Chapter Three #2
Truthfully, my father probably would have loved to raise children with Talia—his first wife—but that didn’t happen, and from what I’ve heard, he’d sort of accepted that. But when Acacia—my mother—came along, she wasn’t taking no for an answer.
And here we are.
Ever the realist, my father likely knew he might not make it to my eighteenth birthday. He would be nearing seventy by then. Part of me wonders if that’s why he took el marfil under his wing…
I was on the floor of the den in our home in Medellin, playing with my toys. I could see my sister outside, chasing the neighborhood cat that Mami wouldn’t let us keep, because in her words, “Extraviadas están sucias.”
Strays are dirty.
Mami was in the kitchen making dinner, and Papa was out in the garden talking to one of his friends. At least that’s what Mami called them. Papa had a lot of friends; people coming in and out of our house to see him.
A few of them were always around… Raul and Esteban, in particular. Big guys who stood by and stared. Sometimes they drove us in Papa’s cars. But they rarely spoke, and Mami acted like they weren’t even there.
So I did too. It was normal.
Still, I preferred our house in Bogota because it was quieter. Any time we stayed in this house, I knew I wouldn’t see much of my father. Of course at the time I didn’t understand why. All I knew was that Papa spoke to his friends much more than he spoke to us.
He was quiet too, but not like me…
Papa was quiet in a way that kind of scared me.
I was organizing my toys by size when I heard a car pull up outside. It registered, but I didn’t stop what I was doing, because there were always cars showing up for Papa. My mother yelled for Avia to come inside.
A loud bang startled me.
In an instant, my heart was racing. And when it happened again seconds later, I was immediately shaking and terrified.
“Avianna!” My mother screamed for my sister, rushing to the door.
I think my father was yelling too… Maybe someone else? But I couldn’t hear.
My ears were ringing.
My sister came scrambling into the house, being pulled by my mother, practically tripping over her feet. Mami was speaking to me, but I could barely hear.
Her eyes were wide as she grabbed me by the shoulders, shaking me. The only thing I could make out was fear on her face. And one word.
“Esconder.”
Hide.
I looked outside and saw Raul and Esteban, my father’s friends… They were lying on the ground.
“Don’t look, Angelito,” Mami’s voice started to come in clearer.
Everything was happening fast. Too fast. It was making me dizzy, and my heart was beating too hard. It scared me.
I thought I was going to get sick.
“Acacia!” My father screamed, but I couldn’t see him. “Get the kids—”
“Go and hide, and don’t come out unless you hear me say it’s okay. Do you understand??” My mother commanded, her voice cracking, though she was speaking quietly.
Frantic, but calm. I could see her shaking.
Tears were tumbling down my cheeks as I whimpered, “Mami… no…”
“Avia, do as I say!” She said to my sister. “Take care of your brother. Whatever you do… Do not let him out of your sight!”
My father was yelling, but I couldn’t understand what he was saying. I was too scared.
Pop! Another loud bang.
“Mami, what’s happening??” Avianna shrieked, squeezing my hand.
“Hide! Now! I love—”
My mother’s words cut out when my father swung into the room, clutching his side…. Bright red leaking out of him.
His hand was slick with deep red and it wouldn’t stop coming.
“Papa!” Avianna wailed, running to him.
She let go of my hand… I felt it, slipping out of mine.
My mother shot me one last look of horror, pressing her hands to my father’s side.
Blood… So much blood.
There were men’s voices outside. At least two, maybe three. They were coming closer.
“Esconder! Ahora!” My mother bellowed.
Everyone was screaming. I was so scared, I could barely move. But somehow I managed to crawl inside the closet and close the door just as two men burst inside.
Pulling my knees to my chest, I struggled to catch my breath. I was crying hard, but it was silent. I was too afraid to make a sound.
“Fuck you,” my father snarled. “Rata.”
I could see them through the slats in the closet. My sister was still out there. I wanted to scream to her, but I couldn’t. I had no voice.
Pop! I cringed, and covered my eyes.
“Mami!” At the sound of my sister’s voice, my hands fell away fast, and I peered through the slats.
“No!” My mother wailed, lunging for my sister…
But it was too late. One of the men had grabbed her and was hauling her away.
He was… taking her.
The other man kicked my mother, then my father. Beating my father, taking his gun as a new man walked into the room, moving much slower than the others.
I could only see him from the waist down. His clothes were different than the others. He was wearing a white suit, and black shoes with shiny buckles.
His arm lifted, aiming a gun at my father…
Pop!
Then he turned it on my mother.
Pop! Pop!
My lips trembled, wide, horrified eyes unable to look away.
I didn’t want to look… I didn’t want to see, but my eyes were wrenched open by a force I couldn’t control.
My father was cursing at him as my mother tried to crawl away. She was bleeding, leaving a trail of deep red in the cream-colored carpet. The other man kicked my father more while the man in white stood over my mother. Lifting the gun once more.
“Lo siento,” he spoke softly.
Almost too soft. I didn’t understand why he sounded like that…
But then it didn’t matter. Because Pop!
My mother went still.
Slumped onto the floor, blood gushing from the hole in her head.
Mere feet away from the closet where I was shivering. Hand clasped tightly over my mouth to keep myself quiet.
“You think they’ll just let you get away with this?” My father choked, groaning when the other man stepped on his throat.
“Déjalo,” the man in white said to the other one, who backed up.
The man who’d just killed my mother knelt over my father. His white suit was all splattered with blood.
He reached into my father’s pocket, and pulled out his knife. The one his father had given him…
Ivory handle butterfly knife with AA carved into it, and a bird wrapped in barbed wire.
Young or not, I recognized it. He always had it on him, and sometimes he would flip it open and my mother would scold him for playing with it.
The man in white flipped open the knife, observing the blade. “This is what comes, Arturo…” He pressed the blade up to my father’s throat. “Sangre por sangre. Tu sabes… si? You know how it must go.” His voice was smooth, tone calm.
Muy fácil… As if he wasn’t holding a blade to my dying father’s throat.
“Blood for blood, Arturo… Venganza.”
Revenge.
He leaned over my father’s face and hissed. “There is truly nothing sweeter.”
“Morir,” my father choked and coughed up blood. “Die, motherfucker! You will burn for this… Ivory…”
His words trailed into gurgling groans as the man dragged the blade across my father’s throat.
It appeared to be moving in slow motion, and I couldn’t tell if I was just seeing it that way, or if he really was taking his time slitting my father’s throat open.
I could feel the whimpers trying to escape me. My muscles were spasming, teeth chattering. I pinched my nose while covering my mouth, to hold my breath in completely, petrified that they would hear me.
I wasn’t sure if they knew I was there, but I could barely think. My brain was completely switched off. All I had was fear.
I couldn’t process that my parents were dead, and that I’d watched it happen. That my sister was gone, and I had no idea where she was or if she was dead too…
I was just afraid. That was it.
Staring at the blood pumping from the open gash in my father’s neck. The way it seemed to gasp out of him like a breath, coating the man’s white clothes.
When my father’s body stopped twitching, the man sat back, wiping the blade on my father’s shirt. Then he closed the knife and tucked it away in his pocket.
The man in white whispered something… I could barely make it out. But it sounded like, “Para ti, Tía Marfil. May his death satisfy you.”
Another man stalked into the room. “Your uncle says it’s time to go.”
The man in the white suit stained red sighed, “Arturo Alvarez… Tu imperio es mío.” He leaned over him once more and grinned. “Gracias, Papi.” He placed a kiss on my father’s forehead, chuckling.
Then he stood up. “?Qué pasa con los ninos?”
What about the kids…?
My heart leapt up into my throat once more.
“We have the girl…” The other guy shrugged.
“Por que?”
“I don’t know, he said to take her. I got the safe. You take care of the boy.” The guy stomped right past me, and I was quaking.
“Dónde está, pajarito…?” The man in white called out, quietly taunting. “Come out of your cage…”
My body was shivering, head to toe, and I needed to breathe, but I couldn’t. I was terrified that he would hear me.
I watched his shoes step closer, and closer, his legs in white pants speckled with red approaching the closet.
He whipped the door open, and I jumped.
Tear-stained cheeks and wide eyes, my chest was pumping as I gaped up at him, in more fear than seemed possible for one person to experience.
In that moment, I could finally see him in full. And I recognized him.
I knew this man…
He worked for my father. One of my father’s… friends.
I was too young to know his name, or understand anything about who he was. All I knew was that I’d seen him before, and my father called him el marfil…
The Ivory.
Blanco…
He cocked his head, the movement of a curious animal.
To my childish mind, he was ten feet tall, towering over me. Eyes like coal, pale skin and white hair. Like an old man, only he wasn’t old. He was young.
Too young to be so frightening.
He stared at me for several generous seconds during which I was just shaking and sniveling. My eyes fell to my parents’ dead bodies on the floor behind him, and he made a noise. Like a sucking of his teeth that called my attention back to him.
He crouched down, putting us eye level. And I was certain he was going to bite a chunk of my neck off or swallow me whole like the monster he so clearly was.
But instead, he simply pressed a long finger to his lips. A gesture even three-year-old me knew meant Shh.
And he whispered, “Ojos abiertos, boca cerrada, pajarito.”
Eyes open, mouth shut, little bird.
He straightened as footsteps up the hall signaled his friend coming back. He closed the closet door and stalked away, joining the other man.
“You handle it?” The man asked him.
And The Ivory grunted, “Si. Let’s go.”
Then they left.
And a deafening silence surrounded me.
The smell of blood and gunpowder hung in the air… along with the desolation of everyone I’d ever loved in the world being dead, and gone. A finality I could hear, see, smell and feel.
They had my sister…
I didn’t know what they were going to do with her, but I could feel the distance between us stretching further and further.
In that moment, I was dead too.
Numb. Empty.
I sat in that closet for twelve hours until someone eventually found me.
Two days later, my aunt Cristal came to the family welfare office to pick me up, and she brought me to live with her in Bogota.
I didn’t speak a word until I was six years old…
After the fear turned to sorrow. Once the sorrow turned to rage.
And that rage prompted an inferno of need in me. A yearning I couldn’t overcome.
Young or not, I knew what needed to happen. It was time to wake up. To be resurrected.
This was my rebirth.
Born in blood, bred for revenge, my life had but one purpose.
Someday I would find The Ivory…
And I would kill him.