Hard Red Spring (26 page)

“What do you mean? You said—”

“You're worse than the men, with your titillated concern.”

“I'm not titillated. I am concerned.”

“Lost little girls are never found, Dorie,” she proclaimed, pulling her lower eyelid down. “They are always raped and they are never found.”

In the bathroom, more clanging metal.

“You take all the effort to sneak out of the embassy and you come here?” Marcella spun around with a magnificent, painted expression. “Aren't there more important things you should be doing? Emelda!” Marcella screamed down the hall, and the clattering stopped. “That fucking clumsy girl. It's so simple, just straighten a coat hanger and snake it in. That's all. But I have to fucking do everything myself. You can't trust anyone in Guatemala. If you want it done, do it yourself.” She breezed out for a brief moment. By the time she returned, the letter was in Dorie's bag.

“Are you still here?” Marcella turned back to the mirror as she fixed a feather in her hair. A quetzal feather, a hair pick exactly like Dorie's. “You better leave before your brown prince arrives.”

—

Dorie wandered the rainy streets like a refugee in Marcella's blue dress. Though she stuck out, she felt the streets gave her perspective. The beggars and vendors who rushed her did so halfheartedly, their eyes somewhere else. Her misery, out here, did not seem so bad. Everyone shared the eaves to keep dry, making room for her.

Every other person held a battery-operated shortwave radio, which played marimba music, sermons, revolutionary news, or replays of Arbenz's speeches. No matter where she walked, she could not escape the clamor.

Filthy children tagged along, touching Dorie, watching her with pleading, crusty eyes. Not allowed to work in factories or plantations anymore, they prowled the streets, picking pockets or selling the things they picked
from pockets. Of course, they did not go to the new schools. They had to eat, after all.

Dorie could not muster the anger to shoo these miserable souls away. So they just grew in number. She walked, the head of a miserable parade, wanting someone else to take control, wanting a car to fly around a corner, screech to a stop, and unload well-dressed Communists in her path. They'd put a hood over her head, and shuffle her in.

She headed in the direction of the embassy, because those were the only streets she knew. But she did not go home. Circling the borders of familiar territory, she kept walking. At one point, just a few blocks from the embassy, she noticed a little storefront church. Inside, safe from the rain, she saw Naomi teaching a literacy class. Thirty Indians, reciting the alphabet. Dorie hesitated, then kept on. Things were too far gone to explain, to ask for help or comfort.

An hour into her walk, she noticed the Nash Ambassador gliding behind at a distance, and once she saw it, she knew that she had been hearing it for a while. She picked up speed, considering the one option she had left. She would run, the car would pursue her, and she would throw herself under it. They were, after all, going the wrong way on the street. An accident. Maybe she wouldn't die. Maybe she would lose the baby, keep Tomás, Gilberto would be fired, and everything would work out.

She ran. Without looking back, she broke into a sprint along the side of the uneven road. Vendors parted, dogs scattered, the Indian children screamed and pointed, some raced behind, trying to keep up. She felt the car accelerate behind her now and tried to prepare herself for the sideways dive.

“Dorie! Dorie, hey!” Tomás called from across the street, waving her down.

Dorie ran faster, but she could see he would catch up with her. Not now, she could not face him now. With a defiant stomp, she stopped in her tracks, turned, and stared down the glaring, opaque windshield until the car proceeded to her side at a crawl. The children dispersed like smoke. She managed a smile—she could not make a fuss now—and let herself be picked up.

—

Dorie found herself sitting in the back between José and Gilberto. Once the door closed, Conroy accelerated, just as Tomás reached the car. His normally placid face pinched in rare annoyance, looking so Indian. How shocking, how hadn't she seen it before? He stared right through the tinted glass, finding her.

Dorie felt disgust at his gaze. His race so obvious now—why had she not
known? Because he never gave anyone a hard look. Because of his nose, a decoy she had grown to love. It looked obscene to her now, a mashed idol of deceit and self-hatred, pressed to the glass. And then gone.

“Where are you going, Mrs. Ambassador?” Gilberto asked.

“Home,” she said. “Take me home.”

“That is a nice dress,” Gilberto said. The most extravagant thing she had ever heard him say. José, on her right, grinned at Gilberto in a chummy way, approving of the joke. The illiterate soldier and educated secretary were now, supposedly, friends. A perverse alliance. Another Jim and Tomás. She hated them both.

The journey back to the embassy seemed much more menacing from the car. Political graffiti dominated the view:
CERDO COMUNISTA, CERDO
CAPITALISTA
. Each time they slowed, Indian children came running to look inside. Their dirty hands pressed to the windows. The children only acted so boldly with cars when some revolutionary milestone was afoot: a fiery radio speech or another reform passed by the legislature. Conroy beeped the horn.

“I know,” Gilberto said slowly and deliberately, “I know you don't like me. I know you think I am ignorant. I know you think I am a savage, but that's just my job. That's why your husband hired me.”

My God, Dorie thought, I've hurt his feelings. Conroy sped up. The hands pressed to the glass fell away, sarcastically waving goodbye.

“I did go to the American Training Center; where do you think I learned English? But I did not finish,” Gilberto explained. “When I was there, the commander gave us puppies. We all had our own puppy that we took care of. I named my puppy Alvaro, he was black with white feet and a white belly. We trained our puppies to run with us and fetch supplies. Then, at the end of training, we were ordered to strangle our puppies with our hands.”

His eyes, which had been frantic to keep up with the speeding landscape, settled on her. Dorie stared back. José snorted back phlegm and swallowed elaborately.

“I would not kill my puppy. Instead, I strangled the commander.”

Dorie looked away. Marcella's wet dress clung to her. She could not stop shivering in the air-conditioning.

“I was not allowed to graduate, but the embassy hired me anyway because . . .” Gilberto strained his neck, pulled her gaze back up to him. “Because the puppy was training to kill men.”

They pulled into the embassy lot. Gilberto leaned in to her and she leaned away with the turn, accidentally pressing up to José.

“Your husband, your friends, all strangled innocent puppies,” Gilberto said. “They strangle puppies, they say, to practice to strangle men. But they never strangle men. They hire people like me to strangle the men for them. But they go on strangling puppies anyway, and think they are courageous for doing it. And I am the savage.”

A moment later, Jim folded her in his arms, standing stiffly while he enveloped her. He cried, smiling at the same time, happy she had been found and brought home.

~~~~~

After Jim stationed Gilberto at the apartment door, Dorie's life became like a chess game in which she was at first slowly, then all of a sudden rapidly, losing her options. Reading anything worthwhile these days frustrated her for her lack of focus—
The Role of the West
stopped making sense long ago—while romances only depressed her. With nothing else to do, she clung to chores to pass the time. The apartment had never been so clean. But she could invite no one to see it, since Gilberto guarded the door. Every time she opened it, there he was, sitting with a composition notebook, practicing his letters. He'd only permit Jim into the apartment, and Emelda, who arrived to find everything already clean. Three days into Dorie's seclusion, however, she came to say goodbye.

“I walked all the way here from Marcella's house!” She limped into the apartment, then proudly showed Dorie the raised welts on her feet. “I did not fall!”

The heels did look painfully cheap, especially now with wear. Even so, Emelda's new life in Miami offered more promise than Dorie currently imagined for herself. But still, Emelda envied her. She could see it in the girl's hungry gaze, perpetually drinking in the apartment, Dorie's things, which she had learned to clean with obsessive care. The fact that someone still envied her lifted her spirits slightly.

There was nothing left for Emelda to clean, so Dorie invited her to sit.

“I wish I was going to Miami,” Dorie halfway joked over wine. This time, Emelda drank with poise, without reservation. She sat elegantly in a chair, transformed in a matter of weeks by relentless practice. The fruit on her hat no longer quivered, but swayed with confidence.

“I won't be gone long,” Emelda said. “I'll make my money, come back, and buy myself a house with
real
things. I'll have land and I'll build a house with floors and lights and couches. Closets filled with dresses and shoes! Will you come visit me in Xela?”

How much did Emelda think she would make as an illegal maid? She probably thought she'd get a minimum wage in America, since she got one in Guatemala. At least, that's what Dorie paid her. Dorie smiled sadly and said of course she would come visit. They would shop for these things together. She preferred Emelda to Marcella. Sipping wine, but not too much, chatting, laughing, like happier book club times. She was friends with an Indian, Dorie marveled to herself.

“Do you feel ready for your trip, Emelda? You aren't scared at all, are you?”

“Yesterday, I felt too afraid to walk to work. But then I realized it was just my shoes. I was not confident in the shoes. So Tomás told Gilberto to give me a ride. But not today. Today, I am ready!”

“You mean Jim told him. Gilberto works for Jim.” Dorie wondered how long she remained unguarded yesterday. Whenever she thought to look, she always saw the shadow of his feet beneath the door.

Emelda tilted her head sharply, reminding her of Marcella. Of course, she had studied Marcella, had studied them both. “No. Gilberto works for Tomás.”

“That's impossible, Emelda.”

“He pays him, I've seen it. And yesterday, when Gilberto drove me, he stood there.” She pointed to the door. “He stood there so Gilberto could leave. He's a very kind employer.”

“Tomás? Tomás guarded my door?”

Sensing tension, Emelda evaded the question. Dorie watched her expressions, her gestures, and her talk regress into that of a maid. Simple, servile, confused. A minute later, when Gilberto knocked, letting them know the airport car had arrived, they did not embrace, though Dorie wanted to hug Emelda and tell her to be brave. Strangely, she saw in Emelda the same hesitation and pity, before she said the most unexpected thing.

“I will pray for you in Miami. If you tell me what you want, I'll pray you get it.”

Emelda stood in the open door patiently, unwavering, as Dorie considered this strange offer. “Oh my, I've forgotten to pay you for the week!” She turned for her purse.

“No. Give it to
her
. I owe for my uniform, room and food, the glass I broke, taxes, emotional distress—”

Dorie pressed American dollars into her hand. “I'm not paying Marcella for your services, Emelda. You worked hard. You'll need this if you . . .” She
didn't know how to finish the sentence under Gilberto's hard stare. She looked down to see his composition notebook on the floor, where he'd been practicing the alphabet. His letters over the past week had improved markedly.

~~~~~

Two days later, an airplane buzzed the city. From the apartment window, Dorie watched it make passes, lower and lower, over the government zone nearby. She did not fear the plane, she feared being a mother, a scandal. She feared Tomás arriving with a bag and two tickets to Brazil. She feared Gilberto stopping him at the door. She feared Tomás never arriving at all. Watching the plane circle, she began to wish it would come nearer. Just bomb the embassy, putting them all out of their misery.

After a few passes, the plane did drop something. Dorie saw very clearly, a bomb that exploded too soon into thousands of pieces. Elegantly swooping and swirling. Paper. Leaflets. One blew over the embassy wall, sailing on a wind over the barbed wire and cut glass. A sign, a message from God. Dorie was desperate enough now to seek signs from God. She phoned the offices below, ordered one of Jim's assistants to retrieve it.

The flyer gave a message in three languages, though none of those languages were hers.

“Dorie!” Jim arrived in the rumpled suit he'd been wearing for days. “I forgot to tell you we're having a party tonight. It's been so busy here, I completely forgot.”

“A party? Where?”

“Here. At the apartment. I'm sorry I forgot to tell you, I thought I had.”

She felt herself losing control, even of the few rooms she now inhabited. “What kind of party? Who's coming?”

“Oh, just the usual, with some additions,” he said. Dorie cast a worried glance over her small, clean prison. “Don't worry, there's nothing to do. You're a pro at these things. The food's been ordered. I just need you to keep it warm when it arrives at five-thirty. I'd planned on a six p.m. start, but we're sort of dealing with a crisis here. I think seven p.m. now.”

“Crisis? You mean the airplane?”

“Arbenz co-opted one of our newspaper stories. I have no idea how, but he ran it today in
El Patriota
a day before our story was supposed to run in
Prensa La Verdad
. But he changed it slightly, made it anti-capitalist.”

“Instead of anti-Communist?” Dorie wanted to ask how a slight change
could swing a story from one ideological extreme to the other, but it seemed unimportant. Everything Jim did seemed unimportant now. “I think you have much more to worry about than these newspaper stories, Jim. Did you see the airplane?”