My Brother's Body: A True Story
by Rachel Showery
Once his body was washed, the bruises both old and new were apparent on his face, wrists and torso. Regan must have suffered greatly for his crimes, for his lust, for his poor decisions.
Posted on August 15, 2008
It was a hot sticky day when my sister and I drove over the bridge to Mexico to collect our dead brother’s body. He had been in gunned down in Juarez a few days before.
Regan was always a wild child. The maid never addressed him by his Christian name; instead she had dubbed him the “little Diablo.” His life was spent in full throttle … or passed out. We were made aware of his death by a phone call from Juarez. My father received an anonymous call that El Diario had printed an article earlier that day about a crazy American who was shot down during a drug feud. My sister and I were elected by the family to go across the bridge to ID his body and pick him up. Nothing bad ever happens to females over there, right?
I was concerned about getting back in time to pick up my kids from school. I had already taken too much time off work and now I had to run this grim errand. I knew some FBI guys from the gym and they told me who to call in order to bring his body back for a proper burial. I was naïve enough to believe that it would be a “safe” trek over the border. The local PD liaison for the Mexican federales reassured me that the Mexicans just wanted “to talk a little bit, ask some questions … no big deal.”
My sister was driving us over in her messy mommy van and drove as only a disoriented female can drive. She was lost to boot, but blended in well with the traffic mores of Juarez. I was used to it so it didn’t bother me, but it did take a while for us to find the morgue.
The morgue in Juarez screams Third World. It’s basically just a wooden shed that one might see out on a deserted landscape between nowhere and hell. Once you get past the initial stench and into the dark choking air you could see the profiles of the corpses. There was no ventilation, not even a breeze, as if the room was sucking life from the living. It was high noon in June, 2002. The bodies were shrouded in black tarp and the flies congealed in and around my little brother’s mouth, eyes and ears. I cried just for the sadness of it … the sadness of such an insult to his dignity, to his pride, his ego. His face was swollen and marbled with dried blood. "Yes ... yes that is my brother,” I said to the Mexican police, who were not dressed like any policemen that I had ever seen.
Things changed once those words were out, once the confirmation was made. There was a shift in the air.
They quickly separated my sister and me, leading us out of the morgue and into an adjacent building. I was taken and seated into room with four men. The interviewer’s name was Jesus and he appeared as dangerous as he was gorgeous. He wore a leather bandolier crisscrossed his chest and a matching holster under each armpit. He wore a heavily starched white button up shirt paired with an unbelievably gifted pair of jeans. He looked like a modern day Pancho Villa posing for the cover of GQ. On one hand alone he sported at least seven carats of SV1 diamonds. His accent was thick and his English poor, so the verbiage was jumbled and oversimplified. “How you know he your brother? Who come see him? What you do for money?" He was polite, even kind, as he repeatedly asked the same questions over and over and over again, as if I was lying. And of course, I was. My patent answer to any question pertaining to my brother’s activities past his 11th birthday was “I don’t know, I just don’t know.”
That process took the better part of four hours. By that time, I was really questioning my own common sense and lack of self preserving instincts. But, I was too afraid to be afraid. I was too worried about my sister and her chronic blabber mouth. I couldn’t even begin to imagine how she was weathering this. I was worried about who would pick up my kids. Who would raise my kids!!!! My mind began to go into to overdrive and I could not stop staring at the stuffed teddy bear that was sitting on the corner of Jesus’ desk. Someone had duct tapped the little bear’s eyes and mouth and bond all four paws.
Jesus saw my gaze and responded by tossing the bear over his shoulder as if to say, "Oh, that’s just a joke.” I nodded my head in thanks.
He then stood up and opened the closet behind his desk. The closet held about 25 semi-automatic rifles with banana clips. Jesus handed two to each man in the room. As he was pulling up his own two rifles, one for each shoulder, he said, “Now we go to brother house.” At this point he was wearing, from what I could see, four pieces of heavy duty firearms. I could not believe what he had just said. I cried out “NO! Please no! You said you would give me my brother’s body if I talked to you and I have talked to you and now I want to go.” He said nothing with his mouth and everything with his silence.
I died … if fright could kill, then I would have died. I was now afraid to be afraid … not to be afraid. Grind, grind, grind went the wheels in my psyche. He must have sensed my angst because Jesus then came to me. He pulled me up out of the chair holding my elbows. He put his face close to my own and ever so sweetly said in his thick accent, "No worry, you with me.” I began to bleed. My period had ended a week ago but I began to bleed. I could feel my body go into meltdown mode.
I felt my liver dump toxins into my blood supply. I gasped and shallowed my breathing. My mouth dried up because my throat had changed into a lead ball and my stomach tightened into a small fist.
They escorted my sister and me outside and into a van together. There were four identical dark vans with blackened windows. They put us in the second van with our respective interviewers and observers and then began to snake through the streets of Juarez. I could not gauge the speed. I was too busy praying for my children and cursing my dead brother. I had never been to my brother’s house in Juarez so there was no reference point for me and nothing was familiar. When we finally stopped and I got out of the van, fully armed commando type soldiers rushed out of the other three vans and began patrolling the sidewalks, fanning out from the vans as if they were setting up a perimeter.
From their head gear to their boots and back up to their menacing semi-automatics they instilled even more fear in my numbed brain. I couldn’t wrap my mind around what my snotty-nosed little shithead brother must have done to deserve this formidable show of weaponry. My sister for the first and only time in her existence was quiet. That alone was a monumental statement as to the gravity of the situation.
My brother’s house was an encampment more than a home, but looked no different from any other house on the street, minus some flowers or shrubbery that women like to grow. My brother Regan never gravitated towards nurturing women. He preferred the whores of the world. And his latest love interest was bred for just that. She was a third generation Mexican drug runner. She was big, dark and ugly. I had never seen her nor had I ever planned to, and my brother’s fate was sealed by her family’s greed and violence.
There were rumors circulating that Regan was being beaten up on a regular basis as he resisted turning over his own ill-gained money and beach front properties to his in-laws. Yes, to the chagrin of my family he actually married this one. We believe that he thought it was a good strategic move. He believed that her middle-ranking mafia family would provide protection for him. He had fled over the border a few years earlier when word got out that the FBI was in route to pick him up.
He had planned this escape and always knew that that day would come.
This very real probability had loomed in his mind for years, adding volume to his overly stimulated lifestyle. Where most people cringed at stress, he thrived on it. It was water to his parched and sick soul. He loved all aspects of the drug business. He would lament for hours about his riches, insisting that the rest of us are just slaves to our American ideologies. And his riches were not just of the kind one can hold in one’s hand. It was the thrills and perils of running a reliable pact of transport mules and hanger-ons. Flattering parasites surround him like jesters around Pilate’s court and he used them like the whores that they were. Gender did not matter. He made even the most viable husbands turn into whores. I know, mine became one.
***
October 1995
I had not spoken to my brother in 10 years and had come back to the states from Germany for the sole purpose of giving birth to my fourth child. If any American woman has given birth to a child in a northern village in Lower Saxony, then they would understand my insistence upon giving birth in 21st Century fashion. It was at this juncture, at this return to my home town of El Paso, Texas, that my little brother met my husband and within hours Regan had recruited him.
If two heterosexual men can fall in love with each other, then indeed it was love at first sight. And before my very disbelieving eyes Regan turned my husband into a one of his chattel … although it did not sink in with me right away. How can one understand a process that is totally outside the realm of one’s own mental terrain? How can you possibly digest information that is transmitted on different frequencies than your own very congested mental highway? Between my baby-kicking belly, diaper-changing , family-rearing activities, I could not decipher that the barometric pressure within my own home was irrevocably changing. I could not fathom that the love of my life was selling his soul and his family up the river.
It’s amazing to me even now that my little brother could simply display a cowboy boot box filled with $20 bills and change my lover, my husband into the male equivalent of a titty dancer. It has forever changed my sense of love, family and loyalty.
That is what the drug business does. It undermines any normalcy of family interactions. It’s hard to cry for such a brother, it’s hard to mourn for his loss of life when he had so little regard for my own and that of my children. Of course the day came to pass that I became aware.
It started with some small gaps in my husband’s stories. Then, when I pressed him for more information, there was no logical sequence of events taking place concerning his whereabouts. The birthing was done and my antennae were up. I was now paying attention to my husband’s lewdness. As if an elephant came in and took a big shit in the kitchen sink, I had to face what was going on. I responded with a mixture of rage and logic. In a calm bitch from hell voice a solid ultimatum was made. I told my husband that he had to leave Regan or leave me. I went on to say that if I had wanted to marry a drug dealer I would have a long time ago. They are a dime a dozen in El Paso.
My husband was from small cold northern village in Germany where most people marry their neighbors, where the foreheads are large and feet go flat due to the shortage in the gene pool. He was never hit with any of those afflictions. His looks were absolutely stellar.
Brad Pitt would pale next to Frank. And my husband Frank was basking in his new easy wealth and all the whores that it attracted. He loved Regan’s lifestyle and would not abandon it. He was living out a fantasy, envisioning himself on “Miami Vice,” his favorite German dubbed-over TV show.
The kids and I never stood a chance.
My yellow-livered husband ran to Regan with the news asking for help to “control Rachel." Regan countered by offering to kidnap the children and take them into Mexico. "That will keep Rachel in her place." My husband Frank, hereinto known as Frankenstein ... a man without a soul ... ran home and actually barked out the threat while I was in the shower. My breasts were heavy with milk and my wet body began to shake at the thought. Such an unconceivable betrayal, a betrayal made by these dogs with whom I shared either blood or bed.
The shower water sounds could not cover the wailing that came from my core, and the wailing could not be contained. I was fully aware that I could, without any remorse, kill both of them. I asked God in my shivering naked rage to do it for me.
***
When we entered Regan’s house in Juarez, I was flanked by Jesus and his semiautomatic rifles. My older sister was now beginning to speak.
Her speaking was triggered when she saw some of Regan’s belongings, especially a book. It was a gift from her to him, “Family First” by Dr Phil. Once the keg is tapped, once she begins to talk, here comes the babbling rambling of words and emotions that only a sibling can decode. I was under the impression that my sister’s mouth could not threaten my life any more than it already was, so I did not attempt her quiet her down. People fluent in English strained to follow her narrative and these guys were too busy cataloging the spoils of Regan’s house. I could actually see the gleam in their eyes and hear the “Cha-Ching” in their brains as they were going over his antiques.
The sight of my brother’s collection of watches, his rainbow of Rolexes, caused an audible gasp by one of the thugs. It was anticlimactic, though. The highly polished wooden boxes bearing the crown logo were empty. Regan’s dainty bride must have squirreled them away.
Jesus was walking beside me asking me even more questions.
He took me outside into the back yard and pointed at what appeared to be a grave. It was at least five feet deep and two and half feet wide.
It could easily contain one, if not two adults. The ground was rocky and dry, and I am sure picks were needed for such a dig. There were cigarette butts all around the ground. “My brother hated cigarettes,” was all I could say. Inside the house my sister’s talking was wearing her interviewer out. She wanted to take some things to her house. Jesus said no, and she cried loud and long.
I don’t know at which point most of the fear had left my awareness.
Maybe it was the familiarity of my older sister haggling. Maybe it was Jesus standing so close and looking into me, not at me, but into me. The fear was gone. I asked again if we could leave. "No," Jesus said. "No."
More men were coming into the house. These men were dressed in business attire one might see in a broad room meeting, they only spoke to Jesus. We were not introduced to them and my sister and I were not acknowledged by them. They left as quickly as they came. ‘OK … Now, you go," Jesus said.
The drive back to the morgue and its adjacent building took a third of the time, I realized that they must have been circling around and making detours to get to my brother’s house.
My little brother’s body could now be released to the family. A funeral home from Juarez would transport his body back to El Paso.
***
Once his body was washed, the bruises both old and new were apparent on his face, wrists and torso. Regan must have suffered greatly for his crimes, for his lust, for his poor decisions. He must have cried many times and there was not a soul that would or could help him. Nobody hurt more over this than my mother. She had tried to save him for many years. But that was the only way he wanted to live so that was the only way he could have gone. She died a little bit after he left. She grieves for him daily. She doesn’t wail, she doesn’t cry out, it’s just that tears fill her eyes if you mention his name.
My sister Raelene wanted the family to get together to pray that God would allow Regan into heaven despite his many transgressions. Sort of like a family intervention. A little late for that! Besides, most of us are agnostics at best and don’t do well in pursuant of religious dogmas.
But this is what I can offer to my little brother:
Regan Roberts Showery may you rest in peace.
Your hell was here, just over that sticky bridge. Whatever you put others through, you ended up paying for with your own beaten and tortured body. And those smelly thugs who tied you up and hurt you shall have their own blood spilled, their own flesh ripped, then burned. And nothing good will come of it. Nobody will win and the living shall cry. They will cry for their husbands, their brothers and fathers ... but most of all they will cry for their sons. No loss is greater than that of one’s own child. And our mother is just one of many mothers. Their sorrow cannot be healed, because their crying cannot bring back their murdered children. And yet, they cry even more when they realize that greatest of all tragedies has happened; that children always end up paying for the sins of their fathers.
In the last six months hundreds of people have been assassinated in Juarez, including an 11-year-old boy who was happily sitting next to his father, a police officer named Jesus.
copyright 2008
