A Blind Spot for Boys

by Justina Chen

  “And another of you two.” I was rewarded with Mom’s approving coo when I forwarded to the photo of them holding each other right after the mudslide. Each image, each sentence was part of the trail of crumbs leading my parents back to themselves. Advancing to another shot, I said, “Here we are, just yesterday, trekking through the mountains and cloud forests. A trip of a lifetime, right? But who knew when we started the trip that water and dirt could be so destructive?”

  “That’s life for you,” Dad said.

  That was the opening I had been waiting for: the exact moment when I could charge ahead and, with the right aim, hit the impossible target: Dad, remember who you are.

  “You know something?” I stood up from the couch to face my parents, my eyes on Dad. Please hear this. Please. “This is life. Anything can happen. So we’ve got to deal with it and move on. I mean, look at where we’re sitting right now after we almost died—died!”

  The luxurious casita with its thousand-count bed linens and indigenous artwork and handcrafted textiles and plumbing and heating was perfectly quiet as my words rippled over them, but had they sunk in?

  “That’s so…” Dad started to say, but he stopped as though his positive attitude had withered and died these last weeks. Neither Mom nor Dad closed the gap between themselves, choosing to remain separate peaks on the sofa.

  “Hey!” Christopher called as he strode into the casita. The door banged shut behind him. His thick hair was damp from the rain. “What’re you guys still doing here?”

  “The evacuation was called off,” Mom said, her eyes drilling in on Dad, who was staring down at his clasped hands.

  “Maybe tomorrow then,” Christopher said hopefully.

  “Do you know where Quattro is?” I asked, unable to help myself. Luckily, Mom was so tuned in to Dad, she didn’t pick up on my question.

  “Oh, he’s volunteering with the cleanup. I was just going to grab my gear and help.” Christopher brushed his hand through his tousled hair, leaving it in even more disarray. The edges of his eyes crinkled warmly when he smiled. The dark circles under them had been erased. After he lifted his rain gear from the coatrack, he paused at the door just long enough to ask us, “Want to come?”

  I waited for my parents to answer, hoped that they would say yes. But Dad shook his head with a rueful smile and said, “Maybe later.”

  “Dad, all those memoirs you read? About explorers? You’ve always said you wanted one big adventure.” I gestured around us, no longer caring that Christopher was right here, witnessing our family drama. “Well, there’s an adventure happening to you right now.”

  It was as if Mom were experiencing an epiphany. She stood up, gazing down at Dad alone on the couch. “It’s true, Gregor. No matter what, you’ll always be my hero. I just wish you believed that.”

  Dad’s jaw worked. Frustrated and unable to stay cooped up inside for another minute, I pocketed the camera and strode to the door, not caring that my shoelaces were still untied. “Wait, Christopher, I’ll go with you.”

  What I didn’t expect to hear was Mom’s echo. “Me, too.”

  Navigating the stone-paved Inca Trail, climbing thousands of uneven steps, traversing different ecological zones—those challenges were nothing compared to shoving our way through the frazzled crowd lined up at the train station. Apparently, the frustrated and scared tourists with their death grips on their luggage didn’t get the memo that the trains weren’t running and the tracks themselves were out of commission.

  “Oh, there he is!” I said to Christopher, pointing down to Quattro on the train tracks, where he was clearing debris with a couple of other men and women.

  “Where?” Christopher craned his neck.

  “Two o’clock.”

  “Wow, you got good eyes.”

  More like a homing instinct where Quattro was concerned. I blushed when Mom nudged me meaningfully. But then Quattro himself glanced up and looked directly at us, as if his homing instinct for me was just as well developed.

  “He’s had a hard time of it, losing his mom and all,” Christopher said to me with a sidelong glance while Quattro hopped over the embankment to make his way to us. As Quattro closed the distance, Christopher hurried to say in a lowered voice, “You’re good for him.”

  What was I supposed to do with that revelatory piece of information? I had already let Quattro know my feelings, and if he wasn’t biting, I wasn’t baiting. I told myself again that I was content with being just friends with him. But then, a heavyset woman pushed me out of the way just as Quattro smiled at me, and I knew she wasn’t the sole reason why I was thrown off balance. He reached out for me before I stumbled. I could have kissed the portly woman.

  “I thought you left,” he said, his hands still on my arms.

  “The evacuation was canceled. So we came to help,” I told him.

  “Cool.” Another grin, another flutter in my heart. I was such a goner for him. “Follow me,” Quattro said as he parted the crowd for us. I envied the easy way he carried himself through the platform.

  “Wow, this is worse than a concert,” I said, glad to be free from the throng when we reached the edge of the tracks. I breathed in deeply.

  “Worse than a mosh pit,” Quattro countered before he leaped down to the tracks. He held his arms up for me and said, “Jump.”

  I had no doubt that Quattro would catch me, but I hadn’t counted on the exhilaration of being caught in his strong arms. Swooning. I never understood that word until this very moment. But I didn’t want to hope for something that would never be; I had spent way too much time doing that for Dom.

  “Gotcha,” he said.

  In more ways than you know.

  Christopher called down to him, “Hey, what about me?”

  “You’re on your own, Dad.”

  We joined the volunteers, all wearing daypacks, none toting luggage, as they gathered around a familiar short and stocky man: Ruben. His eyes lit up at the sight of us. “You all came.”

  “You’re still here!” I said to him. “I thought you left yesterday.”

  “No, I told you I wasn’t leaving until you were all safe,” he answered.

  Then Christopher explained, “Ruben stayed in our tent last night.”

  “You should have stayed with us,” Mom protested now, as I said, “We had enough room!”

  “I’m happier outside,” he said simply, understated as always.

  Really, I should have known that Ruben would be at the center of any kind of relief effort. Here was a man who’d shown us nothing but quiet steadiness since the start of the trip, never drawing attention to himself, never needing to be the hero. He just was, always doing more than what was required. I didn’t have a single doubt that Ruben would stay until each and every one of us in his tour group had been safely evacuated, not because it was in his contract or because he had promised Stesha, but because it was the right thing to do.

  “How can we help?” Christopher asked him.

  Ruben blew out, his breath barely lifting the lank tendril of greasy hair that hung over his right eye. He was holding a lengthy to-do list jotted hastily in pencil. Just skimming the list of projects was overwhelming: removing the debris off the train tracks. Filling empty sacks with sand. Constructing makeshift walls. Half of the work seemed senseless in the face of the relentless river still churning so strongly that a five-foot chunk of concrete bobbed like a bathtub toy before the current hurtled it farther downriver. Dad was right. Even if we worked all night, would we make a dent of difference? Maybe if every single tourist behind us would help, we might be able to clear this small section of track. But how do you mobilize volunteers when desperation is real and danger feels close?

  Without thinking, I knelt down to take a photo of some of the workers, focusing first on a thin young man dragging a massive tree limb that looked three times his weight. My lens found a familiar figure who should have been lounging in Cusco, sipping pisco sours, but was clearing the train tracks with volunte
ers a third her age. The same woman who’d lagged so far behind everyone on the Inca Trail that my father had accused her of jeopardizing the trip. The same woman who encouraged everyone—Mom, Helen, me—with her stories.

  This was the photograph I knew I had to make: a woman who chose to build instead of tear down. I framed Grace just left of center and waited until the exact moment when she straightened, holding a bouquet of torn branches. I got my shot. Next, I zoomed in to a ponytailed woman in a Penn sweatshirt, who scowled at me. Complaining to her friend loudly, she said, “If everyone would stop playing tourist and actually help, we might get something done around here.”

  Chastened, I lowered the camera and tried to listen to what Ruben was saying to the group around him. He lifted his eyes off the to-do list and said, “We need a couple of people to play soccer with some kids.”

  “That’s helping?” asked a balding man with a potbelly.

  “Have you ever seen what kind of trouble bored kids can get into?” countered a stout woman whose wide-brimmed rain hat could have been an umbrella. She said, “I’d volunteer, but I blew out my knee gardening.”

  “I’ll play,” Mom offered. The last time she joined the Thursday night soccer league filled with cutthroat mothers, she had been given a red card for bodychecking an opponent. Those poor kids on the soccer field here in town. Even though I didn’t inherit any of her killer instinct on the field, I was about to volunteer for soccer duty until Quattro placed a hand on my arm and drew me away from the crowd.

  “No one in the press is covering what’s happening here,” he said in a low voice, gesturing to the disarray around us. “That’s why there’s no aid coming. No one knows, and no one cares. But you know. The right photograph can make all the difference.”

  But Dom had told me that only videos could make a difference these days. And that’s what I said now: “A video would be better.”

  “I’m not so sure about that,” Quattro said. “My mom used to do a ton of development work for nonprofits.” The last time Quattro had talked about his mom, he had shut down on me. I waited for a repeat performance. Instead, he continued, “She was all about the visuals helping with fund-raising. Video or photography, I’m not sure what’s more important so long as you’re telling a story. We’ve got to activate people into doing something about all this.”

  That rang true. How many times had I heard Mom talking about “visual narratives” when she prepped for meetings with her clients—telling executives that one iconic image could create a lasting impression. Could communicate information more effectively than even their words.

  “Where’d I post it?” I asked.

  “CNN.”

  “Please.” I shook my head, calculating the minuscule chances of that ever happening.

  “They show photographs from citizen journalists. That could be you. But it’s your decision.” With one last shrug, Quattro said, “I heard entire villages have been washed away. People have died.”

  The image of people trapped in their demolished homes dampened my objections until nothing but the truth was left: If a photograph might possibly help, I literally had to give it a shot.

  “Oh, and that”—Quattro nodded at the camera—“shoots video, too, if you wanted to try something new?” Then Quattro lifted his chin at Ruben and raised his hand. “I’ll play.”

  As Ruben gave the volunteer soccer team directions to the field, Quattro kicked the ball to my mom, who stopped it easily with one foot. The roar of the nearby river grew louder, and a breeze blew my hair back out of my face. Maybe I had approached my photography all wrong. It wasn’t about beautifying people so they looked their best in senior portraits, erasing acne, thinning the girls, beefing up the guys. Maybe it wasn’t even about documenting destruction. Maybe it was about telling stories, the ones that people were living and I was viewing. The ones that knocked my heart open.

  I let my self-doubt go and left the volunteers and makeshift soccer team to scout around town and find stories to share.

  Two dark-haired men digging through the debris on the swollen riverbanks. Planks of wood mingled with mud, the remains of their home. One pulls out a shard of a ruined plate and bursts into tears.

  Muddy tendrils surging and swirling, ready to grasp and drown the unaware.

  An iceberg of cement bashing against rocks.

  A middle-aged mother, hair braided into a single plait, slumped in despair outside her home, a hovel of wood and recycled aluminum. Upon seeing a photographer, she stands and vanishes inside. In a moment, she returns with a feast of a bruised banana for the two to share.

  A tourist filling a plastic bag with beer bottles and empty wrappers, tidying one corner of the town square.

  A tour guide who could have trekked back to his own home and family like half the other guides. But instead, he stayed. And while he waited to get his group to safety, here he was, working to make conditions better for everyone, not for any money, not for any applause, just because it was the good and right thing to do.

  A young man with strong features tucking two squealing kids under his arms and dashing down a soccer field. A young man who takes off his long-sleeved T-shirt and literally gives away the clothes on his back to a boy who’s lost everything.

  Afterward, the kids gathered around me as if I were a candy vendor when I bent down to show them the photos and videos. It didn’t matter if some of the videos were shaky or if most of the photos would never make it anywhere near my portfolio, much less CNN. For me, nothing compared to this very moment, when the children laughed with pure delight as they saw themselves through my eyes.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Not soon enough that evening, our group turned in, one by one, leaving my parents, Quattro, and me in the spacious lounge adjacent to the closed restaurant at our hotel. The stress of daily uncertainty was wearing on everyone. Mom yawned widely for the tenth time in the last fifteen minutes.

  “I’m calling it a night,” she said. “Boy, those kids could play soccer.” At last, she stood up from the well-worn leather couch across from the potbellied stove and held her hand down to Dad to pull him to his feet. “You two going to stay up a little longer?”

  Quattro and I glanced at each other. When he nodded slightly, my own tiredness vanished.

  “Yeah,” I said, and then flashed Mom the key card just as she asked me if I had mine. “Got it.”

  Dad warned us, “Don’t go into town tonight.”

  “Dad,” I said, barely refraining from clobbering him with the throw pillow. “It’s not like anything’s open.”

  “Just saying. People can turn into animals when they’re scared. Be back in the casita in an hour.”

  I shot a silent plea at Mom. Understanding, she slipped her hand through the crook of Dad’s arm and told him, “Okay, honey, I’m wiped out.” With one final don’t-mess-with-me look at Quattro, Dad paused at the door before telling us, “An hour.”

  I sighed. Loudly.

  “Sorry about that,” I said to Quattro with a wry smile as the door swung shut behind my parents. “They used to be so normal.”

  “Nah, now I’ve got a model for how I’ll talk to all my sister’s boyfriends.” As if he only now heard the implication of those words, he flushed.

  My heart actually thumped with excitement. More times than I could count, I had caught myself wanting Quattro to be my boyfriend, but did he subconsciously do the same? But no, what was I thinking? Since our moonlight conversation outside the hostel on the Inca Trail, we had barely even talked to each other until today. And even then, it was Quattro urging me to photograph, all friend, no hint of boyfriend.

  Silence stretched between us. I hugged a throw pillow to my stomach.

  “Hey, can I see the pictures you took today?” he asked.

  “Sure.” As I removed the camera from my pocket, he walked around the coffee table to sit beside me. I was aware of his closeness, aware of him reaching for the camera, aware of the brush of our fingers as I placed the
camera on his palm. We were sitting so close, it’d be easy for me to lean into him, angle my head nearer to his, as I supposedly looked at my photos.…

  A scuffle broke out in the walkway outside: shouted words, a few choice obscenities, pounding footsteps running back toward us. Then, my dad’s voice, loud and authoritative: “Hey! Stop!”

  Without hesitating, I leaped up and rushed out into the cobblestoned courtyard, Quattro at my side. Clearly, Dad had no problem with being a hypocrite, ignoring his own warning to stay safe inside.

  “Hey!” Dad shouted again at two brawling men with stubbled faces and dirty clothes that reeked of days-old sweat. Dad stepped between them. There had been reports of fighting in town, especially with food running out and no further word on the helicopters returning. Fear clogged my throat, but as I tried to join Dad, Quattro placed a hand on my arm. On the opposite side of me stood Mom, her eyes watchful, but she looked calm, almost expectant.

  “Let go,” I hissed, trying to shrug Quattro off. What if they had knives and Dad couldn’t see the weapons? What if—

  Then a familiar confidence emanated from Dad, the calm that soothed countless people who were scared of their rat-infested attics and cockroach-filled kitchens. The authority he had to stop my twin brothers from bashing each other. With quiet assurance, Dad said, “It’s time for you to leave.”

  The moment was taut, the same knot of tension I’d felt at the helipad and the train station. Dad stood firm. He wasn’t giving off menacing vibes, just ones that said he meant business. Whatever the guys mumbled, they left docilely.

  “Wow, your dad’s good,” said Quattro, nodding his head.

  “He is.”

  After a long moment, shivering out in the cold by ourselves, Quattro nudged me. “Head inside?”

  I nodded even though I should have slipped back to the casita, safe and sound without any possibility of making a fool of myself with a boy who so obviously didn’t know what he wanted. If this were Ginny, I’d have lectured that she deserved a Chef Boy who knew with a thousand percent certainty that he never wanted to cook in anyone else’s kitchen.