TAINTED ADORATION

PROLOGUE

I was barely eight years old when I first came to the United States. My mother and I had been living on our own for as long as I could remember, I always wondered why I didn't have a father but my mom refused to speak of him. He didn't exist.

We left Mexico City because of the color of our skin. My mother and I were brown skinned. We were afro Latina and that meant that we were not allowed certain things in the community. My mom already had a lot of things holding her back from getting a job. One, she didn't go to college and had barely completed high school. Two, she had gotten pregnant for me when she was only seventeen and had to put her life on pause to take care of me and give me the life that she had wanted. Her skin color was just another added burden. The people of our town couldn't stand us; we were descendants of slaves, low people. We were known as prostituta negra sudorosa and mayate. The inhabitants of San Miguel de Allende couldn't stand us. They wanted us out.

We had tried for so long, moving from shelter to shelter to shelter. I was now four years old and it was becoming harder and harder for my mom to take care of both herself and I. The little bread that she would acquire would have to be cut into half and suddenly it was too much. She hatched a plan, we would cross the border and venture into the land of dreams where although racism was still rife was not as bad as living in San Miguel.

My life became very strange after that and I sometimes wonder if moving to the United States had been a smart idea.

Mom was taken from me shortly after our move. We had been living in a small room in Austin Texas. Every day she would leave me with a teenage girl of about 12 or 13 named Cheyenne, who was basically supposed to be my nanny. I find that so funny because I was eight years old at the time and Cheyenne was barely older than me as it was. However my mom couldn't afford the older nannies and Cheyenne needed the extra cash.

I might have been young but I had a feeling that mom's job wasn't something glamorous; she had become more cranky, scared, quick to anger. She was around most afternoons but never nights. The few times that she was around at nights were times when she was accompanied by men. She would come in and make Cheyenne take me inside. I never understood what they were doing but Cheyenne did.

One hot July night however, mom didn't return home. Cheyenne stayed with me for hours and mom still didn't show up. 2am came by and Cheyenne had to leave. I was left alone in our seedy apartment in Montopolis with no one to help me.

It had been close to three days, I was close to starving, the electricity had been cut off, and we had no water or food. I was scared to go out in case something bad would happen to me like it had happened to mom. I was basically on my way to dying. Luckily for me Cheyenne had decided to come back and check on me.

"Get up"

"Whe-re are we going" I croaked.

"To get you some food and some water before you die"

We didn't talk much after that. I just remember Cheyenne taking me downtown to a local supermarket,

"I'm going to come out right now with some stuff. As soon as you see me start running, okay?"

I nodded frantically.

I had been waiting for several minutes and still there was no sign of Cheyenne which had me worried. Just as I was about to go in and look for her, I saw something in the corner of my eye. Four men were at the far end of the alley, they looked to be crouching around something but I couldn't really tell since it was so dark and I was so groggy due to the lack of nutrients in my system. Although Cheyenne had told me to wait for her, a part of me was curious and so I walked towards them careful to keep myself hidden behind trash cans. Their voices were muffled but I could make sense of some of what they were saying.