Hard Red Spring (27 page)

“What airplane?”

“The one flying over the government zone an hour ago! It dropped these all over the city!” She handed him the flyer. “What does it say?”

He studied the words, holding the paper out at arm's length. “I don't know. Something about God. I'm not so good at reading Spanish.”

“Doesn't this seem important? Can't we find out what it says?”

He promised her a translation, pocketing the flyer and fleeing for yet another emergency meeting.

For the past twenty-four hours, the embassy had been roiling over the latest development: something called
The Voice of Liberation
. A couple of young dissenters, on the run in the jungle and lugging their own radio equipment, had materialized out of nowhere. Twice a day, in the afternoon and the evening, they hijacked a radio frequency and took the opportunity to criticize Arbenz. Reporting news they claimed he kept out of the papers. It sounded a little ridiculous, these kids with a microphone. Dorie had tried to listen to the show, but it was all in Spanish and Quiché.

—

That evening, Dorie lay on the bed, sweaty and defeated by every cocktail dress she owned. When she stepped into them, they stuck at her hips. When she pulled them over her head, they caught at her breasts. Just as the first knock came at the front door, Dorie zipped up the only dress that fit: a white cotton frock, a bit too casual. She studied herself in the mirror, reminding herself of the truth of Jim's statement. This was an easy role to play. To be graceful, stunning, to make his colleagues jealous of him. For years, she drew pride from these performances, but not anymore. She hadn't enjoyed a Fruit party in years. And in this old, shapeless dress, she felt all confidence leaving her.

She must drink enough to be considered a good sport, while not drinking too much and burdening the fun. The margin of error being about one drink for Dorie. She'd made the mistake last year and argued with some Fruit suit who criticized the Communist push to expand voting rights.

“Why does everyone lump women and illiterates together in these arguments?” she'd challenged him. A grave blunder, according to Jim. “Of course, I know what you mean,” he'd said. “But these Hispanics don't. Just let it slide.”

Thirteen guests arrived over the next hour, half of whom she recognized but could not precisely place. Often, at times like this, Dorie felt her life in Guatemala was like a play with a small cast. The same people reappearing constantly in different roles.

By seven-thirty, Tomás had yet to arrive, but Dorie knew he would come. In dread and anticipation, she drank too much right away. She could not relax, forget him, or even guess how she'd react to his entrance. Emelda, she decided, had been confused about his relationship with Gilberto. More likely, borrowing Gilberto for small jobs was his way of eventually getting him out of the way.

“You're so tense, Dorie,” Jim said, massaging her shoulders, leading her to a quiet corner of the kitchen. “What's going on? I thought a party would cheer you up.”

“I'm fine, Jim. Really.”

“No, you aren't. You're obsessing over scraps of paper that blow in from the street. You talked in your sleep last night, accusing me of riding a plow and strangling puppies. You just refilled my scotch with brandy.”

“I just haven't been sleeping well. I'm sorry.”

“No. I'm the one who should apologize. You're locked in this madhouse and it's not fair. I know I haven't been the most reasonable person lately, and that's affecting you. You're not yourself. I think you need a vacation.”

“A vacation!” Her life of suspicion and phone taps suddenly replaced with parties and vacations? She glanced desperately around the hot, cramped party, wondering if she was going mad. “Where would I go?”

“Don't tell me you hate the idea of a vacation. You need some fun. I've already talked to Cortez and he's agreed to have you at his villa.”

“Of course, a vacation would be nice, but the villa? It's surrounded by Communists now. Poor Cortez is in no position to be entertaining guests.”

Jim waved a hand. “Cortez will be fine. He can't compete with Brazil, so he may as well let the Indians have a go at it and fail. Let them pay a minimum wage to their workers, let them deal with the union. It'll serve them right, thinking they can just jump into a global market and succeed because Arbenz told them they can.”

“Will Gilberto be coming to Xela?” She felt drunk, disoriented, and unable to fight this strange turn of events.

“No, Dorie. I need him here. Cortez will look after you, he knows what to do. And Marcella's going, too. You won't be alone. When did you start calling it Xela?”

By eight-thirty, their priest, Father Guiar, made his entrance, with Hernando from
Prensa La Verdad
. A few Fruit suits arrived, accompanied by Spanish-speaking wives with flimsy bright dresses and shallow faces. Gilberto and José arrived together.

Tomás's appearance took Dorie completely by surprise, though she had been waiting for it for hours. Alone, buttoned up, and with a gentle smile, he stepped in the middle of the room the moment Dorie turned around from chiseling ice. He moved calmly, sure of himself, looking Hispanic. No hint of the thickly laid scars across his back. His nose, a ruin of jammed bone, looked almost charming again. Dorie could imagine him smashing it, then pinching it into its current, tortured shape, trying to attain a bridge.

She fled to the kitchen.

The party eventually settled into factions. The media men spoke seriously among themselves, while the English-speaking suits stood together quietly watching the Fruit men grow drunk. The Fruit women sipped their drinks gracefully, acknowledging Dorie with polite smiles of indifference as she circled to refill their glasses. When she returned to the main room, Dorie saw Tomás again. She moved toward him instinctively, so quickly she bumped into Marcella, tipping her red wine onto the floor.

“Tomás, you haven't been to see me,” she scolded, feeling small and unkempt. She hurried to an empty corner of the room, away from Marcella and the Fruit women. He followed her casually, a few steps behind.

“And you ran away from me in the street. I saw you, you saw me. Why the hell would I come see you? Especially with Gilberto outside the door.”

The excuses lined up, she had so many. “Gilberto was following me in the car. You had no idea and you may have kissed me or something. I panicked.”

“You've never let Gilberto stop you before.” He regarded her closely, unconvinced.

“I can't run like I used to, Tomás. I couldn't even get into my favorite dress tonight!”

“I'm sorry,” he said.

“I don't care about the fucking dress,” she snapped. “I care about you!” She was off-track already. How could he believe her if she spoke as if she hated him?

She touched his wrist. She didn't care if anyone saw, because no one's opinion mattered but hers. The revelation hit her. Jim had been right. Yes, creative thinking solved everything. For she had never considered the
possibility that his Indian heritage didn't matter. She loved him. And she hated all these people, anyway. Why should she care that they ostracize her?

He reciprocated dangerously, twining his fingers in hers. “Then why don't you want to have my child, Dorie?” He said this as if he knew exactly why. His black eyes shining with pain. “I know you're having doubts. I can tell by the way you looked at me when I got here, and in the street. You should have seen your face.”

“Because you're treating me like some knocked-up maid.” She made an attempt to stack some dirty dishes, to dispel any attention they may have attracted. “I've lost confidence. I hate the fact that I have to sit around and wait for you to wrap up things at work. I can't have this baby on my own—”

“I don't believe that, Dorie. I believe even if I jumped on a plane tomorrow and disappeared forever, you'd be fine. You're not some weak woman who needs me to tell you what to do.” His passivity, his opinion of her, were robbing her of her anger. She would prefer it if he made a scene, slapped her.

“I am!” she cried, wanting to collapse in a loud display of tears and breaking dishes.

“You're not,” Tomás scolded, with a careful glance around the room. “You've held your own against Gilberto. Everyone's afraid of what you'll try to pull next. They have Conroy watching the window, to make sure you don't climb out with a rope.”

“I heard your land dispute was dropped.”

“No, Dorie, it hasn't been dropped. Where did you get that idea?” He sipped his drink, his eyes darting to Marcella across the room. “But it's getting very interesting, this case,” he continued. “I think I found that little girl. In Totonicapán—”

“I don't care about the fucking little girl!” Dorie hissed. “I care about me!”

“You don't mean that, Dorie. What a terrible thing to say!” He regarded her, disappointed in her lack of empathy for a missing little girl.

A scuffle broke out in the middle of the room, where José and Gilberto bore down on one of the media men. Everyone turned, drawn by the swift movement.

“The man runs over the woman with the plow, you commie prick
,” José said, loud enough for the room to hear. Everything became quiet as Gilberto backed the man up against the buffet, grinning.

“I'm sorry,” the man managed, his hand going into the spinach dip.

“Don't be sorry,” José continued. “Run a retraction. Sorry is fucking useless.”

Dorie turned back to Tomás, expecting him to intervene, but he'd disappeared, replaced by Jim. At the buffet, the dishes clattered as the accosted man stumbled.

“Jim, aren't you going to do something?”

Jim smiled at Dorie, as he had been smiling all night. A big, ruthless, constant grin. “About what?”

“Gilberto and José! Who do they think they are? I don't want them in my house, starting fights! They've ruined the spinach dip.”

Jim sipped his drink, enjoying the scene. “I think they have journalistic ambitions. This is freedom of the press at its finest, Dorie. Newspapers are a merciless business. Who am I to interfere?”

—

By nine, the drunken crush of the apartment allowed her to escape unnoticed for some air. All that remained of the day was a scarlet cut in the clouds, quickly draining behind the mountains. The city had lost its color, lay simplified in cold shades of blue. Vendors gone, shops closed, one maid passed in her ghostly white uniform. Dorie slipped past the guard station as Conroy admitted a late guest.

The side streets were completely dark, the main thoroughfares losing shape quickly. Dorie hurried, trying to find a safe place to compose herself. Her intoxication compelled her a few blocks farther than she should have gone. After a few wrong turns, she found her destination: an open storefront made of corrugated tin. She walked inside, drawn to the light, the music, the large wooden cross nailed to the back wall.

Naomi was inside. Her little church staved off the night with one swinging light and a battery-operated radio. A handful of Indian women and children worked at tables. There, they painted decorative animal masks, while Naomi hung them up to dry on the walls and from the cross.

“Mrs. Ambassador! What a surprise! How are you?” she asked, and Dorie thought she spied an involuntary glance at her stomach.

No one had asked Dorie how she was in quite a while—Jim asked, instead, what was wrong. And Tomás asked no questions at all. So Dorie shocked herself by answering, “Pregnant. Drunk. Exhausted.” The release almost brought her to her knees. She began to cry.

Knowing enough not to ask anything more, Naomi helped her to a chair, clearing it for her to sit. Dorie recognized the stacked notebooks there. They had the same color and pattern as the one Gilberto bent over all day, every day now. She opened one, then another and another. Names. People
practicing their names a hundred times in childish handwriting. Seeing these names, for some reason, brought more tears to her eyes.

“I just thought I'd finally drop in and see your church.” Dorie smiled in an attempt to lighten her mood. A girl with a clubfoot and a vaccination bandage on her arm teetered across the room. She handed Naomi a painted antler, then grabbed another, unpainted one from a box.

“We're pulling an all-nighter,” Naomi explained. “I'm being kicked out of the country, I have to leave tomorrow. So they're trying to paint all the blanks. They can sell them without me.” Naomi dropped two wet masks on the table in front of her and stared down at them as if she had no idea what they were.

“Why do you have to leave, Naomi?” Though their friendship had barely begun, though no one could help her now, Dorie felt abandoned. Naomi was the only person she knew outside of her vicious little circle. The only person Dorie could imagine accepting her love of an Indian.

“They're kicking all the missionaries out. Haven't you heard?”

“I thought you were helping with their literacy program. Why would the—” She stopped herself from saying Communists. “Why would they kick you out if you were helping?” The Indians rebelling against Arbenz, then Arbenz kicking out his allies. She felt a parallel to her own nonsensical struggle with Tomás. They both wanted the same thing. Why was happiness so hard, then?

“They don't trust religion.” Naomi scraped beneath her fingernails, which were stained green. “And I guess I don't blame them. Baptist, Catholic, Hindu—it's all the same to them. It's all smoke and mirrors to justify poverty.”

“You feel like you haven't helped people down here?” Dorie asked meaningfully.

Naomi laughed. “No. I realize there's much more to the situation than teaching the poor to read and sell crafts. Paranoia is stronger than progress.”

“Paranoia?”

“People get some food, a bit of land, security, and they become absolutely paranoid of the harm it will do them later. They know things will get worse, that Arbenz won't last forever and another Ubico will take over. It's the cycle down here. When another dictator takes over, they'll be implicated by the land they got, by what union they joined. So they begin to distance themselves. One minute they love Arbenz, but the moment the Catholics and the Americans start a buzz, they become terrified and jump ship. It's all self-fulfilling.”