SUNLINERS AND LINGERIE, Chapter III

This is the third chapter in a Seven Part Series.

Lorena de la Echeverria was told she was going to live with an uncle, one with vast resources and land holdings that stretched further than she had ever traveled in all her 12 years. Of course, at 12, Lorena didn’t understand that Heriberto Eduardo Zambada was not the brother of her mother, nor her father, and could not really be an uncle. She could not realize that she was the settlement of a debt that her father had incurred. It was an agreement that sealed the fate of the girl and caused hatred between her parents for the rest of their short lives.

Delivered to the guarded hacienda buried in a lush forest north of Chihuahua, Mexico, Lorena had never seen anything that would rival the riches behind the tall stucco walls she would now call home. She would never see or hear from her parents again, unaware of the fate that would befall them at the hands of her new host. Zambada was not one who left loose ends. With the stacks of cash piled high on pallets in storage buildings hidden all over the estate, he was a man who could buy anything. Anything but a conscience. He was forever devoid of that, and guilt, and on anything other than his own pleasure.

At her arrival, Lorena was treated as a young guest. She was provided with anything she wanted. Dressed in expensive frocks and lavished with gifts, the girl had been thrust into a world she knew nothing of, but was bedazzled by. She would soon miss other people her age, but not at the beginning. She was living in what seemed to be a giant guarded toy store deep in the jungle, complete with its own zoo and playgrounds.

She found her ‘uncle’ to be a gruff man, one who seemed to go out of his way to get her to like him. But the reality was she found him to be odd and cruel. She was uncomfortable in his presence for very long periods of time. While he dressed impeccably in clothes that were white and starched, there was still something seemingly unclean about him. He smelled of the smoke from his Alberto’s Turrent cigars, Papatui soap, and Sierra Norte Mexican Corn Whiskey that made it hard for Lorena to breathe when he got close to her.

Male tutors were paid to come teach the girl subjects a girl her age should know, always with armed guard watching over the lessons. Female tutors, maestras, were brought in to instruct the girl on etiquette, fashion, makeup and hair, and how to present herself. The domestic arts were never addressed, for those skills would never be needed. There would be any number of servants available around the clock to cater to Lorena’s needs and wants so that she would never have to lift a finger.

Once the newness of the life behind the walls subsided, Lorena missed her parents and her siblings and even the filthy village she had lived in. While she had her choice of exotic animals and expensive toys to entertain her, she longed for the ill mannered mutt she’d grown to love back home. The dog had been born with defects that should have doomed it to an early demise, but Lorena willed it to survive and then thrive just by the amount of affection she showered on it. She felt bad that she missed the dog more than she did her many brothers and sisters.

Lorena settled into a routine. Breakfast and dinner with Zambada, lessons in between with breaks for time on the grounds, board games or exercise routines with younger members of the staff and then a bathing ritual before bed. Her life far surpassed the one she would have had in the village, but she was lonely, nonetheless. The guards with guns did not make her feel safe. In fact, just the opposite. “When will my father be back to pick me up?” She would ask her host. He would only smile and tell her not to ask such questions.

In the fall 1958, on Lorena’s 16th birthday, she was given a feast of all her favorite foods and lavished with gifts. “You are my very own princess. You will have whatever it is you desire,” Zambada told her.

That night, after she had completed her bath ritual and gotten into bed, she was about to drift off to sleep when Zambada slowly opened the door to her room and closed it behind him. Lorena thought it strange when he locked the door. With only the moon illuminating the room, she watched him walk over to her bed and found it curious that he seemed to be unsteady on his feet. When he laid on top of her, she almost screamed. But his large hand with thick, sausage shaped fingers covered her mouth. She didn’t make a sound. She didn’t understand what followed, but hated it.

When he had finished, he said nothing. He got up from the bed, pulled his pants up and left the room. She felt ashamed, alone, and afraid. It would happen every night thereafter. She eventually would no longer feel ashamed, knowing it was nothing she could control or stop. She had no choice in what took place every night. She was a caged animal, not unlike the exotic animals kept in pens on the grounds outside the window. She grew to hate Zambada for what he did, despite that which he provided.

After two years of the forced abusive relations, she no longer felt afraid. She accepted what had befallen her, but vowed not to accept it as her future.

Familiarity had caused Zambada to often fall asleep in Lorena’s bed after the act, sometimes snoring in a deep sleep till well into the following morning. She waited for the night he would roll off of her and fall into a deep sleep. She slowly and quietly slipped out of the bed, tied the nightgown around her as silently as she could, and slid the key she hid in her dresser into her pocket. The key was to the ramshackle old Ford pickup truck from behind one of the barns where an army of workers divided the white powder into small bags or piles of American dollar bills into even stacks of cash. She’d taken one of those stacks when she grabbed the key from the old truck.

With moves as smooth as they were purposeful, Lorena walked over to the old oak wardrobe, reached between the gowns and petticoats hanging inside, and grabbed hold of the small garden shovel she’d hidden there. She walked over to the bed where her tormentor lay snoring and raised the shovel high in the air with both hands far above her head. With all the force she could muster, she brought the flat spade of the shovel down on Zambada’s head, landing the implement squarely on his face.

The sound it made surprised her, though she had no preconceived notions as to what to expect. In the hundreds of times she’d performed the exercise in her mind, it had always been silent. The sound of a watermelon being dropped on the ground as the shovel dropped on her tormentor made her giggle just slightly. The second time the shovel struck what had been Zambada’s face, the noise was even more pronounced because of the damage from the first blow. She didn’t giggle that time.

Making her way to the barn that hid the truck, Lorena knew it ran because she’d seen it being driven a few days earlier. She had no idea how far the old Ford would be able to go. But she figured anything outside the walls would give her a better chance of survival than staying put. The 215ci inline-six, linked with a four-speed manual gearbox and a dual-range transfer case had been used as an irrigation truck and was as worn out as anything on the entire estate. The cloth upholstery was torn and deteriorated. The wood floor of the bed was rotten and almost completely gone. The finish had been weathered away in most areas, and corrosion was visible on multiple panels. Dents, holes, and other imperfections on the truck added to its forlorn and desperate appearance. Lorena knew if she stayed behind the walls of Zambada’s ill gotten estate her fate would be no different than the Ford’s.

To her relief, the truck started on the third try, though the sounds emanating from under the rusted and dented hood gave no indication how long that might be the case. Lorena drove the thing slowly away from the barn, in the opposite direction of the house, and headed for a gate on the far side of the property. She hoped the remote entrance would not be guarded at that particular time of early morning. She was lucky in that regard.

The massive tow bar welded to the front bumper of the old truck proved up to the task of pushing the massive wooden gate out of the way. Twelve miles of backroads she was barely familiar with finally wound their way to a larger partially paved highway of sorts. Once on the larger road, Lorena pushed the accelerator to the floor and felt the truck heave and sigh, fighting any attempts of faster speeds. As best she could tell, she’d gone maybe 50 miles when the old Ford died. The gas gauge didn’t work, the engine had smoked since she got the old truck out onto the mostly paved road. She had no idea what caused the thing to finally die where it did. But she was 50 miles closer to freedom and that was as good as she could have hoped for.

Getting out of the old beast, Lorena looked down at herself in the faint early light of morning. There was blood lightly splattered on the thin cotton nightgown she was wearing, some even on the frilly lingerie he made her wear to bed. She wished she’d grabbed something else to wear once she’d escaped, but she had the stack of cash and that would be more useful.