Trouble

I felt really uncomfortable in the outfit they’d gotten me for the trial. They’d dressed me up really fancily to try to make it look like I was an innocent little flower, but I just looked kind of ridiculous. Through the curled hair, the soft dress, the understated makeup, my tough exterior still shined through. There was a twinkle of hate in my eye that would never be there on an innocent individual.

“Don’t worry,” my lawyer told me confidently while we waited in a separate room, away from the main courtroom, while we waited for the jury’s decision. “We sold our case.”

The whole basis, as I’d given the idea for, was that it was a kind of defense. It wasn’t self-defense, sure, since I hadn’t been the one in danger. But I had merely been sticking up for someone else who had been incapable at the time to take care of himself. And even after I shot him, had I not called emergency immediately to get Alejo medical attention? It just showed where my priorities had lied.

But the prosecutor had a great case, too. If I hadn’t planned on killing Cristobal, why the hell was I carrying a gun in the first place? The fact that I was in the gang beforehand made me look even worse, since members were forever killing one another for power, and juries liked to condemn people like me as below the rest of the human race. But despite his strong case, he still allowed second-degree murder to get put on the table.

Alejo had testified on my behalf, telling the story we’d discussed, but he didn’t look over at me. Not once. Ever since our encounter in the interview room, he’d not visited at all, knowing that he’d done nothing but upset me. In a year and a half, I had not seen his face. Briefly, I wondered if he was still with that blonde gringo, but there had been no time to ask.

He looked older, all signs of boyhood gone. There was no more slight roundness to his cheeks, an immature twinkle in his eye. This had changed him, and I could only hope that it wasn’t for the worse.

None of the girls were present at the trial, which didn’t surprise me. They were probably scattered around the country, wondering why I’d abandoned them. Why I’d let them get taken away from their mother. Maybe Esperanza understood, but the others wouldn’t. They were too young. The only thing that would register is that I didn’t love them enough to stay around. Just like their fathers.

We got called back into the courtroom, and my heels clacked on the tile floors as we entered. The people in attendance, which consisted of Cristobal’s girlfriend and a couple other gang members close to him, turned to glare at me. I knew they had no power anymore, since the gang had disbanded, but their stares still made my skin squirm.

The court stayed standing as the jury made its way back in. It seemed like only a couple of seconds, yet also an hour, before they read the word we’d been waiting hours for: “Guilty.”

I could vaguely hear screaming behind me, cheering and clapping, cries to Dios for letting justice work on their sides for once. But it was all muffled, like I had cotton in my ears. My head was swimming, my heart was racing, and I could feel myself go into shock.

I was supposed to get a Not Guilty verdict. I was supposed to be on my way home, where I could scoop Marisol in my arms, hold her close to my chest, smell her sweet curls and tell her how much I missed her. I wanted to read with Claudia, to see how far she’d come with her writing, and gossip with her about what boys she had her eyes on in school. And I wanted to talk with Esperanza, to see how she was doing, to thank her for being strong through all the trials life put her through, even if she was slightly abrasive at times.

Because no matter what, the second I got out of jail, I knew the first thing I’d do was hunt them all down. I needed them. They were my family. At that point, it seemed that even Alejo had abandoned me, and I was just treading water, waiting desperately for someone to pull me out of the pool before I drowned.

No one did. I stayed in a fog, without any visitors with words of encouragements, for the next week. The other prisoners seemed to realize what a funk the trial had put me into, so they stopped the small talk they tried to make to pass the time. It wasn’t like anyone really liked me anyway. They just tolerated me because I had nowhere else I could go.

“You know,” Feather whispered as I stared at the bottom of her bed late at night, “this is just sad. Didn’t you know you was going to be guilty?”

“No,” I replied in a soft voice. “I really thought they’d let me go.”

“Then you’re dumb. They don’t let people like us go. When they have us behind bars, they want to keep us here. Plain and simple.”

She was right. But I hated it. I wanted to leave the musty place. I didn’t belong there.

Granted, it could have been worse. I could have gone in a scared little girl who knew nothing about what hard life was like. I’d seen a couple of girls around the prison like that. They got the shit beat out of them until they cried, and eventually, they had to turn into the one thing they hated.

I’d already been tough and hard. Although, it was hard to deny that prison hadn’t made me worse. Besides when I thought about my sisters, nothing got a reaction out of me. It was almost like I’d turned cold inside.

Not even talking about Liam elicited any emotion. It was like my subconscious had suppressed any kind of feelings I’d ever had for him, and I was able to talk to Feather about all the time we’d had together without so much as wanting to cry.

“When’s your sentencing hearing?” Feather asked, breaking once again through my racing thoughts.

“A few weeks, I think?” I sighed and shook my head. “I don’t even know. It doesn’t fucking matter. I already know I’m going to be in here for life.”

“What did they get you on? First degree?”

“No, second. The jury said there wasn’t enough evidence to get me on first degree, since gang members always carry guns around. It’s part of their job. But that means I got pegged for illegal gun possession, too.”

She let out a loud laugh. “You don’t know how legal shit works, do you? With second degree, they could give you any kind of sentence. And they might be nice to you, since you’ve never been in here before. With first, they basically have to give you life, but anything goes with second.”

I hadn’t thought about that. But even with the new glimmer of hope, my outlook was still pretty grim. They were definitely going to give me jail time, and the longer I was away from my sisters, the more it ached. I’d never watch them grow up into productive individuals. Who even knew if they were doing their homework? If they were eating properly? If they had the clothes they needed?

I started to feel a little sick thinking about it, so I turned over on my side and squeezed my eyes shut, desperate to get a little bit of sleep. I hadn’t gotten much in the past few days, since I’d been so concerned about the trial, but now that I knew my fate, it shouldn’t have been so hard. My mind should have been satisfied.

But it wasn’t. It just kept revving with all the terrible scenarios that I didn’t want to imagine, all the horrors the girls could be going through.

Finally, maybe a couple hours before we had to wake up, I fell into a shallow, fitful sleep.