Black Whiskers

Whiskers turned out dead in a little wooded area right behind Nesla’s house. Come to think about it, it was a stupid name, Whiskers. But it had been the first thing that had caught Nesla’s eyes, back when she had found her abandoned in that old, moldy box under the bleachers of the track field: those long, thin whiskers, black like the rest of her fur. She was tiny, all coddled up, probably trying to escape the cold that had already started, against all predictions, in that little town of South Texas. For Nesla, it was a no-brainer. She had to take that kitty to safety. And she did.

She was an odd duck, that Nesla. Always in her books, not that talkative. Being an only child, she could get away with a lot of things other kids her age couldn’t. Like when she dyed her hair black and started wearing heavy eyeliner even though she was barely thirteen. It was her way to communicate to the world, or so her parents thought, that it couldn’t hurt her any more than she’d already been hurt. Born and raised in a house of horrors until she was six, she’d never opened up about what she’d endured. What the Hinjosas knew was only what the caseworker had shared from her file—which was virtually nothing—and what had appeared on the news at the time.

House of Horrors right outside Sinton, TX.

Mother dead, father in custody after face-off with the police.

Cult-like compound surrounded by police after anonymous caller alerts to child abuse, incest.

Yet again, it wasn’t like they could believe everything out there. Beginning with the fact that the “compound” was nothing like that. They had visited it together, just the two of them, a week before the adoption was finalized. It was a creepy house in the middle of nowhere, true, but a far cry from the massive structure the media had made it out to be. Well, yeah, the traces of torture were still present, the hooks for the chains still stuck on the wall. One would think that the police would clean all that up afterward, but the blood from cut wrists and ankles was still there, the pools of C.D.’s—what Nesla’s older sister had been called by the press—blood on the floor because she had been chained during her period. Some stuff had been blown out of proportion, right, but most of it was real, it was still there. And when the Hinojosas saw it with their own eyes, they each in their mind, even if only for a split second, and even if they would forever deny it to one another and to the world, questioned whether it was a good idea to move forward with the adoption.

That was the reason why, when Nesla came back home with Whiskers, Sandra Hinojosa said yes right away; she had learned to know her daughter. It’d been more than six years already since they had gotten that call for a placement, being told that the girl would spend the night getting checked at the hospital. They’d had never had any major problem with her, no tantrums, no yelling, no shouting, no slamming of the doors. Not even loud music. She was always reading, and when she wasn’t reading, she was taking care of plants or animals. They had a little pond in the backyard where three koi fish were growing, and she could sit there for hours, watching them dance.

At school, always the same: Nesla is a great student, but she has problems opening up to her peers. She was taunted by her classmates alright, and they had moved her around quite a bit, settling in a Catholic school thinking that maybe the smaller class size would make things easier, and religious education would make kids’ hearts kinder. But they were wrong. Except that this time, Nesla wouldn’t say anything. For a moment, Sandra Hinojosa was at peace, believing things were finally going to improve for her child. That was, of course, until the day Whiskers disappeared. Sandra used to let her out on the front porch, on a basket that Nesla had decorated and that served her as bed. Whiskers would wait there, patiently, sometimes sleeping, sometimes just looking around with her big, green eyes, until Nesla came home. But that Wednesday afternoon, Nesla found Whiskers’ basket empty. They looked everywhere. Sandra called Ignacio, and he took their daughter in his truck to go around looking for the cat. Nothing turned up.

Needless to say that Nesla wasn’t in any mood to go anywhere the next day, or the day after that. It wasn’t until Carmenza, the neighbor two doors down, found the body when she was walking her dog, that the Hinojosas stopped looking. Sandra didn’t know that Nesla was listening to Carmenza’s account of how the poor thing seemed to have been tortured before being left there to bleed out until she found her daughter passed out in the hallway, bloodied, a big vertical gash across her left wrist.

Once in the hospital, it became evident how many people knew about Nesla’s history, in spite of the efforts the Hinojosas had done to conceal it.

Ain’t that the girl from that satanic cult?

Wasn’t her mother her sister, too?

I heard they used to tie up the girls and let the boys have their way with them.

At another time, or even maybe in another life, Sandra would have gone after each and every person that made a comment and would’ve given them a piece of her mind, taught them not to mess with her daughter. But this time, she didn’t have that luxury, her thirteen-year-old had just attempted suicide, and saving her life was all that mattered.

One thing that she did do in that waiting room, however, was call the school. Part of what Carmenza had told her, was that some girls had been taunting Nesla, telling her that she was a witch, because of having been born into what had at that point become the urban legend of a cult in a little town of South Texas—a horrible childhood for which she wasn’t responsible on the least. It was then that Nesla decided to change her wardrobe and her hair, and start doing her make-up. What she had done as a way to show them she didn’t care, became proof to her tormentors. Not only was she a witch, a Satan worshiper, but her evil black cat was probably helping her, too. That’s when they got the idea to take Whiskers from her basket, bring her to the woods, and throw rocks at her until she died.

When Sandra learned of that, her heart ached for her daughter. She longed for a friend and companion, and that’s what Whiskers was for her. Whiskers! Even the name was harmless for God’s sake! And Sandra knew that with Whiskers, whatever little hope she had of seeing her daughter smile again, had died.