The naked teenager felt goose pimples all over. Why would police be snooping around this huge deserted pit at this hour? Maybe looking for her! She was being watched!
She didn’t stop to think how that was possible -- there were no houses anywhere near her, and it had been dark out. Still, the idea of someone spying on her nudity, and all the humiliations she had been through, made her face hot with blushing. It was in its way worse than when she voluntarily stripped for those cowboy-hatted rowdies at the club.
Even in the dim twilight her dark Mexican skin must be easy to spot against this wall of concrete. She certainly couldn’t go down the rungs to be easy prey on flat ground. The only way to escape was up. She tried to skip a rung, stretching her foot way up so that her legs were almost a ballet dancer’s split, but she couldn’t get any muscle power that way. So she just climbed faster. Soon she was at the top. She would hop onto the high ground and --
But no. The ground behind the wall must have subsided. As she peeked over the top she saw a yawning gap to an eroded plateau of dirt, too far for her to jump across. Below was bottomless blackness. Going on instinct again, she hopped over the top of the wall to hide herself. As she clasped the lip of the wall with her hands, her feet dangled aimlessly, trying to find something to support her weight. Her big toe found a little outcrop to step on, though it was too small for her other toes to grab. Her other foot swung around, unable to find anything in the unknown darkness. She needed more support. In desperation she swung her foot up above the lip, and planted her heel on top of it. Her legs were stretched wide, not as wide as a split, but it was uncomfortable, her Achilles tendon scraped by the concrete lip above, her toe struggling to hold on below, her breasts crushed again, not against gritty sand but this time against rough, ragged concrete. She could stay like this for a short while though.
She listened carefully. What she wanted to hear was the fading sound of the police car leaving. Instead she heard the crunch of approaching boots. Then voices. She couldn’t make out the words but from the lilt she could tell they were White.
They were probably sent by Harry McNeil, owner of the local paper. McNeil was a racist and played up any news he could get to prove that the Mexicans in town were lawless thugs, or loose women, a threat to civilized society. He had a network of “informers” who were always calling in “suspicious activity” and of course the police were required to investigate. It was all nonsense. Even the Mexicans who were here illegally, like her cousins Rafael and Juan, and the Fuentes family across the street, were well behaved and honest. For a deslegal to break the law would be really stupid. By now everyone on the Mexican side of town had gotten used to the police coming in and searching their houses. The funny thing was, the police were always nice. They seemed almost embarrassed at having to do what they did. When they knocked and entered into a Mexican house, the family chatted with them and sometimes made coffee for them while they did their job in a perfunctory fashion.
Still . . . being found by the police out here at this hour --naked! -- was something she didn’t want to happen. She saw flashlight beams passing over her in the night air. She suddenly realized that part of her foot might be seen. It would be an odd sight, the brightly lit sole of a girl’s bare foot, toes up, sticking up over a retaining wall. Fortunately her foot stayed in darkness.
She shivered -- what felt like an ant was crawling up her twitching big toe! It crawled up her insole, tickling her, then steadily up her calf and now the inside of her thigh. She wished she could shake it off but she couldn’t without losing her grip and falling into rocky blackness. Now it was joined by another. She bit her lip. Please, please, police, go away so I can get out of here! With dread she feared what the ants -- spiders?? -- would do when they got to her crotch. It turned out worse. Attracted by the moisture and warmth, they crawled into her pubic hair. Due to her near-split her lower lips had parted. In they went, exploring. It felt like a lot more than two ants. Maybe a dozen? And now her anus, opened slightly by her stretched posture, was invaded! She felt tiny legs poking at her most sensitive sphincter, then crawl inside.
Guadalupe whimpered and wanted to cry out. With a mighty effort she stifled her anguished moans. Her body shook like a leaf in the wind. Tears flowed silently down to her quavering lips.
The tiny legs poked her in places she had never felt before, exploring the interior of her virginal vagina, and up into her rectum. Now it felt like there were hundreds of them crawling around in there, having claimed her twin cavities as their home. The ones in her butt were in so deep, she wondered if they would climb her entire digestive tract, wiggling all the way, and come out her mouth. The suffering nude teenager prayed and prayed for help.
She hyperventilated, then tried to tamp down the sound of her breathing. She thought of ordeals suffered by others, the suffering of Jesus, those fourteen Stations of the Cross along the walls in her church. But Jesus was the Son of God. She was just a helpless, nude teenage girl.
Blessedly, she heard the sound of the police car driving away, tires on sand fading into nothingness. Now how to get out of this position? Her eyes had gotten used to the darkness of this side of the wall. Looking to her left she saw that the plateau of dirt was reachable if she sidled in that direction maybe thirty feet. Letting go of her toehold, she swung her legs from side to side, while moving her hands along the lip with the swaying rhythm of her legs.
It was an uncomfortable if not exactly painful business. First she was trying to shake those ants off her legs. She thought about squeezing her legs shut to kill the ants inside her, but did they bite? Anyway she couldn’t do that while swinging side to side. Worse was feeling the rough concrete scrape against her breasts, especially her nipples. They were always sensitive, rubbing even against her bra. The stimulation would make them poke out through her blouse, which was embarrassing. Since eighth grade she had learned to put band-aids over them before strapping on those huge 36DD things with the six clasps. Now, her poor nipples exposed and being rasped by the rough mortar, the stimulation was too intense for her to bear. With the police gone, she could now whimper out loud.
Finally with another swing of her legs to the side, her toes grabbed onto dirt. She brought her hands along, got her body upright, let go of the wall and fell back onto what was not dirt but gravel, digging into her butt. It hurt.
No matter. She was finally out of that horrible pit. She rolled onto all fours and jabbed fingers into her vagina, trying to clear out those ants. Then, disgusting as it was, she painfully forced a finger into her butthole, and poked and swept and poked.
She didn’t know if she had gotten all the ants but as if driven from behind she got up and ran, exhausted, her feet hitting the ground with a crazy zigzag pace. She didn’t really know where she was going, didn’t think about it. The sky was getting light. She had to go somewhere.
She passed that little building, which turned out to be a locked-up equipment shed, then found herself on open ground. Horse fences were off to the side. This must be a ranch, though without any horses. Running some more, she saw what looked like a stable and ran toward it.
She made it to the open door, then staggered inside. No horses. This ranch must be abandoned. Then she looked in front of her and, in her delirium, giggled caustically. A wash stand! For horses! Another cruel joke being played on her. Just what she wanted, a place to wash herself off, wash off all that crust and foul algae and grit and rinse out the ants inside her, and clean off the finger she had stuck up her butthole. And it mocked her, surely as abandoned and useless as the rest of this ranch.
Playing along with the joke, she lurched forward and turned the faucet.
It was working! Water coursed through the hose and spurted out the far end. The girl immediately blinked to her senses. No clothes yet but she was at least going to get a shower, get nice and clean!
She approached the water gun with caution. Her cousin Pedrito had once worked on a ranch, and had taken her to see him scrub down the horses. He let her squeeze the gun. She was about seven years old and the recoil pushed her onto her butt. These sprays were powerful.
It took a little thought, but she wrapped the hose around the bar, then braced the gun against the wall. Then she turned the little ring slowly, so as to get a trickle, then a little more, then a little more.
To her great surprise there was a brush on the wall, and soap!
She twirled in the cold spray, like a nude, barefoot ballerina, then scrubbed herself all over, then twirled again. Aaaahh!! It was like that pool but the water, though freezing, was clean. Here I am, getting hosed down like a horse -- and it’s wonderful!
She carefully angled her spread crotch just so, and opened her lower lips. Good bye ants! Then she turned around and bent over and spread her butt cheeks . . .
It was such a relief from stress and danger that her insides relaxed, and she realized she had to poop, terrifically. She looked around. Then decided, why not? She certainly couldn’t find a bathroom, and this was the best place. She squatted over the drain, perching her feet well apart, feeling more like an animal than ever, and evacuated. A few shots with the hose and the poop disappeared below.
She wished there was a towel, to dry off with and (dare she hope?) to wrap herself in. Alas, just a rough cloth tied to a chain, about waist high. To get all of herself, she twisted and turned and braced her feet against the wall. All that dead skin and grit was now off, down the drain with her poop.
She stood in the archway, dripping, finally clean, looking across the expanse of brown grass, a rise leading up to the horizon, the pellucid blue of dawn. God, I thank you that I’m finally clean. She dearly wished for clothes. Having showered and with nothing to put on, she felt untidy.
One thing she had become sure of. She would never be naked again! Even if it was hot out, she would stay covered up. When she got back into town, they would not see so much as a bare shoulder!
She also thought, once again, of Rodrigo. One time she overheard some girls at lunch. “Who could ever have sex with a dick that big?” That was her friend Tonia. And then Jamika said, “If he whipped that out, I’d run away as fast as I could. Later, man!” They were being cruel, as usual. Poor boy! The more shame she felt tonight, the more she thought of him.
Then she remembered something else she overheard, when she was a little girl, when her family was visiting relatives. She was supposed to be asleep, on the living room floor with her sisters and brothers and cousins, but Tía Ana and her mother were talking at the kitchen table. Her mother asked why Ana didn’t have any children. “We can’t make it work; he’s too big,” Tía said. That puzzled her. Tío Daniél wasn’t big; he was shorter than her father. Now she knew that Tía meant. Yet she and Tío were a happy couple, always joking around with each other, playful like kids. “We have fun anyway!” Ana said, which made her mother laugh and almost spit out her wine.
The last Senior Dance was next week. She wasn’t going to go. But now she decided she would go with Rodrigo -- and not like a typical “Mexicana”. She was going to go up to Rodrigo and she would be the one to ask!
Guadalupe, now age 18, thought about what it means to be all grown up. Now, refreshed by the powerful jets of cold water, she felt sleepy. Her mind and her body needed rest. She lurched over to the side of the stable, a clean area of dry grass, and fell onto her side. Within seconds she was snoring.
She dreamed about being on the Moon, running from space monsters, naked, her feet falling into craters. And about being tied on railroad tracks while Rodrigo -- Ariete -- was being pushed down on her by the school bully crowd, his “Ariete” the size of a baseball bat, the boy terrified of possibly hurting her. And about swimming in a cesspool, then ascending into the air and being washed clean by a bright, cold rainbow.
She was awakened by the sun in her eyes. She had been sleeping for several hours. On a Sunday morning in the desert, sound carries. She sat up with a jolt, and by the time her breasts stopped wobbling she could identify the sound, familiar from long ago, like another dream. It was faint, far away, but there was no mistaking the steady growl of the 24-hour refrigerator motor on her great-uncle Jorge’s truck. Which he always kept parked behind his house.
[to be continued]
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