Yolanda's Crossing

Yolanda walks into the kitchen, opens a drawer and pulls out a knife. She hides it behind her back, elbow bent.

It's spring 2004 in Dallas. She stands inside the one-bedroom apartment where she sleeps with Juan inside a closet: roughly 6 feet wide and 10 feet deep, with a twin mattress below the clothes rack. Just hours before, she was furious and crying in the bathroom. She felt an evil rise inside her.

Yolanda grips the knife, sneaks up to the closet and opens the door. She has thought of killing him at least once before, down by the river in Mexico where he first raped her almost six years ago. She later prayed for God to kill him in Oaxaca.

Now 16, she still believes in the Catholic God of sacred life. She knows killing is a sin. But she believes in human justice and knows this is somehow righteous.

The knife would be enough. With a quick stab to his chest, it could all be over. But if he wakes and sees her, she won't be able to handle him. She'll be beaten bloody or worse.

Then there's the unborn baby to consider.

She remembers a doctor near her village in southern Mexico saying that her ovaries were damaged and she would not be able to have children. She always suspected it was because she had been abused so young.

But in December 2003, a few months after coming to Dallas, she was in the bathroom, vomiting. Her head hurt. Nothing felt right.

Her last period was more than a month ago.

The older women in the apartment knew and bought her a pregnancy test. She closed the bathroom door.

Please, God, don't let it be.

Pink. Unmistakably pink.

I'm not going to have a baby, it's not true. It's not true.

She thought about her dead mother and how she could never raise a child, not one imprinted with the memory of this man and his sins. Not with the memory of a man who had raped her at 11 and taken her across two countries.

That afternoon, after Juan came home from work, she told him that the test was positive, but that she didn't believe it was accurate. He appeared indifferent.

Within a week, Juan's cousin took her to Parkland Memorial Hospital for a definitive exam. As Yolanda waited for the results, she already knew it was true. She was more than a month pregnant.

But she does not love this thing growing inside her. Over the next few months, she does not care to know its gender, or listen to its heartbeat or think of a name. She is indifferent to its kicks.

She spoke with a relative about getting an abortion, but she doesn't know how to find a clinic, doesn't know whether it is legal and doesn't have any money anyway.

She jumped up and down in the apartment, hoping it might shake the fetus free. Juan says it doesn't matter to him if she has the baby or not.

After a few months, she resigns herself to having the baby and giving it up for adoption.

Yolanda walks back to the kitchen and puts the knife away, unnoticed. It's not worth it, she tells herself. Juan is still sleeping. So are his relatives, who share the apartment. They live in the Brandywine Apartments, a mostly Hispanic complex near Maple and Wycliff avenues, where caged birds live on first-floor patios and the sounds of Tejano, Cumbia and Norteño music float through breezeways.

Yolanda never talks with anyone about her past. Those in the apartment know she is Juan's woman but don't pry much. Cristina and César Santana, the couple that knows her history and helped her in Georgia and Tennessee, visit occasionally but never very long. César gives her some money and asks one time over the phone if she is ready to leave Juan. She tells him that Juan would kill her if she left. They leave it at that.

While the men work during the day, Yolanda and a woman named Felícitas stay home, cook and watch telenovelas with their storylines of romance, murder and betrayal.

At a few months pregnant, Yolanda shows only the faintest bulge from her still infantile figure. She looks gaunt and frail, as if she hasn't been eating much.

Then on Aug. 16, about 3 a.m., she starts to bleed. An hour later, there is pain and then contractions. Contractions every 20 minutes. Pain every 5 minutes. Then 3 minutes. She tells Juan she needs to go to the hospital.

Don't you dare to tell them that I am the father... say that I am your uncle.

Shut that [expletive] mouth, she curses him as she leaves.

At Parkland Memorial Hospital, they say she's not ready yet and send her home. She returns three hours later.

Doctors and nurses make two notes of interest in her file:

1) Teenage mother

2) Anemia

Yolanda says nothing of the baby's father or how she became pregnant. She is used to keeping quiet.

Shortly after 9 a.m., the doctor tells her to push once, then again. The baby comes out with the second push. It is a girl, 6 pounds, 4 ounces, born with bruises on her face from the natural delivery.

The nurse gives her to Yolanda swaddled in a blanket. She feels warm. Yolanda does not know what the emotion is, but it fills her.

Later, she describes the feeling:

Love or something.

Something she has not felt before. Something that is primal and pure. The baby, she thinks while holding her, is not to blame. The baby does not know the crime she is the product of.

From the hospital bed, Yolanda realizes she cannot give this newborn away. She does not want the baby's life cursed like that of her mother.

Over the next two days in the hospital, she flips through books of names: Maria, Margarita, Mexican names and other English names she doesn't understand.

Juan suggests Ayleen. Yolanda bristles and comes up with Aidelin.

Aidelin Adair Méndez .

As they make the birth certificate, they ask for the father's name.

She says to leave it blank.

The first night back, the three of them sleep inside the closet on the twin mattress. The second night, he forces her to have sex with him with the baby present.

He is getting more violent. She is losing control.

The baby cries all day, and Yolanda has no idea why. She thinks Aidelin may be sick, but Juan says he won't take her for a checkup.

His son, Juan Carlos, has come into Dallas and has been staying around the apartment. Yolanda believes he has seen his dad hitting her. A few weeks after she returns from Parkland, he approaches her with a surprise offer: About $30 to help her leave. Enough for a cab ride.

This will be the first and the last time I help you, he says.

She can think only about the baby and knows this is her chance. She sends word to Cristina that she is leaving Juan and needs to live with her. César warned his wife not to get into trouble, but she brushed him off in her abruptly independent way. She needs to help this girl.

On Monday, Sept. 13, 2004, Yolanda wakes at 5 a.m. as normal. She prepares lunch for Juan, and the men leave for work. She is left alone with Felícitas, who watches her morning soap opera and falls back to sleep.

Yolanda moves to the closet and starts putting clothes in bags. She searches for any money that Juan may have stashed, but finds none.

Outside, it's cloudy and hot. Near the laundry room, she finds a woman who helps her call a cab. It comes around 1:30 p.m. She gets inside with the baby, hands the driver a piece of paper with Cristina's address and breathes deeply.

A half-hour later, Yolanda is on Texas Drive in Oak Cliff, standing outside a one-story white wood home.

She has come with one bag for herself and two small bags for the baby. Inside the house, she tells Cristina everything, much of which Cristina already knows from her husband. She talks about the first time she was raped in La Barra del Potrero, about the threats to her family, about being kept prisoner in motel rooms and about her life in a closet in Dallas.

Cristina vows to keep her safe. She takes her to Wal-Mart to buy diapers, milk and other supplies for the baby.

When they return, Juan is waiting in a car outside.

Cristina sees Yolanda trembling in the back seat, terrorized, her eyes wide with fear.

Stay here. Don't get out.

But he's going to take me back,

Señora. Senito, Senito, he's going to hit me. He's going to take me away.

He's not going to take you. Remember that, he's not going to take you away.

Cristina leaves the car. Her daughter Jessica, young son and Yolanda stay inside.

How are you doing? Juan says.

How did you know she was here?

Because I had people watching her.

Juan asks for Yolanda. Cristina, a woman not given to demure politeness, boils in anger. She curses him, calls him a disgraceful old man and says she will be keeping the girl.

If you try to hit me, if you threaten her ... if you try to lay a hand on her, you're going to pay.

Juan argues, relents and then drives away. Nobody can guess his next move.