Breaking Free (13 page)

A kind-looking woman walked up to Maria on the street one day and asked her—in Spanish!—if she was looking for a job. Maria was so grateful to hear her native language and immediately said, “Si.” The woman was searching for a maid to help out in an old couple’s home. Maria was thrilled and tried not to laugh out loud while she said, again, “Si! Si!” She was so excited, she even forgot to ask how much the job paid.

They set a time for the woman to pick up Maria and take her to the couple’s house. The woman said Maria should keep it a surprise and not tell her family.

Maria didn’t know why it had to be a secret, but she was too excited to ask. She was already dreaming about coming back to the farm with a wallet full of hard-earned cash. Maybe she would buy her mom a new dress, or her dad a hat to protect his eyes from the sun …

FICTION:

Witches wear black hats, ride broomsticks, and have warts.

FACT:

Brujo
is Spanish for male witch. A
brujo
can look like everyone else, but many cultures, especially Mexican, believe
brujos
can cast magical spells to either help or curse people.

A Tomorrow That Never Comes

Maria knew something was not right. The trip to the old couple’s house was taking much too long. She stared out the woman’s car window and felt like the roads were all twisting into oblivion. Maria didn’t know why she’d left without telling her sister where she was going. The surprise of a new job wasn’t feeling exciting anymore. The longer Maria sat in that car, the more she felt like she was riding away from everyone she knew, straight off the map into the unknown.

Maria and the woman drove almost the whole way in silence. Whenever Maria asked where they were, the woman told her it was close and not to worry. They pulled into a driveway in front of a small house. The town they were in now was called Azusa, California. Long, elegant palm trees were overhead and a Masonic temple was next door. Maria felt a little better after she saw a sign for the neighborhood doctor’s office that was nearby. Maybe she had been worried about nothing all along. This place looked friendly enough, at least from the outside.

The old man who answered the door gave her a warm hello. Maria guessed him to be about sixty-five or seventy. He closed the door quickly and led her into the living room, where he told her to sit on the couch. Then he and the woman disappeared into the kitchen and talked in low mumbles.

Maria didn’t know what they were saying. She just knew she wanted to get out of there. It didn’t look like the place needed a maid. There was barely any furniture, and if there was dust it was too dark to tell. There was no sunlight—the shades were drawn and the air was so stuffy and thick. The only thing Maria could hear was herself panting.

When the old man came back into the room, he told her she was hired.

Maria thanked him and said she should probably get home and check with her family first.

The old man shook his head no. He wanted Maria to start working today, and he promised he’d take her home tomorrow. He insisted that his wife was due home soon and would be so happy to meet Maria.

Maria didn’t like his plan, but the woman who drove her said she couldn’t drive her back anyway.

“You can even call your sister if you want,” the old man said with a smile. He walked her to the phone in the kitchen. Before Maria could dial, he had to unlock the receiver. Maria had never seen a lock on a phone.

Maria’s sister was not happy with the situation. She said Maria needed to come home immediately. Maria tried to explain that the man was old and that they were waiting for his wife to return.

“Where are you, exactly?” Maria’s sister demanded.

Maria had no idea where she was. She just kept repeating that she’d be home tomorrow. She wished there were a way to tell her sister how she was really feeling, but with the old man standing inches away from her, she couldn’t find the words.

After she hung up the phone, the woman who’d driven her left. Maria heard the front door slam shut. The old man locked it with a bolt. When he turned around to face Maria again, his smile got even bigger. And creepier.

He offered to show Maria around the house. In the room where she would sleep, Maria saw an altar with a picture of Jesus Christ in the middle. There was also a line of little bottles filled with dirt and dolls with pins stuck all over their bodies. That first night, Maria pulled the blanket over her face so she couldn’t see the dolls. She prayed for tomorrow to come as fast as possible.

The next day, the old man greeted Maria with a mop and a pile of rags. He said he’d take her home as soon as she was done making the place spotless. She scrubbed every shelf and sill in the house. She mopped and re-mopped the floors. But every time she told the old man she was done, he shook his head no.

The phone was locked. The door was locked. Night came and Maria hid under the covers again.

On the third day, the man told her she could stop cleaning, but he had other things for her to do. Lots of other things. And she wasn’t going home any time soon because he’d paid two hundred dollars for her to stay.

“Do you know why?” he asked. He smiled again, as if they were playing some exciting guessing game. Maria shook her head no. She didn’t want to know.

“
You’re mine now,” he said. “To cook, to clean, to pleasure me in any way.”

Maria shook and shook. She shook so hard, trying to wipe away this moment from her brain and erase it from being possible. The man was still talking, telling her that if she tried to contact her family, he would kill her or them.

This is not happening. This cannot be real
. Maria shook her head faster and faster.

The man explained that he was a
brujo
and everyone in the town knew it. He promised he could read Maria’s mind and make her worst nightmares come true. Nobody would stop him, either. Even the priests in the temple next door knew he was a witch who practiced black magic, and they were terrified of him.

Then, just to prove his point, the old man tore off all Maria’s clothes. Maria shrieked and tried to grab them back. As she reached for them, he punched Maria in the face, and he kept punching until everything went dark.

When she came to, she was lying on the ground with her clothes next to her. At this point she was painfully aware of two things: One, that she had been raped, and two, that no matter how much she screamed or cried, there was nobody there to help her.

“Sometimes when I think about it and I wonder, it was because of my brown skin? It was because we’re not on the high class? It was because I didn’t speak any English? You know what I mean? How can they assume I was okay?”

~ Maria Suarez

Doing What She’s Told

Whether he was a witch or not, the old man definitely had a hold on Maria. He told her every day how he would kill her family if she tried to escape. He was very convincing, too. He barely moved his face when he spoke, except to give her that same creepy smile.

It was as if the whole town was under his spell. Maria saw people through the curtains, walking in and out of the doctor’s office and the temple. But they all seemed to walk
around
the old man’s house, being careful not even to touch his lawn with the edge of a shoe. At one point, the old man forced Maria to work in a factory nearby to bring him more money. When Maria tried to hide in the bathroom until everyone left, her boss pulled her out and sent her back to the old man for an even more vicious beating.

Lying on the ground, bruised and weak, Maria started thinking,
Either he’s going to kill me or I’m going to die
. And dying didn’t sound all that bad anymore.

The old man continued to beat and molest Maria regularly. She was in a constant haze of fear and disbelief. She kept working and doing what she was told because she couldn’t see any alternatives.

The only place Maria didn’t work was in the small guesthouse in the old man’s backyard. He rented it to a young couple, and though Maria never went in she was pretty sure that the old man visited the guesthouse to pursue the wife, too. Maria didn’t know if they’d been lured here by the same woman who had promised Maria a job. She just knew they were all caught in this man’s grip and there was no way out.

One day, Maria heard shrieks coming from the backyard followed by a loud whacking sound. Maria wanted to pretend she couldn’t hear anything, but then she thought of all those neighbors walking by, ignoring her screams, and she knew she couldn’t do the same.

The first thing she saw was blood inching through the grass.

Then she saw a plank of wood, soaked a deep red.

She saw the wife’s mouth open, screaming, and her husband stroking her hair.

Maria saw it all, but her brain could not process any of it, especially once she looked down and saw her torturer, the old man, splayed out on the ground. His smile was gone. His skull was cracked open and leaking into the earth.

The renter picked up the plank of wood that he’d just used to murder the old man and pushed it toward Maria. She just blinked, her eyes still not believing this could be true. He instructed her to bury it under the house. She felt like a zombie, her body separated from her brain. She followed the renter’s orders, digging through the dirt and burying the bloody plank next to the house. She had no idea what else to do. She was so used to following angry orders and commands.

Then the police were there. Maria’s sister was there, too. Maria didn’t know how or when they came. She was just wandering around the backyard, in a fog of terror. The renter and his wife were sent away.

Maria’s sister was still living with her husband and daughter in Sierra Madre. She drove Maria back to her house and rocked Maria in her arms, promising her she was safe now.

But Maria couldn’t hear her. She couldn’t eat or sleep or even find the words,
I love you, too.
Maria was caught in a loop of nightmares. All she could see was the old man on the ground, splattered with blood. Then Maria saw him pulling himself out of the grass and lunging at her with half of his head gone. She sat in her sister’s kitchen, quaking and sweating.

This is where the police found her when they came again.

Maria heard the words, “Maria Suarez, you are under arrest.”

Then she heard her sister screaming, “No!”

Maria felt the skin on her wrist catch in the handcuffs.

She smelled the warm vinyl of the police car.

But still, all she could see was the old man reaching for her.
Please
, she thought,
somebody get him out of my head
.

“I know that I am not guilty. I have not done anything wrong. I just didn’t know how to defend myself.”

~ Maria Suarez

The Sentence

Maria was assigned a lawyer to defend her in court. She didn’t understand what he was saying to her. English was still very difficult for her, and his words came at her quickly. She was mashing them all together in her head and couldn’t make sense of it all. He also couldn’t sit still or look her in the eye. Whenever they met to discuss her case, he paced around the room and checked all the security cameras. He swore he’d get her out of custody soon.