Angel Baby: A Novel Read Online Free PDF

mother, Theresa, staggers in from the bedroom. She’s wearing an oversized Iron Maiden concert T-shirt as a nightgown. The bright red dye job on her hair is growing out, her roots showing black and gray, and yesterday’s mascara is smeared around her eyes. She squints at Luz and says, “Yeah, it’s you,” then walks to the couch and digs out a pack of cigarettes from between the cushions, lights one.
    “I’ve forgotten how many years it’s been,” she says.
    “Nine,” Luz says, clutching the backpack to her chest.
    “Seriously?”
    “Add it up.”
    Theresa sits on the couch, legs curled beneath her. She’s gotten fat. Her face is swollen, her belly. She used to be so beautiful, the most beautiful whore in the colonia, people said. It gives Luz satisfaction to see her looking this bad but also breaks her heart.
    “Carmen wrote to tell me you were living with her in L.A., but I never heard from you,” Theresa says.
    “I didn’t think you cared,” Luz says.
    “I knew how you felt about me. It was stupid to keep pretending.”
    She’s right, Luz thinks. At least the bitch gave her that, the gift of truth. She made sure that Luz and her brothers knew the score from the start: Assume that everyone you meet is a liar, a cheat, a rapist, a murderer. A wolf waiting to rip your guts out. And if anyone claims not to be, trust him even less than those who have their crimes tattooed across their foreheads.
    “Carmen was good to me,” Luz says. “I stayed with her and her family and went to school. I did okay, you know, even got A’s in math and in science, but I had to drop out when I got pregnant. The baby was a girl. Isabel. Her daddy died right after she was born.”
    Theresa focuses on a patch of sunlight on the couch, moves her fingers through it. “I don’t need to hear this,” she says.
    But Luz thinks she does, so she continues. “I went to work at Taco Bell after that,” she says. “It was fine. Not fun or anything, but fine. One day I was at the register and this guy, this sweet-talking pendejo, came in and told me I could be doing a lot better, that I was too pretty to be making burritos. He got me a job at a club, a place where gangsters went, narcos. I started out waitressing, then did some dancing.”
    Then did the other thing. Luz doesn’t say this, though, won’t give Theresa the satisfaction.
    Theresa blows out a cloud of smoke, her foot jiggling impatiently. “And? And? And?” she says. “Just tell me why you’re here.”
    “I’m here for her, for my baby,” Luz says. “I met a man at the club. He asked me to move back here to be with him, offered me an allowance. I was only thinking of Isabel when I said yes, that she should have a future. I left her with Carmen and said I’d send money. Things were good for a while, until another man decided he wanted me, that I should be his woman instead. He and my old man fought, and the other man won. El Príncipe.”
    Theresa’s eyes widen in recognition of the name. “My God,” she gasps, and springs to her feet as if Rolando were about to storm in and shoot her dead.
    “Calm down,” Luz says. “I’ve left him, and I’m going back to Isabel. But I need your help.”
    “I can’t help you,” Theresa says. “I don’t have anything.”
    “I need someone to take me across the border. Give me a name.”
    “No, get out now.”
    “You owe me, Mamá.”
    “I don’t owe you shit.”
    Luz thrusts out a hundred-dollar bill pulled from the backpack. Theresa looks at the money, looks at Luz, then drops her cigarette into a beer can sitting on the arm of the couch.
    “Your little brother, Beto, was killed last year,” she says. “They cut off his head and left his body in a ditch. And Raúl’s in prison in Texas. He’ll never get out. They were idiots who took after their fathers.” She snatches the bill from Luz’s fingers. “I thought you were smarter.”
    A voice comes from the bedroom: “Who the fuck are you talking