by Jeanne Winer
“It’s not,” Susan interrupted, “but everyone knew that beforehand.”
Liz put her hand on Tina’s shoulder. “I think we’ll be all right,” she said. “Witness for Peace volunteers have lived in Jalapa for years. Personally, I can’t wait to get up there and start rebuilding the clinic.”
“Me too,” Richard said, stroking his beard.
I sat quietly at one end of the table, listening to everyone’s reactions, and trying to figure out my own. Like the others, the news had hit me like a bucket of ice water, sobering me right up. But now that I was sober, I realized I was beginning to feel excited. This could be the real thing, a chance to participate in something that actually mattered. We could go to Jalapa during a time when they needed us and help rebuild their clinic. The risks seemed small in comparison. On the other hand, I was a burned-out adrenaline junkie, so what did I know?
“Maybe it’s just as well I didn’t read the packet of information,” Allen told me as we left the cafeteria. “If I had, I might not have come.”
“Liz thinks we’ll be okay,” I said.
“Are you afraid?” he asked.
“I probably should be, but I’m not.”
We walked silently down the hall, lost in our private imaginations. As we approached the classroom, Tim caught up to us and told me I had an international call from a woman named Vickie. I’d given her the number of the school, and we’d agreed she would try to call me today. I hurried to an office at the end of the hall where a woman with a baby in her arms handed me the phone.
“Hey Vickie,” I said.
“Rachel, it’s so good to hear your voice. I’ve been trying to get through for hours. How are you?”
“Well, I didn’t sleep much and I’m in culture shock, but other than that, I think I’m okay. How about you?”
“I’m just missing you. So, what’s it like there?”
The woman had left the room. I sat down at her desk and glanced out the window at an overgrown palm tree. A fat green parrot was perched on one of the branches.
“Everything’s larger than life,” I said.
Vickie laughed. “How about a few details? Tell me about the family you’re staying with.”
We talked for about ten minutes before she asked about the situation in Jalapa. I hesitated, and then told her it had been mostly peaceful.
“Good. Just be careful. Oh, your client Emily Watkins called. She said to tell you she was being transferred from the Denver facility to the penitentiary in Canon City and wondered if you’d be able to visit her there sometime. I hope you don’t mind, but I told her you were in Nicaragua.”
“No, that’s fine,” I said, running my fingers along the edges of the desk, which were smooth from years of use.
“So, do you have a return date yet?”
I didn’t answer. I was thinking about the way Emily used to look up legal terms in an old dog-eared dictionary held together with duct tape that Sunny kept in his desk for her. She adored old things: old books, old furniture, old houses. New things, she said, seemed so cold and lonely. They had no history of being loved and cherished.
“Rachel, are you there?”
I stared out the window. “I guess I am.”
“So when are you coming back, sweetie?”
I was glad she couldn’t see my face; it would have looked confused and guilty. “I’m not sure, babe. Part of it depends on when we actually get to Jalapa. After that, we’ve made a minimum four-week commitment to work on the clinic.”
“Minimum? What are you saying? Are you saying you might stay longer?”
I waved my hand in the air as if it were no big deal. “Well, anything’s possible. I just don’t know yet.”
“So what are we talking about? A week? A month?” She paused. “A year?” She paused again, waiting for reassurance but I couldn’t give her any. “Rachel?”
I expected her to start shouting or even worse, crying at any moment. In the meantime, I stared at a row of empty bookshelves lining the opposite wall, wishing the phone would go dead, that something would intervene before the conversation got any worse. “Honey,” I said, “I just got here.”
The silence lasted so long, I thought maybe the phone had gone dead after all. Finally, my partner said, “Don’t lose me, sweetheart. Don’t throw your baby out with the bathwater.”
I swallowed hard and nodded. “I won’t.” I had a strong urge to lay my head down on the desk and take a short nap. It was around three in the afternoon, although according to a clock on the wall, it was a quarter past eight. “Everything’s broken here,” I said.
Chapter Ten
June 10, 1986
Dear Vickie,
You asked for the truth, so here it is: I can picture myself calling the airport and booking a return flight to North America. I can picture myself hugging everyone goodbye, taking a hot bumpy taxi ride to the airport, and waiting patiently while children dressed like soldiers search my bags for contraband. I can even picture myself boarding the plane, but no matter how hard I try, I can’t picture myself arriving in Colorado and settling back into my old life. My imagination stops at the border.
Having said all that, I don’t want you to panic. Everything here, including me, is in flux. The whole country’s in a state of trauma—it’s probably why I feel so at home. But one of these days, the ground beneath my feet will either stop shifting or I’ll finally get used to it. All I need is time; I’m lurching as fast as I can. I probably sound like a lecherous teenager who puts a hand on his girlfriend’s knee and says, “Trust me,” but trust me. It’s still you and me, babe.
Your loving rat,
Rachel
At the end of our strained phone conversation, Vickie and I had agreed from then on we would write instead of call, that Vickie would stop pressuring me about returning home, and in exchange I would tell her as much as I knew as soon as I knew it. In theory, it was a good plan. I reread my letter, which fulfilled my obligation to write, then put it with all the others at the bottom of my duffel bag. At the rate I was writing them—one or two a day—I would end up with quite a collection. Someday, I might even let Vickie read them. Unsent letters from the earthquake capital of the world.
So why didn’t I just send the letter or any of the others I’d written? The truth is I don’t know. All I can say is that for a number of months after losing Emily’s trial, I was a stranger to myself. My motives and desires, usually so clear to me, were suddenly inaccessible. I looked like myself, felt like myself, but didn’t act like myself. In the legal profession, this is known as a complete loser of a defense.
In the meantime, which didn’t help matters, I was suffering from extreme sleep deprivation, the kind that drives a good soldier to divulge critical information about everyone in his squadron and then gratuitously offer more about his wife, relatives, childhood friends and anyone else he can think of. After a week of practically no sleep, I would have traded my entire kingdom for a sleeping pill (Liz had a limited stash but only for emergencies), and if you threw in a small air-conditioner, performed any sexual favors that didn’t leave scars.
Each night, I’d wait until it cooled down to around a hundred degrees, dose myself with a handful of useless Benadryls, sink into my cot, and lie there sweating until I finally passed out around two thirty. Each morning, a few minutes before five, the chicken would hop onto the cot and squat on my ankles. If I kicked her off, she’d wait a few minutes and then try again; three times, five times, ten times, it made no difference. It was exactly how I used to wear down the prosecution on most of my cases.
On my fourth or fifth evening, I made a nice cozy nest on the floor using my softest T-shirts, but the chicken wasn’t even tempted. I tried blocking the doorway with my orange crate, but after a few minutes of scratching, she figured out how to climb over it and then hopped triumphantly onto my legs. One afternoon, while Sonia took a neighbor to the hospital, I snooped around the house to see if I could figure out how the chicken was gett
ing in. After finding at least five possible ways, I gave up. I considered various “accidents” that might befall my chicken, but I couldn’t quite see myself as a cold-blooded murderer.
Living in the tropics, though, it changes you.
Sometime during that first week, I popped open the childproof cap on my bottle of malaria pills and discovered a million tiny insects devouring the contents. There’s no privacy in the third world; it costs money to keep things out. Privileged people can barricade themselves against noise, heat, insects, animals, neighbors and invading armies, but in a country like Nicaragua, there’s nothing you can do. It’s like being pummeled continuously by a relentless bully who never gets tired. Somehow, you have to develop a thick skin and learn to ignore anything less than a fatal blow.
***
One morning during breakfast, Sonia told me that her nephew Jorge, who was only seventeen, was fighting up north near Ocotal. After one of his childhood friends was killed and two others were kidnapped by the Contras, he’d volunteered to go on a dangerous patrol during which his jeep had almost hit a landmine. Every day she prayed for his safety.
“He’s my sister’s only child,” she said. “I remember the day he was born. It was taking too long and we were very worried. When he finally came, everyone started laughing, even the doctor. And that’s why Jorge was such a happy baby.”
“How can you stand it?” I asked, pushing my plate away.
“The war?”
“The war, the embargo, the threat of a United States invasion, the lack of food and medicine. How can you go on day after day when there’s no end in sight?”
“It’s hard,” she said, rubbing her temples with her fingertips, “but the Nicaraguan people have infinite patience, and so we wait for peace.”
“What if you have to wait a very long time?”
“There’ll be nothing left. But in the meantime, eat your breakfast before it gets cold.”
I picked up my fork. “Yesterday, Amelia mentioned you weren’t feeling well.”
Sonia drank some water before answering. “Don’t worry about me,” she said. “Amelia’s the one who is sick. If you go to the dollar store, she needs vitamins.”
I nodded, unconvinced. “I’ll get vitamins for both of you.”
“If you insist,” she said, then stood up to clear the dishes.
I stood up, too. “Just tell me what kind you need, and anything else. If they have it, I’ll get it.”
A few minutes later, Tomas—who didn’t seem to live anywhere—wandered into the house and she gave him something to eat. He looked disheveled, as if he’d been up all night drinking. There was a fresh bruise on his forehead. As soon as he stumbled out, Sonia turned to me and said, “It helps to have faith.”
“In what?” I asked.
She looked astonished, as if I’d suddenly torn my clothes off. “In God, of course.”
Ordinarily, I would have argued that even if God existed, He obviously wasn’t paying attention to the plight of the Nicaraguan people, but I could already tell how stupid, mean and thoughtless that would sound. It takes less than a week in the third world to understand that faith is a paradox; it may cost nothing, but only rich people can afford not to have it.
Another speedy realization: once I understood that the lights and water were subject to the whims of unseen agencies making unpredictable decisions about who got what, I abandoned all efforts to plan ahead. Like everyone else, I learned to be in the moment. Buddhists in the United States, I decided, should stop trying to explain this concept and simply ship their students to Nicaragua. If the water came on, I took a thirty-second shower or washed my underwear. If the lights went off and it was dark, I lay down and tried to sleep. After a while, it seemed perfectly natural. Forget the caves in India, the forests of Burma—plan your next meditation retreat in the rubble of downtown Managua and camp nearby in sunny Barrio Maximo Jerez.
On the other hand, Sonia and her neighbors, fed up with being in the moment, were constantly on the lookout for large plastic containers to fill with extra water. In fact, containers of any kind, not just buckets, were highly prized. One morning at dawn, I wandered into Sonia’s kitchen and noticed an empty pill bottle near the sink. Curious, I picked it up and realized it was the bottle of malaria pills I’d tossed in the garbage a few days earlier. Sonia had retrieved it, emptied out the insects, and washed it clean. After that, I threw nothing away without first showing it to my host.
By the end of our first week, it was obvious that the United States’s embargo was a rip-roaring success. After Reagan took office in 1981 and declared Nicaragua under the Sandinistas (total population 2.9 million) a communist enemy, an economic embargo was instituted which prevented the country from obtaining food, medical supplies, world loans, machinery and other essential goods from its usual sources. For the vast majority of Nicaraguans, luxury items such as toilet paper, shampoo, sheets, new shoes and denture cleaners were unattainable. Supposedly you could buy these products at the dollar store, but no matter when we showed up with our dollars, the store was always closed. After three unsuccessful attempts, we wondered if it was just an empty storefront stocked with imaginary items that Sonia and her neighbors liked to dream about. Toilet paper, vitamins and sandals: mythical symbols of a better life in the unforeseeable future.
Thanks again to the United States there was very little fuel. Gasoline, especially, seemed to be in great demand; everyone talked about who still had any, where to find it, and how much it cost, like the way we talked about marijuana in the sixties. Most of the trees around Managua had been stripped bare by all the new refugees living in shantytowns who cooked on wood stoves. Anything made out of wood had long since been dismantled and burned up. I was about as likely to find a piece of plywood to shove between the mattress and sagging springs of my cot as I was to find a brand-new Cadillac parked in front of Sonia’s house.
The food shortage, however, was the most alarming. Every morning, on the way to the language school, we passed long lines of people waiting outside the supermarkets. Sometimes the lines wound all the way around the block. Sonia told me that many of her friends got up before dawn to stand in line. I told her that teenagers in the United States did that too when tickets went on sale for a rock concert.
***
On Saturday, we were supposed to visit an agricultural cooperative, but the bus wouldn’t start and the driver needed a few extra parts to fix it. We could possibly leave by noon, he told us, if the parts weren’t too difficult to find. We all nodded and after a quick vote decided to take the rest of the day off. When the others had left, Allen, Liz and I chose to head downtown with no particular destination. We walked for miles—there were no street signs anywhere—eventually ending up at the Plaza de la Revolución in front of the Managua Cathedral. On the way, we passed through the earthquake wreckage of various neighborhoods, gazing at the concrete shells of buildings where dozens of people lived. Ragged clothes hung across formerly ornate entryways. In the center of the city, cows grazed in empty lots between buildings. On a number of street corners, we saw women cooking food over fires, serving the fare on banana leaves. We bought some kind of meat but decided not to eat it.
From a distance, the Managua Cathedral had looked impressive but up close it was obvious we were staring at the ruins of a building that was once a grand 18th century church before it was destroyed by the earthquake. The inside was gutted. Since the revolution, a huge canvas portrait of Sandino—the original Nicaraguan revolutionary who defied the US Marines back in the thirties—had been draped over the entrance, which sounds incongruous but was actually classy, like good modern art.
On our way home, we wandered into a large supermercado. By then, the store was empty and there weren’t many products left on the shelves. I picked up a can of Del Monte fruit cocktail and checked the expiration date stamped on the bottom: October 1983. I showed it to my friends.
“Isn’t that against the law?” Allen asked.
�
��That’s not exactly their biggest problem,” I said.
We strolled down a few more aisles and found three cans of black olives, a can of mushroom soup, some Coppertone suntan lotion (SPF 4) and a whole shelf of Purina cat food.
“I guess things could be worse,” Allen said, staring at the cat food.
“I suppose so,” I said, “although I don’t see any dog food.”
“It’s pretty depressing,” Liz agreed. “And next week I heard the government is going to reduce everyone’s ration of rice, sugar and beans.”
“Jesus,” Allen said, looking upset. “That’s all my family eats. The four little kids are always hungry. Half the time, I pretend I’m full and give the kids the rest of my meal. But they need milk. Don’t little kids need milk? Do you see any milk?” His Hawaiian shirt was soaked with sweat.
Liz put her hand on Allen’s arm. “It’s good to care,” she said, “but don’t get too upset. It doesn’t help.”
“But kids need milk,” Allen repeated.
We walked down a few more aisles and found a carton of grapefruit juice (August 1984), a great selection of plastic cups and silverware, and a can of condensed milk tucked behind some TV dinners that had expired before the revolution in 1979. Allen bought the milk and put it in his backpack.
As we were exiting the store, Allen said, “I feel so ashamed.”
“Because we’re North Americans?” I asked.
He nodded. We turned left, and then began hiking down the hot dusty highway toward Barrio Maximo Jerez. In the distance, the Intercontinental Hotel, shaped like a giant beehive, loomed above the flattened city.
“Look, I understand,” Liz said, “but it doesn’t help. At least you’re here, not back there.”
Allen shook his head. “I still feel ashamed. My country’s funding the war, which is making everyone miserable and all the people I meet are so nice to me. I can barely stand it.”
“But it’s useless to feel bad,” Liz argued. “Once we get up to Jalapa, we can make a real difference. Doesn’t that make you feel better?” She stared hopefully at both of us. Somehow, her cotton blouse and matching skirt looked as if she’d just put them on. My clothes, like Allen’s, were drenched.