everything is recorded. As Marta walks toward the exit, she counts three more cameras. They’ve subpoenaed Soto for all of the footage from security cameras. They haven’t found anything damning, but maybe there’s footage that Soto has hidden.

Walking out, Marta waves up at a camera over the door.

“What are you doing?” Linda asks.

“Saying hi,” Marta says. She wants Soto to know she was on his property, hunting him down. She wants him to make another move. La Vista is still pumping through Marta, and she knows what to do next.

Sofia’s house is tiny, with a tidy front yard of yellow lawn, a border of thirsty-looking juniper bushes. A new car sits in the driveway, a small white Kia with the dealership stickers still on it.

“What are you doing here?” Sofia asks Marta when she opens the front door, standing behind the screen. Sofia’s stone-faced, looking back and forth between Marta and Linda like she can’t decide which one she hates more.

“I’ve come to apologize. I’m sorry for what I said the other day.”

Sofia opens the screen door a crack, saying, “Pásele,” without any warmth. It’s clear she’s been crying.

The house smells like cooking grease, fried onions, and ammonia. An older woman on oxygen sits in a recliner, the TV blaring, and Marta has the urge to stop, to talk to this woman, to ask her to tell Marta everything she knows. The woman looks up at her, bewildered.

“Buenas tardes,” Marta says.

“Dios te bendiga,” the woman says, looking more ill than she had before.

Marta and Linda follow Sofia into the kitchen. Sofia puts a kettle on the stove.

“Why did you quit?” Marta asks Sofia.

“I don’t want to work there anymore. I need to take care of my mother,” Sofia says. Marta hears a song of worry singing high-pitched in the air. How? How will I ever pay these bills for her prescriptions, the hospital, for the electricity and water, and, dios me salve, the rent? The imprint of these thoughts hover in the air, repetition making them part of the kitchen’s atmosphere. Marta has always known intellectually what her clients face. Now, La Vista appears to be giving her information that’s more personal and private, the kind that she’s always shied away from. But acknowledging this pain gives Marta more power.

“Did Soto make you quit?” Marta asks.

“No.”

“Whose car is in the driveway?”

A flicker passes across Sofia’s face. “Mine.”

“It’s a nice car,” Linda says. It doesn’t take La Vista to connect these dots.

“Sofia? Mija?” the woman calls from the other room in a weak voice. Voices whisper at Marta: diabetes, a foot that may have to be amputated, a childhood in Villa Ahumada, mother a seamstress .

“I’m coming, Mamá,” Sofia calls. “I need to take her to her appointment at the clinic.”

“I know why you wanted to change your testimony. You needed money right away.”

Sofia’s eyes dart back and forth between Marta’s and Linda’s faces. “I understand why you’d take things from Soto. But he owes you much more than that.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“What else has he asked you to do? Other than change your testimony? What deal have you made with Benjamin Soto?”

“Nobody asked me to do anything.”

“If someone threatened you, that could make our case stronger. There are rules against retaliation, and Se?ora Torres can help you,” Linda says in Spanish. The word is represalias, reprisals.

“Leave,” Sofia says, and there is grief in her voice.

“I don’t want you talking to the other women,” Marta says. She needs to minimize the damage Sofia can do.

“I’ll do what I have to, we all have to eat,” Sofia says, her voice shaking but her gaze defiant.

“I’m warning you, don’t screw up this case,” Marta says, meeting eyes with Sofia. La Vista surges in her. Sofia’s face becomes disfigured with fear.

“Let’s go,” Linda says, touching Marta’s shoulder gently.

Driving back to the office from San Elizario, Marta follows the course of the Rio Grande, passing cotton fields that turn into housing developments stretching for many miles, passing one of the entrances to Fort Bliss. The fort is the size of Rhode Island, stretching up to New Mexico, where it runs into the White Sands Missile Range, the size of two Rhode Islands. During the wars in the Middle East, soldiers poured into Fort Bliss, the ideal place to train for battle in the desert of Iraq, the craggy hills of Afghanistan. When the soldiers came back from war, they were hurt in mind and body, and the violence of the war had to go somewhere. They turned that violence against themselves and against the ones closest to them. This is the nature of abuse, that it comes from somewhere.

Marta’s in battle mode now, and she’s grateful for the familiar feeling of controlled professional rage. The aquelarre is open, and La Vista runs through her. She doesn’t care if Rosa ever comes. She hopes she stays away, because Marta doesn’t want the aquelarre to ever close.