Caray, Caray!

Wow, that was quite a break in between episodes!

Two women are being arrested by the DIEM crew. Someone escorts a younger girl behind them. Aranda calls Capellan to tell her they're on the way with three suspects and one of them is a minor.

Yolanda Andrade and Aleida Nuñez are Elvira y Mercedes, justicieras (agengers).

Lupita and Elvira are cutting up potatoes on an outdoor patio. Elvira is Lupita's aunt. She asks about the building custodian getting the light back on and as Lupita leans over the table, Elvira notices Domingo, who Lupita calls "dad" checking out her ass. Yeah, it's gonna be that kind of night. He complains about the custodian never doing his job and Elvira tells him to bite his tongue, considering the source. He tells her he really is looking for work…and checks out Lupita again. He complains there just aren't any jobs out there. Just office work. And he's more of a fresh-air-lover. He doesn’t look like he smells all that fresh. He gives Lupita a kiss on the side of the head and leaves.

Elvira hisses to Lupita that that loser isn't her dad and she knows it. She says he can't find a job in the open air or under a roof because all he does is sit around with the paper all day. "Haven't you seen the way he looks at you?" Lupita brushes it off, but she won't look at her aunt when Elvira asks her if all he's done is look. Elvira complains about Mercedes ending up with that good-for-nothing. Mercedes walks up with a basket of laundry and gives it to Lupita, telling her to hurry up and take it to her room.

Mercedes asks why Elvira is saying those things to Lupita. She claims that she's not "putting up" with Domingo, that he's doing his "manly duty." Elvira says just be cause he got her pregnant doesn't mean he's a man. Elvira asks her what she's planning to do with four kids and another on the way, with a husband who "no ata ni desata" (he won't tie or untie; he's useless, etc.) . Mercedes says she stays with him because he'll change all their lives and make them better. Elvira reminds her that having a better chance is for those who work, but look at how they're living. "You said it, Lupita's of age. It's time she started sleeping in my room." Mercedes says no way, she doesn't want to cause trouble for Elvira, they'll make room. Elvira asks if Mercedes hasn't noticed Domingo looking at her daughter. "What barbarities are you saying?! What do you have against Domingo?" "Lupita isn't a girl anymore." Mercedes calls Lupita over and asks her what she has against her dad. Elvira says it's ok, she can tell them. Lupita begs her mom not to get upset. Elvira snaps at her to tell them and Lupita asks her not to keep pushing.

They're all escorted into DIEM headquarters and Lupita is placed in Capellan's office. Aranda says she needs to be calm and tell them what happened. Lupita cries that she didn't do anything.

Lupita leaves the kitchen and Mercedes looks up at Elvira and says Domingo isn't capable of doing "something like that." After all, he's her dad. Elvira reminds her that he isn't. "As good as, Elvira. You know what, that kid's gonna hear it from me right now! How dare she make things up." Elvira says this is coming from her too and she doesn't need to be sleeping in the same room with Lupita. "You'd have to be a real idiot not to realize the danger that girl is in!" Mercedes takes offense at Domingo being called a danger and calls her sister bitter and sick. Elvira says it's hard enough having the whole family there and she doesn't want any more problems.

Mercedes can't sleep. She tells Domingo it's not the baby--she's only a month pregnant. He decides a little sex will knock her out, but Mercedes wants to talk. "Domingo, do you love the kids? Even though they're not yours?" He says if he didn't love them, then why would he be supporting them all? Um, except he doesn't actually. "Are you going to throw the work thing in my face again? I swear tomorrow I'll find something!" He claims again to love all the kids as much as he loves little Domingo, who's on the way. "And Lupita?" "Lupita more than all of them. When I see her, I see you. Of course I love her." Ewwwwwww!

The next morning Mercedes tells Elvira what Domingo said. "Hey, not to make you feel bad, but what did you think he was going to say? That he didn't love the kids? That he doesn't love Lupita?" Mercedes accuses Elvira of wanting to say bad things about Domingo so he ends up alone like she is. Riiight, cause he's such a catch! "And what about Lupita?" Mercedes says that Lupita didn't say anything, but Elvira tells her that's because Lupita was too scared. She spouts some nonsense about Lupita making things up because it gets her aunt's attention and it's Elvira's fault for paying attention to it. "That girl is scared and if that sonofabitch puts a hand on her I'll kill him." "Threatening my Domingo is like threatening me!" "So you and Domingo are the same person now? In that case, when he wants to sleep with your daughter, then you hold her down so she keeps quiet. Or maybe you should join in and all three of you can sleep together." Mercedes calls her sister a pig. "I'd rather be a pig then be blind!"

Elvira runs into Lupita inside. Lupita knows they're fighting about her. Mercedes comes inside and asks what Lupita was doing there. Apparently this patio is attached to Elvira's apartment. Lupita says she was just helping her aunt. "Oh yeah? And who's gonna help me with your brothers? Go home." Elvira tries to intervene, but Mercedes tells her to shut up and tells Lupita to get home. Elvira asks if she's given any further thought to having Lupita sleep in her room. "No. Lupita will sleep in her house." Lupita tries to beg to be allowed to stay with her aunt, but Mercedes shuts her up. "Look, Elvira, you're good at threatening, but don't mess with my husband. You're an old maid and that's not my problem. Find a man--that's what you need." "What for? So my life can go the way yours has? No thanks." "Well, better to have had lots of men than to be left alone!"

Capellan comes into her office to talk to Lupita. She says everything is fine and she doesn't think Lupita is guilty of anything. Besides, this isn't a jail cell, it's an office. "But you have to trust me. You have to tell me everything that happened to you. Calmly."

Domingo gets up out of bed in the middle of the night at tells Mercedes he's hungry and going to go get something to eat. While he creepily stands by Lupita's bed with his underwear half hanging off him and picks up the covers to get a better look at her, Mercedes wakes up completely and goes to see what he's doing. He hastily puts the covers back on Lupita and says he was just covering the kids up. He says he was looking for something to eat, but all he found were beans. Mercedes tells him he took a long time. Meanwhile, Lupita is stuffing the sheets in her mouth and covering her head with her pillow.

Elvira brings candy home for the kids. "Yeah, I know, you don't like me to bring them sweets, but that's why I'm their aunt! I spoil them and you bring them up right." Mercedes asks Elvira to forgive her for what she said the other day. Elvira says it is true, she's alone…but it's Mercedes' fault because of Hugo. "Well, Hugo was MY boyfriend." Well, Elvira liked him, that's all. He only stuck around long enough to get Mercedes pregnant with Lupita. Elvira says, just to clarify, she doesn't like the one Mercedes is like now, not even a little. "What do you have against Domingo?" "I talked to Ceci, the doctor from 22, and she told me…." Mercedes complains about her talking to other people about what does or doesn't happen to her. "That's the thing! She says Lupita's an adolescent and we should take care of her." Mercedes says Ceci saw "her" Domingo and wanted him…and she's a nurse, not a doctor. Mercedes tells her to stay out of things. "Domingo's a good man and he loves the kids as if they were his. If you keep saying that stuff, you and Lupita, I'll smack you both across the mouth. That'll be a good remedy!" Elvira goes into the kitchen and says maybe she'll be the one to apply a remedy first.

Capellan asks Elvira if she really thinks she remedied the situation. "At least I did something. Whether it was a good thing or not. It was too late, though."

Some young guys hanging out on the bottom floor of the apartment building say hello to Lupita while she sweeps up leaves. Domingo chases them off and insists they were bothering her. He also insists she call him "dad" and not "Domingo." "If anyone bothers you, that's what I'm here for, ok? You tell me." He kisses her on the cheek and she takes off.

Mercedes is making the beds. Elvira offers to help, since Lupita is downstairs sweeping. "Oh, so now she works for you, or what?" No, she offered, and it's better for her to get out. "I think there's something going on with that girl. I think she's sick."

Lupita is outside crying and eating the sleeve of her sweater. Her mom catches her and she washes the tears off her face. Mercedes starts to ask, "Hey, what your aunt Elvira is saying about…." "I didn't do anything!"

Lupita is in an interrogation room now. Aranda walks in and starts setting things on the table. Her gin, her badge, and her cell phone. "I know right now it's difficult to distinguish good from bad, but it's very important for you to get your thoughts in order and tell me in your own words what happened. Do you know why you're here? You have to know you're safe here, first of all." She reaches her hands across the table and Lupita stops chewing on her sleeve and takes Aranda's hands. "I need you to get your thoughts in order. Do you understand what I'm telling you?"

"But if something was happening, you'd tell me, right? Because Domingo's a good guy. You see how loving he is. Don't go mistaking one thing for another." She tells Lupita to come help her, but Lupita stays outside.

Lupita gets escorted out of the interrogation room and Aranda meets up with Forense Gerardo behind the glass. He says she got Lupita's confidence. Gerardo says looking only at the medical facts, it's a fine line. Aranda asks him to give her the results and she'll write up the report.

Domingo shows Elvira an ad in the paper for a seamstress. Mercedes comes in and says all the kids are finally asleep. Elvira says again that something's wrong. Domingo hurriedly takes a swig of beer. Mercedes says she's tired and Domingo tells her she's been up and about all day. He says something about the baby being a boy and claims to know everything. He makes a snide remark about Elvira needing "alineación y balanceo" (a wheel alignment and balancing). "Are you offering, or what?" "Are you flirting with me? She's flirting with me." "Looks like that's the last thing you need." More snideness about Elvira needing sex and Domingo needing to get a frickin' job. Elvira calls him a "rabo verde" (pervert) and he shuts right up. He nervously guzzles his beer and leaves.

Elvira gets out of bed when she hears Lupita throwing up outside. She's clutching a pair of underwear. Elvira holds her and they both cry. It sounds like Lupita is saying "ya no mas" (please, no more).

Mercedes asks Domingo if he's going to go see about the plumbing job. "No. Why?" She asks him what's wrong with him. "What do you care?" "I'm just asking." He growls at her and grabs her ass. He tells her the beans just didn't go down well. "That's why your sister's still single. She can't cook." Mercedes begs him to stop fighting with her. "Well, it's that time of the month…assuming she still has one!" He laughs, but his head hurts. He takes his beer, or whatever it is, outside to drink it. Two cops come looking for Domingo. They have an order of arrest. "This is your sister's doing! What has she made up now?" They cops lead him away and Mercedes yells for Elvira.

As they take him out of the building he whines that they're probably looking for someone else. Mercedes follows them down and when she sees Lupita she smacks her across the face and yells at Elvira that it's all Lupita's fault. She calls Elvira a "desgraciada"(wretch) for filing the report." Elvira and Mercedes struggle and Elvira ends up holding Mercedes back from attacking Lupita again. Mercedes screams at her daughter to tell her aunt that Domingo didn't do anything to her. Lupita just keeps chewing on the sleeve of her sweater. "Domingo didn't do anything to me," she says, crying and looking down. Mercedes throws it in her sister's face and tells her to go take back the report. Elvira starts walking out and Lupita goes after her asking where she's going. "Where else? To get your father out of jail. And let's see if they don't lock me up for making things up. But I'll tell you this, once he gets out, you're all going to live somewhere else." Lupita asks for forgiveness. "Don't ask me for forgiveness. Don't speak to me anymore." "But, he didn't do anything to me." Elvira calls her a liar and an idiot. "And quit crying, because now he's in jail and they're going to lock me up, and it's your fault!" Lupita can't stop crying and Elvira goes back to her and holds out her hand. Elvira hugs her and they walk out together.

"That guy deserved what happened." She makes some joke about how he was nothing, but now he's everything.

A doctor asks Lupita to lie back and take off her underwear. Elvira explains that Domingo isn't her dad, he's her stepdad. They let the doctor know that Elvira is her aunt. "Look, Lupita, I know this isn't pretty, but we've got to do it. And for how long did you say your dad has been raping you?" Lupita chews on her sleeve. "Answer, honey!" Lupita says it's been three years. Elvira is surprised. A nurse comes in with some test results for the doctor and he rather abruptly says "You know she's pregnant, right?" Elvira and Lupita cry.

Capellan says to Elvira, "Look, what I have here is a murder. Three women are implicated. One is a minor. And she's your niece. Your niece, who at sixteen years old, has to make the decision whether or not to have an abortion. Do you really think we can keep talking around the situation?" She used a new vocabulary word, "legado" meaning "curettage," a scraping of cells from within a body cavity.

Mercedes visits Domingo in jail and brings him food. He complains about the horrible food in there. "It's been a day and a half and they haven't told me anything. Your stupid sister hasn't taken back the report, has she?" "She brought Lupita here so they could do some tests. She's pregnant. She's just a girl, like I was when I had her." He tries to act like someone else did it and he's outraged. "Since she's a minor, while they do the tests…." He tells her she's got to fix things, then slips up and says "oh yeah, she's just a girl, going around showing her…" he holds his hands out in front of him, indicating breasts. "I know who it was! Those loser neighborhood boys!" Mercedes asks if he's not noticing Lupita. She asks him to kiss her medal of the Virgen if he's telling the truth. He does, then kisses her.

In the interrogation room, Mercedes tells Capellan, "I believed him." "What were you afraid of? Being alone? Being abandoned? I don't want to offend you, but there are a lot of cases like yours." "She's just a girl." "She stopped being one violently and under threats. Victims at that age never understand why they're abused. Never."

Lupita serves her brothers food on the patio. Mercedes comes up and says she must be happy that while they're waiting for the test results her "dad" is in jail. "Who was it?" "Domingo said you'd never believe me. But my aunt says…." Mercedes hits her across the face, knocking her to the ground and tells the boys to get inside the house. She goes into the kitchen and tells Elvira that just because Lupita got away with her little "joke" doesn't mean Domingo did it. "You've never doubted Domingo, have you?" "Of course not, that's why he's my husband." Elvira says Lupita is her daughter. "But you're right. You can't go around all the time doubting the people you love. Thank God now with those exams, you'll be out of doubt, and then there's no turning back the page."

Mercedes screams and cries that she can't believe it. Elvira and Lupita huddle outside on the patio. Mercedes comes out, holding a letter and crying. FINALLY she comforts her daugher. "What am I going to do, Elvira?" Elvira doesn't know. Mercedes and Lupita fall to the floor and Mercedes cries over her poor daughter. About time.

Mercedes goes to the jail with food for Domingo. She smiles blandly at him as he digs in. It's those beans he loves so much. He complains the tortillas are cold and asks why she hasn't shown up for 10 days. "I've been feeling bad." He complains about her needing to get him out of there while she puts some beans in a tortilla and hands it to him. "Eat."

Mercedes stirs the pot of beans. Elvira comes up. "If you're cooking it's because you're feeling better. Let's see, let me taste." Mercedes slaps her hand away and tells her not to be stupid.

"You don't eat well here?" Mercedes tells him she talked to Lupita. She asks him how he likes the mole (so not beans after all). "Don't you want to know what I talked to Lupita about?"

Domingo goes chasing after Lupita the day he chased the boys out of the downstairs courtyard. He catches up to her in a hallway, grabs her from behind and asks where she's going.

"What do I care?" He keeps stuffing his face. "You're a dog. An animal. For have done that to a girl for so long, since she was fourteen." "Hey, babe, I don't know why you're upset, but I didn't do anything! I swore it on the Virgen." "Do you know what they do to rapists in jail? Don't you know?"

Lupita sits on the floor, crying.

"Eat. Swallow it." "It's lies, lies started by Elvira. You want the truth? Your daughter, the whore, offered herself to me. Just like you did. Just like her mother. And you know why? Blood calls out. Or have you already forgotten what you were like with me?" Mercedes gets up to leave and he gets nervous and whines to her that he was just joking. "I don't want to spend the rest of my life in jail. You're not going to let me stay here, are you?" Mercedes hugs him and says he won't rot.

Elvira holds the box of rat poison while Mercedes takes a spoonful and starts stirring it into the mole. Then she dumps the entire box in as Mercedes keeps stirring.

Domingo starts experiencing some gastrointestinal distress and coughs blood on Mercedes. She sits him down and holds him.

"How could he rot? I wouldn't let him," says Mercedes.

"He died like a rat," says Elvira,

Domingo finishes dying and the bloody butterfly flies away.

"That asshole didn't deserve to die any other way," says Elvira.

Elvira and Mercedes walk out of the jailhouse together.

"Domingo Martinez murió por envenenamiento."

Domingo Martinez died of poisoning.

"Mercedes y Elvira Gonzalez fueron encontradas culpables en primer y segundo grado de responsabilidad, respectivamente."

Mercedes and Elvira Gonzalez were found guilty in the first and second degree of responsibility, respectively.

"El embarazo de Mercedes, así como su situación emocional, se consideraron atenuantes para su condena."

Mercedes' pregnancy and her emotional state were considered extenuating circumstances for her punishment.

"Fueron sentenciadas a 24 años de prision."

They were sentenced to 24 years in prison.

"Lupita fue declarada inocente y se le permitió abortar, segun las leyes vigentes."

Lupita was declared innocent and allowed an abortion, according to the laws in place.

"Actualmente trabaja en un almacen y se ocupa de sus hermanos."

She is working in a warehouse and taking care of her brothers.

Labels: asesinas