Total pages in book: 138
Estimated words: 128260 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 641(@200wpm)___ 513(@250wpm)___ 428(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 128260 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 641(@200wpm)___ 513(@250wpm)___ 428(@300wpm)
I caught Grace’s eye, and she smiled gently at me, pulling the two girls closer to her.
Gisella and I started cleaning up while Josh finished attending to Maria, and Yoselin held the baby, wrapped in a hotel blanket. He was quiet now.
Grace, Deisy, and Vanessa came over to look at the baby. Yoselin offered him to Grace and she took him in her arms, a dreamy look on her face as she peered down at him. She ran her fingers through his full head of thick, black hair.
“He’s so beautiful, Maria,” she whispered.
Yoselin repeated Grace’s words in Spanish and we all looked at Maria to see she was staring out the window, frowning.
“Do you want to hold your son?” Grace asked, extending the baby toward her.
Maria glanced at Grace but shook her head and looked away. She still hadn’t expressed any interest in the baby.
Grace, Josh, and I all exchanged looks.
“Yoselin, will you ask her what’s wrong?” I said quietly.
Yoselin went and sat next to Maria and talked to her quietly for a minute, and then looked up at all of us sadly. “She says he is the devil’s spawn and she doesn’t want to touch him.”
Grace’s eyes widened and she pulled the baby closer to her chest. “The devil’s spawn…” she whispered. “Why would she say that?”
Yoselin looked at her. “Maria is only seventeen. Her family sold her to a man who came to her village in Venezuela and told them that she would be doing housework for rich families and could send some of the money back to them. Instead, he raped and tortured her. And then he brought her here to Vegas to sell her to other men so they could do the same. That is when she was rescued with the rest of us,” she said, waving her hand around the room to indicate the other women and girls there.
Grace’s eyes were wide with sadness as she blinked away tears. I had heard it all and worse, but it never ceased to make my guts squeeze with the sickness and depravity of it all. I’d never become desensitized to the horror of their stories. Ever.
Maria started talking and Yoselin listened, her eyes growing sadder.
“She says that her mama always told her that us women are the gatekeepers of the world. Only we get to decide which men become fathers, whose bloodline continues and whose does not. And we must choose wisely. She says that the boy is the spawn of an evil man, an evil bloodline.”
I glanced at Grace and something fierce lit her expression.
She moved to the other side of the bed and sat down next to Maria. She looked at Yoselin. “Will you translate for me?”
“Maria,” she said, and Maria jerked slightly but continued to stare out the window. “I agree with your mama. But I also think that in our broken world, sometimes things happen that we don’t control and cannot plan. I agree that us women should be the gatekeepers, but I also believe that this world needs strong, good men—men who are raised by mamas who have seen what weak men do. You have the ability to serve justice—by making your son everything his father was not.”
Yoselin finished speaking quietly, and Maria’s eyes darted quickly to Grace and then to the baby in her arms and then away.
My breath caught, and my chest felt tight, and I knew it wasn’t only because I loved the woman speaking with such tenderness and conviction to a woman she didn’t even know. It was also because my story began in a similar way to the unwanted boy lying in Grace’s arms. A mistake. Created not in love, but by accident. And I knew Grace realized that too by the way her eyes landed on me repeatedly as she spoke, her voice soft and filled with love.
And if I hadn’t known it before, I knew in that moment that there was no one better to have at my side, not just as my love and my partner, but as an extension of this team.
Maria spoke, but she sounded a little unsure now. “He is half of him,” Yoselin translated.
“He is half of you,” Grace countered and Yoselin repeated.
Maria looked fully at Grace’s face now, studying it.
“He’s so precious, so beautiful,” Grace said softly, her eyes falling on me. “Beauty from pain, a gift. Do you want to hold him?” she asked. “Do you want to hold your son?”
When Yoselin translated, Maria shook her head no and spoke softly. Yoselin said, “She wants to see him though.”
Grace held the sleeping baby toward Maria so that she could peer down into his face. She looked at him for a minute and her face softened as she spoke. “She says he looks just like her papa,” Yoselin said.
Grace smiled and held the baby toward her. After a minute, she reached out her arms and took him. She looked at him for long minutes as we watched her and then she snuggled him to her chest, a tear falling down her cheek. Grace stood and Gisella sat down on the bed, and then both she and Yoselin snuggled Maria from either side, and the little girls climbed up on the bed and sat at Maria’s feet, watching the women and the baby. After a minute, Yoselin started to gently show Maria how to nurse him.