Saving the World

by Julia Alvarez

  Alma tries without success to pump the occupants of her car for information. Who is this Jim Larsen fellow? Is anyone—okay, not negotiating, but talking to these boy terrorists? What are the new demands they are making? She feels weepy with unanswered questions.

  “Señora,” the quieter military man finally speaks up. “We do not know any more than you do.” And she believes him. They were all pulled out of their lives abruptly to attend to this rare occurrence. They, too, were on their way somewhere else, not wanting this to happen. Only the journalist whose job it is to be prepared for the unexpected was ready. She holds up her little overnight case. “It goes with me everywhere.”

  By the time they take the turnoff into the mountains, the general has turned genial. It seems he knows several of Alma’s relatives. Has done business with her cousin. Once dated another cousin. Hard to believe this chesty, antique character is Alma’s age, actually six years younger. He has a wife, a fifteen-year-old daughter, a son with leukemia. His eyes fill. He can’t afford to take the boy to the United States, where surely the best doctors could save him.

  No, Alma thinks, this guy is not a general.

  IT’S NOT UNTIL THEY’VE started up the mountain that Alma thinks about calling the sheriff back in Vermont. A lot of good it will do now, late in the day. Still, maybe Alma can avoid a tragedy there. Was Mickey’s deadly virus idea what Helen was refusing to go along with that day Alma walked in on their argument? Hard to believe Helen would keep this disturbing secret to herself. Maybe she knew Mickey and Hannah were just fantasizing. And no matter what, Mickey is her son, the boy on her refrigerator holding up his 4-H prize: head, hands, health, heart.

  Poor Helen. Her hands weak, her heart ailing, her head muddled, her health gone. Her boy in jail. Does she know about the scuffle in her bedroom, how Mickey hit the sheriff by mistake? Yesterday afternoon seems so long ago.

  Alma asks the occupants of her car if they know where she can make a phone call. She has seen them all using cell phones, so she’s hoping they’ll oblige. But no one’s cell phone seems to be working right now; the most promising, belonging to the attractive journalist, gets a signal but does not have an international plan. “Perhaps your American friends,” the general who is surely not a general suggests. He must think his neighbors to the north are godlike: they can cure leukemia; they can produce cell phones with interplanetary capacities.

  The ride is endless. The caravan stops here and there so that the men can take a pit stop, right on the shoulder, their backs to the road. What need for modesty? The road is deserted at this late afternoon hour. Anybody who has to get up or down the mountain has done so. Starr and Alma and the journalist trek out a little farther afield, airing the usual female grievance about the ease with which men can urinate publicly. “The only penis envy I’ve ever had is when I need to take a leak,” Starr laughs. “So there, Mister Freud.” Her drawl makes a lot of what she says sound funnier than it is.

  As for Alma’s wanting to make a phone call, Starr’s cell won’t get a signal until they’re on the mountaintop. Of course, her cell works up here, she replies when Alma voices surprise. Bienvenido doesn’t know what he’s talking about if he told Richard cell phones don’t work at the Centro. And the general is right. Starr can call the United States on her plan. Her daddy would die if he didn’t hear from her every day. So there, Mister Freud, Alma thinks.

  After forty or so minutes on the slow-going, winding mountain road, the caravan comes to a halt. Alma cranes her neck trying to see who all has stopped them. A roadblock ahead. Troops in camouflage stream by either side of their car. A soldier peers in the driver’s window, saluting when he sees the uniformed men inside. Alma half expects him to ask, Any of you bringing a cable TV into the area?

  By the time they reach the mountaintop village, it is dusk. The huts cast ominous shadows; electric lines haven’t made it up to this remote spot. The caravan rides down the narrow, dirt street, windows down, greetings called out to the people who come to their doorways to watch. Troops are visible everywhere. This is probably the most excitement these poor people will see in a lifetime. Except for hurricanes, the journalist reminds them, which rip through the island, leaving behind their trail of destruction, uprooting forests, houses, crops, people. To this day, you fly over the island, the journalist explains, and you see the new green coming up. “Avenidas de esperanza,” she calls them. Avenues of hope. And then because the thought inspires the kind of religiosity that comes easy to those not on the spot, she touches Alma’s hand. “Your husband is going to be fine. God is taking care of him and the others. Don’t worry.” Alma feels a surge of cheap hope. She always regresses when she comes back home. Actually, she reminds herself, she was regressing long before she got here, back in Vermont, trying to strike a deal with Helen’s God.

  Suddenly, Alma catches herself. Her man for Hannah’s, both free, unharmed. But if Alma calls the sheriff to warn him about Mickey’s craziness, isn’t she going back on her part of the deal? It’s late. The sheriff is home by now, his car facing out on the road giving some other motorist speeding home a scare. And the sheriff might be young, but he’s smart with a sore jaw. He’s not going to let Mickey out of jail just like that. Whatever harm might have been done was averted by Alma’s throwing the phone. As for “deadly virus,” it’s probably another imaginary strain of Hannah’s AIDS of conscience. Tomorrow will be soon enough to call the sheriff if Alma decides to do so.

  And maybe, oh please God, maybe by tomorrow, Richard will be free. Getting Mickey into a good therapy program might be the only way for Hannah to really have him back. “He was just trying to do what’s right,” Hannah had said. So were we all, Alma thinks, remembering Emerson’s grassroots revolution, hope and history rhyming. So why have things gone so terribly wrong? Who can she call on?

  She remembers an article she once read about how in moments of terror or pain or grief, most people, no matter their age, cry out for their mothers. Not their wives or mistresses, sons or daughters, but their mothers! Maybe as an infant this was true for Alma, but not since her early teens has she thought of Mamasita as a soothing presence. A few months back, Alma probably would have cried out Richard or Helen, but neither of these names is a helpful invocation right this moment. Who to call?

  Isabel! The name comes unbidden, the one person who might understand the tangled web of head, hands, heart, and health Alma finds herself caught in right now.

  Why not Isabel? Who cares if her story took place a long time ago, if it is half made up, if history wants control of the facts? History can keep the facts. But Alma mustn’t lose faith. Isabel’s story is keeping the knowledge of something alive in Alma, belief in a saving grace.

  THEIR CAR STOPS AND pulls over behind the cars and vans ahead. Everybody is getting out and walking down the main street toward what looks to be the only lit-up house around. Beyond the village, the street dead-ends at a cluster of concrete houses surrounded by a chain-link fence. On this side of the fence there are sandbags and crouching figures. Just inside, Alma can make out a sign, but it’s too dark to read what it says. It has to be! The Centro with its clinic, cloaked in darkness. Did the troops shoot out the generators? Maybe the boys who laid siege to the place—she has got to stop calling them terrorists—are saving fuel, just in case they’re in for the long haul.

  A long haul! How long is that? Another week? A month? Before the generals who are in charge lose all patience and begin to bomb the place. Alma’s panic kicks in again. Richard! she feels like screaming. Are you there?

  “Hey.” Starr is waiting for her in front of the concrete house. “We’ve just been getting an update. They released the local women who do the cleaning and cooking and their kids about an hour ago, and the women gave a complete list of all the names. The guys are just the ones I thought!” Starr is elated, as if she just guessed the right question in a quiz show.

  Alma is glad for the women and children. But it’s amazing how shallow her gladness is except
for how it may connect to her deeper concern. “What about Richard?”

  “Come on in, you can talk to them yourself.” Starr hurries ahead.

  Alma follows, her body breaking out in a cold sweat. Why can’t Starr give her a simple answer: Yes, Richard’s okay? Maybe something horrible has happened to him? Or maybe he is inside, a big surprise Starr doesn’t want to ruin?

  Inside, the room is packed with men who are not Richard, soldiers, plainclothesmen, barefoot men in rags who stand in the shadows, obviously the locals. The room is small but looks even smaller with everyone standing. A coil in the ceiling gives out a vague, milky light, probably solar panel lights, the batteries run down. The men all turn to greet the three ladies, the journalist coming in behind them. Everybody, of course, knows Starr. And the journalist turns out to be a minor celebrity who has a weekly column in which she interviews people who are making news. Alma is introduced as the wife of the americano. “Is my husband all right?” she blurts out.

  “Your husband is fine,” the soldier in camouflage who had been speaking when the women walked in assures her. “Camacho,” he introduces himself. He is a tall man, heart-stoppingly handsome, a rich mahogany color, with long-fingered hands, which when he turns them up in answer to questions he can’t answer are endearingly pink. His teeth flash white. Were she not so terrified, Alma could watch this beautiful man for a long time.

  “I know they released the local women and children. Did they say when they might release—” She catches herself in time. “The rest of the hostages.” Of course, she cares about the-rest-of-the-hostages. But first and foremost, there is Richard.

  “Señora—”

  “Call me Alma, please.” Alma doesn’t know why she hasn’t said this before to all the officials calling her señora, her usual home-country mode, no titles por favor. Most likely, she has just been too panicked to be shrewd. But now she senses that she is finally meeting the person who, if not in charge, then has one of those big, beautiful hands on the pulse of what is going on. She wants him on her side.

  “We expect this situation will be resolved very soon. The women have given us the names of the individuals involved.” He holds up a piece of paper with what looks like a lot of names.

  Alma asks to see the list as if she is going to know anybody on it. Some of the names are the ones Starr mentioned. Moncho. Rubio. Salvador. Tomás. There are three Josés and a couple of Franciscos. Then numbers without names. Young men the women didn’t recognize, strangers from somewhere else.

  The crowd toward the back of the room parts: two young men walk in, dressed in windbreakers, Walter and Frank from the U.S. embassy in the capital. Big handshakes for Jim and Emerson and a hug for Starr. They seem confident if a little weary. They have been here for two days, talking to the villagers, talking to the kidnappers, just talked to the released women. They could resolve this mess in no time. But it’s not their country. These people have to learn to do it for themselves. They remind Alma of parents, vowing to stay out of their children’s arguments.

  “But there’s an American citizen in there,” Alma puts in. “My husband’s in there. And these guys have been talking about bombing the place.” She feels like a tattletale, spilling the beans on naughty classmates.

  Walter—or maybe it’s Frank—rolls his eyes privately at her. “No one is going to bomb anything,” he tells her flatly. They’re here precisely to protect an American life and American property. The Centro and clinic and surrounding lands belong to Swan. Normally, Alma wouldn’t approve of the USA meddling in another country’s business, but this is one time she can’t help feeling glad. Cooler heads will prevail.

  “So what’s up?” Jim asks the embassy fellows, who nod for Camacho to join them. He strides over, smiling hugely, one pink palm clapped on a revolver, another patting his belt of ammo. They all make room for him in their now segregated American huddle. Alma suddenly realizes where the strong smell of cologne has been coming from.

  Jim repeats his question, this time in impressively good Spanish. He wants to know the latest news, what the local women have reported, where the water line is, all the entrances into the compound. As he asks his questions, Alma feels she is watching a champion analyze pieces on a board in a game whose rules she does not understand.

  Camacho summarizes. His Spanish is so slow and well enunciated, it sounds like a foreign language, even to Alma. The local women were released in exchange for some concessions. “The men want food brought in. They want a journalist to interview them. They want cigarettes.”

  “We can let them have that.” Jim nods. “What else?”

  It turns out Starr is right. The kidnappers want amnesty. But in an untenable form. They all want tickets to the United States of America and guaranteed visas so they can stay there and get jobs.

  “Fat chance,” one of the embassy men says under his breath.

  Alma looks over at him, Frank or Walter. He gives her a collusive look, as if what she just heard was in total confidence. “So what’ll you do to make them give up the hostages if you’re not going to negotiate?” Alma asks stupidly, as if these embassy guys are going to spell out the battle plan. “I know you’re not going to bomb or anything, but somebody might do something rash and someone might get …” She can’t let herself think no less say the terrible word.

  The two embassy men defer to Jim as the spokesperson. Alma recalls what Starr said. Nobody’s going to do something unless Jim tells them to. “We’re going to work something out,” he assures her, but his eyes are somewhere else. “You’ll be back home with your husband in time to eat leftover turkey.” This is supposed to comfort her. Little does he know that she’s vegetarian. He smiles—at least he’s cheered by the thought—and then, casting a look that includes Emerson, the embassy boys, and Camacho, he adds, “Maybe we can find a place to talk?”

  The mayor, whose house it turns out this is, comes up to their group. He would like to invite them to sit down on the crude chairs several boys have carried in. He is a short, slight man, with missing teeth, who is way over his head with so much fancy company. A journalist! Americanos! Not since the gente from Swan came to negotiate for the clinic and Centro has there been such distinguished company in his humble house, which is at their orders. Alma feels sorry for the poor guy, knocking himself out to be their welcome mat. To think this is the grand moment of his life. “Those boys, they are just sinvergüenzas,” he starts to declaim in a loud voice. He has asked to be allowed to go inside the compound and talk with them. They’re not going to shoot him. He wiped this one’s snot from his face. He baptized this other one. His wife was like a mother to a third one who was orphaned young. He goes through a rather long list of favors he has done for each one. Again Alma wonders, How many kidnappers are there anyhow?

  “Thank you, Don Jacobo,” Camacho says, courteously and definitively shutting up the old man. “We will go in here to talk.” He invites himself and the American men into an adjoining room. Then, turning to Alma and the crowd of compatriots left behind, he adds, “Perhaps you could offer our tired visitors a refresco.”

  “It would be an honor,” Mayor Jacobo says, again in that loud voice, which he must think is the way to talk to important people, a voice of declamation. The old man backs out of his own back door. A moment later, Alma will hear him in the outside kitchen, ordering his wife and daughters to get together some refrescos. All the glasses in the town will have to be collected in order to serve these many visitors.

  It’s as he’s bowing his way out that Alma looks down, and her heart catches. The mayor is wearing big, floppy shoes, obviously too big for his feet, like a clown’s shoes. God bless us, one and all, she thinks.

  DOES SHE SLEEP THAT night at all? She and Starr and the journalist, whose name Alma finally catches, Mariana from El noticiero, are given the mayor’s daughters’ room. It seems there are two other sleeping rooms: a big house for the area. The americanos, Emerson and Jim, and the U.S. embassy guys from the capital get th
e bigger bedroom where the mayor sleeps with his wife when he isn’t out mujeriando through town. There is another room, which Alma guesses is the boys’ bedroom, and that’s where she assumes a few of the plainclothesmen and generals are staying; the majority, though, hunker down in their cars and vans lining the one and only street of the little village. Who knows where the mayor, his deferential wife, his shy, giggling daughters, his four seemingly mute sons, and a grandchild some other daughter has left behind with her parents end up sleeping. But by dawn, when Alma comes out to the open-aired kitchen, hoping for a cup of coffee, the whole family is there, awake, and at her service.

  “How did you sleep?” the mayor wants to know.

  “Thank you,” she says, so as not to go into details.

  She did sleep some. In her carry-on, along with a half-dozen items she looked at last night uncomprehendingly—why did she bring so many books? why her jewelry? a pair of heels?—she also packed the sleeping pills Richard always talked her out of taking nights when she couldn’t sleep worrying over some important performance the next day that she had to be at her best for; worrying about Mamasita and Papote, what would become of one when the other died; worrying about Helen’s glaucoma and diabetes, not knowing there was an even bigger danger already replicating itself endlessly in the old woman’s body; worrying about her saga novel that she wasn’t writing. You’d think all those worries would vanish, surpassed by this bigger worry, but last night, in a feeding frenzy, all those little worries came into her head, as if to snatch at the crumbs that might fall from the big worry’s feasting on her peace of mind.

  As a last resort, after hours of tossing and turning, Alma tried invoking Isabel again, the twenty-two boys, who sometimes turned into the kidnappers and sometimes into the bashful sons of Mayor Jacobo carrying in chairs. What had become of Isabel’s boys once they had served their use as carriers? Alma tried inventing futures for them. One would become a lawyer, another a teacher, a third a general with no teeth in his mouth and big boots he couldn’t take off. Finally, she fell asleep with the help of Ambien and Isabel reminding her in Helen’s voice that God was taking care of all of them.