Just then, I heard footsteps on the tile patio. “It’s like magic,” Sonia said, appearing at my elbow with a handful of
cordobas
. “Without doing anything, I have just made half of these disappear. Poof.”
I looked at her dark brown face and at the crumpled wad of bills in her hand. Suddenly, because I couldn’t think of anything else, I began to applaud. “Bravo,” I said.
She looked surprised, and then began to laugh. After a moment, she placed one arm in front of her waist and the other behind her back and bowed. I clapped even harder. She straightened up and with a mischievous gleam in her eyes said, “And soon they’ll be completely worthless and we can use them to wipe our behinds.”
“Good. Another problem solved.”
She smiled, stuffed the bills into her apron, and sat down across from me.
“What are you going to do?” I asked seriously.
As soon as the question was out of my mouth, I realized how stupid it sounded. If you lived in North America where there were options, the question would have made sense. But here, whatever you could do to make ends meet had already been done. In Boulder, you might take a second job, borrow money from a friend, or sell your car. In Managua, you already had four jobs, no one had any money to lend you, and whatever wasn’t bolted down had been sold long ago.
Sonia, however, merely shrugged.
I was tempted to offer her some money, but even I knew how insulting that would have been. Besides, there was nothing to buy. But maybe when I left for good, I could hide some dollars in her bureau.
“Don’t look so worried,” she told me, patting my arm. “It’ll make you look old.”
During supper, Sonia told me about a trip she’d taken to Panama when she was twenty-three. Apparently Panama was a popular place for Nicaraguans to visit in the early sixties. She and her best friend Miriam had taken a bus to Panama City and then bummed around the country for almost three months living on their savings. At one point, they’d rented rooms in an old hotel on a beach and taught themselves to swim. It was one of the happiest times in her life. After a few weeks, however, a group of men began pestering them for dates and they decided to move on. When the money ran out, they both got jobs in a dance studio teaching elderly couples how to cha-cha.
“You’re kidding,” I said.
“And the rumba too,” she said. Her eyes had a faraway look and for a couple of seconds I could tell she was back being young and healthy, teaching dance steps in a studio somewhere in Panama, her entire adult life still in front of her.
“Why did you come back?” I asked.
She shrugged. “My father left my mother to start another family with a widow up in Matagalpa. My mother was alone with my two younger sisters to take care of. My father didn’t send her any money. She needed me and I returned.”
I nodded. That’s how it happens, I thought. So many women’s lives determined by other people’s needs and desires. I thought about Emily, who hadn’t finished college because her mother was diagnosed with ovarian cancer and her father had begged her to come home. Within a year, her father was drinking full-time and Emily became the primary caregiver for both of them. She’d ended up spending four years tending to her mother before she finally died, then another six months nursing her father before he, too, followed suit. By that time, she told me, she’d lost her taste for “adventure” and when Hal offered her a permanent position as his wife, she decided to take it.
Later that night, as I lay on my cot listening to Sonia’s nightly prayer for her nephew’s safety, I thought about my own life and how it, too, might have gone more like Emily’s or Sonia’s. In my first year of law school, my father had died suddenly of a heart attack. I was an only child. If my mother had requested that I move back to Boston, I probably would have, but she was an independent woman with plenty of friends and a good job as a reporter for the
Boston Globe
. As far as I knew, it never even crossed her mind to ask, and I never offered. We agreed, instead, to call each other once a month and to spend two weeks in the summer together, usually on Martha’s Vineyard. When she moved a few years ago to Florida, she called afterward to tell me her new address and phone number. She’d been planning to relocate for at least six months, but never told me beforehand. When I asked why not, she sounded puzzled, as if I’d posed a strange metaphysical question. She had no idea why it mattered to me. What difference did it make whether I called her in Boston or in Florida?
I heard Sonia end her prayers that night by asking God to watch out for her North American guest who worried too much. That’s me, I thought, aging faster than a speeding bullet. I lay in the dark and sighed, waiting for my chicken.
***
Although we’d originally planned to leave Managua on Saturday, a few days earlier the government had strongly encouraged us not to travel beyond Ocotal without an army escort, which wouldn’t be available until the following Tuesday. In the preceding days, the Contras had mined the road from Ocotal to Jalapa and blown up a truck full of soldiers. Three soldiers had died in the explosion, and a fourth (a female) was missing. The dead soldiers were found in a ditch with their eyes cut out, a favorite Contra practice designed to horrify and demoralize the families of the victims.
On Friday afternoon, Estelle and Tim laid out our various options. We were sitting with our chairs in a circle in the cafeteria of the language school, wondering if we’d end up spending the entire six weeks talking about Jalapa, but never getting there. We sounded just like characters in an existentialist play, but I kept the thought to myself. Everyone looked too tired and frustrated to appreciate it. Nothing seemed to be going according to plan, and we were beginning to understand that nothing probably would.
After a short debate, we voted (nine to Susan) to postpone the trip until Monday, drive to Ocotal and spend the night there, and hope for the promised escort on Tuesday. It was the only sensible choice, but it left us feeling restless and crabby. We’d also just found out that Jalapa had been placed on twenty-four hour alert and if we ever managed to get there, we’d be staying at the Witness for Peace house, not with any of the townspeople.
The following day, instead of heading north on the Pan American Highway, we drove back to the language school. As we lurched down the dirt road toward the familiar pink stucco building, we hoped it was for the last time. To celebrate our final day of classes, Estelle and Tim brought mangoes, a large bottle of Coca-Cola, and a plate of cookies that Tim’s host had baked for us. After we finished eating, we broke up into our regular study groups where we taught ourselves some new Spanish words that might come in handy, such as landmine, sniper and ambush.
The school had been a bust, but we’d made the best of it. Our teacher, Mrs. Rodriguez, had shown up once, but was clearly too sick to teach. We heard she’d gone to the hospital, which meant she was gravely ill and would probably die. Since we had no books, we spent most mornings reading articles in
La Barricada
, the official Sandinista newspaper, and then tried to discuss them. In the afternoons, we attempted to teach Allen and Tina enough Spanish to get by in Jalapa.
After two weeks, Allen and Tina could greet people in Spanish and ask where they could hide in case of an attack. Both students could also count to a thousand and recite how many teachers had disappeared in the last year, how many schools had been burned, and how many soldiers had been injured or killed. For their last class, we taught them to order fish, chicken, pork, salad, vegetables and dessert in a fictitious restaurant and understand the waiter when he responded after each request, “
No hay.”
There isn’t any.
By three o’clock, we were ready to leave. One by one, we wandered into the cafeteria and sat down on the rickety wooden chairs and stared at each other. The bus wouldn’t come for another couple of hours, but no one wanted to study anymore. We were done. Lenny and I vowed we’d never read another newspaper for as long as we lived, Liz thought her grammar was much worse after spending two weeks talking to the rest of us, and Veronica complained that the bulk of her vocabulary consisted of words having to do with imperialist aggression and covert CIA operations. Even Estelle looked a little glum.
To cheer us up, Tim suggested we plan a going-away party for our hosts the following evening and have it at the community center. Immediately we all perked up. Estelle pulled out a pad of paper and made a tentative list of tasks that would need to be done. Everyone was smiling now and talking excitedly. After a while, we broke up into committees. Allen, Liz and I decided to be responsible for the music. Allen thought his host knew someone with a record player, and I figured Sonia would probably know where to find some good dance music.
“Rachel,” Tim called from the doorway, “you have an international phone call from someone named Vickie.”
“Is that your partner?” Liz asked. She and Allen were sitting across from me at one of the long narrow tables in the room.
I nodded. I hadn’t bothered coming out yet, so how did she know? But the people who mattered to me somehow always knew. Like many gays comfortable with their sexuality, my lifestyle had ceased to feel remarkable, but to even the most accepting straight people, it was still “interesting.”
Regardless, neither she nor Allen looked at all surprised. “How long have you been together?” Liz asked.
“Nine years.” As I spoke, I could feel a small knot forming between my shoulder blades.
“Well good for you,” Liz said. “Send her our regards. This is probably the last chance you’ll have to speak to each other. We won’t have access to any phones in Jalapa.”
As I entered the same office I’d entered two weeks earlier, the same woman with a baby in her arms handed me the receiver. I held it to my head as if it were an unexploded bomb and said, “Hello?”
“Hey,” Vickie answered. Her voice sounded higher than usual, which made her sound young and vulnerable. “I know I promised not to call, but it’s been a couple of weeks and I haven’t received any letters. Maggie’s heard you’re heading out soon.”
My stomach was beginning to hurt. I felt dizzy and sat down on the floor. “It’s the embargo,” I said. “Nothing’s getting through.” It was the new me talking, the stranger who’d run away from home.
My girlfriend was silent.
The old me struggled to the front, elbowing the other one aside. “Vickie, I’m sorry. I’m trying as hard as I can to figure everything out, but it’s still too soon. I don’t know what I want.”
“Do you want me?”
I resisted hitting myself in the head with the receiver. “Of course,” I said, wondering for a nasty moment if I really did. No, I did and yet I wasn’t acting like it. What the hell was I doing? “Vickie, please, I definitely want you. I don’t know anything else, but I know that. Babe, I’m so sorry, I was hoping I could tell you what my plans were but I’m still waiting.”
“For what?”
Yeah, for what? “Clarity,” I said. Sometimes the truth sounds lamer than a lie.
Again, she was silent. Ugh. I’d subjected my best friend in the world to silence for two weeks, and I couldn’t stand two lousy seconds.
“Listen,” I said, feeling frantic now, “you’ve got to hang on. This is just a blip in a long-term relationship. These things happen. Remember when Maggie and Linda were having such a hard time? It probably took them half a year, but eventually they worked it out. We can too.”
“I talked to Maggie about the situation up in Jalapa,” she said, ignoring everything I’d just said.
“And?”
“Stop being so goddamned cagey. She told me everything. She said there had been lots of fighting recently, that the roads were dangerous, and that you might not even get through.”
I rubbed my face and stared at the empty bookshelves. “Are you mad at me?”
“Of course I am. You lied to me.”
I sighed. “I’m sorry. I know I keep saying that, but I am. And I love you.”
“Love has never been the problem,” she replied, and I waited to hear what was. But after another interminable period of silence, she said, “Take care of yourself, okay?” And then she hung up.
On my way back to the cafeteria, I thought of all the things I could have said that might have reassured her. For a nanosecond I considered calling her back and telling her I’d be home in four weeks, no matter what. But the thought of going home was worse than the thought of losing her, so I kept on walking.
***
As it turned out, almost two hundred people attended our party. Earlier in the day, Estelle heard that a literacy brigade of young volunteers from the
barrio
had just returned to the city and she invited them and their families as well. We ended up with four record players, each one playing different music. Nobody seemed to mind. Everyone was dancing, shouting, laughing and eating.
We served beans and cream, fresh tortillas and grape leaves stuffed with yucca, cabbage, green peppers and tomatoes. Bottles of rum appeared as if by magic. At the edges of the party, people discussed the US government’s latest appropriations to build roads and military installations on the border of Honduras. Almost every adult was convinced that an invasion was imminent.
The party officially ended at midnight but continued for another couple of hours. When I returned to the house, it was empty. Sonia had gone to another fiesta when ours began winding down. I lay on my cot and watched a couple of geckos scampering along the wall. I could hear roosters crowing and the sound of canned laughter from a neighbor’s television set. As usual, someone was burning his garbage.
Eventually, Sonia came home and I listened to her get ready for bed. It was about three in the morning. No matter what time she went to bed, however, my roommate never forgot to pray.
As I listened to her through the thin wall of our adjoining rooms, I knew she was wearing the red satin slip she always wore to bed, and that she was standing in front of a low dresser with Jorge’s picture on it. She prayed, as always, as if she truly believed it could make a difference, as if the power of her pleading might influence at least one tiny atom in the universe to bump up against another, which might then start a chain reaction toward something positive. A lovely, if unlikely, idea.