Cartel

Chapter 1 | Virgencita Mia

It was early in the morning and I was getting ready to head over to Don Ever's Carniceria. I had work at ten that Tuesday morning but I always liked to get up early in the morning, I enjoyed taking walks through the park knowing that the narcos are probably all sleeping so I didn't have to worry about me catching any bullets that weren't meant for me. What I did have to worry about though was how I was going to manage to get a whole weeks grocery worth with only $54, that wasn't going to be an easy task. I lived with my handicapped mother and my little sister Yamilet. Jessica, my mom, was always trying to look out for my sister and I, she always gave us more than she could afford and we couldn't have asked for a better parent. My mom was 22-years old when she was handicapped, she was double her age now. I was 2-years old when my mom and dad decided to go out to eat to a local seafood stand. My parents at the time were living in Tijuana, Mexico, not much crime at the time, but it wasn't a City of Angels either. My parents always went to eat there after they both got home from work, my mom would tell me. Everything was going as usual that day, my parents had ordered their favorite specialty item they always got, it was a huge plate loaded with shrimp and avocados with a side of some salty tortilla chips and we were all just having a good time as my mother would tell me. I wouldn't talk much but boy would I eat a lot. I was two years old eating like I was a bodybuilder. After my parents received their food they decided to head back to the car. My mom said they had been having such a great time, she would have never of thought of the horror that would soon occur. My parents got to my dad's old pickup truck when suddenly you could hear gunshots coming from the direction of the food stand, apparently, rival narcos had pulled up and decided to have a shootout in a public place, nothing new. We got the worst of that situation though, my parents and I were in the middle of it all, they were firing sub-machine guns at each other and the shotgun sounds were extremely loud my mother would say. The mixture of screams and gunfire was something my mom would never forget. My mom threw me under the car seat of the passenger side and she got on top of me to protect me from the flying bullets. My dad hadn't gotten so lucky, he had been shot six times, four bullets got him in the head, the rest in the throat area. After about fifteen minutes of non-stop shooting, my mother remembers grabbing her Virgin Mary necklace she always carried around and just started praying that I make it out alive. Thirty minutes later, my mother was in a hospital trying to grasp her life, and as every minute passed, time was running out for her. My mother would later survive but not without any scars from that day. My mother was going to be in a wheelchair for the rest of her life, while I was going to be left fatherless. My mom had been hit twice in her spine trying to protect me, something I would never forget about her, I owed this woman everything. Years passed and my mom met a guy who she fell deeply in love with, his name was Hector and I didn't like the guy at all. He was this tough guy wannabe and he would always yell at my mother. He had a little baby who was now my little sister, she made me realize that good can come out of something bad. A year later, Hector left my mother and Yamilet, it wasn't even my mom's real daughter but she treated her as if she had given birth to her, after my dad's death, my mom spent a lot of alone time with me and having Yamilet with us just for some reason I can't explain, would always find a way to brighten up our day, I treated her like my little princess. One night Hector said he was going out to get some groceries and fortunately never came back. My mother cried, not like it surprised me though, my mom was getting money from the government and by selling her portrait paintings, she made enough to carry us until I could get a job. I had a job now, I was doing some landscape for some people I knew, they would pay me about $75 USD every week to keep their really huge yard real nice and tight. Wasn't much but it was enough so I wasn't going to complain in a town where $75 a week meant you had a good job. We could barely afford to send my little sister to school though, and my mom's medications were getting more and more expensive, I was going to have to get a better job. After walking through the park to get to the carniceria, I got there and immidiately went to greet El Señor Ever, but in reality I went over to greet him so I could also greet Maria. Maria was Ever's daughter and I won't lie, I fell in love with this girl the moment I had laid my two brown eyes on her. She was this tall, slim figured light skin angel who I could not resist, she was the only girl who made braces look so cute on a person's face. She always greeted me first so that gave me a little hope that maybe she felt the same way I did, plus she always insisted that I talk to her more often when I swing by. I greeted Ever and Maria and got my $54 worth of groceries and headed out the store, I couldn't even make a conversation with Maria without my anxiety bursting through the roof, I was scared that she would eventually imagine I didn't like her but I knew it wasn't true. I got home and I saw my mother in the kitchen looking down crying onto a piece of paper. "Mom, are you okay?" "I'm fine Javi." My mom had replied. Javi was short for Javier which was my name. I went over to see what was on the paper that was making my mom cry. I couldn't believe my eyes either, it was an eviction letter that read we had forty-eight hours to clear out our apartment room or else they would do it for us. The card read the reason being was "Late Payment Violations", if you got three of these, you were out. Sometimes they would be lenient and give you a fourth chance but this letter had already been my fourth one. I sat back down, looked down at the letter and just started to weep. My mother didn't say a word, she just hugged me and cried along. My family was going to be homeless, what was I going to do? I felt like I had failed my father. "It's okay my little baby, we'll be fine." My mother's comforting words would always manage to help me push through anything.