“What an adventure we will have!” I quickened my step to encourage them. Of course, they hurried along. I was the one bit of firm land in this sea of strangers. They dared not lose sight of me!
At our approach, a trumpet sounded. The dignitaries and other members of the expedition parted ranks. Don Francisco had already explained the protocol: we, the children and I, were to go up the gangway, as our names were called out to cheers and applause by all present. But first a herald read out the royal decree:
His Majesty, the King, considering the ravages caused by smallpox in his dominions, and being desirous of granting to his beloved vassals the aid dictated by humanity â¦
A strong wind was blowing upon usâwhy we were leaving today, finally, having waited all week for the weathervanes on the housetops to swing back round to a favoring wind. The boys were getting chilled. Pascual was hungry; indeed, the little rascal was always hungry! Juan Antonio sniffled; he was bound to catch cold. TintÃn and Bello, bundled in blankets, wailed in the arms of their nurses. Little did our king guess, as he dictated to scribes in a warm chamber, that the length of his decree might imperil the very mission he was decreeing. If our first carriers fell ill, would the vaccine lose its efficacy? “Soon, soon, my little princes,” I promised the boys, hoping none would call me to account by asking, “But how soon?”
MartÃn!
the herald finally barked out.
“TintÃn,” I murmured his nickname, flashing the teary-eyed little fellow an encouraging smile.
Vicente MarÃa Sale y Bellido!
Bello. A homely boy, despite his nickname.
No doubt, TintÃn and Bello were being boarded first to get them out of harm's way right off. Three days ago, Don Francisco had vaccinated the two children with cowpox fluid from a carrier brought from Madrid. The vaccine had taken, and what a labor of Hercules that had been! The two toddlers had to be watched day and night lest they scratch their arms and destroy the vesicles that were beginning to form; nor were they to mix with the other carriers lest they vaccinate anyone accidentally and break the chain of transmission mid ocean. Of course, being toddlers, TintÃn and Bello could not comprehend the caution we kept drumming into them. Their young age, which in one regard was a benefit, in another created quite a challenge. How was I going to manage on board without Nati to help me? I had commented on this to Don Francisco, who assured me that from the moment of vaccination, the task of caring for the two carriers would fall to the three expedition nurses. After the fluid had been successfully conveyed to the next pair, the immune carriers would fall back to me. He spoke as if we would be dealing with so many barrels of molasses or kegs of rum, not with lively little boys with troublesome minds of their own.
TintÃn and Bello were carried up the gangway by their two nurses, kicking and screaming and reaching their little hands out to me. “Stop that!” Don Basilio Bolaños, the short, gruff nurse, snarled at little TintÃn, “or I'll throw you into the sea.” TintÃn's screams reached a feverish pitch, inciting a new round of crying among the boys left with me. I could see that the task of caring for the carriers would never be totally out of my hands.
“Now, now, boys,” I hushed them. “See, TintÃn is fine. Let's all wave to him.” From the deck of the
Pita,
Don Basilio grabbed the terrified child's hand and forced a wave back, eliciting more screams, almost destroying the calm I had wrought.
Pascual Aniceto!
The next child was called. I had selected each boy for Don Francisco's examination and approval, but our director had made the final pick, writing down each nameâor as much of each name as was knownâthat the herald was now proclaiming in a booming voice.
Cándido! Clemente! José Jorge Nicolás de los Dolores! Vicente Ferrer!
As more names were called, the boys grew bolder in their ascent up the gangway to the
MarÃa Pita.
Francisco Antonio! Juan Francisco! Francisco Florencio! Juan Antonio!
I buttoned up Juan Antonio's jacket, which had come undone, and wiped his runny nose. Perhaps, our sickly Juan Antonio had been a bad choice. But we were running out of boys whose pasts I could fully account for. And Juan Antonio had come to us from the hospital next door with his mother's blood still caked on his scalp. I would have to watch over him carefully so he would not catch a bad cold and imperil his vaccination.
Jacinto! José!
José was the worst of my bed-wetters. Back at La Casa, we had forbidden him any drink after supper, but even so the boy inevitably wet his bed. “What is it with you,” Nati would scold him as she collected his bedding many a morning. “Do you dream every night that you're pissing in a pot?” I would have to be sure to wake him; indeed, it would be best to wake all the boys mid-night to relieve themselves. No wonder Don Francisco had asked for additional chamber pots. He thinks of everything, I marveled once again.
Gerónimo MarÃa! José Manuel MarÃa! Manuel MarÃa!
The three brothers went up together. Indeed, they did all things as a trinity. It was going to be difficult vaccinating only two of them at a time.
Tomás Melitón!
Tomás was a swarthy little fellow; his father or mother must have been a Moor. The other boys teased him relentlessly. Doña Teresa thought he'd be snatched up by a noble family, as the fashion had becomeâwith the Duchess of Alba's adoption of MarÃa de la Luzâto have negritos as part of one's retinue, along with little dogs and monkeys. But the ways of the court did not always take in Galicia.
Andrés Naya! Domingo Naya!
Too late, I noted the wet spot on the back of Andrés's breeches. Unlike the ones who had cried loudly as we were departing from the orphanage,
Andrés had clung to the leg of a table, mute with terror. Somehow that silence had been more disturbing than the din of crying surrounding him.
Benito Vélez!
Our director had been coming down from the deck to carry the toddlers aboard as they were called. Benito, of course, refused to go with him. The boy clung to me, burying his face in my neck, curling himself up and digging into my side like Adam's lost rib. “Best I bring him up, Don Francisco.” Our director nodded and stretched out his hand to the last boy as his name was called.
Antonio Veredia!
Antonio was our little scholar. He had picked up reading easily and had started in on a Bible he had discovered in the chapel. But Father Ignacio had taken it away. The boy was only seven. “He is too young to be navigating these complex waters by himself,” the priest ruled. Now Antonio would be navigating real waters. Lord keep him and all the others.
Isabel López Gandalla!
Had I misheard? Our director had recorded the wrong name! He had so many important things to attend to, I excused him to myself. Still, it pained me to think that I was of no consequence to him: one more member of his expedition to discard from his acquaintance once it was over.
The wind was blowing strong. I heard the clang of a bell and the clinking sound of chains. The gangway swayed. How would I keep my footing, a child in my arms, my heart in my throat, my mind tangled with guilt? High in the rigging, sailors were cocking their heads, trying to make out the one woman who would be on board. It was bad luck to allow a woman on a ship. In fact, Captain Pedro del Barco had out-and-out refused to admit me at first, so Don Francisco had reported to me. The captain had finally come around, I knew not by what means, sending me his personal welcome and a little bag of smelling salts that would prevent any seasickness in myself or the boys. Quite the turnabout! Had Don Francisco been any other kind of man, I might have suspected him of having exaggerated his first report in order to incur my gratitude over his efforts.
“Doña Isabel!” the boys were calling out my name. If nothing else, my
boys now needed me more than ever. Some good might still come of what I had done for my own reasons. I kissed my little Benito's head and whispered, “Here we go!” No matter that Don Francisco had recorded the wrong name in the official documents. I had wanted a whole new life, so why not have a new name to go with it? Up the swaying gangway I climbed, toward the sloping deck where my boys and Don Francisco were waiting for me.
Alma turns into their driveway after seeing Richard off at the airport, and the sight of their house gives her a hollowed-out feeling in the gut. On the radio, the guys on
Car Talk
are having a grand old time. Do they ever get depressed? she wonders. Does one brother ever turn to the other and say, Jesus, I can't go on and talk about carburetors, not today, I can't!
Their house looms before her, a lot of wood, a lot of glass, very Vermont. They bought it from a couple who were divorcing after doing the usual crazy thing: Having marital troubles? Have a baby. Build a house. Alma remembers, now that she is about to go into it alone, that she didn't want to buy it. That she thought it was bad luck to buy a house from a couple that hadn't made it, that Richard had talked her into it, as he often did, by being reasonable. The house was cheap, considering the state's increasingly expensive real-estate market. “The chicifying of Vermont,” Tera calls it. For weeks after they moved in, Alma did cleansings while Richard was at the office. Cleansings don't have a lifetime guarantee, she is thinking. Maybe she should begin by cleansing the house again before she tries to write a novel in it?
A horn toot-toots. Claudine's SUV going by. She recognizes Alma's car. Probably wondering why Alma is sitting halfway down her driveway looking at her own house.
If only you knew, Claudine, Alma thinks. Her down-the-road neighbor, Claudine, is one of the people Alma could never become, which
makes her sad or used to anyhow. Competent, the mother of two darling little girls who are as good-looking as she is, Claudine stayed home with them when they were little, loved it; now works part time as a real-estate agent, loves it; has read all of Alma's books, loves them. If things get bad, Alma can call up Claudine and become friends. Maybe it will rub off on her, Claudine's talent for happiness.
This is nothing new, Alma reminds herself, this terror whenever Richard leaves for any trip that'll take him away overnight, though it's never really made sense. Unlike the monkey experiment Alma once read about, she wasn't torn from her mother's side as a baby and placed in a cage with a mechanical lookalike that delivered shocks whenever Alma climbed into its arms. But clinging to her capricious Mamasita had created its own kind of trouble: never knowing when she'd be given the tit, when the dart. Though Alma had figured it out soon enough.
That was a half century ago, Alma tells herself now, recognizing Richard's tone of voice in her head. Richard has no patience with adults who go on and on about what their parents did to them. “Everyone's going to make mistakes!” he always says after some confessional moment by a troubled friend almost derails a lively and fun supper party. The saga of a wicked-witch mother. An alcoholic father revisited. They will be brushing their teeth after the guests have left, and almost always Alma will be the one championing such courage. “We all so seldom talk to each other about what really matters,” she'll say to Richard, spewing toothpaste suds on her side of the mirror.
“
That's
what really matters?” he'll reply after he's done brushing, rinsing, and patting his mouth dry. Even in this, Alma thinks, Richard has the cleaner windshield.
And now her cleaner windshield is gone. She drives the rest of the way down to the house and gets out of the car. Upstairs, a boatload of orphans and their hopeful rectoress are waiting to cross the Atlantic with a crazed visionary.
Alma decides not to go inside just yet. Instead, she heads across the back field to Helen's house.
“H
ELEN, IT'S ME
!” Alma hollers, after knocking at the back door and turning the knob. She doesn't want to scare the half-blind old woman who's not expecting her at this hour of the morning. Usually, Alma tries to come once or twice a week in the late afternoon for an hour and read to Helen. Lately, Alma has fallen off, letting weeks go by, which she feels bad about, but tells herself it doesn't really matter. Claudine and another woman on their road alternate days checking on Helen and reading her the necessaries: her mail, the local gossipy paper she likes, and anything else she might ask them for. Alma is supposed to do the frills, as Helen calls them. Some good book. Sometimes Helen asks Alma to read something she has written, which is sweet of her, and Alma has obliged a few times but stopped because Helen always falls asleep. But then Helen also naps for Toni Morrison and Robert Frost, so Alma doesn't feel so bad.
“Is that you, Alma?” Helen calls out. Her voice sounds wobbly, croaky, as if maybe she's coming down with a cold.
“Yeah, it's me, Helen,” Alma says, trying to figure out where Helen is since she isn't in the kitchen in back where she usually hangs out all day. Helen is sitting at her telephone-table seat that reminds Alma of being a kid. Amazing to think that forty-some years ago that item was shipped down to a little backwater dictatorship. Some stuff, like bubble gum, found its way everywhere, even back then.
“Hi, dear,” Helen says, her voice brightening. She's looking in Alma's general direction. Helen's hazelish eyes have that cloudy look of the planet Earth seen from outer space. And though Alma knows Helen's vision's almost gone because of glaucoma, Alma always feels as if Helen does see her. “I do, dear,” Helen has told her when Alma has mentioned this feeling in the past, “with the eyes of my heart.”
“What a nice surprise!” she says now, like she means it, but there's something in her voice that doesn't sound like the Helen Alma is used to.
“Everything okay?” Alma asks, wondering if Helen will tell her. Her old friend is not a complainer and avoids ever mentioning any problems in her lifeâeven when Alma has pressed her. Helen doesn't
want to dwell on the negative, Alma can accept that, but sometimes she has the feeling that Helen is afraid people won't come back if she doesn't make them feel better.