The money her shame makes goes for rent, goes for food, for clothes, for makeup, it goes to the doctors for medicine, it goes to pay for the train that she rode. The money goes to the “interest” on her debt that grows every day, no matter how much shame she makes at night.

The money used to go for drugs.

She started shooting heroin that washed away her shame like a moist and soothing cloud full of rain, that brought dreams of her beautiful home in the Petén, her parents, her brothers. Her heroin dreams were green and soft and beautiful like her home.

But heroin cost money.

The men would always give it to her, but they would add it to her “tab,” and as she got deeper and deeper into addiction she fell deeper and deeper in debt, until the men had her working all the time and she shamed herself ten, twelve, fourteen times a night.

Not that she felt shame any longer.

Not that she felt anything.

Then Flor found the Lord.

Not the Catholic god of her childhood, but a loving Lord.

Jehovah God.

A man bought her on the street one night, took her to a dim and dirty room, but instead of taking her, asked, “Child, my sister, do you know the Lord?”

He read to her from the Bible, and then gave her a book, the one written by the leader, a man named Nazario. He came to see her every night, when the men weren’t watching, when the other girls weren’t watching, and he told her that Jesus loved her, that the Lord loved her, Nazario loved her, and that if she accepted that love she would see her family again in heaven. She read the book and he took her to meet other people, other brothers and sisters, in a house where they live and call themselves a family.

One night there Nazario walked over to her, rolled up her sleeves, and saw the needle tracks, and he gently said, “You don’t need this, my sister,” and that was the truth and she believed. He taught her to believe.

That while her body might be a slave, her soul is free.

She gave up the heroin.

This night Flor is standing at the edge of the alley and she hears something in the Dumpster and thinks it’s a rat, but then she sees this boy climb out, this child. He looks startled to see her and starts to run, but she asks, “Are you hungry?”

The boy nods.

“Wait here,” she says.

She goes into the restaurant’s kitchen and asks the cook for some scraps—some meat, a little chicken, a corn tortilla—and brings it out into the alley.

The boy is still there and she hands him the food.

He eats like a ravenous dog.

Flor asks, “What’s your name?”

“Pedro,” he lies.

“Do you have a place to stay?” Flor asks him.

Chuy shakes his head.

“I can take you to a place where you can sleep,” she says. “Jesus loves you.”

This is how Chuy joins La Familia Michoacana.

—

Now Chuy lives in an old house with twenty or so other people, most of them young, most of them otherwise homeless. Some are girls, or even boys, who work the street. Others sell candy, flowers, or newspapers from traffic islands.

Chuy gets a different job, delivering food to orphanages, homeless shelters, and drug clinics. He hops in a van or a pickup truck in the morning and spends the day unloading boxes of rice, pasta, powdered milk and cereal, big vats of soup, cookies and candies, all labeled “With love from La Familia.”

At the drug rehab clinics they deliver something else in addition to the food—copies of the Book: The Sayings of Nazario. Sometimes an adult stays behind at the clinic to talk to the addicts, tell them about Jehovah God and Jesus Christ and Nazario. As the weeks go by, Chuy notices that some of the patients he saw at the clinic come to live at the house or work on the delivery trucks.

At night, Chuy has supper at the house, and then goes to the meeting where they discuss the Bible and the Book, and then sometimes he hangs around the restaurant near the block where Flor works or he sits at home and slogs painfully through the Book, because he was never very good at reading, in Spanish or English. But with Flor’s help, he makes it through, and memorizes key sayings. His favorite is, “A true man needs a cause, an adventure, and a good woman to rescue.”

On Sunday mornings everyone goes to church, and on special occasions Nazario himself comes to preach—the good word about Jehovah God and Jesus Christ and how to live right and do the right things, and Chuy sees Flor’s eyes light up when she gazes at Nazario, and after the service they line up to get his blessing and Chuy is excited in a way he hasn’t been since he first met Ochoa, which now seems like a lifetime ago, because now he has a new life—he loves Jehovah God and Jesus Christ. He loves Nazario.

He loves Flor.

But the Zetas are still very much a part of his new life.

They’re part of everybody’s.

As Chuy moves around the city, he sees their gunmen on the street, sees them go into the bars and the clubs, into the brothels and the tienditas—the little stores—and he sees that they collect protection money from everyone.

The Zetas run Michoacán.

“Didn’t you know that?” Flor asks him one night.

“I thought they were just narcos,” Chuy says.

“They run everything now,” she says. “It was them who took me off the train, brought me here, put me to work. The money I make goes to them. All the girls pay them or they beat you, maybe kill you.”

She knows girls who have just disappeared.

The Zetas rule Michoacán like a colony.

So as Chuy works, he literally keeps his head down. As he goes in the truck all around the city, even out to the little villages in the countryside where La Familia delivers food and clean water, digs wells, and builds daycare centers, he keeps an eye out for Zetas.

If they recognize him, he knows they’ll kill him.

And not quick.

But other than that, life is good. He likes living at the house with his new friends, likes spending his spare time with Flor, even finds he likes going to church, singing the hymns, hearing Nazario preach.

One of Nazario’s sayings is, “You are only as sick as your secrets,” and Flor urges Chuy to go speak to one of the counselors, the man who brought her into La Familia, to do a “cleansing,” because it’s wonderful and he will feel better.

“I feel okay,” he says.

“You have nightmares,” Flor says. “You wake up weeping. If you do the cleansing, the nightmares will stop. Mine did.”

A few nights later, Chuy does his cleansing. He goes into a small room with the “counselor,” a man in his forties named Hugo Salazar.

“Tell me your sins,” Hugo says. “Get them off your soul.”

Chuy balks, says nothing.

Hugo says, “ ‘You cannot climb a mountain with a sack of garbage on your back.’ ”

“I’ve done bad things.”

“God already knows everything you’ve done and everything you will do,” Hugo says, “and He loves you, anyway. This is not a confession, it’s a liberation. Nightmares can’t live in the light.”

“I’ve killed people.”

“You look like just a boy.”

Chuy shrugs.

“How many people?” Hugo asks.

“Six?”

“You don’t know?”

“I’m pretty sure six.”

“Were they innocent people?” Hugo asks. “Women? Children?”

“No.”

“How did you come to kill?” the man asks.

“I worked for narcos.”

“I see,” Hugo says. “Anything else?”

Chuy wants to tell him about his nightmare, what he did with Ochoa that night, but he’s too ashamed, and afraid. The Zetas might be looking for him, and if he tells, he might be identified, because only Zetas do that kind of thing.

“Yes,” Chuy says. He stares at the floor. “I killed my best friend.”

“Why, my young brother?”

“He was going to kill me.”

Hugo lays a hand on his shoulder. “Nazario says that this world is full of evil, which is why we must not be fully part of this world, but always have an eye on the next one. In an evil world, sometimes we have to do evil to survive, and God understands this. The point is that we try to do the right thing, with a pure heart. Go back now, my brother, and do what’s right.”