Hard Red Spring (47 page)

Lenore had to remind herself of this daily since they'd returned from Xela. Because she'd begun to suspect that she could not leave the moment she wanted. The past three nights, she woke with an intense desire to just get out of bed, walk through the church, out onto the path, and past the armed guard at the front gate. To just walk past him without a word or a look, to just take a walk up the road. Would he let her pass, or would he gun her down in the middle of the road, in her nightdress?

Even if she could walk away, she would never be able to leave behind the story she'd just heard. But she let Emelda have her point. The fact that someone there thought she could leave was, for the moment, an immense relief.

~~~~~

The children were getting thinner. Watching them run in the streets in their new jumpers, Lenore noticed how the fabric hung loosely on their shoulders, how it tightened around their swollen bellies. She had written to their church asking for anti-diarrhea medicine and iodine tablets and received a day's supply for the entire village. Dan and Lenore discussed giving every child
one dose or picking a few to treat thoroughly. But they couldn't bring themselves to choose among the children. They'd written again to the church to send more iodine tablets.

Dan crumpled a letter and let it drop to the floor of their room.

“What is it?”

“Pastor May. We're supposed to write to Operation Open Arms for supplies from now on. The church has given over ten thousand dollars for supplies to Open Arms and we have to go through them.” He sighed, massaging his face with his fingers.

“Ten thousand?” She couldn't believe the mobilization, the sacrifices her neighbors must have made to raise this sum. “Does that money all come to us?”

Dan shrugged.

“Well, how do we contact Open Arms to get it?”

“Through the General.”

He slumped down on the box of anti-diarrhea medicine. Outside, Lenore could hear the soldiers constructing the stage for the beauty pageant. Dan rubbed his temples, rubbed at the drills and hammers in his head. “The Lord certainly does test us,” he said.

“So does the Devil.”

“What does that mean?”

“I don't know. It just means what it means, I guess.”

“As long as we're saving souls, we know who we work for.” Dan's bright eyes flashed darkly at her. “The Devil is an agent of doubt.”

“I don't agree with that, Dan. I don't agree one bit. Sometimes when facts come up, it's healthy to reevaluate.”

“What facts have come up, Lenore? What could possibly change the situation down here to make you second-guess what we're doing?”

“I'm not second-guessing, I just think small adjustments could be made. I don't think it's all or nothing.”

“Facts, Lenore, what facts? What do you want to adjust?”

“Well, I think that the Indians should be able to speak their own languages. That has nothing to do with their salvation. God speaks all languages and there's no need to put that added stress on these refugees of having to learn an entirely new language.”

“Have you forgotten everything we've learned at the conference? How will they feel loyalty and citizenship if they can't understand what their President, what the newspapers, say? The language is a huge part of the Project.”

“I don't think it should be, is all. I think we should concentrate on the religion. That's our specialty and I'm not going to pretend to know anything about politics or foreign cultures. And you shouldn't, either.”

Dan's mouth hung open in amazement. “Everything's connected, Lenore. What's happened to make you doubt our mission?”

But it wasn't just one thing, it was several. Not even particularly Emelda's stories, but how Lenore spied echoes of them in everything she had seen on her trip to Xela. The soldiers squeezing their way through the bus, all those villages in the mountains, the direction the bus drove them in. The Civil Patrol. And the village itself. She could not forget walking with Emelda, a new perspective from high up, and watching the line at the water pump disperse as if under attack.

“I was talking with one of the women the other day and she said that military helicopters came to destroy her village. Guerrillas don't have helicopters, Dan.”

“You were speaking to one of the Indians? How? Through Mincho?”

Dan's suspicion had been provoked and she knew she could not fool him. She decided on nonchalance. “One of the women speaks a little English and I've learned a little Spanish. She was able to tell me.”

“You've learned Spanish.” He cocked his head. “Tell me one thing in Spanish.”

“Jesús te amo.”

This, for some reason, enraged Dan. “Don't play games with me, Lenore! You've begun speaking with a guerrilla and believing her lies and are ready to accuse me and the entire military of killing people before considering that she's brainwashing you. An Indian would have no practical reason to know English unless she was an agent put here to try to confuse you!”

“It's not just her. I've seen it myself. I've seen how they run from the helicopters. I've seen the smoke in the mountains, coming from where those helicopters go!”

“They're burning out the guerrillas! How else are they to do it?” He turned away from her, disgusted, the tiny golden claws of his rimless glasses glinting.

“People live in those mountains! All these people lived in the mountains! There are villages everywhere. I saw them on my trip!”

“They live in the mountains because they're guerrillas. Who is this woman? What's her name?”

“I can't believe you believe that. These people have lived in the mountains for hundreds of years.”

“Why would the military destroy their villages, then build them a new one? Who is this woman, Lenore? You have to tell me.”

“I do not. It doesn't matter.”

Dan's rage crowded their tiny room as he punched his palm, fist in hand, over and over. He had to get away, she knew. He had to defuse the violence in him with a long walk, which was easy in Kentucky, but not here.

“This place smells like shit!” Lenore yelled after him, but he did not turn around.

~~~~~

Two days later, Lenore held an extra sewing class to finish the dresses for the next day's pageant. As soon as they stitched on the last beads and catches, the girls slipped behind the curtain to change. The victory was that simple. They modeled their dresses one after the other, giggling. She wanted to call Dan in to show what a little love and patience could accomplish, but they had barely spoken since their fight. They worked opposite schedules now. Dan, to avoid her, took the Civil Patrol night shift and slept in the education building in the afternoons.

Whenever Lenore returned to their room, however, she saw evidence of Dan's presence: an open Bible, corn mix spilled on the floor, marked-up maps, new roads. All ordinary enough, until lunch an hour ago, when she went back and discovered all their boxes emptied onto the floor, their bed pulled from the wall. A search. Dan, possibly with the Civil Patrol, had searched their own room. They hadn't even bothered to clean up. The place looked pillaged. When Lenore felt under the mattress for Emelda's letters to the newspaper office, they were gone.

She ate in stunned silence, in the ruins of her privacy, before going to the last sewing class before the pageant. The letters, would Dan give them to the General? Or would he confront her himself? She'd been waiting for the next mail truck, which she now heard arriving too late. All around her, girls in dresses spun and laughed. Lenore did her best to smile along.

Emelda and a few of the older women emerged from behind the curtain, holding their dresses. “They don't fit,” Emelda said, handing them to her.

Lenore held the dresses up for inspection. The seams seemed fine and sturdy, the proportions looked correct. But she noticed that Emelda's dress
was too tall for her frame. And the other dresses were the same size as that one.

“What happened?” she asked. “Did you make the wrong measurements?”

“No,” Emelda told her, “the measurements are correct. They just aren't ours. They're yours.” She walked over to Lenore, held one of the dresses up to her. “You see? We did a good job. Go try them on.”

Lenore's confusion survived a moment after the thin blade of Emelda's smile sliced through her. “These are supposed to be yours, for the pageant,” she said. And then it hit her. “Why did you do this?”

“These are your kind of dresses. They look nice on you, but they're not for us.” Emelda spoke a few words in Quiché or Achí to the younger girls, all standing around in their dresses, now looking at the floor. One woman disappeared behind the curtain to take hers off.

“Emelda, what are you doing to me!” Lenore's voice cracked in desperation. “I won't have you ruining this. All this.” She swept her hand over the class. “This is what this whole project is about. Do you want to ruin these girls' chances of being Guatemalans, to have a regular life?”

“I know you think this is right,” Emelda said. “I'm not angry at you for it, I used to think your way myself. But this . . .” She slapped both hands on her chest, then her thighs, indicating her ragged Indian costume. “This is sacred. You can destroy our gods, our land, our families, our ability to feed ourselves, but this is different. You are fighting us down to the last thread of clothing. Why do you want us defeated so completely?”

Lenore wanted nothing more than a mirror right then, a full-length mirror to show Emelda what she was so intent on protecting. The shapeless, rotting rags that made her look like a crazy woman.

Lenore lowered her voice to calm the others, who'd grown fearful at the argument. “Emelda, please tell these girls they have a choice. They can go with you or stay with me. I'm not going to fight with you. It's not God's way. You are free to make a choice. You have always had a choice. You chose to do your work for the government, you chose to take the land they gave you, you chose to go to the mountains and fight that same government who had kept their promise to you, you chose to come back and put yourself under the government's mercy, you chose to eat their food and live under their roof, you chose to be baptized.” Lenore's voice had taken on the restrained power of a preacher's. The girls were no longer just frightened, but terrified. Lenore smiled reassuringly at them. “So you can choose not to participate in the
pageant. That is what a democracy is about. Any girl is free to choose.” She folded her arms, finished, but then realized she was standing in front of the padlocked door. She unlocked it and stepped aside.

Emelda said a few words to the women and then turned to leave, with a handful of the class following.

“What did you say to them, Emelda?”

“The one thing I know. Once they put on those clothes, it'll be the last choice they can ever make.”

She walked out. Lenore stood silently, counting the faithful who had stayed behind with her. More than half the girls shifted in their new dresses, eyeing each other. All young, under twenty, the older ones having left with Emelda. Cruzita remained. Lenore watched her take a step in the direction of the door, but only one step. She looked to her grandmother and back, twice, before deciding to stay with Lenore.

—

That evening, Lenore helped the remaining girls get ready in the church, using her dwindling supply of hair spray to mold their hair into fashionable styles. Lenore didn't like to play favorites, but she saved her curler set for Cruzita. She pulled the curlers from their pile of materialist things that they never could throw away, along with the hair dryer and Dan's hair gel, the useless things now proving their worth to the village. Cruzita sat completely still as Lenore worked on her.

“You're so lucky to be young at a time like this, Cruzita. You really do have a chance to start over.” She twisted a thick strand of the girl's hair around her finger like rope.

Cruzita's eyes followed her lips, uncomprehending.

“It's okay.” Lenore laid a hand on Cruzita's forehead to smooth her worry away. “I think you know this all already.”

Cruzita smiled.

“I don't believe for one moment that you have a baby. You're barely old enough for dates. Why would she make up something so horrible like that?”

She knew not to use Emelda's name. Hearing it, the girl would skew her beautiful face in panic and crack the makeup there.

“She was probably just trying to explain away your happiness. She can't understand how you could be so different, being of the same blood, I guess. You know, she told me yesterday that she got pregnant by that United Fruit man she's always talking about? And she kept your father a secret from him. Your grandfather was a big, successful businessman. Of course, you don't
know that. I wish I could tell you. But what good would it do now, anyway? Just make you angry about the proper upbringing she denied you. I think she's threatened by the progress you're making despite all that.” She stooped to look at her directly. “You are happy, aren't you? I can tell.
¿Sí?
”

Cruzita shifted her eyes around without moving her head. “
Sí
,” she agreed tentatively. Lenore pinned a pink foam curler to her scalp.

“I have to be honest with you, though, Cruzita. I think I owe you that much, after putting you through that crazy facts-of-life talk. And I don't want you to think I'm judging your grandmother for her past.” She paused, extracted another long rope of hair, running her finger down the length and finding no resistance. “I didn't wait until I was married to sleep with Dan. It's not that I was lying to you before. Just sometimes, the way things turned out, I really do forget. He is the only man I've been with. And, it's funny. I actually have a fake memory of our honeymoon night, where it's the first time. Anyway, the point is, I do know the kind of temptation that's out there and I know what you're up against. I remember being young, going out on dates, kissing for the first time. All that's just starting for you, and it's so exciting, but it can also get out of control very quickly. How do you say it?
¿Rápido?
”