The bitter and citric scent of hair dyes, hair sprays, and nail polish permeated the rooms and passageways of the building. The odors took me back to the day that Maria had her harelip fixed. It was the day a kettle of vultures circled above our home. And it was also the day my mother was angry with the Acapulco fortune-teller because the woman never predicted that my mother would have to bury someone. Did that fortune-teller tell my mother that her daughter was going to go to jail? In the prison office where I was booked there was a blackboard on the wall. A scrawl of white chalk kept track of the foreign inmates and children. In the jail there were seventy-seven children who were all under the age of six. There were three inmates from Colombia; three from Holland; six from Venezuela; three from France; one from Guatemala, one from the United Kingdom, two from Costa Rica, one from Argentina, and one from the United States. After I was booked in and my photograph and fingerprints were taken, I was given a pair of clean beige sweatpants and a beige sweatshirt and told to change.
