Authors: Kate Wilhelm
“You said she died three years ago,” Anaia said in a harsh whisper. “I don't believe you.”
Barbara glanced around the office, the desk with a few papers on it and a sweating pitcher of water with glasses on a tray, a shelf of books, a file cabinet, one desk chair, and one other chair. She moved the chair closer to the desk, opened her beach bag, and brought out the manila envelope.
Still standing by the open door, Robert said, “I'll be outside, Anaia.” He left, and after a moment, Anaia sat behind the desk opposite Barbara.
“I'm an attorney,” Barbara began, “and last week a couple came to me for advice.â¦
“Binnie gave me this letter written by her mother,” she said, concluding her account of the first meeting with Binnie and Martin. Anaia had not moved throughout. Her hands were tightly clenched on the desk, and she had looked ready to spring to her feet and run away as Barbara told the story of Binnie's escape from Haiti, her marriage to Martin, and finally her trouble with immigration. Barbara handed her the sheet of paper with the copy of Shala's letter to her daughter.
Anaia gasped as she read the letter quickly. She jumped up from the chair, clutching the letter. She moved to the window and with her back turned to Barbara, she read it again, then stood with her head bowed. After several minutes, she faced around again and said in a near whisper, “Lavinia was my mother's name. Shala and I agreed that whoever had a daughter first would name her after our mother.”
Barbara brought out the photographs she had taken of Binnie and passed them across the desk. Anaia looked at them, at Barbara, back at the prints. She reseated herself and separated the four pictures, staring at them fixedly, then gently touched first one then another.
“She is beautiful,” she whispered. “So like Shala, just like Shala.”
And so like you,
Barbara heard her own words in her head.
“What are you going to do?” Anaia asked after another minute or two.
“Following the law of the United States, the immigration department must deport her since she is undocumented and entered the country illegally. I came here to enlist the help of her family to press her case that she is a citizen of Belize, that her mother was Belizean, held captive in Haiti, and that Binnie has a right to be reunited with her real family here. To demand that they deport her to Belize, and not to Haiti.”
“No!” Anaia cried. “She can't come here!”
13
“Do you understand a word of what I've been saying?” Barbara said furiously, jumping from her chair, leaning forward on the desk. “She is Lavinia Santos Owens, and if she is deported to Haiti she will be seized by that man Domonic, or someone just like him, and she will vanish from the face of the earth! She can't cry out for help! She probably will be dead in ten years if she isn't beaten to death sooner.”
Anaia had risen also, and just as furiously cried, “And if she is sent here she will be dead within a week! You come here from your safe country and don't understand anything. Protect her. You have courts, judges, officials. Plead her case for her. Be her advocate, but don't try to manage a situation here that you can't comprehend.”
For a moment they glared at each other. Barbara straightened up, then resumed her seat. She poured water into both glasses on the tray and passed one across the desk, sipped from the other.
“Why don't you tell me the situation, explain what it is I don't understand,” she said levelly.
Anaia sat down again and, looking at the photographs, she said in a low voice, “I can't protect her if she is sent here. I doubt anyone can. Coming here today puts me at risk. Every day the risk increases, until one day someone will betray me. These people are desperately poor, and they can be intimidated, or manipulated, bribed. Sooner or later one of them will yield. My father was murdered, Ms. Holloway, and I'm next on the list. Lavinia is safe in your country. Here, she would follow me, or perhaps precede me, on that same list. I have many friends, but there is always the possibility that someone will reveal my whereabouts. She would be in a strange country and friendless, unable to move about in the forest, unable to hide in any of the villages among friends.”
“Start further back,” Barbara said coolly. “You're telling me the endgame. Where does it start?”
Anaia raised her gaze from the photographs and regarded Barbara for a moment. Then she said, “There is a vast estate, fifty thousand acres, and there is a shipping company at stake here. My father inherited it all on the death of his father. My uncle Julius was left a generous annual allowance. It was never enough to satisfy him. Although over the years my father increased it several times, it never was enough. When my mother died, Uncle Julius came from Spain for the funeral, and he and my father fought, physically fought while he was here. He was driven away and told never to return. My sister and I were sent to a convent school and never lived at home again, but visited from time to time, and I never saw Uncle Julius after Mother's funeral until three years ago when he came back.”
She paused and drank water, then drew in a long breath. “That isn't the real beginning. My mother's death was the real beginning. Before that, Father was a loving, caring father, and he adored my mother. She caught influenza that led to pneumonia and killed her within a week. He died, too, I think. Everything in him that had been good and caring died at that same time. He could not bear to look at us, at Shala and me, and he sent us away. When I married Lawrence, Father said he never wanted to see me again. He said I had disgraced him. I thought he had disowned me entirely. After we were notified that Shala had died at sea, there was a memorial service. He came to me afterward and said he was glad she was dead, that she had brought more dishonor to our name, and it was better that she was dead.”
Anaia lifted her water glass again. Her hand was trembling and she put it down without taking a sip. Then, clasping her hands on the desk, she continued. “From that day until Uncle Julius came eighteen years later I never saw my father.”
She began to speak in a brisker tone as she continued talking about the more recent past. When Julius returned he had found her in Belmopan, where she had been teaching, and he told her that he had heard from friends that Augustus was demented and no longer capable of running the finca and the shipping business. He said Augustus had to be properly cared for in a psychiatric hospital, that it was their duty to place him there, and he proposed that Anaia and he form a partnership to oversee the entire estate. She could continue as the visiting teacher of the outlying areas as she had been doing and he would be the active manager.
“He was persuasive, solicitous, concerned about Father, and about me. I told him no and he became an iceman instantly. He said my decision was regrettable, that he had proposed a humane solution to a problem, and he left. I visited my father a short time later and found him to be as vigorous and mentally capable as he ever had been. I told him what Julius had said. Father asked me what I would do with the finca if it were mine. I told him truthfully that I would convert it to a farm using the methods Robert and I had been teaching for many years. The house would become a school, an agronomy, earth science college, with classes for the workers' children. He laughed until I had to wonder if he really was demented.”
She looked at Barbara and said slowly, “Father told me that day that the estate was to be my inheritance, and also that if he died in anything that appeared to be an accident, or if he was murdered, my life would be in danger and I should take every precaution until my uncle was gone, arrested, or dead. He knew, Ms. Holloway, that his brother intended to murder him. For nearly three years he escaped that death, but then it came. He, two bodyguards, and a driver were murdered on the road from Belize City to the finca. It was made to look like a robbery, but it was exactly what my father had been afraid would happen. Uncle Julius moved to the finca the following day, and I have been in hiding ever since the funeral.”
“Why don't you use whatever legal measures there are to claim your inheritance?” Barbara asked.
“There is a survivor's clause in the will. I must survive my father's death for thirty days before I can claim the estate. My attorney said that such clauses are common.”
Barbara nodded. They were in the United States also.
“If I don't survive for thirty days, everything will be passed on to Julius Santos,” Anaia said. “No one knew there was another possible heir, Lavinia.”
“Someone knew,” Barbara said. “When will the thirty days be up?”
“Next Tuesday at midnight.” She looked again at the pictures. “Why do you say someone knew?”
“There wasn't any reason for immigration to look for her. They must have had a tip, and since there was no reason for anyone to suspect she was an illegal alien, it must have come from someone who wanted her found and deported.”
“Can't you prevent that?” Anaia asked. “Are your laws so rigid that it can't be prevented?”
“I can't prevent it,” Barbara said. “There are people who would gain from her deportation, bureaucrats who would benefit. Martin Owens is a high-profile, somewhat wealthy celebrity. For a minor cog in the great wheel of government to bring down a man who is also a rich celebrity would do a lot to demonstrate that wealth and fame can't protect anyone from justice. In this case trying to prevent the deportation of an illegal alien. It would look good in the personnel file of the official who brought it about. He likely would get a promotion and a bonus.
“I may be able to stall them for a short time, but not for long. If there are witnesses to testify that Shala was pregnant when she sailed, I could possibly make a case. I was hoping you, and perhaps a doctor, could make statements to that effect, that she was pregnant already. Binnie doesn't know her birth date and there's no way to prove such a date, in any event, but I could raise it as an issue. Mrs. Thurston, there is absolutely no documentation available to indicate that Shala Santos was captive in Haiti, or that Binnie is not the daughter of that man Domonic Guteriez, as he claimed. There is nothing to prevent her deportation to Haiti.”
Anaia shook her head. “No one knew except me. We were both afraid Father would kill her if he knew she was pregnant before her marriage.”
“The person your father sent to Haiti to ransom her knew that she was pregnant,” Barbara said. “The question is, what did he tell your father?”
Anaia looked stricken and bowed her head. “If fleeing in order to marry Juan brought dishonor, a pregnancy would have been cause for her death,” she said, hardly above a whisper. “But they are both dead now, Father and his lieutenant. There is no record of that meeting.”
“Well, unless I can provide documentation proving that she is a Belizean citizen, due to her mother's origins, she will be deported to Haiti. She will be deported in any event, I'm afraid, the only question is to where. If she had been born here in your country, and her birth registered, that would make a case for deportation to be to Belize. Yet you say she would not be safe here.”
She took another drink of water and leaned back in her chair. “From what you tell me, and what I know, it seems that there isn't any place she could be safe.”
For a time neither spoke. Finally, knowing it was futile, Barbara asked, “Is there any possibility of enlisting the help of your husband? Lawrence Thurston?”
Anaia shook her head again. In a strained voice, she said, “He came here as a consultant in a government exchange program. He was an expert in soils, in managing tropical land, and he taught at the university for one semester. Robert and I were in his class. The three of us went out into the countryside many times to collect soil samples, to set up test plots, to do his bidding in his work. Lawrence and I married after four months.” Her voice became almost dispassionate, remote, and without inflection as she continued. “A year later he said he had been recalled, but he would be back. I never heard from him again. My letters to Northwestern University, where he had taught, were returned with no forwarding address. My letter in care of the State Department was never acknowledged, much less answered.”
“What about your own law enforcement agencies here? Can't you appeal for protection?”
Wearily Anaia said, “There's little point at this time. There's no way for anyone to know how trustworthy anyone else is, who is paying whom, who answers to whom. Ms. Holloway, my father was growing hundreds of acres of marijuana, using the Santos Shipping Company to send it to his customers. Your own government has been spraying marijuana fields in my country, using a defoliant, what they call paraquat. My father's acreage never was sprayed. There is massive corruption and how high it goes is anyone's guess. Julius apparently has been working for the last few years to increase ties to others, possibly to become a shipper of even more drugs, probably from Colombia, possibly from Mexico, and he has enlisted people to become his allies. My father told me this when I went to see him. He was opposed to broadening his illegal activities, which he readily admitted that day. He didn't believe marijuana was as addictive as tobacco or alcohol, he believed that it was relatively harmless, and he saw no harm in growing it or selling it. He said that the men Julius was dealing with would destroy this country by shipping or even growing much more dangerous drugs. For all his faults, his dishonesty, breaking the law by growing an illegal crop, his prejudices, and his damned honor, he loved Belize, and he and Julius were in a deadly struggle over its destiny. Julius is winning. I stand in his way.”
Door after door kept closing, Barbara thought despairingly. Whatever she had hoped to gain by coming to this jungle land seemed to fade away like a series of mirages the moment she turned toward it.
Almost as if in an afterthought, Anaia said vehemently, “I pray to God that they don't spray those fields! They would poison the land for generations with their filthy defoliant. Many of those people grew marijuana, a few acres here, there. It was their livelihood and they saw no harm in it. With their fields gone, nothing to replace them, they are destitute. Not even subsistence farming is left for them in many cases. The Santos land could feed many of our own people, teach them a different way of farming, sustainable farming, provide cash to buy the things we can't produce for ourselves. And free us from the need to import so much of our food.”