Read Hailey's War for Free Online Page B

immediately claimed the 13th Street clique, or El Trece. Serena wasn’t unwilling to follow in their path, but this time her qualms were different from the ones she’d cited to Lita. Shelooked at the neighborhood girls who had affiliations to Trece and didn’t like what she saw.
    â€œThey weren’t really down,” she told me. “They were just hoochies who slept with the guys. They didn’t even get jumped in. They said they didn’t have to, they were ‘already down,’ whatever that means.” Her voice had filled with scorn.
    It wasn’t anything you could have made a high-school counselor see, but Serena Delgadillo was an overachiever. One short year after she tried to refuse Lita’s initiation, Serena shaved her head, borrowed her older brother’s flannel shirt and chinos, and went to Payaso, the leader of El Trece, and asked to be jumped in. Her brothers vouched for her toughness, and Serena, bloody and bruised, became a member of the gang.
    Serena had to prove herself over and over again, backing up her guys, stealing cars, driving getaway, lying to the cops, and doing a six-month stretch in the California Youth Authority camp. It was the ironically familiar refrain of a woman in a man’s job: She had to do twice as much as the guys to get equal standing with them. Through it all, she kept her head shaved and her clothes masculine. Sometimes the cops mistook her for a boy.
    â€œI have a picture,” she told me that night, “but it’s at my house.” She looked up at me, slyly. “Unless you’re afraid to come to the hood to see it.”
    â€œLet’s go,” I’d said.
    She lived in a one-story house of pale yellow stucco, with an orange tree in the yard and bars on the windows. A motion-sensor light flashed on as we walked up the driveway. Not surprisingly, the dead bolt on the front door was probably the newest and most expensive thing about Serena’s home.
    It wasn’t dark inside, though it was dim. We came into the kitchen, and Serena peered over a cracked Formica counter into her livingroom and then raised a finger to her lips. I followed her gaze and saw a rumpled sleeping bag. It rustled, and a girl stuck her tousled head out and looked at us.
    â€œQuien es la rubia?”
she said.
Who’s the blond girl?
    â€œNadie,”
said Serena.
No one
.
    The girl withdrew back into her nest.
    â€œThanks a lot,” I said.
    â€œYou know what I mean,” Serena said mildly. “Are you hungry?”
    We didn’t talk much while she cooked, out of consideration for the girl sleeping in the dining room. As she heated water to boiling and poured in some short-grain white rice from a ten-pound sack, I looked around the kitchen. There were photographs on the refrigerator, and the subjects were all male—some school pictures, others obviously taken to establish gang cred, as the boys posed with guns and cars. All, though, were bordered with colored paper. On the margins were roses and
virgenes
and the initials
q.d.e.p
.
    â€œWhat’s q.d.e.p?” I asked Serena.
    â€œQue descansa en paz,”
she said quietly.
    â€œThese guys are all …”
    â€œDead,” she confirmed.
    â€œNo girls?”
    She said, “I’ve got the roll call for my
hermanas
on my leg.”
    â€œYour leg?” I echoed, not understanding.
    She hiked her right foot onto the counter and pulled up the cuff of her pants so I could easily see the tattooed letters
qdep
high on her calf, and underneath that, two names: Tania and Dreamer.
    I asked, “How did you decide whether to use the given name or their gang name?”
    â€œWell, Tania didn’t have a moniker,” she said. “She wasn’t in the life, she was just kicking it with some homeboys who were on their porch and got blasted in a walk-up shooting.” She put her leg down.
    Noting the way the names would descend to her ankle, I said,