What a Mother Does

María left for a doctor’s appointment,

said she’d be home in an hour—

the kind of promise no one thinks to doubt.

When the hour vanished and María didn’t appear,

her mother imagined accidents first:

twisted metal, sirens,

a body waiting for a name.

She walked the streets first.

Hospitals.

Police stations.

Grief kept her upright,

taught her how to ask

without falling apart.

Then the whispers swirled—

Taken.

Sold.

Like cattle for profit.

So Susana

took on a new persona.

Dressed herself as a woman

who buys other women’s children,

learned how desire is priced,

how girls vanish in plain sight.

For more than ten years

she searched the whiskerías—

Candy, El Canditejas, El Desafío,

places sweet enough to mask cages,

fronts where daughters were renamed nightly.

She pulled survivors from rooms

no human

should ever see.

She carried them out—

shaking, breathing, alive.

Hundreds returned home

because she would not stop looking.

Her own girl never came back.

But Susana knew this:

each woman rescued

was a fragment of her child—

a smile, a laugh,

a heart, a future spared—

and that wherever she was,

her daughter could feel

how far a mother can go

and still

keep walking.