The Shortest Way Home 1s6n1j

The Shortest Way Home

By

Elaine Reidy

This book is a work of fiction. Places, events, and situations in this story are purely fictional and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

© 2004 Elaine Reidy. All Rights Reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

First published by AuthorHouse 08/04/04

ISBN: 978-1-4685-0154-4 (ebk)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2004105307

Contents

Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 About The Author

To my husband

Dick

with thanks for all his help and encouragement.

The longest way round is the shortest way home.

Irish proverb

Chapter 1

Lina wasn’t kneeling - she never knelt. Whenever anyone asked why, she pointed down, shook her head and shrugged, “Bad knee.” That always worked not many people were interested in other people’s injuries. Wearing her black cap and gown, required dress for required attendance at weekly Mass, she was alone in the last pew, hunched over, perched on the very edge of the seat, waiting for the right moment. The chapel was tiny, and Lina was having her usual trouble. The aroma of incense always made her eyes water and her head ache. The smell seemed to displace the air, and she had to fight the urge to hold her breath. Breathe through your mouth, she told herself. If you start sneezing, you’ll call attention. For distraction, she studied the stained-glass window behind the altar. The sun shining through the glass drove streams of jewel colors before it - emerald, ruby and sapphire points of light swirled through the air. The window was impressive, the scenes artfully portrayed, the colors vibrant. The nuns were very proud of their martyrs’ window. There were two groups of martyrs, each facing the altar. On Lina’s far left was Agatha, in a flowing blue toga with gold trim. In one hand she held a palm frond, the symbol of martyrdom, and in the other, a gold salver containing her breasts. Lina glanced around the chapel. The other girls, in identical black robes, were kneeling with bowed heads and folded hands. How can they go on looking so devout week after week? Don’t they ever get bored? Sighing, restless, she looked back at the window. Bartholomew, dark-haired, bearded and bright red, was posed with a butcher knife in one hand and his flayed skin draped over his other arm like a waiter’s towel. Lina studied the back of the priest’s vestment, comparing its colors with those of the window.

The window was livelier, more brilliant, but harder to look at. The priest’s robe was gorgeous, though, forest-green satin with a wide border of gold fretwork. She wondered where they got their vestments. Were there vestment factories? She’d never heard of one. Maybe the nuns make them, she thought. That would be typical - nuns patiently embroidering garments to give priests authority. Lina’s eyes wandered back to the window. Next to Bartholomew, Saint Barbara knelt before her turbaned father, who was beheading her with a scimitar even as he was being struck by lightning. And bound to a tree, his armor at his feet, eyes cast heavenward, was Sebastian, pierced by a dozen arrows. Lina looked away again. This time her eyes came to rest on one of the stations of the cross, carved in dark wood on the wall of the chapel. It was the second station, and Jesus, his crown of thorns jammed tightly onto his forehead, stood meekly while snarling Roman soldiers whipped him and forced the cross onto his shoulder. Quickly she averted her gaze, and found herself looking at another part of the window. St. Lawrence - Lina’s “patron saint”, since his feast day fell on her birthday was roasting on a gridiron. He was clutching a cross, not looking at all unhappy. On the far right, with spikes pushed under his fingernails, Erasmus lay naked on a block while his intestines were being wound onto a windlass. This priest thinks he’s an opera star, Lina complained to herself. The Mass had been going on for more than half an hour, and he was nowhere near finished. He had a high-pitched nasal voice, but he seemed to be really enjoying the sound of it, chanting slowly and monotonously. Pope Clement stood on the deck of a ship, wearing purple and gold pontifical robes and a tiara sparkling in all the primary colors. Instead of a necklace, he had an anchor tied around his neck - he had been martyred by being weighted and thrown overboard. Lina shifted her arm slightly so that the purple shafts of light rested on her black sleeve. She stretched her arm and twisted it, making the spots race and jump, forming a flashing violet band on her arm. Pretty, it’s very pretty - as long as you don’t know the subject matter. The priest rambled on and Lina looked back at the window. There was John the Evangelist, sitting naked in a cauldron of boiling oil, hands lifted in prayer, while

his gleeful executioners ladled oil onto his head. In a corner, two magnificent white horses reared, the feet of Hippolytus bound to their tails. And then there was the nuns’ favorite - Saint Lucy, the virgin martyr, who held what at first appeared to be two ugly flowers. On closer scrutiny, they turned out to be her eyes, sprouting from stalks. Lucy had plucked them out and sent them to the man who would not stop praising their beauty. Lina knew there were other martyrs depicted on the window, but they were obscured by the large crucifix that hung behind the altar. Odd, Lina thought, after all the time I’ve been forced to spend in churches, I’ve never been able to ignore all these images of horror. Most Catholics must - otherwise, they’d refuse to enter a church. But I can’t block out all the torture scenes. I feel sick and disgusted every time I have to go to Mass. Shaking her head, she decided to concentrate on solving the problem at hand how to get out before the Mass ended. Lina had had no choice about which college to go to - it had been Our Lady of Perpetual Sorrow or nowhere. She had decided to accept what she had to, but to draw up her own set of rules. One of them was that she would never sit through an entire Mass. Over the four years, she had made quite a game out of it. Most of the time, she never went into the chapel at all. But when she’d been forced into the building, she’d always found a way out. She thought back over some of her adventures - the stomach cramps, the sudden coughing attacks, the dire but unspecified emergencies. Once she had even crawled out of the chapel undetected. Her favorite escape was the time a young priest, suspicious when she complained of dizziness, had begun to question her closely. Lina had thrown herself at him, “fainting” in his arms, so disconcerting him that he ended his questioning in mid-sentence. Lina, seated in the last pew on the far aisle, waited until the most solemn moment of the Mass, when all the devout worshippers had their heads bowed and their eyes closed. Then she half-rose, silently slipped from her seat and backed out into the vestibule. She knew that none of the other girls would notice her departure, and the priest, of course, always had his back to the congregation or his eyes turned upward. In the vestibule, she quietly opened the door and glanced out. A priest was

heading across the lawn toward the chapel. Which one? Damn! She’d had to deal with this priest before, and another sudden illness would be pushing things. Well, I didn’t spend four years avoiding this to be forced into it now. There was a window in the vestibule, and Lina went over and looked out. It was only about an eight-foot drop to the lawn. She tossed her cap out of the window, then her shoes. Finally, gown billowing up behind her, she jumped. Both of her knees were perfectly healthy, and she landed well. She hoped the priest hadn’t decided to look out the vestibule window. Though she clapped her cap on her head and kept her face turned resolutely forward, he would need no more than a glimpse to know exactly who it was. Her curly hair, the color, her brothers teased her, of an Irish setter, was identifiable from a distance. Not hearing a challenge, she strode jauntily ahead, and made her way toward the orchard for a forbidden cigarette. Our Lady of Perpetual Sorrow was supposed to be a college, but Lina found that idea ridiculous. A college was a place to broaden one’s knowledge, one’s intellectual capacity. This was a place to be brainwashed, threatened and frightened into ritual practices that Lina felt anyone should be able to see were absurd. Much of the program consisted of attending required religious services and studying theology. Lina had often wondered how it was that, from the first time she had been told religious stories, she had been skeptical. In Catholic grade school, she had been constantly in trouble for innocently blurting, “That doesn’t make sense.” or worse, “I don’t believe that!” The nuns were always explaining to her that all the incredible things they told her had to be believed. It was a matter of Faith. Lina wasn’t sure what that word meant, but she soon began to work out a meaning. It was a lot like…gullibility. I definitely don’t have Faith, she realized. And I don’t want it, either. Unable to contain her inquisitive nature, she had been in constant trouble in school. At home, too, she had overheard aunts and uncles and other assorted family saying, “Colleen asks too many questions. She’s too curious for her own good.” It’s a problem I have, she realized. I can’t help myself - I want to know everything. She had to give the nuns credit, though. They had ways of dealing with problem pupils. One of the more effective ones was a heavy wooden ruler. After a few

whacks on the knuckles, even the overcurious Colleen would lose her interest in knowing everything. And nothing much had changed at Our Lady of Perpetual Sorrow, though these nuns didn’t go so far as to hit the students. Enough. Let me concentrate on the good things that have happened to me here. I’ve learned some French and Spanish, not very much, but enough to read newspapers and to carry on basic conversations, and certainly well enough to get away from my family. The O’Reillys hardly even believed in foreign languages, and they couldn’t understand why I’d want to major in anything so strange. And I’ve changed my name. She had been baptized `Colleen’, a name she had detested ever since she learned it meant simply `girl’. Her parents had been surprised at her reaction. “We just liked the sound of it,” her mother told her. “And we’re Irish. It’s an Irish name. A lot of Irish girls are named Colleen.” “What’s the Irish for `boy’?” “Gossoon.” “Have you ever heard of a boy named that?” “Really, Colleen, you can be very difficult.” In Spanish class, the professor had asked each student her name, and then told her the Spanish equivalent. Colleen’s name had stumped her. The exact translation was “Niña”, but that was not a name. Finally, the teacher settled on “Lina”, using the last part of her name and Latinizing it. Lina liked the change, with its ethnic switch, though a glance at a mirror proved she could hardly as a Latin. If her big green eyes and red hair left any doubt, her tiny upturned nose and milky untannable skin shouted “Irish”. She had to it the truth of her grandmother’s words, “Colleen wears the map of Dublin on her face.” As the end of her college days neared, Lina was uncertain about what to do next. Her Romance languages major and journalism minor didn’t qualify her for very

many professions, except, of course, for teaching. And her family had taken that for granted. They had arranged for her to be offered a teaching job in Trowbridge, Massachusetts, her home town. As her mother pointed out, “The Superintendent of Schools owes your uncle a favor.” Lina was determined not to have any part of that. She had been offered a fellowship in French at a midwestern college, but she had had all the schooling she wanted for a while. One day I’ll go to graduate school, but not now. Helen, her favorite aunt, lived in Chicago, and had invited Lina to come and live with her while she looked for a job there, or until she found a graduate program to suit her. Lina thought she might do that, though what she really wanted was to be independent. But with her limited practical abilities, she knew that was going to be difficult. In the orchard, Lina took out the papers she had been fiddling with all week, and began to think again about the President. Lina adored Kennedy. She felt he was fundamentally different from all previous generations of politicians. She believed he really wanted to make the world a different place, and that he could do it. He was so forceful, so strong and youthful, so completely different from the elderly sedate Eisenhower who had been President since Lina had known what a President was. She couldn’t a single phrase from any of Eisenhower’s speeches. But Kennedy’s ringing prose impressed and inspired her. “The world is changing. The old era is ending. The old ways will not do.” Lina certainly agreed with that. She wondered if she had the nerve to take an active part in the important changes she felt sure were coming. Without doubt, Lina was an altruist. Born that way, according to her mother. But it was true - she couldn’t see a baby bird struggling on the ground without climbing precariously up a tree to return it to its nest. But Lina’s family strongly adhered to the principle that `charity begins at home.’ In their philosophy, she thought, it also ends right there - at home. But maybe that doesn’t have to be true for me. Lina read over the application for the Peace Corps. When it had come, she had almost given up at once. It was difficult - not just blanks to fill in, but demanding detailed essays - why she wanted to be a Peace Corps Volunteer, what she thought she could contribute, what kind of assignment her talents suited her for. She had decided to keep chipping away at it, and she had finally finished. It isn’t

great literature, she thought, as she licked the flap on the envelope and sealed it. But I think I did explain why I want to do this, if not to the Peace Corps, at least to myself. Lina put out her cigarette and buried the butt. She got up, brushed off her gown, and went back to her room for a stamp. Six weeks later, she received an information packet about the Peace Corps entrance exam. Lina found out when the test was to be given, and she borrowed a bicycle to get to the municipal building in town to take it. She left the exam feeling good, sure she had done well. Another eight weeks, and the letter from Washington arrived - it was an invitation to accept an assignment in the Peace Corps. Included was a brochure outlining a project of `community development’. Lina had never even heard that term before. What is it? And how am I going to do it? According to the brochure, the Peace Corps volunteers were to live in urban slum areas in Esmeralda, a tiny Caribbean island, and do whatever they could to improve the neighborhood. It sounded pretty nebulous to Lina, and she was chilled by some of the language in the brochure. “Penetration into the slums will be difficult,” it said, and “Volunteers will live alone in squatter colonies in which normal civic services do not exist.” She turned the phrases over in her mind, reading and rereading the brochure. Normal civic services - what did they mean by that? Police, Fire Department, sewers, garbage collection, schools? Maybe all of them? She thought about the smooth running of the city government in Trowbridge, all the municipal workers proudly marching in the Fourth of July parade, in crisp clean uniforms, carrying banners. Things were bound to be much different in Esmeralda. But Lina had worked hard on the application, and she’d made up her mind. ing the Peace Corps is what I really want to do. And, for the first time in my life, I’m going to put all of myself into something. She signed the acceptance form and sent it back to Washington. Realizing that her decision would baffle her family, Lina put off telling them as long as she could.

One Sunday evening, just as she was about to leave for her train ride to Our Lady of Perpetual Sorrows, her mother said, “I’ve got a surprise for you,” producing a paper. A quick glance told Lina it was a teaching contract. “Just sign right there.” “I can’t.” “What do you mean?” “I’ve accepted another offer.” “What offer?” “I…well, I’ve ed the Peace Corps.” She thought her mother might faint. “Look, I’m going to miss my train if I don’t leave right now.” The next weekend, she was barraged with questions and objections. “What’s the point?” “That’s not meant for girls.” “You can’t go off alone, without anybody you know. It’s not proper.” “You can’t afford to waste so much of your life.” Lina at first tried to explain her reasoning, but she quickly saw that nobody was really listening. So she stopped talking, stubbornly going about making preparations to graduate and to move her mountain of belongings back to Trowbridge. Once she overheard her parents discussing her. “It’s too bad she never got serious with any of the nice boys around here. That would keep her at home,” her mother said.

“Well, I’d rather see her go off and have some adventure than get married too young, and be tied down to a bunch of kids forever.” Exactly what he did, Lina thought. “Now, Jim, don’t go encouraging her. She’ll probably get scared enough to forget this idea if you don’t tell her to go ahead.” Lina got a letter telling her she would soon receive instructions for reporting to an island named Palmar for a month of physical training. Palmar, according to the letter, was similar to Esmeralda in language, culture and climate. There the trainees would have the opportunity to adapt to the conditions they would be facing for the next two years. That was to be followed by another two months of vocational training at Glendora Community College in Los Angeles. Training would begin in early July. That left nearly a month for preparation. Lina spent the time buying and packing the things on a list the Peace Corps had sent her. The list consisted mostly of rough clothing for the physical training part - jeans, Army fatigues, sweatshirts, tee-shirts, boots and sneakers. Lina realized she would also need clothes to live in Los Angeles. It was hard to pack for such different needs and for such a long time, and she spent a couple of weeks working on it. After she received her final instructions, telling her to report to Palmar on July 6, she went around to say goodbye to friends. Making her rounds, Lina dropped in on Bill Reagan, the man she had worked for during the last three summers, teaching swimming. She breezed into his office, in the sub-basement of the local high school, and saw him sitting talking to another man. Bill jumped when he saw her. “Colleen, please wait outside.” He sounded nervous, upset. Lina was annoyed - the hell with him, I’ll just leave. Then she thought better of it. No, I’ll give him another chance. He used to be a friend. She watched the visitor leave, then knocked and went in again. Bill sat there looking thoughtful. “Colleen, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to snap at you. But that fellow was investigating you. He said you were being considered for a security clearance, and he asked all kinds of questions about you. Can you believe it?” Lina laughed. “I hope you didn’t tell him anything true.” But she was upset. I’m

not going to work for the FBI or the military. Why do I need a security clearance? And what exactly is a security clearance? The next day, she got a letter from the Peace Corps, enclosing her plane ticket to Palmar and an application for a $25,000 life-insurance policy. She read the application. The policy covered sickness and accidental death. That startled Lina, who had never before thought seriously about dying. Of course, she reasoned, they would provide insurance, it’s the Government after all. She tried to read the application, but the language was so convoluted and repetitious she couldn’t concentrate. She looked at the section headed “Exclusions”, and decided to focus only on that part. She read: No benefits shall be paid for losses resulting from any of the following: (1) Intentional self-destruction. (2) Participating in an assault or felony. (3) War or any act of war, or civil insurrection. Nothing unusual here, she thought. But she paused for a moment before reaching for a pen and g her name.

Chapter 2

The first thing Lina noticed when she stepped out of the plane was the heat. She had known hot weather before, of course, but this was different. It attacked, smashing into her, making her lungs labor and her guts churn. A ing stewardess, seeing Lina’s knees start to buckle, laughed. “Take it easy. The heat after the air-conditioning does that to you. Just move real slow for a while. You’ll be all right.” The initial attack ed, but then the heat settled oppressively on her, sucking away her breath and making the short distance to the terminal seem too far to stagger. The sunlight had weight and substance, even a malevolent purpose. She felt her pale skin begin to itch and sting. In the terminal, Lina looked over the other trainees. She wasn’t very impressed with the group she saw assembling around her. They were almost all undistinguished-looking men, and the few girls seemed odd and homely. But I’ll soon feel different about these people. When I get to know them, I’ll wonder why I found them unattractive in the beginning. And once I get out of this dress and into something cooler, I’ll feel a lot better. Vans picked up the trainees and they started up into the mountains at once. Lina was appalled by the road conditions. Drivers didn’t follow even the elementary rules of the road. Lina’s van careened around turns, its horn blasting. “Why do you think they use the horn so much?” Lina asked the young man sitting next to her. “I think it’s because everybody wants to be in the inside lane, not hanging on the edge of the cliff. But on this twisting road, they can’t see if a car is coming the other way in the same lane. So they blow their horns going around curves. I think when you hear a horn, you’re supposed to get back in your right lane.”

“Swell way to drive.” Lina began to jam her foot on an imaginary brake pedal at every turn. Through the narrow windows of the van, she saw odd structures along the sides of the road - tiny houses, crosses, and distorted plaster statues clustered in apparently random locations. After about an hour, their driver skidded to a halt in the main square of a town. “San Francisco,” he announced. “Pit stop”. The engers filed off, eyeing each other furtively, and looked around. The town was tiny and baked-looking, all the houses huddled around a plaza dominated by an adobe church. The church had a cross on top, and directly beneath the cross was a niche with a statue of a saint. She reasoned from the name of the town that it must be some Saint Francis. She started going over the possibilities in her mind - Saint Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis Borgia, Saint Francis de Sales, Saint Francis Xavier. But the statue, badly weathered, had no distinguishing features. Lina found that strangely disturbing. She always liked to know who she was dealing with. And there was something very odd about the statue - it was grotesque and misshapen. As Lina fumbled in her purse for her glasses, the fellow next to her giggled nervously. “There’s a vulture on the statue’s head.” She found her glasses and looked again. The bird, so still it looked like part of the statue, clutched the unknown Francis’ head firmly in steely talons. Lina laughed to herself. It must be Saint Francis of Assisi, she thought. He’s the one who loved the birds. The plaza contained a jumbled profusion of palms and other tropical plants, none of them familiar to her. All the plants looked dusty and untended. Lina saw something bizarre and went closer. It seemed a parody of a flower - petals a foot long, shading from a brilliant crimson stain toward the center to a pale lavender at the outer edges. The pistil was a thick hairy rod of bright yellow, jutting truculently out of the blossom. As she stood gaping at it, the van driver appeared beside her. “Giant hibiscus. Beautiful, isn’t it?” She nodded numbly. Everyone tramped away after the driver. In the front yard of one of the houses, Lina saw an unfamiliar tree - something like a palm, but low, with ragged eightfoot leaves. Then she looked again. Drooping heavily from the crown was a thick stalk, capped with a huge hideous purple flower. She stopped and stared. Above the flower, green bananas were sprouting from the stalk, each one arching upward in defiance of gravity. I should have known bananas grow that way, she

thought. I should have bought a book or something. They headed west to the edge of the town and entered a crudely-built structure of bamboo and tin. Inside, a zinc bar stretched along the length of the building. There was a ageway on the right side, and they followed the driver through it into a room that seemed suspended in air. Lina was drawn to a window that overlooked a fairy-tale landscape - a hundred shades of green foliage, threaded through with cobalt streams, fell off in tiers to a distant aquamarine sea. The sun that hovered over the horizon was many times larger than she had ever seen it in New England. “Hi. What’s your name?” The question brought her back with a start to the present. “Lina.” She glanced briefly at the van driver and turned back to the view at the window. “It’s fantastic, isn’t it?” he said. “Yes, I can’t quite take it in. I’ve never seen anything like this before. This could be Mars as far as I’m concerned.” “I know what you mean. You’ll get more familiar with it. But it’ll always seem strange.” He held out his hand. “I’m Jerry, the swimming instructor. Welcome to Palmar, Lina. I hope you’ll like it here.” “I have a question.” Lina suddenly felt she might get her knuckles rapped, but she couldn’t control her curiosity. “What were those strange…cities…those tiny buildings we kept ing on the roadside?” “They’re shrines. Memorials to the cars that went over the cliff.” She shuddered. Then she suddenly ed her grandmother saying whenever anyone shivered like that, “A goose is walking over your grave.” The trainees had a couple of beers, then got back into the vans and continued up the mountain, reaching their destination after another hour - Camp Harwood.

As they got out and stretched, the first thing they noticed was a sign informing them that the camp was named after the first Peace Corps Volunteer to die in action. The camp director was waiting for the trainees as they climbed out of the vans. “Listen for your name. The letter after it will be your bunkhouse.” “The messhall.” He pointed. “The infirmary. The barracks. The showers. Now, about the showers, there’s only one shower room. So the girls will use it from 8 to 9 AM and from 5 to 6 PM. The rest of the time, it will be for men.” “Sir,” someone called out urgently. “Where are the bathrooms?” “I just told you.” “No, I mean…” “The latrines,” you mean? “They’re scattered around the grounds. And they’re co-ed.” He laughed. “This is the first time we’ve had women at Camp Harwood.” And you don’t look delighted about it, Lina thought. “Listen for your name and your barracks. Drop off your baggage, and head over to the mess hall.” The six girls had a whole big barracks to themselves. Since the only furnishings were Army cots and wooden footlockers, the girls immediately appropriated empty footlockers and unused pillows. As Lina headed down a trail to one of the latrines, she was startled by a twofoot-long iguana that suddenly appeared in front of her. It was a nightmare of colors - lime-green, a mottled brown, vivid purple - with a row of floppy black spines that started just behind its head and ran the whole length of its body. She focused in horror on its gnarled toes, each tipped with a thick black claw, and on the loose scaly wattle under its chin. She felt the fine hairs on her arms bristle. The creature turned to look at her with opaque eyes, and shot an immensely long bulbous tongue at her. Lina turned and fled.

In the mess hall, the director gave them the briefest of orientations. “The program will consist of an intensive Spanish course and the Wilderness Challenge. Wilderness Challenge has three parts: survival training, drownproofing, and rock-climbing. The staff will be evaluating you at every step of the way - not just your performance in the program, but also your general attitude.” He laughed shortly. “Just relax and enjoy yourselves. And now, it’s dinnertime.” The food was simple and plentiful, cooked by Palmaran men who chattered away in rapid colloquial Spanish. After dinner, Jerry, the swimming instructor, came into the mess hall where most of the trainees were sitting aimlessly. “Anybody want to go get a beer?” He smiled as everybody in the room scraped chairs back and stood up. Jerry led them through the dense foliage. “This place is called Carlito’s. It’s funny, this was just jungle when we set up the camp. But a couple of days after we started building, Carlito showed up and said, `Tienda open. You come.’ We followed him and here was this place, freshly built and ready for business.” The tienda was a tiny shack made of scraps of cast-off wood, with a rusty tin roof. Carlito sold cigarettes, beer and a few junk foods like peanuts and stale American candy bars. The next day they were assigned to four groups for the various required activities. Lina’s first assignment was rock-climbing. Chet, the instructor, explained the first task. “You have to spider-walk up this incline. It’s about 30 degrees. Now watch while I show you how it’s done.” He began to swarm up the rock face. “Keep your arms and legs outstretched and your torso very low. Otherwise you’ll fall over backwards.” I bet he’s never taught girls before, Lina thought, scraping painfully over the rock. This doesn’t work very well unless you’re flat-chested. “Chest down!” Chet bellowed.

The next day they went out to a rock formation. “There are three climbs,” Chet announced. “The baby climb. Every one of you will be able to do that. Or let me put it this way - every one of you better do it.” A few nervous laughs, but Chet didn’t even smile. “Then there’s the advanced climb. And if you make that, there’s a third one.” He paused and smiled then, a joyless smirk. “We call that one the killer.” Looking up at the towering cliff, Lina thought the baby climb seemed killer enough. “Pay attention now. Your life is going to depend on what you learn in the next few minutes.” This time there were no laughs. “First thing - you make one of these.” He showed them a figure-eight made of rope. “And you step into it.” He did that as he spoke. “Then you attach this.” He held up a metal pulley. “Carabiener.” He snapped it onto the rope between his legs. “The safety rope threads through it. And that’s all there is to it.” It seemed easy enough, and soon all of them had made the figure-eight harness. “This is a rock hammer, and these -” he held up a couple of metal spikes with loops on the ends, “are called pitons. You drive a piton into the rock when you need to, and you attach the safety rope. Got that?” They all murmured assent, and he went on. “You won’t need any pitons on the baby climb. It’s ridiculously easy. But when you do need them, you cannot use a piton to pull yourself up. Absolutely not. That way lies death.” A nervous silence. “An even quicker way to die is to use vegetation to help you climb. all of this! You’re only going to hear it once.” After a dramatic pause, he went on. “This baby climb has a lot of obvious handholds and footholds. You should be able to find them easily. But I’m going

to point some of them out to you anyway.” He started describing the helpful places, but Lina couldn’t really see what he meant after the first twenty or so feet of the cliff. “One more important thing - when you know you’re about to fall, yell `Falling!’ LOUD! The guy up top controlling the safety rope will know to tighten up. That way, you won’t fall as far, or hit as hard. Got that?” Everybody murmured again, some of the sounds closer to moans. “I’m going up first. Then - you.” He pointed at Lina. “And you. Then you. The rest of you line up.” He turned to the cliff face and started scrambling up. It looked easy, but Lina didn’t feel reassured. Putting on her hard hat, she started up. Right away, she discovered two things - one, that the safety rope had so much play in it that, while it would stop her from being killed, it certainly couldn’t stop her from falling and banging painfully against the cliff. The other one was that the handholds and footholds Chet had so carefully pointed out from the ground were too far away from each other for her to reach. At five feet six, Lina wasn’t short for a girl, but she couldn’t reach most of the places she needed to make the climb. They haven’t had girls here before, she ed. They haven’t thought these problems out. If I’m going to go up, I’ll have to find my own way. Twice, when Lina nearly fell, she yelled “Falling!” The safety rope was jerked taut, abruptly pulling her up short. At the end, there was only one way for her to haul herself over the rim of the cliff - she grabbed a tuft of strong-looking grass and dragged herself up the last few feet. She sat down next to Chet, who was lying near the edge of the cliff. “Good job,” he said absently, peering over the edge to see how the other climbers were doing. Evidentally he hadn’t noticed her clutching at the forbidden vegetation. “It’s so beautiful here. It’s almost worth the effort of getting up that mountain.” You could see for miles, and the terrain was spectacular. Every possible shade of green - lime, emerald, olive, hunter - surrounded them. The green areas were divided into variously-shaped sections, some square and obviously man-made,

others set off only by the mountain streams that meandered through the landscape. “You don’t have any fear of falling?” Chet asked. “No, not at all.” “You know, in the last group, there was a guy who said he wasn’t afraid of falling, but he had a great desire to jump.” Lina was startled. That was exactly what she had been thinking. It wasn’t a suicide wish - it was just that, from here, she felt as if she could fly. She could picture herself, arms outstretched as if she were going to do a swan dive, launching herself boldly from the edge of the cliff, gliding peacefully over the luxuriant panorama. She could almost feel the wind rippling over her arms, the sense of freedom and joy… “The guy was nuts, of course. I wrote that in his report. I heard they canned him.” “Yes,” Lina agreed hastily. “Yes. He certainly does sound nuts.” After everyone had completed the climb, Chet announced, “Now you’re all going to go back down.” Lina looked around for the truck that had brought them from camp, but it wasn’t there. “You’re going to rappel down.” “Rappel?” everybody said, practically in unison. Chet, with what seemed to Lina a cruel smile, explained. “It’s simple - you pick a partner. One of you sits just back from the edge of the mountain, spread-legged.” He demonstrated, ing the rope around his waist. “To rappel, you thread the rope through your harness, and hold it in your dominant hand, in front of you, and put your other hand on the rope in back of you.” One of the camp staff, who had been manning the safety ropes during the climb, got up and followed Chet’s instructions. “That way, you’re in perfect control of your rate of descent. The action is simple - you just jump down the face of the mountain, pushing off with your feet.”

Before anybody could ask any questions, the man turned his back to the cliff, and just jumped off. Everyone was speechless. “OK, now, everybody pick a partner. Half of you will rappel, then the truck will bring you back up so you can learn to be anchormen for the other half.” I’m not going to pick the only other girl, Lina thought. I’m going to have to get used to being with all these men. There are sixty of them, after all. And it isn’t “us against them” - we’re all in this together. She looked around. There, him. She walked over to a very tall thin young man. He looks thoughtful and intelligent - and anyway, he has green eyes and red hair like me. His hair’s really strawberry blond, though, and his eyes are lighter kind of an apple green. “Hi. I’m Lina. Would you like to be my partner in this mad venture?” He grinned, and Lina knew she had picked the right person. He had a smile that lit up his whole face. And the smile looked comfortable, as if he used it a lot. “Sure. My name is Luke.” “What do you think of all this?” “Well, let me tell you, it’s a far cry from being back home in Georgia.” His soft drawl sounded odd to Lina, coming from such a tall man. “I’ve never been more than fifty miles from where I was born. But no, I take that back. I had to go to New York to catch the plane to here. Now that was a trip. Almost makes jumping off this cliff seem tame.” And he launched into an elaborate of the adventures of a back-country boy in the big wicked city. Luke kept Lina laughing for so long, she almost forgot what they were about to do. All the pairing off was completed. Lina started to get into the line. Luke caught her arm. “Let’s hang back a little. Maybe some people will decide not to do it, and then we can that group. We don’t want to be the first ones to refuse, but we could be the second.” “I never would have thought of that, but it’s a great idea.” They carefully

stationed themselves at the end of the line. A muscular guy wearing a tight teeshirt stepped forward. “Looks like fun. I’ll go first.” “Good for him,” Luke whispered. “He looks like a guinea pig, don’t you think?” Actually, he was startlingly handsome, tall and very fair-skinned, with thick black hair and deep-set blue eyes. He looked like one of Lina’s uncles. Though he moved with the grace of an athlete, he had a restless quality Lina thought she recognized. I wonder if he’s Irish. Luke and Lina laughed and joked and kept to the end of the line. She noticed that the other girl in the group was also positioned near the back. Lina paid close attention as the big guy got his final instructions. Chet said, “OK, Kevin, are you ready?” “Of course. This is going to be fun.” Lina took a close look at his face. Kevin, she thought. With that face and that name, he was certainly Irish. He was clenching his teeth so hard that a muscle in his jaw was jumping. When he glanced in Lina’s direction, she clearly saw a look of fear, almost terror, in his eyes. She was relieved to see that even this hunk was scared, but she immediately felt sorry for him. It must be very lonely for him, having to put on an act, to pretend he wasn’t anxious like the rest of us. A moment later, Kevin disappeared over the side. The mountain swept back just below the edge, so nobody could see what was happening to him. His anchorman fed the rope as he had been taught, and eventually pulled it back up, so presumably Kevin had survived. The next person went over, and the next. The line was getting shorter. Though a number of people looked terrified, nobody refused. “Don’t worry,” Luke said. “, all the other chickens are back here with us. One of them is sure to say no. Then we can say `us too’, and we’re off the hook.” But surprisingly, although a few people had to be convinced, everybody went. When only Lina and Luke were left, they looked at each other and Luke

shrugged. “Who’s first?” Chet asked. “Me.” Lina stepped forward, figuring that if she didn’t do it now, she wouldn’t be able to. Luke and Lina shook hands, then listened to all the final onitions. At the last moment, with her back to the cliff, Lina still didn’t know how she was going to force herself to jump. But suddenly that part was over, and she was leaping down the cliff, giving great pushes off the rocks with her feet and sailing outward effortlessly. It was actually fun, and much easier than going up had been. She arrived at the bottom after what seemed like only a minute. The truck was waiting, and Lina ran over to it, responding to Kevin’s impatient call, “Come on, come on, we’re all ready to go.” Back on top, Lina quickly found Luke. “It was fun, actually fun. And easy. A lot easier than going up.” Though he looked skeptical, there was a flash of relief in his face. “Listen, the longer you wait, the more scared you’re going to get.” She grabbed his hand, started pulling him. “Come on, now. Get at the front of the line.” When everyone had rappelled, the anchors got back into the truck and were taken back down. They all sat on the ground to eat the picnic lunch that had been brought along. Lina found Luke and sat down to eat with him. “Wasn’t I right?” “Yes,” he laughed. “I may actually have enjoyed it. But I’m not sure yet.” After lunch, they got into the truck and were driven to another mountain. “All right,” said Chet, “now we start on the advanced climb.” Forget it, thought Lina. I did the one they said we all had to, and that’s it. “Most of the guys will be able to make the advanced,” Chet went on. “And maybe even a girl or two.” Lina saw Luke making a face. Poor Luke, he’ll have to try it.

Kevin stood at the foot of the cliff and looked up. “I’m ready. But you might as well take the girls back to camp. I can tell you right now neither of them is going to make this climb.” Arrogant bastard, thought Lina. But who cares? Kevin went up first, of course, climbing easily. But he ran into trouble after a while, and he clung there for quite a long time, looking exhausted. Then he started up again, responding to Chet’s shouted instructions on where to find handholds and footholds. Finally reaching the summit, Kevin shouted down, “Hey girls, one of you go back to camp and get a cold beer ready for me, will you?” The other girl, a busty blond, gave him the finger, and everybody cheered. The afternoon stretched on. Lina was glad to see that Luke completed the climb. Slower than Kevin, he moved more steadily and seemed less awkward. Some of the guys, the shorter, fatter ones, didn’t make it. They had to back down, in a humiliating display of failure. The other girl, the “finger girl”, was lying on the grass, chatting with a circle of men, and clearly wasn’t interested in climbing. Chet came over and sat beside Lina. “Are you going to try it?” “No.” She marshaled all her excuses to resist his attempts at persuasion. “OK. I’m trying to get an idea of my time schedule here.” He crossed Lina’s name off the sheet he had on his clipboard. “No girl is going to make this climb, anyway. So we don’t have to waste any time on it. No point in being late for dinner.” He started to stand up. “Wait a minute. I’ve changed my mind. I’m going to climb. Everybody will just have to eat leftovers if we’re late. Or Carlito’s peanuts.” I’m being stupid and stubborn, she thought angrily, as she walked to the foot of the cliff. The last thing I want is to climb up that mountain. And Chet and Kevin are right - I’m not going to make it. I barely made the baby climb. And I’m tired now, stiff and sore. And covered with bruises. She looked up the forbidding rock. I just don’t like the idea of all the females being counted out so soon. Sighing, she started up the mountain. It was much worse than the one in the morning, and as she had expected, she couldn’t reach

many of the handholds or footholds here either. Several times she slipped and fell, slamming against the cliff’s face before being pulled up short by the safety rope. After each painful fall, she vowed she would stop, then decided she’d go on for a few more minutes. Chet’s voice, yelling to her to use holds she couldn’t reach, infuriated her and she began to curse him in a low steady murmur. Later I’ll think about why I was so determined to do this. And maybe try to work on not being so stubborn. But for now, I’m going to forget everything else, and just go up. She rested her cheek against the mountain’s cold stone face, then took a deep breath and went on. OK, the handholds and footholds are too widely spaced for me - at least I’m smaller and lighter than any of the guys. And that means I can use much narrower ledges than they can. Even a crumbly ledge an inch wide will my weight for a few seconds. So, she discovered, would the pitons, although Chet, below, screamed at her every time she used one to hoist herself up. But finally she reached a dead end. Groping out in both directions, she couldn’t find anything to get a grip on. Chet yelled, “There’s a handhold about twelve inches away from your right hand, on the same line.” But Lina couldn’t stretch another inch. Now what? she thought desperately. Well, it’s against all the rules, but there’s only one way for me to get to that handhold. “Tighten up,” she yelled up. “Falling?” a worried voice called down. “No. Jumping.” A brief silence followed. Then the safety rope was pulled taut, and Lina launched herself into space to try for the handhold. She felt it, then lost it and swung back in a wide arc, scraping against the cliff. Just as she was about to start back again, her left foot found a wide ledge, and she struggled for an awful moment, straining all the muscles in her leg before she could stop her momentum, her outstretched arms scrabbling at the stone, fingernails shredding. She scratched her way back so that both feet were on the ledge. Her legs were fiery with fatigue. She looked at her safety rope - it was now at a severe angle, pulling to her right. “Hey,” she yelled up, shaking the rope. “Move over. I’m over here now.” She saw anxious heads peering at her from the cliff’s edge, and Luke yelled

down, “You’re OK. The safety rope’s been moved. You’re doing great! Keep going!” Lina saw that his face wasn’t that far above her. Maybe I can make it, she thought. Then she corrected herself. I can make it. Now the problem, Lina thought, is that I’m on my own. This part of the mountain hasn’t been scouted, and Chet can’t see this far up. Cautiously, she stretched out her arms. Immediately she felt a handhold, just where she would have put one if she had had the choice. Encouraged, she started up again and found a convenient foothold. Luke’s voice called down from above, “Lina, stretch out your right arm. I think there’s a ledge just about at the end of your reach.” He was right, and she went up another few feet. It seemed to get a little easier, and Luke called out helpful suggestions at intervals. After a while, she looked up and studied the rest of the distance she had to cover. It wasn’t far, but she was utterly exhausted now. Woozy and frightened, she stared up at the unrelenting cliff. Tears mixed with the dirt on her face and made deep rivulets on her cheeks. She heard Luke calling, “You’ve got it licked now, Lina! Only a little farther. Come on, we’re all waiting to congratulate you!” Suddenly, the sun’s rays seemed to form a distinct pattern on the mountain. As if on a map, Lina saw a path, not clear, but in a faint and hazy outline. I’m going to make it! She forced her screaming muscles to make one last effort. In another ten minutes, she was standing on the mountain top. Luke hugged her. “Super! You did great. Whoda thunk it?” Everybody swarmed around her, and she felt proud for a few moments. Then anger settled over her. The staff hasn’t given any thought to having girls here. They’re acting like this is an Army bootcamp. And I’m being stupid. They can get all this competition going, but they can’t force me to go along with it. I did that to myself. And now I’ve got to be very careful. If the staff here isn’t going to worry about my safety, I’m going to take care of myself. Back at the mess hall, Luke immediately began telling everybody about Lina’s triumph. After dinner, they made the nightly trek through the jungle to Carlito’s, and Lina was treated to her two bottles of beer. She felt good, though her left leg was so lame she could walk only with difficulty, and she had a deep scrape across her right cheek that was beginning to form a scab. Her fingernails were

torn and bloody, and throbbed dully. Then Kevin said, “Yeah, but Lina didn’t really make the advanced climb. She moved way off the course. Where she went up, it was easier. And she was climbing all over the pitons - that isn’t allowed. So she shouldn’t get credit for making it, not really.” Lina was flabbergasted. What an incredible jerk, she thought. What difference does it make to him whether I get “credit” for the climb or not? There was silence for a minute, then Luke said, “Actually, Lina deserves even more credit. She had the brains to find her own way.” Several people clapped at that, and the ugly moment ed. The next morning, Chet strolled through the area, calling out, “Time for the killer climb. Who’s got the balls?” Not me, for sure, Lina thought. ignoring him. She spent the day swimming and exploring the mountain trails. At dinner that night, a cheer went up for Luke, the only one who had succeeded in making the killer climb. Lina saw the scowl on Kevin’s face and realized he must have tried it and failed.

*****

An evening routine quickly fell into place. Luke had brought his guitar along. So had Stacy, the blond “finger girl” of the climbing group. Stacy was a Californian, and she had the deep overall tan of a beach dweller. She was about Lina’s height, but much more filled out, with an impressively full bust. Lina noticed that all the men watched Stacy when she moved, though some tried to hide it. After dinner, most of the group would head off to Carlito’s for a couple of beers, then return to the messhall, where they’d sit around talking and sipping the beer the guys brought back from the tienda. After a while, Luke and Stacy would tune up their guitars and begin singing folk songs. Luke didn’t sing very well - he really talked the words in the rhythm of the song. But he was a terrific guitar player. Stacy had an unusual voice, both singing and

speaking - much lower than you would expect, and throaty. All the men thought it was very sexy. Lina knew a lot of Irish folk songs. Her grandmother had always sung as she bustled around the house. She was surprised to find that Luke knew many of the songs, slightly altered, but unmistakably the same. But he thought of them as being native to the American South. Though Lina had a good singing voice, she was too shy to sing solo in public. But a few times, she went on singing after everyone else had run out of lyrics. Then, suddenly realizing she was singing solo, she had quickly stopped. Then one night, while Lina was sipping a third beer, Luke began to play one of her favorite songs. Nobody else knew more than the first few words, so Lina went on and sang the rest of the song alone. After that it was easier, and several times Lina sang songs that only she and Luke knew. One night Stacy and Luke launched into A Hundred Miles. “Not a shirt to my back, not a penny to my name, Lord, I can’t go back home this way,” Luke sang. Lina looked around and saw tears glistening in most of the eyes around the circle. “Lord, I’m one… Lord, I’m two…Lord, I’m three… Lord, I’m four… Lord, I’m five hundred miles from my home.” Lina’s eyes were dry. She’d never been homesick. On her first night at summer camp, she hadn’t been able to understand why so many of the girls began to sob as soon as the lights were turned off. “Not a shirt to my back, not a penny to my name. Lord, I can’t go back home this-a-way.” Kevin was wearing a slight sneer. “Hey, play it again. I know another verse.” Kevin sang, “Lord, I’m one… Lord, I’m two… Lord, I’m three months overdue. Lord, I can’t go back home this-a-way.” And he laughed, though nobody else did, not even Lina, who thought it was funny.

Lina looked forward to finding out what “drown-proofing” meant. Jerry explained, “This is a way to survive a boating accident where the boat sinks. Did you know that the survival rate for that kind of accident is very low? Even the strongest swimmer can’t sustain himself in the water for very long. Trying to swim soon leads to exhaustion, and unless the boat wreck is close to land, everyone wll probably drown. “Drown-proofing is a natural way of staying afloat almost indefinitely without getting exhausted. What you do is let yourself sink - at a certain point, you’ll stop. Then, you give a quick arm or leg movement to return to the surface. You take a fast breath and let yourself sink again.” After a full breath, Lina floated straight upright in the water at about eye level, so all she had to do was roll her head back to breathe again. But some people sank so far that the water was several feet over their heads, and one guy went all the way to the bottom of the 12-foot pool. I wonder how far down he’d go in the ocean, she wondered For the non-swimmers, who didn’t believe the assurances about not needing to know how to swim to do it, drown-proofing was agony. Lina liked it, though - she loved the water, and she got the hang of drownproofing right away. After a few days, the difficulty was increased by having the trainees go into the pool wearing jeans and sweatshirts. The technique still worked, and it was certainly easier than trying to swim with all that clothing on. The next day, Jerry announced, “Here’s a new challenge - I’m going to tie you up before you start.” Lina waited for him to say he was joking, but he didn’t. “Here’s how it works. Everybody picks his own personal lifeguard. I’m going to tie your wrists behind your back, then tie your ankles, and finally tie ankles and wrists together. And you’re going to stay in the water for forty-five minutes.” When Jerry rolled Lina, thoroughly trussed, into the pool, she saw the point. Even the small effort she was able to produce in this position was enough to bring her to the surface for air. Still, she began to feel the first twinges of anxiety. Forty-five minutes? I’ll never make it! she thought, and began to struggle, swallowing a mouthful of water.

She had chosen Luke to be her lifeguard, and he immediately picked up on her panic. He began to tell her a story he made up as he went along - the further adventures of a country boy in New York City. Every time she surfaced, he gave her another phrase. “So the taxidriver said, ‘Listen, Mr…Hick.’ “ Relax. Sink. Kick. Rise. Breathe. “I ain’t going to take you to no Empire State Building.’” Relax. Sink. Kick. Rise. Breathe. “And I said, “It says right here on this sign,” Relax. Sink. Kick. Rise. Breathe. “You have to take me anywhere I want to go.” Relax. Sink. Kick. Rise. Breathe. “Not to no Empire State Building.” Relax. Sink. Kick. Rise. Breathe. “Why not?” Relax. Sink. Kick. Rise. Breathe. “Listen, Mr. Hick, can you read?” Relax. Sink. Kick. Rise. Breathe. “Of course. I’m a college graduate.” Relax. Sink. Kick. Rise. Breathe. “Well, Professor Hick, then.” Relax. Sink. Kick. Rise. Breathe.

“See that sign on that building behind you?” Relax. Sink. Kick. Rise. Breathe. “So I turned around, squinted…” Relax. Sink. Kick. Rise. Breathe. “It said, `Empire State Building’”. Laugh. Relax. Sink. Kick. Rise. Breathe. And he went on - for forty-five minutes. Lina relaxed and returned to the smooth rhythm that let her breathe easily. After a while, she noticed that everyone who could manage it was surfacing at the same time, keeping up with Luke’s story. When it came time for Luke’s group to go into the water, Lina knew she couldn’t even begin to match that forty-five-minute monologue. So she gathered together six people and they tried to duplicate Luke’s story-telling technique, alternating in making up the tale.

*****

Another part of survival training involved learning the terrain. A staff member rushed them on a breakneck tour of the surrounding jungle, telling them the Spanish names and the properties of dozens of plants they’d never seen before. “This plant,” he said, “you’ll notice, has these circular openings on the surface of the leaves .If you brush the leaf from the stem end to the tip, there’s no problem, but if you brush it the other way, you push up spines.” “Then what?” Kevin asked “Ever been burned by a cigarette?” At least, thought Lina, that plant is easy to recognize. Another one, innocentlooking, had a sap that was a potent skin irritant. Stacy stumbled against one,

and later Lina saw that she had painful-looking blisters on her arm. I wonder if she’ll have scars. The only thing, Lina thought, I got out of that tour is that I now know there are some very peculiar, dangerous things growing in Palmar. And I’m being stupid again. I shouldn’t have bothered to try to learn the names of the toxic plants what does that matter? I should have tried to how they look instead. Then I’d be able to avoid the dangerous ones. On another trip, they were shown which plants were edible, though Lina doubted she would trust herself to pick out safe plants on her own. Then they had a meal in the jungle, entirely of things they found and cooked themselves. The roots and barks all seemed the same to Lina - green, slimy, blessedly tasteless. And the tree snails, which they pried loose with jackknives and boiled, were acutely fishy, with a rubbery texture. Lina gagged and spit out the required snail. “Don’t worry, ” Luke said. “We’ll never have to bother with all of this - we’re going to live in a city.” “Who knows how to use a com?” a middle-aged man in army fatigues asked the trainees. “I do,” Luke said. “I was an Eagle Scout.” “Great. Anybody else?” A few others raised their hands. “What’s to learn?” asked Stacy. “Isn’t it just that the com always points north?” “There’s a lot more to it that that, young lady. You’ll all have to learn how to use a com. It’s very important.” Stacy shrugged. “And map reading,” he said. “Another important skill.” Not in a city, Lina told herself. I’ve never been able to read a map, but once I’ve been someplace, I can always find my way back there. I won’t need any map. “Look, mister,” Stacy pointed out. “This map doesn’t have any words on it.”

“Of course not. It’s a contour map.” “Right.” She shrugged and smiled. “ It shows relative elevations. From that, once you establish north with your com, you can figure out where you are.” “Right,” Stacy said again, shrugging again. Lina looked at the map. It might as well be written in Chinese.. At night, there were lectures by experts in tropical medicine. “There are a lot of insects here that you may not be familiar with,” one doctor started out. “We weren’t a week ago, but we’ve got pretty close to most of them by now,” Kevin called out. The doctor looked confused, not sure whether to laugh or be annoyed. Kevin held out his arm. “Here, I’ve got a nice selection.” He offered the doctor a pen. “Could you just jot down next to each welt the name of the bugger that made it? Everybody laughed, even the doctor. Besides mosquitoes and fleas, they’d all had trouble with tiny, almost invisible black bugs that bit any exposed skin. The bites caused intense itching, followed, of course, by intense scratching. The result was weeping sores which left dime-sized scars. “The local mosquitoes are not just pests,” the doctor went on. “They carry malaria, yellow fever, and a number of other diseases, including dengue.” “What’s that?” Delia called out. “It’s a bad fever, mosquito-borne as I said. Locally, it’s called bone-crushing fever. The name is because of what it feels like when you have it.” Lina wondered why they bothered to tell them all this, when it was impossible for them to avoid the swarms of mosquitoes.

“But actually, the reason I was asked to come tonight was to warn you of the dangers of schistosomiasis.” “Shit’s so…what?” Kevin yelled. The doctor frowned. “It’s not funny, young man. Schistosomiasis is an incurable, life-shortening liver disease. It’s caused by a parasite that lives in snails, which discharge it into fresh water.” A groan went up. This was the first mention of that hazard. “Fresh water?” Kevin asked. “You mean, like the stream that runs between the barracks and the mess hall?” “Right,” the doctor said. “Stay out of that, and all fresh water.” “Great timing,” Kevin said, turning away in disgust. They had all regularly waded in it or leapt across a path of slippery rocks, often falling into the stream. Pushing each other off the rocks and into the stream had become a favorite game. The cool water felt good after a few hours in the jungle climate. “Can you give us more information about that term you used’?” someone asked weakly. “Which term?” “Life-shortening.” Another night, a public-health worker explained the rules for safe eating and drinking. I should have brought a notebook, Lina thought. I had no idea this was going to be so complicated. The man droned on, while Lina tried to memorize everything he said. “First, never drink anything made with unboiled water. That means, by the way, no ice cubes. Don’t eat any fruits or vegetables that can’t be peeled or cooked. Avoid pork, and be careful about other kinds of meat - eat it only if it is very well done.” “How about soft drinks?” Luke asked.

“The carbonizing kills some microorganisms. But not all. If soft drinks are made with contaminated water they can be dangerous, even when the bottling process is carefully monitored.” “But surely the well-known brands are safe?” somebody called out. “Not so certainly. They may suffer from the problem of contaminated local water. Coca-cola has made a determined effort to control the local water sources. As far as we know, Coke is safe almost everywhere.” “How about canned food?” “Well, there aren’t any canneries in Esmeralda. So all canned foods will be imported. That probably means you won’t be able to afford it.” “I heard alcohol is completely safe.” Kevin said. “Actually, that’s right. The alcohol makes drinks safe. From bacterial contamination, that is. Obviously, there are other dangers involved with a heavy consumption of alcohol.” “I think I’ll take my chances with those,” Kevin muttered. It’s easy to , Lina thought. What it comes to is, don’t eat or drink anything. “Dairy products,” the doctor went on, “almost certainly carry TB bacillus. TB is a problem that has almost disappeared in the States, but you’ll find things very different in Esmeralda. You’ve all been given a skin test for TB, and I’d guess almost all of those tests were negative. When you leave Esmeralda after two years, most of your TB skin tests will be positive.” A collective gasp went up. “That doesn’t mean any of you will get TB,” he went on hastily. “But most of you will be exposed to it during your stay in Esmeralda. And there are other health dangers you need to know about. For instance, even though you’ll see natives going barefoot, you should never do that. You’ll get hookworm.” “Why don’t the natives all have hookworm, then?” Luke asked.

“They do. Chronic infestation causes lethargy, something you might have noticed. Hookworm’s not something you want to get. So keep your shoes on.” The trainees began a long series of inoculations - yellow fever, typhoid, polio, tetanus, and gamma globulin to fend off hepatitis. Everybody was sore and some of them had adverse reactions to the shots. Lina found herself headachy and queasy most of the time.

*****

“Today,” the director announced, “you all start taking Chloroquine tablets.” “What are they for?” Stacy asked. “Not for - against. Malaria. You have to take them. Every Sunday for the next two years, without fail. And for some time after that - you’ll be given detailed instructions.” Stacy held out her hand. “Give me some of those pills. Malaria sounds like the pits.” “Here, have some water.” Stacy waved the glass away. “I don’t need it. I just chew up any pills I have to take.” “Ever take aspirin?” Lina asked. “Yes. Believe it or not, I like the taste.” “In that case, be our guinea pig.” Stacy popped the pills into her mouth and chewed. Suddenly, she began to gag. Somebody handed her a glass of water, and she drank all of it, heaving and choking - barely managing to keep from throwing up. They gathered around her. “What is it, Stacy? What’s wrong?”

“Bitter,” she gasped, and gagged again. Kevin produced a can of beer. “This will wash anything down.” He boldly downed the two tablets and followed them with half the can of beer. He looked up then, and grimaced. Looking miserable, he finished off the beer and left the messhall, coughing. Forewarned, Lina swallowed her pills as fast as she could, immediately following them with a bottle of Coke. But the pills were so intensely bitter, her mouth and throat burned for a long time. This is awful, she thought. As if we’re going into a battle to the death against Nature. A battle where Nature has most of the weapons.

*****

Lina became increasingly infuriated by the way the girls were treated - as if men and women were exactly the same. In theory, she thought, that should be fine, but it doesn’t work out. Women are smaller, lighter and not as strong as men. And none of the activities are organized so that female advantages, like flexibility and endurance are emphasized. That amused, condescending attitude when the girls can’t do something - it drives me crazy. And this concentration on athletics. Every time I get into the pool to take a relaxing swim, some guy asks me if I want to race. All this competition is ridiculous, but laughing at it seems insulting to the ones who are serious about it - like making fun of the devout girls back at Our Lady of Perpetual Sorrow. And I’m getting just as bad as the jocks, she thought, ing herself boasting at lunch that she could drownproof longer than anyone else. And more than once, I’ve managed to turn conversations around so I could let everyone know I’m in the most advanced Spanish class. One night, the director announced, “The staff is throwing a party for the trainees. Tomorrow night.” A cheer went up. The mess hall was cleared out and a steel-drum band set up in one corner. Lina had never before heard a band like this. They could make their drums sound like almost any instrument. The music, usually very upbeat, sometimes had a

melancholy sound she found appealing. “Come on, everyone,” Stacy shouted. “Limbo contest!” Finally, something I’m good at, Lina gloated. And as the pole was lowered and people were eliminated, she became elated. “Great job, Lina,” Jerry said as she squeezed under the lowest level after everyone else had dropped out. “The winners,” the director announced. “Lina and Kevin.” Everyone clapped. But Lina was annoyed. I went under a lower pole than Kevin. I should have been the sole winner. They don’t declare male and female winners in any other contests around here. Kevin turned to her. “Hey, Lina, stick with me and you’ll always be Number One.” “I was already Number One without you.” He laughed. She scowled. Stop it, she warned herself. Don’t let yourself be forced into becoming someone you don’t like - arrogant and competitive. Like Kevin. The dancing continued. Though there were ten guys to every girl, Lina was immediately thrown back to her high-school days, when she had hugged the gym walls at dances, praying to become invisible. I hate dancing, anyway - a primitive ritual, where people who barely know each other and would not consider touching under normal circumstances, feel free to clutch each other and gyrate to the music’s demand. And I’m a terrible dancer. So why am I standing here praying someone will ask me? She left, and went back to her barracks to read. After a while there was a knock on the door. “Come on in.” “I saw your light on,” Luke said.

“Why aren’t you at the dance?” she asked. “I was just going to ask you the same thing.” “Well, I guess I’m getting a little tired of doing everything I’m told. Especially when it’s something I hate.” Luke laughed. “Me, too. I decided I’m not going to dance just to please the staff.” “Well, the steel drums are great. I’m glad I got a chance to hear them. And actually, it was a nice thing for the staff to do, to have a dance for us.” “Don’t kid yourself. They’re all there at the dance, watching what’s going on. Taking notes. Trying to decide if we’re normal. Not drinking too much, or being anti-social.” He laughed. “Or being too social, sneaking off in pairs into the jungle.” “Oh boy, Luke, I never thought of that. But of course you’re right. I’d better get back there. With only six girls in the group, I’m sure to be missed.” “Never mind. You entered the limbo contest. Won it. That’s enough to show you’re one of the group. Just make it a point to tell everybody tomorrow how you twanged your back in the contest.” Lina laughed. “Luke, you can come up with a way to wriggle out of anything, can’t you?” “Why not?” He shrugged. “No sense in getting into trouble when you don’t have to.” Lina and Luke talked until the dance broke up, late.

*****

Lina had had three years of Spanish in high school, and four in college, but she couldn’t speak it very well , and she was alarmed to find out that she couldn’t understand the workers around camp either. They spoke a dialect completely

different from the slow pure Castilian she had heard in college. What a lousy education I’ve had - spending years reading and analyzing poetry and fiction in Spanish. But I didn’t learn to speak at all. If I’d gone to a real college instead of Our Lady of Perpetual Sorrows, I’d be able to speak Spanish. At first, there were only four in the advanced class, but after a few days, Luke was sent to them. After the first class, Lina said to Luke, “You speak pretty well. I’m too shy to try to chatter away like that. No wonder they changed you from the intermediate class.” “Actually, I was in the beginning class.” “Wow, somebody made a mistake asg you. How many years of Spanish have you had, anyway?” “Well, none. When I heard I was going to be assigned to Esmeralda, I got some books and records from the library and spent all my time on them.” “I never heard of anybody learning to speak like that from records. Do you speak Italian or French or something?” “No, I’ve never even met anybody before who didn’t speak English.” “What’s your secret?” He laughed. “I think I just like to talk and joke so much that I’ll find a way to do it, even if that means learning a whole new language.”

*****

The Kennedy baby was born while they were at Camp Harwood. There was a shortwave radio in the mess hall, and the trainees congregated around it whenever they weren’t busy. They eagerly followed the doctors’ reports, but as it became apparent that there was no hope for the infant, a depression settled over the group. Lina had a sense of utter frustration - at first, she had been sure that with so much expert medical knowledge concentrated in one place, the baby was sure to survive. When the announcement came that he had died, Lina got up and stormed off. She heard a voice behind her - Luke’s, maybe, solemnly say, “It was God’s will.” What kind of God is that, she thought furiously, who demands infant sacrifice?

*****

All through the weeks, the trainees had been hearing about the three-day trek they would have to make. It didn’t really sink in for Lina until the night before they were to set out, when they gathered in the mess hall to get final instructions. The camp director stood in front of the assembled group intoning the rules. “First, you may not take any food or any money with you. Food must be obtained from nature or donated by friendly people along the way. Second, you will have a com and a contour map, with a route marked out on it. These are all you may use to get back to camp.” Oh, no, thought Lina, this is what those damn map-reading classes were about! “There are points marked on it in red - these places have some noticeable landmark or feature, which you are to note down, to prove you actually followed the trek route.”

He looked at them sternly. “The last rule - absolutely no rides.” Lina felt nervous, realizing she was actually going to have to do this - it sounded like an outlandish, even dangerous, venture. The next day, they were divided into trek groups, three to a group for women, two for men. “Stacy Ingram, Charlotte Broderick…and…” The director shuffled the papers in his hands. “Colleen O’Reilly.” Climbing into the back of a truck, Lina eyed her companions. Stacy she knew, from the nightly singing, but…Charlotte, I think her name is - what do I know about her? Let’s see, she always seems to be dreaming, usually has her nose stuck in a book. She must be a WASP - tall and thin, with straight blonde hair and light blue eyes. Now what did Luke say about her? I - she comes from a rich family in Charleston, and she went to…Radcliffe? Vassar? Something like that. Ah well, it’ll be fun to be with Stacy. I get such a kick out of her - that truckdriver’s vocabulary. Lina asked, “Do either of you know any Spanish?” Charlotte said, “Not a word. I spent my junior year in Paris, so my French is pretty good, and I speak some German. Everybody says Spanish is a lot like French, but I can’t make out a word I hear around camp.” Stacy laughed. “Hey, look, I figure if I speak English slow enough, and use enough hand language, I’ll make out all right. How about you? Know any Spanish?” “Well, I majored in Spanish in college, but it wasn’t this kind, and I didn’t really learn to speak very well, only read.” “Great news,” said Stacy, who had only listened to the first few of Lina’s words. “A language expert. That’s cool. This trek should be a gas, then.” Great. If I’m the Spanish expert, we’re going to be in for a lot of trouble.

She was almost afraid to ask the next question. “Did either of you get much out of the survival training?” Charlotte said, “Well, I have to it I was reading during most of the nature lectures.” “Something juicy, I hope,” Stacy said. Charlotte hesitated. “I don’t read much fiction.” “What, then?” Stacy asked. “Well, I’m going to get a doctorate in Renaissance art and literature, and I thought I’d get a head start on it…” “Sounds great,” Stacy said sarcastically. “Well, how about you, Stacy”, Lina cut in. “Can you get us back to camp? Using just the com and the contour map?” And Stacy confessed, “I haven’t had time to do anything since I got here but flirt. Isn’t it super? Sixty guys and only six girls. A little bit of heaven.” “How about contour map reading? Did you catch on to that?” Lina asked. Stacy shook her head. “I figured if I ever needed any of that stuff, I’d just ask one of the guys to do it for me.” Lina looked at Charlotte. “I thought it was pretty boring, so I just skipped out and went back to the barracks to read.” “Renaissance art”, said Stacy. “Maybe that will get us back to camp.” Lina began to feel very worried. I might be able to manage the com, but I know that screwy map is beyond me. Abruptly, the truck pulled over to the side of the road, and Chet got out. The girls jumped down. “This is where your trek starts. Head off the road right here, into the woods. We’ll see you in three days.” Lina debated whether to ask him for help. No, she

decided, he’d enjoy it that we asked - but I don’t trust him to give anything useful away. I can only hope the trek routes are more carefully thought out than the climbing ones were. The girls scrambled up a hillside, and soon the road was lost to view. They were in a small clearing. A maze of footpaths led off in all directions. “Let’s see which way we’re headed,” said Charlotte, who was carrying the com. They gathered around, and she tried to take a reading. She shook the com and tried again. “Which way do we go?” asked Lina. “I don’t know. I guess I don’t know how to use this thing. I can’t get any reading.” “Try again,” Stacy said. “You try.” “Forget it. I wouldn’t know a reading if I got one.” “Let me see,” Lina said. She took the com and did what she had learned in class. The needle swung aimlessly. She tried again. “I think we have a little problem here,” she said, her voice shaking. “This com is broken.” The three girls looked at each other, trying not to panic. “Let’s try the map,” said Stacy. They sat down and studied the wordless map for a few minutes, turning it slowly in all directions. None of them could make the slightest sense out of it. “Well,” said Lina, “we know the dropoff point is directly behind us, and north is marked on the map, so that means the camp is to the northwest. Right?” Nothing but blank stares from the other two. Finally Charlotte said, “Yes, I guess

that’s right.” Stacy just shrugged. “OK,” said Lina, “now, which way is northwest?” “How are we supposed to figure that out?” asked Stacy. “Let’s see,” said Charlotte, “we know the sun comes up in the east, so it should be easy to get all the directions.” They looked up at the sky. Though it was only mid-morning, the sun appeared to be directly overhead. Maybe things are different in the tropics. “Let’s all look very carefully at the sky,” Lina said, “and try to figure out which side the sun is nearer to. That side must be east.” They all studied the sky for a few moments. “What do you think?” Lina asked Stacy. “Oh Christ, I don’t know.” Finally, she pointed. “I think it’s a little more toward that side.” Charlotte said, “No, I’m almost sure it’s a little more toward the other side.” Lina looked up again. The sun still appeared to be right overhead. She thought for a moment, then said, “Charlotte’s right. That way is east. So we have to go the other way.” They put on their heavy backpacks and trudged on. It was very wild country, wild in a tropical way Lina found completely unfamiliar. Tendrils of vines twisted from one tree to another, linking them into a single green mass. Branches arched and twined over the path, forming a nearly lightless tunnel. The trees must be a hundred feet tall, Lina thought. Tree roots arched up out of the ground at aggressive angles, and parasitic plants clung to the trunks and branches. The hanging rope-like vines were called lianas, Lina ed from the jungle walk, and the pink things that grew along them without any visible source of moisture or nurture were bromeliads. Thick spongy leaves brushed the girls’ faces as they walked. Lina found the trees hard to differentiate - the leaves were so similar - all oval, thick and leathery, with smooth edges, and sharply-pointed tips. No oaks here, or maples or chestnuts, like back in Trowbridge. Giant red and yellow butterflies

flapped ahead of them, along with metallic-feathered hummingbirds that looked like enormous insects. Lizards ranging from only two or three inches to threefoot iguanas skittered over leaves and branches. Even the few clearings they came across were wild and overgrown. Lina tried not to think about snakes, telling herself they were just as anxious as she to avoid confrontation. Harder to ignore were the spider webs stretching across the path, some of them with strands as thick as string. In places where the path was so narrow they had to walk single-file, Lina made sure she wasn’t the first. They had been walking for about five hours when they came to a village. As they trudged down the main street, a woman on a porch gestured them inside. They smiled, nodded, and entered the house. Sitting at a table set with metal bowls and spoons, Lina spotted several children, who had clearly just vacated the chairs, staring at them from a corner of the room. The woman picked up a pot and ladled some rice onto each plate. She followed with another pot, this one containing boiled beans. One of the lecturers had mentioned that these were the staples of diet in this region of the world. The meal seemed quite tasteless to Lina, but the other two ate it hungrily. Lina introduced herself by her Spanish name, and the woman pointed at herself and said, “Ana”. Charlotte and Stacy said their names in English. The woman looked blank, then giggled. Charlotte pointed to herself and nodded to Ana, “Carlota.” Mi, mi,” Stacy asked. “Mi…namo.” “I don’t think there’s any equivalent.” “Just make up a name for me, then.” Lina thought for a moment. “Felicia.” It meant “Happy”, and that seemed right for Stacy. Afterward, they went over to the schoolhouse, just a single room with forty or so children, ranging in age from about six to sixteen. The students seemed to be out of control “Well, maybe the sight of three girls wearing Army-surplus khaki and combat boots is just too much for them,” Charlotte said.

“I hope the teacher speaks some English,” Lina said. But she didn’t. They tried to explain that they just wanted to watch the class, but they couldn’t make themselves understood. Then Stacy took out a small wooden instrument and blew into it. In minutes she had taught the students and the teacher a little dance-game. Everyone was enchanted, and Lina was impressed and grateful. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a wooden flute before,” Lina told Stacy. “And I thought you blow a flute through the side.” “It’s a recorder.” “Recorder? Like in tape recorder?” “No, you idiot. Does it look electric?” “Whatever it is,” Charlotte said. “I’m so glad you had it. Just as they told us in class, non-verbal communication can work out pretty well.” “I think we’ve done OK in our primary encounter with the indigenous population,” Stacy said, and they all laughed. A family gave them dinner, rice and beans again, and boiled plantains, which Lina found soapy and bitter. They sat and talked with the family until the sun went down. Actually, Lina talked, in very basic and stilted Spanish, while Stacy chattered away incomprehensibly and Charlotte just sat. After sunset, Lina saw an astonishing thing. The sky suddenly burst into light, with a river of stars along one side. “Look at that!” Lina exclaimed loudly. “What is it?” The family looked a bit alarmed. Lina finally sorted out the Spanish of their explanation. It was the Milky Way. I can’t believe it, she thought, embarrassed. I’ve heard the term, of course, but I never really knew what it meant. It’s so beautiful. And I’m so ignorant. What a strange result of civilization - imagine having to come to an isolated village like this to see something that even illiterate peasants have always known. A child with a candle led them to their sleeping quarters - a stable under the house. Inside, they sat down on the cement floor. As soon as Lina’s eyes

adjusted to the dark, she gasped. The walls were covered with two-inch-long cockroaches. “Nice wallpaper,” Stacy commented. “Let’s just ignore them,” Lina suggested. They all lay down on their Army blankets. “Better cover up completely,” Charlotte said. “Are you crazy?” Stacy asked. “It must be over a hundred in here.” “Yes, but I have a feeling those roaches are going to start to move as soon as we blow out these candles.” “Oh, God, you’re right,” said Lina, pulling the scratchy blanket up over her face. She lay sleepless, stiff and cramped. Somewhere, a radio was playing - not music, but a kind of chant or choral response. It was too far away for her to make out the words, but the cadence somehow seemed familiar. Some time later, she awoke with a start - it was still dark, and she had the sickening feeling that it had been the touch of little legs on the back of her neck that had awakened her. Little legs, but far larger than even the most enormous cockroach’s. Rats, she thought, and struggled to control her panic. She’d been dreaming of her grandmother, dead for ten years, and not often in her thoughts any more. She fell off to sleep again, awakened this time by an unattractive animal sound, and a rude poke in the back. She rolled over, and looked into the unlovely face of a pig. At least the roaches were gone. Maybe the pigs ate them. And a glance at the rising sun showed her that their wild guess about directions had been accurate. They were headed, roughly, northwest. Now if only we’re right that the camp is northwest. On the second day, they found themselves in a part of the country sprinkled with gumdrop-shaped hills. “Dolmens,” said Charlotte. “How do you know that?” Stacy asked. “I took a geography course in college.”

“Must have been a nice change from Renaissance art.” The hills were strange and lovely, a lunar landscape. “Goddamn it!” Stacy yelled when they found themselves on the top of yet another hill. “I can’t understand. No matter how hard we try to skirt them, we always end up climbing.” Lina fished out the map and tried to penetrate its mysteries. “Throw that stupid thing away,” Stacy said. “Give up on it. The only way we’re going to get back is to keep asking people the way to San Francisco.” “Unfortunately, we only met the one person today. And she didn’t know the way.” “Well, we can’t just sit here. We’ve got to keep moving.” Wearily, they picked up their backpacks. “At least the scenery is beautiful,” Charlotte said. “So lush.” “It’s the goddamn rain that does it,” said Stacy. Rain poured down for an hour or two every noonday. The girls had Army ponchos, but it was so hot inside the rubber that they were equally drenched whether they wore them or not. And a strange sticky red mud that built up an inch thick on the soles of their boots made footing hazardous. Lina tried not to think what they would do if one of them fell and broke a leg there - it would take a helicopter to get an injured person out. And where would they find a phone to call for help? “I don’t think I’m ever going to get used to this weather,” Lina said. “I always feel sticky and dirty. My clothes are always soaked. And look at my hair, all frizzy and stuck together.” Gingerly, she felt the raw red patches of sweat-burn ringing her eyes. The three girls spent all of that day walking, talking, and smoking. Stacy was so different from the Easterners. The first Californian Lina had ever known, she was so exuberant and frank it was startling. Her favorite topic of conversation

was men, or, actually, Lina thought, sex. She seemed to take it for granted that everybody did it, as often as possible, with as many partners as possible. “You know, the only problem I see here is finding a good place for…well, a private date. I mean, just slipping off into the trees is no good here, what with all the wildlife and the goddamn bugs. You girls find any good nesting places?” Charlotte and Lina looked at each other and gulped. Lina could tell that Charlotte was in about the same position as she, and finally Stacy got the picture. “Wow! “ she said indignantly. “You girls have to get out and around more. You’re going to dry up. I mean, what are you waiting for? Listen, this is the perfect opportunity - so many guys and so few girls, you can have your pick. After I take my pick, of course.” Charlotte and Lina laughed uncomfortably. “Hey look, this is l963, not 1863. Girls can do whatever they want, whatever guys do. You don’t have to believe everything your mother told you.” Lina could see her point - for Stacy. But not for herself. Lina would drink, smoke, curse, do almost anything else to thumb her nose at her Catholic upbringing. Almost anything - but not sex. That was different - it was her body, herself, after all, and she was not going to herself out among the masses just to feel defiant. She was too proud to be able to stand the thought of boys gossiping about her. And she knew they did gossip. She ed her older brothers’ vicious comments about girls who “did it”. “So who are you waiting for? Prince Charming?” That startled Lina, whose mother had often asked the same question, when Lina as usual had refused a second date with someone her mother liked. “Look,” Lina said, “I’m not all that anxious to get paired off. So if it’s not the perfect guy, why bother?” “Just to have some fun, of course. You don’t have to get married, just enjoy yourself.” Lina didn’t think the idea of having sex sounded like fun. She didn’t enjoy

necking very much, especially when things got heavy. All the puffing and panting and pawing repelled her. “And even if you have a Prince Charming,” said Stacy, “you can be sure he’s out there having a good time, not waiting around hoping to meet you.” Charlotte simply said, “I’ve never met a man who interested me very much.” Stacy looked at the two of them as if she had been sent off for three days with a couple of lunatics. The girls stumbled up and down the dolmens all of the second day. Fortunately, just before dusk, they came upon a small farm - four tiny buildings, thatchroofed and very poor-looking. The people who were sitting on the front porch of one of the houses called out, “What are you girls doing here? Can we help you?” Lina replied in her skimpy Spanish, “We’re heading for San Francisco. Is this the right way?” “Yes. But it is far from here. You must come in and spend the night with us.” They had the usual rice and beans, boiled plantains, and a special treat - a kind of canned meat that resembled Spam. Later, when the girls had a brief tour of the little farm, Lina noticed cans of the meat stored in a shed. She studied the labels on them - PROJECT AGAINST HUNGER: GIFT OF THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES TO THE HUNGRY OF THE WORLD. This is lousy, Lina thought. Here we are on this silly endurance test, and we’re taking food from such poor people. How generous they are, she thought. Try walking down a street in Trowbridge, scarcely speaking English, explaining you were on a trek and had no food or money. You’d probably end up in jail, not in someone’s hastily-vacated bed. Lina offered a half-pack of cigarettes to their hostess. But she said, “Somos cristianos. No fumamos.” First I’ve heard that Christians don’t smoke, Lina thought. Can’t be Catholic. The third day they started out early, armed with the family’s vague directions to San Francisco. Soon after they left the farm, they headed up into wilder country than they had ever seen before. They were high in the mountains, and all day they never saw another person.

“God knows where we are,” Stacy said. “This is supposed to be a very overpopulated country. If nobody lives up here, it must be the end of the earth.” “Yes, I’m worried, too.” Charlotte said. “By the calendar, we should be arriving back at camp soon, but that doesn’t seem likely.” “How do you know we’re not near the camp?” Stacy demanded. “The terrain is completely different from what was around the camp. The plants don’t look the same.” “This is part of their experiment, you realize that?” Lina said. “They deliberately gave us a broken com. They probably gave other groups the wrong map, and they’re going to write a report about how we coped with the situation. Or didn’t.” “Oh, come on now, Lina, don’t be so cynical,” Charlotte said. “It was an accident. Not some kind of diabolical experiment.” They had nothing to eat after breakfast, and toward late afternoon Charlotte said, “I guess we should try some of the things they taught us about getting food from the wild.” “I’ll help you if you want,” said Lina, “but I’d rather not eat than have those slimy green roots and rubber snails. “Uh, well,” Stacy said. “I can’t very well which plants they said we could eat. I guess there are some poisonous plants around here.” “I’m sure,” Lina said. “How about you, Charlotte? Want to pick out some food?” “No, now that I think about it, I’m not very hungry.” So the three sat around smoking. “Now, look, girls, I have to insist on this,” Stacy said. “This is such a perfect opportunity. You have to start thinking about some kind of romance. I mean, we’re completely outnumbered by men, and so many of them are great-looking.” “Who do you like?” asked Lina.

Stacy mentioned a few guys, most of whom Lina didn’t know very well. “How about Luke?” she asked. “Not for me. He’s cute, of course, and he’s a riot, but I’m not interested.” “Oh, what’s wrong with him?” “Nothing’s wrong, he’s just not my type. Too serious.” “You just said he was funny.” “I mean he has a good sense of humor. But he’s a serious type, not just out for a good time like me.” “How about Kevin?” asked Charlotte. Stacy scowled. “What a waste! He’s really gorgeous. But I can’t be bothered with the God’s-gift-to-women type.” “I know what you mean,” said Lina. “But I feel kind of sorry for him, too. He’s very troubled, I think. Angry and unhappy.” “Well, you worry about him if you want. I’m not a shrink.” At twilight, they still hadn’t seen any signs of habitation. “This is it. We can’t walk any farther.” Charlotte’s voice sounded worried. “We’re going to have to sleep in the open.” Stacy asked, “Anybody how to pick out a good place to sleep?” Lina said, “I don’t think we have to worry about building a lean-to. It’s warm. I think we can just sleep on the ground. It’s only for one night, after all.” They chose a place at the foot of a cliff. The ground was spongy and not uncomfortable, and they wrapped themselves in their blankets. “I’m ready to freak out,” said Stacy. “We don’t have a clue where we are, and we’re already overdue.”

Charlotte said, “What worries me most is that we haven’t seen anybody at all today. We can’t get directions or help unless we find somebody.” “Well, it’s too late to do anything now,” Lina said. “Let’s just get some sleep. Tomorrow, we’ll have to try hard to find help.” Darkness fell suddenly, something Lina had trouble getting used to. Immediately, the air was alive with flying forms, silent and eerie. Charlotte said, “I’ve never seen so many birds flying at the same time. And after dark - that’s strange. Are they owls?” Lina answered, “I don’t think owls flock. And I don’t think they have owls here. Maybe they’re…” But she couldn’t even come up with a guess. The birds here, like everything else, were different from the ones in New England. Lina lay on her back. There was still a little red from the sunset left in the sky, and the gigantic moon was crimson. The strange birds continued to swarm, and Lina saw several of them clearly outlined against the moon. Their wings were oddly angular, and they seemed to be clawing at the air rather than floating on it. And the wings were translucent - Lina could see the red moonlight shining through them, outlining bones that looked like stretched-out human fingers. They looked like…she thought for a moment, then let out a shriek. Stacy struggled to get to her feet at Lina’s scream, but Lina quickly said, “Stay down! Those are bats, not birds. Hundreds, thousands of bats, right over our heads! Stay down, or they’ll fly right into us.” In a soft voice, Charlotte said, “I don’t think so. Bats have a kind of radar. I don’t think they’ll get near us.” “What do bats eat?” asked Stacy, her voice shaky. “Insects, mostly, I think,” said Charlotte. “Aren’t they vampires?” Stacy gasped. “Some are,” Charlotte answered, “but I don’t think there are any vampires here. I think that kind is only in South America.”

“Aren’t we in South America?” asked Stacy, “Or pretty close?” “Now listen, the people at camp would have told us if there were vampires here,” Charlotte insisted. “They told us about every other horrible possibility.” “I’m not so sure,” said Lina. “Maybe they just held back this one thing to challenge us.” “Or maybe they didn’t know,” Stacy added. “A lot of the people at camp don’t know shit about this place.” The girls were quiet for a few minutes. Then Stacy asked nervously, “What are we going to do?” “There’s really not a lot we can do now,” said Charlotte. “I don’t think we should try to move. Let’s just cover up completely, so there’s no exposed skin for them to get at, and try to get some sleep.” Lina, sweltering under her blanket, did eventually get to sleep, though she awoke with a start before dawn, her heart pounding, the fading memory of a terrifying dream flooding her brain. In the morning the air was still. Cautiously, they got up. “Oh boy,” Stacy said. “We really did pick the wrong place. Look, there’s a cave right there. Bat heaven.” “I want to see how the cave looks in daylight,” Lina said. “Anybody game?” “Uh, not me,” Stacy said. “I’m all batted out at the moment.” Charlotte said, “I’m not really interested. Go ahead, Lina, we’ll wait for you here.” So Lina went into the cave alone. But not very far. The floor of the cave was a kind of living soup. The droppings from the bats and occasional fallen bats - created a rich food for vermin, and the floor heaved and pulsed with feeding mouths, huge blind worms, gigantic beetles, and other half-seen horrible creatures that made Lina shudder. The stench was appalling,

acrid and stifling. Overhead, the bats, surely millions of them, hung peacefully upside down, their wings folded around them like ragged blankets. Where there should have been faces, there were instead dreadful excrescences, naked pink flaps of skin, bulbous and suggestive. Occasionally, Lina could see a flash of teeth - fangs, she thought, but she couldn’t even make out the location of the teeth in the face. The bats seemed to have no eyes, so she couldn’t identify that normalizing feature, either. They’re blind, aren’t they? Maybe they don’t have eyes. Occasionally, one of them spread its wings lazily and flapped them a few times before folding itself up again. The wings looked like charred paper, black and brittle. Another bat gave its wings a mighty flap, and she saw that it had a tiny baby tenderly nestled upside down on its breast. Lina recoiled. Even monsters mate, she thought. And have baby monsters. They walked all morning, still without seeing any house or person. Around noon, they guessed, they came to a wide river. “Well,” said Lina wearily, “we need to find a bridge or a ford. Which direction seems most promising?” The other two shrugged. “Let’s try this way,” Lina said, and they began trudging along the waterside. At about three, desperate, they decided they were unlikely to find an easy crossing. “Let’s just find a place to cross,” Stacy growled. “Screw the damn shits-sowhatevers!” “Right!” Lina laughed. “Just let them come anywhere near me - in the mood I’m in, I’ll eat them for lunch!” They put their heavy backpacks on top of their heads and started into the water, alert for the crocodiles they had been warned about. It was very muddy and slippery, and deeper than they thought, armpit level at places. On the other side, they stopped and put on dry clothes - dry but filthy from numerous falls in the sticky red mud. They were exhausted and famished now, and Lina knew that some of the wetness on her face wasn’t sweat. Another two hours’ walk found them on the

steep slope of yet another precipice. Stacy was in the lead as they reached the crest, and Lina heard her gasp and pull back. “What’s the matter?” she asked. “I don’t know. What the hell is that?” Lina cautiously peeked over the ridge. The valley below was covered with a spider’s web of metal. In the center of the web was a huge saucer-like structure. A tiny figure - human, they could tell - was moving along one of the strands toward the saucer. “This looks like someplace we shouldn’t be. Whatever it is, it’s got to be military or secret.” Charlotte, who had moved up beside Lina, said, “You’re right. They wouldn’t put something like this way out here unless they were trying to keep it secret. This isn’t America. If anybody saw us here, they’d think we were spies. And we don’t speak Spanish well enough to explain ourselves.” She means, Lina thought, explain fast enough to keep them from shooting us. “Hey, just a minute,” said Stacy. “Nobody who talks to us is going to believe we’re spies. We’re in deep shit here - we’ve got to get some food soon. And we’ve got to figure out where we are. We can’t wander around in these goddamn mountains forever.” “Stacy’s right. We’ve got to take the chance,” Lina said. “All right,” Charlotte agreed, “Let’s give it a try.” They scuttled and slipped down the mountainside. A startled man in a guard booth shouted “Halt!” and slapped at a holstered revolver as the girls skidded to a stop in a cloud of dust. “What the hell is this?” he squawked. Then, “Que…quien…porque…” he sputtered, his Spanish accent poor. “Thank God,” Stacy said. “American.” The three girls tumbled over each other to tell their story.

The man laughed. “I think I’ve got the picture. Just a minute.” He made a quick phone call. Another man soon came out, and the girls explained their problem again. “Peace Corps…” “Trek - supposed to be three days…” “No food for two days…” “Com broken, and this weird map…” “Let me introduce myself,” the man said. “My name is Terry Fisher. I’m the director of this facility. This man you have just met is Phil Marlin. This is his watch.” The girls must have looked confused, because he continued. “We’re not supposed to have guests, but I think we can make an exception in your case. Come on in.” “Ron,” Terry called as they entered. Another man appeared. Terry was older than the other two, and was clearly in charge. “What can we do for you girls?” “First thing,” said Stacy, “we haven’t had anything to eat for two days.” “We can take care of that right away. We were just about to eat dinner ourselves.” And in minutes, hamburgers, French fries and Coke were set on the table. The girls ate frantically, and the men sat there smiling to themselves. Phil said, “There are a couple of other things here I bet you’d find interesting showers and a washing machine and dryer.” Within an hour, wrapped in bath towels with their hair dripping wet, they were feeling much better. A washing machine in the rinse cycle gave off companionable music. “What’s going on here?” asked Lina. “This place looks like something out of a science fiction movie.”

The men laughed, and Terry explained, “Actually, you’re pretty close. We’re here to send transmissions out into space, and to receive messages, in case there is anyone else out there.” Charlotte was amazed and fascinated. “I’ve never even dreamed such sophisticated equipment existed. How wonderful! Imagine the thrill of getting a message across millions of lightyears of space. Imagine finding out we aren’t all alone in the universe!” At about ten, food appeared again - ham and cheese and bread, potato chips, cookies, Coke, beer. Phil went out and relieved Ron. The men put on records and asked the girls to dance. Lina and Charlotte said they were too tired, but Stacy started dancing with Ron. The others just sat around and talked. Lina saw that Stacy and Ron were dancing very close, and she began to feel awkward. “Uh, I think I’ll go to bed,” she said. “Long day, you know.” “Me, too,” Charlotte said. Terry showed them to a room, plain and neat, with two bunk beds. “I’ll take a top bunk,” Lina said. “Stacy won’t want to have to fumble around getting up there if she comes in late.” But in the morning, Charlotte and Lina were alone in the room. The other bunks hadn’t been slept in. They dressed and went out into the common room, where they found Terry sitting, drinking coffee. “Where’s Stacy?” Lina demanded. “She’ll be along in a little while,” he said, clearly embarrassed. “Let me make some breakfast for you.” Lina and Charlotte were silent as they consumed scrambled eggs, bacon, toast and orange juice. Afterward, they sipped coffee and talked. “Terry, you must be thrilled about the possibility of receiving a message from space,” Lina said. “Yes, in a way.” He finished his coffee before continuing. “But I’m more

worried than anything else.” “I see what you mean,” said Charlotte. “We’ve all read so many stories about invasions of Martians. But I guess there’s no way you can limit your message to peaceful people.” “No, not really. So it’s certainly possible we’ll somebody who’d be hostile.” “Oh, I don’t think so,” Lina said. “Any civilization advanced enough to send messages across the universe would have to be beyond the warlike stage.” Charlotte and Terry turned to look at her. She stared back for a moment, then blushed. “Actually, that’s what worries me more than anything else,” Terry said. “We aren’t doing such a great job of getting along with each other. Can you imagine how we’d react to intelligent creatures with tentacles or shells, or with no heads?” “I never thought of that before,” said Charlotte. “But of course you’re right. Maybe we’re not ready to meet other civilizations.” “How sad to think we might be the most dangerous creatures in the universe,” Lina said. “Well, on that depressing note, I have to leave you. I’ve got work to do.” Charlotte and Lina began reading magazines. About an hour later, Stacy and Ron came into the common room, looking sleepy. Stacy was wearing a man’s bathrobe. They went into the kitchen. Accompanied by giggles, slapping sounds, and suspicious silences, cooking smells spread into the common room. Ron said, “Come on, girls, I’ll give you a ride back to camp.” “Great!” said Charlotte. “No,” said Lina. Charlotte and Stacy looked at her. “We said we wouldn’t take any rides. You two can go with him if you like, but I’m going to walk.”

Stacy said, “Jesus, Lina. Don’t be such a twit. We’ve been walking for four goddamn days. It was only supposed to be three.” “And we had a broken com,” Charlotte pointed out. “How far is it to camp?” Lina asked Ron. He looked at a map - a real map, not a contour one - and said, “Camp Harwood is about fifteen miles from here. But it’s pretty rough terrain. It will take you at least today to make it, and you might have to spend another night out.” “That’s crazy,” Stacy said. “Look, you two can do whatever you want. But I promised to walk, and I’m going to walk.” “You’re not leaving us any choice.” “Sorry.” They set out about an hour later, armed with a proper map and plenty of food. They walked the whole day, taking brief pauses to eat, and arrived back at camp at 7 PM, on the fifth day of their three-day trek. “Well, we just sent out a search party for your girls,” the camp director said. “Where were you?” “We found a nightclub out there in the jungle, and we couldn’t tear ourselves away from the roulette wheel,” Stacy said. He glared at her and stalked away. So, Lina,” she said. “Great trek. We must get together and do it again soon.” She gave Lina the finger and turned away. An hour or so later, Lina ran into Luke at the mess hall. “How was your trek?” “Well, I was with Kevin.” “Oh, ugh. I guess I shouldn’t ask any more questions.” Luke laughed. “Well, I’m now part of the world’s fastest trek team.” Lina gave

him credit for not saying any more about Kevin than that. She couldn’t imagine two people less likely to enjoy each other’s company for three days than Kevin and Luke. “Did you notice,” Luke asked, “how everybody listened to the rosary on the radio at eight every night?” The rosary! That had been the half-familiar chanting she had heard - and why she had dreamed of her grandmother. Grandma, had tuned in to the rosary every night at eight and murmured the responses, clicking her crystal beads. At the end, she had kissed the silver crucifix lovingly and replaced the beads in a silver box lined with purple velvet. As a young child, Lina had thought the beads were diamonds, and was sure they and their beautiful container were treasures of great value. That, thought Lina, was before I realized what religion was all about. Luke’s voice interrupted her reverie. “Isn’t it awful that the Palmarans are so taken in by this idolatry?” “My feelings exactly,” Lina said, delighted to find that Luke agreed with her. He went on, “With so many religions around, all of them insisting they have the only way to salvation, it’s easy to be duped.” “Right!” she exclaimed. “I’m so happy to know I’m not going to be numbered among the damned. I don’t drink, I don’t smoke, I don’t dance, I don’t gamble, and I don’t worship idols. Anybody who does is on the road to hell. But I belong to the true church of Jesus. There’s only one road to Heaven, and I’m glad I’m on it.” She started to say something, but Luke was off on a sermon, and he was not about to be interrupted. Now he didn’t sound at all like the Luke she knew. Even his language was different - bombastic and stilted, something he’d memorized. He went on and on, and Lina tuned out most of what he was saying, catching only words here and there - salvation, the holy Word, the son of God. When he paused for breath, Lina said, “Listen, Luke, I have to go now. I need a drink.” And she took off for Carlito’s, and had two fast beers.

Lina avoided Luke as well as she could for the next few days. Hating confrontations, she always just tried to keep out of embarrassing situations. In this case it was hard, though, since their Spanish class met just before lunch, and she and Luke had always walked to the mess hall together. One day, Luke caught her arm as she was about to leave class. “Hey, Lina, you’re making it clear you don’t want to be around me. I hope I don’t have plantain breath.” He smiled. Lina saw there was no avoiding it. “Luke, I was very upset by your harangue.” Luke looked puzzled. “Don’t you discussing religion? How you were so lucky to be saved while others were wallowing in their ignorance?” “Of course I . I thought you agreed with me.” Lina could see this was going to be difficult. “No, Luke, I don’t agree with you. And I was offended by your sermon.” “Offended? I don’t get it.” “I’m an atheist.” “That’s not funny.” “I’m not trying to be funny. I’m an atheist.” “You can’t be!” “I am.” “But that doesn’t make sense.” “It makes perfect sense.” “Haven’t you read the Bible?” “Yes. The Bible is fiction. If you read it straight, without being told what to

think, you’d see that.” He was clearly shocked. “I’ve never met an atheist before.” He looked at her closely. “Here, let me push back my hair so you can see my horns.” He laughed weakly then. “This is a lot for me to take in. Where I come from, anybody who doesn’t belong to our church is called damned. Even other Christians. But almost everybody does belong.” He was silent for a few moments. “All right. I guess I have some rethinking to do. But - you say you don’t believe in God.” He shook his head. “I can’t understand that. It seems impossible.” “Listen, Luke, I’m not going to convince you of my beliefs, and you’re not going to convince me of yours. So why don’t we just agree not to try? We have lots of other things we can talk about - let’s just agree that religion is off-limits. Otherwise, we can’t be friends.” “All right,” he said, she thought reluctantly.

*****

The last ordeal of the Wilderness Challenge program was the Solitary Experience - a day, and more seriously, Lina thought - a night, spent alone in the jungle. Once again, no food was permitted. Lina decided in advance that a day without food was preferable to the slimy, fishy-tasting, possibly fatal alternatives, so that was one worry out of the way. She had to build a shelter, though. That was one of THE RULES. She wandered around for quite a while trying to the nature lectures she’d vaguely listened to. All right, I’d better just start somewhere. She gathered up some branches at random and made a very crude lean-to, just recognizable enough as man-made to mollify the staff who would come the next day to inspect her “campsite”.

It was all right while the light lasted, but the sudden fall of darkness disturbed her. New England woods didn’t look at all like this exuberant tropical overgrowth. Nervous, she eyed the unfamiliar terrain. I don’t know these plants, what good or harm they can do. And I’m…repelled… by their sheer lushness. They’re too fecund. Their phallic shapes and vivid coloring are the kind of thing children giggle at when they notice the matching electric blue face and genitals of mandrills at the zoo. She sighed. All this naked fertility - it seems forbidden and evil. And the vermin is more repulsive than the vegetation - the huge cockroaches, the tarantulas, the iguanas, the black moths, each wing bigger than my hand. Even the mammals are repulsive - bats and mammoth pigs, donkeys with their hideous cries, wild dogs. And all of these animals always copulating. Maybe I should leave now. How am I ever going to fit into such a savage and naked place? But, of course, I’m not going to live out here in the jungle. I’m going to live in a city. And things are bound to be more civilized there. She crouched miserably in her lean-to, wondering if she should just try to stay awake all night - maybe that wouldn’t be so scary. Or maybe it would be worse. Something dripped on the back of her hand and stung viciously. She flipped her lighter and looked up. A milky white liquid was oozing out of the branches over her head. Another drop fell, striking the ground just beside her. Oh no, I’ve made the lean-to out of one of the bushes with the poisonous sap! She quickly crept outside and used her lighter to guide her to the nearby stream. She washed her hand, scrubbing over and over at the spot where the sap had dripped on her. Then she looked around. It’s completely dark. I can’t start over on the shelter. But that’s all right. I can spend the night outside - it’s warm, and I did it once before. She thought of the bats and shuddered. But they didn’t hurt me, she reminded herself. Of course, that terrain was very different from this - it was high country, with pine trees and other temperate plants. Plants I understood. This is rainforest, and there are reptiles and insects here that didn’t exist where I spent that night out. And I wasn’t along then. At least there aren’t any dangerous animals. They told me that, promised it. Lina went back to her lean-to and sat next to it. She reasoned that any creatures

that might be around would avoid something clearly man-made. She dozed off, then awoke with a jolt, her left eye burning and throbbing. She had never felt such agony. Frightened, she gingerly felt the area. Her eye was grossly swollen, and she couldn’t open it. I’ve got to get back to camp. She started to get to her feet, then, feeling dizzy, she threw out her arm. She caught the top of her rough lean-to, and the structure collapsed, pitching her onto her face on the ground. Painfully, she turned over and lay still. It’s completely dark, and I don’t know exactly where I am. With only one useful eye, I could get lost trying to get back to camp. Or injured worse. I’d better stay where I am - morning can’t be that far off. What could have bitten me? Was it an insect or an animal? Was it a bat? Oh, no, will I get rabies? Her eye poured tears and continued to swell. She felt queasy, and began to retch and shake. Ominous noises began in the jungle, and every little rustle made her flinch. The mosquitoes tormented her. Finally, she began to cry. By morning, when her rescuers came for her, Lina was doubled over with cramps, and she was nearly delirious. They took one look and drove her in to San Francisco to a doctor. He diagnosed spider-bite, gave her an injection, and said she should take aspirin every four hours. Through her delirium, Lina heard the doctor berating Jerry, who was with her. “This is dangerous country. It is not a place for Americans to come on romantic adventures. Palmarans don’t spend the night alone in the jungle. And if one of us had to do it, he would know how to avoid the dangers. This ignorant gringa did not have a chance.” Just what I was saying, said Lina. But she didn’t know whether she said it out loud or not. She didn’t leaving the doctor’s office or arriving back at camp. She slept - for what she later learned was a whole day and a night awakening occasionally only to moan and cry and sip a little water. The Solitary Experience for all the remaining trainees was canceled.

Chapter 3

They flew from Palmar to New York, changed planes and took off across country. It was a prop plane, and a very long flight, with two refueling stops. Luke and Stacy played the guitar and sang until they got tired and fell asleep. Some of the men began to play cards. When Lina drifted over to watch them, Kevin asked, “Hey, Lina, want to learn how to play gin?” Lina smiled to herself. She thought of her brothers Pat and Sean, nine and ten years older than she, teaching her to play cards. I must have been about four, she gauged. The boys were obsessed with being manly, and they would play gin, poker or blackjack for hours. Stuck with babysitting for Lina, they’d just deal her in. And she was so happy to be included in the big kids’ games, she stifled her boredom and fatigue. The boys concentrated on the techniques of the cardsharp, paying little attention to Lina’s fumbling attempts to keep up. But she listened to them and watched everything they did. And she developed her own game, ignoring their traditional strategies. She learned to play very fast, to cultivate an innocent, slightly bewildered look, to rely on hunches, and not to follow any pattern for very long. And she was just plain lucky, a fact she accepted without question. After a while, the combination of luck, unpredictability, and careful scrutiny began to pay off. She started to win more and more often. Pat and Sean were astonished and annoyed to hear her tiny voice - more and more often - whooping “Gin!” When they complained that she didn’t play logically, she just clapped and crowed, “I won!” Lina ed when she was about six, winning a hoard of pennies from an uncle who was at first indulgent, then indignant. He had stalked off to warn her father, “That kid has picked up a lot of bad habits. Lina’s father just laughed. “Listen Joe, if the stakes are too high or the kid is too sharp for you, don’t get in the game.”

But Lina began to avoid playing cards. She hated herself as a competitor. She was obsessed with winning, and had a ruthless, go-for-the-jugular instinct. And she began getting headaches whenever she played more than a few hands. She was bored now, though, and annoyed at Kevin’s arrogance. “All right.” She sat down. An hour later, Kevin got up. “That’s the last time I play cards with a girl!” “That’s the last time you play cards at all for a while, Kevin!” one of the other guys said. “Lina cleaned you out!” Everybody laughed. Kevin scowled and walked to the back of the plane. After another hand, Lina left the game too, and went to him. “Kevin, I just wanted to play for fun. But you guys insisted everything be for cash. It doesn’t matter to me. I’ll give you back your money.” “No. It’s yours. You won it.” “I don’t want it.” “Well, flush it down the toilet, then!” He turned away from her. Lina took out what she figured she had won from him, put it on the empty seat next to him, and went off to talk with Luke, who wasn’t at all tempted by the card games. Later, as she ed by Kevin’s seat, she noticed he was asleep, snoring noisily with his mouth open. The money was gone. When the trainees finally arrived in LA, it was past midnight. By the time buses had picked them up, it was 1:45. But nobody was sleepy, and the smokers were desperate. Lina ed having her last one just after the pilot announced they were ing over St. Louis. “Listen,” Kevin asked the bus driver urgently, “is there someplace around here to get cigarettes at this hour?” “I’m not sure. I don’t know this neighborhood very well. But I think there’s a little Chinese grocery a few blocks over. Those places sometimes stay open all night.”

Sleepy college personnel directed them to their assigned rooms, then promptly disappeared. The trainees dumped their luggage in the rooms and reconnoitered. “Anybody want to try the Chinese grocery for weeds?” Stacy asked. “Or would you rather try to get some sleep in these rooms? Must have been a year or so since they’ve been aired.” About half a dozen people trooped over to the avenue where the bus driver had said they might find cigarettes. Kevin was the first to enter, and Lina bumped into him when he stopped abruptly. There was an odd smell in the tiny place, like burnt-out caps. When Lina peered around Kevin, she saw a man lying on his back, taking up most of the store’s tiny floorspace. He must have fainted from the heat, she thought. Then she looked up and saw a Chinese man with a gun in his hand. Kevin tried to back out of the store, pushing into Lina and the rest of the crowd. The Chinese man smiled, bowed slightly, and stuck the gun in his belt. “No worry! This just robber I shoot. Come in! What you need?” “I think we’d better just go.” Kevin was nervously trying to back out, but he couldn’t move. The people in the back of the group were pushing forward to find out what was happening. “I lose everything I make - one, two, three time,” the Chinese man explained. “I rob two times last month. Cops no help. So I get gun. When this man say give him money, I show gun, but he not run. He go for gun. So I shoot. Boom!” Kevin again pushed hard against the crowd behind him. “He crazy - drugs. Animal, not man.” And he kicked contemptuously at the body. “Is he dead?” Lina asked Kevin. “I don’t know. And I’m not about to find out.” “Well, let me see, then.” She stepped past Kevin and knelt by the man on the floor. There was only a little

blood on the front of his dirty white shirt. Gingerly, she touched his arm. It was warm - he might still be alive. She pushed him up on his side, trying to turn him over. The man seemed very heavy, and when she pushed hard, he abruptly flopped over. He sprawled out with his arms flung wide and his legs twisted. The back of his shirt was decorated with a huge glistening crimson flower. Ropes of congealed blood stretched between his shirt and the floor. The puddle the body had been concealing was beginning to darken and coagulate around the edges. A stench rose into Lina’s face, making her gag. The man’s face was turned toward her as she crouched on the floor. He was young, unshaven, with long greasy hair. His clothes and shoes were very shabby, and he looked pathetic and innocent lying there. “He’s dead,” Kevin said. “Definitely.” A siren began to wail in the distance. “Well, I’m going to get my cigarettes anyway.” He stepped over the dead man’s legs and handed the storekeeper a bill. “Two packs of Camels.” He took his cigarettes and the change and stepped back over the legs without looking down. The others had already backed out of the store and disappeared. “Come on, Lina. Before the cops get here.” “We should stay. Tell them what happened.” “We didn’t see anything. Come on.” “I don’t know…” Kevin started out the door. “You shouldn’t have touched the body, Lina. You’re going to be in trouble with the cops your first night here.” “Yes, miss, please. You go now. I talk cops.” Lina got up and scrambled out of the store, running to catch up with Kevin, who was walking purposefully away, not looking back.

“Wasn’t that horrible?” “No. The guy asked for it, and he got it. Justice, that’s what it was.” Lina shuddered. “Have you ever seen a dead person before?” “No.” “It’s sad. He was so young, so poor-looking.” “He looked like something you see on the highway. Dead meat. Animal meat. And that’s just about what he was.” Lina noticed that Kevin’s hands were shaking as he lit his cigarette. “Here , Lina, have one.” “No thanks.” “What’s the matter? Think the weeds are tainted?” “Don’t be silly.”

*****

The Peace Corps quarters were all right - apartment complexes, built around swimming pools. In the men’s quarters, four trainees were assigned to each twobedroom unit. The women’s quarters had only one bedroom, two women to a room. The apartments also had a kitchen, a bathroom and a living room. All the women were in one complex, the men a little up the hill in a more primitive place, small and dingy with only a hotplate and a half refrigerator. Charlotte and Lina were roommates and Stacy was next door. The next morning they were awakened at eight and told to report to the auditorium for psychological testing. I’ve got to stop thinking about the scene at the grocery store, Lina told herself - I’ve got to seem normal.

They were first given a tiresome and repetitive true-or-false test. This is so silly, Lina thought. Only a moron or a maniac would fail to guess the right answer to a question like: I feel like a tight band is being pulled around my head. Then they had a Rorschach test, with the inkblots projected on a screen, and multiple-choice answers. The possible answers suggested interpretations Lina hadn’t even noticed, so she started reading the answers first, then looking at the slide. Actually, nothing looked at all like genitals to her, but she checked that answer a few times just to be sure she seemed normal. At the there was a long battery of intelligence and aptitude tests. The director met with them in the afternoon. “Classes and all other planned activities are mandatory. You’ll be carefully watched, as you were in Palmar. At the end of the training period, a will be flown in from Washington to conduct deselection proceedings.” Lina laughed. Deselection? Don’t they mean selection? Or rejection? The program at Glendora Community College consisted of Spanish, “Community Development”, and physical training. During the next few days, they were each assigned to a psychologist, who would call them in to review their test results. Lina’s psychologist was named Starkie. When somebody pointed him out to her, she felt really nervous. He was about 60, short and slight, prissily dressed, with a grey goatee. He looked serious. Very serious. The other psychologist, Dr. Chalmers, seemed to be much more sympathetic, and a lot less threatening. He was younger, about 40, Lina guessed, and had a pleasant smile. “Ever been to a shrink before?” Stacy asked. “No. Have you?” “Oh, sure. Lots of times. It’s nothing - kind of fun. Of course, these guys - well, it’s different. They’re out to get us. So we have to be careful what we say.” After Stacy’s first session, she told Lina, “You know, that guy Starkie tried to be tricky. He told me I’d given a couple of really weird answers on the tests. Trying

to shake me up. Like the broken com - that?” She laughed. “I’m not very shakeable - I just gave him one of my looks.” She demonstrated. “He’s done the same thing to a couple of the guys, too. He must be dumb - thinking we don’t talk about what’s going on. I mean, he tells us not to, but if he’s got any sense, he should know we’re all going to stick together.” Dr. Starkie had small dark eyes that seemed to be boring into Lina’s head. He had a faint odd smell - cinnamon, maybe. Visions of a hamster running endlessly around a wire wheel ran through her mind. “I’d like you to explain why you answered `True’ on this question - People are always watching me and talking about me”. “Oh, did I answer `True’ to that one?” Lina tried to sound cool. “That was a mistake. Here, give me that, I’ll change it.” She reached out toward the test paper he was holding. He hastily pulled the paper out of her reach. “Well, think about it. Perhaps the `mistake’ was subconsciously the answer you meant to put.” “Oh, no, I’m sure that’s not it. In fact, I’m surprised I made the mistake. Can I look at my test paper?” Dr. Starkie looked annoyed. “No, you can’t. Well, let’s talk about something else. Your results on the Rorschach test were not in the normal range.” Lina laughed. “Well, you have to it the test was pretty weird. I mean, a multiple-choice Rorschach test? Anyway, did you know that we had spent a day and a night in planes and only had a few hours’ sleep before sitting thorough all those hours of tests? No wonder we all made so many mistakes.” “All?” “Oh sure. Everybody’s talking about it - how many of us made silly mistakes.” He frowned. “You may go. You must make a series of appointments with the secretary on the way out.” The trainees were divided into groups of twelve. Each group was responsible for organizing a Friday night party. Attendance at the parties, as the director

reminded them, was mandatory. The psychologists went to all the parties, and Starkie sat on the sidelines jotting notes as he watched. Chalmers chatted with the trainees over a can of beer, sometimes asking one of the girls to dance. Bad luck, Lina thought, for me to draw Starkie instead of Chalmers. Bad luck just when I don’t need it. Under the circumstances, Lina was surprised - some of the parties were actually fun. One of the groups invented a game called “Golpe de Estado” - Spanish for coup d’état. Everybody was divided into teams, and each team earned points toward getting control of strategic locations - the National Palace, military posts, airports, radio stations - by winning various contests. Beer-can stacking, waterballoon toss, and carrying a lighted cigarette on a spoon were some of the events. Lina’s team won, and she got up on a chair and announced, “We are the new government. We ask the citizens to stay calm and obey the new leaders.” Suddenly another team, armed with cardboard and wooden weapons, staged a coup and ousted them, ending the game. Since a lot of Lina’s group were musically inclined, they staged a two-part party - one part consisted of having people make their own instruments out of bits of wood, metal and glass, following the group’s instructions, and play the Esmeraldan National Anthem, while Lina sang it. Copies of the song were distributed to the whole group. The second part was dancing instructions in the culebra, the Esmeraldan national dance. The group had found a few people who knew how to do it, and they started showing the others. There was some basic group instruction, then the announcement, “If you think you have the hang of it, go in the back and dance. Otherwise, stay in front and practice.” “Come on, Lina,” Luke said. “Let’s go in the back .” They hopped around and talked and laughed, waving off the instructors when they tried to help. The next day, she had an appointment with Dr. Starkie. “I think you have delusions about your abilities.” She shook her head. “I don’t have any idea what you mean. You’ll have to explain.”

“You cannot think of any instance of this?” “No. None at all.” “You and Luke went back to dance with the experts, when in fact, neither of you had mastered the steps at all.” Lina started to laugh, then realized that Starkie was dead serious. Oh, boy, she thought. If that’s the kind of thing they’re judging us on, we’re all in trouble. Starkie was constantly baiting her. “Open up. Tell me who you are, what you want.” She tried to be non-committal and “normal”. She felt she was grinning foolishly a lot of the time. The word deselection no longer seemed ridiculous to her. One day Starkie said, “I have heard that you like swimming.” “Oh, yes, I can spend hours in the pool. It’s the only sport I’m good at.” She was happy to be on neutral territory for once. “I spent four summers teaching swimming, and…” “With and without your bathing suit.” She was startled, then scared. She had heard there had been a skinny-dipping party at Camp Harwood, and she was sure Starkie would find that proof of immorality. “No, no. That’s not true. I never go swimming nude.” “Nude? I never said anything about swimming in the nude. But how interesting that you immediately interpreted it that way.” He wrote for a minute in his notebook. Then he looked up at her. “Let us explore that fact.” Lina thought furiously. What was he talking about? Starkie’s face was expectant, but her mind was blank. “Either you swim in a bathing suit, or you swim nude. What else is possible?” “You have several times been pushed into the swimming pool fully clad. You do not these incidents?”

“Oh, that - sure.” It was considered fair game to nudge in anyone who was standing close to the edge of the pool. “And how have you felt on these occasions?” She shrugged. “It’s no big deal - it’s funny. And anybody standing close to the edge knows it’s bound to happen.” “It does not make you angry to have your clothes ruined?” “Ruined? Water doesn’t ruin clothes. At least not the kind I wear. They dry out as good as new.” “And your appearance? You do not feel anger that you appear in public with your makeup smeared, your hairdo spoiled?” “Well, I don’t wear makeup, and I don’t have a real `hairdo’. I just let my hair do what it wants. So it’s not a tragedy for me to get wet. I just change my clothes, and when I dry out, I look pretty much the same as before.” “I wonder if you have a trace of masochism in your personality. You do not mind being put in a humiliating position.” “Look, doctor, we’re all friends here. There’s nothing humiliating about a little horseplay among friends. I mean, it’s a good sign. Nobody bothers to kid around with people they don’t like.” “You know, you tell me almost nothing about yourself. You come across as a complete blank. I have nothing to evaluate you on but your results on these tests. And I am not impressed. Do you think all you have to do is score high on aptitude and intelligence tests? There is a lot more to it than that.” This was the first Lina had heard that she had scored high on the tests. Whatever he says, that can’t do me any harm. “Well, look at what’s going on here - I want something, and you can keep me from getting it. I wouldn’t be very smart to tell you anything bad about myself, would I? I might be crazy,” she laughed, “but, as you point out, I’m not stupid.” Starkie didn’t laugh. He just looked at her intently, then wrote furiously in his

notebook. Lina ran into Luke one day when he was leaving Starkie’s office, and he looked grim. “What’s the matter?” “Oh, snake-eyes is driving me nuts. He keeps getting me into these awful arguments about religion. He’s trying to prove that everything I believe in is false. And I have to try to act cool and keep smiling. It’s a lot of strain.” “Snake-eyes? Is that what you call him?” “Well, he does have snake eyes. He watches every little movement, then pounces. And he’s dangerous - a snake.” Lina laughed. “I feel sorry for you. It sounds like you’re having an even rougher time with Starkie than I am.” “And there’s nothing we can do about it.” “Don’t you think the worst part is the group therapy?” There were two mandatory group therapy sessions a week, one with each of the doctors. For Lina these were ordeals she dreaded so much she actually shook while she was there. “Well, it’s definitely not my favorite part of the program.” Twelve people sat around in a circle - that was so the situation would seem friendly. Most of the time everybody stuck together. They knew what the purpose was - the psychologists were supposed to recommend some of them for deselection. But once in a while, someone forgot to think about what he said. Kevin was talking about a volleyball game. Lina wasn’t paying much attention she was trying to become part of the wallpaper, while surreptitiously maneuvering to get a look at her watch. “We’re doing fine, about to win. But then - disaster! Little miss screw-up comes up to serve.” “Who’s that?” Dr. Chalmers asked.

“Lina.” “What?” Lina gasped. “You lost the game for us. Just completely screwed up. Have you ever served a ball over the net? Ever?” “No. I can’t help that. My arms aren’t strong enough. And I have a lousy aim.” “Excuses! And you didn’t even give a damn - joking while you fucked everything up. You didn’t care that we lost.” “Kevin, it was just a game. A game among friends. Who cares who won?” “I do!” Lina just shook her head. “How do you feel, Lina?” Chalmers asked. She shrugged. “It doesn’t matter.” “It does. Come on, say what you think.” “Well, being a good athlete doesn’t mean anything to me. I know it does to some of the guys - to Kevin. But I don’t care - I mean, it has nothing to do with a person’s character.” “Of course it does,” Kevin said. “You just say that because you’re a such a klutz.” “You just think it’s important because you’re a jock.” “Oh, I’m just a helpless female!” he said in a falsetto voice, simpering and blinking rapidly. “Dumb jock!” “Bitch!” “Hey,” Charlotte said. “that’s enough. We’re all friends here. Aren’t we?”

“Yes,” said Lina immediately. “I’m sorry, Kevin.” Everybody looked at Kevin. His cheeks were red, his eyes flaring. He shook his head, started to say something. “Cool it, muscleman!” Stacy said from across the circle. “We are friends.” She leaned over. “We’re all together in this. We need each other. Know what I mean?” “Yeah, yeah. Right. I guess it doesn’t matter.” “That’s not enough,” Charlotte said. “Apologize. Lina did.” Kevin scowled. “Sorry,” he muttered, not meeting Lina’s eyes. When the session was over, eleven people surrounded Kevin. “Listen, you idiot,” Stacy said. “You can hold your Irish temper for an hour at a time, can’t you? Or do we have to set up a warning system? Maybe we should all get up and give you a kick when you’re being stupid.” “Hey, now, listen…” “No,” said Charlotte. “You listen. You have to keep yourself under control. Tonight was bad enough. With Starkie, it would have been a lot worse.” Kevin scowled. “And you need us,” Stacy added, “not to say anything bad about you. And I’m sure we could come up with a few things if we thought about it.” He looked startled. “Yeah, Stacy. You’re right. I’ll cool it.”

*****

None of the officials seemed to know what “Community Development” meant, and there were some odd attempts to fill out that part of the program. Most of the

programs were one or two day workshops. One session was on deg a sewage-disposal system for a city of 200,000. “We’re going to need a couple more lessons on this before we can redesign the sanitary system for Esmeralda,” Luke said. One day they had a hands-on session on bricklaying. It was a lot harder than Lina would have guessed. “Pick up the mortar on the trowel and flip it over. The mortar will land on the brick.” Lina gamely kept at it, slopping mortar all over herself. She looked over at Stacy, who was surreptitiously using the trowel as a spoon, scooping up some mortar, dumping it out on the brick, and patting it smooth. Lina raised her eyebrows. “OK, OK!” Stacy said. “I know I’m screwing up, but I just can’t get the hang of it. And I’m tired of dropping the shit all over me. My shoes are ruined.” The carpentry instructor soon saw that some of the men already knew something about the subject, and he limited his teaching to them, ignoring the neophytes. Lina had never tried to use a saw before, and she had quite a bit of trouble with it. Kevin laughed at her, though Lina noticed he wasn’t doing such a clean job either. “Come on over here, Lina,” Luke said. “Help me out.” Luke turned out to know all ing hand tools. “Hold it like this,” he showed her, “and concentrate on pulling, not pushing.” After a while, she caught on. “Good job. A perfect cross-brace. I knew you could do.” “I didn’t know I was making a cross-brace. What are we building?” He winked. “I thought an outhouse would be a good idea.”

Soon everybody was working to Luke’s orders, and the unmistakable shape was completed. They put the outhouse right in the middle of the main campus thoroughfare and stayed there the rest of the day. “Peace Corps brochures. Wouldn’t you like to the Peace Corps?” But there weren’t very many interested applicants. “What’s on the schedule for today?” Stacy asked sleepily one morning. Let’s see,” Charlotte said, “Hm…survival training.” “Damn. Sounds like something athletic.” Two professors, both of them pale and bookish-looking, took them to a rubbleand-weed-filled ravine next to the campus. One of them rummaged through a plastic bag and took out some charcoal briquets. The other one produced a couple of packages of hot dogs. He patted his pockets, looking dismayed. “Allow me, “ Stacy said, taking out her cigarette lighter. “Uh, no. We’re supposed to use matches.” “Hey, show us how to make a fire by rubbing two sticks together.” “Never mind. Give me the lighter.” The other professor was pouring out paper cups of artificial orange juice. “Do we have to drink this crap?” Stacy asked. “Just take it one sip at a time.” “Go ahead, make fun,” one professor snapped. “But you people may actually need these skills. We won’t.” “What fun,” Kevin said on the way back up the hill. “Two wimps, some Tang and a Zippo.” “We survived, didn’t we?” Lina said. “And now, any time we find ourselves

marooned in a vacant lot in a major city, we’ll know just what to do.” They made clumsy wooden bowls and hideous ashtrays of brass and copper. Then they threw lopsided pots on a wheel. Luke drawled, “If the Esmeraldans aren’t any better at making trinkets than we are, I don’t think tourist-trapping is going to be very profitable.” First Aid was a little better. First they saw some gruesome movies, including one on drunk-driving accidents that featured a messily decapitated body. Another one - in full sound and color - showed childbirth. Kevin fainted during that film. They learned to bandage and to splint, to treat burns and cuts and to transport victims. “OK, divide into two teams,” the instructor said on the last day. “Here’s a list of the injuries your victim has suffered. Bandage the victim appropriately, then strap him on a stretcher and carry him across the campus and back. First team back wins.” “God, am I tired of competition,” Lina said. Her group all turned to look at her, sizing her up. “Oh, no. Not me. Please!” “Yeah, you,” Kevin snapped. “You’re the lightest one in the group. And I don’t feel like carrying one of these other porkers all over the campus.” Lina’s “injuries” consisted of a fractured right arm and left leg and various head and back wounds. Bandaged and splinted, Lina was strapped to a stretcher and whisked across campus and back. “We won! We won!” Kevin crowed. “Untie me,” Lina said. “Uh, no. I have another idea,” Kevin laughed. “Come on, guys.” They took her back outside and left her, helplessly trussed, on the ground in the middle of the campus. At first, the students seemed to be afraid to help her. Finally, though, a couple of them picked up the stretcher and carried it back to

the Peace Corps office. The next day, Starkie asked, “You must have been furious, being put in such an embarrassing position.” Who’s telling him all this, she wondered. “No, actually, I thought it was pretty funny. Everybody on campus knows about the Peace Corps by now. They know we’re always doing weird things. You know, two of the students carried me back to the office. We took them over to Ryan’s for a beer later.” “Ryan’s?” “The local bar. Everybody knows about it.” “I don’t. I am not in the habit of hanging out in local bars,” he said stiffly. “You might try it. It’s a fun place, very friendly.” “I don’t need advice from you on my social life.” “Oh, right. Are we finished, then?” “I think you should consider what I discussed with you before - perhaps you are a masochist. You do not object when others use you as the butt of a joke. I can only conclude that you enjoy being abused.” “I’ll think it over.” Creep, she thought.

*****

“The emphasis seems to be on quantity, not quality,”Stacy complained. “Imagine having classes from 9AM to 8PM, and a half day on Saturday.” “Don’t forget we have an hour for lunch and an hour for dinner.” “Big deal.”

They ate all their meals in the commissary except on Sundays. Saturday evening, the trainees lined up and put out their hands. “You’re on your own,” the director said, handing each of them $5. “It’s not enough to eat three meals out,” Charlotte said. “Well, let’s be practical,” Lina said. “We can sleep through the first one.” “It’s not enough for two meals either.” “Not if we eat both of them out. Can you cook?” Charlotte laughed. “I’m not even sure it’s possible. Can you?” “No. Let’s go talk to Stacy.” Stacy just laughed. “The day I can’t get a guy to take me out to dinner…” “We need to find somebody who can cook. Any suggestions?” “Try Luke.” “Luke? Why him”? “I have a hunch he knows a lot about cooking.” “Why do you think so?” “He’s always making cracks about the meals when we’re in the lunch line. Suggesting how they could be improved.”

*****

“Luke,” said Lina. “We think we can eat better on Sunday if we all get together and cook.”

“I was thinking the exact thing. If we put some of our money together, we can have a great meal.” “Yes, but we have to find somebody who can cook. Any ideas?” He laughed. “Am I elected?” “Well, you were nominated. And nobody else was. Can you cook?” “When you come from a poor family with eight kids, you learn how to do a lot of things.” “Including cooking?” “Definitely.” “Then you’re elected.” He laughed, held out his hand. “I accept.” “We’ll get a group together, say eight or twelve people? And each one will chip in…how much?” “Eight to twelve? Let’s see, a dollar should be enough.” “Great. See you Sunday, then.” “Better give me the money on Saturday. I’ll be going out early Sunday morning. And I’ll do the shopping on the way back.” . “Lucky he likes to get up early even on a day off,” Delia said to Stacy. “Nothing to do with luck,” Stacy said. “He goes to church early on Sunday morning. And then again in the evening.” “How do you know that?” “I pay attention to people.” When Luke returned Sunday at noon with a couple of bags of groceries, most of the others were just stirring. He dumped the bags in the kitchen at Charlotte and

Lina’s and started working. The sound of chopping and the smell of cooking pervaded the girls’ compound, and most of them ended up dropping in and spending the afternoon helping. The guys never showed up except to eat, around six. Only a few of them could be persuaded to help with cleanup. Not Kevin, Lina noticed. Luke didn’t help with cleanup, either. He looked at his watch after he finished eating, then abruptly got up and left. That late church service, Lina realized.

*****

The Sunday group dinner was a success, and they went on with it. Luke based the meals on rice, pasta, potatoes, beans and vegetables, with only tiny amounts of meat or chicken. So they could eat what seemed like a feast for only a dollar apiece. “Help me, Luke,” Lina said. “I don’t know anything about cooking. I’ll starve once we get to Esmeralda!” “No problem. Just hang around me. Watch what I do. You’ll catch on soon enough.” Lina watched Luke carefully and asked a lot of questions, but he was an instinctive cook, unable to explain either what he was doing or why. And Lina was too unfamiliar with the fundamentals of cooking to learn anything useful.

*****

After classes, they either went over to Ryan’s and drank beer, or bought some and sat around the pool. Stacy and Luke played the guitar and they all sang for hours. Everybody knew at least a few different songs, so the repertoire was pretty big.

Lina continued to be amazed at how homesick most of the trainees were. Some songs brought tears to nearly everybody’s eyes. The only ones never to be affected were Kevin and herself. Lina hid the fact that she wasn’t homesick, but Kevin continued to bait the sentimental ones. Once, when everyone had finished singing “I gave my love a cherry,” Kevin sang an alternate version, ending with, “A cherry in a martini, it has no stone. A chicken a la king, it has no bone. The ring around my bathtub, it has no end. A baby with its mouth taped shut has no crying.” Some nights the men played poker. “Come on, Lina, game tonight at Kevin’s.” “Oh…OK.” She didn’t really want to play, but she was flattered to be the only girl asked. I’m doing pretty well, she told herself one night, but I really didn’t enjoy it. And as soon as I sit down, I get that awful headache that lasts through to the next morning.

*****

“Jesus, how I hate that phys-ed crap,” Stacy moaned. “All the instructors are exjocks. They have no use for females. They think we’re weak.” “Well, we can’t do everything the guys can,” Charlotte pointed out. “Doesn’t mean we’re weak. Just different.” The intense daily workouts wore the girls out, and the instructors snickered at them when they couldn’t perform very well. Lina groaned, “Softball, volleyball, tennis. I’m lousy at all of them.” “Don’t let it bother you,” Stacy said. “It’s really not important.” “That’s what I thought. Until Kevin’s outburst at the group therapy. Now I’m really nervous about phys-ed. I try to do better - but it’s hopeless. I suppose the

shrinks are hearing all about how I’m always the last one to be picked for a team. Any team.” “Monday,” the phys-ed instructor said, “report to the swimming pool.” “Yay!” Lina yelled, then sat back, embarrassed. But, she thought, swimming’s the one sport I’m really good at. My chance to shine. At last. “OK, we’re going to form two teams, and every day they’ll swim against each other. Gradually people will be eliminated until we get down to six on each team. Then we’ll have a swim-off.” “Oh, what a good idea,” Luke said. “A competition. Just what we all need.” Monday morning, Lina hung around and watched the guys who’d swum competitively in high school and college. She stayed late at the pool, trying to duplicate their racing dives and smooth underwater turns. Damn, I’ve never had any training in competitive swimming. That damn high school I went to had no women’s athletic teams. And at Our Lady of Perpetual Sorrow, we had only enough physical education courses to meet the minimum state requirements. All right, I’ve got to come up with a strategy. What chance do I have against these guys? Only one possibility, swim faster than I ever have before. And how do I do that? Breathe less often. Lina began training intensively, always after the others had left. She cut out most of the breathing she had learned, and got much faster, though she felt dizzy and her stomach was always churning at the end of her practice. The elimination round started. To the obvious amazement of everyone, Lina won every one of her races. “You’ve got it,” the instructor said. “A slot on the final race - one 25-yard lap for each swimmer. How the hell did you pull that off?” “Talent. Hidden talent.” Final race. The two teams were lined up at the shallow end of the pool, posing for pictures. Lina was the only girl. She looked around. Most of these guys had been on high school or college swimming teams. Well, that doesn’t mean I’m not

any good, she told herself. I’ve just never had a chance to prove myself. Lina’s team huddled to discuss their strategy. Their coach, one of the instructors, said, “Well, guys, here’s the way it’s going to go. You five - and he pointed at the men - will swim like hell. You’ve got to take a big lead. Lina, you’ll go last. Now listen, you’ve got a job to do here. You’ve got to try to hang on - not to lose all the lead the guys will give you.” You overdeveloped arrogant son of a bitch, she thought. But she didn’t say anything. The other team was in a close huddle. They looked huge and strong. Letting out a loud male cheer, they broke up and streamed over to the starting blocks. It didn’t work out the way the coach had planned - the teams were neck-andneck heading toward Lina. She stood, ready to dive, looking at Kevin, the last swimmer on the other team. Kevin had a tense smile on his face. “You’ve already lost, Lina. You haven’t got a chance.” She ignored him. “You look scared. You know you’ve already lost, don’t you?” She refused to answer. “Well, I don’t have anything to worry about. I’m a lot taller than you, and that’s a tremendous advantage. And look at this.” He flexed his arms, and Lina saw his muscles ripple. “I can sleep through this race and still beat you.” “Is that the only strategy your team can think up? To have you try to scare me? That’s pathetic. And it isn’t going to work. You’re not a very good swimmer, Kevin. And I am.” His face fell, and she had to laugh to herself. It’s so like Kevin to think he can browbeat me. Then she thought, well, maybe he can. He’s not a great swimmer, but he’s a fierce competitor and strong as a bull, and that might be enough to give him the edge he needs. “I’m a man. That’s all I need to drown you!”

I have to win, she thought. And I’m going to. As soon as her teammate touched the wall, Lina hurled herself into the water, trying to make a correct shallow racer’s dive. But she was overanxious, and missed her footing, falling full-length into the pool. She ignored the stinging slap of the water on her belly, though it drove most of her breath away. Furiously, she swam the lap without once surfacing for air. She could feel that she was swimming better than she ever had, skimming the top of the water, her legs propelling her. Certainly, not trying to breathe streamlined the motion a lot. She sensed Kevin in the next lane and heard a lot of splashing. That’s a bad sign for him - great! After a while, she became dimly aware that there was no motion directly opposite her in the next lane. When she hit the wall with a smash, she was still swimming. She looked beside her and saw that she had beaten Kevin - by a lot. Her cheering teammates hauled her out of the pool onto the deck, slapping her on the back. Lina sat there for a moment, stunned, then leaped to her feet and raced into the locker room. Huddled miserably over a toilet, she began throwing up heavily-chlorinated water. “Lina, are you in there?” Stacy called. “Yes,” she managed to gasp. “I - I’m getting dressed. I’ll be out in a minute.” “We’re all heading to Ryan’s for a few beers. Come on over when you’re ready.” “I will,” Lina said weakly. The thought of drinking beer made her gag again. “Kevin its he owes you one. We can’t wait to toast you.” “Right. See you later.” As soon as she heard the locker door close, Lina started throwing up again. A long time later, she dragged herself to her feet, put her clothes on over her wet bathing suit, and wearily trudged home, bent nearly double. I hope you all enjoyed celebrating my triumph, she thought. And I got what I deserved - the booby prize.

*****

As part of the Spanish program, a lecturer was called in occasionally to speak to the trainees about Latin American customs and culture. This program was very popular, and the trainees lapped up every detail. Mr. Gómez didn’t come from Esmeralda, but from El Salvador. He announced, “You have to expect that some of the things I tell you won’t be quite right.” “Don’t worry about it,” Kevin called out. “Some information is better than none. And those seem to be our only choices - something possibly wrong or nothing at all.” Nobody ed Kevin’s protest, though Lina agreed with him, and she thought probably most of them did. One night, Mr. Gómez had to give a lecture on “bad words” in Spanish. When he looked at the list of words, he blushed. “You must understand, I’m only telling you these things so you’ll be sure not to pick up any vulgar expressions.” He looked at his list again. “Now, the first word is…Madre mía! I have to explain that this is a word I never use. In fact, I’ve hardly even heard it.” Kevin said, “Don’t worry, Senor Gómez. We’ll never tell anyone you taught us these words. Except maybe our parents, of course.” “Your parents? Oh, please, this is not something for your parents to hear about.” “God, Kevin has a cruel streak,” Stacy said. “He’s getting a kick out of poor Gómez’ humiliation.” “Would you write that word on the blackboard, Mr. Gómez?’ Kevin called. “My copy is blurry.” Gómez said a word barely above a whisper, and Kevin asked, “How do you pronounce that again? Is the accent on the second or the third syllable? Speak up, Mr. Gómez, we can’t hear you.”

Finally, Gómez said a word and whispered, “Please, this is a word you must never use. It is a very vulgar, very improper word.” “Yes, but what does it mean?” “Well…it means…it…has no specific meaning, but it’s a very nasty word. Just don’t ever use it.” “Oh, come on, if it has no meaning, how can it be a bad word? It must mean something.” “Well, it…it refers to the female body.” “What part of the female body?” Gómez didn’t answer, just stood there looking miserable. “Well, is it something there are two of, or only one?” Gómez blushed furiously and gave Kevin a baleful look. Back in their rooms, Charlotte said, “Kevin was way out of line to talk to Mr. Gómez like that. But he does have a point - there hasn’t been any information so far specifically about Esmeralda. We’re going to a real country, after all, not a ‘Latin area’, as they keep calling it, and we need to know more about it. None of the Spanish teachers are from Esmeralda, and that worries me.” Charlotte seems to specialize in being worried, Lina thought. Lina was part of a delegation to the director, and she was the first one to speak. “I couldn’t understand very much in Palmar, even though I majored in Spanish. Our teachers here are all Americans, and the only Spanish they’ve ever heard is Mexican. We need to hear Esmeraldan Spanish or we’re going to be helpless when we get there.” “I’ll see what I can do,” he said sourly. A few days later, he made a dinner announcement. “I’ve located an Esmeraldan who lives here in L.A. His name is Pedro Martínez, and I’ve invited him to

spend time with you.” Pedro appeared the next day at lunch, and Lina immediately identified him as what her grandmother would have called a “sharp operator”. He was arrogant, and a word Lina had just learned, macho. The word literally meant simply “male”, but the connotations were more comprehensive. The corresponding feminine term was hembra - female, but it was never used in the same context as macho. “Macho”, Lina thought, means thinking you’re perfect just by virtue of being male. The word might be Spanish, but it certainly fit a lot of other men - like Irishmen. Pedro was about Lina’s height, though he wore boots that boosted his height a few inches. His black hair was heavily oiled, and he wore a large gold medallion around his neck. Tight jeans and a tee-shirt with a pack of cigarettes rolled into the left sleeve completed his outfit. He ate all his meals with them, concentrating on the food, mumbling in rapid Spanish that nobody could understand. Occasionally he tossed out a comment about Esmeraldan culture, but most of the time he just ate - as much as he could at a sitting, Lina thought. Is Pedro as being paid besides getting all his meals free? Probably, she thought - what a waste! One day, as Lina was ing by Pedro on her way to her seat, he snapped his fingers at her and said in Spanish, “Woman, get me some more coffee.” Lina continued walking, muttering over her shoulder, “Man, get it yourself.” “Lina,” Charlotte said in their room, “Did you see Pedro’s face when you said ‘get it yourself?’” “No, of course I didn’t. I’d ed him when I said it. How did he look?” Charlotte thought for a moment. “He…he looked…well, I’ve never seen anybody look like that. He was totally enraged.” “Poor Pedro.” “No, but…well, I can’t explain it, he looked…dangerous.”

“Thanks for the warning. But don’t worry. He’s obnoxious, but not dangerous.” Pedro acted as if all the girls were his personal slaves. Most of the other girls did what he wanted - they were all constantly being warned they would have to adapt to Esmeraldan culture. But Lina loathed Pedro. “I don’t care if I get deselected,” she told Charlotte, “I’m not going to fawn all over him.” Pedro decided Lina was his girlfriend. “I think he’s focused on you because you make such a point of avoiding him,” Charlotte said. When he began referring to her as “my woman”, Lina tried to be tactful.“I’m my own woman, Pedro.” But that had no effect. He went on referring to Lina as “my woman.” One day, he grabbed her arm as she ed him in the commissary. “Sit down!” he demanded menacingly. “I don’t want to sit with you, Pedro. Now or ever.” Lina saw his face redden with shock and fury. As she walked away, she heard him say to his neighbors, “My woman has quite a wild sense of humor, doesn’t she?” Lina began eating fast and leaving the commissary immediately. When Pedro followed her one day, she ducked into the ladies’ room. So she managed to avoid him for the most part. But then he took to hanging around their quarters. He showed up for dinner every Sunday, though he never contributed his dollar. And of course, he never helped to cook or to clean up. She went up to Pedro after one meal and put out her hand. “That’ll be a dollar.” He laughed. “A dollar. Now.” “Don’t have my wallet with me,” he muttered. “I’ll get back to you tomorrow.” Kevin laughed. “Not so cool, Pedro. If I was you, I’d just suddenly forget how to speak English.”

Pedro got up and stormed out. “Hey,” Stacy said, “this is no big deal. Let’s just carry Pedro and forget about it. “ “It’s just damned annoying,” Lina said. “We should go to the director, tell him he owes us for Pedro’s meals.” “What are we going to say, Pedro’s eating us out of house and home, and you owe us three dollars?” “You’re right. Let’s just consider it a good case example of freeloading,” Charlotte said. Every place she went, Lina seemed to see Pedro leering at her. He felt free to act the way the trainees did, drifting into each other’s apartments uninvited. So several times she came out of her room to find him ensconced in her living room, drinking her beer, eating whatever he could find in the kitchen. She began to make sure she was fully dressed before leaving her room or the bathroom. And she stopped swimming, hating the way Pedro looked at her in her bathing suit. Stacy said, “Yeah, Pedro’s kind of a jerk, but he’s not bad looking. Why don’t you have a fling with him? Latins are supposed to be great lovers.” The thought made Lina feel sick. One morning after having been up late playing poker with the guys, Lina asked Charlotte, “What’s our eight o’clock class?” “Community Development. Yawn.” “Right. Good night.” And Lina turned over and went back to sleep. When she woke up, Pedro was getting into bed with her. She screamed and slipped out the other side. Pedro leaped over the bed and trapped her against the wall. “Don’t try to play innocent with me. I know you want me. I see you staring at me, looking at my crotch all the time.”

“You’re really crazy. I can ‘t stand the sight of you. If you weren’t such a macho idiot, you’d see that. Everybody else knows it.” He pressed his body against her, forcing her to kiss him, pressing his tongue deep into her mouth. Lina gagged. She twisted her head to the side to get away from him, and he furiously grabbed her hair and forced her face back to his. “Bitch. Trying to make a fool of me in front of everybody. Now you’ll see what it is like to toy with a man.” He grabbed the neck of her nightgown and pulled. The light material tore and he grabbed at her breast, hurting her. Crushing her back into the wall, he thrust himself against her. He’s going to rape me, she realized. Forgetting her embarrassment, Lina screamed again, loudly. Ducking and twisting, she slipped out of Pedro’s grasp. She dashed for the door, but he had locked it. She turned and tried to kick him, but he grabbed her foot and pulled her down, then punched her. Standing over her with his foot on her chest, he took off his jeans. He wore no underwear. Huddled on the floor, Lina looked up - his enormous erection, purplish and grotesque, hovered over her head, his furry testicles quivering. A rank swampy smell assaulted her. He smells like the possum I cornered in the woods when I was a kid, she thought. The smell, more than anything, infuriated her. She gave a cry of rage and abruptly started to her feet, pushing his foot aside and butting her head into his swollen genitals. Pedro fell back, and Lina desperately looked for a weapon. Charlotte’s camera was on the bureau, and she snatched it up. Swinging it by the strap, she hit Pedro on the head. His eyes started to roll back in his head, but he was still standing, so she hit him again, this time in the face. He fell over, and she smashed the camera into his crotch. Weakly screaming for help, she unlocked the door and dashed out. But nobody seemed to be at home in the women’s complex. She ran up the hill to the men’s quarters, and stood in the courtyard, gasping and crying. She saw that the door to Luke’s apartment was ajar, and she ran inside, slamming the door. “Help!” “What? Who?” Luke stumbled from the bedroom. “What’s going on?”

“Luke, help me!” “What’s the matter?” He was shaking his head to clear it. “Pedro got into bed with me, and he was saying the most awful things. He hit me, and he took off his clothes…” She looked where Luke’s eyes were directed, and realized she was still dressed only in her torn nightgown. “Where’s Pedro?” Luke’s voice was strained. “I…I hit him with a camera. I think I killed him. Luke, what am I going to do?” “Just a minute.” He went into the bedroom and came out a couple of minutes later, wearing jeans and his pajama top. “Wait here for me.” He started out the door, then turned. “Lock the door.” He went out, a fierce look on his face. Lina went into Luke’s room, found a bathrobe in the closet and put it on. She didn’t know how much time ed before she heard the knocking, and Luke’s voice at the door. “Let me in, Lina. It’s all over now.” “What happened?” “It’s all right. You didn’t kill Pedro. He’s got a couple of nasty cuts, but he was awake when I got there.” “What did he say?” “Never mind. He’s gone. He’s an awful, filthy man, Lina. Try to just forget about it.” Lina saw that Luke was cupping his right hand in his left. “What’s wrong?” “I think I may have broken a finger or two.” He tried to laugh, but he looked pale, and he abruptly sat down. “Oh Luke, did you and Pedro have a fight?” “No. He was sitting on the floor when I got there, and he smiled and said…well,

something that made me furious. So I punched him. I don’t know how many times. Then I dragged him to the door and threw him out. I kicked him a couple of times as he was running away.” Lina looked at Luke. His skin was gray and he was sweating, though it wasn’t hot. “Luke, do you think you can walk? You’ve got to go to the infirmary.” “Yes, just let me rest for a minute. I think…well…I’m kind of in shock. I never hit anybody before.” He folded his arms on the table and put his head down on them. “I let myself get completely out of control. My church…violence is forbidden.” “Oh Luke, I’m sorry.” “It’s not your fault. Pedro is really rotten. He deserved a beating. I just wish I hadn’t been the one to do it.” Lina got him some water and put a cold cloth on his forehead. “Can you walk now, Luke? We need to get you to a doctor.” “Yes, I’m all right. Let’s go.” She looked down at herself. “Wait, Luke, I can’t go around in your bathrobe. Give me five minutes.” She flew down the hill to her apartment. Fearing to get a whiff of Pedro, she held her breath as she threw on some clothes and ran back up the hill to Luke’s. For once, Luke didn’t even try to be funny as they walked to the campus infirmary. He was pale and sweaty, and looked disoriented. She waited most of the afternoon for him to come out of the treatment room. When he finally did, his arm was encased in plaster from just below his elbow to the tips of his fingers. He smiled weakly at Lina. “Two broken fingers, a cracked wrist, otherwise fine.” Behind him stood the Peace Corps doctor, scowling at Lina. “You have a lot of explaining to do, young lady,” he snapped, and then pushed past her and left.

Lina was bewildered. What have I done? The next day she was told to report to Dr. Starkie. “What happened?” She told him, simply. “Have you been staring at him - at his crotch?” “No! I can’t stand Pedro. I never look at any part of him.” “Even without fully realizing you are doing it?” “No! Definitely not!” He made a notation in his notebook. “Maybe the way you dress is too provocative for him.” “The way I dress? What are you talking about? I wear the most ordinary skirts and blouses. Doctor, look at me. I’m not the voluptuous type. I don’t even wear makeup.” “Still, you are very visible. You are pretty, and your hair…” “Oh, please. You’re not going to tell me it’s open season on redheads, are you?” “No, of course not. But it does make you conspicuous. And I have seen you in shorts and bathing suits.” She thought he was staring at her bust. “Well, of course, on weekends, when I’m hanging around the pool. Bermuda shorts, anyway. And I stopped swimming when I saw the way Pedro looked at me in my bathing suit.” “So you have had trouble with Pedro before?” “Yes. He’s been after me since the beginning. Even though I never gave him any encouragement.” “And yet you have told me nothing about this problem.”

“I never tell you anything.” He scowled. “You must think carefully about this - you may have done something to provoke him.” “That’s ridiculous! Pedro is a nasty little creep who can’t stand to be rejected. Look at my face - I have a black eye from Pedro. He wasn’t asking me for a date. He was trying to rape me.” Starkie smiled coldly. “I find that these things usually have two sides.” “Attempted rape? That has two sides? You’re crazy! Crazier than any of your patients!” He looked coldly at her, then raised his eyebrows and shook his head slightly. He started to pick up his pen. She reached across the desk and snatched the notebook out of his hand. She tore it in half, then in quarters, and threw the pieces into the air. A flurry of scraps filled the room, one getting stuck on Starkie’s glasses. Furiously, he plucked the scrap off. “Get out of here! Now, before I call the security guards.” Lina went straight to the director’s office. She charged past his secretary and confronted him at his desk. He looked nervous, and she figured Starkie had called him. “I’m not going to talk to Dr. Starkie again. Throw me out now if you want, but that’s final.” He stared at her, vaguely waving one hand. Before he could formulate a reply, she turned around and headed for the door. Then she stopped and turned to face him. “I’m not going to go quietly, you know.” “What do you mean by that?” “I’m not sure at the moment. But you can be sure I’m going to begin thinking about it. Right now. And you better do the same.” A couple of days later, Lina hadn’t heard another word from the director. Luke had also been called in to talk with Starkie.

“What did he say?” Lina asked. He shook his head. “He gave me a hard time. I really don’t want to talk about it.” “At least they didn’t send either of you home right away,” Charlotte said. “I think the best thing would be for you two to lie low now, not call any more attention to yourselves.” Lina skipped all the rest of her appointments with Starkie. She stopped going to the group sessions, too. Charlotte’s camera was ruined. “Let me know how much it cost,” Lina said. “I’ll replace it.” But she was worried. It was clearly expensive, far better than any camera Lina had ever owned. Charlotte laughed. “Wait until I tell my father what happened to it. He’ll be delighted to get me another one. He’ll probably get me two.” If I even mentioned this to my family, Lina thought, my adventure would be over. They’d probably send the army to take me back to Trowbridge. “Let’s all of us girls go out to dinner together,” Stacy said one day. Over a pizza, Charlotte said, “We wanted you to know - we all went to the director. We told him how awful Pedro was. We told him how he chased you. And that you never encouraged him.” “Thanks, girls. Maybe with all of us saying the same thing, the message will get across.” But it seemed ominous that the director did not ask to speak with her again. Or with Luke. The next week, the girls were given a special class. A gray-haired woman entered the classroom. “Now girls, you’re going to Latin America. You have to be very careful. You can’t wear sleeveless blouses. Or pants. Or straight skirts.”

“Why can’t we?” Stacy asked. “Well, because Latin men would take that as…well, as an invitation.” “Invitation to what?” Charlotte asked. “Latin men…well, they seem…” She cleared her throat. “They’re kind of preoccupied with sex. Many of them - maybe most of them. So you have to be really careful not to do anything that will remind them of that subject.” “So what you’re telling us,” Lina said, “is that Latin men are apt to behave like pigs. So women have to cover up to protect themselves.” The woman shrugged and smiled slightly. “I guess it’s too radical an idea to think about teaching the men respect? To encourage them to control themselves?” Charlotte asked. The woman treated them to another of her wooden smiles. “Doesn’t it even occur to you that this doesn’t make much sense? Never mind have any semblance of justice?” Lina ventured. The woman shook her head vaguely and backed toward the door. When she had gratefully skittered through it, Lina looked at the other women. “Nothing very promising about this, is there?”she asked. Charlotte looked worried. But Stacy laughed. “Men are men, the whole world round. And I know how to handle men. Just ask me if you have any problems in that area.” Luke and Lina had become very nervous about the deselection process - they had done what everyone had been trying so hard to avoid - called attention to themselves in a negative way. As the end of the training period neared, everybody was called into the auditorium. The director ed out papers. “These are evaluations. Please be absolutely candid.” “Don’t worry. We will be!” Kevin called out.

But when they looked at the forms, there were no questions asking them to evaluate the program. Instead, they were asked to evaluate each other. It reminded Lina of voting for the “outstanding” people for the high school yearbook. Question 1: Which persons would you most, and least, like to be assigned to live with? Question 2: Which persons would you most, and least, like to be assigned to work with? “Most popular” category, thought Lina. Plus “least popular” - bad taste for sure. Question 3: Who will probably be a good volunteer? “Most likely to succeed”, she thought. Question 4: Who is most pleasant to be with? “Best sense of humor”. How did they miss asking who was the best-looking? Lina wondered. As the director collected the papers, he said, “Each of you will make an appointment with your psychologist to discuss the results of these evaluations.” “Shit. More of the same,” Kevin growled. “No, maybe not, this time,” Charlotte said. “This part could help us. It’s a chance for us to see what others think . That’s got to be good for us.” Since Lina had refused to speak with Dr. Starkie again, she was assigned to Dr. Chalmers for this occasion. The hell with him, she thought. I’m probably out anyway - so I don’t have to be polite. But Chalmers was friendly, smiling. “Well, Lina, the results of the evaluation placed you near - actually at - the top. In every category.” She said nothing, trying to digest that, work out the implications. “Almost half the men listed you as first choice for a roommate.” Oh no, she thought. Starkie is going to make quite a case out of that.

She looked at Dr. Chalmers, and saw that he was smiling. “I consider that a good sign.” She thought again of Starkie’s reaction to that question, and burst out laughing. Then she couldn’t stop. When, finally, she was able to get herself under control, she saw that Chalmers was laughing, too. That made her start in again. When they had both calmed down, he handed her a Kleenex. She wiped away the tears. “What do you think my chances really are?” “If the decision depended only on your initial tests, your performance in classes and other activities and this evaluation, you wouldn’t have anything at all to worry about. But, of course, there is that incident to weigh.” “How important do you think it will be?” “It’s hard to say. It could be interpreted as meaning that you wouldn’t be able to get along in a Latin culture. On the other hand, if they believe that Pedro’s behavior was as unprovoked as you and others say, it won’t be considered important at all.” “Of course, the fact that I got along so poorly with Snake-eyes - “ her eyes widened. “I mean, Dr. Starkie - that isn’t going to help me any.” “For sure.” He looked at her for a moment. “You really want to do this, don’t you?” “Yes, more than anything I’ve ever wanted.” He looked at her closely. “Since I’ve conducted this interview with you, I’m also entitled to enter a psychological evaluation. Would you like me to do that?” “Yes. I mean, if you’re going to be positive about me.” “I don’t see any reason not to be.” “Thanks. What about Luke?” “What about him?”

“Well, Starkie was Luke’s psychologist, too. And I know he’s going to get a lousy recommendation. Starkie didn’t like Luke before the trouble with Pedro. Luke…well, Luke’s got very strong religious beliefs. Starkie kept goading him about that. And then - that awful time with Pedro. I feel really bad about that Luke had nothing to do with it. Except that he tried to help me.” “But Luke attacked Pedro. That kind of potential for violence is something the Peace Corps can’t risk.” “That was the only time in his life Luke ever hit anybody. Just think about it there I was, sobbing and screaming, my face all swollen where Pedro had hit me, my mouth dripping blood, my nightgown half torn off. What would you have done?” He said nothing, but he looked thoughtful. “At least Luke didn’t kill Pedro. And he’s been agonizing about it ever since,” she said. “I think I’ll arrange to talk with Luke. If I agree that his behavior wasn’t reckless, I’ll put in a good word for him, too.” “Oh, thanks, doctor. You’ve redeemed the science of psychology.” He laughed. The next time Lina saw Luke, they talked about what Chalmers had said. “Yes,” Luke said, “he told me more or less the same thing. Without the incident with Pedro, I wouldn’t have anything to worry about. And I felt so much better with Chalmers. He was so sympathetic, so human. It felt good to be able to talk about it. I don’t feel nearly as disgusted with myself now.”

*****

Deselection day arrived. A number of official-looking men, all men, Lina noted,

arrived from Washington. The trainees were told it would take all day to complete the process. When she was able to think about it rationally, Lina wondered why they were all so panicky. Suppose I’m deselected? she thought. It’s not the end of the world. I’ll just go and do something else. But they had all been conditioned to think that it would be a disgrace and a disaster to be deselected. Everybody was nervous and worried, smoking more than usual and talking less. During a break in Spanish class, Luke walked over to the window. “Hey, everybody, look here!” Everybody swarmed to the window. “Those are the guys we saw this morning, aren’t they? The deselection ?” They looked down into a meeting room in another wing, a couple of stories below. “Yes, I think so,” Lina said. Somebody went out and gathered the rest of them from the various classrooms. Everybody flocked to the window - classes were over for the day. They could see that there was a dossier for each trainee, complete with a photo. The head of the would pick up one, read from it, then it around to the others. Then there was a discussion, the length varying from just a minute or so to about a quarter of an hour. They were too far away to see any of the pictures clearly, though people made guesses about some of them. “I think,” Charlotte said, “the longer the discussion, the worse it is for the person.” “That makes sense,” Lina said. “If there’s no problem, there’s nothing to discuss.” Once, straining her eyes, Lina thought she recognized her photo. A long

discussion went on, and Lina tried desperately to read the men’s lips, but with no success. She guessed that they would just say “Yes” or “No” at the end, and she said to Charlotte, “Say `yes’. Now say `no’. Again.” She looked down into the room once more, to see if she could recognize either of the words on the men’s lips. But suddenly the discussion was over, and Lina hadn’t seen anything that looked like a vote. The afternoon ground on, and at dinnertime the deselection committee was still in session. The trainees trudged over to the commissary and picked at their food. During dinner, an announcement was made. “You are all to gather here again at eight.” Nobody went back to the apartments. Instead they just hung around in gloomy clusters on the grass. Lina saw Kevin sitting alone, looking grim. “Cheer up. You haven’t got anything to worry about.” “Are you kidding? I did lousy on the evaluation. Goddamn popularity contest. And I’m only in the intermediate Spanish class.” “Well, there are only ten of us in the advanced class. And you started in the beginning. So getting to intermediate is an accomplishment.” “I don’t know what I’ll do if I don’t get accepted. What will I tell my father?” She shrugged. “Why is that such a problem?” “You don’t understand. Failing is something that is just not done in my family. There are no excuses. My father would be furious.” “So what? You’re a big boy now. You’ve graduated from college. You can get a job, live on your own. You don’t have to worry about what your father thinks any more.” Kevin looked surprised. “You don’t get it, do you? If I’m deselected, I’ll have to go into the Army.” He put his head down on his arms. After a minute, he said,

“At least I’m not as bad off as you and Luke are. Boy, am I glad you didn’t find me home that day, Lina! I would have killed that bastard Pedro. Slowly. And enjoyed every minute of it. You and Luke are probably out.” “Well, thanks for cheering me up, Kevin.” She got up and went over to find Luke. She took his hand. “I want to thank you again for helping me that day, Luke. I’m really sorry if they throw you out for it. I wish I could do something about it.” “It doesn’t matter. It’s just something that happened. I did it, and I’ll take the consequences, whatever they are. I feel bad for you, though. It’s not fair to punish the victim.” By eight, all the trainees had assembled in the commissary. A table had been set up at the front of the room, with the of the deselection sitting at it. In the center sat the director. All the men were grim-looking. The director stood up. “Each of your names will be called, in random order, and you will come up here and get a folded piece of paper. The paper will have a room number written on it. You will go to that room for a further announcement. Everybody will open his paper at the same time. That means that when you get your paper, you will leave it folded until everybody has received one.” Fat chance, thought Lina, who was sitting between Luke and Kevin. The roll call began, and a glum silence fell over the audience. Luke’s name was called early. Lina saw that everyone was staring at him as he went up to get his paper. He sank down beside her and opened the paper so both of them could read it. Room 822. After a while, Lina heard her name. She got up, feeling everyone’s eyes on her. She got her paper, sat down, and immediately opened it. Room 822. She showed it to Luke, and he nodded sadly and took her hand. When Kevin’s name was called, he jumped and flushed, then got up quickly, stormed up to the table, and aggressively held his hand out for the paper. When he sat down, Lina saw that he was sweating. He tore the paper open, then snatched Lina’s paper away from her. He read it, and saw that Luke was holding Lina’s other hand. He let out a low groan, as audible as a scream in the deep silence. The director scowled, then began calling the names very quickly.

As soon as they had all received the papers, they got up and started shuffling off to the appointed rooms. It was eerily silent - like a mass funeral, Lina thought. In the hallway everybody started looking for room numbers. Lina, Luke and Kevin walked together - they had been sitting near the door and were among the first to exit. Room 822 was nearby, and the three entered. There were two others there. Lina’s mind raced - were these two likely to be in or out? But she couldn’t think of anything about them, pro or con. Then Stacy walked in. For the first time, she looked strained and nervous. Kevin looked sick when Stacy came in. “Oh, Christ! Little Miss Roundheels! That’s it!” The four of them huddled together. For once, neither Luke nor Stacy could think of anything to say. Other trainees drifted in. Lina looked them over - there were a lot who were surely completely inoffensive. She squeezed Luke’s hand and smiled at him. After a few more minutes, the room was nearly full, and the pressure was off. Kevin wiped his dripping forehead on the sleeve of his sweatshirt. “Who’s not here?” At first, they thought all of them were in the room, but gradually it became apparent that about five or six were not. One of the Washington officials came in then. “Congratulations! Everybody in this room is now an official Peace Corps Volunteer!” A few people gave a weak cheer and some began to congratulate each other, but there was a pall over the group, and soon they broke up and filed out of the room. Back at their quarters, the guys went out and bought a lot of beer, but the dismal atmosphere would not be dispelled. “Why do you think Jim was deselected? Or Helen?” the conversation raged. “You don’t think the had a quota, do you?” Lina said. “Like 10%? That would come to six of us.” “I think this was the most offensive possible way to take care of the selection process,” Charlotte said to Lina. “What do you think?”

“Yes. I agree. Let’s send the an insensitivity award.” The director and all of the instructors showed up at the party. So did both of the psychologists. Dr. Chalmers seemed to be enjoying himself, drinking beer and dancing with all the girls. “No, thanks,” Lina said when he asked her. “I don’t like to dance. But I’ll sit this one out with you.” “Congratulations. You got what you wanted.” “I owe a lot of that to you. Thanks.” “I think you’re going to be a good Peace Corps volunteer. Luke, too.” “I’ll send you a postcard from Esmeralda. Let you know you made the right decision.” Lina was sure Dr. Starkie was there only because he felt obligated to put in an appearance. He looked uncomfortable and scarcely talked with anybody. After a half hour or so, Lina noticed that he was edging around the clumps of people toward the entrance gate. He owes me an unpleasant minute, at least, she decided. She intercepted him and planted herself in his path. “Good evening, Dr. Starkie. You’re not leaving so soon, are you?” “I must. I have tickets to the Los Angeles Symphony for tonight.” Lina noticed then that he looked very elegant. He had on a dark suit that seemed custom-made for his tiny frame, a pleated shirt and a silk cravat, with a matching handkerchief exquisitely folded into his pocket. She was about to make a sarcastic remark and let him go, when, over his shoulder, she saw Luke looking at them. Luke’s eyebrows shot up, a wide grin split his face, and he nodded. “I must leave now. Good luck to you, Lina.” He began to move past her. Lina stepped into his path, giving Luke the time he needed to bring his hand down on Starkie’s shoulder. He spun the small man around and said with a smile, “Dr. Starkie, I’m never going to forget you. And I hope you’ll me, too.”

“You…you…” Starkie muttered. Luke scooped him up and tossed him into the pool. Everybody roared and clapped. When Starkie came up spluttering, Lina called, “Dr. Starkie, I hope you appreciate this. Nobody bothers to kid with people they don’t like.” That perked the party up. About midnight, as things were beginning to break up, Charlotte came dashing out of the resident manager’s apartment, where she had been watching the news on TV. “Hey, everybody! Listen! There’s been a coup in Esmeralda!”

Chapter 4

Lina, Stacy, Charlotte and Luke spent the next month together, waiting for the Peace Corps to decide what to do with them. They felt comfortable with each other, like family. Of course, Lina thought, if I were to count the number of hours we’ve spent together since July, it probably comes to more than I’ve spent with anyone else except for my parents and my brothers. The four of them spent days lying around the pool, lazily sipping Coke. “Come on,” he’ d pound on their door early in the morning. “Get up. I’ve rented a car. We’re going to Las Vegas. Or Disneyland. Or Hollywood. And the girls laughed, threw on their clothes and jumped in the car. “Nobody told us we’d get a vacation on government money,” Luke said. “We have to take advantage of the chance.” “Oh, it’s a real boondoggle,” Charlotte said. “Imagine if the taxpayers knew we were living in such luxury, doing nothing. And getting fed so well, besides.” Charlotte hated the food in the commissary. “When we really should be in Esmeralda, getting our asses shot off, Stacy added. “After all, that’s what we agreed to do.” “Hey, maybe you did,” Lina said. “I never agreed to anything like that.” “They did mention the possibility, of, as they put it, civil unrest,” Luke pointed out. “They’ve got to leave us here until they know it’s safe. They don’t want the bad publicity they’d get if the TV showed a bunch of PC Volunteers lying in front of the National Palace with, as Stacy says, their asses shot off,” Lina said. One day Stacy got hold of some Tarot cards and astrology charts, and the girls sat by the pool.

“OK, Lina, I’ll start with you. When were you born?” “August 10.” The same day they roasted St. Lawrence, the nuns always delighted in telling her. “Ah, a Leo. What time?” “Around noon.” Stacy studied the charts for a couple of minutes. Then she looked up. “You know, all kidding aside, you do act weird.” “What do you mean?” “Well, a Leo born at noon should be outgoing, a leader. But you hang around in the background blushing and stammering. You have such a nice voice, but somebody practically has to stick a pin in you to get you to sing. I don’t think it’s your natural style.” “Oh, come on, Stacy, you don’t believe all that stuff about the stars, do you?” Stacy thought for a moment. “No, I don’t believe in astrology. I’m just trying to make a point. How come you’re trying so hard to be a wallflower? What do you get out of it? You should be out there dancing in front of the crowd, not cringing in back of the door.” “I don’t want to be a leader. I hardly know who I am myself. I don’t want to be responsible for anybody else.” Stacy shrugged. “Hell, it’s nothing to me one way or the other. Do what you want. I just wonder what happened to you to make you so ive.” Lina thought of her family and the nuns - they would say that the worst thing you could do was make a spectacle of yourself. I wonder how many times I’ve heard “What will people think?” Luke walked over just then. “Come on, sit down,” Stacy said, “I’ll tell your fortune.” “No!” He drew back as if the Tarot cards had fangs. “You shouldn’t be doing

this, Stacy.” “Hey, cool it, Luke. It’s just a game, not witchcraft.” “It’s not a game. It is…well…like witchcraft. Cards and stars don’t decide what happens to us.” “What does?” Stacy asked. “God, of course.” “I thought we all had free will,” said Lina. “We do. Those cards can’t decide how our lives will be. Our own actions decide that.” “But you just said God decides our fates,” Lina pointed out. “Well, of course, God makes the ultimate decisions, but we’re responsible for our own actions.” “Luke, you know we don’t have complete control over what happens to us. So what’s the difference if I believe the stars rule my destiny, and you believe God does?” “Listen, Lina, there is a difference. A big difference. Because fortune-telling is wrong. It’s evil, false. And God is true.” “So you say. But I disagree. What makes you so sure you’re right and I’m wrong?” “I’m sure, Lina. There’s no question in my mind.” She shrugged. “I don’t like God very much, Luke. I think he’s mean and unfair.” “Don’t say that! How do you dare? It’s dangerous to talk like that!” “Lina looked up at the sky. “It’s a clear day. But I guess God can send lightning if he wants.” She flung her arms wide. “Come on, God, show me I’m wrong.” “Lina, don’t,” Luke shrieked.

Stacy cut in. “Hey, you two, cool it. Don’t get into a twit about this. It’s just a game. Forget it.” Lina’s face was red and she was ready to go on arguing. But Luke said, “You’re right, Stacy. Let’s just forget about it. I’m going for a swim.” And he left. Stacy idly dealt the Tarot cards. “Lina, what’s with you? You know better than to get into that kind of discussion with Luke. It won’t do any good. Are you trying to make an enemy out of a friend?” “It’s just that I can’t stand to see him so tied up in that religion business. I keep thinking I can make him wake up and see reality.” “Well you can’t. Why don’t you just stay off his back?” “I know, I know - I should just keep quiet. But Luke is so great in every other way. I can’t help trying to change the part of him I don’t like.” “If he kept trying to convert you, you’d be furious,” Stacy pointed out. “He’s the way he is. He’s entitled to that.” “Why do we all like Luke so much?” asked Charlotte, trying to change the subject. “Because he likes women,” said Stacy instantly. “He doesn’t seem to date, ever,” objected Lina. “I mean he likes women as people, not as bodies. Kevin likes women as bodies. Can’t you tell the difference?” “I think Luke would be just about perfect if he wasn’t so much of a fanatic. Maybe he’ll grow out of it.” “Give it up, Lina. It’s something you’ll never understand. Neither do I. But it’s permanent. Luke has that religion tattooed on his forehead. He’s never going to change his mind about it. Otherwise, he’s a good friend to you. So you have to leave it at that.” Lina sighed. “I know it’s a real prejudice I have. Neither of you seems to care

much one way or the other about religion. Why is that?” Charlotte said, “I was brought up Episcopalian, and I guess I believe in it. Religion is just not very important to me. That’s the way it was treated in my family. A tradition - like having a Christmas tree. Not something to argue about or defend to the death.” “My family had nothing to do with religion,” said Stacy. “That was something some people did. We didn’t. It was no big deal. And it still isn’t. I don’t care what anybody does, or doesn’t do about it.” “I still think it’s a nice traditional thing,” Charlotte said. “My family goes to church sometimes on Sundays, and always on Christmas and Easter. We sing and listen to a sermon, and we go home, and that’s it. We don’t sit around chanting prayers or beating our breasts all the time. I mean, I don’t see what’s so offensive about Christmas carols.” “Is that why you don’t want to sleep with guys?” Stacy asked. “Because of all those sermons on being good?” Charlotte smiled. “No. I just haven’t ever met a man I want to own part of me. And that’s the way I’d feel if I slept with a man. That I was no longer completely my own person. So far, I haven’t met anybody who’s worth that. But I will. And when I do, I intend to enjoy myself in bed.” Lina had never put it that way to herself, but she agreed with Charlotte. It was the sense of independence she didn’t want to give up by having sex. But she wasn’t sure she agreed with Charlotte’s confidence that one day she would find a man she wanted. She’d seen too many miserable marriages, where the woman gave up everything, got nothing in return. Stacy had finished dealing the cards for Lina’s fortune and she began to read them. After a while, she stopped. “This is pretty silly. Let’s not bother.” “No, you’ve started now. Go on with it. What’s going to happen to me?” Stacy looked at the cards again. “How do I know? I really don’t know anything about this. I’m just screwing around.” She started to gather up the cards. “What’s the matter, Stacy? Do the cards say something bad?”

“No. I just don’t want to bother with this shit any more. It’s boring.”

*****

Finally, after four and a half weeks, a message appeared on the bulletin board one morning. ALL PEACE CORPS VOLUNTEERS WILL MEET HERE AT 10 TOMORROW FOR AN ANNOUNCEMENT FROM THE DIRECTOR. He walked briskly into the room where all of them were sitting tensely. “Here’s what’s been decided. Twenty-seven of you will go to Esmeralda as planned. The others will stay on here for retraining in teaching English as a foreign language.” “For how long?” someone asked. “Eight weeks.” “Looks like we’re going to be perpetual trainees,” Kevin said. “Maybe we’ll be the first group to never actually leave the US.” “And after the eight weeks?” Stacy asked. “You’ll be sent somewhere.” “I guessed that. What I’m asking is - where?” “That hasn’t been decided on yet. Most likely it will be to a Latin American country, since you’ve all been studying Spanish. That instruction, by the way, will continue during the retraining period.” “So maybe it will be Esmeralda after all?” “No. The Peace Corps has no English as a foreign language program in Esmeralda. Or any plans for one in the near future.”

A few groans went up. “The assignments have all been made. They’ll be posted on the bulletin board outside this room at noon today. One more thing - the assignments are permanent. It won’t do any good to come to me and plead. I don’t intend to make any changes. Is that clear?” “Yes,” Stacy said, stepping up and offering her hand.. “And thanks for all your kindness and sensitivity.” He glowered at her. “You’re quite welcome.” And he swept out of the room. A few people booed. “Shit,” said Stacy. “This is just as bad as the deselection.” “And not only that,” Lina pointed out. “The ones who stay here will probably have another deselection at the end of the retraining.” At noon, everyone was clustered around the bulletin board. A secretary nervously pushed through the group and pinned up four sheets of paper. She was rudely pushed aside as everyone crowded up to read. Lina was dazed by what she saw. All of her closest friends, Charlotte, Stacy, Luke, even Kevin, were assigned to Esmeralda, but she was assigned to the other group. She went outside and wandered alone for a couple of hours. I want to go through with this, she thought. But I’m scared. I need to have people I know and trust somewhere nearby. She went to the director’s office. The secretary said, “He’s given orders that he won’t see any of the volunteers.” Lina sighed. “Please. Ask him anyway. Please.” The secretary picked up the phone. “Lina O’Reilly would like to talk with you.” She looked surprised, then said, “Go on in.” Lina was still trying to think of a convincing argument as she walked toward the office door.

“I suppose you want to go to Esmeralda.” “Yes. You see, all the people I’m closest to are in that group, and I…” “All right. You’re now assigned to the Esmeralda group.” He crossed her name off one list and added it to another. “Why no argument?” She knew she should just shut up and leave. He looked embarrassed. “Well, I’m sorry for what happened to you. About Pedro, I mean. I know you weren’t to blame. At first I wasn’t sure. Then all those other girls came to me and told me the same thing. I wasn’t the one who made the final assignments. But I have the authority to change things. So at least I can give you the chance to be with your friends.” “Thank you. I really appreciate this.” Now the volunteers were given two days to pack, while the officials arranged for their transportation. And the 60, who had thought they would be spending the next two years together, hastily said goodbye to people they knew they’d probably never see again. Home leave was two weeks - the last two weeks they would spend in the US for the next two years. One of the Peace Corps rules was that volunteers were not permitted to enter US territory during their tour of duty. It’s like going into exile, thought Lina. The reason for that regulation escaped her. What difference does it make where we take vacations? During the two weeks at home, they would have to buy and pack everything they needed, and since the leave ended with the Thanksgiving weekend, it didn’t give them much time. Lina’s flight was at midnight. The plane was nearly empty, and the stewardesses plied the few engers with free drinks, so Lina was feeling slightly tipsy and completely exhausted when her brother Pat picked her up at the airport. He looked sidelong at her as they got into the car. “Lord, Colleen, you look strange. Wild. What is it - all that hair? I’ve never seen you with it that long. It sure is red.”

Lina, who had simply not had time to get her hair cut for the last four months, patted her head. “Thanks, Pat. It’s nice to see you, too.” He scowled. “You’re not going to actually go to that crazy place, are you?” “Yes, of course I am. That’s what I spent four months training for.” “You can’t afford to waste two years of your life in such foolishness.” “It’s not wasting time. I’ll be doing something valuable.” “You think you’re going to be 21 forever. But you’ll find out. You’ll regret spending two years on something so stupid, so selfish.” “I’m surprised to hear you say that, Pat. You weren’t one of the ones who objected when I decided to the Peace Corps. What made you change your mind?” “Well, I figured you’d just go for the training - it seemed like an interesting thing to do. I thought it would get the wanderlust out of you. But I never figured you’d actually go to some god-forsaken place for two years.” “Well, it’s interesting to know how you’d already worked out my future, and all without saying a word to me.” “Be serious, Colleen. Who could guess you’d actually do something so silly? Nobody in our family has ever done anything like that.” “That’s a problem with our family - nobody ever does anything unusual. Even leaving that boring little town. But I’m going to do that anyway, so I might as well go to Esmeralda as to Chicago or New York.” “Oh, I see - you’re better than all the rest of the family. You’re going to show us all how to live. Who do you think you are, anyway?” “Let’s not argue.” Lina suddenly felt exhausted. “It’s too long a drive to be fighting all the way.” “You’re weird, Colleen. It’s because you’re so spoiled, because you’re the baby of the family.”

“Oh, right, right - I how you and Sean spoiled me, beating me up whenever you weren’t ignoring me.” He frowned but said nothing. After a few minutes, he reached over and turned on the radio, loud. Lina reflected that Pat, married now, with two young sons, and working in some kind of dull-sounding office job, was living in a world completely foreign to her. She ed how the three of them had huddled together, comforting each other, when their father had come home drunk and belligerent, yelling and slapping at anyone who crossed his path. It felt strange to think that someone she had grown up with had now become someone she could never be close to again. Pat and his wife, she thought, and Sean and his, are new families. I’m not part of those families, and I don’t have a new one. I guess this is part of what it means to grow up. By the time they arrived in Trowbridge, she felt forlorn. Lina’s mother greeted her at the door. “Oh, Colleen, you’re so thin. And your hair…” She patted Lina’s springy curls, trying to flatten them. “I’ll make an appointment for you to get it cut. Red hair is too conspicuous when it’s long.” That’s it. I’m going to let my hair grow for the next two years. The next time they see me, I’ll be completely covered with bright red curls. At least Pat had forewarned her - Lina now knew she was going to have to defend her decision again. Pat and Sean, and her aunts, uncles and cousins, all seemed to have been instructed to convince her to stay home. Her mother was absolutely adamant, and Lina began to long more and more to get away. When I leave, she told herself, it’s forever. A visit now and then, but I’ll belong someplace else. When she allowed herself to think about the next two years, her mouth went dry, but she didn’t dare to it her fear to anyone in her family. Lina’s old friend June arranged for all her friends to have a going-away party - every night. They were so exuberant, she couldn’t tell them about the doubts she felt. So she put on an act. “Afraid? No, of course not. I just can’t wait to get started - it’s going to be a great adventure!”

*****

One day, Lina was in her room packing and waiting for her aunt, who was going to take her shopping at a discount store. She had just, with great satisfaction, canceled the appointment her mother had made for her at the local beauty salon. She heard a car pull into the driveway and turned away from her suitcase. The kitchen door slammed shut. “Colleen, come down!” her aunt screamed frantically. “Hold on,” she yelled back. “What’s the big hurry?” “He’s been shot! He’s been shot!” Lina ran down the stairs. “What? Who? Who’s been shot?” “The President. Kennedy’s been shot!” “Oh my God, no! How bad is it?” “Nobody knows yet. I heard it on the radio in the car. They say he was shot in the head.” “The head?” Lina groaned. That’s the end. quickly running over to turn on the TV. Information came in bits and pieces. The President had been shot. In the head. In Dallas. He had been taken to a hospital. Lina looked at her aunt. Does my face have that same pale frightened expression? They glued their eyes to the TV screen. A policeman had also been shot. The policeman was dead. A man named Oswald had been arrested. Then - the President is dead. Lina felt numb, robbed and empty. She realized aunt was talking. “What?” “Listen, we’d better go shopping anyway. You need these things, and you have only a few days more to shop.”

So they got into the car, listening to the news on the radio the whole time. At the store, they gloomily picked out the things on Lina’s list and brought them to the counter. There were no other shoppers, and the clerks were clustered around a radio. When Lina went to have her things rung up, the girl at the check-out counter idly asked, “So why do you need all these light clothes at the end of November?” “I’m going to spend a couple of years in the tropics.” “She’s ed the Peace Corps,” her aunt added. “Excuse me a minute.” The girl walked away. She returned with the store manager. “Here, just take the stuff.” He shoved the clothes into a shopping bag. “Never mind paying for it. It’s the least I can do, I loved him so much. Do a good job. Make all us Americans proud of you young people.” Unnoticed tears rolled down his cheeks. “Thank you. I’ll try.” She ran her sleeve over her own dripping face. The whole family spent the evening huddled in front of the TV. It all seemed so impossible, even as plans for the funeral were announced. Lina’s family went off to church several times in the next few days. All kinds of special services and Masses had been hastily arranged. They seemed to get some comfort from them, but Lina flatly refused to set foot in a church. “I’ve been to my last Mass,” she announced. “You’d all better just get used to that.” Everyone was acting as if it were a family member who had been murdered, and Lina was annoyed - I’m the only one here who had a close enough connection with Kennedy to feel so despondent. She continued to do her packing, and her family kept up the barrage of arguments to keep her home. But now she was absolutely determined, as if it would be betraying Kennedy not to go through with what she had promised. Two days after the assassination, Lina watched while Oswald was taken out of the police station to be transferred somewhere else. She saw the pistol emerge from the crowd. Oswald’s face turned into a mask of shock and pain. The police all leaped on Jack Ruby as Oswald died, right there in front of the whole country.

Lina got up and went to her room. What’s happening? This doesn’t seem like America at all. This is what I was warned to expect in a Latin American country. Assassinations don’t happen here. And the sound of President Johnson’s voice, its twang so completely in contrast to Kennedy’s familiar Boston accent, drove her wild. Things have changed, drastically and suddenly. The world I’m going into is new and alien. But so is the one I’m leaving - the one I’d thought was old and familiar. And I don’t feel like I fit into either one. A feeling of desperation and disgust overcame her, and she lost all patience with her family, snapping at them when they tried to talk with her. Lina’s father took her aside one evening, when he had come home, for a change, early and sober. “Listen, Colleen.” His voice was low and urgent. “This is your own decision. Don’t let anyone else make it for you.” “I know. And I’ve made up my mind. I’m not going to give in.” “Right. Don’t let anybody talk you out of doing what you want.” He looked at her, then beyond her, his eyes haunted and empty. “You only have one life, maybe only one chance to do what’s right for you.” “Yeah, I know that. But dad, I’m kind of scared. I don’t feel like I can tell anybody else that. I’m going to do it, I’ve made up my mind. But - well, I’m not nearly as confident as I like to pretend. For one thing, my Spanish is lousy. I I’m scared.” “You’re young, that’s the way it’s supposed to be. Of course you don’t know what you can do. But this is the time to try yourself, to see what you’re capable of.” “Everybody tells me I’m being selfish - they say I don’t care that nobody wants me to go.” “Your first duty is to yourself. Don’t forget that.” Lina hugged him then. It had been so long she couldn’t the last time.

Later, she thought - that may have been the longest talk I ever had with my father.

*****

Thanksgiving was a disaster. Though they all sat down to the traditional dinner, everyone was solemn and joyless. Lina was irritable, and found something to disagree with in every comment anyone made. Finally, when Sean said something sarcastic about the Peace Corps, she blew up. “Why are we bothering with all this, anyway? Nobody feels very thankful today. Why didn’t we just call the whole thing off?” “It’s a tradition, Colleen,” said her mother. “When bad things happen, traditions help to hold us together.” “I don’t agree. I think it was a stupid idea to go ahead with this. The hell with tradition.” And she got up and stormed off to her room, slamming the door. On Friday, Lina’s friends took her out for a final going-away party. But it was more like a wake. Pat and Sean and their wives went along, Lina was sure at her mother’s insistence. When Lina expressed her disgust at Oswald’s murder, Pat said, “Oh, Colleen, you’re such a jerk. I wish I’d been there. I’d have shot him myself. And been proud of it.” “There are laws in America to deal with things like that. We don’t shoot people down in the streets in revenge.” “You don’t understand men, Colleen. Any man with an ounce of patriotism would have done the same thing.” “Aside from the law, now we’ll never know who was behind this, who’s responsible.” “At a time like that, who could worry about such a thing? Kill the bastard, that’s all any real man would think about.”

“I wish I could tell you how sick I am of macho statements like that!” “Oh, listen to you now, already speaking Spanish so us ignorant slobs can’t understand you.” June broke up the quarrel, but Lina felt frustrated, knowing that most of them agreed with Pat. “I’m leaving.” she got up and headed for the door. “I’ll drive you,” June said. “No, I need to be alone. To walk for a while.” And that was that. My brothers didn’t even say goodbye to me. Early Saturday, Lina’s parents drove her to New York, where the volunteers were to catch the plane to Esmeralda. The weather had suddenly turned very cold, and Lina wore a heavy woolen coat over her light cotton dress. At the airport, she spotted most of the other volunteers, some of them also with their families. She wondered if anybody had backed out at the last moment. When the flight was announced, Lina gave her coat to her mother, knowing she wouldn’t be needing it for a long time. That small act seemed finally to make her realize what she was doing, and she shivered. She thought, I feel so young. I’m so scared. She hugged her parents and looked at them, looked through them, seeming to see a hazy path. That’s my life without them. She walked through the gate and onto the plane. Most of the engers were the Peace Corps volunteers. Nobody had failed to show up, though several said they it might have been different if the assassination had not happened. Finally Lina was able to discuss that awful event with people she felt would agree with her about it. “I’m just wiped out,” Stacy said. “Ever since Kennedy first created the Peace Corps, I’ve thought of it as a way of doing something that mattered. A way to make sure I didn’t just become part of the rat race. And Kennedy - he was a hero to me. The one who gave me the courage to go ahead with it.” Maybe she’s right, thought Lina. Was it that Kennedy, so ardent and eloquent, so full of energy, had given all of them the strength to do this outlandish thing?

Now that he was dead, what would happen to their ideals? Charlotte said, “I think for all of us, it means the death of childhood, the end of the fairy tale.” “Oh give me a break,” Kevin said. “Think about it, Kevin,” Stacy said. “Use some of the grey stuff that’s must be in there someplace behind those big blue eyes.”

Chapter 5

The hotel, in the capital city of Aguadulce, was built of rose-color adobe with balconies and decks of green mahogany weathered by the salt breeze to a delicate sage color. “Wow, they must have made a mistake putting us up here,” Stacy crowed at the doorway to their room. “We’re supposed to be roughing it.” But as soon as they stepped into the room, they started coughing. An appalling stench of mildew permeated the air in the room. “The tourist trade in Esmeralda must be pretty bad,” Charlotte decided. “I bet this hotel hasn’t been used in a couple of years, at least.” Gagging, Lina crossed the room to the balcony, threw open the door and plunged out. “Look at this view,” she called. The other two ed her. The balcony overlooked an aquamarine sea with brisk white breakers. “Let’s get our suits and go for a swim,” Lina said. “Leave the doors open. It’ll be aired out by the time we get back.” But at the front desk, the clerk said, “There are no beaches in the city. The coast here is coral. It’s beautiful to look at, but it will tear you to pieces if you try to get close to it.” The foliage should have been lovely - bougainvillea, oleander, hibiscus and dozens of palms of different varieties surrounded the hotel. But everything was dry and dusty, the edges of the leaves crisp and yellow. “I wonder how long it’s been since it rained,” Charlotte said. “Months, it looks like.” The first week was orientation - lectures, some of them from volunteers who had been in Esmeralda for a while, some from the doctor, and some from the director, Wallace Brown, a bombastic type Stacy promptly named Boomer.

Boomer’s first lecture dealt with what to do in case of political trouble. “Now,” he explained, “this is simple to . The code word is WATER. Can you that?” “Water,” they all dutifully repeated. “You’ve got it. Each letter stands for a different assessment of the current political situation. W stands for WATCH, and we’re always in that state - this is Latin America, after all. It means you always have to be watchful for any signs of possible trouble. A stands for ALERT - that means there is some political unrest. By the way, we’ve been on A for a few weeks - expect that to continue until further notice.” “How do we know when the letter changes?” somebody called out. “I’ll tell you. Or someone else on the Peace Corps staff will. You don’t have to worry about how this stuff is figured out - the Embassy does that, and they keep a close eye on things. Now, T means TRAVEL. That means you have to get to the American Embassy as soon as possible. But without panic - we don’t want to give anything away to the natives. The signal that the letter T has been reached is - the Abraham Lincoln Library is closed. Got that?” “The Abraham Lincoln Library is closed,” they all echoed. “What the hell does that mean?” Stacy yelled. Boomer looked irritated. “I was about to tell you. Now, it’s a clever little insider thing. All the libraries of the United States Information Agency, the USIA, are named Lincoln, so if the Lincoln Library is closed, it means Americans aren’t welcome. In case of major trouble, we’ve made arrangements for that message to be put on the local radio. Now listen carefully here. In case anything sudden and very serious comes up, E means EVACUATE. Never mind the Embassy - get outside of the towns, and proceed to sites on the coast where US Navy ships can pick you up.” Boomer held up a paper. “This is a list of those sites. You’ll get the list as soon as you’re assigned to a post. It won’t mean much to you at first. But it won’t take very long before

you’ll know the area around your post. As soon as you can, you have to go visit all the possible evacuation sites on this list - places that are reasonably nearby. Figure out how you’d get there if there was trouble - if there was no public transportation, for instance. And then - and this is vital - destroy the list. Until you destroy it, make absolutely sure you don’t leave it where it will fall into the wrong hands.” “What if something happens today or tomorrow,” Kevin asked, “before we get the list?” “Unlikely, highly unlikely.” “But if something does happen, we’re the ones in the most danger,” Kevin persisted. “We’re new here - we don’t know anything about the place.” “You’ll just have to trust the opinions of the experts that no serious trouble is expected in the next couple of weeks. Any other questions?” “Yes,” Charlotte said. “What does R mean?” “Oh, right. You distracted me. R means RUN. That means never mind about a calm orderly retreat to the Embassy. It means you can’t count on being picked up at the coastal list sites.” He paused for effect. “It means you have to just make your ass scarce.” He laughed. “Where should I get my ass to?” Kevin asked. “That’ll be up to you, if it happens that way. Needless to say, we don’t expect anything like that. But you have to analyze the situation at your post, and figure out what you’d do in case of a revolution, a Communist insurrection, or some other catastrophe.” Stacy turned to Lina. “Isn’t this a gas?” Lina laughed along with her, but she couldn’t help feeling worried. This is no joke, she told herself. It’s not just an adventure, it’s serious. The next day, Boomer said, “The Peace Corps in Esmeralda has some very basic rules of conduct for volunteers. They’re perfectly easy to , so I don’t want any arguments later.”

“This is fun, isn’t it?” Stacy said. “Every place we go, there are rules. They’re all a little different, and we’re supposed to instantly memorize them.” “And follow them to the letter,” Lina added. “Volunteers,” Boomer went on, “are `on duty’ twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. So there’s no time off for bad behavior.” Weak laughter. “No more than two of you can live together - that, by the way, is a change in the one-only rule we had before. That’s because we have, for the first time, girls in the group.” “Women,” Stacy called out. Boomer frowned, but ignored her. “No more than five Americans can get together, for a party or a picnic or any other social activity, unless an equal number of Esmeraldans are present. I’ll be coming around - unannounced - to check to make sure you’re living up to these rules.” This sounds as bad as Our Lady of Perpetual Sorrow, Lina thought. She looked over at Stacy. “I’ll have to ask for a written list of who we can sleep with,” Stacy whispered, rolling her eyes and laughing. Lina began to laugh then too, realizing that anybody who thought he was going to impose convent-school rules on Stacy was going to find out it was a full-time job. The doctor had the usual dire warnings. They’d heard them all before. Don’t eat or drink anything is the way it comes out, thought Lina. The lectures by the veteran volunteers were the most interesting - they told what to expect and gave advice on local customs. One guy warned, “It’s very insulting to refuse to eat or drink anything that’s offered.” “I wonder if he and the doctor have ever compared notes,” Lina muttered. Everybody kept talking about living in the “barrio”. The word literally meant just “neighborhood”, but Lina realized it had a negative connotation. No one

called the elegant area around the hotel a barrio. So she decided its real meaning was more like “slum”. The schedule was so full there was no time to explore Aguadulce. “This is stupid,” Kevin said, “Here we are finally, where we worked so hard to get, and they’re not giving us a minute off to see it.” After the first two days, small groups began abandoning the scheduled activities, taking a morning or an afternoon off, sometimes the whole day. Lina thought the central part of Aguadulce was lovely, with its Spanish-colonial architecture, cobbled streets and ancient buildings, whitewashed or painted in soft pastels. Most of the houses were built in an unbroken row fronting directly on the street, giving the impression of a solid unyielding wall. But sometimes, as she trudged the sweltering streets, Lina could see through a door that had been left open. Inside, the floors were tiled, the ceilings high, and the walls thick, all creating a hint of delicious coolness. The wooden doors were high and narrow, with jalousies that were kept tightly closed during the heat of the day. At night, the slats were turned horizontal to catch the breeze that always came in from the sea at sunset. Occasionally, Lina could look down a narrow alley to see the square the houses were built around. The squares were lush and green, with central fountains and iron-work balconies running around them. “It’s so strange,” Charlotte said as they spent an afternoon wandering around, “there are no flowers or lawns, no decorations on the facades to impress the people who by. But the courtyards are beautiful and lush.” “Yeah, that’s it. That’s what’s so different about these houses. The goodies are only for the people who live there. Nobody else can even tell if a family is rich or poor,” Stacy said. “I suppose it prevents robberies,” Lina said. “Maybe. But I don’t think that’s why it’s done this way,” Charlotte said. “These houses are built to make sure the poor don’t even get to look at the beautiful things the rich own, never mind share them. Maybe it prevents revolutions.” “There’s something else,” said Lina. “The people inside are mostly women.

Shutting up the houses and making the interiors so beautiful makes sure that the women don’t think about wanting to go out.” “Well, one thing’s for sure,” Stacy added. “People who build houses like this aren’t trying to impress anybody. They don’t give a damn what other people think of them.”

*****

On the third day, they were eating lunch in the hotel dining room. Kevin looked unbearably smug, Lina thought, and carefully avoided asking him what he’d been up to. Finally, as people were finishing their meals, he said, “Well, I want to tell you, these Esmeraldans are a lot more civilized in some ways than Americans are.” Nobody took him up on that. “I spent last night - a long night it was, too - at the best whore house in Esmeralda.” “I’m surprised,” Stacy said, “you had to do that. I’d have thought the women would come to you. Try to beat your door down.” Everybody laughed. Kevin’s face flamed. “I’m not kidding,” he smirked. “The level of talent in that place is almost unbelievable.” He leaned back so his chair rested on its two back legs. “Anything a man needs, they can provide.” He closed his eyes. “I can tell you…” Suddenly everybody realized he was telling the truth. “Oh, Kevin, how could you? Aren’t you afraid you’ll get VD?” Lina asked. “You’ve heard of penicillin, haven’t you?” Luke turned away, his cheeks blazing, a look of disgust on his face.

“I can’t understand doing something like that,” Lina said. “That’s because you’re not a man. The Esmeraldans take a man’s needs for granted. You know, on a boy’s thirteenth birthday, his father takes him to a whore house. And that’s that. They’re not puritans like the bunch of you.” “It’s not a question of being puritan,” Stacy said. “It’s more a question of being human. But I can understand how you’d have trouble with that.” “Bitch!” Kevin got up and stormed out. “There’s definitely something wrong with a guy who has to buy it,” Stacy said. “Especially a guy as good-looking as Kevin.” “You’re right,” Lina said. “It’s kind of sad. He must feel very lonely.” “I don’t mean I feel sorry for him. If he can’t get a girl in the normal way, it’s his own fault. He’s obnoxious. And he doesn’t give a shit about anybody but himself. That’s why he has to buy tail.” “Actually, I think it’s the perfect arrangement for a guy like Kevin,” Charlotte added. “He doesn’t even have to pretend he cares anything about the woman. And he really doesn’t think women are good for anything except to go to bed with.” “Listen, let him do whatever he wants,” Stacy said. “Who cares? I know I don’t.” “What do you think?” Lina asked Luke. “Can you explain it from a man’s point of view?” “Oh, please - don’t compare me to Kevin, just because we both happen to be male. We couldn’t feel more differently about this.” “How do you feel?” “It’s immoral, plain and simple. All you have to do is read the Bible to see that. There are no excuses or arguments about it. It’s wrong, and Kevin will burn in hell if he doesn’t repent.”

*****

The city had a central plaza, a large square with royal palms, jasmine, crushed coral pathways, and a perpetual flame for the Father of the Country. Royal palms, Lina learned, were the very tall stately ones that had a single spike pointing upward from the center of the fronds. A few blocks from the square was the National Palace, an intimidating white marble building, always surrounded by soldiers bristling with weapons. This was clearly one of the nicest sections of town, with government offices, shops, and elegant restaurants. The barrios where the volunteers would be living were a long way from the hotel, and they couldn’t get there without knowing more about the transportation system. One day, Lina and Charlotte were out wandering when they spotted a group of shacks along the seaside. Curious, they went over and began threading their way into the place. It was much bigger than it appeared at first. Narrow dirt paths, hardly wide enough for two people to , wound between hovels made of split bamboo or odd pieces of corrugated tin, with thatched roofs and burlap curtains instead of doors. The air was oppressive - charcoal, sewage from the open drains that paralleled each path, and an overlying stench of rotting fish. “This must be the kind of place we’ll be living in,” said Lina. Charlotte shuddered. Walking through, they saw women only occasionally, carrying water or hurrying from one place to another. Unemployed men sat in groups around crude tables, playing dominoes and drinking rum. Everybody stared at them, some people looking surprised and interested, others decidedly sullen. “Come on,” said Lina. “Let’s get out of here. We’re too conspicuous.” They were silent as they walked back to the hotel. Lina had a taut searing sensation in her belly. She wondered what Charlotte was thinking. The next day, they received their assignments - Charlotte and Lina were assigned to the same barrio, and Kevin would be nearby. Luke would also be in the capital, but some distance from the others. Everybody else would be assigned to other cities. Stacy would be halfway around the island, a hundred miles away.

The night before they left for their posts, they all went down to the cocktail lounge for a goodbye party. The lounge was a rustic patio in back of the hotel, really just a thatched roof held up by thick bamboo poles ringed by beds of wilted flowers. They sat around the rattan tables sipping rum punch. Though the punch was strong, the rum couldn’t seem to dispel the melancholy. Everybody’s worried, Delia thought - but nobody’s going to say so. Darkness settled in, and a waiter came around to light a tiny candle on each table. After a while, Lina realized something strange was happening to the flowers and the poles - they seemed to be moving slightly, and subtly changing their outlines. She pushed her chair away from the table back into a shadowy area, and sat perfectly still for a moment, staring at one of the poles until her eyes adjusted to the darkness. Rats, dozens of them, were climbing up and down the poles and rustling through the flowers. She stifled a scream. Rats are a fact of life here, you can’t panic every time you see one. You have to be rational, she told herself - they’re really a lot like squirrels. They’re both rodents, but I don’t loathe squirrels. The only difference, really, is the tail. Why should I think fluffy-tailed squirrels are cute, but naked-tailed rats are ugly? The rats ignored the people and went about their nightly forays. Lina studied the tail of one of the rats. What’s so awful about that? she asked herself. And immediately answered - it looks like a huge, filthy worm. One of the rats stopped and boldly looked right into her eyes. There was no pretending about that sight. This was no squirrel in a slightly different fur coat. It was a rat, its cunning predatory face hiding nothing - not its intentions, not its desire.

*****

Brown called Lina and Charlotte into his office. “I’ve made arrangements for you to live with a family. For one month.” They nodded shyly.

“By that time, I expect you to know your way around and be ready to move into a house of your own. I want you to know that this is a concession to the fact of your being girls. The men don’t get any such pampering. They’re dropped off on a street corner with their duffle bags. They have to make it on their own.” Neither of them could think of any clever reply, and they just nodded and left. The family was named Gutiérrez, and it was just a woman and her fourteen-yearold daughter. Officially, that is. Unofficially, there were always family moving in and out, some staying for short periods, others seeming to be permanent residents. The house was made of split bamboo with a corrugated tin roof, much better than the shacks Lina and Charlotte had seen along the beach. It was divided in half lengthwise, with bedrooms along the lefthand side, and the living room, dining room, kitchen and bathroom, one in back of the other, on the right. The floor in the living room was tiled, those in the bedrooms and bathroom were cement, and the dining room and kitchen floors were just packed dirt. There was a small yard running beside the house on the right, but it was dark, and was used only to keep chickens. The kitchen did not in any way resemble an American one. For one thing, there was no refrigerator - the cost of importing one would have been prohibitive, and the electricity to run it even worse. There was no proper stove either. Along one side, there was a cement structure, called a fogón, containing four shallow square holes with metal gratings in the bottoms - charcoal burners. A channel led from the bottom of each burner to a square hole at floor level. Once the kindling began to burn a little, you had to crouch by the hole and fan vigorously to provide enough of a draft to keep the flames from going out until the charcoal caught. The sink was also a cement structure. The hole in the bottom simply continued through the wall into the back yard. There was only one faucet - if you wanted hot water, you heated a bucket of it on the fogón. Since even houses that had indoor plumbing, like this one, had water only a few hours a day, the water for drinking and cooking was stored in an earthenware jug about five feet tall. It had a rounded bottom, and sat in a wooden stand which kept it just off the floor. The principle worked well - there was slow evaporation

all the time through the porous clay, keeping the water cool. Unfortunately, the open top was an invitation to mosquitoes to lay their eggs, so they were growing their own torture weapons. And, of course, since the water was unboiled, Lina and Charlotte would not drink it. Though the girls had constantly been warned that they would experience “culture shock”, it was much worse than they had expected. Everything was difficult, especially the language, a thick rapid dialect even harder to comprehend than the one they had heard in Palmar. The scarcity of water, and the complete lack of hot water bothered Charlotte, who was used to taking leisurely hot baths. Here the water was frigid, and likely to run out abruptly. They learned how to take an Esmeraldan shower - wet an arm, soap an arm, rinse an arm. Go on to another limb. That way, you couldn’t be trapped with soap all over you if the water suddenly quit. Lina was more upset by the food than the water shortage. Always a picky eater, she couldn’t stomach the meal they were served day after day - boiled rice, boiled kidney beans, boiled plantains. Occasionally, there was a tiny amount of unidentifiable stringy meat or some very salty, very fishy dried cod. The only variations on the menu were spaghetti, overcooked to sliminess and served in warm peanut oil, and eggs fried in several inches of the same heavy oil. Lina began having a lot of trouble digesting peanut oil, and her stomach seemed to turn as soon as she looked at her plate. Though Charlotte didn’t like the food either, she was able to eat it. Lina just picked at her food, drank lots of Cokes from the tienda across the street, and smoked more and more. “Lina, you have to eat,” Charlotte urged. “You know that. At least the rice and beans are nutritious. You’re going to get sick if you don’t eat anything.” “Don’t worry about it. I’ve never been a big eater, anyway. I’m all right. And I can’t just eat things I hate, like you do. I seem to have a little flap over the bottom of my throat, and it locks up tight when it meets rice and beans, or boiled plantains, and especially when it’s that awful fishy stuff.” “Lina, Coke and cigarettes aren’t enough to keep you alive.” “Never mind. Let’s just say I gave up food for Advent.” Lina laughed, but Charlotte looked worried.

Both of them were appalled by the insects - there were so many of them, and most of them were enormous. Charlotte moaned every time a two-inch roach darted across the floor or over the table as they ate. The Gutiérrezes never acknowledged the roaches, never seemed to notice them at all. Lina’s undoing was tarantulas. The sight of one of them moving, raising each thick hairy leg and putting it down with apparent deliberation, so horrified and paralyzed her she couldn’t even try to get out of its path. Luckily, the spiders had no more desire to get acquainted than she did.

*****

One afternoon, Mrs. Gutiérrez brought four furry guinea pigs into the living room where the girls were sitting. Neither of them knew anything about guinea pigs, but for Lina they brought back pleasant memories of rabbits cavorting on the lawn near the edge of the woods, at home in Trowbridge. The guinea pigs frolicked around the girls’ legs and climbed all over them. “Now Fred,” Charlotte said, “get out of my hair. Go over there and play with Judy.” “They’re so full of energy,” Lina said, extracting one that had snuggled down into her pocket. “And a lot smarter than I would have guessed.” “Let’s get a kitten once we get our own house.” “Good idea. I hope we can get a tamer one than Tigre, though.” Tigre, the Gutiérrez’ cat, was fierce and aloof. “I think if we feed it, it’s bound to be.” The Gutiérrezes didn’t feed the cat at all. He hunted his own food - mice, spiders and the giant roaches. The girls went out for a while later in the afternoon and returned just at

dinnertime. They sat down at the table and Mrs. Gutiérrez put a plate in front of each of them. Lina looked at her plate. There was a strange shape, a skinned head and four little legs sticking stiffly straight out. It looked like a crucified baby. Charlotte was smiling, as usual, somewhat vacantly. “Well,” Charlotte said to Mrs. Gutiérrez, stabbing her fork at the meat, “this is something different. What is it?” Lina grabbed Charlotte’s arm and shook her head. Charlotte looked puzzled, and Lina hissed at her, “Go back to our room. I want to tell you something.” Charlotte shrugged and left the room. Turning to Mrs. Gutiérrez, Lina said, “I think we ate something bad in town this afternoon. We don’t feel very good. Please excuse us from dinner.” Then she went back to their room. “What’s up?” said Charlotte brightly. “Hurry up, will you, I’m starving.” “Fine,” snapped Lina. “Then go on out there and eat Fred and Harriet and whoever the other two were.” Charlotte’s eyes widened, then she abruptly threw herself on her bed and began sobbing. Lina sat down on her bed, miserable and revolted. This is silly, she thought. I know where beef and pork come from. But the memory of those tiny stiff legs would not leave her.

*****

Marina, with her teen-aged devotion to fashion and beauty, was intrigued by the exotic house-guests. She became convinced that the startling colors of the girls’ hair was produced by the shampoo they used - a product that didn’t seem to exist in Esmeralda. The girls let Marina use their shampoo, but when she eagerly examined herself in the mirror afterward, she was bitterly disappointed. Lina’s hair, while a strange color, was at least curly. Charlotte’s hair was a source

of mystification - both the color and the texture were puzzling to Marina, and she took to caressing it every time she walked behind Charlotte, shaking her head. One day, they overheard Marina and a friend talking about them, and Marina described Charlotte’s hair as “absolutely dead.” Charlotte was incensed, but Lina could appreciate the trouble Marina had describing hair so radically different from her own. Charlotte’s blue eyes and Lina’s green ones also caused a lot of speculation. Most people thought they couldn’t see very well - their eyes were always described as “weak”. “Well, you can understand that,” Lina told Chearlotte. “Probably the only lighteyed Esmeraldans are albinos, and they do have weak eyes.” “You’re so lucky,” Marina said, “not to have hair on your legs. Or under your arms. All Esmeraldan women do. It’s so ugly.” “Uh, actually, Marina, we do. Probably all adults do. We just shave it off.” Marina looked stunned. “What’s the matter?” “Le hace daño. You’ll get weak. You could die.” “Don’t be silly. Most American women shave. Been doing it for ages. We’re perfectly healthy. And men - men have been shaving for hundreds of years, maybe more. It doesn’t kill them.” “No, it’s all right for men. I mean, their faces. And I guess for American women, from what you say. But not for Esmeraldan women. I wouldn’t dare.” “Where do you suppose that superstition came from?” Lina asked Charlotte. “You know, it sounds oddly like the story of Samson in the Bible.” “That’s it! Samson lost his strength with his hair. And then he died. But how come it only applies to women here?”

“Who knows? Except that most prohibitions here apply only to women.” This was the girls’ introduction to hace daños. “What does that mean, hace daño, anyway?” Charlotte asked. “It means, “It’ll hurt you.” They thought that there were probably hundreds of hace daños - they only found out about one when they violated it. Some of them applied to everybody, but most of them were for women only, many of them centering on menstrual periods. In high school, Lina had been surprised to hear that some of her friends’ mothers would not let them bathe or wash their hair when they had their periods. That seemed like medieval medical practice to her. But here, the prohibition extended to carrying water in a bucket. That presented quite a problem, since carrying water was a necessary part of everyday life. For some reason nobody was able to explain, using soap powder to wash clothes or dishes was also forbidden at this time. Bar soap, however, was all right. One hace daño that applied to men as well as women was the prohibition against reading or writing after meals. This was a very serious infraction of the regulations and Mrs. Gutiérrez was frantic to get them to stop it. The girls retired to their room after meals to spare her the sight of them killing themselves. Lina had the impression the Esmeraldans felt death was an unnatural event, that you could avoid it by following the rules. But, of course, the rules were so complicated nobody could follow them all. Lina got a letter from a friend who already had a son and was pregnant again. “I’m going to ask Marina if there’s an Esmeraldan way to know the baby’s sex in advance. Louise would get a kick out of that.” “Be careful,” Charlotte warned. “You don’t want to insult her.” “Yeah, you’re right.” So she asked Marina, “I know you don’t believe anything like this, but I was wondering if you know any superstitions about how to tell if a baby will be a girl or a boy.”

“Superstitions? No, I’m sorry.” As Lina turned to leave, Marina said, “But there is one sure way to tell. It never fails.” “Oh, good. What is it?” “You put a scissors under one cushion, and a knife under another. Then you ask the pregnant woman to choose one or the other cushion to sit on. Then check to see which one she has chosen. The knife means a boy, the scissors means a girl.” “Why is that?” “Because a woman uses a scissors, and a man uses a knife.” Lina went back to her room and wrote to her friend with instructions. When she told Charlotte about the “test,”she said,.”I bet it’s not the use of the tools that explains the belief.” “What, then?” “The configuration.” And Lina ed the obelisk on the road that ran beside the sea - it was commonly called the macho monument. Further along was one shaped like a capital U, and it was called the hembra monument. But Louise, who had chosen the scissors on the test, had a second boy. “Gee, Marina, your test failed.” “What happened?” “Well, you you predicted a girl for my friend. But she had another boy.” Marina looked worried. “Then…there might be something wrong with the child. A health problem.” “No, I don’t think so. The doctors say he’s fine.”

“Doctors,” Marina scoffed. “They do not know anything. I’m going to pray, make an offering to the saints.” “Oh, don’t bother, Marina. I think everything is all right.” “Praying can do no harm.” Marina looked worried. The next day, Marina called Lina into her room. “Come in here and look what I’ve done.” On a tabletop, there was a kind of altar, with statues of saints and what the nuns had called “holy pictures.” There was a jumble of other things on the altar dishes of powders, twigs and seeds, glasses of colored water, beads and other trinkets, a mirror, flowers, even some food. There was such a profusion of color, Lina couldn’t take everything in at once. “What is it?” she asked. “It is a plaza,” said Marina. “Of course, my mother helped me make it.” Lina understood that this use of the word plaza was different from the one she was accustomed to. “What’s it for?” “It’s to prevent evil. Here is the Virgin of Altagracia, for luck.” The Virgin of Altagracia was the patron saint of Esmeralda. “And over here, San Pablo, for power. But the most important is this one. See, I have made an offering here to Santa Clara. For protection. Now we will do a despojo.” Lina had never heard that word, and listening to Marina’s explanation didn’t make it completely clear. Finally, she came to the conclusion that it was some sort of ritual purification. Marina took an egg and put it in a glass that was half-filled with water. Then she began to pray to Santa Clara. “A prayer for peace and harmony.” Afterward she lit a white candle. “We will repeat this every day for nine days, and then there is another part we must do. And send this to your friend to put on the baby.” She held out her palm. In it was a small black shape - a fist, with the

thumb inserted between the second and third fingers. “What is it?” asked Lina, fascinated. Now she ed seeing these on babies’ wrists, or hanging from cribs. “You don’t know what the higa is?” Marina said in amazement. Lina shrugged. Higa - the word meant fig. Although the charm looked somewhat like a fig, it was surely a fist. “No, what’s it for?” “It’s to ward off the evil eye. All babies should have one. You know a lot of babies die in the first year - that’s because of the evil eye. Tell your friend to bury three yellow roses, too, just to be sure. Then I think everything will be all right.” Lina was captivated. What an incredible mixture of religion and superstition! “My grandmother was superstitious, too. Whenever it began to thunder, she would scurry around the house sprinkling holy water in every room, invoking the Blessed Mother to spare her home.” “Was your house ever struck by lightning?” “No.” “So maybe it worked.” “True. But then, neither were the `heathen’ neighbors’ homes. “Heathen meaning Protestant.” “Maybe your grandma protected the whole neighborhood.” Lina began to think more about her grandmother - how she burned candles in front of statues, for various “intentions”, and had lists of saints who were to be invoked for various purposes. St. Anthony was good at finding lost articles, and St. Jude could rescue “hopeless causes”. But Marina’s profusion of trinkets, ornaments and images seemed a step beyond her grandmother’s superstitions. Every day, Lina went into Marina’s room to watch her perform the ceremony. Charlotte went with her a couple of times, but she clearly found it distasteful. On

the ninth day, Marina took the egg out of the glass and threw the water into the street. “Now we must go to the park.” “Just a minute,” Lina said, intrigued. “I’ll call Charlotte.” But Charlotte refused. “I don’t want anything more to do with these weird ceremonies. They give me the creeps.” So Lina and Marina walked to the park, where they went deep into a wooded glade. Marina asked the name of her friend’s baby. “Christopher.” Marina abruptly flung the egg on the ground, smashing it, intoning, “Santa Clara, as this egg is broken, let the evil disappear from Christopher’s life.” Lina was fascinated by the ceremony. For a non-traditional religion, she thought, this one seems very organized. Over time, Marina revealed a few more details, and Lina began to recognize things like the bead bracelets and necklaces many Esmeraldans wore. Marina told her they were given to people after a kind of initiation ceremony. The colors of the jewelry indicated which “saint” a person was devoted to. Lina later noticed people wearing these beads, though she couldn’t Marina’s list of saints - strange names, not at all Spanish-sounding. The beads were very tiny, and some people wore several different necklaces or bracelets. Some were red and white, some red and black, others blue and yellow. “Marina, these blue and crystal beads I see some people wearing - I like them. Where can I buy a necklace like that?” “You can’t. Or at least you’d better not. It would be disastrous to wear one of those necklaces unless you were…part of the…” “You mean, like…initiated?” “Yes. Like that. Forget those beads. You can get a nice amber necklace in one of the tourist stops downtown.”

One day when Luke came to visit, Lina asked, “Do you know anything about a…well, a kind of local half-Catholic, half-I don’t know what-religion?” “Yes, I’ve heard about it. It’s called Santería. There’s a lot of mixing up of African gods and Catholic saints. It’s not a proper religion at all. It’s more like a form of witchcraft.” He shuddered. “They practice animal sacrifice, can you believe it? Actually, I think it’s kind of a Spanish-speaking version of Voodoo. But it’s very hard to get information.” “I don’t suppose there’s much written down about it.” “I don’t think so, and people don’t like to talk about it. Followers are supposed to keep quiet. And most people are embarrassed to it they believe in black magic.” Lina brought up the subject as often as she dared with both Mrs. Gutiérrez and Marina. She tried to pay more attention to things like talismans and mysterious or inexplicable customs. On a visit to a family one day, Lina noticed something strange in the bathroom a stick wrapped in colored ribbons with bells on the ends of them. Rusty brown stains spattered the stick, and a few bedraggled feathers clung to it. “What was that?” she asked Marina, describing the object. “It…it’s called a palo” As far as Lina knew, palo just meant stick. “But what is it used for?” Marina shook her head. “I can’t tell you. Maybe some day…” “Were those blood stains on it?’ “I can’t tell you. Don’t ask any more.” One day when only Lina and Mrs. Gutiérrez were home, a very black man came to the door. He was a Haitian, and spoke only a little heavily-accented Spanish. Mrs. Gutiérrez treated the man with a mixture of fear and awe, struggling to communicate.

“Señora Gutiérrez,” Lina said, “I can speak a little French. Can I help?” “Please try.” “What is it you want, M’sieur?” The man’s face broke into a wide smile, and he burst into a cascade of words. Lina got some of it, enough to know he was selling charms and potions. She translated that information for Mrs. Gutiérrez. “Wonderful! These Haitian medicines are the best in the world. What does he have?” Lina asked the man to describe his goods. “This one,” he held up a Coke bottle, filled with a yellow liquid, clearly not Coke. It’s for…” Lina struggled to comprehend. “I…I think he says it’s good for pregnancy and fatigue… and for foot problems.” Oh boy, I hope these potions are intended to rub on, not to drink. The Haitian seemed to understand Lina’s stilted ungrammatical French, but she had a lot of trouble comprehending him. A lot of the words he used didn’t sound like French at all. Mrs. Gutiérrez went off to get her purse. The Haitian asked if Lina wanted to buy some of his potions. She shook her head, and he began pulling other things out of his bag, Catholic “holy pictures” and medals. She continued to shake her head, ing to smile politely. But when he pulled out a picture of St. Patrick, she couldn’t resist. “What’s that?” “Domballa.” “I don’t understand.” He burst into a long explanation. As far as Lina could make out, Domballa was a snake god, and the picture of St. Patrick surrounded by snakes served as a

reminder of Domballa. Or maybe Domballa and St. Patrick were the same person. Or related somehow. Mrs. Gutiérrez returned with the money for the potions she wanted. The Haitian waved the picture of St. Patrick in front of Lina. “No. Thank you, but no.” He looked at her for too long. His dark eyes, deep-set in his black skin, had a yellowish cast that seemed somehow ominous. “Take it. No money.” “No thank you. I don’t want it. Don’t need it.” He pocketed the money from Mrs. Gutiérrez and put the picture down on the porch. He waved his hand over it in an elaborate pattern, chanting words that were clearly not French, then shouldered his pack and left. “Take it,” Mrs. Gutiérrez said. “I don’t want it. I told him that.” “It cannot stay there. And I will not touch it. It is meant for you - you must take it.” Lina looked at her. The woman looked pale, frightened. “Certainly. If it means so much to you.” She leaned over and picked up the faded image. She turned it over. On the back was a prayer in Italian. “This is not a joke. These Haitian medicine men are very powerful.” “I’ll keep this in a safe place.” She turned to go into her room. “You should have paid for it.” “I told him I didn’t want it.” “You must pay for charms. It’s dangerous not to.” “I’m sorry. I guess I didn’t understand. Shall I run after him?”

Mrs. Gutiérrez looked down the street. She shook her head. “He’s gone now. You should have paid. It is dangerous to treat a medicine man disrespectfully.”

******

Lina had never had any trouble with ants except at picnics. Here, though, the ants were an ever-present nuisance. The girls couldn’t leave anything edible lying around, even for a few minutes, without the little creatures making a trail to it. The ants were the very tiny brown ones, and they could infiltrate the most unlikely places. The Gutierrezes had set up a table in the kitchen for the girls to store their food. “Charlotte!” Delia shouted. “Why can’t you to put the lid back on the peanut butter jar?” “I did! I’m sure!” Lina was skeptical - Charlotte was notoriously negligent about things like that. She had always had someone to clean up after her. But when Lina had to use all her strength to twist off the cap, only to find that there were ants inside, she realized she had been unfair. She picked up the jar and examined it. The ants were all in a line, walking around the threads. They were so tiny they could just treat the threads as a circular ramp, eventually reaching the summit, where they plunged in. “Put the legs of the table in cans of water,” Marina suggested. “And put some kerosene in the cans.”

“What a great idea!” It worked for a while - about a week. Then they once again noticed ants in everything. Lina traced the sinuous lines of tiny creatures. The ants were walking up the wall, across a beam that hung over the table, and dropping onto

the table from there. The first layer of ats died, and the second. But eventually, all the corpses formed a soft surface for the next wave, who survived. She was amazed. How did they know how to do that? Did they have some sort of collective intelligence? Was there some hidden Ant Mother who told them how to outwit their human foes? Stacy came to visit and told about her first night in her town. “The Chamber of Commerce had a banquet to welcome their new Peace Corps Volunteer. All these men kept getting up and talking. Of course, I couldn’t understand a word. So I figured I’d just keep eating and smiling. But when I cut open the tortilla on my plate, this little trail of ants marched out. I didn’t know what to do - I ed the guy who said it was incredibly insulting to refuse to eat or drink anything. I knew I couldn’t complain about the tortilla.” “Oh, Stacy, you didn’t eat the ants, did you?” “Not as many of them as I might have. I started banging my fork on my plate discreetly, of course. That made the ants scatter - for a few seconds. Then I ate a little bit of the tortilla, smiling like mad. I kept it on like that, and eventually I got enough of the tortilla down to avoid a diplomatic incident.” “Oh, poor Stacy,” Lina said. “That sounds awful.” “Probably not the worst thing that’ll happen to me while I’m here.”

*****

One evening Lina was in the bathroom, taking a miserable cold-water shower. She was just about to leave when she saw that the bottom of the sink was a sickly green color. Mold, she thought idly, and started to put her hand in to wipe it away. The “mold” began to move. Lina jumped back and focused on the sink. Its bottom was completely covered with an enormous green spider, which had begun to stir as Lina approached. She screamed and backed up against the far wall. The door crashed open, and Marina stood there.

“Look”, Lina shakily pointed to the sink. Marina took one look at the creature, then backed out into the kitchen and immediately returned with a thick sharpened stick. She approached the sink cautiously, then suddenly raised the stick upright and drove it downward with all her strength, impaling the spider. She took the stick, with the spider still wriggling on it, and threw it through the kitchen door into the side yard, where Tigre promptly sprang on it. Lina turned her head and rushed back to her room, trying not to listen to the crunching sounds in the yard.

*****

The girls had been in Esmeralda about a month at Christmas time. Both of them felt hungry most of the time, but Lina was really famished. For over a week before Christmas they had been hearing about the feast they were about to have. The Esmeraldans celebrated Christmas Eve, not Christmas day itself. “For Christmas Eve,” Marina said, “we always have equipaje de pollo”. Neither Charlotte nor Lina knew what that meant. The dictionary said equipaje meant either a sports team or the equipment for one. “At least we know it’s chicken,” Charlotte said. “Right. Who cares how it’s cooked?” Charlotte laughed. “I think you’ll get special pleasure out of eating this particular chicken.” Lina blushed, ing her embarrassing encounter with the chicken. “Now listen, I don’t know much about chickens, but Diablo must hold some kind of record for belligerence.” Charlotte laughed again. “This must be the only chicken with such a bold name.”

“Well, Diablo is a good name for it. It is a devil. It’s just not a chickenly chicken.” The first time she had met the chicken, Lina had been trying to find her way to the bathroom at night. She knew that if she simply headed toward the back of the house, she was bound to find it - it was the last room. What worried her was the arrangement for turning on the light. There were no switches in the house. In the bedrooms, the lightbulbs had a string attached, but in the rest of the house you tightened and loosened the fuse to turn the light on and off. Lina was afraid to try that, so she groped around in the dark and finally got into what she recognized as the kitchen. As she turned to open the bathroom door, she heard a rustle, and then sharp claws tore at her legs. She screamed, dancing away from the creature, trying to protect her ankles. The house erupted into activity. Marina and Charlotte started screaming. Mrs. Gutiérrez came running out of her room and turned on the light. The chicken was still clawing and pecking at Lina. Mrs. Gutiérrez dispatched the chicken to the yard, and things settled down. Lina was very embarrassed, and vowed to stop drinking Coke after dinner. Lina named the chicken Diablo, and she kept a close watch on it after that. She saw it several times fighting with the cat over a roach or a piece of garbage. The chicken was often the winner. Lina hoped they were going to cook Diablo for a long time - the creature must be very muscular.

*****

One thing the girls had adjusted to was the erratic electricity. Many nights the lights went off without warning, but they could count on them going off when there was a baseball game. The city’s electrical system was not powerful enough to supply current to both the houses and the stadium. An odd consequence was that many people went to the baseball stadium to do other things than watch the game. There was usually a culebra band somewhere in the stands, and people danced in the aisles. A lot of women and girls went simply to socialize, paying no attention whatever to the game.

Sometimes Lina and Charlotte went to the stadium. Lina usually tried to follow the game, but Charlotte always took out a book and read until the game ended. When they didn’t go to the stadium, they tried to read by candlelight. That was very unsatisfactory, and Lina couldn’t do it for very long without getting a headache. During the day of Christmas Eve, Marina and Mrs. Gutiérrez decorated the house. They whitewashed bunches of twigs and put them in empty tin cans, hanging a few ornaments from them. Then they put red and green paper streamers around the living room. Lina and Charlotte had bought each of them a small present, and the Gutiérrezes gave each of the girls a straw tote the size of a small suitcase. Marina had crudely painted flowers on the totes, and they looked very charming. Towards dusk, Mrs. Gutiérrez went into the kitchen, saying it was time to start preparing the feast. Lina, Charlotte and Marina were sitting in the living room chatting when Lina suddenly wondered if Mrs. Gutiérrez was about to kill Diablo. She jumped up. “Let’s go out for a walk, find out how other people are celebrating the holiday.” The three girls walked through the streets, iring the streamers and other ornaments people had put on their porches or in their front windows. A procession ed by, heading toward the church. The priest sprinkled the crowd with holy water dipped from a silver container. Lina jumped back to avoid having any of the water touch her. Both Charlotte and Marina looked at her in shock, and Lina blushed, but she rubbed compulsively at the damp spot on her arm. Behind the priest, men carried the statue of the Christ child. “The men will put the Christ child in the crib in the church. That will mark the beginning of the holiday,” Marina told them. After about an hour, they returned home. It was completely dark now, but the lights had not gone on yet. Candles were burning around the living room, giving the room a soft cozy glow. Marina immediately headed into the kitchen to help her mother. Something was cooking, and Lina’s mouth began to water, the first time her appetite had been stirred since arriving at the Gutiérrezes. It didn’t exactly smell like chicken, but it smelled different from the everyday aromas.

A few minutes later, Marina came out of the kitchen and announced that the meal was ready. There were two candles on the table, one near each end. Lina was sitting between the candles, so her place was pretty dark. Mrs. Gutiérrez filled bowls from a large pot and they ed them around. Lina peered into her bowl - it wasn’t chicken, it was spaghetti, coated as usual with peanut oil.. Charlotte, sitting across the table, looked at her questioningly. Lina shrugged and politely began pushing the food around. Feeling something solid under the spaghetti, she jabbed at it with her fork. The fork bounced off. She stabbed again. Finally, with a crackling sound, the surface broke, and she lifted the piece of chicken to her mouth. She tried to bite it, but nothing happened. So she nibbled at the skin, which was so tough she couldn’t even get her teeth through it. What part of the chicken is this? she wondered. She held it toward the light, but all she could see was a slim dark silhouette. Charlotte was having trouble dealing with her chicken, too. Mrs. Gutiérrez asked, “How it is?” “Delicious,” the girls said in unison. Surreptitiously, Lina pushed the piece of chicken off her fork and ate a few strands of the spaghetti. The dressing of warm heavy peanut oil dripped off her fork . Instead of the familiar boiled plantains, a platter of fried plantain slices had been prepared for this special occasion. While they were very oily and salty, Lina liked them a lot better than the boiled ones. She ate several slices of plantains, then tried again to get a bite of the chicken, but with no more success. Charlotte began eating the spaghetti and the plantain slices. “Sra. Gutiérrez, everything is delicious!” About a half hour into the meal the lights went on, and Lina dug through the spaghetti looking for the chicken. She found it. It was a foot - not a leg, a claw. She had never thought of chicken claws as edible. Charlotte had something speared on the end of her fork. Lina recognized the object while Charlotte was still squinting at it curiously. The fork had penetrated Diablo’s head, a tine jutting out of one of his boiled eyes. Suddenly, Charlotte gave a little cry and dropped the fork. Mrs. Gutiérrez smiled. “This is equipaje de pollo. I’m glad you enjoyed it.”

In their room, Charlotte asked, “What do you think became of the rest of Diablo?” “Well, I….” Then, with a start, she knew - they had sold it. That was where they had got the money for the decorations and the presents.

Chapter 6

Toward the end of the allotted month, the girls went in search of their own place. They found a wooden house on a busy block, attached to another house on one side. A narrow yard hugged the other side. The small tin-roofed house had a living room, kitchen, two tiny bedrooms and an indoor bathroom. A woman and her four children lived in the corresponding space on the other side of the common wall. The house had the same cooking arrangements as the Gutiérrez’. The girls had tried to learn the intricacies of the kitchen from Marina, but they still felt that using the fogon was a challenge. “First you take twigs,” Marina had said. “They’re a special kind of wood - it’s oily, so it burns easily. You split all the twigs.” And she demonstrated, turning pencil-thick pieces into matchsticks, using a knife she hit with a rock. Marina had done the job quickly, but to the girls the splitting seemed to take forever, and Lina got cramps in her legs from crouching on the floor. “Then you put the twigs in the burner and you light them. As soon as they get burning nicely, you add one piece of charcoal. Carefully.” “Charcoal?” Charlotte picked up a forked piece that looked just like the branch it was made from. “It looks funny. American charcoal is all neat and square.” Marina looked impressed. “I must go to America some day. Everything sounds wonderful there.” “Later,” Lina muttered under her breath in English, “I’ll explain the difference between charcoal and briquets.” “Then you fan,” Marina went on, “Fast and strong. If it catches, you add more charcoal, then start fanning the hole near the floor.”

It could take as much as an hour to get a fire going, and then it should properly wait for a half hour before you started to cook on it. This was so much work, the girls cooked at most once a day. Their menu wasn’t very imaginative. Neither of them knew much about cooking, even with gas stoves and refrigerators. “I’m so tired of French fries, scrambled eggs, peanut-butter. And if my mother could see me digging into the peanut butter jar with my fingers, she’d faint.” “Well, we could splurge and buy a can of bonito.” “No, it’s too expensive. And I don’t feel like squatting on the floor with a knife and a rock at the moment.” “How could we both have forgotten to bring a can opener?” “I figured it would be easy to get one here.” “Me, too. Of course they don’t sell them. Not many people can afford to buy canned food.” Since it was such a hassle to get, they rarely ate meat. Once in a while, they made spaghetti - Italian-style. It was a lot of work - everything had to be made from scratch. Peeling, chopping and boiling down tomatoes for sauce took most of the day. Garlic and onions were available, but not oregano or basil or any other herb or spice. And with no refrigeration, the sauce provided only one meal. In spite of the inordinate amount of time they spent on cooking, most of their meals were dismal. “We use all fresh ingredients,” Lina complained during dinner one evening. “Why isn’t this food delicious?” “Probably it would be if we knew how to cook.” But Lina knew only the basics, while Charlotte’s family had always had a cook, and she had never even attempted to cook anything. She was willing to try, but her ignorance was abysmal. One day when Lina arrived home for lunch, Charlotte was angry.

“What’s the matter?” “Oh, the grocer sold me defective spaghetti. I suppose he’s just taking advantage of me because I can’t speak Spanish very well.” Lina was puzzled. “What’s defective spaghetti?” “Look at it. It got all gluey when I tried to wash it.” “Wash it? You washed spaghetti?” Lina started laughing. “Well, why not? You wash rice, don’t you? Isn’t rice the same as spaghetti? Only a different shape?” “I guess you must have been daydreaming when Marina taught us how to cook spaghetti. Pay attention now. It’s not hard.” Charlotte put some water on the charcoal burner, and Lina started explaining. “See those bubbles? That means the water’s boiling. At that point, you drop in the spaghetti.” Charlotte started to do that. “No, wait, have this ready.” Lina handed her a large spoon punched full of holes. Marina had made the holes herself, with a rock and a big nail, and presented the tool to the girls as a going-away present. “Now put the spaghetti in. You have to wait a minute or so.” Charlotte stared at the roiling water. “Now! Start spooning!” Lina held a tin dish while Charlotte spooned the boiled beetles off the top. “Perfect! By the time you get all the beetles off, the spaghetti is done. See how easy it is?” Getting meat, on the other hand, was not easy - it was available only at tiny corner stands that closed before 8 AM. Later in the day, the severe heat made it impossible to keep meat around. Even so early, the smell of the meat, already beginning to turn, was so strong that Lina tried to hold her breath when she

finally got up close enough to give her order. You ordered by calling out: “Ten cents worth of pig!” Or goat, or cow. The butcher casually brushed off the curtain of flies from the carcass before he cut off a hunk from wherever he happened to grab, and that’s what you got. There was no recognizable cut - much of the time the girls ended up with a piece of overworked muscle, especially with cow, which was almost impossible to chew. Usually, if they bought cow they ground it up. They had bought an old-fashioned cast-iron meat grinder - but it was discouraging how little ground meat you could produce that way. The unaged meat was very bloody, and the grinding produced huge reeking puddles. The smell made the girls gag and retch, effectively eliminating any appetite. At the Gutiérrez’, Tigre went crazy when they ground meat, seeming to revert to some primal beast, yowling and struggling violently if they tried to restrain him. They had to lock him in the bathroom. The only meat the girls ate regularly was pig. It came in little lumps - neither of them had ever seen meat that looked like that. Following instructions from Mrs. Gutiérrez, the girls crushed garlic, mixed it with salt and rubbed it all over the meat when they got it home. When they cooked it at lunchtime, it was quite tender. The Peace Corps doctor had a fit when anyone mentioned he was eating pork, even very well done. “Cooking,” he explained heatedly, “will kill the microbes, but not the poisons they’ve already produced. Eventually, you’re going to get sick - very sick - if you eat pork.” Lina and Charlotte had found a “foolproof” way of seeing if the pork was contaminated. They cooked all the meat, then cut a little off one lump and offered it to Tigre. Usually he ate it - then Lina and Charlotte cut the rest of that hunk in half and ate it. But sometimes, Tigre would sniff at his bit and refuse to eat - they threw that hunk away. Lina knew the doctor would think they were crazy, but it was true that Tigre rejected pieces the girls thought looked and smelled good. “Cats have a way better sense of smell than humans,” Lina argued. “I think it’s a pretty scientific way of dealing with the pork.” “If you think it’s ‘pretty scientific,” why haven’t you shared this great discovery

with the doctor?” Lina was more comfortable with Spanish than Charlotte was, so she did most of the shopping. Since they ate a lot of eggs, Lina often went into the local tienda and asked, “Tiene huevos hoy?” - Do you have eggs today? She was puzzled that the tienda owner always snickered, and he always gave the same answer, “Si, señorita, tengo dos - Yes, señorita, I have two,” although there were usually lots of eggs clearly visible behind the counter. The grocer would then burst into uncontrollable laughter. Finally, one day when Marina came to visit, Lina asked, “What’s going on with the tienda owner?” “No, no,” Marina laughed when Lina told her about the strange exchanges. “You have to say “Hay huevos hoy?” - Are there any eggs today?” “Well, I was pretty close. What’s the difference, anyway?” asked Lina. “Well, huevos has another meaning.” “What is it?” Marina blushed and giggled, then finally told her. So Lina found out she had been asking the tienda owner if he had balls.

*****

When the girls got their first electric bill, they were astounded - it was very high, almost twice their rent. Charlotte took the bill over to María, their next door neighbor. “How can this be so high? We have only a few light bulbs.” “My bill is a lot lower,” María agreed, “and I have a refrigerator, a radio and a hotplate.”

“This really stinks. They’re just overcharging us because we’re foreigners.” “No, I don’t think so. Go on home. I’ll get José to help you.” She went across the street and talked with a man for a minute. Then he went inside his house and came out with a ladder and a screwdriver. José crossed the street, looked at the front of the house, then came in and looked around. “You have two problems. First, your neighbors are stealing your electricity.” “What?” Charlotte demanded. “How can you steal electricity?” “Like that.” He pointed up near the roof. There was a hole, just barely visible, drilled through the wall. A wire ran through it and was connected to the maze of wires that ran through the house. There were no ceilings or plastered walls, so wiring was all visible and easy to follow. They went outside and looked for the wire. It went through the wall, across the narrow side yard, and through another hole into the house next door. María laughed. “That’s Ana for you! Tricky. She takes in ironing for a living and she has a refrigerator. And you’re paying for it!” “How could they have got into our house to do this?” Lina asked. “They did it before the house was rented, while it was vacant. Probably at night. They hoped the new tenants would be stupid enough not to notice it.” He looked embarrassed then. “I mean…” “You got it just right, José,” Lina laughed. “They must have been delighted to see the two of us move in.” José took out a fuse, then climbed up and cut Ana’s wire with a large wickedlooking knife he pulled out of his waistband. The wire snaked through the hole in the wall and fell heavily into the yard. Then José went out and tossed the severed wire over the fence. Lina saw a face surreptitiously watching at the window next door. “You said we have two problems, José. What’s the other one?” Charlotte asked. “You haven’t corrected your meter.”

“We haven’t corrected it,” Lina said indignantly. “It belongs to the electric company. They should correct it.” “They won’t. But I’ll do it for you.” He took the ladder outside. The meter was located at the apex of the roof. José climbed up and removed the glass dome, then fiddled around a bit, replaced the dome, and came back down, slapping the dust off his hands. “Your bills will be a lot lower now.” Lina squinted to see what he had done. Where before there had been a bunch of wires connected to the meter, now there was only one. The rest of the wires went around the meter and connected directly to the cable from the street. “I corrected your meter. Now only the lightbulb from the front room will show on it.”

*****

Lina thought it was funny to see how each of the volunteers adopted one or two inviolable health rules. But apart from those, anything went. When they managed to get together for a restaurant lunch, one would drag the lettuce out of his sandwich as if it were crushed caterpillars, while reaching for his ice-filled glass of Coke. Another would insist on warm Coke from the bottle with her salad, and a third would look aghast at the other two. The truth was, if you followed all the health regulations, you’d starve. At first Lina made an effort to stick to the rules, but as she got hungrier and thinner, she realized she had to ease up. Like everybody else, she finally settled on her own little set of regulations. She followed the Peace Corps doctor’s recommendation to eat only fruit that could be peeled,like bananas, oranges and avocados. That was easy - those were the only ones she liked, anyway. She refused to smoke native cigarettes unless they were filtered. Some of the unfiltered ones were very cheap, but so strong you got burns around your lips after a few packs. Lina avoided dairy products almost entirely. Once in a while, though, she had a papaya milkshake, because somebody had told her that papayas have an enzyme that kills bacteria. And she ate cheese imported from Denmark - the doctor had told them that was safe. It was scarce, though, and very expensive. There was a market catering to the embassy crowd, a long hard trip across town from Lina’s barrio. But it was

worth the occasional trip. It sold the Danish cheese and fair bread, and a grilled cheese sandwich was Lina’s favorite dinner. In the same place, you could also get ground beef. There were four grades of it, even the cheapest one pretty high for a Peace Corps budget. For a treat, Lina and Charlotte sometimes splurged and got some, even though the chances of getting it home before it began to spoil were not so good. One day while Lina was in line at the market, the woman in back of her struck up a conversation. She was a few years older than Lina, married to an Embassy officer on his first assignment. She was sweet, innocent and pretty, dressed in a pale-yellow cotton dress, a dress that Lina could not have kept clean for five minutes. “Beautiful place Esmeralda, isn’t it?” Lina said. “I guess so. It’s hard, though, there are so many things you can’t get here. I mean, things we take for granted back home. And I expected more flowers - you know, it’s so drab and dusty.” “Well, there’s been a drought for a few years now. I hear the place is really beautiful - lot of flowers and all - when the weather’s good.” “Too bad we came here at the wrong time.” Lina’s turn came, and she ordered a pound of the cheapest ground meat. The woman said to her, “Oh, I’m getting the same thing. What kind of dog do you have?” Lina was startled, embarrassed and offended in quick succession. She nearly shot back, “Lady, I am my dog.” But she controlled herself, smiled and said, “Not a dog, a cat. A purebred Persian.”

*****

It rained a few times in Aguadulce during the first three months after the group arrived, but after that a relentless drought locked itself onto the land. Water became very scarce in the barrio, available only at night, and then only from a tap in the street that had just enough pressure to bring the water to ground level.

The men dug a three-foot-deep hole in front of the tap. You had to jump into the pit, pull in your empty eight-gallon peanut-oil can, put it under the tap, and wait until it filled. The time varied from ten minutes to almost an hour. Then you had to get that heavy can out of the hole and back to your house. Tiny girls could handle this almost without effort, hoisting the can to ground level, which was about eye-level for them, then onto one hip, onto the head, padded with a rag, and off they glided. Lina and Charlotte went together to fetch water. They could barely manage to wrestle the can out of the hole, and there was no way they could lift it very far off the ground. So they had to grab the can by the rim and waddle back to the house with it. The neighbors liked to gather to watch this performance - there wasn’t much entertainment available in the barrio. Then, because the house had a flush toilet, they had to get back at the end of the line to get a second can. All of that had to be used for the flushing that was done only once a day. No matter what the circumstances.

*****

Most of the Esmeraldan men went around armed. Every adult male seemed to carry at least a knife, and any man who could possibly afford it had a handgun. “It’s just another display of machismo,” Lina told Charlotte, “we don’t hear about many people actually being shot.” “Except by the police. They’re supposed to be trigger-happy.” One day, Charlotte and Lina hailed a público - these were meterless public taxis that ran on routes like buses. They picked up as many people as they could fit - you deposited a dime in the ashtray and called out, “Drop me here!” when you wanted to get out. The two girls got in the back seat, Charlotte plopping herself down next to a big burly man. After a few minutes, Charlotte whispered to Lina, “This guy has his hand under my behind!” “Well, tell him to take it out.” “No, I’m too embarrassed. You tell him.” So Lina leaned across Charlotte. Politely, as she had been taught, she said,

“Pardon me, sir, please take your hand out from under my friend.” He growled, “She’s sitting on my revolver, and I’m just trying to get it out before she kills one of us!” Nobody was sure what the traffic laws were. It certainly didn’t seem that pedestrians had the right of way. There were only a few traffic lights, and walkers just had to dash between the cars, which didn’t even slow down for people trying to cross. Once, Lina was in an accident - the público in back of the one she was riding in plowed right into them. Lina climbed out, along with the other four engers and the driver. Nobody was hurt, and Lina just stood there, expecting the drivers to exchange license and registration numbers, or the police to come to take the information. But as she watched, the other público also emptied, and everybody, including both drivers, ran away. Lina was still standing there wondering what had happened, when a er-by yelled at her, “Run, señorita, run!” She looked at the man. “What? Why should I run? I was a enger.” He shook his head and said, “Listen, americana, do you want to be arrested? Run! Before it is too late!” Reasoning that he must know something she didn’t, Lina ran and didn’t look back, though even afterward she couldn’t figure out how anybody could have blamed her for the accident.

*****

Lina had learned a trick at the orientation sessions, and she made it into a little bedtime ritual. A couple of hours before she planned to go to bed, she would pick up one of the small green lizards, anoles as they were called, that abounded on the walls of all the houses, and pop it inside her mosquito net. By bedtime, she was sure no stray mosquito was alive inside. She then evicted the anole and jumped in, making sure the net was firmly anchored under the mattress. Some people left the anole inside for extra protection, but she couldn’t sleep very well with the thought that she might wake up with a cold little guest on her body.

*****

“You know,” Lina said one day as they left a tienda, “I have an idea for a project.” “Great!” Charlotte said. “What is it?” “You saw all the food in there from Project Against Hunger?” “Yes. Luke says most people sell it to tiendas as soon as they get it. Because they don’t know what to do with wheat and corn meal.” “Right. The cooking oil is the only thing they recognize. And the powdered milk.” “But what can we do about it?” “Suppose we show them how to make things they like out of the American surplus food? Then they wouldn’t have to sell it for a fraction of its worth.” Charlotte burst out laughing. “You mean we should become cooking teachers?” “We could learn to cook. We’ve learned a lot of other things.” “Well…I guess we could try…” They spent a couple of weeks in the kitchen, concocting dishes using the wheat and corn meal and cheap local ingredients. “Ugh!” Lina exclaimed when she tasted one of their experiments. “What’s the matter with it? I think it’s pretty good.” “Too much corn meal. I can taste it.” Esmeraldans didn’t like corn meal, and neither did Lina. So they figured if they made something with corn meal and Lina liked it, the chances were the Esmeraldans would too. Cooking on an open fire was the only possibility - there were no ovens. Charlotte and Lina were friendly with several women who lived far back in the barrio, in a squatter’s area of dirt-floored shacks the residents called Africa. On visits, they made it a point to study the kinds of containers and utensils these very poor people used. Since no one could read, the girls had to figure out how to give instructions that could be understood and ed easily.

Eventually, armed with half a dozen recipes for fritters they thought people might like, they invited their friends from Africa to their place. Boxes of American surplus food lined the shelves in their kitchen. The women sat around the kitchen table and Charlotte served coffee. Lina got up and casually started cooking. “American food,” one of the women said, shaking her head. The others giggled. Lina went on, adding onions, peppers and tomato paste to the wheat, corn meal and milk powder in a hollowed gourd like the ones the poor used for bowls. The water Lina used to make the mixture was boiled. They knew the women wouldn’t use purified water, but they hoped thorough cooking would make it safe. Lina picked up a battered spoon and half filled it with oil. She poured the oil into the skillet, then waited a minute and added some of the batter. Soon a delectable aroma filled the room. The women turned to look. Lina flipped the fritters over and quickly seared the other side. Then she spooned them out and drained them briefly on torn-up newspapers. Charlotte served the fritters to the women. “American food,” one woman said, licking her lips. “Delicious! How do you make these?” In a few minutes, the women were all clustered around the stove, fanning the charcoal burners and mixing the wheat and corn meal with powdered milk and other ingredients the girls just happened to have handy - peanut butter, drained chopped tomatoes, shredded carrots. “Lupita,” cried one. “Go to the tienda. Get some guava paste. Let’s see how that tastes in these…what do you call them?” she asked. “Fritters,” Charlotte said lamely. “Fríteres,” the woman repeated. “American food. Very good!” “I never knew you could do anything with the milk powder except feed the babies,” one woman said. “No!” Lina exclaimed. “You mustn’t give it to the babies. Not unless you boil the water first.”

“And then only if you don’t have enough milk yourself,” Charlotte said. “Mother’s milk is best for babies.” “American milk must be better. Look how healthy, how smart Americans are.” During the next few weeks, when the girls visited the homes in Africa, they were always treated to fritters made with American wheat and corn meal and powdered milk. The women, far better cooks that Charlotte and Lina, had developed dozens of variations on the fríteres. And for the first time, they saw boxes of Project Against Hunger food in people’s houses. “Lina, we did it!” Charlotte exclaimed when they got home one day. “Did what?” “Something! Something that had an effect, that made a difference. We did something. So we can do something else.” “What should we do next?” Charlotte thought about that. “Well, something that worries me is that women are feeding babies milk powder mixed with river water. So many babies here die before they’re a year old anyway. Giving them contaminated water has to be adding to the death-rate.” “We’ve tried telling women they should nurse the babies. Or at least that they should boil the water. They don’t believe us.” “What can we do about that?” “Let’s go to the health department tomorrow. See if they have any suggestions.” The health department had a film explaining the necessity of boiling water. The girls watched it. “This is terrific,” Lina said. “It tells the whole story, simply and clearly.” They made arrangements to borrow the film to show in the barrio. They made a big occasion of it, going around telling women to come to their house “when the sun is high”, because there were no clocks. They served Cool-Aid, which the women loved. “American drink,” said one. “Good!”

They all giggled. They showed the film several times. It showed a woman getting water from a stream, then a drop of that water under a microscope, teeming with microorganisms. There followed an explanation of how, and for how long, to boil the water, then a second look under the microscope, showing all the organisms inert. Charlotte and Lina were congratulating each other on their success when they heard one of the women say, “How horrible! Imagine how sick you could get from drinking water with all those dead things in it!” Charlotte sighed. “Win one, lose one.”

*****

The most frequent request for help the girls received was for English lessons. “I want to move to New York.” was the constant explanation. At first the girls resisted. “I don’t think the Peace Corps mission includes encouraging immigration,” Charlotte said. But one day they got a very tempting offer. They were approached by a group of Esmeraldan doctors who wanted to take part in an exchange program with a hospital in New York. “We need to know basic English. We will pay you for lessons.” “We’ll let you know.” At home, they talked it over. “Obviously, money isn’t the answer,” Lina said. “But this barrio has no doctors, no nurses, no way for a sick person to get any kind of care. Except to go to the hospital - and then only when they’re near death. Maybe we can exchange English lessons for medical care.” “Maybe. But it’s going to be hard. They know how bad it is for the people here. But they’ve never made any effort to do anything about it. Why should they bother now?”

“Because we have something they need, and they have something we need.” “We’re going to have to be hard-nosed if we want to pull that off.” “We do want to, so we’re going to have to work at being tough.” They spent a day going over the interview in Spanish, thumbing through the dictionary Charlotte had brought, saying forcefully, you will do this for us, and we will do that for you.The next day Lina, in her best Spanish, announced the . “We will teach you English if you will man a health clinic in our barrio. We will set up the schedule. Get twenty of you together, and our barrio should be able to have a doctor every weekday morning, while each of you will only spend half a day a month here.” To their surprise, the doctors agreed to all their , rising to shake hands and say, in effect, “It’s a deal!” Afterwards, Charlotte said, “I bet they figured out what the deal would be before they ever approached us.” After working in the barrio for a while, most of the doctors began to take a real interest in the patients. They arranged for the clinic to get basic medical supplies, bandages, vaccines and medicines. Purloined from the hospitals the doctors worked in, Lina guessed. But she didn’t really care. In the afternoons, the girls taught First Aid, hygiene, invalid and baby care and cooking, all subjects they learned hastily reading books they hounded Boomer into ordering from the US. Charlotte got the idea of arranging recreational activities for the many children in the barrio. They had to have separate groups for the boys and the girls, since mixing the sexes meant the boys would immediately take over, relegating the girls to the background. They had an arts and crafts class for girls. For each project, Charlotte and Lina made a model to show what they were talking about. At first the girls would meticulously copy the model, using exactly the same colors and patterns. So Charlotte and Lina started showing the model only briefly, then putting it away. They thought that was working, until they heard the girls arguing about whose looked most like the model. The girls had thought it was an exercise in memory.

And the children did have good memories, since the only teaching method in the schools was rote-learning. The teacher stood in front of the class and dictated, while the students scrambled to try to get every word down. For exams, the students memorized the entire contents of their numerous notebooks, and tried to regurgitate everything into their exam books. Students who could write down the notebook contents word for word as it had been presented to them got the best grades. When Charlotte and Lina taught, trying some of the “progressive” ideas they’d learned, trying to get the children to be imaginative, inventive and individual, the kids didn’t like it at all. They didn’t understand what the girls expected from them, and it made them very anxious. One day they made decorative headbands with the girls - scraps of felt, which they cut into various shapes and glued on a ribbon. But when they tried to tie the finished headbands on the girls, more than half of them shook their heads and said, “En luto.” Charlotte flipped through her dictionary. “‘En luto’ means in mourning.” Mourning was a very complicated custom, with different numbers of months or years for relatives of various degrees of closeness. Since even distant relatives were mourned, many of the girls were in mourning all the time. They could wear only black, or black and white, called medio-luto, if the deceased was a distant relative, or if it was near the end of the mourning period. The girls even had to wear black dresses over their khaki school uniforms. Boys didn’t seem to be affected by this custom, except for a short period right after the death. Lina worked one day a week in Santo Tomás Hospital, which was not far from the barrio. She held recreation sessions for the children, who otherwise simply sat in their cribs all day, every day. The hospital had a group of Peace Corps nurses, who had arrived three months after Lina’s group. Since none of the nurses spoke more than rudimentary Spanish, Lina helped them translate American nursing books.

*****

Their house was adequate, even pleasant, but it had one major problem - it was infested with mice. Even in daytime, they could see the tiny creatures darting around the house. But at night the mice took over completely. Anything even remotely edible left out at night was consumed by morning. Lina had bought a shellacked seed necklace at the market - but when she decided to put the necklace on one morning, all she could find of it was the string - and that was badly chewed. Then Charlotte found a hole in one of her shoes, and they knew the situation was serious. Shoes were very expensive, not something they could easily afford to replace. They knew where the mice were coming in - there was a hole in the cement floor of the living room. “We should fill that in,” Charlotte said. “How?” “I don’t know. With cement, I suppose.” Lina went over and looked down the hole. “I can see the ground. It’s about a foot down. How are we going to fill up that whole area with cement?” “I guess we need some technical help with this.” “Even if we did that, there are a lot of other holes in the walls and the floor. The mice will probably come in other places if we plug up this one.” “We need to get a cat.” “We’ve talked about this before. The problem is what are we going to do with it when we leave?” “I know.” They knew it would be almost impossible to get permission to take it to the US. And they knew no Esmeraldan would dream of treating a cat the way Americans would. “But I think we have to do it.”

“All right. It will mean we can begin eating pork again, too.” Lina let it be known around the barrio that they were interested in a kitten, and in a few days, after Lina had finished her cooking class, she went to look at a litter. She played with five adorable kittens. Lina had almost forgotten how wonderful baby animals were. The kittens clambered all over her, nibbling at her fingers and kneading her skin with razor-sharp claws. Back home, she told Charlotte, “Yes, it’s something I want. A little warm creature to greet me at the door.” “I won’t do?” She laughed. “You know what I mean.” “And when we leave?” “We’ll have to deal with that at the time. Tomorrow we’ll go over there and pick out one of the kittens.” When they entered the house, the woman looked sad. “I’m so sorry. The kittens all died last night.” Lina was astounded. They had been so lively when she had seen them. “What happened?” “I don’t know. They just all went like this.” She contorted her face and hands into dreadful positions, “And then they died.” Charlotte asked, “Did they have white stuff around their mouths when they died?” “Well, I’m not sure. They might have.” “What did you do with the kittens?” Charlotte asked. The woman looked surprised. “We just threw them in the garbage,” she said. “And where is this garbage?” Charlotte demanded. The woman looked alarmed

now. “My husband took it away as usual - he takes it to the dump on the edge of the barrio, near the river. They throw everything there, then burn it every few days.” Lina and Charlotte thanked her and left. On the walk home, Charlotte said, “You know what this means, don’t you?” Lina nodded. “I’m going to have to get rabies shots.” Lina took a público to the Peace Corps headquarters, and told the doctor what had happened. He sighed. “This is going to be difficult. These injections are brutal, I might as well tell you that. And you’ve had other allergic reactions. So I’ll have to keep you under close scrutiny during the series.” “Do I have any choice about whether or not to get the injections?” “None whatsoever. Rabies is uniformly fatal. And, by the way, it’s a horrible death. Since we can’t recover the kittens’ bodies for examination, we have to assume they were rabid. You have to get the inoculations.” Lina went to the office every morning, for fourteen mornings, and had an injection in her abdomen. The injections themselves hurt dreadfully, the liquid forming a hard painful lump under the skin that took the whole day for her body to absorb. And then it was time for another injection. After the third shot, Lina began feeling nauseated and dizzy. Her fingertips went numb and her mouth was so dry she had difficulty swallowing. “Those are bad signs,” the doctor told her. “From now on, I want to keep you under observation for several hours after each injection.” He insisted on driving her home every day. “I can make it on my own. I’m used to it.” “You don’t realize how weak you are. You can’t take three públicos to get home while you feel woozy.” Sometimes that meant Lina had to spend most of the day at headquarters waiting for the doctor to be free. She tried to read, but she was too lightheaded to concentrate. So she just sat around idly or lay on a cot in a back room, feeling sorry for herself and guilty because she wasn’t working. After the seventh or eighth shot, Lina became so wobbly she wasn’t able to do anything other than lie on the cot, tossing in pain and moaning for hours.

What a savage place this is. This would never have happened to me in New England. I was never afraid of the natural world back home. Of course bad things happen in New England - the fact of predator and prey isn’t any different there. But it seems so much more constant and naked here. Everyday life here is so full of menace. Nature is different here, not the friendly ive Mother Nature I grew up with, but a savage, macho Father Nature. In Father Nature’s kingdom, animals don’t kill only when hungry, to eat, but whenever they please. For sport, from boredom and pride. Then they settle down arrogantly to lick their bloody claws. “I guess we should give up the idea of getting a cat.” She was lying on the table, trying to concentrate on not counting which shot this was. And how many were left. “No. You need a cat. The mice are a rabies threat, too. You just have to find a healthy animal.” One day Lina whined, “I just can’t take another shot.” The doctor was stern. “This is my decision, not yours.” The series went on. The skin on her stomach was hypersensitive from so many needles, and Lina was so miserable she was shaking by the time she entered the doctor’s office. After her last injection, as Lina teetered off the table, the doctor presented her with a loosely-covered basket. Inside was a tiny black-and-white kitten. “This is the daughter of an Embassy cat. She’s already had her first series of shots. And I promise to see that she gets a home when you leave. All you have to do is name her.” Lina hugged the animal. “That’s easy. I name her Medio-luto.” She took the kitten with her to the cot in the back room, and ed out happy, the kitten cuddled up next to her. The doctor gave Lina and the kitten a ride home. As soon as she was put down on the floor, Medio-luto began a survey of the premises. First she circled the walls, then she began to make forays across the floor. Quickly she found the hole in the floor of the living room. She sniffed around the edges, then turned around and peed into the hole. The girls never found another mouse in the place.

*****

One day while Kevin was hanging around the girls’ house, Luke dropped by. He wasn’t his usual sunny self. “What’s the matter?” Kevin asked. “You look ready to murder somebody.” “Oh, I’ve just come from the Project Against Hunger office.” Luke worked there occasionally, helping straighten out records that had been so neglected that the American central office of the organization had threatened to stop shipments of food. “Things must be in an awful mess there,” said Lina. “Incredible. I’ve been going over invoices and receipts for about a month, and I finally got things straightened out enough to get a picture of the operation. And I noticed the amount of grain unloaded from the latest ship was nearly twice the amount entered as received in the warehouse. And when I went back to check, I saw the same thing has been going on for months. Probably much longer.” “Can you figure out how it’s done?” Kevin asked. “Some unofficial unloading is going on.” “What does the Project Against Hunger director say?” Lina asked. “He winked at me and said, `It is always like this. Some of the bags fall off the trucks on the way to the warehouse.’” “What are you going to do about it?” Kevin asked. “Well, now that I know about it, it shouldn’t be a problem. I can make sure I’m there when the ships come in, so I can supervise the unloading. And I can go with the trucks to the warehouse, to prevent the falling-bag problem. But I’m really mad.” “Do you have any idea who’s been stealing the grain?” Lina asked. Luke laughed. “You know me. I find out everything, sooner or later. Yes, I know who it is. Or at least I know who the stolen grain in going to. His name is

Meléndez, and he’s a rancher who lives about 20 miles north of the capital. He has an enormous spread, everybody says, and he’s tremendously rich. The last person who should get free food.” “Well, this is an outrage,” said Lina, “Let’s go up there and steal the food back.” “Great idea!” Luke laughed. “We could re-label the sacks: GIFT OF THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES - STOLEN BY SR. MELENDEZ, RE-STOLEN BY THE PEACE CORPS.” “Right,” said Kevin. “Can’t you just see his face when he finds out the grain is gone, but he can’t complain to anyone about it?” “You’re both joking,” Lina said. “But I’m serious. I think we should do it.” “No way,” said Kevin. “We’d be shot on sight.” “Then we have to make sure we aren’t seen.” “Forget it, Lina, it’s just a daydream.” “I never thought you were a coward, Kevin. And I know you aren’t, Luke. So what are we waiting for?” Kevin and Luke looked at each other warily. Then Kevin said, “You know, it just might be possible. Let’s think it over and talk about it again tomorrow.” When the guys had left, Charlotte said, “Listen, Lina, you do know what you’re planning is crazy, don’t you?” “Well, it’s daring, but I think there’s a good chance of pulling it off.” Charlotte shrugged. “Do what you want. But at least it what you’re doing is reckless and irresponsible.” “Come on, Charlotte - you sound like my mother. It’s just a lark.” “It’s stupid, something even Kevin wouldn’t have suggested on his own. What is

this ridiculous competition between you two, Lina? Why don’t you try to figure out what’s going on there, instead of forcing him into a childish escapade? And what about Luke? You’re pushing him to prove he’s as macho as Kevin.” “Oh, come on, don’t make so much of it. Kevin and Luke can make up their own minds about what they want to do. I’m not forcing them into anything.” “You are. And this isn’t the first time. I wish you’d try to think about what you’re doing, and why.” “I guess that means you won’t be ing us.” Lina turned her back. A few nights later, the three of them assembled at Lina and Charlotte’s. They all wore black clothing, and had even darkened their faces with charcoal and oil. “Are you coming with us, Charlotte?” Kevin asked. Charlotte scowled. “Whoops, sorry. Wrong question.” They got into the jeep Luke had finagled from the Peace Corps. Driving north on the main highway, he said, “I know where the ranch is. I drove out there yesterday, while it was light. I even found the cattle barns - I could see them from the road. That’s where the grain will be.” After an hour or so, Luke said, “This is it.” He parked well away from the road, and they got out and quickly scaled the chain-link fence. It was low, only five feet. “This fence,” Luke said in a low voice, “was designed to keep the animals from wandering. Not to keep people out. It would never occur to Sr. Meléndez that anyone would dare invade his property.” For the same reason, probably, the barns were unlocked. They searched the first one. The cattle began to low sleepily as they entered, and Lina froze. “Never mind.” Luke had grown up on a farm. “Cattle will start to moo like that for any number of reasons - like if a barn owl flies through. Nobody will think a thing of it.” They took out flashlights Luke had dimmed with cloth hoods, and cautiously looked around. Nothing suspicious. They moved on to the next barn. Still nothing. The third barn had a sticky door, and it squeaked loudly when they finally managed to get it opened. They flattened themselves against the wall. A dog started to bark furiously, close by. Lina clutched Luke’s hand tightly.

“Keep calm,” he whispered. She felt sweat break out all over her body, rivulets of it dripping down her spine. She began frantically blinking, trying to stop the stinging sweat from dripping into her eyes. The dog continued its frenzied baying. “It’s not getting any closer. That means the dog is confined,” whispered Luke. “tied up or penned. Maybe nobody’s around to hear him barking.” They stayed still until it was clear nobody was going to appear. The dog gradually began to calm down. They took out their flashlights again. “These are beautiful animals,” Luke said. “They must be his prize cattle.” Lina and Kevin looked carefully at the enormous cows. Kevin shrugged and said, “I guess I’ll have to take your word for it, Luke. They all look straight out of a Borden’s ad to me.” In that barn, up in the haymow, they found what they were looking for. Luke ran the dimmed beam of his flashlight over the lettering. PROJECT AGAINST HUNGER: GIFT OF THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES TO THE HUNGRY OF THE WORLD. There were about fifty sacks, and they got them to ground level easily enough, by simply pitching them down into a pile of hay on the floor. Carrying them over to the fence was a lot harder. Soon Lina was so exhausted she was shaking. I can’t complain, she thought. This is my project - I have to carry my share. The sacks were too heavy to throw over the fence, but Lina had another idea. Luke climbed over, and Lina climbed up and straddled the fence. Kevin handed Lina a sack, and she handed it to Luke. The dog began to bark again, and the three of them froze. If anybody comes while I’m perched on this fence, Lina thought, I’m dead. But no sound came from any of the other farm buildings. The dog, discouraged, soon fell silent. Working at frantic speed, they got all the sacks over the fence. Luke backed the jeep up near the pile, and they quickly tossed the sacks into the vehicle and took off, leaving the lights off until they were on the main highway. They drove in silence for a few minutes, then Lina burst out laughing. Kevin followed, then Luke, and they all laughed so hard Luke had to pull the jeep over to the side of the road. When they were finally able to get themselves under control, Luke drove directly back to town and turned into the street in front of the Project Against Hunger warehouse. Luke took out his keys. “The watchman won’t be here. He only shows up on payday.” Luke threw open the doors, and Kevin drove right into the deserted warehouse.

The three unloaded the sacks and got back into the jeep. “Wait a minute, you two, I’ve got something I’ve been saving for you.” Luke reached under the seat and produced a liter-bottle of beer and a bottle of Coke. Luke had the Coke, of course, and Lina and Kevin shared the beer. “A toast,” Lina said, “to the Robin Hoods of Esmeralda.” The beer was warm, but Lina thought it tasted just fine. The next day, Kevin dropped by and they two of them relived their adventure, regaling Charlotte with boasts of their daring, ignoring the fact that she scowled and asked no questions. After Charlotte left for an First Aid class she was teaching, Kevin said, “Lina, you’re different from most girls I’ve met - you’re almost not like a girl at all.” “Explain that one a little better, Kevin.” “What I mean is that not many guys would have done what you did last night, never mind be the one to insist we do it.” Lina could hardly move a muscle, she was so stiff and sore from the night’s exertions, but she didn’t it that to Kevin. I guess that’s the best he can do, she thought, the nicest compliment he can think of to give me is that I’m “almost not like a girl at all!”

*****

María, Charlotte and Lina’s next-door neighbor, was 27, just a few years older than the girls, but she looked at least 40. María had four children and was pregnant again. Her oldest child, Carmencita, was 13 years old and retarded. Carmencita was squat, and she had some kind of congenital condition that caused her to honk constantly, together with a severe speech impediment. It was hard for the girls to judge, but Carmencita, while clearly mentally deficient, didn’t seem very badly retarded. María’s “husband”, Luís, had two other “wives” and several other broods of children, a common domestic situation. Luís was

civil to the girls, but they sensed that was only because they were Americans. He was short, and he stood so straight he was nearly standing on his toes. He almost seemed to be leaning backward. Luís would strut around like the lord of the barnyard, crowing and flashing the long nails on his little fingers. The fingernails signified that he did not do manual labor. In Luís’ case, the girls found that particularly infuriating, since he appeared to be permanently unemployed. They referred to him between themselves as `the royal turkey’, a literal translation of the Spanish pavo real, the term for `peacock’. They delighted in the fact that both of them were taller than Luís. Charlotte, who usually slouched, stood bolt upright when she talked to him. Luís wasn’t at María’s very often, and when he was, he confined his activities to sitting around listening to the radio and drinking beer and rum. The leers he directed at the girls when he thought he wasn’t being watched made them pledge never to be alone with him. When Luís was drinking, which was every night as far as the girls could tell, he tended to get rough. He would beat the kids, and María, too, for the slightest offense. “María, why do you stay with Luís?” Lina asked. At first, María said, “I love him.” But as they became friendlier, María began to open up more. “Look at me,” she would say. “Where would I find another man?” And truly María was an ugly woman, short and squat, with a broad squashed nose, small squinty eyes, and a lot of facial hair. “But, María,” Lina protested, “Luís is not much good to you. He’s not here very much anyway, and when he is, he’s usually making trouble. And I bet he doesn’t give you very much money, either.” María shook her head, then laughed. “He can give me this.” And she patted her swollen belly. Lina shut up then. I don’t know whether María is referring to the child or sex. I’d argue that the last thing María needs is another child. But whether the pleasures of sex are worth Luís’ obvious shortcomings, I’m not in any position to tell. Personally, given a choice between Luís and nobody, nobody would win a landslide victory. But I can see María’s point. Here, a woman without a man has no status. And what about me? Everybody is in this mad race to become part of a couple. But not me. There are men all around, but there’s always something wrong something so basic I can’t even start a relationship, much less hold onto one.

Maybe María has the right idea - take what you can get and put up with the rest. That’s what my mother did. At least then I wouldn’t be alone. She thought again of her mother asking, “Who are you waiting for, Prince Charming?” Yes, I guess that’s it, Lina thought. It’s Prince Charming for me, or nobody at all. In his cups, Luís liked to make fun of Carmencita by imitating her snort and lisp. Carmencita started going over to the girls’ place whenever Luís showed up. After a while, María took to doing the same when Luís got violent. Luís didn’t dare to force them home, but Lina thought he made it even worse for them when they finally returned. María also went to the girls’ place at other times - she had discovered that the girls could read and were always supplied with the latest magazines and newspapers. “María,” Charlotte asked abruptly one day. “Can you read?” “Oh yes, of course. But I have weak eyes.” Lina tried to signal Charlotte to shut up. She knew illiterates used that excuse, weak eyes. “I went to school for a while - but…” Her voice lowered to a whisper. “shoes…” Lina knew the connection - a child could go to first and second grades tattered and barefoot. But in the third grade, uniforms and shoes were required. At that point the poorest ones dropped out. María didn’t go in much for literature, but she liked tales of romance, scandal and outrage. She sometimes brought them a battered yellowing issue of a gossip magazine. “I heard there was a good story in here.” The story, when they read it to her, would be about a nine-year-old mother, or a pig born with a human face. Carmencita also liked to hang around the girls’ place. They gave her chocolate and Cokes and treated her to exotic American food, like cheese sandwiches and canned soup and fish. And they were much nicer to her than anyone else was. Life was hard for the poor, and for the subnormal it was even worse. “Don’t you think it’s weird how Carmencita fawns over us so much?” Lina asked Charlotte. “No. She relates to us - she thinks we also have speech impediments. People

laugh at us, the same way they laugh when she talks. But we’re living in what must seem incredible luxury to her. Look at all the clothes we have. And we buy all the Cokes and cigarettes we want. We tell her how we eat in restaurants Carmencita has never done that, probably never will. And Luís doesn’t dare to beat us up, even though she knows how much he’d like to.” One day, Carmencita watched Charlotte struggle out of the pit with a tin of water. She laughed and tried to show Charlotte how to get the can onto her head. Charlotte sighed. “I just can’t do it, Carmencita.” “I will fetch the water for you. After I have fetched it for my own family.” “No, Carmencita. Thank you. But we can’t let you do that.” Carmencita must have mentioned it to María, because the two women came over later. “You must let Carmencita carry water for you.” “No. We can do it for ourselves.” “Clearly you cannot. And Carmencita wants to help you. You give her Coke and chocolate and make her feel welcome.” “Maybe it is a good idea,” Charlotte said. “What would be a fair price?” “Carmencita will help you without pay.” “No. That’s out of the question.” María thought a moment, then tentatively suggested, “Ten cents a can.” “Make it 25 cents,” Lina said. Both María and Carmencita looked delighted. “Oh Lord,” Charlotte muttered in English, “Boomer is going to roast us if he finds out we have a servant.” “Don’t tell Luís,” Lina told María. “This will be a little money you can have for yourself.” María smiled but said nothing, and Lina knew the money would go right into Luís’ rum bottle. “María,” Lina asked one day, “why don’t you have your sons fetch water? They’re both big and strong.”

María laughed. “Impossible! That’s girls’ work.” “What is boys’ work?” María just laughed and shrugged. The truth was, boys did very little work around the house, even when the work, like fetching water and carrying firewood and charcoal, required brute strength. Once, when Stacy was visiting for the weekend, María dropped over. Lina was in the kitchen making coffee when she heard María asking Stacy about birth control. Lina lingered in the kitchen, reasoning that Stacy was a better source for that kind of information than she was herself. María left. “Has she finally decided not to have another child? That would be good news.” “No. She’s worried about Carmencita.” “Carmencita?” Lina was astonished. “But…look at her. What man would want her? And anyway, María never lets Carmencita out of her sight except to come over here.” “Sometimes I worry about you. Don’t you think it’s time to grow up and face life?” “Don’t change the subject,” Lina snapped. “I’m not changing the subject, you idiot. María is afraid Carmencita will have Luís’ child.”

Chapter 7

One day during their fifth month in their own house, as Charlotte and Lina were making their daily rounds at the clinic, they noticed a stranger earnestly talking with the doctor on duty. He was tall for an Esmeraldan, about five feet ten, Lina guessed, with a muscular frame that made him look even bigger. The doctor introduced them. “This is Francisco, a gardener at my country club. He overheard a couple of us talking about our clinic work and asked if he could come to visit.” Francisco spent the day in the barrio, watching with great interest as the doctors examined patients, and the girls gave out medicines to some and advice to others. In the afternoon, he went with the girls to their cooking and arts and crafts classes. He was an intelligent man and had finished high school, something few of the poor managed. But jobs were scarce in Esmeralda, and minimal employment was the best he could get. Over coffee in the afternoon, Francisco said, “Would you consider doing for my barrio what you are doing here?” “Well, we’re pretty busy here all the time,” said Charlotte. “We really don’t have enough time to start over somewhere else.” “But we only need one of you. The other one could continue here. You don’t have to work together all the time.” The girls looked at each other. He was right. “Please. I will help as much as I can. My wife will help, too, and I can find others. We desperately need a clinic. One of my own children died because I could not afford to take her to a hospital. And your work with the women and children - we need that, too.”

“We’ll go with you to look at your barrio.” It was far poorer than the one the girls lived in, more like the one they had seen by the sea their first week in Aguadulce. There were many more people in the new barrio, and the houses were smaller. They visited Francisco’s place, and met his wife, Luz, and their four young children. Their house was neat and clean, but tiny, only two rooms. Back home, Charlotte asked, “What are we going to do about this?” “Francisco’s right. One of us could go to work over there.” “I couldn’t. I don’t speak Spanish well enough.” “But I do. And I could. Go over there, I mean.” “How am I going to get along in Spanish?” “Most of the people here are used to you, used to your Spanish. And I bet it’ll get a lot better if you’re alone, if you have to figure out how to express yourself all the time.” Charlotte looked dismayed. “We can’t decide this on a selfish basis. I mean, I know we shore each other up, and that makes us feel better. But if those people need help, we have to try to give it. That’s why we came here.” “I know, but…” “Let’s talk to the doctors tomorrow.” The next day, they found out that the doctors and Francisco had already set things in motion. The doctors had already agreed to help set up a clinic in Francisco’s barrio. And they’d promised to get other doctors they knew involved. “I guess we have no choice,” Charlotte said glumly. So Lina took on the new job. As she had expected, things went faster and more

smoothly. The doctors kept their promise to recruit others, and Francisco and Luz introduced Lina to people and helped her to set up classes and other activities. Luz worked in the clinic, and gathered a group of women for a First Aid class Lina taught. The next month, Stacy came to visit them. She burst in the door, whooping. Charlotte and Lina hugged her. “Hey, great news for you,” Stacy said. “I’m moving to Aguadulce. And in here with you.” Lina immediately saw that Stacy seemed different from her usual self - nervous and more subdued, with a haunted look that told Lina that something had happened in Stacy’s small town, something bad. Stacy didn’t confide anything for a week or so. But then one night she came in toting a bottle of rum. She went to the tienda across the street and got some Coke. “Let’s get plastered,” she announced abruptly. “What are we celebrating?” Charlotte asked. “Don’t be dense. Have a drink.” “Tell us, Stacy,” Lina said. What happened?” “Is it so obvious something happened?” “Yes.” Charlotte looked surprised. Stacy burst into her story. “When I first got to Santa Clara, I stayed with a family, like you two did. But they were rich - they lived in a classy part of town. I started teaching in an outdoor school for poor kids, and helping the Red Cross guys with nutrition and public health programs, so I figured everything was cool. But after six weeks, Boomer came out and told me I had to get my own place.

“Boomer was hot for me to be living in a barrio. He picked out the poorest one, and he started crowding me, making sure I was spending time there. I tried to just laugh him off for a while, but finally I had to do what he told me. So I went around the barrio saying `hello’ to guys. You know how it is - the women are always inside working. “I asked a couple of guys I met to help me find a place to rent. One day when I went back, they showed me a vacant house, and I made arrangements to rent it. So I moved in one morning, and went out to the market and bought a bed and stuff, and spent the rest of the day trying to paint the kitchen. You know, when they showed us all that crap about bricks and sawing things, they didn’t get to painting. It’s a lot harder than I thought. “I was concentrating on the damn paint, and I didn’t notice it was getting late, but then it got dark all of a sudden - you know how it does. So I went over to the front door to close it. It was damn lucky I did that. I looked out the door and the street was full of men, all right in front of my house. “I slammed the door, and somebody began pounding on it. Then men began saying, `What are you closing the door for, americana? How can we come in if the door is closed? “I didn’t get it at first. I yelled, `Get the hell away from here. I don’t want any of you jerks in here.’” Stacy laughed. “At least that’s what I tried to say. You know how lousy my Spanish is. I don’t know what I actually said - if anything. So then these guys all started yelling, and I didn’t need to know very much Spanish to figure out what they wanted.” “They were yelling, `Americana, come on out and play with us,’ and stuff like, `Hey, blond lady, let me in. I have something to show you.’” “I was completely freaked out. All these bastards were pounding and kicking at the door. I started screaming, but they didn’t even hear me by then. They had bottles of rum, and they got drunker and drunker. They started throwing stones, and a couple of times somebody kicked the door so hard I was afraid it would break. They were so pissed, and I still didn’t get it. “Then suddenly, it came to me - they thought I was the new whore in the barrio!

That was why they were so surprised - so mad at me for not letting them in. I sat on the floor in front of the door all night, not sleeping at all, crying. I was so furious - first I was mad at those Esmeraldan guys, but then I got even madder at Boomer . That asshole should have known better than to tell me to walk the streets batting my eyelashes at every guy I saw. “The guys outside began leaving when it got light, and I grabbed whatever I could carry and got my tail out of there. I went to the family I’d been staying with, and they were glad to have me back. But I knew it was all over for me in that town - it was so small. By the next day, everybody knew what had happened.” “Oh, Stacy, how awful! You must have been terrified,” Lina said. “You bet your cookies I was.” Stacy tried to laugh. “The first time I’d ever even thought of being afraid of men.” “But this must have happened weeks ago,” Charlotte said. “How come you’re just coming back now?” “You won’t believe this one. Boomer wouldn’t it things were really hopeless in Santa Clara - with the whole damn town thinking I was a whore! Finally, I told the jerk that if he didn’t get me out of there, I’d quit and tell it to the newspapers back home. That did it, and he let me come back here.” “You’re still feeling bad about it, I guess,” Charlotte said. “Yeah, I’m kind of surprised about that. It shook me up more than I thought at first. But mostly, I’m just so pissed at Boomer I can hardly look at him. I tell you one thing, if those guys had raped me, I’d have cut off his balls and fed them to him for dinner. And he knows it. I think he’ll get off my back, at least for a while.” Two weeks later, Lina was in the Peace Corps headquarters picking up mail. Boomer ed her on his way upstairs to his office. “Lina, come up to my office before you leave.” What have I done now, she wondered.

“You haven’t forgotten what I told you that first day?” “No. Of course not.” He talked for hours. What is it he expects me to quote? He looked expectantly at her. Finally she shrugged and shook her head. “No more than two volunteers can live together.” “Oh, yeah. That.” “What are you doing about it?” “Hm. Nothing, I guess.” “Do something. Within a month.”

*****

“That piss-face!” Stacy said. “Let’s just ignore him. What’s he going to do?” “You said he managed to beat you down in Santa Clara. He’ll do the same to us. We should do something before he forces us.” “Well, let’s be practical,” Charlotte said. “What kind of solution can we think of?” They fell silent for a few moments. “I guess we all agree, then,” Lina said. “I should go and get a place in my new barrio.” “No, no,” they both said. But of course, it was the obvious solution. Lina wasn’t delighted at the prospect. I’ve never been alone, really alone, before. How am I going to handle it? The new barrio was so crowded it was hard to find unoccupied space. And Lina,

being alone, could not afford a whole house. It took her a month to find a place. It was half of a dirt-floored shack, a back-house behind a cobbler’s shop, near Santo Tomás hospital. Lina’s part measured about 9 by 12 feet, and had no windows, plumbing or electricity. The shack was made of split bamboo, with large gaps between the strips. Curious neighbors sometimes enjoyed watching Lina dress through the gaps. The partition between the halves stopped about 18 inches from the thatched roof. On the other side, two couples and five children were living. The panting, groaning and squealing that went on just about every night left Lina in no doubt about how they got all those children. The only access to the house was down a long narrow dirt alley. A faucet in the alley occasionally had a trickle of water, but most of the time Lina had to get water in the usual way - from a ground-level tap in the street. The outhouse had a toilet, which, of course, didn’t flush unless it was filled with water from the tap. Lina shared this convenience with her nine neighbors and the five men who worked in the cobbler’s. Lina seemed to be the only one who ever attempted to accumulate enough water to flush the toilet. She had a single bed, four shelves of raw wood set on bricks, and a tiny table. There was no chair, so she pulled the table up to the edge of the bed whenever she wanted to use it. Droves of mosquitoes tortured her all the time, not just at night. There were no cooking facilities inside. Whenever Lina wanted to cook she had to crouch over a tiny charcoal burner on the cement-paved patch outside the shack. She began skipping meals, buying Coke from a tienda to soothe the hunger pains, smoking more, and eating a regular meal only when she could get over to Charlotte and Stacy’s. The drought grew worse. Sometimes there was no water in the barrio for days, not even late at night. Lina began taking her straw tote with her every time she went out, packed with necessities in case she found water. She always had soap, a small plastic bottle of shampoo, a toothbrush, a hand towel, a change of underwear. A couple of times, she boldly strolled into the poolside shower areas of big hotels, guessing the attendants would assume that any white person was staying in the hotel. She was too busy most of the time to pay much attention to her living conditions. But occasionally on a very hot night, Lina would lie on her lumpy bed, drowsing

fitfully, half-listening to the sounds of her neighbors at play, and wonder. What am I doing here? Why am I living like this?

*****

The Peace Corps headquarters was a house in a mild state of decrepitude on a fairly fashionable street near the center of the city. Lina walked up the long wide driveway to a dusty yard whose only feature was a massive banyan tree. She always marveled at the tree. Its foliage was so dense there was perpetual twilight underneath. Little rain had fallen in all the months Lina had been there. Most plants were withered, half dead, but the banyan looked healthy, the leaves dusty but not browned. The tree must have been planted and taken root during a period of abundant rain, and it had grown so strong that the elements no longer had much control over it. She had to ire its independence - the heat and drought had made her listless and depressed. Inside the house it was fairly cool, the verandas and the banyan providing some relief from the oppressive sun. She checked her mail, then sat to wait for an appointment with the doctor. Lina was once again suffering from a mysterious tropical ailment. She had swollen glands all over her body and a mild fever. The visit was really only a formality. She expected to get the usual answer - it’ll go away by itself. It always did. Lina had treated herself to a package of Oreo cookies, an expensive imported luxury. The cookies were terribly soggy, unappetizing really. But they did remind her of home, so she was able to believe they were delicious. As she sat in the small reception area, an off smell and a funny feeling in the parts of her in with the couch rang a warning bell somewhere. No wonder most of the Esmeraldans have either plain wood or plastic upholstery plastic doesn’t mildew as quickly as fabric does. Sometimes Lina thought she and everything she owned would be completely liquefied before her tour was up. Despite scientific explanations from the doctor and others, she couldn’t understand how it could be so oppressively humid all

the time, yet never rain. Never mind, she told herself, I’m only a little sick, I have my Oreos, and I’m not going to start worrying about a soggy cushion. The front door opened and a man about forty came in, looked around and sat down next to her. Lina didn’t know him. She was surprised, since she was sure she knew all the volunteers, and he somehow didn’t look like a visiting official. He was very thin and drawn and seemed worried. Dysentery, she guessed. “Hi. I don’t think we’ve met before. I’m Lina O’Reilly.” “Ralph Paley.” “Would you like an Oreo, Ralph?” “Thanks.” He took one. There was an unwritten rule among the volunteers - when one of them was eating expensive American food during a bout of homesickness, the rest of them would not accept any offer to share it. So ordinarily, no one would touch Lina’s Oreos, no matter how much she insisted. All right, she thought, he probably hasn’t had anything appeal to him for weeks. Maybe this will put his appetite back on track. But Ralph kept absently helping himself to more cookies. “These are terrible,” he said after he’d eaten three or four, “so damp and stale.” Then stop eating them, Lina screamed silently. But she kept smiling at the thin man. She put the cookie package on her far side, where they weren’t so easy to get at. But Ralph leaned over and helped himself to two more Oreos. Lina was very annoyed by the time the doctor appeared at his office door. Ralph quickly jumped up, still clutching a cookie. “Doctor, please, I’ve got to talk to you.” The doctor looked puzzled. “Can it wait a while, Lina?” She nodded, and the doctor shrugged, “All right.” After about ten minutes, Ralph came out, looking somewhat relieved.

He sat down next to Lina again, and started to say something, but she got up and headed into the doctor’s office. “I’m next.” “So what’s wrong with you?” “Swollen glands all over. Fever.” “Fatigue?” She shrugged. “Not something I’d notice. Not with my schedule.” “A lot of volunteers have been complaining about those symptoms lately. I’ve tried to find out specifically what it is, but I can’t find anything written about it. It’s probably mosquito-borne. Judging by the others who have had it, I’d say it’ll go away after about a week.” “I’ve had it over a week.” “Well, give it another week or so.” “I can hardly put my arms down at my sides.” “There’s nothing to be done about it. I know it’s uncomfortable, but believe me, the males who have it are in a lot worse condition than the females.” “What? Why?” “Think about it. In of anatomy.” “Oh, OK, I get it. Is there any medicine for it?” “Aspirin for the fever. Nothing else.” “So I should just walk around with my arms held out from the shoulder for the next week or so?” “That’s all the advice I can offer.” Sighing, she got up. “Lina, if you’re not too busy, I hope you’ll help out the man who was just sitting

with you outside.” “Sure. What’s the matter with him?” “Nothing much. He’s Dr. Ralph Paley. He’s here on a ship from the Oceanographic Research Laboratory in Norfolk. They’re investigating the reefdwellers of the Caribbean, and he had the idea that some of you might know where to look for the coves and small reefs that won’t show up on his charts.” “You’ve got the wrong person. I practically never get out of the city. I don’t know anything about the shore.” “Even so, you can help Dr. Paley find the ones who do know what he needs. Come on, Lina, help the man out. On his own, he won’t get anywhere. And he doesn’t speak any Spanish.” “Well…” “I’ll tell Boomer, if he asks, that I insisted you take some time off to recuperate.” “Uh, tell…who?” “Boomer. You don’t think your nickname for him is a secret, do you?” Lina blushed. “And I’ll provide a medical excuse for anybody else you can recruit for Dr. Paley, too.” “All right.” It sounded interesting. Lina went out and saw Dr. Paley waiting for her. “Look, I don’t have the information you need, but I’ll bet some of my friends do.” “Will you show me where they live?” She thought for a moment. “Let’s find Luke. He knows everybody and everything.” As they drove off, Dr. Paley said, “By the way, I’m really sorry about eating so many of your Oreos. The doctor explained how expensive they are. It was

generous of you to let me keep on munching without saying anything.” “Well, I’ll tell you something - if you’d taken one more cookie, I was going to leap at your throat.” He laughed. “Actually, you were right about my being sick. I picked up an intestinal bug at one of these ports of call. Your doctor just gave me some pills I hope will help.” They went off to look for Luke. As they entered the barrio, several little boys ran alongside the jeep, throwing rocks rather half-heartedly and screaming, “Yankee, go home!” Dr. Paley blanched and jammed his foot on the brake, but Lina laughed. “Never mind. Luke taught the kids to do that. It keeps the director off his back. He’ll give them a penny later.” Then she stopped abruptly, biting her lip. Paley laughed. “This Luke must be very clever. And don’t worry - I won’t tell anyone official.” Luke was home. “Yes, I do happen to know somebody who occasionally sneaks away to go snorkeling.” “Great,” Dr. Paley said. “Who would that be?” “Uh, well - myself.” “How would you like to take some time off to hunt for exotic fish?” “I’d love it.” “Who else is likely to know where the coves are?” asked Lina. “Kevin.” The three of them drove over to Kevin’s. Along the way, Luke entertained Dr. Paley with tales of life in the barrio. Kevin was home, also available and willing. “Let’s have lunch, then I’ll show you the ship. And, please, my name is Ralph,

not Dr. Paley.” They drove back to the center of town and went to the only pizza restaurant in Aguadulce. Lina, Luke and Kevin lit into the pizza, but Ralph just had a bite or two. Lina wondered whether it was because the food was really lousy, or because he didn’t feel well. Ralph insisted on paying for everybody. Then they got back into the jeep and headed for the waterfront. The ship, named Triton, was small, but packed with scientific apparatus. Lina asked what each piece of equipment was, and she remained fascinated even though she didn’t understand what most of the machines were supposed to do. There was a computer, huge and very delicate, and all kinds of aquaria, many of them holding bizarre examples of sea life. Ralph, it turned out, was a marine biologist and the chief of the group. The other scientists, who doubled as crew, were mostly younger, just a few years out of college, and very friendly. Only one of them was a woman. Dr. Ruth Barry was in her mid-thirties and very competent-looking. The three volunteers sat down, and Kevin and Luke went over charts and maps with the crew, indicating sites where they had gone snorkeling. A route was decided on, and they would start off the next morning. “Well,” said Lina regretfully, “I guess you don’t need me any more.” “Can you swim?” asked Ralph. Before Lina could answer, Luke said, “Lina’s half fish.” “ us, then. We can always use another diver.” “Thanks. I think I will.” “I’ll lend you three the jeep so you can go home for some clothes.” He stopped to think, then said, “We can’t sail until the morning anyway. Why don’t we have a party on board for all the Peace Corps volunteers?” Lina, Kevin and Luke went around to everybody’s house, leaving messages for those who weren’t home. Then they went back to their places to pack.

That night, seventeen Peace Corps volunteers gathered on board the Triton. The crew was friendly and generous. Kevin and some of the others had brought along some Esmeraldan beer and rum, and the crew cooked out on the deck - hotdogs and hamburgers, followed by ice cream. Lina noticed that all the volunteers ate the same way. Each one took his plate of food, found a place to sit down, and ate in silence, concentrating on the food as if he were taking a test instead of having a good meal. Only after all the food was gone did the Peace Corps people think about socializing. The crew put on records and everybody except Lina and Luke danced. Lina noticed that Stacy was off in a dark area dancing very slowly with one of the crew. Later they showed an old Marx Brothers movie. It was such a lift for the volunteers, who had spent months working hard in depressing conditions. Lina worried a bit about what the crew thought of them, and she kept trying to get her friends to talk with their hosts, instead of keeping to themselves as they tended to do. Stacy had disappeared with her dancing partner. And Kevin was drinking too much. Otherwise, Lina thought they were behaving well enough. Charlotte had been dancing with Ralph, and sat with him during the movie. That would be a nice combination, she thought. Both of them were so quiet and sincere. Ruth Barry was very serious. During the movie, she got up and whispered to Ralph, “I’m going to get in a few hours work before bedtime.” After the other Peace Corps people had left, Luke, Kevin and Lina were shown to their quarters. Lina was to bunk with Ruth. She felt uncomfortable about that - she was afraid Ruth would resent the intrusion. She wondered whether the doctor was just shy, or one of those joyless types. The next morning when Lina woke up, Ruth had already gone to work. Lina got up quickly and dressed, then went to the galley for coffee. Luke was there, talking like an old friend with several of the crew. Preparations were under way for sailing. After a while Kevin came in, looking terrible and moaning for coffee. Everybody laughed, but Lina was embarrassed - he was so obviously hung over. They sailed for a few hours, then dropped anchor and prepared for a dive. Since

Kevin and Luke were experienced snorkelers, Ralph sent them with the other divers for a lesson in scuba diving. He assigned Lina to a crewman for instruction in snorkeling. She picked that up easily, and was fascinated, though a bit startled at how clearly she could see twenty or thirty feet below her. At lunch Kevin sat next to her. “I got the hang of scuba diving right away,” he bragged. “How are you doing with the snorkeling?” “Fine, fine,” she said, though she hadn’t enjoyed the morning much. Ralph came in later, and went right over to Luke. “Well, you did really well this morning. You’ve picked up scuba faster than anyone I’ve ever seen. You’re ready to dive tomorrow.” Lina thought about the difference between Luke and Kevin. Kevin’s successes were always so obvious. If he didn’t make a lot of noise at the time, he made sure everybody knew all about it immediately afterward. Luke was so modest it was easy to overlook the fact that he was good at so many different things. The next afternoon Lina had her first lesson in scuba diving. She hated it. The idea that she needed so much cumbersome equipment to stay alive in the alien environment made her feel she should just keep out of there. And she was claustrophobic underwater. Her instructor had to keep telling her to breathe slower. Lina didn’t trust the breathing apparatus - she was surprised each time she drew a breath and actually got air. But she said nothing about her fears. I was invited along because I can help with the diving - if I don’t do that I’ll just be dead weight. Then too, there was that old competitive feeling. If it had been only Luke, Lina would have felt comfortable saying she was afraid of the scuba diving. But she wasn’t going to tell Kevin anything like that. Anything Kevin can do, she thought, so can I. Eventually Lina conquered some of her fear, and she learned some basic skills. She began to help on minor assignments, forcing herself to make short dives to retrieve plant specimens. But she had another problem - she was terrified of the sea creatures she saw. These creatures are so alien, so strange - they seem menacing, even the tiny ones. Some of the creatures had no discernible front or back, top or bottom. I never realized before that most sea dwellers have no communication, no ties to

each other, not even to their own species. The only interest they seem to take in any other living thing is to devour it. And even then, their expressions never change. To Luke, she confessed, “I know it’s crazy, but I feel like the fish know I don’t belong down there. Like they’re waiting for me to make the mistake that will turn me into food.” On one dive, Lina found herself face to face with an enormous grouper. Although she’d been told this was not a dangerous fish, she became so frightened she immediately surfaced, neglecting to follow any of the safety procedures. Kevin and Luke, on the other hand, were having a great time. They spent every day diving and talking about marine biology with the scientists. Ralph was very impressed with Luke, and his low laughter could often be heard as Luke managed to turn the most ordinary event into something hilarious. One evening when Lina went into her cabin, Ruth said, “You don’t like diving very much, do you?” “How can you tell? I thought I was covering it up so well.” “You talk in your sleep. You’re afraid of fish?” “Yes. But I guess I’ll survive. I’m sorry if I’m keeping you awake.” “Why don’t you just say you’d rather do something else? There are lots of other things you could do to make yourself useful.” Lina thought about that. “No, I think I’ll stick with the diving. I don’t want to it to Kevin that I’m scared.” “Kevin? I would have thought Luke was more your type.” “No romance, not with either of them. It’s just that there’s a kind of competitive attitude in the Peace Corps, and I guess a personal rivalry between Kevin and me. I don’t want to lose face if I can avoid it.” Ruth looked at her closely. “I can understand that. But I think it’s stupid to let it

make you so miserable. Do you want me to officially request your help on my project? Lina thought about that. It would be a way off the hook, and it might convince Kevin. “No. But thanks for the offer.” “A bit stubborn, aren’t you?” Lina was annoyed, but she managed to say calmly, “Yes, I guess I am. But I’m trying to work on it.” “You’re young. You’ll get over the reckless streak. What are you planning to do when you get back home?” “I’m not sure yet. Look for a job, I suppose.” “Not go back to school?” “Maybe, eventually.” “Do it as soon as you can. If you don’t, something will come up - you’ll get locked into a job, or get married, and then you’ll never go back. You’re a bright girl, Lina. Don’t let yourself be sidetracked into something routine.” “I guess you took your own advice.” “Yes, I got my Ph.D five years after I graduated from college. Now I’m doing something I love, something exciting and useful.” “What’s it like, being on ships all the time, surrounded by men?” “It’s not exciting in that sense. I have to be business-like or I wouldn’t be respected. No beer parties or skinny-dipping for me.” She hesitated. “In college I was pretty happy-go-lucky. Like your friend Stacy. But you can’t go on like that forever. I decided to buckle down, and I like my life. I don’t miss all that fooling around.” But she sounded sad and a little wistful. It’s what Pat said, Lina thought. You

aren’t going to be 21 forever. Sooner or later, you’ve got to get serious.

*****

One day, Lina and Luke were underwater, busily gathering coral from a reef, when she felt a tug at her arm. Luke was there, pointing behind her. She turned and saw a shark swimming slowly by only a few feet away. Though it was paying no attention at all to them, the sight of it jolted Lina. Its eye, a ball of malevolent black jelly, froze her. And the mouth…the shark held its jaws loosely open, and it was bristling with teeth - some stuck out, others up, and there seemed to be endless ragged rows of them. She wondered if it could close its mouth at all. She forgot how to use the breathing apparatus, and tried to breathe in and blow out at the same time. She started coughing and then she couldn’t breathe at all. Gagging and choking, she began to panic. Then Luke was in front of her. He held her and gestured to her to breathe slowly. Gradually she calmed herself. She looked for the shark, but it was gone. She signaled to Luke that she was going up, and he nodded and went with her. She scrambled onto the deck and sat there, breathing raggedly, trying not to cough. “Are you all right?” “Yes,” she gasped. “I just panicked. I’m all right now.” Her throat felt raw, and she was still fighting off the urge to cough. “It wasn’t interested in us, you know. We could just have kept an eye on it and gone about our work. Just because it was a shark doesn’t necessarily mean it was planning to eat us.” “I know that. Know it, but I don’t feel it. The sight of that shark so close just made me lose control. It’s such a horrible thing, just a streamlined killing machine.”

“It’s one of God’s creatures, all the same.” “God? How can you believe in a God who created the shark? If you want proof there is no God, or at least no benevolent one, the shark is all you need.” “I don’t see it that way. Obviously. You’re angry at God, always looking for a reason to blame him.” “Let’s get off this subject. We’re going to start fighting if we don’t.” They took off their gear and went to the galley for some coffee. She was angry at herself for not being able to control her fear. But she couldn’t forget the teeth. When she had calmed down, Luke went off to find another diving partner, and Lina went back to her cabin. Dressed, she went in search of Ruth. “Please, assign me to help you. I never want to dive again.” Lina spent the rest of the trip working in the lab. Kevin, with his annoying ability to sense Lina’s weaknesses, guessed what had prompted her change of assignment. She had to put up with his incessant jibes and jokes. He thought it was particularly funny to sneak up behind her and dangle a wriggling fish in front of her face, or to put a squirming squid on her head. No matter how hard she tried, Lina couldn’t help screaming each time, much to Kevin’s glee. Finally, Luke said, “You know, Kevin, this is like hearing the same joke over and over. It’s boring. Very boring.” Several of the crew cheered. Kevin looked angry, then embarrassed. The badgering stopped. When they arrived back in Aguadulce, Lina was happy to leave the ship. I don’t know what I want to do for a living, she thought, but at least I’ve eliminated one possibility. Marine biology is definitely not for me.

*****

One morning Lina woke up with an astonishing headache and a desperate thirst.

She got up and dressed, then went to a tienda and bought a Coke. That quenched her thirst, but made her feel queasy. I drank it too fast, she thought. All right, this isn’t a clinic day. I’m going to cancel my cooking class and take it easy. I think I have a touch of something. By the time she had gone to Francisco’s house and told Luz she had to cancel, Lina was feeling miserable. Starting the walk back to her house, her head throbbing, she realized something was wrong with her eyes - she couldn’t turn them without intense pain. She began seeing dancing points of light before her, and her thirst increased until she felt crazed for lack of water. She staggered up to a small tienda and ordered two bottles of Coke, drinking one as she walked, then the other. She couldn’t seem to keep her mind focused - wild creatures began to wander in and out of her brain, dragging strange disconnected thoughts with them. Why is it taking me so long to get home? Surely I’ve been walking for an hour already, and I’m not even close. Suddenly she felt she couldn’t take another step. Looking around dazedly, she saw an alley in front of her, darkly shadowed and inviting. I have to sit down for a few minutes, she thought. Then I’ll go home and sleep for a long time. When Lina woke up, it was dark. She was startled. Wasn’t it morning when I set off for Francisco’s place? What’s happened to the whole day? She ran her hand over her face, and was surprised to find her skin dry and rough - and very hot. Slowly she got up, her hands scrabbling at the coarse bark of a tamarind tree, and staggered out of the alley. It must be very late, she thought. Nobody was in the street. One break for me, at least. She was embarrassed that she couldn’t walk straight, realizing that anybody who saw her would think she was drunk. Eventually she got home and immediately sank onto her bed. With her last conscious thought, she tucked the mosquito net in around the mattress. Some time later she awoke from a terrifying dream that the netting was trying to suffocate her. Thrashing around to free herself, she pulled it down on top of her. She didn’t have the strength to struggle free of the yards of net, and she began screaming, believing it was a savage creature trying to murder her. She awoke to hear her nextdoor neighbors standing over her bed discussing her condition. They had extricated her from the net and now they offered her water. Lina was very thirsty and too disoriented to why she should refuse it.

“Where do your friends live?” Lina couldn’t the address. Anyway, Charlotte and Stacy weren’t there - they were teaching at a summer camp for teenage girls. “Thank you, thank you very much.” Not English, she told herself. I’m supposed to talk to them in…that other language. But she couldn’t a word of it not even its name. Time telescoped - the next time she woke up she noticed she was covered with mosquito bites. She slept again. Someone was shaking her - Carmencita was there, giving her more water. “Thank you, Carmencita.” She felt as if she were shouting down a tunnel. She sank back onto the bed, wanting to go to sleep again. “You must get up. You are very sick. Carlota and Felicia are not at home. I have called a público. You must go to the melicanos.” “The…what?” “The others like you. The melicanos. The white people. They will have medicine for you. You cannot stay here. You will die.” The girl grabbed Lina’s arm, forcing her to sit up. A momentary lucidity made Lina’s eyes snap open. “You’re right. I need to get help.” She got up, reeling crazily against Carmencita. The stocky girl had no trouble ing her. As they struggled out the door, Lina asked, “How did you know I was sick?” “You haven’t come home in a long time.” Lina realized that Carmencita was confused. She thinks I still live with Charlotte and Stacy. But I have to give her credit - she’s only been over here once or twice, yet somehow she managed to find the place. And she found a público and convinced the driver to do what she said.

The alley seemed to have grown much longer since Lina had traveled it last. She had to stop and rest several times, leaning heavily against the wall. But finally she and Carmencita reached the street. Lina cried out as the light sent a knife through her temples. Her knees buckled, and Carmencita had to lift her into the back seat of the público, thrusting her purse into her hands at the last moment. The driver turned to her expectantly. What’s the address of the Peace Corps office, she wondered. Finally the name of the street surfaced. “Patriot Street,” she gasped. “Just drive along it - I…I’ll tell you where to stop.” It was a long ride, and the light tortured her. She had to cover her eyes with her arm, peeking under it to keep track of their progress. Her headache was appalling, and she had to turn her head painfully to see both sides of the street. A rainbow arched around the edges of her vision. Finally, she recognized the high bushes that surrounded the grounds of the Peace Corps building. “Here, leave me here.” The driver looked doubtful. But Lina insisted, “It’s all right, my friends will be here.” She fumbled in her purse and found a bill, a crumpled thing, scarlet on one side and azure on the other. She tried to read the denomination, but the numbers meant nothing to her. She thrust the bill at the driver. When he saw that she didn’t intend to ask for any change, he said, “Thank you very much, señorita. Get well soon.” He smiled, flashing a gold tooth. Lina got out and opened the gate. Inside, she realized how confused she was. I’ve forgotten how far it is from the gate to the house. I should have had the driver leave me right at the steps. She started up the dusty driveway, her feet moving in the cadence of the pulsating in her head. The points of light before her eyes seemed like a swarm of bothersome insects, and she waved her arms in front of her as she walked, trying to drive them away. Why doesn’t someone see me, come out to help me? What time is it? She tried to raise her eyes to gauge the time by the sun, but the direct rays made her so dizzy

she staggered, started to fall. Beside the driveway, she saw the banyan tree. The ground under the drooping branches looked so cool and inviting. She swerved off the path and headed for the tree. As soon as her eyes were in the shade, she sank gratefully down onto the cool soft earth. Somebody was trying to make her wake up. “Go away!” she moaned. “I’m tired. It’s the middle of the night. Go away!” Her tormenter left her alone. The next time she woke up, she realized she was lying on something too high and too solid to be her bed. She managed to slow the spinning of the world. She was on the examining table in the doctor’s office. She moaned loudly, and the doctor leaped up from a chair and came over to her. “You’re all right, Lina. You’ve been sick, but you’re all right now.” She tried to get up, then realized she had an IV tube in her arm. “What happened?” She began to cry. “You have dengue fever. Your temperature was very high, and you were dehydrated when we found you. It’s a good thing you didn’t crawl all the way under the tree. You fell down with only your head in the shade. I saw your legs sticking out from the branches this morning when I came in. I don’t know if we would have found you in time otherwise.” “In time for what?” The doctor leaned over her. “You were very sick. Your temperature was over 103 degrees when we found you. And it was probably even higher earlier. You couldn’t have gone on much longer like that.” Lina’s foggy mind tried to grasp the significance of his words. With a start she got it - I nearly died. She shuddered, and immediately thought of her grandmother’s goose. “It’s a situation I’ve dreaded. You weren’t coherent enough to get help when you needed it. If we hadn’t found you - well… another few hours lying there could have been fatal.” “Carmencita,” she murmured, lying down on the table again.

“What? Who?” “Carmencita saved my life. I have to do something for her when I’m better.” “You can explain that to me later. Meantime, though, I’m going to try to set up some kind of buddy system. Everybody needs to have someone check on him, have someone who’ll know if he hasn’t been seen lately and may be sick.”

*****

Lina recovered slowly from the dengue. The weakness and aversion to light lasted for weeks. The dengue was bad enough, but she was terrified of getting malaria. Whenever she took her Chloroquine tablets, she became nauseated and got a throbbing headache. She read in a Peace Corps newsletter from Peru that those were symptoms of allergy to the drug. Then she heard a rumor that a volunteer in Africa had gone blind after ignoring such an allergy. Lina immediately stopped taking the pills. She realized she had to do something about the mosquitoes in her house. So she began keeping a flit gun of insecticide on the table just inside the door. As soon as she opened the door, she grabbed the gun and pumped a cloud of DDT before she entered. It helped, though she thought the poison probably was doing as much damage to her as to the mosquitoes. She also began to rely on the Peace Corps-supplied insect repellent, putting it on several times a day. The repellent was very oily, and it was not absorbed into the skin - it just stayed on top, very messy and uncomfortable. It smelled like gasoline and it dissolved plastic, so that if Lina put it on and then decided to write a letter, she couldn’t get the pen out of her fingers. Her plastic tablecloth had holes in it the shape of the bottle, and Lina felt obliged to pay for a neighbor’s couch after the plastic upholstery tore loose and remained attached to the backs of her legs when she stood up to go home. In the weeks that followed, Lina realized that her neighbors and Carmencita had given her contaminated water - she began to suffer from devastating attacks of diarrhea. She lost weight, felt weak and nauseated most of the time.

The doctor ordered a whole series of tests. On the day she went back to get the results, he shook his head. “Amoebic dysentery.” “Hm. That doesn’t sound so good.” “It isn’t. It’s very serious. The amoebas here are a particularly virulent strain.” “What…what do I do?” “Take more Chloroquine. I’ll give you a schedule, and some more pills.” “Isn’t Chloroquine for malaria?” “Yes. But it helps for amoebas, too.” She didn’t dare tell him she wasn’t taking Chloroquine at all. “And I’ll give you another medication. But, most important, you have to pay attention to nutrition. This is very important - you have to eat an adequate diet or you’ll starve.”

*****

One day Boomer came by on a barrio check. “Well, Lina, you don’t look too busy. I’ve just been asked to provide a couple of volunteers for worthwhile causes.” Lina knew the director accepted all such requests, then went fishing for people to fill the positions. She sighed. There was no getting out of his assignments. She hoped it wouldn’t be something that took too much time. She really was very busy. “How’d you like to work in the manicomio?”

The thought appalled Lina. The manicomio was the insane asylum, a forbidding grey prison-like structure beside the river. Lina knew that people were sent there only when they were undeniably insane, usually violent. She couldn’t imagine dealing with such patients. “No, not that. I’ll take the other one, whatever it is.” “Fine. You start next week. Teaching literacy at San Lázaro.” “San Lázaro. Isn’t that the…” She had heard the name before, but couldn’t quite in what context. “Yes.” He smiled. “The leper colony.” Lina went to the department of public health before her first day at San Lázaro. “Leprosy is not curable,” the director told her, “but it is treatable. It can be arrested with the use of medication. But the damage it has already caused, neurological deficits, impairment of vision, other problems, cannot usually be reversed.” “Is it very contagious?” “No, not very. It is contagious, of course, but it is just about the least contagious of contagious diseases.” “Then how do people get it?” “It is usually contracted only after close over a long period. Only the very young or the sickly contract it from casual with victims.” “That’s a relief.” “Uh, well, I should add that there are people who are congenitally predisposed to leprosy. Scandinavians, for instance. They may get it from much less extensive .” “How can you find out if you’re congenitally predisposed?” “Unfortunately, you can’t. That is, except for…well, actually contracting the

disease.” Lina smiled weakly. Does being so underweight, and always getting attacks of amoebic dysentery, made me `sickly’? I’m going to start eating better, cut down on smoking. But what about the congenital predisposition? I’m not Scandinavian, but I get rashes all the time and sunburn so easily. And leprosy is a skin disease, after all. “Why do you need a leper colony if the disease can be controlled and prevented from spreading to others?” “A good question. We don’t really need one. But there is a revulsion in the general population to the very idea of the disease. People simply will not let anyone known to have leprosy live among them. When you consider that leprosy is less contagious than…tuberculosis, for example, or syphilis, which are both well-tolerated, it doesn’t make much sense.” “I guess there’s a kind of biblical curse to the very name leprosy.” “Yes, and it’s too bad. Fear of ostracism prevents many people from seeking treatment until it’s too late. Until they have deformities, things that can’t be treated.” The public health director had seemed so enlightened about the disease, Lina expected to find a modern hospital complex at San Lázaro. Instead, the place was dismal and decrepit. Dusty paths meandered between shacks which lacked any semblance of comfort or convenience. There were two larger structures both rundown bamboo and tin buildings shoddily constructed. One was the dispensary, where a public health service doctor and nurse gave out medicine for a few hours one day a month, and the other was the “social center”, where essentially nothing happened. That was where Lina’s class was held. The conditions seemed medieval - the lepers were permanently separated from their families. Lina never saw any visitors while she was there, and she doubted there were many. Lina had taught literacy before and found it interesting, though ultimately discouraging. Spanish was a phonetic language, and it should have been easy to teach and to learn. Her methodology text stated cheerfully that after only a few

hours many people could read simple sentences. The starter sentence, for instance, Mama ama a papa - Mama loves Papa - contained only three letters. It seemed reasonable to master that in one lesson. But somehow it was more a psychological problem than one of education. Lina thought that many illiterate adults had some kind of problem dealing with the symbolic nature of letters. They might be able to recognize some of the letters, and even to make some of them, but actually reading, like most people Lina knew did without even thinking, was seldom the result of a literacy project. And the reading part was the easiest part - writing was extremely difficult for adults who had never done it before. I wonder what the point of teaching literacy here is, anyway. It’s not likely any of these people will learn enough to be useful. I guess the project is really only a way of ing some empty hours. There must be a lot of them in a leper colony. Lina was very nervous the first day. Trying to look cheerful and reassuring, she pretended she didn’t notice the students’ horrible deformities. She ed out pencils and paper, then turned and wrote the starter sentence on the blackboard. She had the students repeat the words after her. Then, without thinking it through, she said, “All right, now, we’ll all try making these letters. Pick up your pencils, and…” She froze as they all attempted to obey her, picking up the pencil in whatever way they could, some with only one or two fingers, the fingerless fumbling to grasp the pencil with their feet or mouths. It took all of Lina’s self-control not to burst into tears and run out of the room. One patient, Andrés, who had been a high-school student when he came down with the disease, could certainly read. He sometimes helped the other students with their lessons, though he spent most of his time poring over whatever books the health workers could get him about leprosy. He had sheaves of loose paper, a pitiful assortment of different sizes and types, much of it yellowed and brittle, and he was laboriously compiling a history of leprosy, writing with only the thumb and part of two fingers left on his right hand. Lina always had coffee with Andrés before leaving San Lázaro. “I think this project is just eless,” Lina complained one day. “Most of the students aren’t learning much.”

“Maybe the point is to educate you, not us.” She blushed and looked down as she absorbed the suggestion. Andrés seemed to be trying to test Lina, standing close to her and clutching her with his disfigured hands, watching how she reacted. She felt he was always observing her behavior carefully, and she found herself touching her students often, more often than she would have in an ordinary classroom situation, to prove that she did not find them repugnant. “You know, Lina, I think there are many more cases of leprosy in Esmeralda than are diagnosed. It’s one thing in the cities, but in the countryside, where I come from, people have all sorts of maladies. They endure them, recover if they can, or die. There are no doctors to tell people the names of their diseases, never mind to treat them.” While Andrés was now taking medication that stabilized his condition, permanent damage had been done to his eyes and nerve endings, and he had no sensation over much of his body. And he spoke with the hoarse rasping voice typical of lepers, the result of irritation to the mucous membranes. Lina was afraid prolonged talking was bad for him, but he was so eager to communicate she couldn’t cut him off. “Did you know, Lina, that leprosy has a very long incubation time? You might not know you have it for years after you’ve been infected.” “No. I didn’t know that. How…how do you know you have it?” “Usually the first symptom is that you get whitish patches of what seems to be only rough dry skin. But then you notice that the patches are anesthetic. You know? You can’t feel anything there. One of the diagnostic tests for leprosy is to stick needles into those white patches. If you don’t jump, you’ve got leprosy.” Lina realized she was going to be suspicious of every little blemish that appeared on her skin for years to come. She wondered if that had been his intention. “Andrés,” Lina said one day, familiar enough with him now to ask personal questions. “Do you know how you got leprosy?” “Yes, I think so. From the time I was an infant, I slept in the same bed with my

grandfather. He had some sort of skin disease - a disease that was never named. He died when I was eleven.” With his horribly deformed hands, he wiped away tears. “How I loved him. I missed him so much. For a long time, I couldn’t sleep the whole night through in that bed. I would wake up after a few hours’ sleep, and feel the bed next to me empty. Then I’d start crying. I was alone - for the first time in my life.” “A couple of years later, I began to develop lesions on my arms and legs. Then my ears began to change.” He touched the bulbous swollen ears Lina had noticed many of the lepers had. “After another couple of years, it became impossible for my family to ignore what I had. The bridge of my nose collapsed. And the damage to the nerves made me begin to lose parts of my fingers and toes.” He held up his ruined hands. Lina managed not to react, but didn’t think she had fooled Andrés any. “You know, there are a lot of folk names for leprosy. The Aztecs had one of them - Being eaten by the gods.” She shuddered, and Andrés smiled in satisfaction at having made her react. “Very good, isn’t it? So cynical - and so descriptive.” “When did you come to the city?” Lina asked hastily. “Well, I was asked not to return to school, and all my friends were forbidden to associate with me. My younger brothers and sisters began to avoid coming too close. At that point, I decided I had no future…there. I don’t think of my village, my family, any more. I never say those names.” “And you came straight to San Lázaro?” “No, I survived for a few years as a beggar on the streets of Aguadulce. Then my disease took a turn for the worse, and I went to a hospital clinic. They diagnosed leprosy. I knew that’s what it was, of course, but that was the first time anyone had ever used the name. I knew then that my life - my real life - was over. They sent me here. To wait to die. I have been here ever since. And I will die here.”

He looked at the ground for a few minutes, stirring the dust with a toeless foot. Then he looked up at Lina, straining to see her through his clouded eyes. “Another folk name for leprosy, my particular favorite, is - the death before death. That says it all for me.” Andrés had nobody educated to talk with except Lina - the nurses and the doctor were too busy to chat, and they went back to the capital as soon as their monthly work was done. Lina brought sweets to the other class every time she came. For Andrés, she brought paper and pencils. Andrés was always dropping horrible little facts about the treatment of lepers, carefully watching her reaction. Lina knew that lepers had always been considered outcasts, but she had never thought much about their plight. She was chilled at Andrés’ stories of persecution. “Here, Lina, let me read you this. I’ve been working on my chapter on the Church’s attitude toward leprosy in the Middle Ages. See what you think of it.” She felt she had no choice. “Let me give you a little background information. Religious rituals were very important in the life of the Middle Ages. There were many more of them than there are now. Besides the usual ones - baptism, marriage, and funeral services, other occasions called for formal ceremonies. One of those occasions was the diagnosis of leprosy.” He began to read. “During a `leper’s mass’, a newly-diagnosed leper was formally ejected from the community. The leper knelt before the altar, his face covered by a black veil, and the priest threw a spadeful of earth from a cemetery on the leper’s head. “Then he was read a list of prohibitions. The leper could not enter a church. He could not visit a tavern or any other place of public assembly. He could not wash in a stream, draw from a well, drink at a fountain, touch children, enter a narrow lane. “He was given his signal - a clapper, a bell or a horn, and his leper’s costume, long robes with a red letter L. The priest then led him to his place of exile,

outside the town. The priest put a cross on the door, hung a box on it for alms, and the leper was on his own - for the rest of his life. A short time, if he was lucky.” Lina shook her head. “Some `men of God!’” “You have to take everything in context. Those times were more brutal than ours. Violence was an everyday fact of life, and the Church was more benevolent than private citizens were. They often simply set a leper on fire.” “For not obeying the commands against public ?” “No, just for being a leper. But then again, the Church was not always so comionate. Sometimes a leper was given a Christian funeral, then buried alive. That was a particularly popular treatment for pregnant women.” Lina couldn’t think of anything to say except, “How horrible!” “Yes. But at least that ended it. Ended years, perhaps, of just waiting. Years of suffering the death before death.” Lina wondered why Andrés was writing his book. After she’d done some research in the Aguadulce library, it seemed to her there were already quite a few books on the history of leprosy. She supposed he was doing it for the same reason her students were attending her meaningless classes - it killed some of the overabundant time. Lina had her mother send her books on leprosy, and she laboriously read them to Andrés, translating into Spanish as she went along, while he patiently scratched out notes. Her mother wrote frantic letters asking why she had become so interested in leprosy, but she never answered directly. One day, Lina received an unexpected check from her mother, with an explanation - at a family party, a card game had started and there was quite a bit of money in the pot at the last hand. Lina’s family always played cards for money - they said it made the game more interesting. Pat had won the game with a colossal bluff. As he gathered up his winnings, he said, “This reminds me of Colleen.” And he decided to send the money to her. Lina used it to buy an old battered typewriter for Andrés. When she delivered it,

Andrés was overcome with emotion. He grabbed her and hugged her, giving her a big kiss on the cheek. Lina was unable to suppress a gasp when she smelled, up close, the cloying odor of Andrés’ body and his fetid breath.

Chapter 8

Lina went to the Peace Corps office to check her mail one steamy day. She sank into an armchair in the reception area, panting slightly, waiting to regain her strength before she set off for home. The doctor walked in, took one look at her, and said, “Go into my office. Now.” She made a face, but she knew she had to obey. “How much do you weigh?” “About 120.” He motioned her onto the scale. “97.” Lina frowned. She knew she was thinner, but she had no idea that she had lost so much weight. “What are you eating?” “Whatever’s around.” He sighed. “Let’s try this again. What did you eat yesterday?” “Let’s see - for breakfast, a Coke and a cigarette. Two or three cups of coffee during the morning, at the hospital. A banana and an orange for lunch. Then dinner with Charlotte and Stacy - we made some French fries and split an avocado. And another Coke.” The doctor pinched the skin on Lina’s forearm. “Look at that.” The skin didn’t go back down. “Why does that happen?” “Because you’re dehydrated.”

“Hm.” “You have malnutrition, Lina.” “Malnu…! Oh! Well, I guess I’ll have to start eating more. I don’t have much of an appetite. Of course, having those three bouts of dysentery took a lot of the weight off, too.” “Well, you’re going to have to force yourself to eat, and to eat better. You have to eat protein every day. You ought to know that.” “OK, I’ll do better from now on.” “This is an emergency. I order you to go on vacation, right now, and concentrate on gaining some weight.” “But I can’t go away. I have too much to do. And nobody I know is planning a vacation.” “No excuses. You’re going on vacation, off island, some place where you can eat a lot of food, and have a chance to relax.” “I can’t afford anyplace like that.” “Start thinking about places to go. Because you’re going. Soon.” Lina ignored his order, figuring that if she kept out of his way, he’d forget about it. Her promise to eat better deteriorated into having more Cokes than usual. It’s full of sugar, she rationalized, that should fatten me up. But two weeks after her meeting with the doctor, he showed up at her house. “I’ve been doing research about vacation spots. There are some teachers from the American school going to Haiti next week. And you’re going with them.” Once Lina knew it was inevitable, the idea of going to Haiti fascinated her. It would be a complete change - different language, different culture, different religion, if you considered Voodoo. She tried to get some information about the country, but it was very difficult in Esmeralda. There were few books about Haiti available, and Esmeraldans avoided going there.

Luke shook his head when Lina told him about it. “One of the guys who works at Project Against Hunger was stationed in Port-au-Prince before he came here. He says conditions there are really brutal. The dictator, Duvalier, `Papa Doc’, as they call him, is completely vicious. And they say he’s beginning to lose control of himself. Roy said even diplomats are being pushed around. It doesn’t sound like a very good place to go for a vacation.” “Well, it’s just about the only place I can afford, and I think a lot of those stories are sensationalized. If Haiti were as bad as all that, the State Department would put it off limits. And they haven’t.” “Still, Lina, you ought to think about it. Maybe you should just stay here and take a month off.” “No, I’m going. I’m always exhausted. I need time to just lie around and relax. If I stay here, I’ll keep finding work to do. I just wish I had more time to plan before I go. I wish I had time to practice French a little. And I wish I were going with you and Charlotte and Stacy instead of strangers.” “Oh, you’ll be all right, Lina. You said these teachers are all girls about your own age. You’ll be best friends by the time you’re ready to come back.” The flight was quite short - it seemed to be just a take-off and a landing. The four teachers sat together, two and two, and chatted to each other. Lina sat in back of them and watched the sea. They had met for the first time at the airport departure lounge. After exchanging names, the four teachers went on to chat about people they knew and Lina didn’t. She’d tried to add something to the conversation, without success. After a while, she gave up, deciding it wasn’t worth the effort. Welcome to outsiderville, she thought. Anyway, they all seem shallow and frivolous. Maybe I’ll find some interesting people in Port-au-Prince. I hope so - spending a month with these girls isn’t going to be much fun. When they had landed and gone through port control, three of the girls piled into the back seat of the nearest decrepit taxi. Lina climbed in beside the driver, and was promptly squeezed up against him by the fourth girl. Imperiously, in English, one of them told the driver to take them to the Indépendance Hotel. But the word sounded a lot different in English, and the driver shrugged and shook his head. He smiled, revealing a mouth full of astonishingly white, perfect teeth, and said something in a curious lilt. Lina

recognized a couple of French words, and struggled to recall the French she had studied in college. Hesitantly, she gave him the name of the hotel in a French intonation. He nodded. Lina tried to think of how to ask him what the fare would be, as he popped the emergency brake off and the car leaped forward, gears grinding. They rattled along the twisting road out of the airport, faster than the condition of the road or of the car seemed to merit. Lina ducked to see out the windshield. Haiti looked completely different from Esmeralda. The terrain was rocky and mountainous, and the contrasts stark barren brown crags rose from patches of brightly-blooming hibiscus, their leaves thickly coated with dust from the dirt road. The drought that had afflicted Esmeralda for so long did not seem to have affected this nearby island. Lina finally saw what she had expected to see in Esmeralda - tropical foliage, lush and wild. She had the same reaction to it as she had had in Palmar - it was disturbing, almost sinister in its profusion. The people looked completely different from Esmeraldans - they were very black, with a bluish tinge, and they moved in a different way, with a fluid grace and poise that Lina envied. The women she saw along the road were wearing full-skirted dresses made of printed fabrics in colors even more dazzling than those of the tropical blossoms. They walked barefoot, balancing burdens on their heads that ranged from a sewing machine to a huge flat basket of flowers. It looks like Africa, Lina thought, and was surprised. She had almost forgotten Luke’s warning about Papa Doc’s bad reputation. But as they rounded a tight curve in the road, a shocking sight sprang into view. Three crosses stood in a row, with the rotting remains of a corpse hanging on each. On the chest of each corpse was a sign in French: `Thus to the enemies of Haiti!’ Lina gasped. The driver accelerated as soon as the grisly sight came into view. “Wait! Stop! What is that?” Lina grabbed the driver’s arm. He just shrugged and kept his eyes resolutely on the road. Lina lifted her camera, but he reached over and pushed it down, saying in French, “No photos! Are you insane, Mam’selle? You are in Haiti now. Be prudent.” Lina sickly asked the others what they thought about the scene. There was resolute silence for a long moment, then one of them said, “Hey, look, we’re

tourists. We don’t want to get involved in any political problems. Why don’t you just relax and stop trying to save the world, at least while you’re on vacation?” Lina stared out the back of the taxi until the twisting road obscured the horrible view. The first sighting of the Indépendance was enchanting. It was a ramshackle Victorian building perched partway up a steep mountain overlooking the bay and the city. It was a child’s version of a castle, but made of wood, with a turret or a gable everywhere it was possible to insert one. A perfect fantasy-land, Lina thought. The hotel was set back from the road, and a circular driveway lined with bougainvillaea hedges bursting with cerise blossoms led to the sweeping stairway. Wide verandas surrounded the building, lavishly strewn with wicker lounge chairs. Inside, a long mahogany bar stretched along one side of the lobby, while sluggish overhead fans and rattan furniture gave atmosphere to the lounge. Lina smiled. If Humphrey Bogart isn’t staying here, someone equally exciting must be. She began to relax. They checked in and went to see their quarters, a suite with a sitting room and two bedrooms, each with two double beds. The sitting room had a balcony overlooking Port-au-Prince. There was a brief argument over who would get stuck with Lina, and she quickly claimed the couch in the sitting room as her bed. By now she felt dreadful - exhausted and numb with shock over the sight of the crucified bodies. She collapsed onto her makeshift bed and slept for hours. When she awoke, she found herself alone in the suite. She got dressed and headed downstairs. Feeling shy and conspicuous, she looked around for the others and found them at a corner table in the lounge, chatting animatedly with a group of six men. Going over to the table, she realized they were speaking Spanish. Or at least some primitive version of it. Lina could barely suppress a laugh at their elementary vocabularies and execrable accents. Their confidence as they chattered on impressed her. Why am I so shy speaking Spanish? she thought. I speak so much better than any of these girls, and they’re not afraid to talk. It turned out the men were a delegation from the InterAmerican Cooperative

Bureau, doing a six-month survey to determine what improvements could be made in the Haitian irrigation system. They had been in Haiti for three months already, and they were clearly delighted to meet a group of young white nearly Spanish-speaking females. Lina created a mild stir by her entry. At least, she thought spitefully, I’m the best-looking of the girls. The IACB men were ing around family pictures - pictures of houses, wives, children, dogs, all amateurly posed and photographed. She politely cooed over them, and asked the names and ages of the children, but she was disappointed to be in this exotic place, speaking Spanish with men who were exactly like those she had just left. At least, she thought, I am speaking Spanish, not some painful version of Spanglish. Dinner was announced, and they all headed for the dining room. The first course was a black bean soup with sherry. That was followed by grilled fresh fish, pork and vegetables on skewers, spicy rice, and French pastries with the coffee. Lina ate more than she had at one sitting for many months. Afterward, they all trooped out to the veranda. Lina gradually realized that they had pretty well been paired off - probably before she had come on the scene. One of the men came over and sat beside Lina. “My name is Javier.” He smiled and leaned toward her, looking deep into her eyes. He was actually quite nice, and good-looking as well - but Lina had seen his wife’s picture during the family-portrait session. She was pretty, smiling shyly at the camera, and about seven months pregnant. No, thanks, Lina thought, and went to bed early and alone. The IACB men didn’t speak Creole, French or English. And that pretty well took care of the language possibilities in Haiti - certainly, Lina thought, nobody appears to know any Spanish at all. Lina had hoped to travel around the island, but there were no cars for rent, and taxis, which were reputed to exist, were very hard to come by. Lina asked Philippe, the bartender, why, and he said, “Gas and spare parts are so expensive in Haiti that only the rich and the military can afford to keep cars.” The IACB men had three jeeps and, it appeared, very little work to do. So Lina had two choices. She could stay at the hotel all day alone, or tag along with the four happy couples. She alternated between the two, thinking, I haven’t felt so

out of place since Sean and Pat had to take me along with them on dates. And she found she was reacting in exactly the same way as she had then - she just trailed along and smiled in embarrassment. One morning during the first week, Lina decided to take a bus trip. She consulted a map and a guidebook, and selected Jacmel. The guidebook said it was a lovely Victorian town, and the map seemed to indicate that she should be able to get there, see the town and get back the same day. The buses, called `tap-taps’ were wonderfully picturesque. A tap-tap was really just a flatbed truck with benches bolted to it and canvas draped over poles to form a roof and sides. Outside, it was charmingly painted, in brightest reds, blues and yellows. The vibrant Haitian designs had elements reminiscent of Pennsylvania folk art, except, of course, that the human figures were all black. Lina’s tap-tap bore the slogan: Diu = amur, God is love, spelled phonetically in Creole. Inside, it was sickeningly hot, and people traveled with their chickens and pigs, so the stench was awful. But Lina had ridden in Esmeraldan buses under similar conditions, so it didn’t bother her. She was used to the Esmeraldans’ surprise at seeing a foreign white girl on a three-penny bus. The Haitians stared at her unabashedly and giggled. Everybody seemed to be talking about her, and a lot of people talked to her, too, though she couldn’t understand them. She smiled and they smiled back, beautiful teeth flashing. She tried a little of her hesitant French on them, but the motor was so noisy she couldn’t make herself heard. The guidebook hadn’t mentioned how bad the roads were. The roadbeds were washed out in places, and huge ruts made travel very slow. The tap-tap often leaned precariously to one side. At lunchtime, the bus pulled over to the side of the road, and everybody got out. They were in a minute hamlet consisting of five or six huts. The huts were shabby, made of scraps of rusty metal, bits of cardboard and tangles of vegetation. Small boys ran over to the tap-tap and tried to beg or to sell lengths of sugar cane or homemade sticky candy. When they saw Lina, they all drew to a halt, surprised and shy. Then one of them ran back into a hut, and came out with a bottle of hot, frothy Coke. Lina bought it, and gave each of the boys a penny.

She sat on the dusty ground to drink her Coke. Immediately, traveling companions offered her food. This was a dilemma - she didn’t want to take anything from these destitute people, but she knew it would be insulting to refuse to eat their food. She tried to wave them away, smiling and saying in French, “I’m not hungry,” but they continued to thrust food at her. Finally, she accepted a piece of cassava - flat bread made of manioc, from one woman, and a banana from another, and gave them a pack of Esmeraldan cigarettes in return. Everybody grinned and nodded at her. One of the women said something to a little boy, and he ran inside a hut and returned with a piece of smoldering charcoal held between two sticks. The woman lit two cigarettes, and all the people from the bus shared them, smiling and nodding at Lina as they puffed. Looking around the smiling circle of ragged people, Lina wondered why Haitians seemed so cheerful. Her gaze came to rest on the squalid huts - they have no reason I can see to be happy. One of the cigarettes was ed to her, and Lina had a puff. She began to feel relaxed and content. A jeep roared up and screeched to a halt beside the bus. The Haitians all stiffened, the smiles disappearing. Two men leapt out of the jeep. One was short and broad, the other taller and slimmer. They were dressed alike, in blue jeans and shirts, cowboy hats, red scarves and dark sunglasses. Both sported wide web belts laden with handcuffs, clubs and other ominous equipment. And both wore pistols low on their hips. Crossing the shorter one’s chest was a bandolier bristling with cartridges, while the other nonchalantly held a submachine gun stretched along his leg as if it were an extension of his arm. They swaggered over to Lina, moving in an arrogant way in complete contrast to the way all the other Haitians moved. Also unlike other Haitians, they wore menacing scowls. Lina knew who these men were - Tonton Macoutes, the Haitian secret police. The name Tonton Macoutes meant something like bogeyman, but its frightening image was meant for adults. In Creole, the short one demanded something from Lina. She looked at him closely, trying to figure out what he wanted, but she couldn’t understand a word. She stood up, shrugged and smiled at him. He scowled again and turned to his companion, muttering at him. The other man, with a visible effort, began to speak in slow awkward French.

“Show us your…” and he said a word Lina did not understand. Lina shrugged again and shook her head. The two men spoke rapidly to each other in Creole. Lina noticed that both of them wore bead bracelets like the ones associated with Santería in Esmeralda. Then the taller one turned back to Lina and demanded her port. Lina understood that, and she fumbled for it in her purse and handed it to him. He gave it to the short one, who examined it carefully, opening the cover and focusing carefully on the words printed inside. He turned the page, and, when he saw her picture, quickly turned the booklet over, then shot a glance at Lina to see if she had noticed that he had been “reading” it upside down. Lina restrained her impulse to laugh. “Not this one. The other one,” the tall one said. “Other one? I have only one. Everybody has only one port.” He began to speak hesitant French again, and Lina picked up the gist of what he was saying. She was supposed to have something, a paper - foreigners weren’t allowed to leave Port-au-Prince without a paper from the police. Lina hadn’t heard of that. It seemed bizarre, and she wondered if he was making it up. The two men motioned Lina toward the jeep. She shook her head, and the short one slapped his hand onto his pistol. She followed them to the jeep. Lina’s fellow travellers got up and scrambled aboard the bus, some of them casting furtive pitying glances at her. The bus roared off, moving faster than it had all morning. The small boys had disappeared into the huts even before the jeep had drawn to a halt. A silence seemed to reverberate along the dusty road. The tall Macoute started talking to Lina again, and she focused closely on his mouth, desperate to understand what he was saying. “You will wait here. A bus will come, going back to Port-au-Prince. You will get on it. You will not leave the capital again without permission.” “Yes, yes,” she babbled. “Yes, I certainly will. I’m sorry, I didn’t know about the

permission. I won’t do it again.” The Macoutes got into their jeep and roared off. Lina sat down, too shaky to stay on her feet. There was no shade, and she began to feel faint from the heat. Not a sound came from the huts, and Lina supposed the occupants had fled. But she didn’t dare to expose them to danger by going into one, even an empty one. It was about an hour and a half later when the bus came. Lina flagged it down and climbed on board. It was jammed, and even hotter than it had been outside. Once again, the Haitians showed astonishment at the sight of her. People crowded together and made a tiny space for Lina to sit down, a prize space since it was by a column she could lean on. They smiled at her, and she tried to smile back. A small black pig grunted, turned around twice, and sat down on her foot. The tap-tap lumbered and lurched back to Port-au-Prince. Exhausted, Lina dozed off. When she was jolted awake by a particularly deep pothole, she realized the interior of the tap-tap reeked of exhaust fumes. She looked around and saw that everybody else was sleeping, even people who were sitting bolt upright. The chickens were silent, and the black pig snored, slobbering on Lina’s leg. She fought to stay awake for the rest of the trip. When the tap-tap finally arrived back in the capital, Lina was nauseated and had a bad headache. The manager paused in his instructions to the bartender to follow her progress across the lobby, noting that her her skin was scorched to a hideous purple. As soon as she got into her room, there was a knock on the door and a maid handed her a jar of obviously homemade ointment. It smelled like rotten bananas, but Lina put it on anyway. It helped relieve the pain, though nothing could prevent the inevitable peeling that began a few days later. The Haitian hotel workers shook their heads and averted their eyes as she walked around with shreds of skin dropping off and trailing behind her. No more solo excursions, she realized. You have to make some fun for yourself here, in the capital - preferably in the hotel. The next week, the teachers and the IACB men decided on a picnic at the beach. Lina, tired of doing nothing by herself, accepted their half-hearted invitation. Like Aguadulce, Port-au-Prince had no beaches, only inhospitable coral. So going to the beach meant traveling.

The first stop was the police station. Lina now understood that the Macoutes she had dealt with had been telling the simple truth - foreigners were not permitted out of Port-au-Prince without a sort of internal port. The station was hot and dirty. It was crowded with desperate frightened-looking people, apparently trying to get information on family who had been arrested. On the walls were enlarged photos of decaying dead bodies with signs on them like those Lina had seen on the crucified corpses on the airport road Thus to the enemies of Haiti. They had to wait about half an hour. Lina felt that was a minimum, a concession granted because of the IACB men with them. Many of the Haitians looked as though they had been there for days. A policeman took her port and examined it minutely, this time right side up. He was a Macoute, wearing the unofficial uniform of Papa Doc’s henchmen. Like all the Macoutes Lina had seen, he was very arrogant, so unlike the other Haitians. His voice was low and menacing as he said, in heavily-accented French he did not seem comfortable speaking, “Mam’selle O’Reilly. You are staying at the Indépendance, are you not?” Lina nodded. “And you will be in Haiti for one month?” She nodded again. “Answer me when I speak to you!” he snapped. “A vacation trip, is it?” “Yes.” “And in Esmeralda, what is your profession?” “I am a teacher.” “Of what?” “Various things. Health, English, arts and crafts, literacy.”

“You are employed by the Esmeraldan government, or the American one?” Lina thought about that. She decided that she had to tell him the truth, though she would have preferred not to, afraid the Peace Corps would not be a popular organization with the Macoutes. She hoped they had never heard of it. “I am a Peace Corps volunteer.” “Ah, I see. A US government employee, then.” “Yes.” “I will give you permission to leave the city, Mam’selle. But I advise you to keep your ideas to yourself. We in Haiti do not wish our people to be corrupted by Communist ideas carried by young radicals.” “Monsieur,” Lina said stiffly, “I am asking for permission to go to the beach, not to hold a political meeting.” He took off his sunglasses and glared at Lina. She had been trying to avoid looking at him directly, but now she had to, and his eyes frightened her. They were shallow and empty, no more human with the glasses off. “Do not imagine that because you are American, and white, you are somehow special or protected.” Lina was too frightened to reply. Her silence infuriated him. He snarled, “The road to Jacmel is long and harsh. Some who travel it never return. They just disappear.” “I only want to go to the beach. I mean no trouble.” Her voice was shaky. “ that you are subject to Haitian law. As long as you are here, do you understand? As long as you are here.” “Yes. I understand.” As she left the station, Lina noticed one of the IACB men ing money to the Macoute behind the desk. Is that what all my trouble has been? Maybe I was just supposed to pay this man, and the two on the road, and I’m just too dumb to

realize it. For Lina, the flavor of the day’s outing had already been soured by the time the nine of them went out to the jeeps. Then they had to travel about an hour, on dreadful partially-paved roads. The springs squealed and popped in protest, though the jeeps were new. They were stopped at four roadblocks on the way. At each, silent Macoutes motioned them out of the jeeps with their machine-guns, and searched the vehicles, the men’s pockets, and the girls’ purses. Lina, with an abject eagerness that disgusted her, produced her police paper whenever she saw a Macoute. Finally, they arrived at the seaside, and a boatman ran over to row them to an island a short distance offshore. He took two couples on one trip, the other two on the next, then returned for Lina. She kept smiling grimly. The island was wild - plants of all descriptions covered it, right up to the edges of the land. Low scrubby types hugged the shore, while the royal palms inland towered over the lush landscape. Lina couldn’t believe they were going to spend the day here - there seemed no way even to get ashore. The boat was settling deeper into the water, and Lina, too late, took off her shoes. She wondered what the chances were of making land before the boat sank. Finally, the boat plodded around the side of the island and Lina saw a beach, an arch of palms, stretching off to the horizon. It’s so perfect, she thought, if this were a movie, I’d just yawn. Another Hollywood conception of Tropical Paradise. Peacocks roamed the beach, their raucous voices ill-suited to their opulent appearance. The sand was the color and texture of sugar. Just off the beach, thickets of white jasmine, pink bougainvillaea and huge blueand-white ion flowers bloomed wildly. Fragrant orchids, yellow with fringed petals and crimson centers entwined themselves around the other plants in a tangled profusion of color. Small parrots screeched and flitted through the trees, providing sudden flashes of red, green and turquoise. The sky was an intense deep blue, with just enough fluffy white clouds to provide contrast. Offshore, Lina spotted a few small boats with homemade sails made of cast-off clothing. Nobody lived on the island, but there was a quaint shack, too quaint and too clean to be authentic, perfectly placed in the landscape. There, you could buy American cigarettes, Coke, and grilled hamburgers, clearly brought over just for this one day of habitation.

In spite of feeling like an intruder, Lina was enchanted by the island, and determined to enjoy her day. So she ignored the fact that nobody spoke to her very much, and she tried to be amusing and interesting. That was a lot easier for Lina than for any of the other girls. One, a Spanish teacher, spoke what Lina rated as poor-to-fair Spanish. The other three spoke what Lina had come to call “Stacy-type” Spanish - they chattered away in what they imagined to be Spanish, but which could scarcely have been intelligible to the men. Even Lina, who understood both Spanish and English, could barely figure out what they were trying to say. She began showing off her Spanish, telling jokes and using complex word-play. Soon everybody began using her as an interpreter. Lina, feeling useful at least, complied. The men, and then the girls, began drinking rum and Coke. Lina had one, but only one, knowing that liquor and intense sunlight were a bad combination. The others began to get silly, then risqué. The comments they asked Lina to translate became more and more racy. One couple started kissing, lying right there on the beach. Another went into the water, and began playing some kind of doubtful game in the shallows. Lina lay down and closed her eyes. She really didn’t want to be watching this. Everywhere she looked, she saw either a wild necking scene, or a half-naked body. After a while, she decided she really didn’t want to be listening to it either, and she got up and retreated to the center of the island, carrying her book. It was sweltering hot as soon as she moved back from the beach area. The undergrowth was too thick and too full of insects to sit there, and the only thing to do was to cross the tiny island and sit by herself on the other shore. The boatman invited her to share his lunch, a fish he caught and then grilled on the beach. They tried to talk, but they weren’t very successful. The boatman seemed to understand some of her American-accented French, but she couldn’t make out much of his Creole, even when he spoke slowly and used a lot of gestures. Lina was still peeling from the sunburn she’d suffered while waiting for the bus on the Jacmel road. The shrinking skin itched unbearably, and she idly scratched at it, raising flaps and shreds of skin that were stirred by the slight noonhour breeze. She caught the boatman’s alarmed glances. I bet he thinks I have leprosy

or something equally loathsome, she thought. By the time they started back to the hotel, Lina was very depressed. The four armed searches they had to endure left her drained. The perfect ending to the perfect day, she thought bitterly.

***** After the disastrous beach trip, the bartender Philippe seemed to recognize that Lina was in a bad way, and he adopted her. He always invited her to sit at the bar, busy only at night, and he chatted with her whenever he could. Philippe spoke good French, so Lina could understand him, and he knew quite a bit of English, ed from the days before Papa Doc’s repressive measures drove off the American tourists. He was clearly concerned about Lina, but too busy to take care of her as well as he wished. So, as Lina could not fail to notice, he turned her over to Dieudonné. Dieudonné was a journalist who hung out at the Indépendance whenever there were foreign guests. Lately, foreigners were becoming rare, and Dieudonné was glad to see the American girls. His specialty was worming all the gossip out of the guests, then reporting it cryptically in the newspaper, with no names mentioned. About Lina’s companions, he had written: “At the gingerbread house, four bejeweled ladies are finding Haiti’s weather considerably hotter than expected.” The newspaper was in French, since, as Dieudonné explained, Creole was not a written language. A commission was working on a phonetic system of rendering Creole into written form, but progress was slow. This meant that most Haitians, who spoke only Creole, remained illiterate. Dieudonné spoke French perfectly, and his English was fair. Lina relized that he understood just about anything she said, but he didn’t speak English very well his accent was thick and his vocabulary stilted. Since Lina understood French much better than she spoke it, they carried out whole conversations with Lina speaking English, and Dieudonné speaking French. Maybe it’s odd, Lina thought, but after all, language is communication, and we’re certainly communicating.

After a while, she figured something out - most of the Haitians who spoke French had a very distinctive Haitian accent. They had probably never heard “proper” French, and they didn’t expect anyone to speak that way. Lina began to venture her French - she had a pretty good vocabulary - and nobody laughed at her accent. So she relaxed a little, and began to try to speak French all the time. Pretty soon she felt fairly comfortable. Lina tried to get Dieudonné to talk about Voodoo. She knew Voodoo was even more widespread in Haiti than Santería was in Esmeralda. From the little she had been able to find out, Lina felt that the two religions were probably the same. And she had the feeling this was a real, serious religion - not just a kind of black magic invoked on occasion, when it was necessary to put a curse on an enemy. She was fascinated by the idea of it - a religion basically African, with traces of Indian ceremonials from a culture long-since exterminated, and many of the external trappings of Catholicism. Since leaving the Gutierrez’ house, though, it had been hard for Lina to get any information about it in Esmeralda. People laughed and said “It’s something only the ignorant believe in.” That made it impossible to continue questioning a person without insulting him. She thought Haitians might be less reluctant to talk about their religion than the prickly Esmeraldans. But when she introduced the subject to Dieudonné, she got the same stock reply. “Me, I’m a Catholic.” She pressed. “I know a little about Voodoo, and I’d really like to know more.” “What do you know?” “Well, the names of a few of the gods.” “Which ones?” Lina didn’t really know very much at all, and she was embarrassed. “Well…” She ed the image of St. Patrick that the Haitian vendor had said represented him. “Domballa, the snake god.” “Dumb who?” asked Dieudonné, laughing. And he wouldn’t pursue the subject. Haitians, like Esmeraldans, loved to dance, and there was dancing in the lounge almost every night. People came from all over Port-au-Prince, so it was a large, lively group. Lina noticed again the extraordinary way all the Haitians seemed to

move. Unlike her, they acted completely at home in their bodies. She had by this time come to loathe dancing so much that she was determined not to do it unless it was an absolute necessity. And since I’m on vacation, she promised herself, I don’t have to do anything at all. Dieudonné had clearly taken on the responsibility of amusing Lina. “Come on, chérie, let’s dance.” He took her hand and tried to raise her to her feet. “Thanks, Dieudonné, but I can’t dance.” “Why can’t you?” “I don’t know how.” “I’ll show you.” “I can’t learn. But, please, don’t sit here with me. I like watching just as well as you like dancing. Go and enjoy yourself.” Sometimes he did. He was an excellent dancer, light-footed and natural. Maybe someone that good could teach me, she thought wistfully. Then she thought better of it. It wasn’t a matter of learning steps, you had to relax and let the music take you over, and nobody could teach her how to do that. Dieudonné always came back to Lina. She felt guilty monopolizing him when she knew he’d rather be dancing, but she was grateful - without him she would have been very lonely and depressed. Now that it was clear she would not sleep with him, Javier had also become something of a friend. Lina liked him, and his Spanish was easy for her to understand. Javier seemed eager to tell somebody what Haiti was really like. “Lina, it’s so ugly here, politically. It’s impossible to escape the corruption. We cannot get anything done. The life of the peasants gets worse and worse, and nobody in a position to do anything about it cares.” “Well, I guess you just have to keep trying, and hope what you do will have some effect.”

“No, it’s beyond that here. There is no hope that anything will improve.” “Of course, there’s some corruption in all governments,” Lina pointed out. And a great deal in Latin American ones, she thought. “But here, it’s complete. The government takes everything of value, and hardly even bothers to cover it up.” “I guess Papa Doc rates as one of the worst dictators around.” Javier looked around nervously. “Don’t mention his name, Lina. It’s dangerous. Even when you think you’re alone. He has spies everywhere, and he finds out everything. And, listen, don’t go around asking people about Voodoo.” “Voodoo? What does that have to do with it?” Javier looked exasperated. “You are too innocent. Papa Doc is the chief of Voodoo. He uses it to control all of Haiti. Stay away from the subject, Lina. I’ve been here a long time, and I know what I’m talking about.” And he went off to dance with a pretty mulatto. One day, Lina dared to say to Javier, “None of you seem to be doing very much. You spend most of your time sitting around here.” He shrugged. “We have given up. We’re not going to accomplish anything. We know that, and we’re tired of trying when the situation is hopeless.” “Why don’t you just leave, then?” He raised his eyebrows. “You don’t understand much about politics, do you? It would cause all kinds of embarrassing repercussions if we left early. So we will stay our six months, write an uncritical report for the IACB, and that will be the end of it. And of our recommendations.” “Well, it sounds very hypocritical to me. How can you stay here under these circumstances? Don’t you miss your family?” “Of course I do.”

“But not enough to stay away from women in the meantime?” Javier flushed. “I can’t spend six months without a woman.” “But you’d be faithful if you were at home, is that it?” she snapped, thinking how all the Latin men she knew had at least one mistress. He glared at her, and she was surprised at her boldness. Philippe’s rum punch is loosening my tongue. “You really don’t understand men very well.” “No, I guess I don’t. I thought they were just people.”

*****

“Lina, your friends are all having a good time.” Dieudonnè and Lina were sitting out a dance. “So am I.” He looked at her silently. “In a quieter way.” “Wouldn’t a little vacation romance be fun for you?” “Yes, if it happened. But it hasn’t.” “Javier is interested.” “He’s married. “I said a romance, not a wedding.” “No, I can’t do that. I’d feel guilty.”

“I know some nice single men.” “Thanks, Dieudonné, but no thanks.” “Ah, I see. You would not want a black lover.” “Oh, come on, you know that’s not what I mean. I’m just not casual about those things.” “Things?” “Sex. I’m not casual about sex.” “You are too serious.” “Perhaps. But that’s the way I am. I can’t help it.” “Do you belong to a very strict religion?” She laughed. “No, definitely not that. I’m an atheist.” He raised his eyebrows. “Ah, an atheist. Well then, you have a lover back in Aguadulce you are being faithful to.” In a burst of frankness, or perhaps it was Philippe’s rum punch, Lina said, “No, Dieudonné, I’ve never had a lover. I’m alone in the world. I always have been.” “How odd! But you are a beautiful girl.” Irritated, Lina snapped, “I said I’d never had a lover, not that I’d never had an offer.” “Sorry.” He laughed. “How old are you?” “Twenty-two.” “You look only fifteen or sixteen. If you were Haitian, you’d have three or four children by now.” “Right, and I’d look fifty.”

He laughed, and again offered to teach her to dance. She refused, and they continued to chat for a while. Finally, casting about for a way to amuse her, Dieudonné asked, “Do you play cards?” Lina had completely given up playing cards. She hated what it did to her, how it made her feel. But now, to get Dieudonné off the hook, she said, “Yes.” Dieudonné called to Philippe to bring over a pack of cards. “What’s your game?” he asked. “Whatever.” “Name it.” “Gin.” He quickly dealt a hand, looking bored. Lina told herself to relax and enjoy the game. But as soon as she picked up the cards, she saw that she had a good hand. She was instantly launched into a familiar sequence of thoughts - I can win this hand. She began to use her customary tactics. She smiled vaguely at Dieudonné, but watched his eyes and his hands when he drew a card. She noted how long he thought before he threw a card down, and she memorized his discards. She knew he wasn’t paying much attention to his playing. I can take him, easily. She tilted her head indecisively from one side to the other, then picked up one of Dieudonné’s discards. Only one more card, she thought. Come on, Dieudonné, give it to me. She giggled. Dieudonné drew a card and quickly discarded it. Lina forced herself to move slowly as she picked it up, slipped it into its waiting place, and laid down her cards. “Gin.” He looked carefully at her. “Another hand.” She shuffled the cards clumsily, then dealt, while Dieudonné gazed at her steadily, trying to catch her eye. But Lina wouldn’t look at him. He was good - very good - when he concentrated, but he made a mistake late in

the game. He realized it at once, reached out to recapture his discard, then drew his hand back and scowled. Lina looked at him, and she could feel their wills engage. She threw down her cards, scattering those on the table. “I concede.” “Why did you do that? You would have won.” “Maybe.” “Certainly.” “How do you know that?” “I read it in your face.” Lina was disconcerted, wondering if her carefully cultivated poker face had failed her. He read that thought, too. “I can sometimes read what others cannot. Why did you throw in your hand?” “I could see it was important to you, and it didn’t matter to me.” “It is not your responsibility to make me feel good. Just play. And I will take care of myself.” He sounded angry. He handed her the deck. “Deal.” “It’s your turn.” “Never mind. Deal, and forget the innocent act.” Lina shrugged and picked up the deck. She shuffled fast and fancy, then picked up the deck and cut it several times, one-handed. She set the deck down and looked right into Dieudonné’s eyes. He laughed. “Show me how to do that.” Lina realized that Dieudonné probably picked up some money playing cards with unwary tourists.

“You’d better not use this on any innocents.” “Chérie, I am not stupid. But I know some people who will find those moves very impressive.” Lina showed him the shuffling and cutting tricks, and he tried them a few times, not getting them quite right, but learning the basics. “That’s it. Now it’s just a matter of practicing.” “Right. Now let’s play. Seriously.” Lina gave up the act then and played as well as she could. Dieudonné won the next hand, but got only a couple of points from her. “Do you want to play for money?” he asked, too casually. Lina reached across the table and patted his hand. “Dieudonné, you know I don’t have any money to gamble with. But if I did, I’d know better than to lose it to you.” “But you are not a loser, are you?” Lina kept her eyes down. “Look at me, Lina.” His voice was soft and gentle, but commanding. She looked up at him. His eyes are strange, she thought. Dark and deep, slightly threatening. “You are not a loser, are you, Lina?” “No. Not usually.” He laughed. “Do you play poker?” “Yes.” “Like you play gin?” She shrugged and looked away. “I’m lucky.”

“Perhaps. But you’re also good. You play a shrewd game with the innocence of a child. There is money to be made here.” “No.” He thought about that for a while. “All right,” he agreed reluctantly. “At least, show me some of your techniques.” “I have no technique. I do whatever I feel like. That’s the secret. You couldn’t play the way I do. It’s too reckless, too reliant on hunches. No man could play the way I do.” “Well, it’s a good method. It works for you.” “Yes, and it makes you sweat.” He laughed and wiped his brow with a large white handkerchief, then leaned over and took her hand. He had beautiful hands, the fingers long and delicate. “Imagine! A twenty-two-year-old virgin who can beat Dieudonné at cards!” He squeezed her hand. “Chérie, you are strange. Too naive in some ways, too sophisticated in others.” “Thanks, Dieudonné. I needed that.” “What?” “Never mind.” “No, explain. You needed what? I didn’t understand.” “It’s nothing. I was trying to be sarcastic. It’s just that I’m beginning to get a bit sensitive about being called strange. It’s all right - I should just get used to it.” “I’m sorry, chérie, I didn’t mean to insult you. I meant more - unique - than peculiar.” Lina laughed. “Thanks, Dieudonné, but I know what `strange’ means. The next morning, in the newspaper: “The fifth jewel finds gin her tonic.”

*****

One night, there was a quick exodus of the romantic couples right after dinner, so Lina was left alone by eight PM. Dieudonné, for a change, hadn’t shown up, and there was no dancing. Lina went over to the bar. Philippe said, “Oh, Miss, I close the bar now.” “Why? Why is it so quiet tonight?” “Miss, it is a holy day.” “Really? Which one?” “You know, Miss. Like a saint’s day.” “Which saint?” “Well, Miss, you know we have different saints here.” Lina gave it up then, realizing it must be a Voodoo holy day, not a Christian one. She felt sad. She had dressed nicely for dinner, anticipating an enjoyable evening. She was wearing what Kevin had cynically named her “Virgin of Guadelupe” dress. It was white, with a full skirt and long sleeves, heavily embroidered in red in a Mexican pattern. Lina knew it made her look young and innocent, especially when she was so thin, but she liked it anyway. She wandered over into the lounge, and sat on a wicker swing suspended by chains from the ceiling. She could hear drums beginning to the north, then to the southeast. She tried to think of something to do other than going up to bed. Unexpected tears began to roll down her cheeks. The twilight came suddenly, as it does in those latitudes. She blinked, and Dieudonné loomed in front of her. She hadn’t seen him walk in, he was suddenly just there, between her and the fading light. She could see no face, no hands, just a white suit and a white hat, very close.

“Ma p’tite, you look so sad here by yourself. Where are your friends?” “They are all with their lovers.” He hesitated a moment. Then, “What will you have to drink?” “The bar is closed.” “Never mind.” He went away for a few minutes, and came back with two tall glasses with lime and pineapple slices - Philippe’s rum punch. It was cool and sweet. They sipped it slowly. Abruptly, Dieudonné asked, “Lina, would you like to go to a Voodoo ceremony with me? I mean a real one, not the kind staged for tourists.” She thought for a moment. Of course, I want to see a Voodoo ceremony. But it would be reckless of me to go off alone with Dieudonné - I scarcely know the man. And I know too much about the place. She thought about the scene on the airport road and Javier’s warnings. Dieudonné saw her reluctance, and he crooned, staring at her intently, “I will take care of you, ma p’tite, my little flower. Trust me. Come with me…” His melodious voice, softer than usual, seemed to mesmerize her in that humid half-light. Then darkness fell almost audibly, bringing the sunset breeze. Lina thought she saw appalling things writhing in the corners of the room. She seemed to stand back from herself, and she heard her voice, or almost hers, say she would go with him. She knew it was a foolhardy thing to do, and that blaming her decision on the tone of his voice and the quality of the light wasn’t logical. Still, she left the hotel with Dieudonné. They got into his car. It was some time later, when they had reached the outskirts of the city, that Lina realized the car was the most dilapidated she had ever seen. She looked around. The whole interior seemed to be taped, wired or lashed together. Once they had left the city the road was horrible, much worse than the one to Jacmel. Cavernous ruts produced such a constant jarring Lina kept her mouth tightly closed to avoid biting her tongue. Several times Dieudonné had to get out to remove logs and stones from the road. Curiously, he always carefully

replaced the obstruction after he had driven past it. The car heaved and coughed and rattled. Lina tried to close her mind to the thought of what would happen if it broke down, as seemed likely. Nobody knew where she was, or even that she had left the hotel. There were no lights on any of the roads. The headlights were so feeble, casting light for only a few feet ahead, she soon had no idea of either the direction or the distance they had traveled. After a long silence, Dieudonné said, “I will try to explain something of what you will see. But you must understand that Voodoo is very complicated. You will not come to understand much of it in a single evening. And you must never speak of this night to anyone in Haiti. I could die - and so could others - if you spread tales about this.” “Why is that? I thought Papa Doc encouraged Voodoo. Isn’t he the chief Voodooist?” Dieudonné shot her a sharp glance. “You know too much, and far too little. I will say only that this is not one of the authorized Voodoo ceremonies. So it is very dangerous. You must swear to keep silent. Now.” He was solemn, almost sullen, when he spoke, and Lina wondered if he regretted inviting her. She thought again of the scene on the airport road. “I swear not to tell anybody.” For a few jolting minutes, the silence was complete. Then he said, “The place we are going is called an hounfor. The word means, roughly, `sacred grounds’. The purpose of the ceremony will be to honor and, if possible, to summon the gods loas, as we call them. There are many loas, and we do not know in advance which, if any, will honor us with their presence.” He pulled the car over abruptly. They got out, and he stood in front of her, speaking earnestly. “What you will see tonight will seem strange to you, no doubt. But it is not as strange as it is reputed to be. There will be no human sacrifices or orgies. Simply people trying to find a way to understand the meaning of life - and of death. In that, Voodoo is just like any other religion.” Dieudonné led the way into a canefield. The cane was ripe and thick, and it towered over them. The field was stifling and full of insects. Lina was nearly

blinded by swarms of gnats around her face. How can he move so fast? she wondered. There’s no moon, and he has no light. Finally she began to hear the murmur of voices, and they came into a clearing where a group of people were milling about and mumbling in soft Creole. Lina could not understand a word. There were drums, not the steel ones of the other islands, but made of skin and wood. African, she thought. The drums were silent. They approached a place where there was a thatched roof on poles. There were two trees at the entrance. “Legba’s trees. Legba is the loa of the crossroads - the physical crossroads, and also the spiritual one.” Lina smiled vacantly, trying to look as if she understood what he meant. “The hounfor is a place where the dividing line between the visible and the invisible worlds can be erased. Legba will be greeted first, because only he can give permission to summon any of the other loas.” There were several small whitewashed structures, roughly the size of a closet, scattered about, leaning crazily. In the center was a post, painted in spirals like a barberpole, but in bright colors. “The poiteau-mitan. The spirits, if they come, will enter by descending the pole.” Lina’s eyes began to adjust to the dimness. All the men were dressed in white shirts and tros, the women in white dresses with long full skirts. Everyone was barefoot. There were animal noises - chickens, goats and the small black Haitian pigs wandered around. In the trees, white doves were roosting, cooing gently. The ceremony had not begun yet, but as soon as Dieudonné and Lina arrived, everyone fell silent. Lina felt self-conscious. She could not see any faces clearly, but she felt like an intruder, and she was afraid people might resent her being there. Then she thought - with this solid wall of people in front of me, I’ll surely sense the animosity if there is any. So she concentrated on trying to feel the emotion emanating from the crowd. She felt no hostility - instead, there seemed to be an enormous wave of expectation, composed of equal parts of surprise and

excitement. A man dressed in a kind of wizard’s cloak, with pieces of mirror and cryptic semi-literate symbols on it, took a jug of water and lifted it up, then turned a quarter-turn and repeated it. He did this four times. “He is the houngan,” whispered Dieudonné. “The priest. He is saluting the four points of the com.” The houngan poured three trickles of water across to the foot of the painted post. He ed the jug to Dieudonné, who poured some at the same place. Dieudonné handed the jug to Lina. “You do the same.” “No, please, Dieudonné, I don’t want to do anything. I just want to watch.” “It is an honor to be asked. It means you are a distinguished guest. You must do it.” Feeling self-conscious and rather silly, Lina complied. She felt pulled into the ceremony now. This is no lark, like going to an oddball theatrical performance, she thought. I’m part of it - but I don’t want to be. I’m afraid. The bead curtain over the doorway of the largest of the whitewashed structures parted, and three men came out, walking backward, and raised their arms to the north, south, east, west. Then they knelt and kissed the ground in front of the post three times. They got up and raised their arms to the houngan, then to Dieudonné. One of them lit a candle, and offered a dish to the four directions. “The laplace,” said Dieudonné, “a kind of secondary priest.” The la-place sprinkled white powder around the center post. “It’s flour,” said Dieudonné. The la-place was using the flour to draw abstract figures on the dark earth, sifting the flour between his fingers. It looked very hard to do, but he produced intricate, delicate designs. Lina couldn’t even guess what they meant, though they contained elements she recognized - triangle, cross, heart, simple plant and animal forms. “Those are vevés. Each one represents a different loa. They are…a kind of

invitation for the loas to come.” The ceremony continued with a sort of litany - the houngan chanting, the laplace, Dieudonné and others responding. It went on and on. The heat was oppressive, and Lina couldn’t help feeling disappointed. Here I am, she thought, at a secret ritual of a very exotic religion, and it’s as dull as a Catholic mass - just mumble, mumble, mumble. Dieudonné glanced at Lina, and saw that she was about to drop. He looked to his left, snapped his fingers, and a chair appeared. Lina sank gratefully into it. Still the litany continued. It seemed to get even hotter, and Lina began to get thirsty. At long last, the chant ended, and Dieudonné told her, “That was the Prière Guinée - the prayer to Africa, where all Haitians came from. Did you understand any of it?” “No. It didn’t even sound like Creole.” “It isn’t. It is in an unknown language - a language my people once knew, but have forgotten. We memorize the sounds, but do not know the significance of the words.” At first that seemed incomprehensible to Lina. Suddenly she ed that her grandparents had spoken Gaelic. While she could converse with some ease in three languages, Lina would not even recognize Gaelic if she heard it spoken. She felt a spasm of anger - and for an instant understood the frustration of losing your language, your culture. The drums began - three beats and a pause, repeated about a dozen times, then sustained beating for a minute or so. This sequence was repeated several times. “Another invitation to the loas. A more…urgent…one this time.” The drums took up a different cadence, a complicated kind of point-counterpoint rhythm, and a dance began among the participants, a slow serpentine undulation ing through their bodies, emphasizing the extreme grace Lina had noticed since she had first come to Haiti. “They look boneless,” she said to Dieudonné. “How I wish I could move like that!”

“You can, Lina. Perhaps some time you will.” Everybody seemed to dance at times - there was no audience, all were participants. The dancing took place in groups, not in couples. The sound of the drums was so insistent, the dancers seemed fused - they all moved as one body, as if they were being directed by an unseen puppet-master. Children who looked only eight or so, and very old women were dancing effortlessly. The steps seemed simple - not the kind to cause anxiety. Dieudonné led Lina closer to the drums. She could feel the ground vibrate with the rhythm. She felt a bit odd - still woozy from the long ceremony, she thought. She was beginning to feel the drums inside her - surely her blood was coursing to the same beat, and her breathing seemed altered. It was like walking beside a band at a parade - your feet were forced into the rhythm of the music. She thought crazily that the rhythm was similar to that of the Irish reel, a dance she had learned as well as her inept feet could manage, when she had taken Irish dancing lessons as a child. Dieudonné took her by the hand and led her to the spot where the dancing was going on. “No.” But she let herself be led. “Let’s dance, ma p’tite. Relax. Close your eyes and listen to the drums. Enjoy yourself.” Lina closed her eyes. Immediately, she tried to open them again, but they didn’t want to. Blood pounded in her ears and her feet began to move, seemingly by themselves, in the steps of the long-forgotten reel - intricate steps she had never before been able to maintain for more than a minute or so. She opened her eyes then and looked down as the magic feet - my feet! she thought - bewitched, performed as she had so earnestly and hopelessly willed them to at high-school sock-hops and college mixers. Gradually, the others stopped dancing and formed a circle around her, murmuring, “Erzulie! Erzulie!” The women began to come up to her and grasp her little fingers. Seed necklaces were thrown over her head. A silk handkerchief was pressed into one of her hands, and a bunch of flowers into the other. Lina was still dancing the reel, never missing a beat. Men came over, one by

one, and danced in front of her, quickly picking up the steps of a dance they could never have seen before. Everyone was smiling and clearly having a good time. Lina’s apprehension of hostility seemed ridiculous now. The murmuring continued, “Erzulie! Erzulie!” Gradually, the drumming slowed. Lina stopped dancing and stood, feeling good but a little foolish. Tears were streaming down her face, and she used the silk handkerchief to wipe them off. The handkerchief was heavily perfumed. The houngan started doing something different. People were bowing and kneeling as he walked around. Lina saw that he was carrying a chicken, and waving it over people while he muttered in Creole. The chicken was strangely silent and ive, nothing like the Gutierrez’ fiercely aggressive Diablo. The houngan approached Lina, and Dieudonné whispered in English, “You must bow.” She did. She felt a whoosh of air as the chicken flapped its wings over her. It crowed loudly three times. The noise was so close to her ears it filled her head and deafened her. She jerked upright, to see the houngan looking intently into her eyes. The painted white circles around his eyes gave him the appearance of a strange insect with enormous corneas and pinpoint pupils. Dieudonné took her arm, steadying her. The houngan bit the head off the chicken, and spat it on the ground. Blood spurted wildly from the neck, a red stream splashing over Lina. The houngan drank some of the blood, calmly, as if he were taking a sip of Coke from the bottle. Then he bent to squeeze the rest over one of the flour-paintings, the one whose center motif was a heart. He threw the body on the vevé, where it continued to thrash, obliterating the delicate design. The next thing Lina ed, she was lying on the floor of a strange tiny room. The room was stuffed with objects, and had pictures on every square inch of wall space. There was a platform on one side, with a mirror on it, and vials of perfume, flowers, jewelry, a bottle of champagne. She struggled to sit up, crying out. The bead curtain parted, and Dieudonné entered. “You are all right, ma p’tite.” “What happened? Where am I?”

“In Erzulie’s chamber,” he answered, as if that made perfect sense. “Come, chérie, let us go now.” Lina got up and saw that her dress was filthy. It was muddy on the back, where she had apparently fallen down, and the bodice was drenched with chicken blood. Lina thought about the rest of the ceremony, but she couldn’t quite it. After the dreadful episode of the chicken, things got misty. Something else died violently, she was sure. But she couldn’t what. Shakily, Lina followed Dieudonné out of the room. She saw that the ceremony was over. The people stood in a silent solid wall, just as they had when she arrived. Again, she felt the emotion flow from the crowd sadness and regret and…something else. What was it? Lina thought. Fear? Yes fear. The singing, dancing and drums had stopped. She stumbled along through the cane after Dieudonné, aware for a long time of the feeling of eyes on her back. Lina must have slept in the car, for they seemed to arrive at the Indépendance at once. Dieudonné took her inside. “Change your dress, and bring the soiled one to me.” “Never mind. It can’t be cleaned. I’ll just throw it away.” “Do as I say.” His voice was soft, but his tone sent her running to her room. None of her roommates were there - they spent their nights in other bedrooms. She changed, and brought the filthy dress down to Dieudonné. He disappeared with it for a couple of minutes, then came back into the dark lounge. “What was that ritual?” He looked steadily into her eyes, but he didn’t answer. “Why did you take me to it?” she demanded. “I was ing along the veranda, going to pick up Philippe for the ceremony, and I glanced into the lounge. There you sat, alone, with the last ray of sunlight touching you. I saw - white dress, white skin, flaming hair, and tears. On impulse, I went in. But we don’t believe impulses are random. They are

messages sent to us by the gods, and to fail to act on them would be disrespectful and dangerous. So I did what I had to.” He looked curious then, and asked, “But you? You came with me willingly enough. Why?” “It was an impulse, plain and simple, and not divinely-inspired. I was bored and lonely. Or was there something odd in the drink?” His already-black face darkened with fury. “No,” he said icily. “Absolutely not.” There was silence for a long time. “Tell me, did you dream while you were… away?” “No, of course not. I wasn’t sleeping - I fainted.” “But,” he persisted, “what, exactly, do you , after the houngan killed the chicken?” “Oh, please, Dieudonné, don’t pull all that mumbo-jumbo on me. I wasn’t under a spell or in a trance. I exactly what happened.” And all at once, she did, vividly. “What happened?” “The moon came up suddenly. And I heard the noises - the firecrackers and the men screaming. There was an aroma, over the incense and the charcoal…” “What aroma?” “Meat roasting. And then I saw you.” She stopped, going over the scene in her mind. “I must have been sitting on the ground. You looked so big, looming over everybody.” “And what was I doing?” She looked at him, surprised. “You know. You were holding a crucifix over the coffin.” He said nothing for a while. Then he said, “You mean a cross?”

“No, a crucifix.” “Think about that part again. Was it me?” “Yes, of course it was. Who else could it have been? But you were shimmering…or…changing somehow.” “How?” “I can’t describe it exactly. Like…an old kind of photograph I saw in a museum once, that changed from positive to negative as I moved my head.” “The face. Was it mine?” He sounded almost frightened. Lina squeezed her eyes shut and concentrated. “I don’t know,” she said at last. “I can’t see the face.” Dieudonné shuddered. “And in the coffin? Who?” “I don’t know. I can’t see that, either.” He was silent again. Then he said, sighing, “I’m truly sorry if I frightened you. I didn’t mean to take advantage. But I felt at the time that this experience would be good for you. And perhaps it has been.” He got up to leave. “Wait.” Lina grabbed his arm. “What was it everybody was chanting - Erzulie what does that mean?” Dieudonné smiled then, though he still looked worried. He began a kind of litany. “Erzulie - she is the goddess of love, the tragic mistress, divinity of the dream, the muse of beauty.” He stopped and went on in a normal speaking voice, “Erzulie is sometimes reputed to be a virgin goddess. She is sweet and feminine and gentle. The people…well….they thought you resembled their conception of her.” He walked toward the door. Lina called after him, “What happened to Philippe, Dieudonné? Why didn’t you pick him up, if that was what you came here for last night?”

He turned, but Lina couldn’t see his face in the darkness of the lounge. “Philippe found his own way to the ceremony, Lina. Don’t you ?” “No, I didn’t see him.” “You danced with him, Lina. For quite a long time.” Dieudonné stepped through the door and disappeared. Lina ran to catch him, but the wide veranda stretched off in all directions, empty. She awoke in the morning with a headache, still alone in her room. When she opened the closet to get a skirt, she saw her white dress hanging there, spotless, starched and pressed. Her stomach churned. She went down to breakfast and saw Dieudonné sitting at a table on the porch. She realized that she had never seen him in daylight before. He looked exhausted and agitated, far from his usual cool elegant self. His blue-black skin now looked parched and blotchy, with a grayish tinge. She started to draw back, but he saw her and motioned her to his table. He ordered coffee for both of them, then handed her an envelope. “I have a small present to make amends for frightening you last night.” Inside the envelope, dangling from a golden chain, was a tiny coral fist, with the thumb inserted between the index and middle fingers. Lina knew what it was - the higa, the charm against the evil eye. Handing it back, she said, “Thanks, Dieudonné, but I don’t think anybody has put a hex on me. I don’t need this.” He smiled bleakly. “Ah, I see you are indeed knowledgeable. It is good for that problem, it is true, but it brings other benefits also. I have made an offering to a certain loa, asking that he oversee your safety. I know a sophisticated American girl like you does not believe in such superstitions, but the amulet is pretty, so I hope you will wear it anyway.” His speech sounded rehearsed, and he seemed nervous. Lina thought for a moment. “All right. It is pretty, and wearing it can do no harm.” She started to put it on, but Dieudonné stopped her, clutching her hand, saying,

“Kiss it first.” Lina felt foolish, guessing that her compliance was necessary to complete the spell he had cast. But she didn’t want to make a scene, and she already felt that people at nearby tables were looking at them furtively. So she did as he asked. He took her hand then and looked into her eyes. “There is something else, something I cannot explain, but I must tell you.” He sighed. “It is often this way. The innocent, the naive are the vessels of information to the initiated. Then it is up to the initiated to interpret the message. And that is never easy.” “I don’t understand.” “No, of course you don’t. I told you you would not understand very much in so short a time. But what I must tell you is this…” He hesitated. “There was no moon last night, no firecrackers or screaming men, no coffin, no meat roasting. And definitely, very definitely, ma chérie, there was no crucifix not in a canefield in Haiti.” “Dieudonné, what does all this mean? Are you telling me I had a hallucination?’ “I think it was more like a…a vision.” “Are you warning me of something?” He avoided looking into her eyes, then sighed and said, “I have no specific warning for you…but the omens are there. I know you do not believe in our gods, but that does not mean they cannot affect you.” He stopped, then looked up at her. “I know all this sounds bizarre to you. I’m trying to explain it in a way you will be able to accept.” He hesitated for a moment. “Chérie, there is a saying.” He said something in French that Lina at first could not take in. She struggled to find an English equivalent, and finally got it. It meant something like - `You have to play the hand you’re dealt’. She nodded. “I understand.”

“But you are a card player, a good one, so you know luck exists. And I think that, for some reason, you have, a little more of it than most people. You’ve noticed that, haven’t you?” “I…I guess so. Yes.” “So you don’t have to play the hand you’re dealt. Not always. There are things you can do - finesse, bluff, even cheat - to improve it, make a better hand.” “But it sounds like you’re trying to create luck, and I don’t think that’s possible.” He looked directly at her then. “Perhaps not in your system, Lina, but in mine… it can sometimes be done.” He sighed again, then added in a murmur, “For a price, of course, always for a price.” “Dieudonné, are you a priest? A, a…what do you call it?” “Houngan. Yes, chérie. I am an houngan.” He smiled sadly and reaching across the table, touched the coral fist on her neck, stroking it with his thumb. Then he kissed Lina’s hand. “I’m fond of you, Lina, very fond. Please, this means a great deal to me. Promise you will wear the amulet all the time.” “Forever?” “Well, let us say…for a year. That should be sufficient.” “For what?” He shrugged, then rose and quickly left without looking back. Stirring in the back of Lina’s mind was an unnamed fear, and she felt suddenly too young and too innocent to deal with Dieudonné and his exotic religion. She finished the coffee, but skipped the food. Her stomach was burning as she started back to her room. Philippe called to her as she went past. “Mam’selle, a car will be waiting to take you to the airport at noon. You have a

confirmed reservation for the 1 PM plane to Aguadulce.” Dieudonné wants me out of Haiti. For my safety, or for his own? What does he think is going to happen? Philippe had a strange haunted expression, and he was looking at the pit of her neck instead of at her face as he spoke to her.

Chapter 9

On Independence Day, all Americans in Aguadulce were officially invited to the Embassy for a picnic. But Boomer left a message in each of the volunteer’s mailboxes. “This is not the sort of gathering I expect to see PCV’s at. I expect that all of you will spend the day as usual, among the people in your barrio.” The volunteers talked about his note. “Maybe he’s not serious,” someone said hopefully. “Don’t be stupid,” Stacy snapped, “He’s going to be there, watching. And if any of us show up, he’ll make us suffer for it.” “You’re right, damn it,” Kevin said. “It’s so rotten. With all of us close to starving here.” The doctor came in then, and everybody fell silent. “Lina, come on in. I want to talk with you for a minute.” “How are you feeling?” he asked. “Fine.” He motioned her onto the scale. “You look lousy.” “Thanks.” He nudged the pound weight down, bit by bit. Finally the scale balanced. “You haven’t gained any weight since you came back from vacation.” “But I did gain some then. And I haven’t lost it, have I?” “No. How’s the dysentery?”

She shrugged. “Not bad.” “You still have it?” “Occasionally. But the attacks are getting less frequent. I think I’m licking it.” He frowned. “What am I going to do with you?” “Why not prescribe the Embassy picnic?” she joked. “Good idea. I’ll tell the Director we have a crisis on our hands.” “You’re kidding.” “I’m not. Go to the picnic. And eat as much as you can.” “Anything particular I should eat?” “As much protein as you can manage. You know what foods have protein, don’t you?” “Meat, chicken, fish, milk, eggs…” “Right. Eat lots of that stuff. And eat fast - get all the nutrients you can into you before you lose interest.” Nobody else dared to go, so Lina was on her own. She looked over her meager wardrobe and decided that she had the perfect outfit, a white linen dress embroidered with red cherries that an aunt of hers had made for her graduation. She also owned one pair of high-heeled shoes, also white, so she looked presentable. But the dress, a perfect fit a year ago, now hung straight from her shoulders. Lina went over to Charlotte and Stacy’s and tried it on for them. “What do you think?” she asked doubtfully. “There’s a seamstress right down the street,” Stacy said. “Let’s go over there.” The seamstress altered the dress so that it fit perfectly, and Lina felt good when she tried it on.

“Eat something for us,” said Stacy. “A good solid greasy American hotdog for me. With mustard and ketchup, and anything else you can cram on it.” “And for me, some kind of gooey dessert. Strawberry shortcake or lemon meringue pie,” Charlotte said. “I’ll bring you back something to eat. If I can find anything that won’t spoil overnight.” “You know,” Charlotte said wistfully, “I think I’d eat strawberry shortcake even if I knew the cream was so old it was going to kill me.” Lina had planned to collect enough water to bathe and wash her hair the night before, but there was no water at all in the barrio that night. She used the little water she had to clean up a bit, but she felt uncomfortable, knowing she would be with elegant people. No público route went near the Embassy - people who lived in that neighborhood owned cars. There was a bus route, however - the rich had servants who took the three-cent bus to work. It was a long walk to the bus stop. She walked slowly, trying not to stir up dust all over her white clothes. Carrying her shoes in her hand, Lina tried to just when she had quit worrying about hookworm. Good thing I did - there’s no way I could walk this far on such a rutted road in high heels. She left the shoes off in the bus, too, knowing she’d never manage to stand up for the 30-minute bus trip in fancy shoes. And sitting down was not an option, especially in a white dress - people took their pigs and chickens with them. The driver, typically, drove like a man, careening around corners at high speed, using the horn instead of the brake whenever he could. Lina knew buses rarely actually stopped - they just slowed down somewhat. She would have to jump off, a difficult job in a straight skirt, even barefoot. Approaching her “stop”, Lina hiked her skirt up to her hips, took a firm grip on her straw tote, and leapt off. She took a couple of staggering steps after landing, but managed not to fall. She pulled down her skirt. Good thing I wore my best underpants, she thought.

Another walk awaited her, but this time through a very elegant neighborhood. The drought did not seem to be affecting the people here - their lawns were green, and gardeners were busily watering plants and flowers. Lina didn’t put on her shoes until she reached the embassy gate. My hours of wearing these shoes are limited, and I don’t want to start that clock until I have to. Her barefoot state drew scornful glances from the few people she ed walking. The sneerers were servants of the rich - the rich themselves didn’t do much walking. Once on the Embassy grounds, Lina quickly went in search of a bathroom. When she found one, she got a nice surprise - there was water, lots of it, and it was HOT. She thought for a few seconds, then quickly stripped, took a shower and washed her hair. She realized she must have stumbled on the ambassador’s wife’s bathroom, because there were lots of feminine goodies in the medicine cabinet - face cream, deodorant and perfume. She helped herself, reasoning it wasn’t stealing unless she took the whole bottle. One of the servants gave her a rather strange look as she left the bathroom, but she held her dripping head high and ignored him. She headed away from the sounds of festivity, and found a secluded garden behind the Embassy building. She sat for a while, combing out her hair with her fingers to make it dry quickly. When she returned to the party area, she felt a lot better. She stopped to grab a hotdog and a hamburger from a grill manned by an Esmeraldan in a spotless white outfit and a chef’s hat. She ate one with each hand, then approached a long table that held whole hams and platters heaped with potato salad, cole slaw and corn on the cob. Interspersed among the platters were plates of chocolate chip cookies, whole apple pies and bowls of strawberry shortcake. Lina picked up a plate and piled it high. Without even moving away from the table, she started stuffing herself. After a while, she slowed down. She surveyed the table to see if there was any food she could safely take back to Stacy and Charlotte. The cookies - just the thing. Surreptitiously, she opened the brown paper bag she had packed in her tote, and began stuffing cookies into it. “You’re eating as though you haven’t had a good meal in a year,” a voice said behind her.

Lina quickly shoved the bag down into her tote. Blushing, she turned and saw a young man, about her own age, dressed in a blue and white seersucker jacket and white pants. He was handsome in a Waspy collegiate way, with eyes of the palest blue and limp sand-colored hair, hair the Esmeraldans would call “absolutely dead”. Clean, thought Lina, he looks so clean. “Ssh,” she said. “Don’t call attention to us. Just back off over here a minute, and I’ll explain.” He looked mystified, but followed her lead, and started walking slowly backward away from the food table. When they’d got clear of the area, she stopped. Turning her head toward him and shielding her mouth with her hand, she said, “Well, thanks for not giving me away. You see, I’m an industrial espionage agent.” “What?” He looked alarmed, and Lina had all she could do to avoid breaking into giggles. “A major food manufacturer has paid me big bucks to get enough of these cookies to have them sent to a laboratory for analysis,” she whispered. “The Embassy’s cookies are considered the best in the world. The Ambassador’s wife makes all of them by herself, did you know that?” The young man looked over at where the Ambassador’s wife stood beside her husband, stiffly greeting strangers. “All these hundreds of cookies?” “Oh, yes. She was up all night baking. She won’t let anyone help - she guards that recipe like it was the formula for the A-bomb.” “That doesn’t seem like…” “My client will make a fortune selling bootleg cookies if I can help him steal the recipe.” Finally, he got it and burst out laughing. “Hi. I’m Lina O’Reilly.”

“Pierce Harvey.” He put out his hand. Great name, thought Lina. Pure WASP, no pretensions. And she shook his hand, realizing with embarrassment how greasy her fingers were. “You know, you had me going for a little while there.” “You’d caught me red-handed, and I had to come up with something.” “Why were you…uh…stockpiling…cookies, then?” “Sorry, it really is a secret.” “Well, maybe you’ll explain how you could eat so much so fast, and still stay so slim.” “That’s another secret. If you want to know it, it’ll cost you.” He laughed again, and Lina liked the way his mouth widened, his eyes crinkled, and his whole face got involved in the laugh. Laughing, he reminded her a little of Luke. “What are you doing in Esmeralda?” she asked. “I’m here visiting my parents for a few weeks. My father is an economic attaché at the Embassy. He’s just been assigned to Esmeralda.” “Oh.” She looked around. “Where are your parents?” “They aren’t here today. They’re at a conference in Caracas. How about you?” “I’m from Massachusetts. And you?” “Well, I’m not exactly from anywhere. My father’s job has always kept us on the move, and I’ve never lived much in the States. But right now, I’m at the University of Chicago. I’ve just finished my first year of law school. But I meant what are you doing here?” “Actually, I just came to try out the food.” “I meant in Aguadulce, not at this party.”

Lina knew what he meant. But, she decided, this is a day off for me, and I don’t have to talk about the Peace Corps all day long if I don’t want to. “I’m not at liberty to discuss that,” she said with what she hoped was a mysterious smile. He looked startled, then shrugged. “All right, Mata Hari, I didn’t mean to pry.” Pierce and Lina got some more food and retreated to the garden to eat and talk. It was fun for Lina to be speaking English again, in such pleasant circumstances. Pierce didn’t make a lot of clever remarks, but he responded enthusiastically to even the mildest witticism of Lina’s. Somewhere in the course of the afternoon, she had a strange thought - this is what I’m supposed to be doing. This is normal activity for a girl my age. Then what do I call what I spend all day doing? Abnormal? Perverse? A long time later, Lina felt someone watching her, and she turned to look right into Boomer’s face. Nobody else had entered the garden in the two or so hours we’ve been here, she thought. The bastard has been searching for me. He said nothing, but his face spoke loudly - while it was all right for her to be here, for health reasons, she was definitely not supposed to be having fun. Lina smiled sweetly at him, then turned away. “Who was that?” “Oh, he’s got something to do with the Peace Corps - you know, those wild-eyed rebels.” “Yes, he looks like it. You’d think he’d have more sense than to come to an Embassy party dressed like that.” Lina looked back at Boomer, who was heading away across the lawn. He was wearing his favorite outfit - rumpled khakis, a loud Hawaiian shirt hanging outside his pants, an enormous straw hat, and mirrored sunglasses. Lina knew he thought he looked pretty cool, but she ed Kevin’s crack on first seeing him in his full finery. “He looks like a guy who’s trying to rent out his sister.” Lina and Pierce went back to the public area, played a little croquet and chatted with a few Embassy people, but mostly they just sat and talked and joked and ate. Pierce was clearly amazed by how much and how often Lina could eat.

As soon as it was dark, an Embassy servant announced that a film would be shown - a documentary. Lina wasn’t very interested, but she didn’t want to it it. Pierce said nothing, and soon they were seated on folding chairs on the lawn. Lina watched the screen. The title appeared: Years of Lightning, Day of Drums. It was a documentary about President Kennedy. Scenes of his life, including some of his more effective speeches, were interspersed with scenes of his funeral. Lina was riveted, alternately appalled and inspired, just as the filmmakers had intended. The scene of Kennedy’s tiny son, standing solemnly in short pants saluting his father’s casket, sent even the Esmeraldan servants into inconsolable sobs. After that, nobody felt much like celebrating, and the party broke up. Pierce had his parents’ car. “Do you want to go out and see some of the sights?” But Lina felt miserable. “No, I think I’d just like to go home.” She felt again the frustration of Kennedy’s death - the feeling of being robbed of hope. Sad and angry, she needed to be alone. “All right. I’ll drop you off.” “No. Just leave me at the central plaza.” From there, she could catch the first of three públicos home. “I want to see you again.” “Well, I don’t know…” “Tell me where I can pick you up. Tomorrow.” “I can’t. I’m busy.” “Cancel everything - I insist. Tomorrow. Where? When?” “Here in the plaza, at ten.” Changing from the second público to the third, Lina had to wait quite a while in the heart of the red-light district. As usually happened, men kept coming up to her and asking, “How much?”

“Five hundred dollars,” she said. That was her standard reply. Since the going rate was ten dollars, the men always backed off, shocked. Somehow, tonight, her answer didn’t seem as clever as usual. The next morning, she looked over her clothes. She fingered her second-best outfit, the “Virgin of Guadelupe” dress. She hadn’t worn it since she returned from Haiti. Ridiculously, the dress gave her the creeps. But it was the only possibility, so she put it on and took the bus to the central plaza. She could have got there by público, but she hadn’t received her monthly pay yet, so she was pretty broke. The difference between three cents and ten cents was enough to make her decide on the bus. At the plaza, Lina jumped off, put on her shoes and walked to the other side of the square. Pierce was already waiting for her. She got into his car and they drove east, the road hugging the ocean. Lina absorbed the startling beauty of the land - the white beaches stretched off endlessly, lined with glittering aquamarine water on one side. On the other, royal palms thrust their aggressive center fronds toward a sapphire sky. As noontime approached, Lina began to wonder what to do about lunch. Outside the main cities, there were few restaurants, and those served rice and beans and boiled plantains, catering to traveling Esmeraldans, not to tourists. At one o’clock, Pierce said, “Lunchtime,” and pulled the car into a cove. He went to the trunk, opened it and produced a surprise meal. Roast chicken, potato salad, fresh strawberries and champagne, all packed in an ice chest. They talked and feasted until the champagne and the hot sun made them sleepy, and they both dozed off. When she awoke, Pierce was propped up on one elbow, looking down into her face. “What are you doing?” “I’m just watching you. You look so pretty lying there asleep.” He leaned down and kissed her. The two of them sat and talked and necked a little until the sun began to go down. Back in the city, they ate in a restaurant on the elegant street that ran along the

sea. They were assigned what must be one of the best tables, overlooking the rocky cliffs that sheered off to the water’s edge. “Food’s good, don’t you think?” Pierce said. “Terrific.” “Did we just hit the place on a good night, or is the food always as good as this?” She shrugged. “I’ve never eaten here before.” He looked surprised. “How many good restaurants are there in Aguadulce?” “I don’t know. I’ve only eaten out six or eight times since I’ve been here.” “How long is that?” “Well…quite a while.” Alarmed, she realized she didn’t how many months exactly. As if I’ve forgotten that I have a specific amount of time to spend here. And then I leave. “Over a year.” “The food must be terrific at your house, then.” “Right. Terrific.” She knew Pierce was staring at her, but she kept her eyes focused on her plate. After dinner, they walked along the cliffs and talked. But when it got late, Lina again insisted that he drive her back to the central plaza instead of home. “What’s the matter? Are you afraid your parents won’t like me?” “My parents?” She was puzzled. “What’s the problem, then?” “No questions, please.” “Meet me again tomorrow.” “All right.”

On the way home, she thought - I’m going to have to tell him where I live, how I live. But I really don’t want to - something will change when I do. They spent the next morning swimming at the country club. A huge buffet lunch was served on the patio, and Lina tried to control her appetite, though she felt like plunging headfirst into the bowl of lobster salad. “Pierce,” she said over coffee, “do you want to come to my house?” He looked at her narrowly. “I was sure you weren’t going to ask that.” “Why?” “I thought…I guessed it wasn’t your parents you didn’t want me to meet.” She was puzzled. “Who then?” “I figured you had a husband.” She was startled. “No, no, nothing like that.” They got in his car and she directed him to her barrio. “Park here, Pierce.” “What? This is a hospital parking lot. You don’t live here, do you?” “No. But you can’t drive that car where we’re going.” “Why not?” “You’ll see.” As they walked through the barrio, Lina tried to keep an eye on Pierce’s face. Walking down her alley, he glanced from side to side doubtfully, but she couldn’t be sure whether he had raised his eyebrows. At her door, she reached in for the flit-gun, then nudged Pierce aside while the fumes settled. Inside, Lina lit the candle and they sat side by side on the bed. She thought his face looked strained, though she couldn’t see him well by the dim flicker of the candle. “Pierce, I’m in the Peace Corps. I help run a health clinic, and I give cooking

classes. And I teach literacy in a leper colony.” While she was talking, one of the neighbor couples started in on their favorite form of recreation, with their customary volubility. Earlier than usual, Lina thought. It took Pierce a couple of minutes to get the picture, but when he did, his face turned crimson, and he snapped, “Let’s get out of here!” They drove to his parents’ house, not talking about anything important on the way. The place was beautiful, set in an enormous garden of carefully-tended tropical flowers and bushes. The house itself was large and luxurious, cool even in the heat spell, and it was lavishly furnished. The floors were elaborately tiled, the ceilings beamed in teak, the furniture upholstered in leather and decorated with embroidered pillows. The table surfaces held clusters of silver ornaments. Pierce sat down, looking very upset. “What’s the Peace Corps director’s name?” “Wallace Brown.” “Well, I can’t understand how he could let you live in a place like that. He should watch out for you, make sure you’re living in a safe place with decent people.” “I can take care of myself.” She listened to herself. It’s true, she thought with satisfaction. I can take care of myself! “That’s not the point. You shouldn’t have to live like that. I’ve heard about other people in the Peace Corps - they teach in proper schools, and live in regular houses, with servants, even. They’re not sharing filthy shacks with disgusting people. And working in a leper colony - that’s ridiculous. It’s revolting. And it’s dangerous.” “It’s not that bad. I knew it wasn’t going to be a country club when I ed.” “Yes, but this isn’t a decent way for you to live. You’re in danger. I’m going to ask my father to talk to Brown. He has to be made to realize the terrible position he’s putting you in.” “Look, Pierce, I’ve been living like this for quite a while. “It’s all right. I’m comfortable with it. Don’t go getting the Embassy crowd to butt in.”

He calmed down a bit. “We’ll wait until my parents get back. Then we’ll talk about it.” “All right. Let’s not get excited about it until then.” “Right. Let’s go see what there is to eat.” They went into the kitchen and Pierce looked through the refrigerator. “Not much,” he said, but it looked like the horn of plenty to Lina - chicken, hard-boiled eggs, potato salad, ice cream and Coke. They ate, and Pierce put on some records - not Latin-style music at least. “Want to dance?” “No. Let’s just listen to the music.” They sat on the couch and necked. Lina liked him - she thought he had a lot of what she was looking for in a man - if she was looking at all. “Stay here with me tonight.” She hesitated - she could hear Stacy saying, `Go ahead, you idiot. He’s handsome, polite, intelligent. What are you waiting for?’ “No. I like you, Pierce, but I’m not ready to go to bed with you.” He sighed. “I didn’t mean to push you. It’s just that my parents will be home tomorrow, and I’ll be going back to Chicago next week. It doesn’t leave enough time to go slow. And I like you a lot, Lina. I wish we could get to know each other better.” “Just bad timing. I wish I’d met you last year, when I was in college. When I had lots of time for dating.” Then she smiled to herself. Fat chance I had of meeting anybody like Pierce at Our Lady of Perpetual Sorrows. They spent the evening and most of the night together. “Pierce, I’ve got to go home.” “No,” he groaned.

“I mean it. Right now.” He caught her tone. “All right. I’ll take you.” “Leave me at the hospital.” “No. It’s too late.” “Please, Pierce. It’s important. If my neighbors see me getting out of this car, it will ruin my…well, my credibility.” Reluctantly, he dropped her outside the hospital gate. “I want you to come for dinner tomorrow.” “Do you think that’s a good idea? Your parents won’t want company their first night back - they’ll need some time to relax.” “It’ll be fine. I want them to meet you. And the servants do all the cooking - they won’t have to do very much.” When her neighbors began their nightly activity, Lina put the pillow over her head to try to block out the sounds. But that was too hot, so she just lay there trying not to listen. After a while, she began to cry. By the next afternoon, Lina was frantic at the prospect of meeting Pierce’s parents. “I don’t have anything to wear,” she complained to Charlotte and Stacy. “Let’s see what we can come up with,” Charlotte said. They went throught all their wardrobes. Charlotte was a lot taller than Lina, so they concentrated on Stacy’s clothes. “Here,” Stacy said, “the perfect dress.” It was aqua cotton, cool and elegant-looking. It was also too big for Lina, but there wasn’t anything she could do about that. All her own clothes were too big, too. “Just cinch in the belt,” Stacy said. “You’ll look all right.”

Charlotte couldn’t understand Lina’s nervousness.”You always do fine in social situations, Lina. Just be yourself. They’ll be amused and delighted.” Lina realized that Charlotte wasn’t even aware of the possibility of being snubbed - it had never happened to her. “Listen, Lina,” Stacy said, “why don’t I put your hair up in a French twist? That will look very elegant.” Lina knew what `elegant’ meant - less conspicuous. Stacy’s comb scraped through Lina’s buoyant hair. After forcing the hair into a controlled shape, Stacy put twenty or so pins in to force the hair into submission. Looking into the mirror, Lina thought she did look more subdued. At six, Lina walked over to the hospital grounds and found Pierce waiting for her. “You look beautiful,” he said, but he looked puzzled. “Is something the matter?” “Well…your hair. It looks…different.” “Do you like it?” He laughed nervously. “No, I like it better the way it usually is. All loose and curly.” “No problem.” Lina took the pins out of her hair, carefully storing them in her purse. She combed her hair out with her fingers and shook her head, letting her curls follow their own design. They’ll either like me or they won’t, she thought. Better be hanged for a sheep than for a lamb, as grandma used to say. Pierce’s parents seemed much older than hers. Both were sparse and lean, with grey hair. Lina cast around for a word to describe their hair. Obedient, she finally realized - that’s how their hair looks. Mr. Harvey was wearing a suit. He looked like he always wore one. Lina figured Mrs. Harvey’s beige silk dress wouldn’t dare wrinkle when she sat down. The Harveys’ smiles were stiff and formal, something they snapped onto their faces at will.

Lina pretended to be pleasantly surprised by the house and the furnishings, trying to catch Pierce’s eye - I don’t want your parents to know I’ve been in the house before, she tried to signal him. After a tiny glass of sherry, they sat down to a formal meal. The maid was wearing a black dress and a white apron and cap. Lina was amazed - she hadn’t realized Americans lived like this any more. “Pierce tells me you’re in the Peace Corps?” Mr. Harvey inquired. “Yes.” “What is your assignment?” “Assignment? Well…uh…we don’t really work like that. We’re supposed to find something useful to do.” “And what have you found?” “Well, one thing I’m doing is working with people who receive surplus American food, trying to help them use it instead of selling it.” “I wasn’t aware food is being sold.” “Oh yes, it is. Because the Esmeraldans don’t like it, don’t know what to do with it.” “What kind of food, particularly?” “Well, corn meal, for one.” “That’s ridiculous. Corn meal is a staple of Latin cooking. The Mexicans couldn’t do without it. They eat it at every meal.” “But these aren’t Mexicans. They’re Esmeraldans, and they really don’t like corn meal.” “If they get hungry enough, they’ll eat it.” “They don’t. They sell it for a fraction of its value.”

“And what else don’t these picky peasants like?” “Bulgur wheat. They don’t know what to do with it.” “Bulgur wheat is one of man’s oldest foods. Why, it’s been found in ancient Egyptian tombs.” “But if Esmeraldans won’t eat it, it’s a waste of money to send it here. It ends up feeding the rich, who know how to make use of it. Or worse, rich people’s cattle.” He looked vexed. “What do you suggest?” “Well, maybe the bulgur wheat should be sent to Egypt. And the corn meal to Mexico.” Mrs. Harvey, seeing an argument about to start, smoothly put in, “Lina…that’s an unusual name. Is it your whole name, or a nickname?” Lina blushed. Pierce hadn’t asked her that, and she hadn’t thought to tell him her real name. “It’s…Colleen.” Silence. Across the table, Pierce’s eyebrows went up, and he grinned widely. “The red hair should have been enough,” Lina blurted out. “But just in case anyone should miss the ethnic connection, my parents named me Colleen O’Reilly.” She realized by the looks on their faces that Pierce hadn’t told them her last name, either. How had he got away with that? It was actually quite funny to be so able to read their thoughts: here we give him all the best, private school, summer camp, dancing lessons, country club. And what does he do but drag home a radical Irish girl with flaming hair the first chance he gets? Lina got through the meal as best she could. At least, she thought, I didn’t spill anything or drink from the finger bowl. The Harveys tactfully retreated to another room soon after dinner, and Lina and Pierce sat in the high-ceilinged living room, talking and listening to records.

“They liked you, Lina. Could you tell?” Lina looked at him narrowly, wondering if he was being sarcastic, though that wasn’t his way at all. “Oh, do you think so?” She wanted to say, Don’t you think they would have been happier if you had brought home a Negro prostitute? Pierce tried to kiss her, but Lina was stiff and nervous. That would be a perfect ending to this evening, she thought - for Pierce’s parents to barge in while we’re necking. As Pierce was driving her home, Lina said, “I have a lot of work to do - I’ve taken off all the time I can. I’m not going to be able to see you so often from now on.” “I understand. I know you’re supposed to be working all the time.” Lina was pleased to see that he looked disappointed. They did see each other three more times before he had to leave for Chicago, but always for brief periods - no more whole days together. The day before Pierce’s departure, they went for a drive. “My parents are having a cocktail party for me tonight. It’s just the Embassy people, not anybody you’d be interested in meeting.” That’s true, Lina thought, but I would have liked the chance to decline. “I guess this is goodbye, then.” She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. “It’s been great, Pierce. I hope we meet again.” He grabbed her, kissing her furiously. At nine, Pierce was at her door. She was surprised he’d managed to find his way there in the dark. “I just had to come, Lina. I didn’t want to waste my last night here with all those boring friends of my parents’. Let’s go out to dinner.” Lina made Pierce wait outside in the alley while she changed. I bet I’m very

popular with the Harveys at the moment, she thought, smiling. They had a wonderful time at dinner, and afterward drove along the nearlydeserted road toward the distant beach area. Pierce drove the car off the road into a palm grove, and they talked and kissed. “Lina, I’ll miss you. You’re such an unusual girl. So…so natural. Not at all like any of the other girls I know. Promise you’ll write to me every week.” “All right.” A long time later Lina said, “I have to get home. I can’t arrive home at daybreak. Everybody in the barrio would know, and be scandalized.” Reluctantly, he started the engine. “Lina, I want you to see me off tomorrow. I’ll have my father swing by your barrio on the way to the airport. Be waiting outside the hospital.” Lina’s face tingled from rubbing against Drew’s cheeks, and she was feeling very mellow. Then, suddenly, she woke up completely. “No, Pierce. Your parents will want to say goodbye to you alone.” “I’m the one who’s going away. I’m the one who decides who to say goodbye to.” The next morning, she was waiting as the shiny black car pulled up in front of the hospital. The Harveys were in the front seat, and Pierce leaped out of the back, smiling, and led her in to sit beside him. Mrs. Harvey turned around. “Hello, Lina, nice to see you again.” Her voice was very cool, and she looked Lina’s dress over carefully. Lina blushed. At least I’m clean, if not elegant. Mr. Harvey mumbled something, then pulled out and started toward the airport. Pierce took Lina’s hand and held it tightly. The four of them sat awkwardly in the crowded dingy departure lounge. Pierce was completely oblivious to his parents’ coolness. Maybe they always act this stiff, she thought, but she didn’t believe it. Finally, Pierce’s flight was announced, and he got up and kissed his mother lightly on the cheek, shook his father’s hand, and then threw his arms around

Lina, hugging her fiercely. Embarrassed, she tried to struggle free. When he finally released her, she saw to her surprise that he had tears in his eyes. “Take care of yourself, Lina. Promise you’ll write.” “I promise.” Pierce snatched up his suitcase and quickly walked out to the waiting airplane. Alone in the back seat of the car, Lina decided that she was not going to start any conversation. So she simply murmured polite replies to Mrs. Harvey’s not very convincing attempts to chat. I wonder, Lina thought, if they give a course in small talk to all diplomatic wives. Mr. Harvey at least said nothing at all. At the hospital, he mumbled something again, and Mrs. Harvey said, “Goodbye, Lina. It was nice to have met you.” “Thank you for the ride.” She immediately turned her back and walked off, holding her head high.

Chapter 10

A group of Peace Corps volunteers decided to spend a Sunday at the beach. The nearest beach was about 40 miles west of the capital, with no public transportation, so they needed a couple of jeeps. The persuasive Luke managed that easily. Lina decided what grandma would have said of Luke - He could make you believe the sun rose in the west. Twelve of them squeezed into the two vehicles, and they set off for a day in the sun. The Esmeraldans had different customs from the Americans when they went to the beach. For one thing, you could rent bathing suits. They were quite expensive to buy, being imported, and nearly impossible to make with the limited fabrics available. Instead of hot dogs and French fries, peddlers sold boiled plantains on a stick, along with sweets made of sugared yams or tomatoes. While the Americans lolled around in their bathing suits, playing volleyball and swimming a lot, the Esmeraldans were pursuing their own activities. There were a lot of radios, all blasting culebra music, and people danced on the beach. Esmeraldan women did not go in much for bathing suits. Instead, they sat around, on chairs they brought from home, dressed in frilly pastel-colored dresses with lots of crinolines. Their perfectly coiffed hair and careful makeup were protected by parasols that matched the dresses. It reminded Lina of the picnic scene in Gone with the Wind, the women coyly peeking from behind their fans in the manner of another century. The men wore tiny bathing suits, the tight elastic kind, but they didn’t swim much. Some of them sat in the shallow water, up to their armpits, and drank rum out of the bottle. Lina noticed that Luke had angry round red spots on his chest. I guess if he wanted us to know what that’s all about, he’d tell us. But Stacy took one look

and said, “Wow, Luke, you look like you’ve been attacked by the creature from the black lagoon.” Luke laughed. “You’re pretty close. And if you think these spots look ugly now, they’re two weeks old.” “I don’t think I want to hear this.” Lina got up to go for a swim. Kevin said contemptuously, “How can you have lived here for so long and still be so squeamish?” She sat down again. “What happened was this,” Luke said. “I went out one night to take a shower. The water is only on in my barrio at night, and the shower is in an outbuilding in back of the house. Just as I stepped under the water, something jumped onto my chest and seemed to attach itself. My heart was thumping so wildly I thought I was having a heart attack. I could feel this great weight, and suction, but no pain, so at least I knew it wasn’t biting me. I finally got up the courage to look down. All I could see was this enormous pink-lined mouth gaping open just below my chin. I completely freaked out, and began screaming and jumping around and slapping at the thing. Then I heard a great sucking sound, and it let go of me and dropped to the ground. When I looked up, a bunch of my neighbors were standing there, stunned at the sight of me shrieking and doing this frantic dance. Stark naked.” “Oh God!” said Stacy. “What was it?” “One of those enormous tree frogs. The suction disks on those huge feet of theirs are incredibly strong.” He fingered the marks on his chest. “As you can see.” Lina shuddered. Just another obscene creature that thrives in this climate. She was lying on a blanket next to a ruined wall, half-dozing, when she felt a tickly feeling on her leg. She snapped awake, to see a hideous insect crawling on her. The two-inch-long red and yellow bug had long thick red legs with tiny claws at the ends, snapping open and closed. Its bristly antennae moved in a slow rhythm and its silvery blind-looking eyes stuck out on stalks on the sides of its head. The stalks moved continuously, so the creature was clearly not blind. She sat up and flicked it off with a panicky motion. Rubbing her towel on the place on her leg where the bug had been, she was about to lie down again when she caught a slight movement out of the corner of

her eye. The bug had landed in a web, and a gigantic black spider with grizzled hairy legs was scuttling down toward the helpless creature. The bug was struggling frantically, its body glowing and pulsing with desperate energy. Lina couldn’t sit still for what she knew was going to follow, so she snatched up a book and used it to break the web. The bug skittered off, and the spider hesitated, seemingly surprised, then raced all around the web, looking for its prey. Finally, the creature seemed to realize that it had been robbed, and stopped for a long moment, motionless except for some dreadful appendages around its mouth, which worked in a savage rhythm. Lina didn’t want to look at the spider, but she felt her eyes drawn to it. She could swear it was giving her a hateful glare. Don’t be silly, she told herself. The spider shifted slightly, and Lina saw, or imagined, a flash of the most malevolent red from its multiple eyes. Then it rushed back up its web to hide in the ruins of the wall where it lived. Shaken, Lina got up and walked quickly down to the water. The ocean was clear and cool, and she plunged into it gratefully. Normally, she was afraid of swimming in the ocean, but Luke had shown her the reef that cut the beach off from the open sea. “This is one of the few places along this part of the coast where you don’t have to worry about any big fish,” he’d said. “They can’t cross the reef.” She swam out 40 or 50 yards, then stopped and turned around. Treading water, she looked back at the scene on the beach. She felt relaxed and peaceful. From this distance, the beach looked like a painting - the Esmeraldan women sitting in coy groups were tiny jewels, and the bright stripes on the Americans’ beach towels glowed like exotic blossoms. The water was aquamarine, and so clear that she could see far beneath the surface. A shadow ed under her, so quickly that she didn’t really see it, just got an impression of movement. A minute or so later, when it ed under her again, it was swimming much slower. Something dark and long, she thought idly. Lina began to wonder what creatures were going about their lives in the water below her. That thought made her slightly uneasy. She continued to float there, resting. The third time the shadow swam under her, it was moving very slowly. Lina tried to estimate its length. It must be about…ten feet - maybe a little more. Suddenly, she was very alert. What happened to that damn reef?

Almost immediately, the shadow turned, and Lina felt something tentatively bump her feet. She panicked and took a mouthful of water before she was able to gather herself together and start swimming for shore as fast as she could. She could feel her body cutting through the water, and she knew she was riding very high, her arms and legs in perfect rhythm, propelling her smoothly. When she got to the shallows, she leapt to her feet and ran out of the water. Kevin called, “Hey, Lina, are you practicing for a comeback race with me?” Lina scrambled to her feet. She gaped at Kevin. Has he forgotten that I won the other race between us? No, of course not. He’s just hoping that everybody else has forgotten, that Kevin will be presumed to have been winner - big macho Kevin. “Did you see anything?” she gasped. “A fin?” “No. What happened?” “There was something long and black under me. It nudged me, and I panicked.” “Well, I didn’t see anything.” He laughed. “Maybe it was an Esmeraldan man, getting fresh.” Lina headed immediately back to her towel. She dozed off, but her dream was distressing. Father Nature, the evil spirit of the tropics, has singled me out as a victim. My feeble resistance has no chance against so powerful a malevolent force. Once in a while, Father Nature gives me a faint but distinct warning, to remind me how helpless I am. At any time, he might tire of playing with me and inflict a fatal blow. And that will be the end of me.

*****

Boomer dropped by one day. “I’m going to bring the Ambassador’s wife to visit you.”

“What? Why?” “Because you’re doing such a great job. Set up something for Wednesday afternoon, about 3.” “I’ll be teaching a First Aid class for teenage girls then. You can come and visit it if you want.” “Sounds dull. See if you can come up with something better. We’ll visit your house afterward.” That makes it easy, she thought, to figure out why I’ve been chosen for this hour. I live in the worst conditions of any volunteer in Aguadulce. So I’m going to be shown off as an example of noble sacrifice. “If you want lousy conditions, why not have her come over to the leper colony?” “Don’t want to freak her out too much. Anyway, it’s too long a drive. And I don’t want to expose her to anything contagious.” “But you don’t mind exposing me, is that it?” He shrugged. “It’s your job. It’s not hers.” The day of the visit, the chauffeured Cadillac pulled up to the house where Lina was giving her class, and Mrs. Quentin and Boomer stepped out. They watched Lina’s students finding pressure points to stop bleeding and bandaging various simulated limb injuries. Lina’s students prepared coffee. “No, thank you,” Mrs. Quentin said, in English, when one of the girls held out a cup to her. “It’s perfectly safe,” Lina told her quickly, in English. “The water is boiled. At least take a sip. It’s insulting not to.” “No.” She shuddered, refusing to take the cup from the girl’s hand. Boomer took a few sips from his cup and put it down on the table. “Let’s go.”

Outside, they headed toward the limousine. “No,” said Lina. “It’s only three blocks. We can walk.” Mrs. Quentin looked like she didn’t understand Lina’s English. Boomer shook his head. “I’m walking. And if you want to visit my house, you’re going to walk, too.” Boomer started to turn toward the car again. Lina grabbed his sleeve. “We walk. Or I walk the other way.” His face flushed and he started to snap a reply. But he seemed to read the determination on Lina’s face, and reluctantly turned to talk to Mrs. Quentin. They walked, while the chauffeur drove slowly along beside them. Lina was furious at Boomer. This farce served no purpose other than to further his attempt to get in with the Embassy crowd. He was fawning all over Mrs. Quentin as they walked, shamelessly flattering her. Lina started down the alley. The cobbler had tethered his fighting cocks out there. “You’ll have to jump over them. Jump high - they’re pretty vicious.” Lina jumped, then turned to watch Mrs. Quentin, eyes wide and skirts flying, hurtling over the cocks while they crowed and clawed at her ankles. Boomer followed, glaring at Lina. For a change, there was a trickle of water that day, and one of Lina’s neighbors was washing her three naked children. Of course, this made the alley muddy. The children squeezed up against the wall as best they could, and the Americans floundered by. On the patch of cement in front of the shack, the other neighbor was plucking a chicken, dipping it in boiling water to get the pinfeathers off. The smell of that, thought Lina, is absolutely indescribable.

Then they were at Lina’s door. She opened it, reached in and grabbed the flit gun, pumped it a few times, and entered. Through clouds of DDT, Lina said, “You can come in now.” Mrs. Quentin had tears in her eyes. “No! I’m sorry. I…I’m late. I have to get back to the Embassy right away!” Boomer gave Lina a hateful look. “I’m sorry you have to leave so soon,” Lina called after their retreating backs. “I was going to slaughter a goat for you.” Lina laughed when she got inside her house. Boomer would never believe she hadn’t staged the whole thing. But later she felt upset. How is it that I can live like this, when Mrs. Quentin obviously couldn’t? Just because I’m more adventurous, more flexible? Or is it because I’m lower class than she is - coarser? And I shouldn’t kid myself, either. I’m a stranger here, not one of the people. I’m not going to spend my life standing in a ditch waiting for water to flush the toilet. I’m going to leave - and that makes my time here just an interlude. My real life stopped the day I arrived, and it will start again the day I leave.

*****

All the Esmeraldan women had pierced ears. It was done by the midwife right after the girl-child was born. The midwife inserted a piece of string to keep the hole open. If the family couldn’t afford earrings, the mother had to keep moving the string back and forth through the ear to keep the flesh from growing around the string. In Lina’s hometown, only the most ethnic people had pierced ears. There had been one girl in Lina’s Catholic grammar school who had them - she was Lebanese, a group that seemed very exotic to all Lina’s friends. They spoke a strange-sounding language, ate such peculiar foods, and all the women wore black dresses and shawls. So Lina associated pierced ears with the most oldworld habits.

One day, as Lina was at the hospital giving her weekly recreation class, she saw one of the Peace Corps nurses wearing earrings, clearly the pierced type. “What have you done?” “We’ve all pierced each others ears.” “Why?” Lina was afraid they’d all “gone native” - an alarming condition they’d been warned might descend on them unexpectedly at any moment. “Well, for one thing, it’s very practical. If you’re going to pay a lot of money for gold earrings, why not make sure you don’t lose them?” Actually, that argument made sense to Lina, for a simple reason. She had virtually no earlobes, and she couldn’t wear earrings for more than a few minutes without pain. She had several times lost a valuable gold earring, which had slipped easily off her tiny lobe and disappeared. Over dinner at Charlotte and Stacy’s, Lina announced, “All the Peace Corps nurses have pierced each other’s ears.” “What a great idea!” Stacy said. “Let’s go over to Santo Tomás tomorrow and have them do ours.” “Yes,” said Lina. “I’ve decided to do that.” She looked at Charlotte. “How about you?” “Maybe. I have to think about it.” “It actually makes sense to me. You know, no more lost earrings, no more sore earlobes.” “I know all that. That’s not what I have to think about. I have to decide whether or not I want to go back to Charleston. I certainly can’t have my ears pierced if I do.” The next morning, Lina went in to the center of Aguadulce, and spent some of the money she had saved for vacation on a pair of gold hoop earrings, small and delicate.

The three girls went to the hospital, and one of the nurses pierced their ears hygienically, using an antiseptic to clean the lobes, and sterilizing the needle first. It was virtually painless, and when Lina looked into the mirror later, she liked the discreet glint of gold as she tossed her head. Charlotte, Stacy and Lina toasted each other with Coke. “Here’s to not going back to Charleston!”

*****

Lina’s was the only paved patio in the area. That made it a favorite place for several neighborhood activities - practicing dance-steps, for one. One morning, Lina was jolted awake by a sound like a woman in sudden excruciating pain. She jumped out of bed and flung open the door, to see an elephantine pig shaking its head, its slit throat spouting blood. The pig, catching sight of the open door and seeing a possible haven, charged at Lina. Five men, who had been laughing at the pig’s plight, turned their attention to Lina, aiming appreciative comments at her thin cotton nightgown. The pig fell onto its front knees as it drew near the door. Lina screamed. The pig, in a begging position, still screaming humanly, raised its head and looked pleadingly at Lina. Without thinking, she took a step toward the animal and reached out to it. The pig made one more pitiful squeal, then gave its head another mighty shake, and spurted the last of its blood over Lina, drenching her from waist to feet. Then it slowly collapsed, rolling onto its side. Lina just stood there dazed, looking down at the pink body lying in a large pool of blood, surrounded by laughing men. A tangle of thoughts raced through her mind. The pig is the same color as I am. Grandma said when someone was lucky, “He’s on the back of the pig.” What did that mean? Why are the men laughing? One of the men stepped forward, smiling menacingly. Lina backed into her

house, slamming and locking her door. The men outside continued to laugh and joke, but although one of them knocked on the door and invited her to come out and have a drink, nobody seriously tried to enter. Lina was nervous, though. The “lock” on her door was only a flimsy hook-and-eye, no match for a solid kick from a strong man. The men stayed for hours, butchering the pig and skinning it, drinking yellowish rum from the bottle as they worked. Lina was trapped inside. She didn’t even dare to take off the bloody nightgown. She knew the chinks between the rough boards of the house gave the men a good view of her. She didn’t want to encourage them to make a serious attempt to get in. There was no water in the house, and she didn’t want to sit on her bed all bloody. So she ended up sitting on the dirt floor, swatting off the swarms of ants that quickly gathered, while the horrible bright blood coagulated on her skin, creating a tormenting itch and a rash that continued even after she was able to wash.

*****

Being away from her family and friends for the second Christmas in a row made Lina feel forlorn. It wasn’t supposed to be like that - her plan had been to take a vacation, to go to Jamaica for a week and meet Pierce there. She and Pierce had been writing faithfully for the six months since they had met, and she felt she really knew him by now. Stacy kept telling Lina to “stop kidding around with Pierce and start fooling around with him.” Lina hadn’t made up her mind about that yet, but she was really looking forward to being with him again. So she was upset to find in her mailbox on December 20, a note to call Pierce’s father. She assumed it was bad news. “Mr. Harvey? It’s Lina O’Reilly.” “Oh, yes. Pierce has broken his leg. Skiing. He’s in the hospital, in traction.” “How bad is it?” “He’s expected to recover completely, but he’ll be in the hospital for about a

week. Then he’ll have a cast and crutches for a couple of months.” “I’m really sorry. Tell Pierce I’ll write to him right away.” “Yes, I’ll do that. Have a nice holiday.” “You too. My best to Mrs. Harvey.” Lina got the distinct impression the Harveys weren’t unhappy that Pierce was safely confined to Chicago. She sat down and wrote Pierce a long letter, and mailed it right away. She hung around the Peace Corps office for a while, sorry for herself and not anxious to rush back to her barrio. Some of her friends dropped in, and they commiserated with her. She decided she would accept Francisco’s invitation to spend the holiday with his family. Rumor held it that a group of rich Esmeraldans, Rotary Club , had heard about the volunteers and felt sorry that they were going to be lonely on Christmas Eve. So they had offered to host volunteers for the evening. That was very kind, since this holiday was strictly a family celebration - outsiders were seldom invited, and having a foreigner who probably wouldn’t fit in very well would be awkward. As usual, Boomer had immediately accepted the invitation on behalf of the Peace Corps. But he hadn’t counted on one thing - that the volunteers had all been invited to spend the evening with the families they had been working with. When almost everyone declined, he had become frantic. As Lina was getting her things together to go home, he waylaid her and said, “I heard your plans have changed. You’re available for Christmas Eve.” Lina said, “No, I’ve made other plans, and…” He interrupted, “No excuses. Be here at six PM.” He started off, then turned back, looked her over carefully, and said, “You do have a clean dress to wear, don’t you?” She smiled at him, seething. “Clean? Well, no, I can’t guarantee that. Will you ask your wife to lend me something? Tell her it has to be very elegant. Green is

my best color.” “Funny, Lina, you’re very funny. Just be there at six on the twenty-fourth. As clean as you can manage.” Back in the barrio, Lina told Charlotte, “I’m just not going to show up.” “That’s not a good idea,” Stacy said. “Boomer’s in a real tizzy about this. And it doesn’t really make much difference to you. Why don’t you just go along with it?” “You’re right. I guess I could use a few brownie points with him.” So at six on December 24, she appeared at headquarters, wearing her nicest dress. There were only about a dozen volunteers there, some from a group of farming advisers who had just arrived a few weeks before and didn’t know very many people yet, a few who had only recently moved into the capital from someplace else, and Lina. They stood there, stiffly dressed in their best clothes, milling nervously around the waiting room, where the only furnishings were a dreary collection of musty stuffed chairs and nicked tables. Elegantly-dressed Esmeraldans drove up the dusty driveway in expensive foreign cars. They got out and inspected the waiting Americans, then picked out one or two and departed with their catch. Lina had retreated to the back of the crowd each time an Esmeraldan entered. Still, she was beginning to squirm when a tall handsome white man, about 35, she guessed, came in. He was dressed in formal clothes. He looked around, saw Lina, and came over to her. In perfect English, he asked, “Do you speak Spanish?” Lina answered in Spanish, “Yes. Not perfectly, but enough to get along in most situations.” He nodded and said, still in English, “My name is Eduardo Salazar y Cabot. I had to ask that because my parents are elderly and speak little English, and I don’t want to make them uncomfortable if it can be avoided. Please, I invite you to spend this holiday with my family.” He bowed, took her hand, and bent over it, kissing the air. “We would be delighted to have you spend this evening with our family..”

Lina smiled. “Thank you. I am honored. But please, let’s speak Spanish. Your English is much better than my Spanish, it’s true. But I need the practice, and you clearly don’t.” His car was a maroon Mercedes, and Lina didn’t want to think what it cost or how he had got permission to import it. Eduardo fumbled to get it into gear. “I don’t drive this car myself very often,” he apologized. “But I didn’t want to come with the chauffeur - I thought it might make you nervous.” “What, me, nervous? Of a chauffeur, and a Mercedes, and a man in a tuxedo? Certainly not.” Eduardo laughed. “You’re going to have a good time. You have the right attitude.” If Lina had seen the Salazars’ house as she was walking past, she would have thought it was an embassy or a museum. But she had never been in this neighborhood before. It was even richer than the area around the American Embassy. There was a taste in the air - she felt sure they were near the sea. The house was set far back from the street, the grounds a carefully-tended park surrounded by a 15-foot iron fence tipped with inhospitable spikes. The house itself was massive, with a red-tiled roof and a white stucco facade studded with inset tiles, some of them coats of arms, others Moorish geometric designs. A wide cedar stairway led to a veranda that stretched off into the twilight. Inside they walked down a carpeted hallway, its walls hung with copper-rimmed antique ceramic plates. Huge jars, five feet tall and exquisitely decorated and glazed, were lined up along the walls. At the end of the hallway, they entered an enormous room. Lina had to turn her head both ways to take it all in. There were several full-sized Persian carpets, but still much of the polished teak floor was bare. Lina counted six sofas, three of them heavy brocade, the others dark red leather, and a larger number of stuffed armchairs. The room was very cool, though there was no air-conditioning. How do they manage that? Lina wondered. And why isn’t all this furniture moldy? She looked up and saw that the ceiling, vaulted and decorated with gilt rosettes, was about 15 feet high. That explained some of the coolness. There were marble-topped tables everywhere, set on heavy wrought-iron bases. Some of the table tops were inlaid in intricate

geometric patterns, while others had gilt designs or inscriptions. I wonder what language the inscriptions are in. If I get a chance to get close to one, I should look at it carefully. Over an ornate mahogany fireplace hung a huge portrait, clearly one of the Salazar ancestors. Lina thought he was staring disapprovingly at her, and she wondered if her dress was formal enough for this setting. Well, she thought, it doesn’t matter - I don’t have anything better. She wished she had a cape like the ancestor’s - full-length black velvet, lined with crimson silk, and embroidered around the neck in gold. The portrait had the most extraordinary frame, of enamel in tiny intricate arabesques in a dozen brilliant colors, and it was inlaid with turquoise and coral. She put out her hand to touch the frame, then quickly snatched it back, as if she were in a museum. Eduardo invited her to sit down, and she chose a leather sofa. It must be stuffed with feathers, Lina thought as she sank slowly into its depths. The leather was kid, and Lina couldn’t help surreptitiously stroking it. Eduardo handed her a drink in a tiny elaborately cut glass with a gold rim. It was some kind of liqueur, sweet and strong and with an aroma of tropical flowers. Behind Eduardo there was a wide doorway, fitted with a massive wooden grating for a door. Over the doorway was a fanlight, divided into eight s, each filled with a different shade of stained glass. The setting sun transmitted brightly-colored shafts of light into the room. She struggled to accept the thought that the Salazars actually owned all this. Just seeing it was a pleasure for Lina. What must it be like to own it? Or had they owned it all for so long that they could no longer appreciate its beauty and rarity? Do they think everybody lives this way? Lina couldn’t help thinking of her bed, the only place to sit in her house, and ing how Kevin called her place “Lina’s half-a-shack.” Eduardo left the room for a moment, then returned with an elderly couple. They were both small and frail, very pale, with gray hair. Lina didn’t know much about men’s clothes, but she could tell that Eduardo and his father were wearing their own tuxedos, not rented ones. Maybe they dress for dinner every night, she thought. Sra. Salazar’s dress was of maroon silk brocade, mid-calf length, with a mandarin collar and elbow-length sleeves.

Lina suddenly understood just how inappropriate her own white dress was for an evening party. Eduardo made the introductions, and they sat and talked for a while before dinner. All of the Salazars spoke slow, educated Spanish, and Lina felt comfortable, though she had to keep reminding herself to upgrade her diction and to abandon the colorful expressions and coarse accent she used in the barrio. She was glad now that she had studied Castilian in college, and knew the proper way to speak. Charlotte, who had learned all her Spanish in Aguadulce, now spoke pretty well, but in such a low-class way, sometimes Lina burst into laughter listening to her. Lina was also grateful for Mr. Gómez’ long-ago “bad word” lecture. At least she wasn’t likely to tell the Salazars how frigging beautiful their house was. Sra. Salazar said, “We always serve French food on Christmas Eve. I hope you will not be disappointed that we will not have Esmeraldan food.” “Oh, no. Whatever you have will be fine with me.” They went into the dining room. There was a table big enough for at least twenty people, but there were just the four of them. Down the center of the table stretched a garland of flowers, artfully woven around a dozen candles in baroque silver candlesticks. How will we ever things around? Lina wondered. Everything seemed larger than life - the silverware was heavy, the pieces elaborately decorated. They seemed bigger than ordinary silverware, and they were gold, not silver. I wonder if you still call it silverware, Lina thought. And there are so many of them. I’ve completely forgotten how to deal with all this stuff, if I ever knew. But at least I know enough to wait for my hosts to choose an implement, then follow suit. The dinner plate also seemed too big. And stretching out from the end of her knife were four wine glasses, each a different shape. “We will eat alone, just the four of us, and the rest of the family and some close friends will us later,” Eduardo explained.

Of course, they didn’t the dishes around. Servants entered with silver trays. Each of the diners soon had his own servant, who stood behind his chair and catered to the one person only, serving the food, removing empty plates and refilling glasses. The meal started with hors d’oeuvre. A small avocado half stuffed with - Lina couldn’t see very well, so she dug her fork in and tasted - lobster. She knew lobster was not found in these waters. This has to be very expensive, she thought. I’ve got to come up with a strategy for this meal. My appetite is bad, and I’m nervous. And having all these different forks and spoons must mean there are going to be a lot of courses. How am I going to look like I’m eating a lot and enjoying it? All right, I’ll eat only the special things, and not fill up with anything I can eat every day. So she picked out the pieces of lobster and ate them, leaving the avocado, though she cut it up some. I’m hungry and I love avocado, but I can get one in the market for three cents. The next course was soup, a clear consommé with diced vegetables - carrots, green beans, turnips, peas. The servants served sherry with this course. Lina sipped at the soup, leaving most of it in the bowl. Then came a molded rice dish. Lina tasted it. It was heavenly - a pilaf made with crab meat. Lina wanted to eat all of it, fast, with a tablespoon, but she restrained herself. I have to be refined. Anyway, all that rice would fill me up completely, and I don’t know how much more food is to come. Tears filled her eyes as she forced herself to eat only a few mouthfuls. When her servant whisked her nearly untouched plate away, she felt desperate. If only this were a restaurant, she thought, where I could ask for a doggy bag. “Everything is delicious,” she said politely. The Salazars asked her about her work. ing the trouble with Mr. Harvey, Lina tried to keep her answers bland, avoiding any subject that might seem like she was criticizing anybody. When the next course came, Lina knew she had made the right decision about the pilaf. It was broiled steak topped with a braised artichoke bottom filled with

peas and pimento. Sauteed mushrooms with herbs and tiny round balls of shredded potato browned in butter accompanied the meat. Lina’s stomach churned. How is it possible for only four of us to eat this much? And why aren’t these people fat? She smiled and cut into her steak. It was so soft, and the thick dark sauce was extraordinary - made with red wine, she guessed. She ate a couple of pieces of the meat, then tasted the vegetables. Charlotte, Stacy and I could eat for days from just this course. What will I have for dinner tomorrow? Maybe I’ll treat myself, because it’s Christmas, to a can of Spam, or a piece of stale American chocolate. Or I might have boiled rice and boiled beans with Francisco and his family. No, I’ll probably have a couple of Cokes, an avocado and a lot of cigarettes. My usual dinner. The servants removed the dishes, Lina’s hardly touched. The next course was salad. She laughed to herself - would the doctor tell her she should refuse to eat salad in this company? She dug into the delectable dish - Boston lettuce, chives, cucumbers, with a dressing of olive oil. Lina’s stomach appreciated the change from the heavy peanut oil. Eventually the dessert arrived - caramel custard, with thin sugary cookies, strawberries, raspberries and grapes surrounding it on the plate. Lina exclaimed at how beautiful it looked, though she wanted to scream. She had not had these fruits in a year, and she absolutely could not even take a taste.She quietly destroyed the custard with her spoon, burying some of the fruit under it. , she told herself, the Salazars have no way of knowing what a torture this meal has been to me. She sipped at the glass of heavy sweet white wine that had been poured with the dessert course. I wonder what this is, she thought. It’s delicious. Lina had no idea how much she had had to drink, since her servant filled her glass after each few sips. But she knew she must have had quite a bit, because her Spanish was becoming more fluent. It wasn’t just her imagination, she knew, or the loss of judgment that went with drinking. Other people had told her it was true that she spoke better after a few drinks. She was just more relaxed then, and

less self-conscious. Lina’s watch wasn’t very nice, so she hadn’t worn it. Now she wished she had. This must be the longest meal I’ve ever sat through. I wonder if that’s just my imagination. Probably not - it must be taking some time just to serve so many courses. Finally the meal was over, and Lina and the Salazars went back out into the salon. Eduardo served another glass of liqueur. Lina really didn’t want anything else to drink, but she didn’t know where to put the glass. She kept nervously taking sips of it, and eventually the glass was empty. No more, she told herself you’ll fall down or say something stupid. They talked for a few minutes, then other family started to arrive. Servants opened a door at the end of the salon, revealing another large room where the Christmas tree had been set up. It was a real fir tree about 12 feet tall, and Lina wondered where they had found it. She had heard there were a few areas of the country that were high enough to have evergreens, so she supposed they must have sent to the mountains after it. Surely they wouldn’t import a Christmas tree, would they? The Salazars had an enormous family, and in an hour or so there were more than fifty people present. Under the tree there were beautifully-wrapped presents for the children, who eagerly tore them open, flinging paper and unappreciated gifts around the room. The adults began greeting each other effusively, sipping drinks and nibbling at the trays of food scattered around on the marble tables. The children, an even dozen, Lina counted, soon began to get bored, and started whining and creating havoc. Lina, who had been giving recreation classes in the hospital for a long time now, knew just what to do. She started playing with them, sitting on the floor, using the new toys. This was easy - at Santo Tómas, there were no toys, only thirty or forty kids and Lina to control and direct them. She taught the kids a little game that was popular at the hospital, and they picked it up right away, clapping and singing. After a while, Eduardo tapped Lina on the shoulder. “The children are to be taken home now, Lina.” A small group of women in plain black dresses began to claim various children. The nannies, she realized. She handed the youngest

child, who had fallen asleep in her lap, to his nurse. Eduardo helped her to her feet, and they walked out into the salon. She saw that most of the furniture in the salon had been moved back against the walls, and the massive doors at the end had been opened, connecting the room with the wide veranda. The floor of the veranda was covered with bright blue and yellow tiles. Small tables were scattered around the area, each with a bowl of flowers and a candle. On the refreshment table in the salon, a huge bowl of sangría was being tended by a servant. Just what I need, thought Lina, more to drink. Sangría, she knew, was a mixture of red wine, brandy and orange juice. Pieces of pineapple, orange, cherries, and lemons floated in it. Later in the evening, when Lina tasted it, she found it delightful, and much lighter than the rum punch and cognac the servants were also offering guests. A trio of musicians came in and set up on one side of the salon. They began to play - the familiar culebras, but also a pretty, slow and elegant kind of music. An elderly man who identified himself as Eduardo’s uncle came over to Lina and explained to her, “It is called the danzon, a Cuban dance our family is very fond of. We find it very easy to dance to, especially those of us who are no longer in our twenties. Would you like me to show you how to do it?” Having little choice, Lina said yes. Anyway, the room was crowded, and everybody was chatting and dancing and drinking, so she didn’t feel selfconscious. And then, there was all that wine. So she danced with Eduardo’s uncle, and easily learned the steps of the danzon. I can dance a little better since my trip to Haiti, she thought. Though I don’t know if I could ever come to enjoy it. After a while, Eduardo came over and cut in. “Thank you for amusing Uncle Pablo. I hope he wasn’t boring you.” “Boring me? Not at all. He’s very interesting. And he’s a marvelous dance teacher. I think I actually learned a few steps.” “And the children? They did not bore you either?” “Oh, no, children are never boring.”

Eduardo took Lina around the room then, introducing her to a lot of people whose names she never seemed to catch. The trouble was that upper-class Esmeraldans had a lot of names, including at least two surnames, the main name being the second-to-last one. And the formal way of introducing people necessarily included a lot of elaborate phrases, making it hard for Lina even to figure out where the name was in the sentence. Eduardo concluded each introduction with, “Lina speaks Spanish.” That made the relatives feel less awkward, and they began to talk with Lina, asking her about her work. All of them expressed great respect for her courage, but none offered to come and see what she was up to. A few offered to make a donation, though, and Lina tried to those names, wondering if she would have the nerve to hit them up for money later. Lina went to the bathroom. It was easily twice the size of her house. Like the rest of this house, it was elegant - tiled in bright colors, with brocade silken-looking curtains and gold-plated fixtures. I could live in this bathroom, Lina thought. I’d just move the vanity up against that wall, there’d be plenty of room for a bed, and…she laughed then. But she felt sad and vaguely angry. If the Salazars owned just half of what they do, ten families could have their futures assured, and the Salazars would still be living magnificently. How can I find a way to get Francisco connected with the Salazars? He could be a gardener here as well as at the country club - the pay is so low there. I bet even the servants of such rich people are financially secure. She drifted back into the salon. “Hello. I’m Marta.” The woman was a little older than Lina. “I’m Eduardo’s cousin. Do you like him?” “Yes, of course. He’s very nice, and so polite.” “He likes you, I think. His marriage was annulled, did you know that?” “No, I didn’t.” Lina had been wondering about Eduardo’s marital state. “I thought it was almost impossible to get an annulment.” “Ah, well, if the Papal Nuncio is an old family friend, it is not so difficult,” Marta said, laughing. “Eduardo’s wife was very beautiful, but very bad. She was

wild, you know? And indiscreet. In the end, she ran off with another man. Eduardo has been very sad ever since.” “I’m sorry to hear that. He seems like a very nice man.” “Ah, he is. He is my favorite cousin, so I am always trying to find the right girl for him. He never seems interested. But tonight he is having a good time. That is good for me to see. Perhaps…” She laughed, then changed the subject. “How long have you been in Esmeralda?” “Just about a year.” “And do you like it here?” “Yes. It is very beautiful, and the people are good and friendly.” “Would you like to live here?” Lina thought about that. “It depends on the circumstances, I guess.” “You speak Spanish very well. Soon you will be speaking without any accent. Maybe you will forget how to speak English.” She laughed, then said more seriously, “Tonight Eduardo acts like he did ten years ago. He smiles, he dances, he tells funny stories. You are a good influence on him.” Lina thought Marta was being overly optimistic. “I think I seem exotic to Eduardo.” “Certainly. There are no Esmeraldans with hair your color. At least unless they buy it. And one cannot dye one’s eyes. But what can be better for a woman than to appear exotic to a man? It is a great fortune.” Eduardo came over then and asked Lina to dance. After that dance the musicians took a break, and Lina and Eduardo went out onto the veranda and sat at one of the little tables. The veranda looked out over the rest of the Salazars’ grounds, which ran down to the sea. Beyond a stand of silhouetted royal palms, the water glittered in the moonlight, and soft waves licked at the coral shore. “I hope you are enjoying yourself.”

“Oh, very much. It’s so generous of you to invite a stranger to a family celebration.” “You fit in very well. Several people have told me how charming you are.” “Well, you know, your family speak a Spanish so much easier for me than what they use in the barrios. I only hope I have not forgotten myself and used a rude phrase with one of your venerable great-aunts.” He laughed. “Luckily, all my great-aunts are quite deaf. So you could tell them all something outrageous, like that you were a Protestant, and they would smile politely.” The band started up again, and Eduardo’s father asked Lina to dance. He danced elegantly, with the flourishes of another era. “My son likes you,” he said in a faded voice. “So do I.” Lina danced most of the rest of the evening with Eduardo. The musicians played almost nothing but the danzon. “I bribed them,” said Eduardo, laughing. And Lina felt, for the first time in her life, almost comfortable dancing. It was one AM. “Come, Lina, I’ll take you home,” Eduardo said. Lina was alarmed. She hadn’t thought of that. But there was really no way out he’d never agree to leave her at a público stop at this hour. Eduardo took his own Ferrari instead of the family’s Mercedes. It was red. Of course, thought Lina, why have a Ferrari in an inconspicuous color? She directed Eduardo to her barrio. He had clearly never been to this part of town - he didn’t recognize even the most outstanding landmarks. At the hospital, Lina said, “Please, Eduardo, pull into the grounds here, and let’s walk the rest of the way. My neighbors wouldn’t understand if they saw me getting out of this car.” “Yes, of course. I’m sorry. I should have thought of that.” They got out of the car, and Eduardo took off his dinner jacket and bow tie. It was the tie-it-yourself kind, Lina noted, not the clip-on. He went back and rummaged through the trunk for a minute, then took out a dark sweater and

pulled it on, covering his pleated shirt and cummerbund. They walked the few blocks to Lina’s street. She thought he shuddered slightly as they turned down the dark alley to Lina’s backhouse. There was always a lot of noise in the barrio, but Lina knew as soon as they arrived at the entrance to the alley this was something unusual - a party in progress at her neighbors’. At the end of the alley, they came upon a scene of drunken celebration. There were about 50 people jammed onto the tiny patio, dancing to the music of a tinny radio blasting from her neighbors’ half of the shack. She turned quickly to see Eduardo’s reaction, but he had bent down to pick up one of the children, who had fallen asleep leaning against the foul outhouse. He scooped the child up, and straightened, facing Lina with a look of distress. The other four children were huddled in in clumps around the cement slab where the adults tipsily danced. The oldest girl, about eight, was clutching a baby. They looked exhausted and miserable. Lina gathered them up and herded them in her door. She pumped the flit gun and Eduardo entered, coughing. Lina settled the five children in her bed, where they all fell asleep instantly. Eduardo watched her tuck the blanket in around them. “Where will you sleep?” “I have a genuine US Army cot.” She dragged it out of a corner. “And you can help me set it up.” Eduardo looked at her. “Come back to my house. There are plenty of empty rooms there. You can’t sleep here like this.” He gestured toward the patio, where the music and laughter continued. “I can. I’ve slept this way before. Many times. I won’t hear a thing after five minutes.” “Put the net over the cot, at least. You’ll get malaria.” Lina thought of the attack of dengue. He’s right, she thought. The mosquito net was wide, and Eduardo helped her stretch it so that it covered the cot as well as the bed. “Thank you, Eduardo, for everything. I had a wonderful evening. It was like

being a princess in a fairy tale, for one night.” Eduardo looked around. “Lina, I would like to see you again. But I understand the choice must be up to you. You know my name, and where I live. I hope, truly hope, that you will call me, or write, or just come to visit. But if you don’t, I will understand that. I also had a wonderful time tonight. Like a prince in a fairy tale, for one night.” Eduardo put his arms around Lina and kissed her, at first lightly, then hungrily. Pedro’s face leapt into her mind, and she pulled back, pushing Eduardo away. “I’m sorry,” he said, embarrassed. Then he turned and left abruptly. Lina hoped his car was all right. She settled down under the net and was soon asleep. In the morning, she got the children up and took them to the tienda. “Buenos días, Efrain. How much for breakfast for five children? Four, actually. The baby will have milk.” “Make it…say, a peso.” She raised her eyebrows. “Pretty cheap.” “Just leftover rice and beans - that’s all there is.” He looked at the ragged children. “Probably more than they usually get.” “Sounds good.” Efrain served the children from a collection of battered dishes and pans. He started to mix up powdered milk with a gourdful of water for the squalling baby, but Lina stopped him. She bought a bottle of mineral water, and mixed the powdered milk with that. “The usual for you, señorita?” “Yes.” Efrain produced a bottle of Coke, and Lina lit up a cigarette. She thought about Eduardo and his family. Would she actually get in touch with him? They were nice people, and she knew she shouldn’t hold their wealth against them. But she

decided to let it go at what it had been - Cinderella, with no follow-up from the Prince. If I got involved with Eduardo, she thought, I’d have to deal with something I’ve never considered - the possibility of spending the rest of my life in Esmeralda. Even with a lovely padding around reality, I don’t think I could be happy here. When they walked down the alley, the children saw that the door to their house was open, and they all scooted in, the eight-year-old still clutching the baby. Lina returned to her own side, and started to sit down on the bed. She quickly jumped up - the mattress was soaked. It looked and smelled like all the children had wet the bed during the night.

Chapter 11

One day about two weeks later, when Lina and Stacy were at Peace Corps headquarters checking their mail, Lina found a note in her box in an unfamiliar female hand. It was from Marta, Eduardo’s cousin, begging Lina to call him, and giving a number. “Please,” the note said, “if you will not do this for me or for Eduardo, think of my dear aunt and uncle. Both of them liked you very much, and they are constantly asking Eduardo if he is going to see you again.” Stacy tried to read the note over Lina’s shoulder. “Hey, wait a minute. I haven’t finished. Don’t fold it up yet. God, how I hate not being able to read Spanish fast and upside down. It leaves me in the dark about who’s doing what, and I can’t stand that.” Lina laughed. “Never mind. It’s just Eduardo’s cousin, pushing me to call him.” “You’re going to, aren’t you?” “I don’t think so.” “Goddammit, Lina, why not?” “I don’t think I want to get involved with Eduardo.” “I don’t get it. This rich guy likes you, and you say he’s gorgeous, but you don’t want to bother. You should have your head examined.” “I don’t want to talk about it. It’s too complicated.” “At least go out with him once. You can have a fun evening, a few drinks and a good meal. Lina, you look like a scarecrow. You need a good meal. Call him.” “Well, maybe I will.”

“Do it now. There’s a telephone here. You’re not going to find another one today.” Stacy nagged until Lina gave up and went to the telephone. She dialed the number, hoping it would be busy. But Eduardo answered right away. Lina was embarrassed - she found it very difficult to talk on the phone in Spanish, and she hadn’t prepared anything to say. But Eduardo recognized her voice at once and switched to English. Lina explained about Marta’s note, and Eduardo laughed. “Well, nobody can accuse Marta of being subtle. But I’m glad she convinced you to call. When can I see you again?” “Well, I don’t know. I’m kind of busy…” Stacy slapped her hand over the mouthpiece. “Tell him this weekend.” “Well, maybe this weekend.” “Perfect. How about Saturday morning? We’ll go out of town for the day, visit some friends of mine, have a picnic. How does that sound?” “Yes, that would be fun.” “All right. I’ll pick you up at nine in front of the hospital. Bring a bathing suit. I…I mean, if you have one.” “I do. OK, I’ll see you on Saturday.” “Right. Lina, I’m so glad you called.” On Saturday, Lina climbed into Eduardo’s Ferrari at the hospital gate and they drove north on the highway. “Where are we going?” “To visit some friends of mine. They have a big ranch - horses and cattle. It’s beautiful. You’ll love it.” Lina cast a few oblique glances at Eduardo’s profile. He is very good-looking, she thought. What if we fell in love, got married? I could live in a house like

Eduardo’s, always cool and beautiful. There would be servants, and I’d have a sports car like this one, or better still, a chauffeur to take me wherever I liked. I’d have elegant clothes, jewels, wonderful food. And I’d never have to work. And I’d be as far from Trowbridge as it was possible to imagine. Eduardo insisted on speaking English. He had gone to school in the United States since he was a child, and his English was perfect, colloquial and unaccented. I suppose if I stay here long enough, she thought, I’ll speak Spanish like he speaks English. That would be an accomplishment. They drove for about an hour, then turned off the highway onto a paved road that meandered through a grove of trees, finally turning into a sweeping driveway. The house that came into view looked so romantic Lina immediately thought of the word hacienda, though she had never heard that term used in Esmeralda. The facade of the house was made of gleaming white stucco and the roof of overlapping rows of arched red terracotta tiles. It was set in a grove of royal palm trees. Meticulously pruned bushes, all in bloom, lined the front, and the house was surrounded by verandas. Some, screened-in, extended so far they were outdoor rooms; others were more like balconies. Eduardo and Lina got out of the car and went up three steps leading to the entrance. She finally got a good look at his clothes. He was wearing a navy-blue double-breasted blazer with gold buttons, cream-colored linen tros and a white silk shirt, open at the neck. They were in front of a massive wooden door with wrought-iron hinges and hardware. Before they could knock, the door swung open and a man stepped out, smiling broadly. He was older than Eduardo, in his forties, and a bit paunchy, with thinning black hair combed straight back from his forehead. He was dressed in a beige linen suit. His wife, a step behind him, was wearing a frilly dress of pink organdy, its skirt puffed out with crinolines. A satin ribbon at the waist was tied in a bow in the back. Her shiny black hair was carefully curled and sprayed, and her makeup was perfect. Lina glanced down to see that she was wearing delicate high-heeled shoes exactly the same shade as the satin sash. Lina felt shabby in her faded maroon cotton skirt, flower-printed shirt and flat backless sandals. Stupid - I know how people look at the beach. I should have realized a picnic was an occasion to dress up. But it doesn’t really matter. My

best clothes would still be shabby here. Eduardo, naturally speaking Spanish now, introduced Lina. As usual, she missed the names. Emilio, she thought the man’s name was, but she didn’t get the woman’s at all. “Nice to meet you,” said Lina. Emilio bent over her hand and kissed the air. The wife kissed the air on both sides of Lina’s face. How white the upper class is, she thought. Their hair may be black and their eyes brown, but their skin is purest white. The house was remarkably cool, although the day was stifling. Lina was surprised to see that it was only one floor. From outside it had looked like at least two. The ceilings must be 20 or 25 feet high, she thought. Massive dark wooden beams ran across the ceilings, about five feet apart. Elaborately carved s braced the beams along the walls. Smaller reddish wood joists ran the other way over the beams, and the oblong spaces where they crossed were filled in with colorful glazed tiles. All around the room, brick-faced arches led to other parts of the house. The walls were of cream-colored adobe, hung with various decorations - brass and copper medallions, tapestries in South American Indian patterns, antique musical instruments, glazed tiles. Pots of flowers, fuchsia interspersed with fragrant white jasmine, were attached to the walls with bands of iron. Lina marveled at the bizarrely-colored fuchsia, its red petals surrounding a purple center bowl, the sepals also red. It clashes with itself, she complained silently. She noticed some old wrought-iron tools, and remarkably lifelike fruit, grapes, pineapples and oranges, delicately fashioned out of silver, all gracing the walls in casual abundance. Suspended from the ceiling was a gigantic wrought-iron chandelier. Lina tried to guess what its circumference was, and decided it was about twelve feet. It contained scores of candles. I wonder how they light them, she thought. And how they change the candles. Smaller versions of the chandelier were suspended from the center of each of the arches. Mounted on the wall under one of the arches was an altar to Our Lady of Altagracia. The statue, about eighteen inches high and dressed in silk and satin clothes, was perched on an ornate silver stand, and surrounded by a halo made of gold foil. On each side of the statue was a crystal vase of orchids, white with one

crimson and yellow petal. Numerous windows and doors led outside, all fitted with jalousies, partly closed and angled downward to deflect the sun’s glare. The floor was covered with cool glazed terracotta tiles, scattered with inlays of colorful mosaics and striped Indian-pattern rugs. While the construction was much more rustic than that of Eduardo’s city house, the furnishings were equally luxurious. There were six enormous Spanish chests against the walls. Lina, ing how she had thought the Salazar’s bathroom would make a nice home, now decided that a couple of these chests pushed together, with some of the s poked out to provide ventilation, would also be an improvement on her house. There are so many chairs and couches in the room, Lina thought. I wonder how big this family is. But no, she realized, the room isn’t just for family. It’s always ready for a big party. Some of the chairs and couches were covered with thick brocade in a black-andwhite geometric Moorish motif, while others had dark wooden frames with seats and backs of wide woven leather strips. The leather smelled faintly of cattle, and creaked agreeably when Lina lowered herself into one. The hostess disappeared through the arch that had the altar in it, nodding her head to the statue as she ed. She returned almost at once, and two women in black dresses and white aprons appeared, each balancing a round brass tray about three feet in diameter, carefully arranged with platters of food. The platters were pottery, elaborately decorated in a dark blue and ocher design of stylized flowers, a Spanish motif. Eduardo said, “I was telling Erminio and Rosalina about the Christmas Eve dinner you had with my family, and how I regretted that it was French and not Esmeraldan. So Rosalina agreed to serve only native food today.” Erminio, Lina thought. I almost got it right. Eduardo pronounced the names slowly and clearly, and Lina realized he had understood her difficulty catching the introductions. She didn’t recognize very many of the foods. The garnishes were familiar avocado, lime, green peppers and pineapple slices. But the main ingredients -

shrimp, chicken, steak and scallops, were foods Lina had seldom tasted since she had arrived in Esmeralda. I guess these foods are native to the people of this class. Not to the people I live with. I wonder if Eduardo and his friends have ever had the plain boiled rice and beans and plantains of the barrio. The maids set the huge trays down on mahogany tables and began offering the platters of food to the four of them. Two men, dressed in black with pleated white shirts, entered the room, bearing bottles of champagne. Ceremoniously, they popped the corks into white napkins, and poured the wine into goblets made of cut glass mounted on silver stems and bases. It was still only about ten-thirty, pretty early for a drink, Lina thought, but she felt too self-conscious to refuse one. She’d had nothing to eat today, only a few cigarettes, and last night’s dinner had been an avocado, a banana and a Coke, so she was certainly ready for the food. Sipping the champagne and eating the hors d’oeuvre, Lina smiled. Last night I went to sleep hungry in a dirt-floored shack, today I’m sitting in this elegant room having delicacies and champagne served to me. The champagne quickly affected her, and, without realizing it, she gobbled some of the food. The maids, trained to be observant of the guests’ needs, quickly converged on her, thrusting tray after tray in her direction. Suddenly, she found herself with food in both hands. The others looked at her, clearly surprised. She was unable to suppress a painful blush. Soon other guests arrived. One after the other, Lina was introduced to them. She hoped she would get a chance to ask Eduardo to go over the names before things got embarrassing. There were finally twelve people in all, four couples besides Lina and Eduardo and Erminio and Rosalina. All of the women were dressed like Rosalina - very feminine dresses, in pale cool-looking pastels. Clearly, each woman had had her hair done for the occasion - five shiny stiffly-sprayed coiffures surrounded Lina. Lina had some lipstick and mascara, but she always felt she looked like a clown when she put it on. The contrast between her pale skin and the bright lipstick was jarring, and dark eyelashes with red hair just didn’t look plausible. She knew that achieving the perfect look of all these women took a lot of time and concentration. She felt odd and homely, and pathetically underdressed. She

pulled herself together then. I can’t even begin to think of measuring up to the fashion standards of these people. I have to forget about all that, and just act like myself, with no pretensions. A few of the others started to speak to Lina in English, but she insisted it wasn’t necessary. And it really wasn’t. The upper class spoke so differently from the people Lina lived with, so much slower, and without dropping any of the letters. Lina felt listening to them was very much like listening to English. Of course, speaking was a step beyond listening. Still, with the steady flow of the champagne, Lina relaxed and became more fluent. A bit before noon, Erminio announced that it was time to get started, and the women began to gather up their purses and beach bags. Lina had almost forgotten this was to be a picnic. She had already eaten all she wanted, but she dutifully filed out of the house with the others. Outside, it was fiery hot. A line of jeeps stretched along the curve of the driveway, each with a driver. The jeeps began loading up and driving away. The last one was for their hosts and Eduardo and Lina. Rosalina, Eduardo and Lina got in the back, and Erminio got in front, twisting around to speak to Lina. “All of this land we travel over now is the property of my family. We have been here since Columbus’ second voyage. We’re raising champion race horses, and doing experimental work with cattle, trying to develop a strain that can withstand the tropical climate and still yield a large quantity of beef.” Lina thought the Peace Corps might be interested in Erminio’s experiments. Providing more affordable protein sources was the kind of project they encouraged. She made a mental note to get in touch with Erminio later, on business. The jeep tore along the dirt road, churning up a cloud of dust. Aside from the dust, the road was pretty good. At first fields lined the road on both sides, stretching off to the distant mountains. After a while, the fields gave way to wilderness, full of tangled jungle vegetation, completely uncultivated. Finally, the jeep drew up at a cleared area, and Lina looked at her watch. Twenty-five minutes, she noted. “We are still on my land,” said Erminio, “and we would still be if we continued driving for another hour. There are a couple of public roads cutting through, but all the land is mine.”

Lina wondered how much land that made. As she got out of the jeep, she looked back and saw another line of jeeps following them. They were in front of a large rustic house, set up on stilts, surrounded by verandas like the main house. Rosalina led the women inside and assigned each one a place to change into her bathing suit. Lina’s suit was one she had appropriated from her cousin just before leaving Trowbridge to come to Esmeralda. She had been trying on her own bathing suits when her mother came into the room. Lina had lost weight during the training, and all her suits hung off her, making her look gaunt and sickly. In desperation, Lina’s mother had commandeered all the women’s bathing suits in the family. They discovered that 12-year-old Kathleen’s suit looked good on Lina. Its broad horizontal green and white stripes added bulk to Lina’s figure, and a row of white ruffles around the seat made her look less haggard. Lina’s prominent bust, unaffected by any kind of weight loss, bulged out the front and top of the child’s suit, concentrating attention away from her thinness. She found Eduardo just outside the door and he led her down to a beach along a creek. Walking behind him, Lina studied Eduardo in his bathing suit. He wore a tight bikini, the kind Lina had noticed were popular on the beaches here. He had a good build, not muscle-bound, but a good strong body. Walking behind him, Lina could see the muscles rippling in his back. He had a narrow waist and tight buttocks. And, although he had a patch of dark hair in the small of his back, the rest of his back was bare. Lina hated to see men who had hair all over their bodies. Once she had sat on a beach behind a man whose back was covered with bristly black hair, with longer hair jutting out of his shoulders and down over the tops of his arms like epaulets. Repulsed by the sight, she had moved her blanket. On the beach, she could see that Eduardo had quite a bit of black hair on his chest, but a clear white space below his breastbone. She cast a brief glance below that, where his abbreviated suit protruded suggestively. If I were a man, she thought, I’d wear trunks. I’d be embarrassed to display those bulges. At one end of the beach, there was a low waterfall bouncing down a rocky cliff, producing a soft mist that cooled the whole area.

“Do you like to swim, Lina?” She laughed and nodded, and walked to the edge of the bank. She waded into the water, then moved out. Swimming to the center of the stream, she called to Eduardo, “Watch my fingertips.” She let her breath out, raised her right arm and let herself sink to the bottom. Resurfacing, she called, “Could you see my fingers when I was underwater?” “No. It looked like your hand was a couple of feet under the water. What are you doing?” “Checking whether it’s safe to dive.” She got out of the water. The others slowly drifted down from the house. “Oh, Erminio, how beautiful!” she heard one of the women say. “It’s so cool and peaceful.” Lina got back into the water and swam across the stream, then got out and climbed up the slippery side of the waterfall. She let the cool water flow over her for a few moments. Then she found an outcropping, dug her toes into the edge of it, poised briefly between standing and falling, and did a swan dive into the deep pool. Everybody clapped when Lina surfaced. She started swimming freestyle back and forth in the broad pool below the waterfall, as if she were swimming laps, momentarily forgetting where she was. Then, in sheer exuberance, she did a lap of butterfly. When she paused for breath, she saw that everyone was watching her. She climbed out, laughing nervously, and sat on the bank. All right, I’m showing off, trying to make it up to myself that I don’t have stylish clothes and sophisticated Spanish. If I’m going to be out of place anyway, I might as well do the things I’m good at. “Lina, what do you think of my swimming style?” Eduardo asked, doing a lap of freestyle. Although he was a bit clumsy, he’d clearly had swimming lessons. “Great!” she exclaimed. “Why don’t you try moving your arms a little more this way?” She demonstrated. Right away, he looked lighter in the water.

Then Erminio asked for advice. This is a cinch, thought Lina. Since Erminio floated so high in the water, it was easy to show him how to swim straight ahead instead of just splashing about. Soon Lina was teaching a little swimming and diving class, all male. She beckoned to the women to come down. They were all sitting and standing around, in beautiful fashionable swimsuits, chatting, but none of them had gone anywhere near the water. Their hairdos and their makeup still looked perfect. The women smiled and waved, and came down to the edge of the creek, dabbling their toes into the water and carefully sprinkling some over themselves to cool off. Clearly they were not going to swim. Erminio climbed out of the water and wandered off. “Come on, everybody,” he called a few minutes later. “Lunchtime.” A huge campfire had been set up back from the road, and the air was heavy with the smell of roasting meat. Lina dried off and put a knee-length white terrycloth playsuit of Stacy’s on over her bathing suit. A servant materialized and presented her with what was apparently lunch - a huge section of banana leaf, with a grilled piece of meat on it. Lina had never seen such an enormous amount of meat served as one portion. She accepted the meat with a weak smile and sat down at a picnic table. The meat was very rare and bloody. Lina cut a few pieces off the edges, where it was slightly better done, and nibbled on them. There were dishes of other foods on the table, potato salad, Spanish-style rice cooked with peas and saffron, and vegetables and fruits. Lina took some of them onto her banana leaf, partially covering the meat. A dog and a couple of cats had appeared at the smell of meat cooking, and Lina began cutting off hunks of the meat and surreptitiously feeding it to them under the table. One of the cats climbed into Lina’s lap and began to lick her hand. “I wish I were a cat,” said Eduardo, smiling, as he ed in back of Lina. Eventually, she disposed of all of the beef, she hoped unobserved. It’s actually very funny, she thought. Hungry yesterday, hungry tomorrow, stuffed today. She looked around at the other women. They had put on a variety of stylish bathing-suit coverups - one wore a Malaysian sarong, another a shift with a Grecian drape, covering only her right shoulder. All their coiffures were intact,

and Lina started fluffing up her hair. It was so thick it took forever to dry in back. At least, she thought, once it dries, it will look as good as it did before however good that was. After lunch, Erminio announced, “Now we have a special treat. We’re going to have a rodeo.” They left the tables and walked back to the house and beyond it, to an area of corrals and paddocks. Near one of the corrals, cowboys were spinning lassos, roping each other and the fence posts and laughing and joking. They were dressed in Spanish style, tight black suits with bolero jackets, ruffled white shirts and string ties with silver medallions. Erminio called one of them over. “Show the señorita how to use the lasso.” The cowboy started to spin the rope, first slowly, then so fast it blurred. Abruptly he turned and aimed it at a fence post. It hissed through the air and landed squarely over the post. The cowboy gave a little cry and jerked the rope tight. He went over and took the lasso off, then handed it to Lina with a smile and a bow. She tried to follow his instructions on spinning it. It was much harder than it looked, but eventually she did get it to make a few slow crooked loops. “Come, señorita, see how it is with a real animal.” The rodeo began then, the cowboys releasing enormous pale-dun steers into the corral and roping them, then jumping off their horses and wrestling the steers to the ground, where they tied their legs together. “What kind of cattle are they?” Lina asked Erminio. These animals did not at all resemble the small skinny cows she had seen in the countryside around Aguadulce. “Brangus. It’s a crossbreed of Angus cows and Brahman cattle from India. Brahmans can withstand tropical conditions.” Lina thought she’d definitely have to get in touch with Erminio later, on business. “Señorita, try roping one of them,” called one of the cowboys. Lina looked

around to see that the other women were standing back and chatting, scarcely paying any attention to the rodeo. Shrugging, she climbed up to the top rung of the corral and took a lasso from a cowboy. She spun it awkwardly, then aimed it at a steer, but she wasn’t even close. She tried it a few more times, but with no more success. “If you kept at it long enough, you’d get it,” said Erminio. “You’ve already got the basics. Why don’t you try throwing one of the steers?” “Oh, no. They’re much too big for me.” “No, look, señorita, it’s much easier than you think,” one of the cowboys said. “You just have to get one or two fingers into the corner of the steer’s mouth, and pull. They fall like they had been shot.” So Lina tried that and found, to her surprise, that it was true - these enormous beasts simply collapsed if you could manage to exert a slight downward pressure on their jaws. Tying the legs wasn’t very hard, either, though Lina was very slow, and the cowboys had to hold the squirming steers while she fumbled around. She was having fun, laughing and shouting Epa! along with the cowboys when one of the steers was roped or thrown, until she glanced outside the corral and saw the other women standing there rigidly, watching her with a mixture of amazement and distaste. “Qúe marimacho, la americanita,” said one of the women. Lina memorized the unfamiliar word so she could ask Eduardo what it meant. She looked down at herself, her hands dripping with the steers’ saliva, her feet and legs covered with dirt, her white playsuit grimy with dust. “I think I’ve had enough,” she told the cowboys, and climbed out of the corral. She went over to Erminio. “I’m going to go for a quick swim to clean up.” When she got back to the house, the others had all dressed and were lounging on the various verandas sipping drinks and nibbling the food the servants were offering. The cowboys, drifting up from the corral, were standing around chatting and spinning their lassos.

Lina went inside and dressed, rubbing her wet hair with several towels, trying to get it, if not fashionable, at least as neat as possible. When she came out, she saw a cowboy sitting on the edge of a veranda, strumming idly on a guitar. Lina went over to him and asked if he knew an Esmeraldan folk song she was fond of. He began to play it and to sing along. But he knew only a few words, and Lina was disappointed. Eduardo came over. “I haven’t heard that song in years. I my nursemaid singing it to me as a child, but I don’t the words very well.” Softly, Lina began singing. By the time she had finished, she was surrounded by the group, listening in silence. At the end, everybody clapped. I’d better start fading into the background, she thought. All day I’ve been drawing attention to myself. But everybody insisted she continue singing, and she went through the three or four songs she and the cowboy both knew. Lina got up and wandered into the house, looking for a bathroom. She finally found one, deep in the interior of the house. On her way back, she stepped through a door and found herself face to face with one of the men - she couldn’t his name. “Hola,” she said, and started to by him. Suddenly he grabbed her arm, pulled her into a short corridor. Before she could grasp what was happening, he pressed himself against her and kissed her, thrusting his tongue into her mouth. Lina tried to push him away, but he was strong and determined. She twisted and ducked her head, burying her face in his chest. She wanted to scream, but she was embarrassed, afraid of the scene it would cause. Silently, she struggled with him, managing to raise her arms from her sides and to get her hands on his chest. She pushed hard with her hands and her head, at the same time stamping on his instep as hard as she could. She knew her soft sandals wouldn’t do much harm. I wish I had Rosalina’s sharp heels, she thought. This bastard wouldn’t be able to walk for a week. He released her, and she pushed him again, saying, “Let me go, you pig!” She backed out of the corridor and began to run. She heard him exclaim, not even sounding upset, “Qué leona! Eduardo sí tiene suerte!” - What a lioness! Eduardo certainly is lucky! Lina rushed outside through the first door she came to. God, she thought. Just

like Pedro. I don’t even know this guy, don’t know his name or which woman he’s married to. I haven’t spoken three words to him all day. What made him think he could just grab me like that? She was furious and disgusted. He had no reason to think I like him, but that didn’t bother him at all. He felt like pawing me, so that’s what he did. Too shaken to go back to the group, she wandered around, trying to get her fright and anger under control. Behind the house were more corrals and pastures, and Lina walked down a track leading to three other buildings, cattle or horse barns. The track ended, cut off by a chain-link fence a little beyond the third building. On the other side of the fence was a substantial paved road. Lina walked to the end of the track, looked through the fence for a moment, then turned to start back. From this point of view, the scene looked strangely familiar. It was beginning to get dark, and that had something to do with it. She went over to the first barn and looked in. It was a cattle barn, nothing special. She went on to the next one. She could hear the cattle lowing before she got to the door. She didn’t care much for cattle - they were so placid and dumb. Imagine the stupidity of them, letting such a small creature as me wrestle them to the ground. The door of the third barn was partly closed - Lina idly nudged it to open it enough for her to see inside. The door reluctantly swung back a little on its hinges, letting out a shrill squeak that made her jump. In the stalls, the Brangus cattle munched on grain and swatted flies with their long tails. The door had swung to after Lina, and it squealed again as she pulled it open. She stopped, riveted by a startlingly clear memory of the scene - Luke, Kevin and herself climbing over the fence, looking for the missing grain in the first two barns, without success. Then in the third barn, with its noisy door, finding the sacks labeled PROJECT AGAINST HUNGER - GIFT OF THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES TO THE HUNGRY OF THE WORLD. And stealing it. For that was surely what Erminio must have judged their escapade. Meléndez, yes, that was Erminio’s name. Lina left the barn. Suddenly, she started to laugh, thinking how strange that this could have happened. Well, maybe not so strange. Esmeralda is such a small place, its tiny upper class must all be connected. She couldn’t wait to tell Luke

and Kevin about this. One of the cowboys was strolling along the track toward the cattle barns. “Are you lost, señorita?” “No. Just out of place.” He looked puzzled. She headed back toward the house, feeling his eyes following her. When Lina got back to the group, everyone was looking for her, including her attacker. He at least had the grace to avoid looking her in the eyes. “It’s time to go back to the main house, Lina,” Eduardo said. It was dark when they arrived, and the candles on the chandeliers had already been lit, so Lina still didn’t know how it was done. Everybody had a final drink, then the party broke up. She wondered what these friends of Eduardo’s thought of his date. She smiled to herself - I don’t have to be a mind-reader to know that. They’re very surprised at his choice - they think I’m unkempt and uncouth and unfeminine. But they agree with Marta - the red hair and green eyes are so exotic that Eduardo could hardly be expected to act rationally. But they’re sure it won’t last. Eduardo will soon realize he’s more comfortable with a woman of his own class. Which I clearly am not. In the car on the way home, Lina told Eduardo what had happened. She started to describe the man who had grabbed her, but Eduardo quickly said, “No. I don’t want to know who it was.” “I can’t understand what got into him.” “Well, you were the center of attention all day. You acted completely different from all the other women. He must have found that exciting. Perhaps he thought you were interested in him.” “Isn’t it customary to find out how welcome you are before you grab?” “Well, try to forget about it. It’s over, and you aren’t hurt.” He doesn’t know whether I’m hurt or not, she thought - and he doesn’t seem to

care. She was silent for a few minutes, then decided to drop the subject. She didn’t want to start an argument. “Eduardo, what does marimacho mean?” “It means a girl who acts like a boy. I forget the word in English.” “Tomboy.” “Yes, that’s it. Tomboy. Why do you ask?” “One of the women said it about me.” She didn’t have to ask whether it was a derogatory word. He said nothing for a few minutes, then, “I get the feeling you don’t appreciate our culture very much.” “That’s not true. But there are parts of it I can’t ire.” “Let me guess. It bothers you that the men act so macho and the women so feminine. You find the men too aggressive and the women too ive.” “Well, yes. Men should be able to think about something besides sex. And women can do more than just look pretty.” “Is there something wrong with trying to make yourself attractive? “No, of course not. But there’s more to life than that. And being really attractive is partly how you act, anyway. If I were a man, I don’t think I could stay interested for very long in a woman who didn’t do anything else but look beautiful. I’d get bored.” “You’re terribly naive, Lina. You have grand ideas about how everything should be, but I think without much real understanding of how they actually are.” “And how are they, actually?” “Different from what you wish they were. For one thing, men have stronger… uh… physical…needs than you seem to realize.” “You’ve got me there, Eduardo. Men don’t seem to be able to get along without

sex. I don’t really understand it, but I’ve heard it said often enough to realize it must be true.” “And it might surprise you to learn that many women also have very strong physical desires.” Lina thought of Stacy. “I’m not quite as stupid as that.” “I suppose American men have a better attitude toward women.” Lina sighed. “No, not really. But at least they’re taught to be more polite about it. An American man wouldn’t have grabbed me like that. Unless he was drunk, and your friend wasn’t.” “What’s the solution, then?” “Well, there’s no simple answer. But I think women should spend more time developing their talents and less on clothes and makeup. When women look and act the way the women did today, it encourages men to think they have no other abilities but to attract men.” “All right, I agree with that. But do you think if women stopped wearing makeup, the problem would be solved?” “No, of course not. But it might be a start. And the men would have to start realizing that there are more things to do in life than sleep with women.” Eduardo laughed. “I guess I don’t have to ask if you’ve ever been madly in love.” Lina thought about Pierce for a moment. “You’re right. I haven’t. I…I guess you have.” “Yes.” He drove in silence for a while. “You know, Lina, it’s a great experience. For me it was wonderful, even when it was pretty bad.” Then he added, “At least, until the very end. Then it was terrible.” “All right. I can understand the joy of being madly in love. But that level of ion doesn’t last. And then what do you have? You have to find some ground to communicate on other than sex.”

“True. And I it that here the only real relationship between men and women is often sex.” “Right. The separation is almost complete. Women really only have close relationships with each other and with children.” “And men keep to themselves except when they want to go to bed?” “Well, that may be a slight exaggeration, but basically it’s true.” “You’re right. It would be better to emphasize the ways we’re all similar, instead of acting as if we have nothing in common.” She caught his sarcastic tone. “Well, why not? Men and women are more alike that most people it, certainly more alike than this kind of culture accepts.” “Still, Lina, you have to realize that you are actually here, in Esmeralda, not in Utopia. And when you act the way you do, an Esmeraldan man might very well pick up the wrong cues.” “I’m not issuing invitations. I’m just acting naturally.” “I understand that. But most men here would not. I think you should consider how you might seem to an Esmeraldan man. You act so independent, so uncaring of the social conventions, so determined to do whatever you want. Even when it’s so clearly not what any other woman would attempt. That’s the way prostitutes here behave. Add to that the red hair and…Lina, you’re very pretty. If a man thinks you’re…available…you shouldn’t get so upset.” “Oh, so your friend was justified.” And Pedro, she thought. He’s saying that Pedro’s attack was partly my fault. “No, I don’t mean that…whoever it was…was right. I just mean that he responded to what to him were very clear signals. And you should try to be more aware of that. It might keep you out of trouble.” “God, I’m so sick of everybody being so preoccupied with sex. What’s the big deal? There are so many other interesting things to do.” He laughed. “Not in Esmeralda.”

Chapter 12

Francisco and Lina were working hard, trying to improve conditions in the barrio. Francisco had organized some of the local men to construct a split bamboo building with a thatched roof for the new clinic. Lina doggedly attended meetings at various city bureaus, arguing her case that at least some of the major streets should be paved. Abruptly, after dozens of frustrating meetings, Lina was called to a government office. “Señorita, the main streets in your barrio will be paved in two weeks. Make sure the clinic is finished by that date. The mayor is going to come to the barrio to dedicate the improvements. Why is the mayor doing this? Lina wondered. There aren’t any elections scheduled. Or even rumored. He must be looking for some kind of political appointment. The dedication day arrived and the mayor and other officials pulled up in shiny chauffeur-driven black cars. Francisco and Lina had organized a reception, and the officials were treated to snacks and shots of rum, although it was only 10 AM. The mayor greeted Lina effusively, ignoring Francisco. She was surprised to see radio reporters, and even a TV reporter, with the mayor’s party. He must be looking for quite a high office. The mayor nudged her toward the TV setup and shook her hand, smiling into the camera. Lina was wearing the white dress with the embroidered red cherries she’d been wearing when she’d met Pierce. The dress still looked beautiful - fresh and stylish. She felt good, knowing she looked elegant enough for the occasion. There were a lot of people crowding the streets - it seemed as if the entire population of the barrio had turned out. Lina realized this must be the first time

anyone so prominent had ever been there. When people congratulated her for having arranged everything, she was embarrassed. She didn’t know why her barrio had been singled out for such an honor, but she was pretty sure it involved her being American. An American’s request was a lot more likely to be acted on than an Esmeraldan’s. And the mayor was a lot more likely to get TV coverage of himself with a white American girl. A dais had been set up in the middle of the main street of the barrio, and the mayor got up on it and began a long flowery speech. It was very hot and still. Lina let her mind wander, so she missed the beginning of the commotion. A rock flew at the dais, narrowly missing the mayor’s head. More rocks followed, then sudden rifle shots. The mayor, showing surprising agility for such a fat man, leaped off the dais and launched himself into the crawlspace under the nearest house. His shiny shoes protruded for a moment, then wriggled away into the darkness. Lina turned around to give a piece of her mind to the disrupters, when she was abruptly pushed to the ground and a heavy body fell over her. As he rolled away, Francisco hissed, “Don’t move. Something is wrong - seriously wrong. Stay down and cover your head with your arms. I will come back for you.” Lina heard more gunfire, then an odd whooshing sound. She glanced up to see a house burst into flames. She threw her arms over her head and lay rigid in the dust. What seemed like a long time later, Francisco threw himself down next to her. “You’ve got to get out of here. Crawl over to the side of the street. Keep your head down. When you get to the shadow of the green house over there, go around to the left side of it. Then you’ll be out of the line of fire. Wait for me there - I’ll get you back to your house.” He put his hand on her arm. “Lina, listen, this may be serious. I don’t know very much yet, but I have a feeling it’s something big. Stay in your house. I will come or send someone to let you know what to do.” He began picking up handfuls of dust from the street and rubbing them over Lina’s white dress. “You’re too conspicuous,” he explained. He got up into a low crouch and scurried away. Lina followed his instructions. When she reached the shadow of the green house,

she sat cowering against the wall, waiting. But Francisco didn’t return. I can’t sit here all afternoon. I’ve got to get inside. Gingerly, she got to her feet. She took off her shoes and began to make her way to her house by a back-alley route, avoiding the busier areas of the barrio. Changing into a plain skirt and blouse, she checked the contents of her battered straw tote as usual -underwear, deodorant, soap, shampoo, toothbrush, towel, pencil, notebook, money. She sat on her bed with the tote in her lap and waited for Francisco. But an hour went by, and he didn’t show up. What now? I have no idea what’s wrong, or how serious it is. I’m completely cut off here - no radio, no friends. What if it’s another coup, or a revolution or a civil war? I need to be with other Americans if there’s going to be any serious trouble. I’d better go over to Charlotte and Stacy’s. She stuffed some more clean underwear and another hand towel into her bag, and cautiously left the house. It took her an hour to weave her way through the back streets, trying to stay in the shadows. When she finally got there, the house was empty, though the door was unlocked as usual. Lina tried to read, but she was agitated and frightened. She got up and started pacing the living room. Medio-luto rubbed against her ankles and meowed questioningly. She picked up the cat and went in and lay down on Stacy’s bed. The two snuggled up and the cat began purring. It was after three when Lina woke up, and she was still alone. Something seemed wrong. Gradually, she realized what it was - the barrio was very quiet. No children screaming, no hawkers pushing their wares, no loud music. She got up and went to the door. The street was empty. Although it was very hot, everybody had doors and jalousies closed. She heard a low murmur next door - the radio was on at María’s. The faint rhythm of the music sounded wrong to Lina. She closed the jalousies and the front door and went over to María’s by the back way. Luís was there, and the whole family was huddled around the radio. “What do they say, María?” “Not very much. Listen.” There were occasional announcements exhorting the people to stay calm, but no information on what was going on. Mostly there was music - but not Esmeraldan-type music. No lively culebras or sorrowful ballads. It was American military-style music. Sousa marches, and the Battle Hymn of the

Republic over and over. Luís had a rifle, military and new-looking. He kept picking it up and caressing it nervously. The house smelled strange – gasoline, Lina guessed. “What do you think is going on?” Lina asked him. “It is nothing to be discussed with women,” he growled. “It is an affair of men.” Lina said nothing, but thought nastily that if it was trouble, Luís was right - it was the work of men. And for all his brashness, Luís is as nervous as I am. He doesn’t know anything - he’s just playing macho as usual. She tried to the long-ago orientation on what to do in case of a political crisis. The WATER code. I wonder if we’re still on A. How will I find out if the letter changes to T? It would be hard for anyone to get a message to me away out here. And what if we get to E? That list of evacuation points - I have no idea where mine is. But then, it doesn’t matter - all the places are outside the city, and I have no way of getting to any of them. Wait a minute, though. The information that the letter T has been reached is supposed to be broadcast on the radio. She tried to - what was the signal? Something about a library. Then it came back: the Abraham Lincoln library is closed. She concentrated, staring at the radio, mentally repeating every broadcast word. But an hour later, she still hadn’t heard anything about the Abraham Lincoln library. Of course there’s no guarantee the announcement will be broadcast, she thought. Maybe whoever’s taken charge of the radio station isn’t amenable to ing warning signals along to Americans. That was a possibility nobody had mentioned in the orientation. After Lina had been at María’s for about an hour, Charlotte and Stacy came in. Lina was so glad to see them! The girls went back to their own house, and Lina quickly told the other two what had happened in her barrio. “Something is wrong,” Charlotte said. “We know that much, but we don’t really know what’s going on.” “It just feels bad,” Stacy added. “Like a disaster is waiting to happen.” “Let’s go over to Kevin’s,” Lina suggested. “Maybe he knows more than we do.” But he wasn’t there - hadn’t been for quite a while, according to his neighbors. The three girls went back home, but kept popping over to María’s to hear the news.

“Did you notice it smells strange at Maria’s?” Stacy asked. Charlotte shrugged. “Yes,” Lina said. “Gasoline, I thought. Or kerosene.” “Oh my God,” Stacy gasped. “That was what Carmencita pointed at as I was leaving.” “What?” “Molotov cocktails. There are a couple of dozen of them in Maria’s kitchen.” Just then, people began to call out and to go outside, but only onto their porches, looking up. Cautiously, the girls went out. Half a dozen airplanes were flying over. This was unusual - it was rare to see a plane at all. And these planes weren’t airliners, they were small, maneuverable. “Military,” said Charlotte. Some odd flashes shot from the ground up to the planes, then a plane erupted into flames and the others began furiously shooting down. It sounded like popcorn popping. Pandemonium erupted in the barrio. Trucks and cars began to roar down the street, including, incongruously, a Coca-Cola truck. A man threw something at it, and it burst into flames, its occupants jumping out and fleeing. People threw things at them, yelling, “Get out of here, Americans!”, though the men were clearly Esmeraldans. “Americans?” Charlotte said in horror. “Is that how they insult people now? By calling them American?” “Look,” Lina whispered. All along the street, men on porches held pistols or rifles. “Come on!” Stacy urged. “Let’s go in. It’s dangerous for us to be outside like this, unprotected.” “We need to know what’s going on,” Lina said. “We can look out the windows. But we need to be inside.” An hour or so later, the girls heard a number of sustained barrages of gunfire. They could see nothing from the window, but it sounded very close. Next door,

Luís flew out onto the porch, clutching his vicious-looking rifle. A couple of jeeploads of police roared into sight, and Luís aimed clumsily in their direction. María screamed and dragged him back into the house. The riot police, heavily-armed and wearing their familiar white helmets, jumped out of their jeeps and began running down the street firing. Ordinarily, such a charge would have caused immediate panic-stricken flight, but this time many of the men held their ground and returned the fire. The police charge stopped abruptly. There was a moment of confused silence, then the police regrouped in a solid line. “Doesn’t look like anyone was hit,” Lina whispered from her position by the window. “The neighborhood men probably don’t know how to shoot,” Charlotte said. “And the police were running, so they couldn’t aim. Maybe this is just a show of force, and now everybody will go away and forget about the whole thing.” “Let’s hope so,” Stacy said. The standoff lasted a minute or two. Then a number of Molotov cocktails were hurled from porches, arcing gracefully through the air toward the police line. A police jeep burst into flames. Seconds later, so did a policeman. He ran forward, screaming horribly. Shots rang out. The policeman fell motionless just twenty feet from the girls’ door, still blazing brightly. “Oh my God.” Charlotte turned away from the window, gagging. “Where did all these guns and firebombs come from so suddenly?” Stacy said. “What the hell is going on?” The police line immediately began walking backward, fast. Reaching their jeeps, they piled into them and sped away. The neighborhood men went back into their houses and a sullen hush settled over the barrio. At dusk the disorder started again, though this time not right in front of the girls’ house. They could hear shooting and shouting, and there were dull glows in the sky that shouldn’t have been there. Eight o’clock came, but the rosary did not come on the radio. That chilled Lina - it seemed more ominous than the martial

music. That night the girls took turns sleeping, one of them always sitting awake near the back door. María had put her radio on a chair in the back patio, so the girls could hear it, too. But no real news was broadcast. In the morning the barrio was much more subdued. The roosters crowed as usual, but there were no meat vendors, and the tiny tiendas did not open. A heavy odor of smoke lay over everything, but it didn’t smell like the usual charcoal fires - it smelled like gasoline. There was menace in the air, as if the bright sunlight might be a trap for the unwary. “We’ve got to call Peace Corps headquarters,” Lina said. “We need some advice.” “Screw advice!” Stacy said. “We need someone to come and get our asses out of here.” “Well, which phone should we try for?” Charlotte asked. “The one at the police station or the one at the rectory?” “Better make it the station,” Lina said. “We’ve used that phone before. We don’t know the priest.” Threading their way through narrow back lanes, they headed toward the police station. The smell of gasoline seemed to get stronger as they got deeper into the barrio. Although it was a typical sunny day, the air was hazy with smoke, and Lina kept having to wipe tears out of her eyes with the back of her hand. Stacy was in the lead when the three girls, walking in single file down an alley, finally drew near the station. She peeked out from the shelter of the alley, then recoiled and let out a low moan. Lina pushed past her. The station was gone, burnt to the ground. Bombed-out vehicles were lying at crazy angles. Greasy black smoke curled out of the ruins, and charred corpses littered the ground. An overwhelming odor of gasoline hung in the air. Several of the detested white helmets were scattered among the corpses, but there were no weapons near any of them. “Whoever did this,” Charlotte said, “took all the guns afterward.”

“Come on, let’s get to the church. Fast,” Stacy said. Timidly, Charlotte knocked at the door of the rectory. It was immediately opened by an elderly priest, who took one look at them and practically dragged them inside. “Young ladies, you should not be out wandering the streets. You should not even be in this neighborhood at all. Something very bad is happening, I fear.” “Yes, padre,” said Charlotte. “We are also afraid. That is why we have come here. May we use your telephone?” “Yes, yes, of course. Call someone who will come to take you away from here. Far away.” He led them to the phone, and Charlotte called the Peace Corps headquarters while Lina questioned the priest. But he knew no more than they did. Lina turned around and saw Charlotte’s stricken face. “What did you find out? What should we do?” “I don’t know. I called, and I think it rang, but I’m not sure. Either the phone’s not working, or nobody’s there.” “So what the hell do we do now?” Stacy asked. “Stay here,” the priest urged. “Whatever happens, you will be safe in the church.” “He’s got a point,” Stacy said. “But if someone from the Peace Corps comes for us, they’ll never think to look here,” Lina said. “Right,” Charlotte said. “Let’s go back to our place, stay inside, and wait. If nobody comes for us by this afternoon, we’ll have to work out some plan.” They made their way back by a roundabout route. When they got to their corner, they could see very clearly - all the houses on their side of the street were in flames.

“Shit,” said Stacy. “There goes everything we’ve got, everything we’ve done.” “Come on, let’s get out of the middle of the street,” Lina said, pulling the other two into an alley. They huddled there, shaken and frightened. “What are we going to do now?” asked Stacy. “Maybe we should try to get to the Peace Corps headquarters or the Embassy.” Lina suggested. “I think it’s too late for that,” Charlotte said. “We’re too far from any safe place to walk. And we haven’t seen any buses or públicos. I don’t think they’re running.” “Anyway, all our money is tied up at the moment,” Stacy said, nodding at the line of flaming houses. “I have some,” Lina said. “But you’re right, there’s no way we can get all the way across town. Let’s go to my place.” “No, I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Charlotte said. “After all, the trouble seems to have started over there. Things might be even worse in your barrio. And it’s a long way to walk in the open.” “Yes,” said Charlotte. “And it’s a bad sign that Francisco never showed up again. If something has happened to him, maybe people will be looking for you, even waiting at your house.” Lina shuddered. “Why?” “Who knows? I mean, that’s the point. We don’t know anything. So we’ve got to be careful.” “What then?” Stacy asked. “The only other thing I can think of,” Lina said, “is Santo Tomás hospital. There are Peace Corps nurses there, and we know a lot of the Esmeraldan doctors and nurses. It’s close by. And there’s a telephone, so we can keep trying to call for help.”

“All right,” said Charlotte. “I don’t think we have any other choice. At least we’re traveling light.” They all took one last look at the blazing ruin where their house had been. “After all this time here, it’s hard to believe all we have left is the goddamn clothes on our backs,” Stacy said, her voice half-angry and half-scared. Slowly and carefully, they worked their way to the hospital. It was in chaos, the emergency room full of gunshot and burn cases. The air was alive with shrieks and moans. Lina knew the layout of the hospital. As she was leading the other two to an istrative office, they ran into a Peace Corps nurse. “Thanks for coming,” she said, leading them to the room where the nurses slept. “Things are so horrible here. We need all the help we can get.” The girls were too ashamed to it they had come to save themselves, not to offer help.

Chapter 13

The hospital was a concrete box two stories high, laid out in the form of an H. On the ground floor, the emergency room ran along the front of the bar of the H, backed by a corridor. The chapel, chaplain’s office, and istrative offices were on the other side of the corridor. Esmeraldan hospitals, like the schools, were Catholic. Upstairs in the same location, the operating rooms were in front, with the recovery rooms and labs in back. The wards ran along the legs of the H. Balconies along the outsides of the wards served as the only corridors. The building was no fortress, but to Lina, Charlotte and Stacy, it seemed completely secure. The hospital grounds were large and should have been lush, but the long drought had withered the flowering bushes and the grass was scorched to a crackling yellow mat. A small grove of royal palms stretched their spikes, futile lightning rods, toward the unresponsive sky. A few of the hardier shrubs still held leaves, though they were dingy and heavy with dust. One of the first people they met was Kevin. They all rushed to hug him. Stacy said, “Kevin, what the hell is going on?” “I don’t know. Some weird things happened in my barrio, and I knew something was really wrong. So I thought of how I could save my ass. I’ve worked here on and off, helping the with ing. So I just came on over.” “Is Luke here?” Lina asked. “No. I haven’t seen him in weeks.” “When is the Peace Corps going to come and get us out of here?” Charlotte wanted to know. “I talked to Boomer yesterday. He said he didn’t think things were so bad. He said I should stay put and keep in . But the phone’s been out all day today. I keep trying. But…well, I figure it’s going to be a long time before the

phone is working again.” The Peace Corps people had taken over an unused dressing room next to the nurses’ bedroom. They’d opened the connecting door and packed the extra room with discarded beds without mattresses, forming a rude sleeping ward for the Americans. This will be interesting, Lina thought. I always believed I could sleep through anything, but these exposed springs might be a challenge. The girls dumped their few belongings there and went around the hospital looking for ways to help out. Stacy was able to handle the gore pretty well, so she began helping the nurses change dressings and IV tubes. Dealing with the wounded made Charlotte faint and sick, but she found she could manage to cope with bloody instruments. So she took over the job of post-op cleanup - washing the blood and bits of skin off instruments after surgery, and sterilizing them in the autoclave. She showed Lina the machine, a stainless steel cylinder. “You wrap the instruments in towels and put them in. The autoclave cleans the instruments and the towels with steam.” “Wouldn’t it be quicker just to wash the instruments in boiling water?” Lina asked. “You can’t put sharp things, like scalpels and needles, in water. They lose their edge,” explained Charlotte, who had picked up this bit of information a few minutes before. Lina found she could do whatever anyone asked of her - nothing could make her squeamish - not blood, not vomit, not even death. She drifted into a grisly schedule, working in the operating rooms whenever there was a need, which quickly became most of the daylight hours. Her Spanish was good enough for her to quickly pick up the names of instruments and the commands the doctors were likely to give her. She grabbed naps whenever she could, then spent every night in the death-room. All the men who were expected to die during the night were put into one small windowless room, on gurneys, as Lina learned the wheeled stretchers used in the emergency room were called. A single candle lit the room - candles were scarce. The point was to give as much comfort as possible to the dying. In reality, the

only thing Lina could do for the men was to offer them a little water, a puff on a cigarette, or a few soothing words. The water is contaminated, she thought, and the cigarettes are deadly, but it’s too late to matter. After the first few times, Lina decided to go along with it whenever a delirious patient thought she was his wife. She murmured platitudes while dying men gave her instructions on what to do with the family money. Lina guessed few of the men had ever had as much as a hundred pesos at one time. A lot of the men used their last breath to give advice about the children. “Keep them in school,” many of them said. “They need to get an education.” Lina was surprised. It was the first time she’d heard men take so much interest in the children’s schooling. When a patient died, she removed the medical appliances, IV tubes and catheters, so they could be cleaned and re-used. Even this gruesome task did not shake her composure. Or was it apathy? Many of the patients were delirious. Groans, screams, prayers and curses permeated the hot, close air. The dim flickering illumination hid the worst sights, but the smells of blood, vomit and excrement were overpowering. And the smell of death, of impending corruption, hung low and ominous in the heavy humidity. Very rarely did a man survive the night. The nurses are good, Lina thought. It only takes them a minute or so to work out exactly how long a wound will take to kill a man. Whenever she stopped to think, she supposed she must be upset, but she didn’t really feel it. She didn’t feel much of anything, even hunger, after the first few days of eating only a bowl of rice and beans and some onions twice a day. The numbers of mouths to feed grew constantly, but there was little reserve supply of food, and not much prospect of getting more. The kitchen workers were trying to conserve food, so the bowls of rice and beans and onions grew steadily smaller. There was no shortage of cigarettes, the black-tobacco native ones - Lina smoked incessantly and tried to sleep when she felt hungry. The chronic slight giddiness brought on by hunger was actually pleasant. Lina, Charlotte and Stacy were issued official-looking nametags, though it

seemed to Lina that most of the patients were far beyond caring who was tending to them. She lay on her bed, wriggling to try to get comfortable on the naked springs. Turning the nametag over in her hand, she read: C. O’REILLY, Enfermera. “We’ve got to keep in mind,” she said to Charlotte, “we’re not really nurses, whatever the tag says, no matter how desperate the situation.” She looked at the tag again. Maybe it should say: S. O’HARA. Am I coping so easily because I keep promising myself I’ll think about all this later? At least Lina had some experience of death. Charlotte had never before seen a dead body. Her parents had felt that their children should not be exposed to funerals or other unhappy events. Lina had been to many wakes and funerals - an Irish child sees these things early. She was somewhat used to the trappings of death - dim candlelight, the smell of incense and lilies, the stiff, almost-familiar figure of the deceased dressed in best clothes, with rosary beads wound unnaturally around stiff fingers. The powdered face always struck her as wrong, as if the undertaker had tried to model a face in clay from a verbal description. Lina thought of several times when her mother had tried to get her to touch a body in its coffin. But she had always refused. Then her memories flickered around something she had not ed in years - something she consciously avoided ing. She was sixteen. Eighteen-year-old Davie was a distant cousin of hers. He had been in the same hospital as Lina’s grandmother, who had suffered a stroke. Every day, after school, Lina had first visited her grandmother, then Davie. At first he hadn’t seemed very sick, and the two shyly became close, following all the breathless stages of teenage romance. Eventually they got to the point of kissing and hugging in the dark corners of hospital stairwells. But Davie had become worse, and eventually he had been confined to bed. He grew dreadfully thinner. Finally, whenever she had visited him, a nurse would soon ask her to leave, saying he needed medication. Lina had seen the agony in his face, the bruises from the constant injections covering his skinny arms, the longing and the tears that formed in his eyes when he saw the nurse approach with another needle. But she had not entirely grasped what was happening. Then she had been prevented from seeing him at all for three or four weeks. No

explanation, just “No visitors for awhile.” Late one night, when Lina got up to go to the bathroom, she heard her parents talking downstairs. Her father said, “We should tell Colleen. After all, she’s going to find it out soon enough.” “No. Maybe he’ll get better. He’s so young…” “Get better? You know Davie’s dying. He’s blind, for God’s sake! You saw him, heard him - do you really think there’s any chance for him?” “No, no, I suppose not. Oh, Jim, wasn’t it awful? The way he said he didn’t understand why God was doing this to him?” “A lot of that talk is because of the cancer - it’s in his brain now. He’s pretty doped up, too.” “I know. But when he said he must have done something to deserve so much pain, but he couldn’t what it was, I thought my heart would break.” The next day, Lina’s mother had said, “You know, Colleen, Davie’s very sick. Now…well, his doctors are afraid he won’t get better.” Lina had waited for her mother to explain just how sick Davie was. But her mother just turned away. Two days later, her father hung up the phone, ran his hands through his hair, and turned to her. “Colleen, Davie died an hour ago.” Surprisingly, considering the terrible wasting Davie had suffered, the wake had been held with the coffin open. Lina ed kneeling on the padded velvet step before the coffin. She gasped as she saw the boy she had been so in love with, a skeleton with only a thin layer of fragile papery skin stretched over cheekbones that seemed sharp enough to break through at any moment. She had groped toward him through her tears and taken his hand. It was cold, with a finality far beyond the effects of refrigeration. The boy whose lips had felt so sweet in the hospital corridors had become another kind of being, alien and frightening. Lina let out a loud gasp, then jumped up and fled. She had spent hours walking and sobbing. These corpses, Lina thought, don’t seem so dreadful. They’re more like the robber in Los Angeles - still warm. She could almost pretend they were still

alive. It was hard to tell exactly when a man stopped breathing, but Lina tried to stay alert. A man had to be dead, of course, before you retrieved the IV’s and catheters, but the sooner after death you did it, the easier it was. You definitely didn’t want to wait until the corpse went rigid - then it could be a real struggle to retrieve the equipment. At least the bodies never got that cold - not in this climate. The climate, however, produced another problem. Putrefaction began immediately after death - sometimes sooner, Lina thought. And there were rats, lots of them. An outbreak of typhoid or cholera was a real danger. One afternoon, Lina was dozing lightly. She stirred and woke, her mouth watering. What was that delicious aroma? Had the kitchen finally got some meat? She got up and sleepily wandered out to the balcony. Kevin stood there, staring out over the lawn. “Hey, Lina. Have you seen the human barbecue pit?” She looked down. A trench had been dug through the middle of the lawn. The corpses had been lined up, doused with kerosene and ignited. Now they were smoldering, the human shapes still visible through the smoke and charred skin. Lina gagged on her saliva, outraged at her body’s betrayal. She fled back to bed, her stomach churning with hunger pangs and nausea. Her dizziness led her into sleep, but the sleep was light and troubled. Finally, a loud heavy-arms fusillade jolted her completely awake. She sat up, her head pounding and full of confused impressions of Voodoo ceremonies with human sacrifices, and Catholic masses with priests intoning, “Take and eat, for this is my body.” These men have no problem killing each other, but they would be horrified by the idea of eating what they have killed. Strange there’s a taboo against eating human flesh, which makes no difference to the dead, but not against killing, which matters a great deal to the living.

*****

The third or fourth night Lina spent in the death-room, there was a tap on the door at about midnight. With the candle on the table behind her, she could scarcely see the man outside, but she saw the Roman collar glowing. She muttered a greeting. The priest entered and went around to each man. Performing his ritual mumbo-jumbo, she thought. She tried to tune him out, but she couldn’t help getting angry. Of course he knows what to do, she thought, because it’s always the same answer, no matter what the question. When he had finished, he came over and stood in front of her chair. “I am Padre López, the chaplain here.” “Lina. I’m one of the Peace Corps volunteers.” “This is a brave and comionate thing you are doing. But how terrible it must be for you.” The voice was deep and musical, and she strained to get a better look at him. She moved to the side of the candle, and he turned to look at her. He was young, around thirty she guessed, and meltingly handsome. His shiny black hair was thick and wavy, his skin olive. He had the most extraordinary eyes, dark and deep-set, with finely-arched eyebrows and such long thick eyelashes they almost looked false. “This is not a proper job for a young girl.” Young girl, she thought. Read - virgin. I bet he can’t stand to think that I might see one of these poor guys naked. Relax, she told herself. He’s trying to be nice, and I’m bristling at him for no reason. “Please let me know if there is anything I can do to help you or your friends. We are grateful for your assistance.” They talked for a while, about the hospital and the fighting, and Lina was grateful that the priest’s Spanish was slow and educated and very easy for her to understand. One afternoon she overheard some of the Esmeraldan nurses talking and giggling about the priest.

“Cuban,” one said. “But he must have had a Conquistador somewhere in his background.” “How can you tell that?” “Because he has Catalán eyes.” “What are Catalán eyes?” The nurse laughed. “You can always tell Catalán eyes. Dark, fringed…they’re just the most beautiful eyes in the world.” “Ah, yes. I understand what you mean.” Now why, Lina wondered, would a man who looks like that take a vow of celibacy? Ah well, never mind. As priests go, this one seems milder than most. He’s not always preaching or trying to force his views on everybody. And what he’s doing, comforting the dying - that’s the kind of thing priests are supposed to do.

*****

One afternoon Lina got up from a nap and went over to the door, where they kept their collection of white hospital smocks hung on a hook. She flipped through them, trying to find a relatively clean one. Nothing had been washed since the troubles began, and a stomach-churning smell of blood hung over them. Finally, she took all the smocks down and threw them on a bed where she could examine them closely. But they were all pretty filthy, so she just chose one at random and put it on. Turning, she saw herself in the now-revealed mirror on the back of the door. She stepped up close to the glass. Can this really be me? So thin - eyes sunken, hooded, black circles etched around them. Face so narrow the small gold earrings look huge. Skin as white as the smock. She clutched a handful of her unruly red hair, twisting it between her fingers. It had grown halfway down her back, completing the impression - a waif, starved and beaten, a pathetic child in need of adult protection. She raised her fist and

shook it at the mirror. No! I’m not helpless. Not yet.

*****

They were all frantic with worry about friends. Luke rated high on the list of missing people they worried about. “Listen,” Charlotte said, “Luke’s smart and sensible. If there was any chance at all, he made it out of danger.” “What about María and Carmencita and the other kids?” Charlotte wondered. “They probably lost everything they owned,” Stacy said, “little as it was. I only hope they got out. It must have happened fast - the wood in those houses was so dry. And the houses were so close together.” “The Gutiérrezes live closer to the center of town,” Lina said. “That might be good news,” Charlotte said. “Or bad,” Stacy added. “Francisco and his family,” Lina said faintly. The other two looked at her with such pity, she didn’t go on with her thought. Dead, she thought. Most likely, they’re all dead. How about Eduardo and his family? If this is a socialist revolution, it’s those people, the Salazars and their friends and relatives, who are most likely to be at risk. I hope none of them will be killed. She thought of Erminio, whose land stretched endlessly over the plains up to the mountains. That land was enough to house and feed all the people in her barrio, and probably more. And she ed how much of the land was uncultivated, when people were starving nearby. If I were in his position, rich and privileged in the midst of so much poverty, I’d understand the danger of revolution. And be ready to get out at any time.

Erminio’s land might be confiscated, but I’ll bet most of his money is kept outside of Esmeralda. That was an old Latin American custom. So even when a dictator was deposed, he, or his family if he were unwary enough to be assassinated, would retire to luxurious living on the Riviera, leaving an empty national treasury. In interviews, they always complained about how much they missed their country. But somehow they managed to drown their agony in champagne and caviar. “Medio-luto,” Charlotte said suddenly. They looked at each other. “Let’s hope she’s dead,” Stacy said. And they all burst into tears.

*****

The operating rooms were in use all the time. Soon, a second table was set up in each room. But after a while things got so busy, the minor operations were performed right on the gurneys. One day, Lina was assisting a surgeon in removing a bullet from a man’s abdomen. The doctor worked quickly, confidently, snipping and stitching. After a half hour, the waste basin was nearly full of loops of slippery blue intestine, nesting comfortably together in a thin coating of bloody jelly. Lina had already discovered that a human could live after the removal of yards of intestine. Live quite normally, too, if he didn’t die of infection. Though in this situation, that was a big IF. Suddenly, there was a lot of commotion in the hallway, and Lina heard a rushing sound, along with low commands. That told her that a couple of new patients were being wheeled into the other operating room, farther down the corridor. Tying one final knot, the surgeon turned to Lina. “This procedure is finished. Close the incision, nurse. I’m going on to the next patient.” He turned away, stripping off his gloves as he headed for the door.

Stunned, she stuttered, “Please doctor, sir, I’m not a nurse…” But he had already plunged through the door. A wave of horror run down her spine as she looked at the patient. The gaping incision ran from above the man’s breastbone to his groin. Things were pulsing and heaving in the open area - what were they? She identified lungs, heart - but what was that throbbing bluish thing on the left? Her vision fogged and her mouth went cottony. She staggered back a step. No, I can’t faint, she thought. This man will die if I do. She steadied herself on the edge of the gurney, a low whimper escaping her. The chaplain turned and saw her situation. Giving a final sign of the cross over a dead man, he went to her side. “Here.” He pulled on surgical gloves. “I’ll sew and you bandage.” His hands shook as he started to pull the muscle and skin together. “Do you know how to do this?” “I’ve never done anything this serious before, but I have done some stitching.” “So have I. I hope your experience has been with incisions, not buttons.” He gaped at her. Great, she thought, he must think I’m a jerk. He started sewing slowly and clumsily, with none of the facility the surgeon had shown. But he had long slim fingers. It looked to Lina like he’d be able to tie delicate knots. Better he than I, she thought. I can’t even hem a skirt straight. He began to sweat profusely, and Lina leaned over and wiped his forehead, as nurses routinely did for doctors. The priest started at her touch. I suppose, she thought nastily, he’ll have to do penance for allowing a woman to touch him. He plodded on, mumbling softly. Lina couldn’t make out the words, but the rhythm told her he was praying. That kind of thing never did me any good, she thought. But maybe he’s got an inside line to God. I hope so. She leaned over and wiped his forehead again. I don’t care how timid he is - I’ve got my job to do. And a priest’s sweat is as bad for an open wound as a doctor’s. This time he didn’t jump, just stopped his sewing until she was finished. Lina bandaged as the priest stitched.

When they were done, they looked at each other and smiled - the patient was still breathing. Lina started to push the gurney into the recovery room, but the priest stopped her. “Wait a minute.” He started mumbling again, louder this time. The Last Rites, she guessed. That night, while Lina was in the death-room, the chaplain came in. “You are here again, mi hija?” “Sí, señor, every night.” She resented his calling her `my daughter’. “It is not fair for you to be here every night.” “It is not fair for them to be here, either,” she shot back, harsher than she meant to be. He looked at her closely, nodded, and turned his attention to the packed gurneys. When he had finished, he returned to her. “May I ask why you call me señor?” Lina felt cornered. To herself, she called him López, since she had long ago vowed never to call any man father, except - possibly - her own. But she couldn’t call him López to his face. It would be terribly rude to call a man by his last name, without any title. She looked at him, embarrassed but determined not to back down. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be rude, but I’m very uncomfortable with priests, and I just can’t call you padre. You’re not my father. Not even in a spiritual sense.” He looked into her eyes for what seemed a long time, and she was grateful he could not see her blush. But she was determined not to break the gaze. “All right. I can accept that. But don’t call me señor. Nobody calls priests that - it sounds like you’re calling me lord. And that makes me uncomfortable. Just call me Miguel.” “No!” she blurted out, too loudly. “I can’t call you by your first name.” “Well, not in front of other people, but when we speak here, you can call me

Miguel.” He looked directly into her eyes. “It is still my name, after all, and I am still a man.” No way, Lina thought, am I going to call him Miguel, just as if he were one of the guys. But she couldn’t face making more of a scene, so she meekly said, “All right.” “How are you holding up under all this wretchedness?” “I’m all right,” she answered automatically. “You must be very upset,” he persisted. “No, not very.” “Surely you haven’t seen anything this horrible before.” “No, of course not. But I’m not having any trouble coping. I just take it as it comes, and try not to think about it.” “Well, I guess that’s as good a way as any to deal with…” he looked around, “all this. But, sooner or later, you will have to think about it. Will you be able to manage?” “I’ll have to, I guess.” He sighed. “You are not spending much time with your friends. You must try not to let yourself become isolated from them. You need each other now.” He has a point there. We all have such crazy schedules we barely see each other. I really miss Luke - he would have helped us all get through this. Later, when she had time, she thought about it. Why does López know so much about our lives? He must be checking up on us, she thought angrily.

*****

The situation quickly decayed. The generator went off, so the autoclave no longer worked, and now instruments were just wiped off with alcohol and reused. There was a severe shortage of anesthesia, and in less than major procedures, none was used. Patients invariably fainted early on in the operation. But until they fainted, they screamed. One day, there was a rare lull in mid-afternoon, and most of the Americans gathered in the sleeping ward to rest and talk. Charlotte said, “I think the worst thing about all this is that we have no idea what’s going on here. Who’s fighting whom? And why? Is it a revolution? A civil war?” “I don’t know,” said Kevin. “I’ve asked some of the men. They just call themselves `rebels’. That’s strange, right there, when you come to think about it. Every tiny little Esmeraldan political party has such a long impressive-sounding name. But these men don’t have one.” Lina said, “We don’t even have a name for it ourselves. Charlotte just called it `all this’, and I’ve heard Kevin call it that, too. Some of us call it `the fighting’ or `the problem’, or just `it’.” “What do you call it?” asked Stacy. Lina thought about that. “It’s strange. I’ve never seen anything like this, of course, but my grandmother used to tell me stories of horrible things that happened in Ireland when she was a girl. I guess this reminds me of what she told me. Anyway, I keep thinking of it as `the troubles’ - not singular, but plural.” One of the nurses said, “Of course, we don’t let them bring weapons in here, but we’ve seen men in the ER bringing in the wounded. They seem to have plenty of weapons. All the guns look new and modern. I wonder where they get them.” “Not knowing what’s going on makes it all seem so dream-like,” Lina said. “Everybody’s fighting like hell, but nobody knows why. It’s so surreal - like a weird nightmare.” Kevin said, “Lina, believe me, it’s real. We could all get shot or blown up at any moment. You can’t get any more real than that.”

“I think of that every time I wake up,” said Charlotte. “Is this my last day?” A nurse said, “I know what you mean. That thought is always in the back of my mind, too.” “Not me!” Lina declared. “I’ve hardly begun to live yet. I’m not ready to die, and I’m not going to!” Kevin said, “Hey, everybody, listen to Lina here, the Great Survivor! That’s your attitude in a nutshell - it’s not going to happen, just because you don’t want it to. But being stubborn isn’t going to do any good here, Lina. Whatever’s going to happen will happen, whether you like it or not.” Lina was stung. “Is that it, then? You’re just sitting still waiting to get killed?” “There’s not a lot we can do about it. But I tell you one thing, if it looks like we’re going to be shot, I’m going to grab the prettiest one of you and drag her into the closet!” Charlotte quickly shot back, “Listen, if it comes to that, you won’t have any choice. I’ll grab you and drag you into the closet. I’m damned if I’m going to die a virgin!” The gales of laughter that remark provoked released some of the tension. One of the nurses produced a twelve-stringed folk guitar she had bought in Colombia as a souvenir, but didn’t know how to play. Stacy tuned it up and began to strum it. Soon they were all singing every anti-war song they knew. Lina found herself singing “Where have all the flowers gone?” so ionately that the others stopped and just listened to her. She stopped abruptly. Here we are, she thought, surrounded by death, and all we can think of to do about it is to sing.

*****

On death-watch that night, Lina realized that events were speeding up. The room was packed, and the men were dying faster. Gas gangrene - untreatable and lethal - was spreading through the wards. Up till now, many of the men had lasted to the early-morning hours. But this night more than half of them died before midnight. The room was filled with moans and cries and the babbling of men in endless streams of delirium. The priest came in at about one-thirty. Lina reflected that he had quietly won the battle of the names. After a couple of attempts to call him to a dying patient’s side without using any name at all, Lina had given up and started to call him Miguel. After the last man had died, he said, “Let’s go out on the balcony and get some air.” He started talking softly, encouraging Lina to share her feelings with him. Aware that he was practicing psychology, or at least his priestly version of it, on her, she bristled. What right does he have to think he can adopt me as one of his “flock” without even asking? No, she told herself. Calm down. He recognizes how close you are to the edge. And he’s trying to help. She scarcely saw any of the other volunteers any more, and even when they were together, everybody was trying to tough it out, acting as if the daily horrors were nothing remarkable. So Miguel was using certain techniques - like getting her to talk about anything that would distract her from the present horrors. it it now - he’s helping me keep my feet on the ground. And Miguel was very easy to talk to. That’s really saying a lot, she thought. For while by now Lina could say whatever she needed to in Spanish, she still felt stilted and dull. The problem is, she realized, my personality is completely different in the two languages, and I really don’t like my Spanish-speaking one. But with Miguel she was beginning to find a little personality shining through her awkwardness. She had even found a trace of her sense of humor creeping into her conversations with him. Whistling in the graveyard. When she told Miguel about Charlotte’s “closet” remark, he roared with

laughter. “Lina, I appreciate how natural you are. Very few people dare to be risqué, or even amusing, with priests. It’s something I miss - a lot.” I’m not going to tell him my Spanish isn’t good enough for me to be subtle. Or that anyway, I just don’t respect his office enough to censor myself. The two of them got into the habit of going out onto the balcony every night after all their patients had died. “What is the problem with you and my religion?” he asked one night. “Do you belong to a church that believes that the Catholic religion is evil?” Lina laughed. “No, you’ve guessed that one completely wrong. I was brought up a Catholic.” She watched his face carefully, noting his surprise. “What happened?” “Nothing specific. I never believed a word of it, not from the beginning. I’m an atheist - I think I was born that way.” Once again, his face ed surprise. “Still, you have a hostility that goes beyond mere disbelief. Why are you so angry at the Church?” “Because religion is a lie, and it’s dangerous.” “Dangerous? A strange word to use about religion.” “Not strange at all. In the history of the world, I’m willing to bet more people have been tortured and killed over religion than for any other reason. That makes religion dangerous.” She had to give him credit for not jumping on her statement with refutations immediately. Instead, he seemed to be considering her words carefully. “All right. I concede the bad history, but that doesn’t take away from the good religion does.” “Not much good that I can see has come out of it.”

“Well, there are priests, like me, who are trying to do some good. I’m here, trying to give comfort to these poor dying men. Surely you can’t fault that.” “I’m here, too,” she snapped. “And I don’t expect the men to listen to any sermons in exchange for my comfort.” That, she thought, was rude. And much too harsh. He winced, and she felt bad. Come on, try to control the venom. “Anyway, my point is that religion is untrue and unnecessary. There is no God.” “So you say. But how do you know?” “The same way you know there is a God. Faith. I believe just as strongly as you, but you believe in God, while I know there is none. I’ve known that since I was very young. Not all the priests or nuns or family pressure could ever convince me otherwise.” He considered that. “But what if there is a God?” “It would make no difference at all to me. I’m going to live the way I want, God or none.” Miguel looked at her carefully, as if trying to read in her eyes whether she was serious enough for him to consider her idea. Or whether she was just baiting him. His scrutiny made Lina uncomfortable. “And yet you are living a good life.” “How priestly of you!” she snapped. “To assume that an atheist must be immoral.” He was quiet for a moment, looking at her solemnly. “You’re right. That was unfair.” He paused again. “So you’re not afraid to die and then find out God is there, ready to judge you?”

“No. If there were a God, I’m sure he would be reasonable and logical. I don’t think he’d blame me for not burning incense or offering him flowers. And so far, at least, I’m not afraid to be judged on my actual behavior.” “But what if God does demand adherence to ritual? If he judges you by whether or not you went to Mass?” “Then I don’t care about him. If he is really so petty, I don’t want to spend eternity with him.” She laughed. “And you know the old joke - all the interesting people will be in Hell.” Miguel looked deep into her eyes for a long moment. Then he said, “I think you are a rare type. What is called a `natural Christian’ - a person who is good just because it feels right.” “I am not a Christian,” Lina snapped. “Don’t you dare to try to make me one!” He flinched. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you. I’m just trying to understand you.” She sighed. “Don’t bother.” “Look, let’s not argue about this any more. I don’t think we’re even opposed. I think we are just looking at the issue from slightly different perspectives.” “No, it’s more fundamental than that. I challenge you - I wouldn’t live my life any differently if I found out for sure right now there is a God.” She stopped, watching his face. “What is your challenge?” “How about you? Would you live the same way if you found out there is no God?” He looked confused and hurt. “That’s not a fair question to ask a priest.” “No, I suppose not. Priests aren’t playing the same game as everyone else. Or at least they’re not using the same rules.”

“What do you mean by that?” “I don’t know. Listen, Miguel, I’ve got to go to bed now. I’m so exhausted I’m babbling.”

*****

The next afternoon, Lina was assigned to assist at a major operation. The man’s leg was laid open down its entire length and terribly crushed, so it had to be amputated. But this was not a hospital in which amputations were usually performed. In normal times, the patient would have been quickly and safely transferred to a specialized hospital. But that was impossible now, so the operation had to be done here. Lina was surprised to see how much the surgical instrument looked like an ordinary hacksaw. Then she took a closer look at the saw, which was battered and slightly rusty. Oh no, she thought, It is an ordinary saw. The amputation was at mid-thigh, where the femur was the thickest, and it seemed to Lina that the saw wasn’t very sharp. The surgeon had a terrible time getting through the bone, and a tremendous tension built up in the room. Periodically, the patient would begin to wake up and groan horribly or begin a scream, and he would be given another whiff of ether. The operation dragged on all afternoon. The two doctors and three nurses were dripping with sweat by dusk, when the bone finally gave way. Lina was so queasy from the smell of the ether she had to concentrate to keep from retching. The rest of the amputation went quickly, and the surgeon finally handed the dripping leg to a nurse, who rushed out of the room with her bloody burden. The doctors quickly completed the operation, pulling a big flap of skin across the stump to cover the gaping wound, and stitching everything in place. Finished, the doctors left the room, stripping off their gloves and dropping them

on the floor as they went. Two of the nurses moved the patient onto a gurney. As they pushed the gurney toward the recovery room door, the man began moaning and thrashing. The other nurse cleaned up the floor area under the operating table, wiping up a pool of blood. Then she left, too. Lina went to the side table and sorted the instruments into related groups. She took the tray of instruments and pushed open the door to the scrub room, intending to wash everything and get it ready it to be used again. In the dimness of the room, her eyes caught a flicker of movement. She stopped and focused. There on the table where the nurse had left it, lay the amputated leg - surrounded by rats. The ones who had their backs to her scurried around as she approached the table, tossing drops of blood from their jaws. She screamed and threw the tray at them. They panicked and began jumping in all directions. One of them leaped straight at Lina’s face, and she threw up her arms with a shriek. The rat hit her hard, its bony claws tearing at her, trying to get a grip on her hair. Then it was gone, and Lina, stumbling backward, crashed into the wall. Her eyes rolled back, and she slowly slid down to the floor. When she came to, it was dark. The leg still lay on the table, instruments scattered around and on it. The rats hadn’t come back, but there were ominous scrabblings in the darker corners of the room. Lina gathered up the instruments and washed them, making as much noise as she could. Then she reached out toward the leg, trying to steady her shaking hands and ignore her scalding stomach. I’ve got to do this, she thought. She picked it up, and, keeping her arms outstretched, started to carry it to the lawn. It was very heavy, and her arm muscles were jumping with fatigue by the time she reached the cremation pit. Using the last of her strength, she flung the leg out as far as she could. It probably won’t be long, she thought, before the rest of this poor man s this shattered leg. Impulsively, she sank to her knees and made an awkward sign of the cross toward the severed limb. From there, she could see maggots teeming in the parts of the corpses that lay near the edges of the smoldering pit.

*****

It was a horrible night in the death-room. Everyone had died by 1 o’clock, several within a single hour. Lina noticed that the patients were noisier than usual, more of them screaming. What would you have done, she asked herself, if Miguel hadn’t been here? Of course, this is his profession - giving comfort. But at least it he’s very good at it. Miguel went around to each man, and the level of screaming went down. After the last one had died and they had removed all the medical apparatus, they went out onto the balcony. it it, Lina told herself, most of the men died happier because Miguel was there with them. The shooting had stopped, or at least diminished, but they were wary, not knowing when it would resume. The only news reports they’d had for days were from Radio Havana, and the volunteers weren’t relying very heavily on them. The latest reports said the U.S. government had sent down a large contingent of Marines. “That’s not true,” Kevin had said indignantly. “It would be ridiculous. There’s just no reason for the U.S. to do that.” As Miguel and Lina stood on the balcony, something new, strange, rose into the sky. It sat in the tropical air, on a level with their eyes, an artificial moon that slowly sank without fading. Lina was enchanted. To her exhausted mind, the light seemed a miracle, reminding her that beauty was constant, despite the horror of the moment. She turned to Miguel with a smile. He frowned. “They can’t even leave the night in peace. They have to use those magnesium flares so they will have enough light to shoot each other.” The utter perversion of it made Lina burst into tears, the first time since the troubles had begun. Miguel gripped her arm. “Come, Lina, we must sit down. It is not safe to stand in the open like this when they’re using flares.” They sank to the floor of the

balcony and he pulled her head onto his shoulder, saying, “Cry, cara, cry. You cannot keep all this horror inside forever. Let it out.” Lina sobbed for some time, and she did feel better, except for an incipient headache. Then, suddenly, she sat bolt upright, shocked by the forceful return of a memory. “Miguel, this reminds me of a dream…or a vision…I had in Haiti.” “Tell me.” “Well, I can’t it exactly, but there was screaming and shooting and…” She stopped. “Yes,” he said, “What else?” “Meat cooking,” she whispered. The bottom seemed to drop out of her stomach. No, not meat cooking - bodies burning. But she didn’t, couldn’t, say it. “And then what?” “The moon rose suddenly, and…” She slowed down, seeing the scene again, Dieudonné holding a crucifix above a coffin, shimmering in that odd way she hadn’t been able to explain to him. She concentrated, squeezing her eyes shut. “Dieudonné kept changing, from a black man in a white suit to a white man in a black suit, and back again,” she whispered. “Dieudonné?” “He’s a priest, a Voodoo houngan.” “A houngan is not a priest.” Miguel sounded disgusted. “Forget whatever he told you. Voodoo, Santería, is pure superstition. An educated young woman like you should not pay attention to such things.” “Miguel, listen to me. So much of what I saw there is just like this.” Even you, she thought, but she didn’t say it. “Don’t be silly. Voodoo is just a lot of mumbo-jumbo.” “Who are you to criticize another religion?” she snapped. “You’re a practitioner

of mumbo-jumbo yourself.” He flinched. “How can you say that? The two are not comparable.” “They are to me. Not just comparable - identical.” “You’re not being fair.” He was clearly annoyed now. “Fair?” Lina felt herself growing shrill. “How about being logical? There are no real differences between Voodoo and Christianity. Certainly not in of credibility. And as for superstitious practices, that’s a laugh! It would be very hard to say which religion has more of them.” He was silent for a long moment, trying to control himself. Go ahead, Lina thought, at least get mad. Act human! I can accept that, respect that. Finally he said, his voice tight, “If saying such things makes you feel better, go right ahead.” “I’m not trying to be offensive. But that was such a typical priest’s reply - my religion is pure logic, everybody else’s is ridiculous superstition. To me, they’re all the same, equally false.” “If you are so above religion, why are you wearing that pagan charm? Do you think wearing it is daring and provocative?” That stung. Lina fingered Dieudonné’s coral fist. “It’s a gift from a friend.” “Do you know what it is?” “Yes,” she answered authoritatively. “It’s an amulet against the evil eye.” “Yes, yes, but do you know what that configuration of the fingers means?” She had never even thought about it before. “It’s an ancient symbol for sexual intercourse.” That startled her, made her feel foolish.

“Do you think that thing will protect you?” “No, but my friend does.” “Your friend. The houngan? Is that the kind of person who gave it to you?” “Yes, a houngan gave it to me. And don’t use that superior tone of voice. I don’t judge people by the religion they belong to. I just decide whether they’re good people or bad people. And Dieudonné is a good person.” She stopped and looked Miguel right in the eyes. “Though he’s not Catholic. And, of course, he’s not white.” Now Miguel looked stung. “Listen, doesn’t it bother you that people here who see you wearing that thing think you practice Santería?” “No,” she said, “I can’t control what people think. I know why I wear it because my friend asked me to. It’s a symbol of friendship. It has no magic for me.” “Well then, if I gave you a cross on the same , a gift from a friend, would you wear it?” Lina had to smile. How easily he trapped me. “Yes,” she said reluctantly. “And would it have no meaning for you? No magic?” “Only the same meaning this higa has - the memory of a friend.” Miguel looked into Lina’s eyes for so long that it began to make her nervous. “It is very late, Lina. Let us go in now.” Lina went to bed. She reflected that Miguel was looking drawn and shaky, and guessed that he wasn’t getting much sleep. The Esmeraldan nurses said he often went on ambulance runs, to help the drivers with the patients. With all the gunfire in the streets, that must be a hair-raising job. The next afternoon, Lina ran into Miguel in a corridor, and he asked her to come to his office. “Sit down.”

Uneasily, she sank into a chair. “Here. I have something for you.” He handed her a small velvet box. She stared at it, knowing what it must contain, wondering where he had got it, and wanting to stop things at this point. But she couldn’t think of any way to do that. Finally she opened it. It was, of course, a cross. It was made of gold incised in an intricate pattern. In the center, an emerald was surrounded by four diamonds, the jewels forming a tiny separate cross. It was old-fashioned, lovely, and clearly expensive. “Miguel, I can’t accept this.” “Please, I want you to have it. It was my mother’s. She died two years ago, and it’s the only thing I have of hers.” “Look, Miguel, this is too valuable. It’s too personal. And it’s not right. I’m an atheist. The cross means something to you - to your mother, that it never can to me.” “Take it.” “I’m not the right sort of person to be wearing this. Your mother would not approve at all.” He smiled. “You are exactly the right person to be wearing it, and my mother would agree with me completely. You must take it - you promised.” Lina desperately wanted to refuse, but Miguel’s face was so eager, and he looked so happy for once, she couldn’t do it. At last, she said, “All right, but no magic, you understand?” He nodded. She took off the gold chain. As she started to put the cross on it, he covered her hand with his. “Take off the higa.” She yanked her hand away. “No. I never said I’d do that. I’ll wear the higa, or

I’ll wear them both, but I will not wear the cross alone.” She looked straight into his eyes. “You’ve pushed me pretty far, but you can’t push me any further than that.” “All right.” He laughed. He picked up the chain and kissed the cross. “The cross has been in stranger company over the centuries. And still it survives.” He fastened the gold chain around her neck.

*****

One day they brought in a little boy who’d been shot in the head. They put him in a small recovery room and Lina stayed with him until he died about four hours later. He screamed the entire time. Will the echoes of those screams ever leave me? Lina wondered as she trudged back to her room. How many years have been compressed into the last few weeks? When I have time to sort it all out and think it all through, I suppose I’ll discover that I’ve learned a lot of valuable lessons. Well, look how much I’ve already got out of this - I’ve learned to let go of hope, trust, innocence.

*****

The next day, Lina was in the basement. A nurse had said there might still be some old sheets down there, and they were desperate for clean linens. She heard something in one of the side rooms. She headed toward the sounds. If rats have gotten into the supplies, I’d better try to scare them away. At the door of the room, she stopped. It wasn’t rats. It was Stacy and Kevin, intertwined on a pile of rags, grinding against each other and grunting. Lina thought they looked like they were both struggling to get on top. She jumped back from the door. She was sure they

hadn’t seen her, so she quietly walked back to the staircase and went upstairs. God, she thought, they didn’t even bother to take their clothes off - just unbuttoned and unzipped where necessary. And Kevin and Stacy couldn’t stand each other. But apparently neither of them could go without sex for very long. Like dogs, she thought, disgusted.

*****

A powerful man was delirious, and he kept pulling the intravenous tube out of his arm. Nurses quickly surrounded the bed. “Help me,” one of them said to Lina. “What is it?” “We tied him to the bed and put the tube in again, in his ankle, but now he’s thrashing around so much, he’ll pull it out again.” “What can I do?” “Hold him down until he gets all the intravenous fluid.” “How? He’s too strong for me.” “Just lie across his legs. It won’t take very long. Just make sure he doesn’t dislodge the tube.” “All right.” She settled herself across the man’s legs. He immediately began cursing and thrashing around, nearly kicking her off. She wrapped her arms around the metal frame at the foot of the bed. In this position, she was pretty much in control. While she was struggling, the man in the next bed began to choke. What do I do now? She tried to get up, but her patient thrashed mightily, and she settled down

again. She called for a nurse, but nobody came. When the intravenous was completed, she ran over to the other bed, but the man was dead. Lina was appalled. I should have gone to help him, she thought, even if that meant my patient would have pulled out the tube. That wouldn’t have been fatal. I just didn’t think straight. I didn’t think straight, and a man is dead because of it. She thought about that - he probably would have died anyway if I hadn’t been there. That made her feel a little better. Then she thought - But I was there. And I didn’t do the right thing. But I was doing what I was told. Disgusted, she thought, now I sound like a Nazi. She went and lay on her cot, consumed with guilt.

*****

The fighting was very close, bullets zinging through the air around the hospital at irregular intervals. By this time the tap water was so contaminated they could not offer it to drink, and the wards were full of feverish men moaning in thirst. The kitchen was just a tin roof on poles set up about 20 yards away from the hospital, and open on all sides. The kitchen workers refused to go down to boil water for the patients. “Why,” Lina asked a doctor, “was the kitchen built away over there like that?” “To keep the vermin a kitchen attracts away from the hospital itself. It was not designed with the possibility of warfare in mind.” The afternoon stretched on, hot and dry, and the frustration became intolerable. Finally, Lina said, “I’m going to go down and boil some water.” “Lina, you’re crazy,” Charlotte said. But Lina was determined, and she had a

look that Charlotte had learned not to argue with. She went down to the ground floor and opened the door. While there was a lot of shooting going on in the vicinity, there wasn’t any on the hospital grounds. She crouched, took a deep breath, and raced across the open ground. Still no shooting. She filled up all the big tin cans and put them on the stoves, then started gathering up wood to start the fires. There was so much gunfire, it just faded into the background, like static. Lina bent over to pick up a piece of wood, and heard a loud PING. Water began to pour onto her head. Uncomprehending, she reached up her hand to stop the water, and it was struck hard, just at the wrist, and smashed back into the leaking can so hard the can toppled over, sending a sheet of water across the kitchen. Suddenly the air was whistling and howling with bullets. In the cluttered kitchen, they bounced and skimmed around angrily. Lina froze there, crouching, numbly watching as blood streamed down her fingers and pooled on the dirt floor. She heard Miguel’s voice shouting, “Lina, get down!” She sat down. She could see that the glass door of the hospital was slightly ajar, and Miguel was huddled in the opening. “Were you hit?” he called. “Yes,” she yelled back, “but only on the wrist. I think it’s all right.” She looked at her wrist. It was streaming, but not pumping blood. “Lie flat, and cover your head with your arms. You’ll be safe if you stay down. Please!” Lina did as he said. A wave of nausea came over her as blood soaked through her hair and dripped down her face. She looked back at the hospital door, gauging her chances of getting back there. Zero, she decided. There was absolutely no cover. Her tears began to mix with the puddle of blood in the dirt. Tears of pain, she told herself, not of fear. The hospital door closed and she heard no more for some time.

Suddenly, the door flew open and Miguel dashed out, bent double, and pounded across the open space toward the kitchen. Bullets began to whiz around the grounds and slam into the kitchen again. The hospital door shattered. Miguel launched himself into a perfect racer’s dive, low and flat, as soon as he reached the edge of the roofed area. “Are you all right?” she called. “Yes,” he gasped. “Keep down.” He began to crawl toward her. “You’re crazy,” she said as he crept up beside her, but she was so happy to see him she began to cry again. “Let me see the wound.” He rolled onto his back, pulled up his shirt, and took out a small packet. It contained antiseptic, bandages and tape. He examined her wrist, then cleaned and wrapped it, and said, “It’s shallow, and I don’t think there’s any metal in it. I hope you didn’t break anything. The bones are very close to the surface at the wrist.” “No, I don’t think it’s serious. It doesn’t hurt very much,” she lied. She could bend the fingers and she thought that might mean nothing was broken. But the pain was blinding when she tried to turn the wrist. “I hope you have all the heroics out of your system now. We could both have been killed by your little escapade.”

“I wasn’t trying to be a heroine - just to get the job done. You shouldn’t have come out here. That was really stupid. I was all right by myself.” “I was terrified,” he said simply. “The wrist - a tiny nick in the artery and you would have bled to death in minutes, alone and helpless.” Lina put her head down on her folded arms and shuddered. “There goes the damn goose again,” she said in English. “What?” “Never mind.”

He leaned over and pushed the hair out of her eyes. “We’re going to be here together for a while, I think, so let’s not quarrel. I didn’t mean to insult you, but I think you’re surviving this situation by refusing to experience it. And that can be dangerous. That’s all I meant.” “Listen,” she snapped, “if there were some way for me to get out of here, I’d do it. But there isn’t. What do you think I should do? Cower in a corner? Or get hysterical? I have to do whatever I can to help, and try to stay alive at the same time.” “Yes, your actions are commendable. What I mean is that you’re refusing to react emotionally. You’re trying to pretend you’re not here. But you are, and all this is really happening, whether you want to it it or not. You’re feeling something now. You’re frightened, worried, horrified - what? Can you face it?” “I’m furious!” she blurted out. He looked surprised. “All right. Why?” “Because this is all like a game - a spoiled little boy’s afternoon fun. Even turned into this bloody horror, it’s still a game - a man’s game, and women have only one part in it - to pick up the pieces and try to fit them back together when it’s all over.” “Are you saying you wish women had a more active part in the bloodshed?” “No,” she snapped, “I think that would be impossible. Women would refuse to contribute to this insanity. But if women had a part in running the world, none of this would happen. Women would never have invented war. Can you imagine a woman spending years of her life developing a more damaging type of bullet or a more lethal gas?” Miguel thought about that. “What do you think women would have invented instead?” Lina felt like punching him. “You’re not suggesting, are you, that violence is fundamental to human nature?” “I don’t know, cara. I’d like to believe it isn’t. But it has always been there.

Humans have always had wars, back to the earliest times. And even animals are known to carry on organized warfare. Insects do, I know, and I think mammals, too.” “Well, animals do a lot of things we no longer do - like fucking and shitting in public. Why can’t we eliminate fighting as well?” “It’s a good thought, Lina. But, given the evidence of history, perhaps it is contrary to human nature.” “Contrary to male nature, you mean. But that’s only half of human nature. It’s this, all this, that is contrary to human nature. And it’s just plain stupid!” He patted her arm, “I wish you were running the world. It would be a better place.” She flung his hand off. “Don’t talk down to me! I’m not being emotional or idealistic. I’m talking simple, cold logic. Look around you. Look at the work of men! You and I spend every night in a death-room, watching men bleed to death, rotting while they’re still alive. The rats are so bold they walk around in broad daylight, dragging off bloody bandages. The doctors are operating on conscious, screaming men. And we’re lying in a puddle of blood next to a human barbecue pit!” She stopped for breath, trying to control some of the shrillness that had crept into her voice. In a quieter tone, she said, “I don’t know what the problem is here, but no matter what it is, this cannot possibly be the answer to it! And God damn any macho moron who thinks otherwise!” She burst into tears. Miguel, lying beside her, stroked her hair and murmured, “Lina, life isn’t always fair or logical. I know it seems like a minimum to expect, but you can’t depend on it.” She stopped crying and looked over at him. “What a strange thing for a priest to say.” He looked shaken. “Maybe so. The times are strange. Just this, cara, I’m on your side. I agree with you.”

They stayed on the kitchen floor until it was completely dark. The fighting seemed to have shifted by that time, and when they ran, huddled over, back to the hospital, they didn’t attract any more gunfire. Miguel cornered a doctor in the corridor. The doctor looked at Lina’s wrist. She gasped as he tried to turn it over. “It’s not broken - just badly bruised. And the bleeding has almost stopped. But let me put a few stitches in it.” “No, no!” said Miguel. “If it’s not serious, you shouldn’t waste sutures.” Lina looked at Miguel, astonished. The doctor also looked surprised. “All right. It will heal on its own, though it will scar without stitches. You’d better get some sleep, nurse.” Miguel walked her back to the sleeping room. “Lina, I couldn’t let him suture you without antiseptic. You know the needles aren’t clean. Better to have a scar than tetanus. Get some sleep now. I’ll take over the death-room tonight.” But when Lina lay down, her wrist throbbed and burned so much she couldn’t sleep, so she got up and went to the death-room as usual. The nauseating sweet stench of gangrene permeated the stale air of the death room. “Miguel, I’d never smelled gangrene before this last week. Why does it smell familiar to me?” “I don’t know, Lina,” he said absently. “It reminds me of something else, too. But you wouldn’t know about that.” “What does it remind you of?” “Well, gangrene…it smells like advanced leprosy.” The death before death, Lina thought. She began to shiver uncontrollably, though the night was very hot.

Chapter 14

One morning, Charlotte and Stacy woke Lina. “I know you haven’t had much sleep, but this is important,” Charlotte said. Stacy burst out, “We’re going to try and get out of here.” “Yes. We’ve decided things have gone beyond…well, what we can deal with. We have to find a way out.” Stacy said, “Yeah. So keep your eyes open. Try to figure out a way we can get to the Embassy.” “Right. Stacy and I will be thinking, too, and in a couple of days, we’ll compare notes. But we have to get out of here. Soon.” Her voice was tense, shrill. “Think about it, Lina. Try to help us find a way out.” That night, the men in the death-room were dying much faster - the room itself seemed to be trying to fulfill its function. The first death set off a rash of others, and six died within a single half hour. Miguel performed his usual ritual over the dead, and talked with the one man who was still alive, or talked at him, since the man was in a coma. The last man died about one. After gathering up all the medical apparatus, Lina and Miguel went outside. The fighting seemed to have moved to some other area, at least temporarily. There was no more shooting in the nearby streets, though they could hear it farther away, and the stream of casualties had not abated. Lina felt safe in leaving the hospital building, but she stayed alert. They walked around the grounds, skirting the cremation pit, and drifted to an open area under a royal palm, where they sat down and talked quietly. There was a constant rustling in the nearby bushes. I never realized, Lina thought, how active squirrels are in the dark. Then she ed with a start that there were no squirrels in

Esmeralda. She looked around frantically. “Let’s get out of here, Miguel. The bushes are full of rats.” They started walking again, talking quietly. Suddenly, the shooting stopped completely, leaving a silence more ominous than the gunfire it replaced. Lina and Miguel froze, waiting to see what dreadful trick this was. But the silence held. They got up and walked to the front gate. Looking up and down the street, they saw nothing out of place. “Lina, do you want to go home and get some things? I think it would be safe now, if we hurry.” She decided she wouldn’t be afraid as long as she wasn’t alone. They never heard a sound as they walked the dark streets, keeping to the long shadows near the housefronts. No dogs barked, no babies cried, no lights shone. “I guess most of the people have run away,” she whispered. “Yes, it must have been days ago. Look how insecure we have felt, even in the hospital. How much more vulnerable the people living in these hovels were.” There was a lot of damage evident. In some streets, houses had been knocked down, and in others, fire had destroyed everything. “I wonder if my place is there at all.” But it was, untouched. The next-door neighbors were gone - their door was ajar, and the house was empty. Lina opened her door and found the candle in its usual place on the table. She groped for the matches and lit one. She automatically reached for the flit-gun, then realized that the usual swarm of mosquitoes was gone. Of course, she thought - they wouldn’t stick around once there was nothing to eat. Miguel went over and sat on the bed, and Lina quickly began gathering up clothes and photographs. She seized her one unused toothbrush and thrust it into the canvas bag she was packing. She had been in the unfortunate position of having to share hers with Charlotte and Stacy. And, she suspected, with Kevin as well. “Finished,” she said. Instead of getting up to leave, Miguel said, “Come and sit for a while.”

Lina went and sat beside him. “Things are becoming worse every day. You and your friends must make a decision about what to do.” “Yes, we realize that. We’re going to try to escape as soon as possible.” He looked sad, then relieved. “I’m glad you’re leaving. It’s bad enough now, but I think it’s going to get even worse.” “What about you? What are you going to do?” “I will stay until the end.” “What will the end be?” “There is no way to know that.” “Take a guess.” “Lina, you will leave, and live, and that pleases me. What will happen to those who stay, only God knows. There is no point in guessing.” “Are you going to die?” “I have no reason to think so. But I can’t tell the future. Certainly it is a very dangerous situation, and as I said, I think the worst is still to come. So death is always a possibility.” “Are you afraid?” He sighed. “No, not exactly afraid. Just…regretful, I guess I’d call it. I’m not ready to die. There are a lot of things I want to do. But I can accept whatever God has in store for me.” “God? Do you honestly believe that it’s part of God’s divine plan to have you shot?” “I believe the deaths of all these people - and mine, if that’s what happens, may be part of a design of God’s, a design I cannot comprehend.”

“How can you respect such a God?” “Please, Lina, let’s not argue about religion again. This is one of the last times we will ever see each other. Let’s just enjoy these few minutes we have together.” “I have a premonition. Something terrible is going to happen. Do you feel it?” “Lina, I am not a Voodoo houngan. I do not read messages from God into every fleeting emotion.” She decided to ignore the sarcasm. “Lately, when I think of the future, it’s so hazy. I just can’t get any picture of what it will be like after this is over. Maybe that means there is no future.” “No, it just means you are exhausted and depressed. And that is perfectly normal, under the circumstances .” “Miguel, we keep hearing more reports of American soldiers being involved in this. That rumor should have died out if there was nothing to it. What do you think?” “I don’t know, cara. It’s something I’ve been trying to get information about. But I’m afraid it might be true. If it is, it places your lives in terrible jeopardy. That’s one of the reasons I’m glad you’re leaving. But I’m going to miss you…a lot.” “I’ll miss you, too.” “Lina, do you when we spoke about religion, and you challenged me to say I’d live my life the same if I found out there was no God?” “Oh, forget about that. I was tired and angry.” “Well, it was a reasonable question, and a good thing to think about. And I’ve decided on an answer to it. I would not live my life substantially differently if I found out there were no God. I would continue doing much of what I am doing, trying to help people. But the help would certainly take another form. So the answer to your question is - no, I would not live my life the same way if I found out there was no God.”

She mulled that over for a long time. Finally she said, “Are you itting the possibility that there is no God?” “Since I cannot prove otherwise, I have to it the possibility. Though not the probability.” “Miguel, I’m not trying to undermine you. At least I don’t think I am. But you asked me questions, and I tried to answer as honestly as I could.” “Of course, the question of the existence of God is something I’ve considered before. But…well, it’s different now. It’s the first time the answer to that question could change my life.” “Well, it’s really a meaningless question anyway. You are here, in this horrible situation, and you can’t change your profession just like that.” “Not my profession. Maybe my behavior.” “Well, what’s the difference? I mean, in this situation?” There was a moment of silence. Then Miguel said, “What do you think about Charlotte’s saying she doesn’t want to die a virgin?” Lina was grateful that he was dropping the touchy subject of religion, and she said with a laugh, “I wholeheartedly agree.” “So do I.” He was not laughing. Startled, Lina said nothing. The silence went on for a long time. She wanted it to continue forever. But she knew that wasn’t possible. It was like Pat had said you aren’t going to be 21 forever. And of course, he was right. I’m 22 now, almost 23. And maybe I won’t even reach 23. “Lina, I love you.” Lina stared straight ahead, studying the top of the partition between her space and that of her neighbors. She ed the sounds that had carried over that barrier before. I never understood it, she thought. Why does it take so much effort? So much puffing and panting? But it doesn’t matter any more. They’re gone, and I’ll never see, or hear, them again.

“Do you understand what I mean? I love you, not as a priest should, but as a man loves a woman.” His hand groped for hers, and finding it, grasped it gingerly. Lina remained silent, turning her head away. Her thoughts raced furiously, but she could not hold onto them. Her mind was a record, its music finished, spinning silently on a turntable. Miguel squeezed her icy hand. “Lina, I feel closer to you than I ever have to anyone. I think you feel the same way about me. Am I right?” “Yes.” “Look at me.” He gently pulled her face around toward his. “You have a decision to make about what we do now.” “I have? Don’t you mean we have?” “No. I’ve already made mine.” “You’re a priest.” “I’m a man. And I love you.” “And you don’t want to die a virgin.” He winced. “Lina, you know how to hurt. But, precisely, what I mean is that I don’t want to die without sharing the joy of love with you.” “Look, if neither of us knows what to do, we’ll just make a mess of the whole thing. I’m awkward, Miguel - I can’t even dance.” But she ed how well she had danced with Eduardo and his family. And in Haiti, the crowd chanting, “Erzulie, Erzulie.” They called me the Goddess of Love, she thought. “I said I was a virgin, not that I didn’t know what to do.” “Isn’t it the same thing?” “No, not at all. I can give you pleasure, I’m sure of it.” “I’m afraid.”

“Just listen to me, and watch me. I will show you what to do. If you don’t like it, we will stop. I promise.” “All right.” Her voice was so low she scarcely heard it herself. He leaned over and kissed her, barely brushing her lips with his. Her mouth was frozen. Then he pulled back and just sat there looking into her face, stroking her hair with his left hand, and running the tip of his right index finger over her mouth. Her lips melted. Suddenly, she began to worry about how she smelled. She still had her bottle of deodorant, and she used it faithfully every day. Most days, there was a fair supply of dirty water, and she washed as often as she could. But she had not had a real bath for a long time. One day recently, she had worked next to Kevin, and had been repelled by his rank smell. Of course, under the circumstances, it was excusable, but she wondered if she smelled as vile as Kevin had. She ed how Pedro had reeked, and how furious the smell had made her. Thinking about Pedro made Lina nervous. She ed that she had lost most of her curiosity about sex after that. Why am I getting involved in it now? She pulled away. Miguel let her go, but looked hurt. “What’s the matter?” “Nothing, I guess. I just thought of something unpleasant.” “This is no time to think, especially about unpleasant things.” Not taking his eyes from hers, he began taking off his shirt. That’s the right move, Lina thought. She felt much better once the Roman collar was out of sight. The candlelight softened everything, casting a comforting glow on the dismal surroundings. Miguel leaned over to her. Surprisingly, he smelled good. Maybe priests don’t sweat like ordinary people, she thought. But of course that wasn’t true - she ed how heavily he had been sweating in the operating room back…how long ago? when she had first worked with him. She reached out and touched his face. He smiled, then took her hand and kissed the palm. He doesn’t jump when I touch him now. He kissed her again, harder this time, then ran his tongue over her lips. “Open your mouth.” She did, and his tongue flickered over her teeth.

“Do the same to me.” His teeth opened, and his tongue began to caress hers. Lina had always felt revolted when a man had tried that on her before. This time, a surge of electricity ed through her body. Miguel pushed the pillow in back of him and leaned back on it, folding his arms behind his head. “Run your hands over my chest.” The hair was thick, dark and unexpectedly soft. Something went wrong with Lina’s breathing. She seemed able to catch her breath only in gasps. “Now under my arms.” That hair was longer, springy and slightly damp. He shuddered and sighed deeply, closing his eyes. “Kiss my nipples.” Lina did not know the word in Spanish and became completely unnerved. Miguel waited for her to do what he had told her, then opened his eyes to see her looking panicky. “What’s the matter?” he asked. “Your what?” she asked. “Kiss your what?” Miguel burst out laughing. “Lina, do you see how funny this is? Here we are about to make love, and you don’t even know the names of the body parts in Spanish!” It was funny, actually hilarious. He threw his arms around Lina and held her while both of them laughed uncontrollably. When they had stopped laughing, Miguel continued to hug her, rubbing her back and neck. Lina liked the feeling. He let go of her and leaned back against the pillow again. He told her, then showed her, what nipple meant. She felt more relaxed now. “Now lick them.” She was enjoying the new sensations, but she wondered if she was doing it all right. She looked up at his face for assurance. By the flickering candlelight, his eyes were luminous, and he looked relaxed and radiantly happy, as she had never seen him before. He brushed her cheek with the back of his hand, tickling her, and smiled into her face. He seemed to be memorizing her features, photographing her with his eyes. He reached for her and began groping at her blouse, as if he couldn’t figure out how the buttons worked. She didn’t help him or stop him, just looked down at

his long thin fingers, thinking of how many times she had seen his hands in candlelight, making the sign of the cross over a dying man. Miguel tugged a little at her blouse. “Aren’t you warm in that?” Lina started laughing again. She tried to imagine how Kevin would have dealt with this situation - he could probably strip a girl with one hand, while the girl hardly noticed. He probably practiced undressing techniques until he was perfect at them, the way Lina had practiced fancy shuffling and dealing. Sex was a game to Kevin, as cards were to her, with the same goal - the joy of winning, of defeating. Miguel looked hurt. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to laugh. But that really wasn’t a very original thing to say.” “It was for me.” He was clearly embarrassed. “I’ve never said it before.” He pulled away from her. “I know I’m not acting like a movie star. But you aren’t making things easy for me. As usual.” “I know. I’m sorry.” She looked at him intently for a moment, then quickly took off her blouse and bra. His eyes lit up, and he moved closer to her. His hands moved over her bare skin, then his lips. Lina had always assumed that sex was for men to enjoy and women to permit. And that was what she intended now - to let Miguel do whatever he wanted. She herself wasn’t planning to do much of anything. But Miguel seemed to have a different idea. He clearly expected her to take as active a part as he was doing. “Please, Miguel, I don’t know what to do.” “I’ll tell you. But you can’t just lie there. What pleasure would that be?” He told her how to touch him, and she did what he said. Then, “My turn,” he said, and he repeated the caress on her body. All the time, his soft voice murmured endearments and encouragement. He was so clearly delighted with her, telling her over and over how soft her skin was, how beautiful her eyes. He wrapped her long hair around his hand and kissed it. It would have been impossible for Lina not to respond. And she was fascinated by his body - his hair

was silken, his skin smooth, but underneath it his powerful muscles bulged and rippled. What surprised Lina was that Miguel concentrated on giving her pleasure, not on taking it for himself. She had not even realized she could feel pleasure from being touched. He was so slow, so patient, so eager to show her all the delightful possibilities. Lina didn’t object when Miguel asked her to take off the rest of her clothes, but she pulled away and turned her head when he started taking off his pants. She couldn’t help thinking of Pedro. “Lina, look at me.” He gently turned her face back to him. She had to it that Miguel didn’t look as threatening as Pedro had. Of course, he isn’t planning to rape me, she thought. That does make a difference. He looked so vulnerable and shy, and she knew he was blushing, as she was. “Touch me.” He took her hand. Lina was shaking, but she let him guide her hand. The skin was surprisingly soft and tender, and warm. Why had she thought he would feel cold? He groaned and arched his back. She had to react to his pleasure. She felt incredibly powerful. She lay down beside him and they kissed and caressed. “Are you still afraid?” he asked some time later. She thought about it seriously for a moment, then said, “No, no, I’m not afraid at all.” He kissed her again, and said, “Lina, I will try not to hurt you, but you must forgive me if I do.” She smiled at him. “You’re forgiven.” Miguel rolled over on top of her. Lina felt a twinge of pain, then a delicious sensation. She was surprised - she had always assumed that the actual sex act was overrated - she had been sure of it. Miguel was still murmuring softly, but now incoherently. Rumor had it that this part was over quickly, but rumor was wrong again. Then, totally unexpectedly, a flash of pure pleasure shot through her. A moment later, Miguel thrust wildly and called out her name. Lina thought of Stacy. I finally understand what she’s been talking about. Stacy

was right. This is wonderful. Miguel, nearly asleep, whispered what sounded to Lina like a couple of lines of poetry. It took her a while to work through the Spanish. It was the beginning of a hymn she ed from her childhood. “Holy God, we praise thy name. Lord of all, we bow before thee.” She wondered sickly if Miguel still thought his mother would approve of Lina’s wearing her cross. Miguel and Lina got back to the hospital about six, and Lina fell into an exhausted sleep. But she woke up after only a few hours, her mind in turmoil. You idiot, she thought, The man is a priest. Did you ever consider what you were doing to him? But it was his idea - and he’s responsible for his own behavior. No, it was wrong, absolutely wrong. Then - why can’t I be more like Stacy? Stacy would have been in and out of bed with him in a flash, laughing the whole time - no regrets, no recriminations. Well, so much for my romantic fantasies. No satin sheets, no roaring fire, no magnificent sunset or candlelit dinner, certainly not a Prince Charming. Just a creaky ten-dollar bed in a dirt-floored shack, and a priest. She thought about it again. Well, in spite of everything, Miguel does have all the qualifications for Prince Charming. At least for the occasion.

*****

Charlotte and Stacy woke Lina up about an hour later. “Lina,” Stacy said, “we’ve been thinking some more about how to get out of here.” “Yes, and we thought the padre might be able to help us,” Charlotte said. “You’ve been working with him, so we thought you could ask him.” “No.” “Come on, Lina, we’re desperate. Ask him.”

No way am I going to do that. He’d think that was what I had in mind when I made love with him. “Come on, Lina. Get up. Go talk with him.” I guess I could go into his office, stay awhile, and then tell them Miguel hadn’t been able to think of any way to help them. She got up, reaching for the bag of clean clothes beside her bed. No, I’m going to wait until I find some water. I’m not going to put those clothes on until I can get washed. She grabbed the outfit she’d been wearing since the troubles began, and climbed into it. While Charlotte and Stacy watched encouragingly, Lina went to the door of the chaplain’s office and knocked. Miguel called, “Come in.” She did, hesitantly, and Miguel’s face lit up. “Come, sit down, Lina. We have a lot to talk about.” Well, she thought, at least he isn’t pretending not to know me the morning after. “Miguel, I’ve thought about what we did, and I realize we acted hastily. I’m sorry if you regret it now.” “We didn’t act hastily. At least I didn’t. I knew what I was doing. And I don’t regret anything. But I want you to understand how things are.” He hesitated for a long moment, looking at her intently. She knew he was trying to formulate his thoughts exactly, to express himself precisely, as he liked to do. “I am a priest. I will always be a priest. Being a priest is not like being, say, a lawyer. It is not just a profession which can be abandoned for something else. There is a profound change in the soul of the man who accepts ordination, and it can end only with his death.” “I understand, Miguel. I’m not going to make trouble for you. You can just forget last night ever happened.” “No, Lina. That’s not what I meant. My experience with you has also caused a major change in me. The emotional experience, I mean,” he added hastily, “not just the physical one.” “But that too.”

“Yes, that too. I’m glad we made love. It helped me to clarify feelings I had had for some time. I don’t feel guilty. I believe we were brought together because we belong together. Everything else is only a matter of working out details. And while it is not possible for me to stop being a priest, it is possible for me to stop acting as a priest.” “Miguel, I love you, too. But I don’t think we should rush into any decisions. We have to be sure of what we want before we do anything irrevocable.” “I’m absolutely sure of what I want to do. It’s up to you now.” Lina’s head was spinning. She looked at him - he looked so happy, so eager, so beautiful. Lina put her head down on her arms and began to cry. Miguel went around the desk and stroked her hair to comfort her. “I know it’s hard to think clearly just now. But you will see, all this will have a happy outcome. I’m sure of it. Years from now, we will look on this moment and smile.” He continued to stroke her hair. “You don’t have to make any decision now. Just think about what I have said. We will talk again, when you have had more time to consider the alternatives.” Lina stopped crying, and tried to clear her head. Yes, she thought, that’s a good idea. I’ll think about it later, when I can be calm. Suddenly she realized that, for the last few minutes, she had been hearing strange sounds, shouts and crashes in the corridor, starting near the ER door and moving toward them. Miguel looked at her, alarmed. “What is that? It sounds like trouble.” He went to the door and opened it. Four rifle-bearing men were in the corridor, and they stopped when they saw him. One of them looked beyond Miguel and saw the pale redheaded girl sitting inside the office. “Here is one of the Americans!” he shouted. The others pulled Miguel into the hallway and rushed into the room. They all leveled their rifles at Lina. She felt a sharp pain in her chest, as if the gun barrels had actually jabbed her.

“American soldiers are killing our men, killing our children,” one of them snarled. “Now we are going to kill an American or two!” Miguel, who had pushed into the room behind the men, quickly shouldered himself between them and Lina. “This woman is not American. She is a nurse from Spain.” One of the gunmen shoved Miguel, sending him crashing into the wall, and held his gun at the priest’s chest. Another growled at Lina, “Where are you from? What are you doing here?” “I am from Barcelona. I am here to help men die.” Her language was perfectly fluent, her accent impeccably Castilian, with the lisped Iberian c - Bar-the-lo-na. No hesitation, no self-consciousness. Flashing through her mind was the advice she got from an old-timer when she had first arrived in Esmeralda. “Get an Esmeraldan boyfriend. The best place to learn a language is in bed.” Having guns pointed at you also improves your fluency, she thought. She looked at Miguel. He was looking pointedly at Lina’s left breast. Her hand fumbled to it, and she realized she was wearing her nametag. As unobtrusively as she could, she clutched her collar, hiding the tag. Had they noticed it? Could they read? The moment stretched on and on. Lina looked into Miguel’s anguished eyes. Let it be over quickly, before I know what’s happening. She pulled her eyes away from Miguel. The men, seeming startled by her reply, hesitated, their guns still trained menacingly on her chest. Miguel broke into the silence. “Believe me, my sons, she is Spanish. There are no more Americans at this hospital. There were some, but they all left yesterday.” They looked at him suspiciously. “Listen to me. I am a priest. I cannot lie. And I am a Cuban. We hate Americans even more than you men do. Believe me, if there were any Americans here, I would tell you.” The men lowered their guns. “Now, my sons, please leave. You know how bad things are. All your comrades who lie here are dying. You must not show disrespect for them.”

Clearly the men were used to obeying priests, and they looked at each other, embarrassed. One of them gestured at the door with his head, and they left abruptly. Silently, Lina and Miguel watched them go out the door, across the lawn, out the gate. Lina leaped up, running down the balcony to the sleeping room. It was empty. Hysterical, she grabbed a ing Esmeraldan nurse. “My friends,” she started in English, then quickly switched to Spanish. “My friends - what happened to them?” The nurse silently pointed at the closet door. Lina went over and said softly, “It’s Lina. They’re gone. You can come out now.” Slowly eight chalky-skinned people filed out of the closet. “What happened?” Miguel asked. Charlotte began explaining. “Dr. González, the duty doctor in the ER, saw those men with the guns come in. He figured out what they were going to do. He ran around gathering up all of us and hid us.” “What courage that took,” Miguel said. “They’d have killed him if they’d known what he did.” “What are we going to do now?” Kevin asked, sounding shaken. Miguel went over and closed the corridor door. “I’m going to get you all out of here. Now.” He looked around. “You have to divide up. Let’s see - three groups.” “Group 1.” He pointed toward the two Negro volunteers and a dark-haired nurse. Miguel knew she’d grown up in Panama and spoke Spanish perfectly. “Group 2.” He picked out two nurses and Kevin. “Wait here. I’m going to ask Dr. González to take you to his house and hide you until dark. Or until he thinks it’s safe for you to travel.” “Group 3. You, to my office.” He pointed to Lina, Charlotte and Stacy. About five minutes later, Miguel came into the office. He looked at Charlotte and Stacy. “Will you wait outside in the corridor for a few minutes?”

When they’d left, he said, “Lina, I have made arrangements for you to leave in an ambulance with one of the drivers I have been working with. He will get you to the Embassy, or as close to it as he can. You are going to survive. But it is not over yet. I wish I could make it be over for you right now, but I can’t. I will get in touch with you as soon as I can. You must stay calm and wait for me. You will hear from me. Count on it.” Lina threw her arms around him, and they hugged tightly, desperately. “Lina.” He looked strange, uncomfortable. “Let me do one more thing before you leave.” “Anything.” “Let me bless you.” “What?” Lina was astonished. “Please.” He looked wretched. “This is ridiculous - I can’t believe you could possibly think it would do any good.” “I want you to live, and I can’t think of anything else that might help.” “Miguel, if there is a God, your blessing can only be a curse on me, on us.” “No, no, you’re wrong. God will protect you. He will save you. He will not charge my sin - if there was one - to you. I cannot help you after you leave here, but He can. And I believe He will. Please, Lina let me do what I feel I can to defend you.” “All right,” she said sickly. “What should I do?” “Kneel down. Bow your head.” Hiding her distaste, she obeyed. Miguel put his hand on her head and began murmuring in Latin. Lina’s confused mind could not understand what he said, but she had the impression it was a personal prayer, not simply a formula.

“All right, Lina, get up.” They kissed again, awkwardly, then Miguel opened the door and they ed Charlotte and Stacy in the corridor. Miguel led the three girls to the emergency entrance. “This is José. He will be your driver.” José opened the back door of an ambulance. It was spacious, with two windows, one on each side, about 18 inches above the floor. “Keep your heads below the level of the windows.” He climbed into the driver’s compartment. Charlotte and Stacy got in, and Lina turned for a last look at Miguel. Their eyes met, then suddenly his arms were wrapped around her, and he was kissing her greedily. As soon as he released her, she climbed into the ambulance, avoiding her friends’ eyes. She didn’t want to see their shocked expressions. They lay on their backs on the floor, and the ambulance started off. Lina felt so safe in that heavy metal vehicle - security at last! But there was a problem - one of the tires had a slow leak, and José had to keep stopping wherever he could find a place to put air in it. Every time the vehicle stopped, Lina was terrified. She felt she could hear not only her own heart beating, but also Charlotte’s and Stacy’s. Since they were lying flat, they couldn’t see each other’s faces, and they didn’t even dare to whisper, so Lina felt alone and isolated. There was something that struck her as particularly horrible about lying there watching the two windows above her. What is it? she thought. That I don’t want to die helpless and cowering? Certainly that, but something else, too. Then she realized - it was too much like the biblical Last Judgment, waiting for God to swoop down on her from above, wielding a golden sword, to deliver his final disapproving blow. After about the fifth stop, Lina heard voices and the sounds of other vehicles, but she couldn’t make out any words or guess where they were. Then the windows shattered, sprinkling glass shards around the interior. The three girls threw their arms up to protect their eyes. Lina brushed the glass off, then looked up. She saw the barrels of two rifles, one at each window. She tried to close her eyes, but she

found she was paralyzed. She just lay there, exposed and powerless, the blood pounding in her ears. Faces, one black and one white, cautiously followed the rifle barrels. When they leaned in to get a better look, Lina could read their nametags. One said `Wisnowsky’, the other `Jackson’. “Americans!” she said. “We made it!” The three girls got out and sat down on the Embassy steps. Lina realized she was clutching a towel from her bag as if it were an old friend. A reporter came over, took her picture, and asked if she had a quote for him. She blurted out the first thing that came to her. “I didn’t pray, I never prayed.” He looked puzzled and didn’t bother to write it down. The reporter and his partner went over and looked into the ambulance. One whistled, and the other started frantically snapping pictures. Not understanding, the three girls went over and looked into their recent refuge. There were jagged holes all over the vehicle. The walls and ceiling were spattered with blood and clots of yellow and gray - fat and brain tissue, Lina thought numbly. “The driver on the previous run,” José was explaining to the reporters, “and all the patients were killed, caught in crossfire.” Lina looked at Charlotte and Stacy, wondering whether they had known and spared her. But the other two looked stunned. We must have been nearly in shock, Lina realized, not to have seen that awful mess when we got into the ambulance.

Chapter 15

The two reporters gave the girls a lift to the Hotel Conquistador, which had been turned into an evacuation center. What a shock! The Conquistador had been the most elegant hotel in the city, but now the lobby was filled with bedraggled refugees who seemed to be living there. The potted palms were lifeless, and the swimming pool was drained, the bright tiled bottom covered by debris. And the grounds were swarming with US Marines. The rumor had been true. That shocked Lina, and made her feel betrayed. We could all have been killed because these childish men are here, strutting around in crisp new uniforms that look like Halloween costumes. And the older ones, the officers, are worse. They should be somewhere else, doing something useful, she thought, instead of here where they don’t belong, making people die. The three girls went timidly to the front desk. The clerk laughed at their request for a room. “Take any room with an open door. It’s an emergency, you know?” Upstairs, they raced along the corridor, competing with a dozen other people to find an empty room. Finally, at the very end of a ageway, they found one. There were no servants left in the hotel, and the sheets on the beds had obviously been used. Stacy went into the bathroom. “Oh wow! Look what’s in here!” It was water. It wasn’t hot, but it was definitely water. Running water. After they’d all had a glorious cold shower, they threw all their clothes into the tub, along with some of the hotel’s French shampoo, and stirred the mess around. Then they wrapped themselves in the bedsheets and left to find out what was going on. I can’t believe, Lina thought, I left that bag of clean clothes beside my bed in the hospital. I’m down to the one outfit again. But at least I still have my tote, with

the things I always carry. Just outside the door, they came across the second group from the hospital. “Oh, thank God, you got here safely!” Charlotte exclaimed. “What happened?” “Father López got us hospital whites, even medical bags, and he was dressed in his clerical clothes. We walked all the way across town to the Embassy. We got stopped by soldiers twice. The priest did all the talking - told them we were going to another hospital to try and get some blood and anesthesia.” “How horrible that must have been,” Lina said. “The worst part was when we got caught in the middle of a shoot-out. We had to hide under some trucks for an hour. I thought we were dead then.” “What about Kevin and the other two nurses?” “Father López left us at the Embassy. He said he was going to walk back to the hospital and get the others, then get them to safety as soon as it got dark.” Charlotte disappeared in the crowd, and Stacy and Lina went back to their room. Suddenly they heard a key fumbling at the door. It opened, and a man walked in. He looked astonished. “Who are you girls?” he hissed. “What are you doing in this room? And what the hell are you wearing?” Stacy said, “They told us at the desk to take any empty room, and that’s what we did.” “But how did you get in?” “The door wasn’t locked. In fact, it was ajar,” Lina said. He looked aghast. “No, no, it couldn’t have been. This is the operations room. It was locked.” “Well, if it was locked, how the hell do you think we got in? We don’t have any keys,” Stacy pointed out. “You have to leave at once,” the man said, in a voice that was growing shrill.

“Look, mister, I don’t know who you are, but if you want us to leave this room, you’ll have to find us another one first.” The man was frantic now. “Who are you?” he demanded. “Show me your identification.” “We’re Peace Corps volunteers,” said Lina. “We don’t have any identification with us at the moment.” “I hope for your sake the Peace Corps director can identify you,” the man snapped at them as he stormed off. “Jesus,” said Stacy, “what a weird little man.” Wondering what “operations room” meant, Lina looked around the room. There was nothing unusual in it. She went over to the closet and opened the door. “Oh, wow, look at this!” Stacy rushed over to the closet. It was packed full of equipment. “What the hell is all this?” “I’m not sure. It looks like a ham radio I saw in Aguadulce, but it’s a lot more complicated. “Well, maybe he was for real,” Charlotte said, “look at all this stuff! It must belong to somebody.” “Tough shit. When he finds us another room, we’ll leave. The hotel is packed. There are no more empty rooms. And we’re not going to camp out in the hall just because that asshole forgot to lock his door. We’re not going to disturb his precious equipment in the meantime.” “Right. He’ll find us another room if he wants this one back badly enough.” “Let’s go down and try to find something to eat.” “One of us better stay here, make sure that nut doesn’t come back and just throw our stuff out in the hall”, Lina said. “We can’t lock the door from the outside.”

Stacy looked disappointed. “I’ll stay,” Lina said. “OK. Bolt the door from the inside. I’ll bring you back something if I find anything edible.” “I’m exhausted. I’ll be asleep when you get back.” “Yeah, Lina, I know how you out in the presence of a bed. I’ll pound on the door loud enough to wake even the Queen of the Night.” Still wrapped in the sheet, Lina lay down on one of the beds. Let them make fun, she thought, at least I can get all the sleep I need, never mind what awful conditions. She was awakened by a hand roughly shaking her. She sat up and saw four men around the bed. One of them had a pistol. The nervous man was not among them. “Get up!” the man with the gun ordered. Lina did, clutching the sheet. “Who are you? What are you doing in my room?” “Over there!” he ordered, and when Lina hesitated, he shoved her across the room. One of the men unlocked the connecting door and they all went through, into a room very much like the one they had just left. But this one was full of radio equipment, and several men were sitting there operating it. They glanced up, and smiled when they saw Lina’s strange costume. “Hey, look!” said one. “A maharani!” There was another door on the far side of the room, and the gunman said, “Through there!” “Wait a minute,” Lina pleaded. “Let’s talk about this. I haven’t done anything wrong. Take the room, if you want it. Just let me get my clothes out of the bathtub. They’re all I have.” Two of the men grabbed Lina’s arms and rushed her across the room. “Stop! Let me go!” she screamed.

One of them slapped her hard. “Shut up!” The door opened in front of her and she was pushed through it. The gunman said, “Sit down!” and pointed to a chair. “No! Let me go right now. You have no right to do this. Let me go or I’ll scream.” “No, I don’t think so.” He grabbed a handful of her hair and twisted it painfully. Then he slapped her again, and forced her into the chair. Now Lina was frightened. “What is this all about? I haven’t done anything wrong. I’m an American, just like you. What do you want from me?” “Who are you and what were you doing in the operations room?” “Operations room. That’s what that nervous little man said. I don’t know what it means. They told us at the desk to take any empty room, and that’s what we did. The door was standing open.” “Impossible!” “It was. That weird little man probably forgot to close it.” One of the other men came in, carrying Lina’s tote. “This is all that was in the room, except for this pile of shit in the bathtub.” He dumped a soggy mess on the carpeted floor. Lina watched in amazement as they emptied her bag and searched it with maniacal thoroughness. They tore her wallet to pieces, and took each of her cigarettes apart, sifting through the tobacco and examining the paper, the wrapper, and the cellophane. They squeezed all the toothpaste out of the tube, then cut it open and looked at it with a magnifying glass. One of the men unenthusiastically toed through the wet mass on the floor. “What are you looking for? I’m in the Peace Corps. I teach health education and English classes. What do you think you’re going to find in my toothpaste?” “Where’s your port?” one of them asked. “All our ports are kept in the Peace Corps office.”

He looked skeptical. “Why?” It was a good question. The answer was that it was to keep them from violating the rule against re-entering the US during their term of service. But it sounded peculiar, as though they were serving a term of exile. “It’s their policy,” she muttered. “You have no ID at all - no Peace Corps card, no driver’s license, nothing.” “I left my American driver’s license back home - it’s no good here. And only the men got international driver’s licenses. The director said having girls driving jeeps and vans causes too much fuss.” She trailed off as she said, “And there is no Peace Corps ID.” It all sounded weak, even to her. “Nobody goes around without any ID unless they’re trying to hide something.” “Ask the Peace Corps director. He can identify me.” “We can’t find him. Do you know where he is?” Lina shook her head. “Peace Corps - that’s a commie group.” Another one laughed and said, “Hey, maybe she’s hiding something important under that sheet.” They looked at each other, then two of them took Lina’s arms and forced her to her feet, while a third grabbed the sheet and pulled it off her. They didn’t bother examining the sheet. They examined Lina. “A little too skinny for me, but she’s a real redhead, anyway. And she blushes!” “Let me go, you animals!” Lina snarled, struggling to free her arms. “Lively,” another one said, “I like them lively. And she’s got nice tits!” He reached out and Lina recoiled and started to scream. The gunman slapped her. “I told you to shut up!” he snapped. There was a tap on the door to the next room, and the gunman went over, opened

it and had a whispered conversation with the man on the other side. The others continued to leer at Lina. The gunman looked different, more thoughtful, when he turned back, and Lina saw a chance. “Let me go,” she said softly. “I haven’t done anything wrong. You know that. If I had been spying in that room, would I have been sleeping?” “Let go of her.” He gestured at the sheet. “Put it on.” Lina did, burning with rage and shame. “You can go. But you better keep your mouth shut. Nothing happened here, you understand? You never met any of us.” “Don’t worry. I still have some faith in the human race. I’d rather forget that not everyone qualifies for hip.” There was a silence in the room. Lina sensed the egos of the men filling, draining, the air in the room. My smart mouth, she thought. When am I going to learn to control it? The gunman’s face darkened. He raised his arm as if to hit her. For a moment, he glared at her. Then he lowered his arm. Without saying another word, he gestured her over to the door into the corridor. When she was in front of it, he shoved her violently in the small of her back. She hit the door with a thud, the doorknob driving into her stomach, taking her breath away. He pulled her aside and opened the door, then shoved her out with such force that she slammed into the opposite wall. Lina recovered her breath, wiped a smear of blood off her mouth, then ran along the corridor and downstairs to the lobby. She quickly found Charlotte and Stacy and stayed with them the rest of the afternoon, nervously looking around every few minutes. People were staring at the girls dressed in sheets, and Charlotte and Stacy were giggling about the sensation they were causing. An hour or so later, Boomer approached them. “There’s been some problem with

your room. It’s all right now. I had it changed.” He sounded as if he expected them to be grateful that he’d taken care of everything. When they went to the new room, all their clothes were in a wet heap in the bathtub. Lina’s bag was on the dresser, minus the wallet, but with a new pack of American cigarettes and a new tube of toothpaste. Her Esmeraldan money was neatly arranged inside her checkbook, along with a new US hundred-dollar bill. Is that their payment for scaring me half to death? Since nobody commented on the bruises on her arms or the swelling on her face, Lina didn’t tell anyone what had happened. She lay down beside Stacy on the comfortable hotel bed and tried to sleep. But her head was churning. I didn’t do anything wrong, she told herself. Did they know that? Did they care? Every time she dozed off, a memory of the lewd looks on the men’s faces jolted her awake. The next morning, Lina went out looking for the third group of volunteers from the hospital. She soon found Kevin. “It’s so wonderful to see you alive and whole!” she exclaimed, hugging him. “When did you get here?” “Just an hour or so ago. What a night! The padre borrowed a truck, dressed up as a farmer, and put the three of us in the back. Then he covered us with straw and vegetables. He drove all the way across the city, through all the shooting. It took hours, and he had to backtrack and find new routes when we got to roadblocks and heavy combat areas. God, how I hated not being able to see what was going on! When we finally got near the Embassy, there were snipers in the trees all around, shooting down into the compound. So he had to detour again. Finally, he managed to drive to within a few blocks of here. Then he got out and walked with us the rest of the way.” He stopped for a moment. “Talk to Mary Ann. She has a letter for you from him.” He looked closely at Lina. “The padre’s amazing, Lina. He saved our lives, all of us, without thinking twice about the danger. We’re lucky he was there. We’re alive. I don’t think we would be if he hadn’t taken care of us.” He waited, but Lina said nothing. “I need to find something to eat. I’ll see you later, Kevin.” She went off in search of Mary Ann, but she couldn’t find her. Wandering into the kitchen, she caught a glimpse of a familiar back leaning over a stove.

“Luke!” He turned around and she rushed into his arms. “I knew you’d get through this, Luke.” She began to sob. “Of course I did. You know me - I always find a way.” “What are you doing?” “A lot of people have come here for safety. Some of them are just camped out in the lobby. A lot of kids, did you notice? I decided to make a meal out of whatever I could find around, try to feed people.” “How did you get permission to do that?” He laughed. “Permission? I just marched up to the cabinets, to the stove, and started working. Nobody’s thought to challenge me.” Lina shook her head, laughing. “Well, at least you haven’t changed at all. Where have you been for the last few weeks?” “I was at a hospital. I heard you were, too.” “Yes. It was horrible.” “Later, we’ll talk about it. As soon as we get the chance. We all need that.” He looked haunted. I suppose I do, too. Still, being with Luke gave Lina a feeling of security. “I’ll help, Luke. What are we cooking?” He shrugged. “No-name soup. Hand me that package of rice.” When the meal was ready, they went around the lobby, pushing a big silver cauldron on a cart, ladling the soup out in paper cups to the refugees. “Thank you,” was the constant comment. “We haven’t eaten in two days.” Some people said three. A regal American woman, surely a diplomat’s wife, Lina guessed, came over

and asked for a cup. Luke gave it to her, and she had a sip. “Ugh!” she sputtered. “Canned soup! I thought you were serving cocktails.” Lina watched Luke’s face twist with disgust. After the soup was gone, Lina sat in the lobby, on the lookout for Mary Ann. Finally, she spotted her, and leapt up. “I understand,” she said, trying to sound casual, “you have a letter for me?” “Yes. Not here. In my room. Shall I go and get it?” “I’ll go with you.” When Mary Ann handed over the letter, she had such a frankly curious gaze, Lina blushed. She went off by herself to read it, finding a dusty corner of the garden to sit in. Dear Lina, I have just found out you are safe at the hotel, and I thank God for that. Lina, I love you. It feels so good, so right, to say that! You are the best thing that has ever happened to me. I think you feel a little confused at the moment, but I know you will come to feel the same way about me. I believe we can have an extraordinary future together. It will mean a complete change of direction for both of us, but I am convinced it will be worth it. Lina, I need you. When all of this is over, I will come for you. Wait for me, and keep safe. I don’t want to write this part, and I wasn’t going to, but I know I must. We both realize there is a possibility that I may be killed before this horror is over. It is unlikely - very unlikely - but if it should happen, I want you to promise me something. That you will not blame God. God loves you, Lina, even more than I do. Promise, if I die, that you will me, not with bitterness, but with joy - and know that your face will be the last image in my mind. Until we meet again, cara,

Your loving Miguel

*****

The next morning, Boomer gathered all the volunteers together. “It’s too expensive to keep you all at the Conquistador. I’ve arranged for you to be taken to a private school that was evacuated at the beginning of this. You can do all your own cooking and laundry. Save the government some money.” “How much is the government spending on this invasion?” Stacy asked. He glared at her, then turned to walk away. “How come the government has to save money by abandoning us again?” Kevin called. The director began walking faster. “Wait a minute, Boomer!” Stacy called after him. Lina watched the back of his neck turn red. He surely knew their nickname for him, but nobody had ever addressed him by it. He turned around, Lina cringed from the rage on his face. “Listen, motherfucker,” Stacy taunted. “You’re responsible for us - that’s your job. And you’d better start taking care of it. Not like the fine job you’ve done up to now. Because we’ve had it - and we’re all together now. If anything happens to any one of us, the rest are going to see to it that the rest of your life is sheer hell.” “You fucking whore - I should have sent you back right at the beginning. I saw right way you weren’t interested in anything but sleeping with anybody you could yank the pants off of!” Stacy ignored the insult. “ what I said. All of us - together.”

“And the rest of your life,” Lina added. “Don’t threaten me!” “That was just a promise,” Kevin said. In the afternoon, US Army vehicles picked them up and took them to the Colegio Santa María, two buildings about a mile from the hotel. The school’s generator was working, so there was electricity and cold water. Each of them laid claim to one of the cubicles in the main building - nuns’ quarters, they assumed, since they were tiny and bare. There was a small chest at the foot of each bed for belongings. The beds were narrow, less than twin-sized, and the cubicles all contained a single decoration - a large crucifix, grotesquely detailed. Stacy promptly took hers down and put it in the chest. “These beds are ridiculous. They must be made on purpose to be too narrow for more than one person to get in.” She laughed. “But don’t worry - I’ll work something out.” The other building contained a chapel and a refectory. There was lots of canned and frozen American food, and so many cases of soda the storeroom looked to Lina like a supermarket. It was almost like being back at Glendora - Luke throwing a bit of this and that into a pot and producing a delicious dinner for 17. They had an Esmeraldan army guard, a sloppily-dressed nervous type. “Don’t go taking any walks after dark,” Luke warned. “That guy will probably shoot anything he sees moving.” Lina had left a letter for Miguel at the Conquistador desk, telling him where to find her, but she was afraid it would never get delivered in all the confusion. Here, they were far from fighting areas, and slowly, cautiously, they began to relax. One night about a week after they arrived, they all sat in the parlor and sang the old songs, though Lina waved them off when they asked for a solo. Luke, true to form, had somehow managed to hold onto his guitar through it all. Stacey had lost hers with all her other possessions in the fire.

They found some wine - sacramental stuff, Lina thought. It was sweet and heavy, but they drank it anyhow. There wasn’t much of it, so they couldn’t possibly be as high as they felt, but suddenly they were acting like children. They chased each other around the building, wielding pillows and cans of whipped cream, howling with laughter. The guard came over to see what was happening, and they gave him the last glass of the wine. Finally, everyone except Lina went to bed. She sat on in the parlor, re-reading Miguel’s letter and worrying. Luke ed by the room and came in, thinking they had forgotten to put out the light. He saw her and abruptly turned away. She realized then that Luke had been quite cold for a couple of days, so she called him back. “What’s the matter, Luke? Are you mad at me?” He said nothing, just staring at her disapprovingly. “How about just telling me what the problem is. I’m not really in the mood to play guessing games.” “How could you? Don’t you have any shame?” Lina was astonished. “Luke, what in the world are you talking about?” “Oh, come off it, Lina! Everybody’s talking about how you’ve seduced a priest. You must think it’s very funny. But it disgusts me. Are you proud to have destroyed someone’s faith?” “Luke, I would have expected more from my friends than that. I mean, the fact that `everybody’ is talking about me - well, that doesn’t surprise me so much. But you’re my friend. Or at least I thought you were. I’d have thought you’d have more faith in me than that.” Who’s spreading this rumor? she wondered. Then a thought flashed through her mind - could it be Stacy? She’d think it was amusing. She burst into tears. Luke awkwardly approached her. She got herself together and handed him Miguel’s letter. He began to read it. “Uh, no, Lina. This is personal. I don’t want to read it.” He handed it back to her.

“No, damn it! You started this, now you read it and see what really happened.” He looked at her for a moment, still angry, but finally he smoothed out the paper and read it through. Then he said, “Lina, I’m sorry. You must feel terrible. Where is he?” “I suppose he’s still at the hospital. I haven’t heard from him since that letter, and that was over a week ago.” “What are you going to do?” “I don’t know, Luke. I love him, but it’s an impossible situation.” “Well, maybe not. Maybe you can work out something that would make you both happy.” “Oh, Luke, right now, I’d be happy just to find out he’s all right.” “Maybe I can help you. I know some of the people at the hotel. Maybe they can get a message to him.” Of course, thought Lina, Luke knows everybody. “Thanks,” she said. “I’d really appreciate that.” “Lina, I’m sorry…about your problem. But I’m happy you’re in love.” “Thanks,” she said, beginning to cry again. “I’m just so worried at the moment. At least if I knew he was safe, I’d be able to think straight.” “Tomorrow, I’ll go back to the hotel and see what I can do. Go to bed now. We can’t do anything tonight.” They stood up and Luke put his arms around her. “Listen, if you need a shoulder to cry on, I’m here. I’m your friend, Lina. You can count on me.” Just then, Mary Ann stepped in to put out the light. She saw the two of them, gasped and rushed out. Great, thought Lina, by tomorrow they’ll be calling me the Jezebel of the Peace Corps. The next morning, Luke walked back to the Conquistador. He began to go about

his favorite activity, chatting with people. This time he had a purpose. He talked with Embassy staff, reporters, hotel workers, and each got the same message Luke wanted news about Padre Miguel López, of Santo Tomás hospital. “We’ll wait a couple of days, then I’ll go back and see what news there is,” Luke said. But Lina couldn’t wait. The next afternoon, she set off for the hotel, thinking it couldn’t hurt just to ask if anything had been heard yet. She went up to the desk. “I’m a friend of Luke’s…” Before she could say anything else, the clerk said, “Listen, when you see him, tell him his friend the priest is dead.” Lina felt a roaring in her head. She struggled to speak through the noise. “How?” “Caught in crossfire, in an ambulance. He and the driver and the patients, all killed.” “When?” “Three days ago.” “Are you sure?” “Yes. My wife’s sister-in-law works at Santo Tomás.” Lina turned away. She stumbled across the lobby and out into the withered garden, where she was violently sick. She stayed in the garden for a long time, then finally got up and walked back to the hotel. She couldn’t face going inside, so she sat down on the ground with her back to the wall near the main door. I’d better go back to the school, she thought. But it’s such a long way, and I feel so weak. There’s no telephone at the school, and anyway there was no vehicle there. I’ll have to walk. I’ll just sit here for a while, until I get my strength back. “Hey, hi there, Lisa,” she heard. She looked up and saw Marty, one of the reporters who had driven her from the Embassy to the hotel. “Lina.”

“Yeah, right. What’s new with you?” “Do you still have that van?” “Sure.” “Can you give me a ride?” “Tell you what. You know this town. How about you take me on a little tour around the city, familiarize me with the geography? I can’t seem to find my way around. Then I’ll take you where you want to go, as long as you tell me how to get back here. Deal?” “All right,” said Lina. They got into Marty’s van and drove toward the center of the city. “Are you all right, Lisa? Your voice sounds kind of funny.” “Yes. I’m just a little tired, I guess.” She showed him all the local landmarks, and named the major streets and buildings. They drove through the main plaza. “At the corner, turn right. The other way is the National Palace, and it’s under siege. We have to stay away from there.” “Hey, I need some really great shots. That sounds like the perfect place!” And he turned left. They pulled up right in front of the gate. Immediately, they were surrounded by soldiers bristling with weapons. Soldiers who were clearly very nervous. Lina looked up to see planes circling overhead, diving and shooting. Lina whispered to Marty, “Put your hands up, and don’t say a word of English!” In Spanish, she called out, “We’re sorry. We got lost. We’re Venezuelans, trying to get back to our Embassy. Can you tell us the way?” “Out! Out! Hands up!” “Yes, yes, of course,” said Lina. “Don’t shoot!”

They got out. “Open the back.” The soldiers were so close Lina could smell their unwashed bodies. “Yes, yes, of course. Right away! Now I’m going to put my hands down. Don’t shoot! Now I’m going to open the back of the van. Don’t shoot! Now I’m going to put my hands up again. Don’t shoot!” The soldiers looked in the back, and saw that there was nothing threatening. Lina was beginning to relax a little when Marty suddenly whipped a camera out of his breast pocket and began snapping close-up pictures of the soldiers. Time stretched, and Lina was able to take in every detail of what was happening. The soldiers swiveled around, slowly, slowly, all of them leveling their rifles at Marty. His smile faded, and he lowered the camera. “No! No!” Lina screamed. “Don’t shoot him! He doesn’t have a gun! Don’t shoot him!” Out of the corner of her eye, she saw that the soldier on her left had started to squeeze the trigger. Without thinking, she threw her arm under the rifle, pushing it upward. The shot went into the air, and all the rifles turned and aimed at her. This isn’t going to be so bad. She pictured Miguel’s face and briefly wondered if he had had time to hers. She closed her eyes. “Stop!” The shout, in authoritative Spanish, made Lina’s eyes snap open. The line of soldiers remained frozen, still sighting at her down their rifle barrels. A long second elasped. Then the guns, one by one in ragged succession, dropped to point at the ground. Lina turned to her left, where all the soldiers’ eyes were focused. An officer stood there, pale and shaky-looking. “Who are you fools? What are you doing here?” “This man is a journalist. I live here, and am traveling with him by chance.”

“Señorita, your companion must be crazy. Even now, I wonder if he realizes how close he came to death.” “I agree with you, señor. He is crazy. But he is not dangerous, except to himself. Please, will you let us go? I will guarantee to get him away from this area at once.” He hesitated a moment. “Yes, get out of here.” He turned and ordered the soldiers to let them go. They got back into the van, and the officer stepped up to the enger-side window. “Señorita, this is not a game. We are surrounded by death - immersed in it.” He snapped his fingers. “A few more corpses would mean nothing. This is not something for women and idiots to meddle in. This fool, and you yourself, have come within a second of death. You must find yourself a smarter companion. Right away!” “Yes, I intend to do that. Right away. And I thank you, señor. For my life - and for that of…this fool.” They drove off, and Lina could still feel the guns trained on them. She even knew how many there were. She could sense each one boring into her back. They turned a corner, and she heaved a great sigh. “Well, that was real interesting! Where shall we go now?” Lina could hardly talk through her clenched teeth. “Take me back to the hotel, you maniac! Then you can go wherever you want.” “Hey, Lisa, don’t get all nervous. That was no big deal. I do this kind of thing all the time.” He patted his pocket. “I was lucky this time. They didn’t smash my camera, or even ruin my film. I bet I got some terrific shots!” Lina was silent. At the hotel, she got out of the van, slamming the door. “See you around, Lisa. I’ll need a quote from you about what that officer-fellow said.” She turned and glared at him. “He said you were a fucking moron who didn’t

deserve to still be alive!” He laughed. “Great quote!” “Write it down. It’ll make a nice epitaph.”

Chapter 16

When Boomer arrived at the school a few days later, he was greeted with a haughty silence. “You’re all going to Puerto Rico for a while.” “Why?” Kevin’s voice was surly. Boomer’s mouth twisted. “Because I’m the boss, that’s why. This is my decision, not yours.” “When will we be coming back?” Lina asked. “When I decide.” “Thanks for everything. It’s really been fun. Wouldn’t have missed it for the world.” Stacy thumbed her nose in his direction. “Get your shit together tonight. You’ll be picked up at 6 AM tomorrow. And good riddance to all of you.” He turned and stomped out the door. “I feel sorry for him,” Luke said later, over a Coke in the living room. “I don’t.” Stacy said. “I feel sorry for us.” The next day they stood huddled and silent in the scorching dawn, clutching brown paper bags or tattered straw totes containing their few possessions. When the khaki-colored bus drew up, they formed a docile single line and filed onto it. A jeep full of American soldiers cradling rifles went in front and another followed, its mounted machine gun pointed directly at the back window of the bus. They clustered together in the front, except for Lina, who walked alone to the back and sat gazing out at the soldiers in the jeep. Numbly, she thought, This is my last view of Aguadulce - down the barrel of a gun.

At a military airport on the outskirts of town, they were loaded onto trucks and driven to a plane on a far runway. The back of the plane was hinged down, forming a ramp. They walked inside what looked like an unfinished attic, with exposed thwarts and beams, not even a proper floor. Stretched from “floor” to “ceiling” down the center of the aircraft was a cargo net. A soldier gave them web belts. “Tie yourselves to the net,” he ordered. Other people, strangers, came on - families, it seemed, with a lot of children. There was a toilet - literally a bucket on what ed for the floor, with a shower curtain around it. The plane took off sluggishly, laboring to clear the runway. It lumbered on its way and several children immediately became airsick, spewing vomit. It splashed and tossed all over the engers as the plane dipped and turned leadenly. The first time the plane gave a good roll, the toilet bucket overturned, adding its contents to the reeking puddles already splashing around. “Keep your feet up,” called Kevin. “Most of the shit is on the bottom.” Lina clung miserably to the net, feeling as sick as the children. Eventually the plane dropped, suddenly and clumsily, and settled onto the runway, scarcely rolling at all. The engers filed off and lined up at the port control counter, where immigration officials gagged and glared as they examined papers. The volunteers had been given back their ports the day before, but their yellow immunization cards, kept so painfully up to date, had not been returned. So they had to line up with the other bedraggled refugees, while white-jacketed Public Health Service workers shot them simultaneously in both arms. Nobody knew how many or which shots they had received. Still in a silent line, they ed on to a woman with a weary smile, who handed each one a box. Next, they were directed to a desk. The sign over it said, U.S. CITIZENS ARRIVING FROM ESMERALDA, HERE. A young man, clearly bored with this assignment, handed each one a new US ten-dollar bill. He pushed a pile of vouchers toward them, motioning each of them to sign for the money. “You Peace Corps people - go out this door and wait. A bus is going to come for you.” Outside, Lina looked at the box and saw that it was marked RED CROSS REFUGEE KIT. Idly she opened it, finding a toothbrush, soap, a razor, two

aspirin, three Band-Aids, and a single Kotex. She looked up and saw Luke, standing a little apart from the others, wearing soiled ragged jeans and a dazed expression. He was clutching his refugee kit in one hand and his $10 bill in the other. Lina thought how defeated he looked, and how old. A tear rolled silently down her face and dropped onto the Kotex, where it instantly disappeared. Kevin stalked up to a vending machine and took out an Esmeraldan quarter. “Watch this.” He slammed the coin confidently into the machine. A package of M&M’s dutifully emerged from the chute. The rest of the gang swarmed around the machines and were soon gobbling junk food, exclaiming how wonderful it was. But no one buys food from airport vending machines, and everything was stale and tasteless. It was hot, very hot. Of course, they were used to that. But the humidity seemed worse than in Esmeralda, bearing down on them as if trying to force their bodies to the earth. Soon it succeeded - they were all sitting on the concrete, reeking of vomit and urine - miserable and humiliated. The inoculations were beginning to affect some of them. Stacy stood up, wobbled over to the trash bin and threw up. Lina felt woozy, and Luke, seeing her begin to teeter, pulled her head down onto his lap, where she dozed fitfully. When a public bus labeled DOWNTOWN SAN JUAN pulled up, Kevin got up. “Screw this! Let’s go!” They all got up, gathered their things together, and got on the bus. “Where are we going?” Charlotte asked. “An Esmeraldan friend of mine told me his mother-in-law owns a pensión in San Juan,” Luke said. “Sounds good to me,” Stacy said. “Where is it?” “I don’t know. But I’m going to find out.” Luke walked to the front of the bus and talked with the driver. “Finally a bit of luck. The place is just a few blocks away from a bus stop. We’ll be there in about half an hour.”

The pensión was a dilapidated but roomy bungalow. They surprised the ancient formidable ama de casa, but she looked at them shrewdly. “Cash only. In advance,” she demanded in heavily accented English. “No problem,” Kevin said. Because the Esmeraldan banks had been closed for weeks, they’d been paid in American dollars at the beginning of the month, a week or so before. They’d had nothing to spend American money on in Esmeralda. The ama was soon squawking orders, and people began scurrying around, chattering and packing things. It seemed that a host of her relatives freeloaded whenever the place wasn’t full. In loud clear barks, she ordered them to double up or vacate at once. “Paying guests!” she squawked. “Out, out all of you! Take your stuff! Make room for the paying guests!” “We can wait for the rooms,” Luke said, “but we need to wash.” The old woman seemed to notice their problem for the first time. Silently, she led them to a disreputable shower stall in a back hallway. Then, shaking her head and obviously holding her breath, she trudged back toward her tiny office. They all took quick cold-water showers, then stowed their battered baggage with the ama and went to find food. When they returned, the rooms were ready - cots were packed wall-to-wall in two rooms, one for the women and one for the men. Exhausted, they slept for most of the afternoon. Then they went out in search of telephones to call their families. “Mom, I’m safe.” “I know that,” Lina’s mother snapped. “Why did it take you twelve days to call?” “Twelve days?” “We were notified twelve days ago that you were safe in Puerto Rico.”

“Notified?” She was mystified. “Who notified you?” “The Peace Corps office in Washington. You could have found a minute to call us.” “They lied to you. I just got here a couple of hours ago. Twelve days ago, I was…” She thought about it. Was that the day we escaped from the hospital? “Never mind. Anyway, I’m safe now.” “When are you coming home?” “I have no idea. I’ll let you know when I find out.” “Come tomorrow.” “I can’t do that. I’m still in the Peace Corps. I have to wait until they decide what they want me to do.” “Forget the Peace Corps. Just come home.” “I can’t. Listen, I have to go now. People are waiting for this telephone.” “Where are you staying? What’s your phone number?” “I don’t have a phone at the moment. I’ll call you again later.” “Colleen! Wait, wait…” She hung up. “Bastards,” Stacy said as soon as she got off the phone. “Liars!” That evening, they assembled on the veranda. “No point in hanging around here,” Kevin said. “Let’s go out!” “And do what?” Lina asked. “Prowl..”

The next few days they spent the same way - sleeping most of the day, then spending the nights wandering the streets in stiff synthetic finery they bought from bins in bargain outlets, smelling of cheap cologne and after-shave. Lina did not call her family again. I’ve got to call Pierce, she told herself. But somehow it seemed too much trouble to try to find out his phone number. Finally, she wrote him a letter, not saying very much, just that it had been terrible, but that it was all over now and she would write again. She put no return address on the envelope, since she didn’t know how long they would be staying at the pensión. A few days later, Lina wrote the same letter to her aunt Helen, also without a return address. On the sixth day, in the early morning while they were still asleep, two vans pulled up in front of the pensión. A man got out of one, entered and spoke to the ama, paid her, and went in to wake the men, while the ama did the same for the women. Everybody assembled on the wide veranda. “Pack your things,” one of them said, smiling ingratiatingly. “We’ve come to take you someplace much nicer.” “Who are you guys?” Stacy demanded. “Where do you think you’re taking us?” “You’re lucky. You’re going to have a vacation. At the US government’s expense.” “Where?” Lina demanded. “In Santa Anita.” “Where’s that?” “It’s at the northeast corner of the island. Where the Caribbean meets the Atlantic, more or less. We’re taking you to a resort, to the Hotel Imperial.” “Why?” “Because the government realizes you’ve been through a lot - that you need a rest, a break. Time to relax and get yourselves together.”

A skeptical silence followed his explanation. Then Kevin said, “Sounds good to me.” “Yeah,” said Stacy. “Whatever the real reason is. I mean, what the hell - I’m broke.” She stepped up to one of the vans. “Take me to that resort.” The Imperial was a graceful building perched on a rocky cliff overlooking a turbulent blue-green ocean. The rooms were lush - marble fixtures in the bathrooms, heavy brocade bedspreads, constant attentive maid service. They could have gone swimming, either in the ocean or in the swimming pool, if they’d had bathing suits. Tennis or golf were also available, if they’d had the equipment or clothing. But they were not allowed to eat in the hotel - house rules required men to wear jacket and tie in the dining room. So they all had to pile into the vans and drive in to Santa Anita whenever they were hungry. They soon discovered that this `vacation’ had an agenda. The two men in charge were psychologists, and their job was to find out if anyone was dangerously depressed. They had a number of interviews with the psychologists - sometimes in private, sometimes in small groups. The questions were always the same - How did you feel during the fighting? How do you feel now? Are you nervous, worried, depressed? Are you sleeping? Eating? Drinking a lot? And they always ended on the same note. Is any member of the group worse off emotionally than the others? Please tell us, we won’t make trouble for anyone, we just want to help. “Beautiful, isn’t it?” Charlotte sighed, stretched out on a lounge chair on their balcony. The relentless crashing of the breakers against the base of the cliff created a rhythmic sound that was very soothing, almost hypnotic. This afternoon, most of the volunteers were gathered in the girls’ room, trying to hide out from the psychologists. “I guess if we have to be in custody,” Lina said, “we should be grateful it’s in such pleasant surroundings.” “Lighten up, can’t you, Lina?” Charlotte said. “Why are you so suspicious?”

“Why are you so naive? Don’t you realize there’s a purpose to all of this?” “Lina has a point,” Stacy said. “Why is the `government’ bothering with all this? Who cares how we feel?” “Good question,” Lina said. “Anybody have any ideas?” Kevin had one. “They want to avoid bad publicity. And it would be bad if one of us said the wrong things to the press.” “Yes.” Luke looked thoughtful. “And think about the bad publicity if one of us…” He shook his head and stopped abruptly. “One of us what?” Kevin asked impatiently. “One of us got depressed enough to…well, to harm himself.” Kevin guffawed. “Well, count me out of that one, folks. That kind of thing is just not on my schedule.” When she realized that she had been asked to make more appointments than most of the others, Lina knew someone had mentioned her as being particularly troubled. She felt betrayed. Do they think the psychologists can help me cope with this? Or really want to? Why should any of us trust these men? We don’t know anything about them - maybe they’re just as bad as Dr. Starkie. Waking up one morning about 5, Lina got up and went out for a walk on the golf course. After half an hour or so, she sat down and gazed out over the ocean, studying its languid beauty. Suddenly she felt that she was being watched. She looked up, and saw one of the psychologists standing nearby, staring at her intently. “What do you want?” She heard the irritation in her voice. “How are you?” “Fine. Except that I’m not getting enough privacy.” “I’m sorry about that, but I’m concerned about you. You always look so sad. You eat so little, and I don’t think you’re sleeping very well, either. Is there anything

you’d like to talk about?” “I have the feeling you already know too much about me, things I haven’t told you.” “Do you think I want to do you harm?” She thought about that. “I can’t think of any harm you could do me. But I can’t think of any reason why you’d care about me, either.” “I thought that after all you’d been through, you might like to have someone looking after you.” “I don’t need looking after. I can deal with my own problems. Anyway, I can’t see how someone who’s being paid to provide a service can give anyone a feeling of security.” After a few minutes, he said, “You lost your boyfriend in the fighting.” Not a question, just a flat statement. “Well, I was right. I suspected someone was telling you about my personal life.” “Your friends are worried about you. They know how much strain you’ve been under. They think it might be more than you can handle by yourself.” “My friends are too nosy.” “I can understand why you’re angry. Do you want to talk about it?” “No, certainly not with you. But they’re paying you, aren’t they, to get certain results? Tell me what you want me to say, and I’ll say it. And you can go away.” He sighed. “I’m not your enemy.” “You’re not my friend, either. If I promise not to kill myself, will you go away?” He looked dismayed. “All right, listen. I didn’t lose my boyfriend. I know where he is. But he’s dead. My boyfriend, the priest, as I’m sure you already know, died violently…a while ago.”

I don’t exactly how long ago it was, she thought guiltily. The memory is sliding farther and farther away. Today I can’t how many days it’s been. Soon I’ll forget how many months. In time, I’ll forget which year he died. Will I eventually forget it happened at all? “Naturally I’m upset,” she continued wearily. “But I’ll get over it. On my own. Go back and tell whoever sent you that I’m all right. And if I’m not planning to hang myself from the nearest palm, you can be pretty sure no one else in this group is either.” “That’s a pretty heavy burden on you. Is there anything I can do to help?” “Yes, actually. You can release me and my friends from custody. We need to start working on picking up our lives again, going on.” She got up and left him sitting there. That afternoon, they were loaded into the vans and driven back to San Juan, to a hotel. “Just until you can go back to Esmeralda,” one of the psychologists said. Lina felt chilled - she hadn’t considered the possibility of going back. But maybe that is what the Peace Corps intends. Why else would they send us here instead of directly home? She thought of her burned-out barrio, all of the people she had worked with, probably dead. The embattled hospital. The cremation pit. Miguel. I could have stayed there, she thought. I was adjusted to it, coping with all that horror. But now - now that I’ve survived, escaped - how can I go back? The hotel was shaped like an ocean liner - a narrow oval, hollow in the middle. It was clearly well built, with lovely architectural details. But it had seen better days. The hollow center contained a swimming pool, and balconies ran around outside the rooms above the pool, with the rooms opening directly off them. There was a skylight over the pool - metal beams formed four-foot squares that were glazed, though much of the glass had since fallen out. “The skylight is stupid,” Stacy told the bellboy in her pidgin Spanish. “Why cut off the sun from the pool area?” He laughed. “The hotel used to have a problem with guests diving off the

balconies into the pool.” Kevin looked over. “You’re joking.” The bellboy shrugged. “A few drinks too many, and it seems like a pretty macho thing to do.” The pool still held water, green and slimy. “Swamp-water Jell-O,” Luke drawled. “Probably tastes of frog.” Lina thought it was probably just dirty rainwater, nothing they would dare swim in. The rooms were damp and dark, the mattresses musty, but it was much better than the way they had lived in Esmeralda, and they all settled in comfortably. It didn’t take Kevin very long to find out the only other residents of the hotel were prostitutes.

*****

They usually slept all day or sat around in the hotel bar. The Black Magic Lounge was below the lobby level, and it suited them perfectly - there was no natural light, and very little light at all. It was sleazy, shabby, dreary. “Who wants to go out to the beach?” Charlotte asked one of their first afternoons at the hotel. Nobody responded. “Right. I think I’ll just sit myself down right here and have a drink.” “Why don’t we want to go out in the sun?” Lina asked. “Back in Esmeralda, we’d jump at the chance to lie around on the beach.” “Depression,” said Stacy. “One of those shrinks explained it all to me - we’re totally depressed. So we stick together, stay in the dark. And we don’t laugh unless we’re drunk. A classic case of depression, he said it was.”

“Sounds right to me,” Lina said. “We’ve always been a pretty classy group. Let’s have another Cuba esclava.” Rum and Coke, formerly Cuba libre, or Free Cuba, was now sarcastically called Slave Cuba by refugees from Castro. The bartender laughed every time one of the Americans ordered one. They sat in the bar and sipped drinks until sundown. Then as dusk approached, they began to stir. “Come on,” Lina said. “Let’s figure out what to do tonight. Anybody have any ideas?” “I think we’ve hit bottom as far as seamy bars go,” Charlotte said, barely suppressing a shudder. “That place we went to last night was about as low as they get.” “Depression,” Stacy said. “We’re trying to find the most decadent places we can.” “We’re pretty broke, too,” Lina said. “But I like the decadence theory better. Sounds more romantic.”

*****

One afternoon when Lina was asleep, the phone rang. She muttered at it, but it continued to ring, so she got up and answered. “There’s a gentleman here to see you,” said the desk clerk. “Wrong room.” She hung up. The phone rang again. “Señorita O’Reilly, there’s a gentleman to see you. I have sent him up.” “Who is it?” “I do not know, señorita. He said he had to talk with you. He is on his way up. He is a gentleman.”

Oh, I get it, Lina thought. Whoever it is gave the desk clerk a generous tip. Angrily, she threw on the first thing she found - a billowing dress in a purple, pink and orange Hawaiian print. Stacy had picked it up in some bargain store bin. “It’s perfect,” Lina had laughed when Stacy modeled it. “I couldn’t have designed it better myself.” Barefoot, her long red hair tangled, Lina stomped to the door and flung it open. She backed up, and Drew’s father came into the room. “Hello, Lina.” He looked her over carefully. How clever of him, she thought, to be able to get that close to raising his eyebrows without actually doing it. “Pierce has been frantic to find out if you’re all right.” He tucked an envelope into the pocket of his linen jacket and went on. “He begged me to look for you. How are you?” “I’m fine. As you can see.” “Do you need money?” “No, I have plenty.” “I’ll tell Pierce I saw you.” I’ll bet you will. Abruptly, he turned and left - not quite quickly enough to keep her from seeing his look of contempt. Pompous ass, she thought. I wish I’d slept with your son when I had the chance! Afterward, dressing to go out with the gang, she wondered what it was he’d done that seemed odd. She went back over the encounter, and finally ed. What was in the envelope he’d stuffed in his pocket? She thought about it for a minute. Of course - it was a letter from Pierce. He was going to give it to me, but he changed his mind. I’ve got to write to Pierce, she thought guiltily. This time, I’ll give him my address.

*****

They were never quite sober, but usually no one was noticeably drunk, either. They just maintained a constant state of buzz that made them feel comfortable. Sometimes they gambled at a casino, not an elegant one where bets were expected to be large, but at one of the neighborhood places. Lina made a small steady profit playing blackjack. One night, Stacy said, “Lina, if we all chip in, you can make bigger bets. We’ll split the profits.” “If any.” “The losses, then.” “Good idea,” Kevin said. “I’ll play a few hands, too.” Lina did all right, but Kevin kept losing. “I told you not to drink while you play,” Lina told him. He scowled. “No lectures, please.” “Uh, listen Kevin,” Charlotte said. “Why don’t you lay off for a while? You seem to be having an off-day.” “My luck is about to change.” “You just don’t get it, do you, Kevin? What I’m saying is that you can play with your own money. But not with mine. I want Lina to play with my money.” Kevin scowled, but he pulled out of the game. When Lina lost a hand, he taunted, “Anyone could have won that! You’re losing your touch.”

“Get off her back, Kevin,” Stacy snapped. “Lina’s doing fine. Nobody wins all the time.” Kevin sat there, glaring at her and downing drink after drink. After a couple of hours, Lina said, “That’s it for me.” “We’re ahead,” Charlotte said. “by quite a bit.” “No more of this. It makes me too nervous. I don’t mind risking my own money, but I don’t want to lose anybody else’s.” She looked at her watch. Four AM. Bats, we’re turning into bats. Maybe eventually we won’t be able to see except at night. She never got around to writing to Pierce.

*****

Late one afternoon, Lina left the Black Magic, found a pay phone, and called her aunt Helen. As soon as Helen answered, Lina felt embarrassed. I’m pretty tipsy, she realized. But her aunt didn’t seem to notice, or at any rate, didn’t comment. Lina explained a little about what had happened in Esmeralda, muddling things up quite a bit, then started crying. “When are you coming home?” Helen interrupted. “I don’t know.” “Why are you staying there?” “I don’t know.” “Look, why not just go back to Trowbridge?” “No! No way!” “Then come to Chicago. Just get on a plane and come.”

“Maybe I will.” “When shall I expect you?” “Don’t expect me,” Lina said, and hung up without giving her aunt her address or phone number.

*****

“Everybody’s beginning to act strange,” Lina complained to Charlotte. “No. Everybody’s just beginning to act like more like himself. His real self.” Lina looked at her out of the corner of her eye. Doesn’t she realize she’s one of the ones who’s getting weird? Charlotte had become very withdrawn, spending all her time reading, sitting curled up in the one rickety armchair. She surrounded herself with piles of books, oblivious to the weather, mealtimes, or other people, twisting a strand of her hair as she turned pages. Even when she went to the Black Magic, or out with the group at night, she took a book in her purse. After an hour or so, she would put on her glasses and begin reading, holding the book up close to her eyes and squinting to see in the dim light. Stacy still hung around with the group during the day and late into the evening, but she didn’t sleep in the room any more. She must have found a boyfriend somewhere, thought Lina. She wondered who it could be. Stacy had long since run through the Peace Corps men, and they almost never saw anybody outside of the group. One day Lina, Stacy and Charlotte went down to the Black Magic just after noon and sat sipping rum cokes. About four, a group of workmen came in and started drinking and playing the jukebox. After a while, one of them came over and asked Lina to dance. Automatically polite, she declined. A few minutes later, another man asked Charlotte. She also said no. When a third one asked Stacy, she mustered her atrocious Spanish. “Señor, please stop asking us to dance. My friends and I are

talking. And we can’t dance anyway. We are drunk.” The three girls burst into laughter at the shocked look on the man’s face. The next day, Lina was chatting with the bartender. “That one, your friend who told the men you were drunk …” “Yes?” He leaned over the bar. “She is a puta.” The word meant whore. Lina glared at him. “She sleeps with the porter, the bellboy, the gardener, the handyman. Anybody.” Instantly Lina knew it was true. “And you too, I suppose.” He looked her in the eyes. “And why not? I am a man. Why should I refuse a plain offer from a woman? A blond woman?” Lina felt sick, but she couldn’t think of any way to talk with Stacy about it. And Luke - she wasn’t really surprised to see him in the Black Magic one afternoon, clutching a little pile of pamphlets, unsuccessfully trying to convince other volunteers to take them. As she entered, Luke turned and started toward her. She held up her hand. “Luke, if those are religious tracts, stay away from me with them.” His face fell. He shrugged and left. Kevin was drinking too much. In fact, drinking almost all the time. He was an argumentative, sometimes hostile, drunk. “I’m worried about Kevin,” Lina said one afternoon as the three girls sat around the Black Magic. “Why do you bother about him?” Stacy asked. “He’s obnoxious. He always has been.” “Don’t you care if he’s in trouble?”

“No. He doesn’t give a shit about me. So why should I care what happens to him?” Lina thought about Kevin and Stacy grinding together on the floor in the hospital basement, panting and groaning. “You’re so hard, Stacy.” “And you’re so stupid. Kevin wouldn’t lift a finger for you. But you moan around worrying about him. Forget him - let him go to hell if that’s what he wants. By himself.” I’m the only one who isn’t changing for the worse.

*****

Lina was awakened one day by pounding on her door. She glanced out the window - it was still light, not time to get up yet. She yelled, “Go away!” but the pounding continued. She finally went to the door. It was Luke. “Get dressed and come out with me.” “No. I’m too tired.” “Come on, Lina. I need to talk to you. Now.” She was suddenly aware that Luke was carefully averting his eyes from her threadbare nightgown. She closed the door in his face and got dressed. They walked around to the back, to the ill-kempt little strip of beach. They were alone - the other residents of the hotel never used the beach. Lina winced as they stepped outside. Her first sunlight in… what was it, about a month?…stung. They sat on the sand. “Lina, what are you trying to do to yourself?” “Oh, Christ, Luke, did you drag me out here just to give me a sermon?” “You’re going all to pieces.”

“Saying `damn’ is going all to pieces to you.” Irrationally, Lina felt angry that Luke never cursed or swore. “What do you say when you hit your finger with a hammer?” He put his hand on her arm. “I don’t want to talk about your language. Or mine. I want to talk about what’s happening to you.” “I…I’m unwinding.” “Looks to me like you’re winding yourself around a bottle.” “Look, I know you don’t approve of drinking, but it helps me relax. Let me be.” “I know you’ve been through a lot, but do you really think drinking all day and all night will make it better? You’re on a downhill spiral. Don’t you realize that?” “You’re a prude. I warned you a long time ago, Luke - if you’re going to preach at me, we can’t be friends.” “Have you had an intelligent conversation in the last month? What are you eating? When was the last time you combed your hair?” Guiltily, Lina ran her fingers through her tangled curls. “I’m OK,” she insisted. “I’m not going to go on this way forever.” “Listen to me…” “Get off my back, will you?” Lina got up to leave. He grabbed her wrist. “How do you think Miguel would feel if he could see you now?” She tugged her arm away, but he held on tight. Turning, she slapped him viciously in the face, again and again, until he loosened his grip. She pulled free and stormed off down the beach. “Lina!” His voice was thin, shrill. She turned and saw him sitting there, his hand held over his cheek where she had

hit him. Is that blood running out of his mouth, she wondered? No, no it must just be the shadows. “Please. Just do one thing. Read his letter again.” “Luke, listen to me! I don’t need you - or your bible, or your goddamn smug moralizing. Leave me alone, do you hear? Just fuck off!” She didn’t go back to the hotel. Instead, she took a long walk around the city, trying not to think too deeply. But it all flooded in on her. So many men telling me how to run my life - Pierce, Dieudonné, Eduardo, Miguel, Luke. Not because I asked any of them for advice - they all think I can’t survive without a man to take care of me. She found herself in front of a church. A strange mood came over her, and she went up the stairs. It looks just like every other church I’ve ever seen. Catholics do that deliberately, so they can feel at home in any church anywhere in the world. It’s comforting to them. They don’t think of it as lethargy, stagnation. She walked up the side aisle. Of course, there was Mary - the impossible mothervirgin. Ideal, unattainable model of womanly perfection, created by men who hate the real thing. Lina recoiled as a trick of the light, or the result of tropical mold, produced a ghastly effect on the statue - it seemed to be riddled with leprous lesions. Between the statue and the altar railing was a bank of votive candles. Lina would not kneel, but she leaned over and lit one. The flame riveted her. She felt in another dimension, on another plane. Gregorian chant seemed to float on the air, as if sound could have a sort of lingering aroma. She could not pray, but she wished, as she used to wish on birthday candles, that Miguel had found the heaven he had so ardently believed in. Her eyes filled with tears. Snap out of it. You don’t have any money with you. You can’t pay for the candle. And you know how the Church works. No cash, no answered prayers. Or even wishes-come-true. Then another thought forced itself into her mind. Maybe if you had taken off Dieudonné’s pagan charm, God would have spared Miguel. Disgusted, she shook her head, trying to clear it. What bargain can you make

with such a God? And why can’t you be in a church for five minutes without being sucked into the fairy tale? She walked to the central aisle. There, hideously impaled on a golden cross, hung the twisted, tortured corpse. She sat down and stared at the altar. The flickering candlelight, an empty stomach, and the lingering aroma of incense combined to bring her back to her grade-school days. She fell into the half-daze she had always felt in church as a child. She visualized a priest dressed in gorgeous satin robes, richly embroidered with mystical symbols. As usual, his back was turned to her, and he was muttering in Latin. This was Miguel’s world. He had accepted it, understood it, even loved it. And he had felt comfortable here. Lina felt like a Martian, trapped in a ritual she could never hope to understand, no matter how eagerly its disciples tried to explain it to her. It was an alien culture, full of cold cruel idols, dreadfully misshapen. She slammed her fist down onto the altar rail. “I hate this place!” Lina shouted. “I’m so scared,” she whispered. She made her fantasy priest turn around, forcing him to look outward, not upward. The ceremonial robe hid the shape of the creature beneath. If human, it revealed no arms, no legs, no hint of sex, only an unnatural square-cornered outline. The colors of the robe swirled and clashed, and Lina could no longer interpret the symbols on it. But there was no mistaking the Catalán eyes, burning, burning, into hers. She walked back over to the candle stand. Taking the gold chain off her neck, she toyed with it and its tiny charms, thinking, considering. The candlelight flickered over the diamonds on the cross, the rainbow glint making her eyes tear. Finally, she took off the cross and put the chain and the coral fist back around her neck. She cradled the cross on her palm for a moment, then she kissed it and quickly dropped it into the coin slot. Back at the hotel, Lina went down to the Black Magic.

“Cuba esclava,” she said to the bartender. “Doble.”

*****

Two nights later, they went to the worst dive yet. Luke wasn’t with them. Lina realized she hadn’t seen him at all since their run-in on the beach. I’ll have to find him and tell him I’m sorry - though he was the one who started it. The bar was just a tin roof erected over a cement slab in a warehouse and factory district. Lina thought it looked like an hounfor - but what god were they here to worship? The place was furnished with a ratty selection of mismatched chairs and tables, rickety and sticky with spilled beer. A card game was in progress in a corner, and a great deal of money was strewn on the table. The music was deafening. The dancing was really no more than standing in place and wriggling, since the place was packed. “Most of these women are professionals,” Kevin commented. “Professional what?” Charlotte sounded confused. He shook his head and laughed. “God, Charlotte, where have you been for the last couple of years?” Charlotte looked questioningly at Lina, obviously still not getting it. “Dancers,” Lina said. Charlotte looked around. “They don’t seem very good dancers. Most of them, anyway.” Lina shrugged and shook her head. “Let’s have a drink.” The Peace Corps group was conspicuous, and Lina felt nervous and uncomfortable. She’d had a couple of beers and was beginning to feel a little more relaxed when the band struck up La Bamba. The bandleader pointed to

various people in turn, who then sang a verse, sometimes original. Lina had been to parties in Aguadulce where this game was played, and she had been put on the spot several times, so she had made up a couple of verses. When the bandleader pointed to their group, intending to embarrass them, Lina whispered, “Screw it!” to Kevin, then got up on a table, and using all the theatrical tricks she could think of, belted out one of her verses. Nobody expected that, and people began to clap and whistle. The bandleader beckoned Lina up to the stage, and she shrugged and went. The band played the music to a steamy Mexican ballad, and Lina sang it, hamming it up shamelessly. She sang another song, then the band eased into “Bésame mucho”, and Lina clutched the mike, breathing heavily into it. The song was so completely corny, so overromantic. Lina was making fun of the whole thing. Then she began thinking of Miguel. And she grew serious, thinking about the words and savoring them. “Kiss me, as if tonight were the last time. Kiss me - how I fear to lose you afterward.” The audience picked up her mood and became very quiet. When she had finished the last word, giving it all the emotion possible, there was silence for a moment, then loud heartfelt applause. Lina jumped down and started back to her group. A man thrust a bottle of beer into one of her hands, and another gave her a second. She arrived back at the table and sat down, thinking about Miguel as she had not let herself do much lately. Several men asked her to dance. Not wanting to dance at all, she got up and moved into a corner that had only a single purplish bulb. Sitting there, gulping her beer from the bottle, she suddenly saw that her skin was bluish. The ultraviolet light produced strange effects - she seemed to be glowing, and her white blouse was giving off a hideous iridescence. I look like a zombie, she thought. That idea jolted her into thinking again about Dieudonné and her dream. So much of it had come true - maybe all of it. Except…whose coffin had she seen? Miguel’s? But the dream had been very literal - Miguel wouldn’t be standing over his own coffin. Dieudonné’s, then? Certainly Dieudonné had been afraid of that. A chill settled

over her shoulders. Or was it mine? She thought over the scene again. Yes, that could have been it. It could have been my own funeral I saw that night, sitting there on the cool earth watching the people mourn. The hand clapping down hard on her shoulder made her jump and let out a little cry. A man stood there, not asking but demanding that she dance with him. He was small and skinny with greasy hair, a grimy tee-shirt, and a gold front tooth. His eyes were bloodshot and he smelled of sweat and beer. “I thank you, señor, but I am en luto. I cannot dance.” It was as polite as a refusal could be, but of course he was offended. In the background, she could see that his friends were beginning to rib him. He grabbed her arm and twisted it, trying to force her to her feet. His friends laughed, calling !Epa! His repulsive little fingernail dug into the sensitive scar tissue on her wrist, and she cried out. Hearing her, Kevin approached. Lina cringed - he was clearly drunk. In excellent Spanish, Kevin snarled at the man, “Your mother is a whore!” The man replied, “I fuck your sister!” And he gave Kevin a push. Kevin returned a punch, and it seemed as if that were a signal everybody was waiting for. In seconds, they were in the middle of a brawl. Men, then women too, began cursing and swinging at each other. Bottles and glasses smashed. The card table was overturned, and people began to scramble for the bills scattered on the floor. In the confusion, someone snatched Charlotte’s purse. The Peace Corps group left on the run, with an angry mob on their heels. The sound of police sirens closing in scattered their pursuers, and they slowed down to look like innocent tourists. Eventually, they made their way back to the hotel. “Hey,” Kevin said as they swarmed into the lobby, “let’s go out to the beach have a moonlight swim.” “Good idea,” Stacy said. “To the beach everybody! Skinnydipping time!” A murmured refusal spread through the group. “Hey, OK, never mind. Everybody to your rooms! Change into bathing suits, and meet here in fifteen minutes!” Changing quickly, Lina waited on the second-floor balcony for the others to come out. She began to think again about her dream, about the coffin. She had

the nagging thought she should be able to understand what it meant. Then she had a horrible moment of clarity - it couldn’t have been Miguel’s coffin. Miguel could have had no coffin. If the accident had happened close to the hospital, his body would have been returned to the hospital grounds, to be consigned to the “human barbecue pit” along with the rest of the day’s casualties. Lina felt sick as she pictured his smooth skin blistering, charring, his beautiful eyes running… No. More likely his body had been left where he’d died, to rot in the wreckage of the ambulance. She thought of the vehicle she’d escaped in, with its splatters of human fluids, and she ed the stench of gangrene, the odor of putrefaction, ed the rats that grew huge from the wars of men. That was surely the end of Miguel - nothing so civilized as a coffin, with candles surrounding it, and loved ones mourning. No, he’d ended up in a twisted mass of metal, with maggots and rats to help Father Nature accomplish his task of corruption. Dazed and sick, Lina leaned over the railing and looked down. There was a pane missing from the skylight directly beneath her, and she could see into the pool. The water seemed a dark sea-creature far below her, undulating gently. It looked soft, sensuous, inviting, not the lime-green excrescence of iguanas and tropical plants, but the black-green of pine needles and azalea leaves in New England. Kevin came out onto the balcony behind her. “Hey, Lina, planning to dive?” “Would you dare to dive from here?” He looked over. “Sure! Right after you.” Laughing, Lina climbed onto the railing, holding onto a vertical column. She heard Kevin laughing nervously. “Hey, come on, get down. You’ll fall.” She could see the diving board, so she knew it was the deep end of the pool. She never really decided to do it, but then she was in the air, feeling more like she was flying than falling. She aimed her body into the center of the square formed by the steel beams of the skylight. No problem, she thought, elated. I can fly! Then she had a sudden sickening thought - how much water is there in the pool?

Petrified, she arched her body, pulling out of the dive as soon as she hit the water. Still, she smashed into the bottom, momentarily stunning herself. Taking a long breath of the foul water, she floundered and gagged before she finally managed to pull herself together and give a hard push off the bottom. Surfacing, she saw that the pool contained only around three feet of water. She tried to yell to Kevin not to dive, but all she could do was gag and cough. She hauled herself out just as the manager reached her, howling in Spanish. He grabbed her, and she pulled away. They struggled for a few moments, then she gave him a hard push. He skidded on the slimy deck and fell into the pool. Lina dashed for the stairway, croaking, “No, Kevin, No!” When she got to the second floor, Kevin was standing on the railing. Most of the rest of the group was ranged silently against the wall. Lina stood panting as Luke grabbed Kevin from behind and dragged him off the railing. The two men fell backward onto the floor of the balcony. There was a moment of shocked silence, then Luke pushed Kevin away and snarled, “Haven’t we all seen enough senseless death? Does one of us have to die, too? Is that the only way to stop you?” He was silent for a moment. “Are you willing to die, Kevin? Just to prove you’re a man? To Lina? To such a silly bitch?” Kevin just sat there, looking pale and frightened. “Listen, you morons!” Luke shouted, shaking his fist. “Wake up! Sober up! Grow up!” He jumped to his feet and stormed off. The others silently retreated to their rooms. Lina sat in a chair in the tawdry lobby the rest of the night, intending to stay awake. She dozed, then jerked herself awake, terrified by her dreams. Ugly twisted images flitted through her mind and disappeared, leaving an aftertaste of dread. A swarm of bats clawed across a crimson moon, fangs gnashing viciously. A pool of blood sat richly on a floor. Rats sipped at it, shaking their heads, scattering scarlet droplets. A leper glared at her with the baleful red eyes of a spider.

At dawn, exhausted, Lina went for a walk along the deserted beach. The sun was the way she’d first felt it so many months before in Palmar, a weight that pressed on her flesh, causing an itch and a stinging that tormented her. She held her arms out in front of her and looked at them, watching angry red patches form on her pale skin. She continued walking along the beach. Now a few people wandered out - fishermen, not tourists. Lina went down to the water’s edge, waded out until the water was waist-deep, then plunged in. She swam a long way straight out from the beach. Then she stopped, easily treading water, looking back at the shore, drinking in the beauty that she could appreciate only when she was distant from it. Prisms of seawater converted the too-bright colors into glittering jewels. She turned over and floated on her back, her eyes forced shut by the glare. Her hand went to her throat, and she tugged hard at the gold chain. It snapped, and she held it over her head. Dieudonné’s coral fist loomed dark against the brightness of the sun, and she squinted to focus on the tiny fetish. Lifting her arm, she threw the chain as far as she could. The exertion sent her head under the water. Surfacing, she turned and swam slowly back to the beach. On the beach, she looked up and saw that the sun was more than halfway between the horizon and the zenith. Late enough, she told herself. It’s over here , now. Time to travel on. Tiptoeing into her room, she looked at the sleeping forms of Charlotte and Stacy. What a lot we’ve been through together. I wish them well. And maybe in twenty years or so, I’ll want to see them again. Quietly, Lina changed into her best clothes, stuffed the few things she still possessed into her nearly-disintegrated straw tote, and took a taxi to one of the big hotels. Boldly, she walked into the elegant beauty salon and had her hair cut short. Then she went across the lobby to a travel agency and bought a plane ticket to Chicago.

About The Author

Elaine Reidy served as a Peace Corps volunteer in the Dominican Republic from 1963 to 1965. She was evacuated from the Dominican capital by U. S. Marines in the wake of a violent revolution and civil war. After returning to the United States, she embarked on a long and successful career as a book and paper conservator. She was chief of the celebrated book conservation studio of Carolyn Horton before moving to the New York Public Library as Book Conservator. Ms. Reidy served for 17 years as Head of the Conservation Laboratory at the New York Academy of Medicine. She also taught book conservation at the Graduate School of Information Sciences at Queens College of the City University of New York, culminating her career as Fulbright Visiting Scholar at the Antorchas Foundation in Buenos Aires, lecturing in Spanish on book and paper conservation. Since settling in New York City, Ms. Reidy has written two novels in addition to The Shortest Way Home. She is married to the photographer Dick Schlefer.