It’s morning. I stagger into the kitchen to find Maria and Rosa are giggling. Strange. They’re usually grumpy in the mornings.
‘Wassup? Someone’s birthday?’
‘Is Christa,’ Maria says in a sing-song voice. ‘She go for five days to her sista!’
I squint at her. ‘And ...?’
Maria sighs impatiently. ‘Is one week wirrouther, Senorita. We must celebrate, Senorita.’
I yawn and accept the cup of coffee from Rosa. ‘Yeah, celebrate … maybe we should put some whisky in the coffee, huh?’
They are suddenly so quiet, my head snaps to look at them. Although both women look at the floor, I spot the smirk on their faces. I glance at the wall clock – 9 AM. Their eyes are shining, but not from joy. I nod several times. ‘You’re drunk! I’m gonna breathalyse ... ’
‘Si!’ the ladies chorus, giggling like two overweight schoolgirls.
‘Go bring us a bottle,’ Rosa urges and shoves me out of the kitchen.
‘Hey stop!’ I protest.
Maria nods vigorously, reaches into the grocery cupboard and brings out an almost empty bottle of Vodka. ‘This Senorita,’ she says. ‘Go bring us one of this.’
I look at Maria, then at Rosa and finally sigh. ‘What the hell – let’s do it.’ With that, I hurry off to steal booze for my already tipsy servants.
At the sight of the bottle of Vodka in my hands, the ladies rip off their aprons, throw down their dishtowels and bring out three large drinking glasses. Shot glasses don’t seem to exist here.
We sit on the patio, basking in the morning sun and drinking Vodka. Well, the bithces sit back and enjoy the morning sun while I’m made to do all the fetching and pouring.
‘Not too much Senorita,’ Maria says, her eyes lighting up like a sign on an all night liquor store at the sight of me refilling their glasses. ‘You are not a big drinker.’
Yeah right. ‘I am not a big drinker,’ I correct.
Rosa doesn’t bother with discretion. ‘Is too little, Senorita. Pull some more. Pull some more.’
‘Okay, okay,’ I say and top her glass. ‘But if you guys fall on your faces and hurt yourselves, then Diablo’s mother is gonna kick ... ’
‘She not his mother!’ Maria snaps. ‘Don’t call her that.’
I pause with my pouring and look at her. ‘Wh …what do say?’
Maria’s glare and the pursing of her lips confuses me. When Rosa and her exchange secret glances, I sense some juicy gossip here.
Strategically, I top their glasses before they ask for it. What do you know – Vodka is a mighty muscle relaxant – their tongues get really loose and start wagging – stuff that makes my jaws drop and I’m pretty sure my FBI friends listening in are equally shocked at what they learn.
‘Christa, she adopt Diablo,’ Rosa says.
Shocked? There’s more – I learn that Troy and Diablo are blood brothers while Pedro, Rocky and Digger are Christa’s biological children.
‘Diablo, Troy, Lucas, Santana – Christa adopt them all when they were children,’ Rosa says. My jaws drop. ‘So ... Santana ... I mean ... so Diablo, he’s not incestuous, then? I mean he’s not having sex with his sister?’
Rosa flashes me a reproachful look.
‘Wow,’ I mutter. ‘How wrong was I?’
‘But Santana, she do everything Christa asks her to do, Senorita, because she got no place to go. And Christa make Santana evil. Very evil sometimes and I no like Santana for that.’
‘Gosh, I had no idea ….wow!’
Maria explains: when Diablo was six, arsonists burnt down his village and killed his parents. He was found wandering around with two year old Troy on his back. Christa, a drug dealer from another village, who was always on the lookout for kids she could ‘adopt’ with the sole purpose of using them as cheap labour on her cannabis plantation, heard about the village being destroyed and decided to do some pillaging herself.
She and her husband Jimo, rode into the village, rounded up a whole lot of orphaned kids, including Troy, Diablo and Santana and took them to her home. She promised Diablo that if he stayed and helped in her plantation, she would prevent the authorities from placing him and Troy in different foster homes.
Since Diablo was terrified of losing his only brother, he agreed. Diablo looked a lot older than six, so he was made to work longer and harder in the Christa’s plantation.
But he was smart and strong and challenged Jimo’s abusive, unfair rules and regulations. To keep him in line, Jimo beat him on a daily basis. Jimo’s favourite punishment – hold little Diablo’s his head underwater until he passed out. Then get someone to administer mouth-to-mouth until Diablo recovered. Christa stood by and laughed while it happened.
‘So that’s why he’s afraid of water! Not because he’s a pussy.’
‘No Senorita,’ Rosa says. Diablo not a pussy, Senorita.’
‘Christa – gosh, how could she allow this when she herself had kids?’
They tell me that some nights, Diablo was chained to a dog kennel, while the others slept inside the house.
Jimo also extinguished cigarettes on Diablo’s palms and later progressed to Diablo’s body.
Some weekends Jimo held an open day where he invited everyone, including people from his neighbouring villages to view the animal called “Diablo” who was chained to a fence.
Children were allowed to throw stones, poke and humiliate Diablo while he was paraded in chains. Over time, Diablo became reclusive and even when he was released from his chains, he chose to hide in the dark shed away from people.
‘Jimo is such an asshole!’
‘He biiig asshole Senorita,’ Maria says, tears filling her eyes, ‘very biiig asshole. Diablo put tattoos all over his body to hide the cigarette scars.’
‘So that explains the tattoos. Ohmigod!’ I put both my hands on my head, ‘I got Diablo wrong.’
‘Everybody get Diablo wrong,’ Rosa says.
I put down my glass. Suddenly, I no longer wanted to drink and party. I’m really sober now and …there’s that word again – sad. Why the hell did they have to tell me all this? Upset my status quo? I was happy with the way things were – Diablo was a brutal thug who killed for fun and I was going to let him hang for his sins.
Now I have this feeling inside me – the same feeling I felt when I realise that my mom had gone to a better place without me.
Rosa looks at the bottle and gawks. ‘Maria you finish it all!’
‘No, I do not finish it. You finish it. So shut up!’
‘You shut up!’ Rosa replies.
‘No, you shut up!’
‘No, you shut up!’ Rosa rises to her feet and moves slowly towards Maria, her eyes wild and fiery.
‘Wait!’ I cry.
‘You a bitch!’ Rosa says.
‘You mother a bitch!’
‘Wait, what happened after …?’
‘You talk about my mother?’ Rosa hisses.
‘Ladies!’ I shout.
Rosa turns her head slowly to look at me, her eyes slanted. ‘Go bring us ’nother bottle, then we tell you more.’
‘Tell me first then I’ll bring you …’
‘No!’ Maria intervenes, ‘You bring us cheese too. Cut it into small blocks, put on a plate, bring it here then …’
For fucks sake! The bitches are taking advantage of my good nature. They are my servants and I am their boss, master – whatever and I need to remind them of that.
I glare at them. ‘Eh, Vodka or Tequila?’
‘Vodka,’ they chorus.
Pissed off, I hurry away. How dare they treat me like a hired hand? I’m Mujer de Diablo. Diablo’s woman, remember? Lady of the Manor. I will not stand for …
‘Make quick,’ Rosa yells. ‘Go! Go!’ Go!’
‘Si,’ I say meekly and fetch Vodka and a platter of cheese for my drunken servants so that they will divulge more about Diablo. Maria said she was not a big drinker – my ass!
As they polish another bottle, they fight over each other to tell me more.
‘Diablo is thirteen, Jimo hit him with a whip over here,’ Rosa says, pointing to her forehead. ‘Then Diablo, he turn around and he grab Jimo and cut his neck. Front of everybody. Some people clap.’
‘Omigod!’
‘Then everyone be scared of Diablo, Gringa. They call him a mad dog and they call him devil. Diablo, he put tattoos over here.’ She points to her forehead.
So that’s why he’s got three green lines over his forehead; to cover the scars left by Jimo’s whip.
Maria explains that all the men in his gang followed suit and tattooed three green lines across their forehead – an emblem that identified them as Diablo’s men.
They tell me that Diablo used to paint his face black, probably to scare and intimidate anyone wanting to take Jimo’s place. In time, his beard covered his face and the black paint was no longer necessary.
Christa was not happy with Diablo as their leader and called in her brother Tony, known as “Tongue” to take Jimo’s place. Tongue was older, ruthless and strong and Christa was sure he could handle Diablo. But Diablo rejected Tongue’s leadership and almost killed him in a fist fight. Defeated, Tongue backed off and accepted Diablo’s leadership.
Terrified of his mental state, Christa had no choice but to accept Diablo as their leader even though he was only thirteen. She was smart enough to realise that one of Diablo’s strength was his fearlessness and having Diablo around kept them all safe from other bandits and drug lords.
‘So that’s what they mean when they say he killed his own father,’ I murmur, remembering the FBI’s words. They too had it wrong. Hope they’re listening.
‘Diablo not trust anyone Senorita,’ Rosa says. ‘He not allow anyone to get close to him. Only Troy. But we take care of them – Diablo and Troy. Maria and me, we like Troy. We like Diablo. They are our boys. Where they go, Rosa and me, we go too. But Christa she make Diablo do bad things. She put bad stuff in his head and she make him bad.’
‘Si,’ Maria says, ‘Diablo don’t sleep. See his eyes? Red, eh? Can’t sleep. He smoke all night. Bad dreams. He too scared to close his eyes.’
Wow. The monster, the beast, the monster that filled my nightmares has trouble sleeping because of bad dreams. Unbelievable!
When the second bottle of Vodka is finished, I bring up the subject of housework.
Both women look at me with arched eyebrows.
‘You do it today,’ Rosa slurs.
‘Si, you do it today,’ Maria echoes.
‘You have a hope in hell!’ I snarl and before they get physical with me, I stagger to my room and collapse on my bed, shell-shocked by all I’ve heard. I mean Diablo was a six year old boy and yet he was tortured and treated worse than an animal. How does anyone get past that?