It took a few seconds for his eyes to adjust, and then he saw her. In the corner of the room, on a mattress thrown on the floor, lay Doña Carmen, or what was left of her. The woman Rodrigo remembered was strong, broad-shouldered, dark-skinned and tanned by the sun, with hands that could carry sacks of vegetables and knead tortillas at the same time. The woman before him was a skeleton with skin, her arms as thin as dry branches, her cheeks sunken, her long white hair plastered to her face with stale sweat.
She wore a gray nightgown that had once been white, stained with things Rodrigo preferred not to look at. Carmen raised a hand, trembling so much it seemed the air was moving it. She opened her eyes, it took a while to focus. “My son, is it you or am I dying?” Rodrigo fell to his knees beside the mattress. He couldn’t speak, the words wouldn’t come, he just hugged her. And when he held her close to his chest, he felt every bone in his mother’s body, every rib, every vertebra, as if he were embracing a wounded bird.
He wept like he hadn’t wept since he was a child, an ugly, broken cry, the kind that comes from a place you didn’t even know existed. “I’m here, Mom. I’m here.” Carmen was crying too, but weakly. Tears streamed down her sunken cheeks, and she couldn’t even lift a hand to wipe them away. Rodrigo looked around, and every detail he saw was worse than the last. At the bottom of the door, there was a gap, a rectangular hole cut into the wood, just big enough to fit a plate through.
Beside the mattress were the remains of stale tortillas, a couple of dried beans stuck to the floor, and an overturned plastic cup. Someone was passing her food there—the bare minimum, just enough to keep her from dying, not out of compassion, but out of convenience. A dead body raises questions; an old woman locked away and silent does not. In the opposite corner, a bucket served as a toilet. The walls had marks, scratches made with something, maybe a stone, maybe a fingernail. Rodrigo counted them without meaning to.
Dozens, hundreds. His mother had been counting the days in her own house, the house she built with her husband, the house where Rodrigo was born. Someone locked her in there like an animal. They nailed the windows shut, put chains on her, and passed food through a hole in the door, not to keep her alive, but to keep her quiet. Rodrigo clenched his teeth so hard his jaw cracked. Who did this to you, Mama? Carmen closed her eyes and didn’t answer.
He lacked the strength or the courage. But Rodrigo already knew the answer was 200 meters away. Rodrigo carried his mother like a child. She weighed nothing, literally nothing. He wrapped her in a clean blanket from the truck and settled her in the passenger seat. Canelo jumped into the back of the truck without being invited, as if he knew that finally someone had come to do what he couldn’t.
He drove like a maniac. The nearest clinic was 40 minutes away on a dirt road. Rodrigo made it in 25. He kept glancing at his mother, who had fallen asleep or fainted, her mouth slightly open and her breathing so shallow that Rodrigo kept placing his hand on her chest to make sure she was still alive. He arrived at the clinic skidding and carried her inside. The nurses saw him and reacted immediately. They put her on a stretcher and started an IV.
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