Kathy pushed a wheelbarrow filled with empty potato sacks a mile down to the sea. Her back was killing her by the time she got there, and she wondered how she would manage when they loaded it up. Indeed the shore was strewn with robust avocados, what appeared to be a whole shipment or harvest of them, as if they’d been dumped by a cargo ship. Kathy and Sister Juana got to work. They slowly drifted east as they combed the beach for more fruit. Neither of them noticed anything out of the ordinary until Kathy’s sharp hearing caught a familiar slap, slap, slap sound. She looked up.
It was a boat, about a hundred yards out. It appeared to have gotten stuck, and was motionless, slightly tilted to the side. The local fishermen had told Kathy that there were sandbars and sharp rocks just off that beach, which was why boats always fished at a safe distance. It shouldn’t be so close to the shore, Kathy thought. Certainly not a boat that size—it was a cabined fishing boat with twin engines, roughly the same size as one her father had once owned. “It must be stuck or wrecked,” said Sister Juana. “But I don’t see anyone, do you?”
“I wish I had better eyes,” Kathy said, making barrels with her fingers and raising them to her face. The nun dropped the avocados and kicked off her shoes. “Ve a ver,” she told Kathy. “It must have drifted over from one of those fancy marinas in Santo Domingo.”
The boat, named For Tuna, was a Hatteras, close to forty feet. Homeport was San Juan, Puerto Rico. By the time Kathy got to the boat, the water was up to her shoulders. She grabbed onto the narrow ladder that led up to the deck. When she got to the top, she peered into the boat. It was filled with debris and had flooded with several inches of water on deck; a bouillabaisse of dead fish and shrimp, palm fronds, seaweed, a ripped plastic tarp, a gutted grapefruit, and a phone book. The hatch appeared to have a tight seal and was padlocked from the outside, so she climbed over the side rail and knocked on the hatch door. She didn’t get, or expect, any response. She swam back to Sister Juana and reported that the boat was abandoned.
“Fortuna,” Sister Juana echoed when Kathy told her the boat’s name.
“In English it doesn’t mean ‘fortune’ like it does in Spanish. It just means that someone is looking for that kind of fish. Atún.”
“You need luck to catch tuna,” Sister Juana said. “Alejandro has tried, but all he catches are crabs, grunt, and barracuda. Fortune from Puerto Rico.” Sister Juana narrowed her eyes. “What a name. The Spaniards should have considered the implications before they named it ‘port of riches.’ Why wouldn’t it attract pirates and rivals—with that name?” She inspected the boat from another angle, trying to figure out what to do about it. “How in the name of God do we alert an owner in Puerto Rico that their boat has drifted all the way over here? There isn’t any Coast Guard around.”
“Smugglers will steal it,” Kathy said. “That boat’s not going back to home port on its own. But that’s not our problem.” Kathy looked down at her wet sundress. She was already feeling embarrassed at how the cloth clung to her, and now she had to walk through town in it.
Who thought of it first, they would never know for sure. Kathy’s whole body stiffened. “My God,” she said.
“My God,” echoed the nun in the same stunned voice. Juana would come to believe that God (whom she alternately believed in and didn’t believe in, but whom she argued with constantly) was mocking her. You don’t believe in miracles, old girl? Ha! I’ll show you a miracle. She looked up at the sky. Squinting, she spread her gaze across the heavens, waiting, listening. She saw and heard nothing. God’s blue eye was blank and indifferent.
As soon as they got home, they sent the oldest of the original children into the neighboring village to go find Alejandro, to bring him back with a single word: “urgente.” In the time it took them to cook up a feast of fried plantains with salted avocado slices on the side, Sister Juana had hatched the plan that had already been quietly unfolding in the secret recesses of her heart.
In the Dominican Republic, Kathy Cooper stood out. She was tall, wide, milky-skinned, blue-eyed. She had a mouthful of perfect white teeth and a narrow bite, which she clamped tightly whenever she smiled, like a Texan beauty queen. She was so beautiful, everyone said. Some people called her muñeca, “doll,” although Kathy insisted she was not considered beautiful back home. But in the DR, she was a magnet for attention. In the village, men (single or otherwise) saw her as either a sexual trophy or as a potential green card. Kathy regularly got marriage proposals from strangers. Children sat very close to her, stroking the blonde hairs on her arms and squealing with amazement at their blondness. “In the DR, even bugs, rats, and stray dogs adore me,” she would joke, as she slapped off mosquitoes. She had a solid command of the Spanish language, but her accent was heavy and her textbook Spanish was highly entertaining to the locals. She often missed jokes and other cultural nuances, but never missed the meaning of anything important.
During Kathy’s first month at the orphanage, the youngest nun, Sister Antonia, had declared that Kathy had the “soul of a nun.” Kathy had flinched, then smiled graciously and thanked her for the compliment. When Antonia was out of hearing range, Sister Juana had patted her thigh and said, “Don’t worry, you don’t remind anyone of a nun. She didn’t consider how unflattering that must sound to a modern young woman.” But Sister Juana somehow knew that the cause of Kathy’s inadvertent flinch probably had nothing to do with vanity. “You have a hurt inside,” she ventured one day, and Kathy only nodded, but wouldn’t say more. And on the one occasion that Sister Juana probed, Kathy evaded the subject. “Since I came here, Sister Juana, I’ve realized that nuns are stereotyped in my country. You’re not cloistered or cut off. You’re more like social workers.” She pointed to the nun’s calloused hands. “You’re up to your elbows in the muck and grit of life, not dreaming about angels playing harps in the clouds.”
Sister Juana nodded. “We raise the unwanted children of prostitutes, criminals, and drug users. We know the smell of marijuana; we know what moonshine smells like when you sweat it out, what sniffing glue does to the pupils. We know how to recognize the signs of rape and mental illness. Before coming here, I ministered over at the women’s prison. After that, nothing could shock me. And after seeing what I’ve seen, no sacrifice is too great to try to save my children from that kind of destiny.”
It wasn’t long before Kathy began to open up a bit, if only about the lighter aspects of her life. Juana especially enjoyed the gossip about the other Peace Corp volunteers, and whenever Kathy had a meeting in the capital, she’d bring back updates that the nun heard with the rapture of a soap opera addict.
Several months prior to the hurricane, after they had put the children to bed, the two women had been sitting in the backyard together. Juana had shared something that she could never confess to any other member of the clergy. “I don’t love God,” she said, looking up at the sky, as if to include Him in the conversation, for she had been raised to never say anything about anyone that you wouldn’t say to their face. “I don’t even like Him.”
Kathy had shaken her head. “What?” She laughed. “That’s absurd. You serve God every day.”
Sister Juana had her hands pressed together as if in prayer. She bit the tips of her index fingers softly, and said, “Le sirvo sin quererlo. Somos como un matrimonio, sin ilusiones ni juegos seguimos adelante. I am his resentful servant. I watch as He creates life, then He goes on to other things, never looking back. He doesn’t steward his creation.” The words rushed out. “It’s irresponsible and cruel. And every day the orphans keep piling up, those little souls.” She stopped, swallowed, blinked, and then wiped the edge of her eye. “Yo le grito desde la cocina que no sea tan haragán. He’s a very lazy God. I remind Him every day.” She lifted a finger, wagged it in the air. Then she sat back and looked at Kathy. “Blasphemy, right? But look.” She waited. She looked up, then said, “See? He won’t do me the favor of striking me dead. He knows that I deserve some rest. But no. He’s a brutal and demanding pat
rón.”
Kathy was shocked, amused, and a bit in awe. “I have never heard of anyone having such an intimate relationship with their God,” Kathy said. “You talk like He’s a living, breathing being.”
Sister Juana shook her head. “It torments me to know that the cycle will continue. Our children will reach the age of ten and go to the house for adolescents, where they are pooled with other children who will contaminate them with . . .” She made a face and looked away. “When they hit puberty they’ll make more unwanted children, who will commit crimes and prostitute themselves only to procreate more orphans.”
“But there are those who make it, right?” Kathy said. “And some get adopted.”
“A few,” she conceded. “But it’s rare. Even the smartest, kindest children hit adolescence and then they teeter on the edge,” she said. “And no one’s going to adopt the ones that aren’t babies. Foreign couples want infants.”
“I’d love to take them all back to the States, just drop them off somewhere safe and let my countrymen figure it out.” She sighed. “But how would we get them off the island?” It was a rhetorical question.
Sister Juana said, “Your country has opened its arms to so many people from all over the world. I am a great admirer of the United States, and especially its little outpost here in the Caribbean, Puerto Rico.”
And then an abandoned boat from Puerto Rico appeared with the words “For Tuna” written across the back. Coincidence? Juana was suspicious, thrilled, challenged. But more than anything, she was convinced that her brother would have safe passage into Puerto Rico.
Kathy would never forget the moment when they snuck back out with Alejandro and his friend to show him the stranded boat (thanks to the Germans again). Juana took Kathy’s hand. “You said that you know how to navigate a boat, right? Then transport my brother to Puerto Rico. And take some children with you too. Deliver them somewhere safe.”
The nun had figured out almost every detail of the plan, but Kathy had to consult with an outsider, someone to play devil’s advocate. She ran across town to find a phone to call Rashid, her friend, confidant, and fellow Peace Corps volunteer from a nearby village. She wanted him to cover for her absence during the two days she would be gone. It was prudent for someone to know where she was, just in case the Peace Corps came looking for her. She needed access to nautical weather forecasts. There were so many things that could go wrong. He had ticked them off: “The engines could malfunction. You could run out of fuel or get lost and die of exposure. You could encounter drug runners who will rape you, kill you, and throw you to the sharks.” He sat down and said, “Kathy, it’s like driving a camper full of kids through the badlands of Mexico, only with ocean currents trying to sweep you out to the open Atlantic. Then there’s the fact that the Dominican or U.S. Coast Guard or marine police aren’t going to appreciate you smuggling immigrants into the United States. If the Feds catch you, they’re gonna charge you with a felony or two. Let’s see. Kidnapping, aiding or trafficking of illegal aliens while aboard ‘stolen’ property. Or how about abandonment and willful neglect of minors? How about you get kicked out of the Peace Corps, and get a criminal record? Good-bye law school. And how well do you know these two characters, Alejandro and Rául?”
All true. And the more Rashid talked, the deeper Kathy felt her decision take hold, because she kept thinking of reasons it was right. And she had imagined those grown children, in their graduation gowns or in business suits, or maybe just standing in front of a simple house, alive and healthy but not prostituting, not sniffing glue or cutting sugar cane until their hands are bloody. This is what she was thinking when Rashid ran a hand through his shiny black hair and said, “With that said, if you pull it off, Cooper, it’ll be the greatest accomplishment of your life. Hell, it might be the biggest accomplishment of my life just to support you in this.”
After Sister Juana had spelled out the plan, Kathy had looked out at the ocean of children in the yard and realized that nobody would even notice if a handful of them were gone. And yet it was such a huge risk. She remembered reading something in a religious pamphlet about the futility of tossing starfish back to sea when thousands of them were beached. The moral of the story was that the opportunity for a second chance mattered immensely to the one starfish that got a second chance. Whether it registered at that time or later, the appearance of the starfish on the lawn emerged as a powerful trigger, some kind of divine push or big hint from the cosmos. The starfish had died in the dishpan, but the spirit of the metaphor persisted. Insisted. Yes. Yes. Yes, her heart said. Do it.
In the end, Rashid gave her his blessing, support, and vow of secrecy. Kathy could see that Rashid saw her with new eyes. “You’ve got some balls, Cooper,” he had said, and she thanked him for his counsel because it helped her make a few “worst-case scenario” adjustments to the plans with the men, as well as a “let’s get our story straight” session with Sister Juana.
The nun had made the sign of the cross over Kathy’s forehead and asked her if she was sure. What might the nun herself be risking, Kathy could only imagine. But of one thing Kathy was sure: Sister Juana suffered from the same ailment of the spirit that she did.
Kathy, Alejandro, his friend Rául, and Sister Juana sat at the kitchen table at the orphanage, surrounded by screaming children. No need for Rashid to send maps and nautical charts, they had found everything they needed inside the boat after they broke the lock and went below. The boat’s navigational instruments were in perfect working order. Kathy and the men had taken it for a test drive (it still had fuel in the tank) and it had turned out to be perfectly seaworthy. They were to leave early the next morning. They had moved the boat to a safe and remote anchorage a few miles down the coast. Alejandro had spent the day gathering supplies and preparing the boat. Rául, who Kathy suspected was a small-time thief, quickly showed himself to be indispensable. He somehow found more fuel, no questions asked. The two men were jubilant, almost giddy. They had found a white captain’s hat with a shiny black bill in the For Tuna. “Tell me, Sister, what kind of illegal immigrant wears a captain’s hat?” Alejandro said. “I have a suit jacket that belonged to my father that I’m going to wear, in case anyone spots us, and a cigar, so I look like a gentleman.” The men would be met by a friend in town, and they would start their new lives by washing dishes at a small neighborhood restaurant. Alejandro’s eyes sparkled in the light of the gas lamp. “I’ll send you money, Juana, I promise. I’ll send you money. And when I become a citizen, I’ll figure out a way to come back and get you.”
Sister Juana had waved him off. “I’m not going anywhere. I just want you to be safe, get a job, get married, be happy.” She paused, changed her mind. “A little money now and then would be nice.” Alejandro threw his head back and laughed.
Sister Juana demanded that the boat be returned to a legitimate port, dock, or marina in Puerto Rico. Also, she made them promise to help any yolas that were in trouble out in the open waters. “Remember that you two might have been on a yola too if it hadn’t been for the miracle of the motorboat. If you see anyone in trouble, help them. Come back if you have to. And don’t forget to check the beach at Isla Mona. People get stranded there.”
Once in Mayagüez, they would tie up and vacate the boat, at a dock identified as safe by their friend in Puerto Rico, at the site of an abandoned condominium where he had worked as foreman before the owner went bankrupt. Then they would place a phone call and let the police return the boat to its rightful owners. As an American citizen, Kathy could easily get back to the DR by ferry from Puerto Rico.
The children would be strategically abandoned. It was very important to stage it right, Sister Juana insisted. The U.S. authorities would have to operate on the assumption that they were Puerto Rican children. No one would report them missing. As it was, the Dominican government hadn’t sent a social worker to check in on the orphanage in months. As abandoned, unaccompanied minors, the U.S. government would be obligated to assume custo
dy. They’d have a chance at something better.
The children, they agreed, had to be young enough to not give away any real information about their origin. “Señorita Kathy, grab a few babies and let’s get going,” said Rául.
“You can fit twelve or more in there,” Juana said.
He balked. “And if we get stopped by the Coast Guard they’re not going to believe that they’re our children, Juana. It’ll look like we just emptied out an orphanage, which, by the way, we did.”
“But six is so few,” Sister Juana said.
“Five,” Kathy said. “We don’t want to have so many kids that they crawl overboard, or cause an accident.”
Rául said, “The children represent an unnecessary risk. I don’t think we should take them at all. It’s crazy, Sister.”
“You’re taking them,” Sister Juana said, hands raised. “Or you’re not going.”
“You don’t know where the boat is,” Rául dared.
Sister Juana turned her head two degrees to the left, and narrowed her eyes.
Alejandro patted his friend’s shoulder nervously. “C’mon, Rául, we can handle five kids.” He put the captain’s hat on Kathy. “Nothing bad can happen—we’re transporting orphans, after all. God will be with us.”
“Five. Five kids but that’s it,” Rául said, turning back to Sister Juana. “So pick out the ones who won’t give us away.”
Juana took a deep breath. “Ay-ay-ay-ay. I’ll have to consult with Charles Darwin,” she muttered.
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