Hard Red Spring (40 page)

Instead of using Mincho, Lenore asked Emelda to translate, in the privacy of her shed. Though Cruzita's first language was Quiché, she also understood Ixil. Emelda spoke Quiché and Achí. So between them, if all went well, Lenore might be able to communicate with her women in three languages. Emelda had agreed to a trial run with her granddaughter. No promises yet, no pen and paper. It would be a test for all of them, and Lenore was so nervous that she ate a whole bag of Fritos beforehand.

Outside, the Civil Patrol marched up and down the main path. Emelda still refused to use her light, but the sun was high enough to brighten the ventilation shaft in the ceiling.

Any personal attention in the camp made the Indians nervous and Cruzita mercilessly chewed her fingernails, black and broken from the fields, while Emelda perused a copy of the newspapers that had arrived that morning on one of the trucks. She scanned, looking for something specific. Evidently, she understood Spanish as well.

“Cruzita, I called you in here because you were baptized.” Lenore nodded to Emelda, who translated. A rosy alarm spread across the girl's face. Emelda lowered the newspaper.

“Cruzita is afraid she's in trouble. Did she do something wrong?”

“No, no! This is part of the program. Everyone who gets baptized must have a personal interview. This is very good. Please tell her that.”

As Emelda translated, Cruzita relaxed slightly. So many people in the camp had already been interviewed, Lenore thought, and, amazingly, word of the interview process hadn't got around. These people were terrified not only of the military but of each other. In her corner, Emelda found something. “I cannot believe this!” she cried. She folded a page of the newspaper into a neat square and began tearing.

“I just have a few points to make about what the baptism means, that's all. The first one being that since she was baptized, she needs to recognize that she's a sinner.”

Emelda held up a hand, inked black like a paw. “If I tell her that, she will think she did something wrong. Can't you see how frightened she is?”

“There's nothing to fear. We're all sinners, Emelda. Me, you, and Cruzita.”

Whatever she was ripping came free in her hands and she held it up. “Then Cruzita needs to know what sins are in your religion, so she knows what is considered wrong. She needs examples to understand. What are sins in your religion?”

Lenore felt, even as she answered this logical question, the conversation turning in Emelda's favor. “Lying, murder, greed, vanity, envy—”

Emelda laughed, waving her clipping.

“What do you find so funny about Christianity, Emelda? You're always laughing at Dan's sermons. I've been dying to know what you find so funny about all of this.”

“It's just, you think you're the first with these ideas. All those are sins for us already, but you think you invented morals. What is a sin that we don't have already?”

How had Dan done this interview with so many people, so quickly? She suspected Mincho, armed, did not entertain questions as he translated.

“Okay. It is a sin to be angry and revengeful. In order to be saved, she must give up her anger and never fight. Terrible things have happened to everyone down here, but she must take the high ground and break the cycle of violence.”

Emelda huffed, tossing her newspaper away. “No. I won't tell her that.”

“Why not?”

“Why do we have to give up our anger? We have a right to be angry.” She walked to the door, spit on her finger, and pasted her new clipping next to the others. “
La resurrección de Evie Crowder
.” Parts One and Two, and now a Part Three. All with the same picture of the little girl with pixelated eyes.

“You do not,” Lenore said. “You brought all this violence upon yourselves. Everyone's guilty. Communism is a collective decision, a collective sin.”

This, Lenore could see, thawed Emelda's ironic composure. “Cruzita never was guilty of anything. No one here's guilty of this war but me!”

Lenore, astonished, looked to Cruzita to confirm what she'd just heard, but the girl's blank face showed no recognition of the English words.
“Emelda, you're being unfair to yourself. How could you be guilty and everyone else innocent? You alone did not start this war.”

“You've no idea what I've done. My voice was so powerful, the whole country listened to me.”

“I find that hard to believe. If you had so much power over everyone, why don't you use it now? Why don't you tell them to trample the fence and free themselves?”

Lenore caught herself too late. Why did she use that word, free?

“No one here knows who I am. Not even my own granddaughter. Everyone used to listen to me, but that was a long time ago. Now, if they knew who I was, they would kill me. I want them to. I don't deserve to live, I want them to kill me, but not yet. I have something to do first.” She pointed to her pasted clippings. A guerrilla. Lenore was sure of it now, but a woman? Of course, the General had warned them of this.

“As long as you admit your guilt and give up your anger, Emelda, you can be forgiven. The Communists promised everyone land if they did terrible things. Your sins aren't different from anyone else's here.”

“Oh yes, I got land.” Emelda chuckled. “But not from the Communists.” Her eyes seemed to reflect whatever Lenore suspected at any particular moment. Guerrilla, innocent. “I got a whole mountain in Xela!”

Communist. That word caused Cruzita to panic. She patted her grandmother's arm, asking her to translate, afraid they were still talking about her. It was Lenore's turn to speak. She decided to avoid the whole business for the moment. The problem of Emelda was getting no easier.

“Emelda, we're talking about Cruzita. This is her interview. Your interview will come. If you still want to be baptized.”

“Yes,” she replied. “I do.”

“Then your interview will come.” Even as she said it, she wondered if they would get that far.

“Yes,” Emelda declared, “it will.”

—

Mincho's presence in her and Dan's room did not surprise Lenore when she came back from the sanitation building that night. Dominating the streets and now her sewing class, he had the idea that he was in charge of the village, maybe even in charge of her. She glanced around, knowing she had nothing to hide from Mincho. Huela, however, patrolled the room, sniffing around her feet.

“Hello,” Lenore managed in a natural voice.

Was he trying to intimidate her? Reporting him to the General, she knew, would only make it worse. And when she complained to Dan a few hours ago about the women sewing under gunpoint, he'd said, “I guess he's used to working the Civil Patrol. We can't expect him to just snap out of that mind-set. He's very effective, the men need him.”

Then they fought. Then they negotiated a fragile peace.

“Do you need something, Mincho?” Lenore asked now. Would he demand something of her in her own room? His uniform no longer looked new. Missing buttons, frayed cuffs, he looked like any other soldier now.

Mincho pursed his lips. The clutter of the apartment was unsatisfactory to him. Without trash service, they'd accumulated piles of empty pop cans, twisted toothpaste tubes, shampoo bottles, soiled face wipes, and plastic food wrappers. Huela circled one of these piles.

“The women finished their skirts today, but they are not wearing them,” he said.

“I know, Mincho.” Yes, she knew very well. It had not been a good day. “But those skirts were just practice. We're moving on to men's clothes now.” She cringed inwardly, but she had decided on this excuse to buy herself more time. “The men are more important. The road crew needs new pants already, they're working so hard they've ripped right through the donation pants. The class will be serving the village, which is much more important than serving themselves.” She could convince the women to wear their skirts, surely, with anyone but Mincho as translator.

“Humph.” They both watched Huela claw at a box pushed halfway under the bed. Their box of snack food, Lenore realized.

Dan entered then, practically marching, out of breath. Looking unsurprised to see a soldier in their room, Dan handed Mincho the baptism list. “Mincho just came to me with some disturbing news,” he informed Lenore.

“Oh?”

“One of the women has been selling herself for food.”

“Oh.” She tried her best to feign shock. The villagers, who'd arrived in the camp emaciated, were losing the weight they had gained in the beginning. Food shipments had increased, though not in pace with the rising population of the village. The road project was behind due to some strategic guerrilla gains in the jungle and it was nearly impossible to airlift the amount of food and supplies that the village now needed. In addition, the work-for-rations system did not favor widows with children. “Who?”

“Ama.”

Lenore imagined the small, serious woman shooing her five children away from the sewing class. The children staring at her through Mincho's legs, making faces, and making her almost smile. Lenore had admired this woman from afar, seeing how dedicated she was to her family. She washed them every day at the pump and had even made a comb from a broken fork to fix their hair. In her mind, Lenore saw Ama as a mother more than anything else. More than an Indian, a refugee, a lost soul.

“She's up for baptism this week and there's no way I can let this happen,” Dan said. “I have to write up a report now—”

“A report?”

“Yes, a report. For the General. I have a form to report any infraction.” His ears blazed at the tips, as if frostbit.

Lenore said nothing at first, but let the air of out of her nostrils with an impatient puff. And that was enough. Dan wheeled around to look at her, their fight from before stoked so easily. “What?”

“I don't think that's necessary, to get the General involved.” Her feelings on this subject surprised her as much as him.

“Are you kidding, Lenore? Not only do we need to tell the General, but the woman needs to be punished. If others see that this is an acceptable way to get food, we're going to be living in a brothel in a week!”

“Ama has five children and no husband to earn rations.”

“Ama is a prostitute. Prostitution is a crime.”

That word hit her like a splash of water, twice. Somehow, giving it that name made it more difficult to defend. She flushed with shame, but continued despite herself.

“I don't think so, Dan, I don't think so at all.” Shame gave way to anger as she yelled, “I think the crime here is not enough food!”

Dan stared at her. “You're telling me you think prostitution is acceptable?”

“I'm saying that some sins trump others and the fact that we're not providing enough food for these people is tempting them unfairly to sin.” Indeed, she attributed her own recent sins to hunger. The TV, her meetings with Emelda. Maybe this, too, was a lapse in judgment, but she could not stand down. The jeans from the donation pile no longer fit. They sagged in the seat, in the knees, not making her feel thin, but small and weak. She would begin sewing her own clothes along with the women.

At first Lenore felt pleased at the way village life had carved out a new body for her, but she was becoming increasingly alarmed at the fact that her
period was now six weeks late. She often felt the buildup of blood raging, angering her easily, like right now, screaming at her husband, defending a woman she hardly knew.

“The food situation here is meant to promote spiritual cleansing,” Dan informed her. “You know just as much as I do the spiritual benefits of fasting.”

“Don't give me that, Dan. Don't tell me you really believe that down here.” She laughed out loud, suddenly, uncontrollably, like a crazy woman.

Mincho spun to attention. “Beasties, I did not come here to talk about this with a woman,” he said. “She is not in charge.”

Before Lenore could set him straight, Dan said, “Right.”

She stared at her husband.

“There's no question she'll be reported and punished,” Dan said. “I have made that decision and Mincho agrees. What we need to decide now is how to prevent this from happening again.”

Lenore stood in the center of the room, forcing the men to talk around her. All her delays with Emelda, and now Ama would pay the price. If she'd had the option of talking to Lenore, Lenore could have talked to the General, to get her more rations. She could have prevented all of this.

“The others must see she is punished,” Mincho said. “That will help.”

“The villagers could be involved in the punishment,” Dan said, nodding.

“You can have them all stone her,” Lenore offered. “Right there under the flagpole. And they can sing the national anthem after.”

They ignored her, like an unruly child. “The General will think this is from idleness,” Mincho said. “Idleness is not good. He'll be happy if we have a plan.”

“Clearly, this is something the Civil Patrol should enforce. This is exactly the sort of situation we're supposed to prevent.”

Lenore stepped from the center of the room. “You better start keeping an eye on me,” she snapped in retreat. “I'm getting hungry, too. My Swiss Cake Rolls are almost gone. I just might up and sleep with someone for food!”

She fled through the church, grabbed one of Dan's blank sermon notebooks, and ran out into the village. She had wanted to embarrass him in front of Mincho and she surely had succeeded. She walked now, briskly, taking the route she often traced in her mind. She stepped into the shed without knocking, without hesitation.

“Emelda,” she said to the sleeping figure on the floor, “I need you to work
for me.” She threw down Dan's notebook, with a pen tucked into the spiral spine.

“I've worked for Americans before,” Emelda replied. “Everyone in my family has. It never ends good.”