by Jeanne Winer
“I guess so,” Allen said, and then looked at me. “What about you, Rachel?”
I shrugged. “I agree with Liz. It’s self-indulgent to feel ashamed. It’s a waste of energy.”
“Exactly,” Liz said, nodding.
“But I feel ashamed anyway.”
Allen grinned at me.
Liz sighed. “You’re both too sensitive.”
“It’s because we’re Jewish,” Allen said.
“Do you think that’s it?” I asked, and decided he might be right.
Liz was walking between us. She put her arms around our shoulders and we continued down the highway. “It’s a good thing you both have me.”
Allen and I nodded to each other. Without Liz’s cheerful pragmatism, her unsentimental determination to make a difference here, we might have both succumbed to the hopelessness and despair that was constantly nipping at our heels.
A bus crammed with over a hundred passengers, many of whom were hanging onto the windows and doors, rumbled past us, leaving a trail of thick black smoke in the air. We coughed for a few seconds, but kept on walking. It takes less than a day in Managua to learn the Nicaraguan shuffle, the most efficient way to walk when it’s unbearably hot and you don’t want to use up any more energy than necessary. To do it correctly, no part of the body above the knee moves at all; the head, shoulders, arms, trunk, hips and thighs remain relaxed but still, as if you were standing in the same spot and little rollers under your feet were propelling you forward.
“Rachel,” Allen said, “tell us a story about being a public defender.”
For a moment, I recalled the metallic sound of handcuffs closing over Emily’s wrists and shook my head. “To tell you the truth, I’m sort of trying to forget I was a public defender.”
“Oh, come on,” Allen pleaded. “My feet are killing me. I need a good story to distract me.”
I sighed. “Do you want a funny story or a sad one?”
“Funny.”
I thought for a moment. “Actually, all the funny stories I know are also sad. Maybe Liz can tell us a funny story about people dying in the emergency room at the hospital.”
Liz punched me in the shoulder. “Cut it out, Rachel. Life isn’t as grim as you think.”
Both Allen and I stopped shuffling and stared at her. Allen’s face, and probably mine as well, was streaked with dirt from the bus.
“Okay,” Liz relented, “maybe it is, but the world is bigger than that. There’s beauty all around us to balance things out.” She raised her arms to indicate all the beauty that Allen and I were missing.
We continued to stare, waiting to be convinced.
“Come on, guys. Nature, love, friendship, those are all beautiful things. And there’s also laughter, courage and people who want to help out and make a difference in the world. Those are the things that make life worthwhile.”
“Will you be my guru?” Allen asked.
I started to laugh, but stopped when I saw her face.
“Knock it off,” Liz said, sounding genuinely aggrieved. “Both of you.”
“Hey, I’m sorry,” Allen apologized. “Really. I was just embarrassed to admit those are the kinds of things that make my life feel worthwhile too. Forgive me.”
“Me, too,” I said, “although I’m in more of a waiting-to-feel-that-way-again mode.”
Liz hesitated, and then put her arms around both our shoulders again. “You are really lucky to have me.”
Amen, we thought.
***
For Sunday, Tim and Estelle had set up a visit to the Managua headquarters of AMNLAE, the national women’s organization. At noon, our refurbished bus dropped us off at the entrance. A solemn young woman in her early twenties named Scarlet was waiting to take us around and answer any questions. When she stood up from behind her desk, we noticed she was missing part of her left hand.
Over the next few hours with Estelle interpreting, we learned that before the revolution there were no labor codes or civil rights for women, and as bad as it was now, the tradition and culture of machismo had been much worse. Women couldn’t ask for a divorce and had no say in their children’s futures. In the workplace, women were forced to take pregnancy tests before being hired, and often their wages were paid to their husbands or fathers. Prostitution was big business—Somoza and his thugs ran hugely profitable prostitution rings.
Since the revolution, there had been many gains but, Scarlet emphasized, these were accomplished only because women participated in the revolution and were now helping to draft the constitution. As soon as the constitution was ratified, it would guarantee that men and women were equal, and that women would be paid equal wages for equal work.
We ended up sitting around a small conference table on the third floor of the building. The walls were decorated with various posters depicting women actively involved in the revolution: a female professor lecturing in front of a blackboard, a teenage girl in army fatigues with a rifle slung casually over her shoulder, a nurse holding a needle while her patient rolled up his sleeve. At the end of our visit, Estelle asked Scarlet about her hand.
“I was involved in the takeover of Managua in June 1979,” Scarlet said. She sounded both matter of fact and proud, the way everyone in the States sounded who’d been at Woodstock.
Immediately, we did the math. Seven years ago: Scarlet would have been sixteen, maybe seventeen.
“Would you be willing to tell us about it?” Veronica asked, blushing a little.
Scarlet nodded. Instinctively she cradled her injured hand in the crook of her right elbow. “We were fighting the National Guard in a neighborhood close to the one you’re all staying in. We built barricades in the street out of furniture and rubble left over from the earthquake. Everyone who lived there was helping us, including grandparents and little children. Even though the Guard had tanks and planes, we knew we would eventually win. In desperation, Somoza ordered the Guard to start dropping bombs on us. About twelve thousand people died in Managua fighting against Somoza. Early one morning, a bomb exploded and I was knocked unconscious. When I woke up, many of my comrades were dead, including my sister and two of my brothers. But I was lucky. I only lost part of my hand.”
None of us could think of anything to say. Scarlet’s experience was so far out of the realm of anything we’d known, it was hard to comprehend. She could have been telling us the plot of a war movie or about a nightmare she’d once had as a teenager.
Finally, Estelle broke the silence. “That’s quite inspiring, but it’s also very sad.”
“Yes,” Scarlet said. “It’s very sad how many people we’ve lost and how many we continue to lose. When you go back to the United States, please tell everyone you meet that in 1984 we had a fair election, and that sixty-seven percent of the people voted for the Sandinistas. Tell them to stop funding the Contras. I only have one brother left and I don’t want to lose him.”
We filed out in a somber mood. I knew from my reading that Somoza fled the country on July 17, 1979, taking all his possessions, including the coffins of his relatives. He also took the entire national treasury, about one and a half billion dollars. Two days later, the Sandinistas officially entered Managua and the city went crazy with joy. There was a fiesta in the streets for seven days. Everyone was ecstatic; they thought the war was finally over.
I found Liz on the bus and sat down across from her. “Is there anyone in this country who isn’t suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome?” I asked.
“I doubt it,” she answered. “Oh, by the way, the talk tonight on land reform has been changed from seven to seven thirty. There’s no bus available. A bunch of us are meeting at the community center at seven. If there’s enough of us, we might take a taxi.”
“Okay,” I said, staring out the window.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
“I’m fine, but if I’m not there at seven, don’t wait for me. I’ll find another way to go.” I was feeling guilty because I had no intentio
n of sweltering through a two-hour lecture on land reform. On the way home from the supermercado the day before, I’d noticed the Altamira cinema, and Sonia had told me it was one of the few places in Managua that was air-conditioned.
As the sun set over the flattened city, I was standing in line waiting to enter the theater. Eventually, a Nicaraguan woman in a bright orange dress showed up holding a roll of tickets and began selling them. When I reached the head of the line, I asked what was playing, although I really didn’t care as long as it was cool inside.
“It’s a North American movie,” she told me. “Los Nerds En Vacaciones.”
“Oh.” I paused, imagining a moment in the future when someone in the States questioned me about land reform under the Sandinistas and I would have to admit that instead of attending a lecture on this crucial topic, I’d gone to see a movie entitled Nerds On Vacation. Fortunately, the door opened just then and I felt a cold blast of air on my face and arms.
“One ticket, please,” I said.
The film was about rival gangs of rich fraternity boys screeching around Palm Springs in their red convertibles, each gang trying to bed as many women as possible. The movie had been dubbed into Spanish, but unfortunately had English subtitles that I couldn’t help reading. For a while, I amused myself wondering what the Nicaraguans in the audience could possibly be thinking. Did the film alarm them? Did they think, My God, there’s no point trying to reason with people like this? Or did they wonder, Why do these North Americans even care if the Sandinistas are running our country?
But, of course, most of the Nicaraguans were sitting there for the same reason I was and would have happily watched a movie about Mongolians learning the hokey-pokey as long as the theater’s heroic air-conditioner continued to crank out cool air. It would be a sad day in Managua when it finally rattled to a halt.
After an hour, however, I’d pretty much had it. When a few of the fraternity boys, dressed in togas, began barfing over the balcony onto the heads of innocent pedestrians, I stood up to leave.
“Is that you, Rachel?” I heard Allen whisper.
“Where are you?” I asked.
“A few rows back.”
“How did you know it was me?” I asked.
“I heard you groaning. Is the seat next to you empty?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll come and join you.”
The theater was a big hall with a single door that opened to the street. It was dark inside except when anyone entered or left, which happened every three or four minutes. For a couple of seconds until the door closed again, the picture was obscured. Ordinarily, it would have been extremely annoying.
After Allen sat down, he whispered, “I saw Lenny and Veronica in the back row.”
“Really?” I was feeling better already.
“I’ve sat through some real losers,” Allen whispered, “but this is the worst thing I’ve ever seen. I’m hoping that maybe the communists made it on purpose to discredit us.”
“You’re too hopeful,” I said. “But you’re young.”
Allen put his head on my shoulder. “Rachel, I’m not sure I can ever go home.”
After a few minutes, I said, “I know what you mean.”
***
By the beginning of the second week, we’d basically given up on the language school. The teacher still hadn’t showed and the two high school students seemed to have disappeared as well. We decided to continue attending, however, just in case the teacher recovered or the government found someone else to replace her. If not, we were determined to use the time to improve our Spanish as best we could on our own. None of us, though, would be sorry to leave when the two weeks were up. Learning was good, but helping out would be better.
And then, unexpectedly, a government official contacted Estelle and asked if the brigade would be willing to volunteer for a couple of days at a nearby sand quarry. We’d be filling in for a group of workers who’d recently joined the army. Although the work would be hot and tedious—shoveling sand into trucks headed for various construction sites—we were all eager to go.
When we arrived at the quarry, we saw a huge pile of amber-colored sand, a couple of dilapidated buildings in the distance, and about two dozen trucks lined up in front of the sand. Most of the trucks were at least twenty years old and looked as if they were being held together with wire and electrical tape. A couple of shirtless men in tall rubber boots approached us and told us to sit down and wait, that they expected some of the drivers to show up soon. About an hour later, three grumpy looking teenagers drove up in an army jeep and climbed out. After that, we were all issued shovels and told to begin filling up the trucks.
By the middle of the afternoon, we’d managed to fill twenty-two of them. We were tired and filthy. Although we’d brought hard-boiled eggs and tortillas, no one felt like eating. After a short water break, we moved on to the twenty-third. As we began shoveling, a white-haired man with a clipboard and a set of keys hurried over to one of the trucks and tried to start it. The engine made a couple of dry desperate grinding sounds, then quit altogether. The man cursed, and then climbed out and marched back toward the buildings. A few minutes later, the same man and three others showed up, each carrying multiple sets of keys. They were all clearly upset and shouting to one another. Hopping in and out of trucks, they tried them all, but none of the engines would start, each one making the same horrible grinding sound before dying.
“What’s going on?” Richard asked Estelle.
“I don’t know,” she said, “but I’ll go find out.” Her face was coated with dirt, like a coal miner’s after a day inside the tunnels.
The men were now lifting up the hoods of all the trucks and shaking their heads. Estelle and Tim walked over to join them. Finally, after examining a number of the engines, the man with the clipboard determined the trucks had been sabotaged. Estelle came over with the bad news.
“Sabotaged?” Allen asked. “How?”
“No one was here last night,” Estelle explained. “There was a fiesta. Usually someone volunteers to stay.”
“Shit,” Lenny sighed, “they probably just poured sand in all the engines. It would be the easiest way.” He was leaning heavily on his shovel looking more like Walter Brennan than Robert Redford.
“Who would do something like that?” Tina asked, patting her eyes with a handkerchief that had once been clean, white and dainty. “Not the Contras?”
“No, of course not,” Susan retorted. “It must have been the seven dwarfs.” She threw her shovel to the ground.
“Hey,” Liz said, “we’re all shocked and upset, but sarcasm won’t make us feel better.”
Susan shrugged. “Well, it made me feel better.”
Richard walked over and put a hand on his wife’s shoulder. “Please, Susan.”
She pushed his hand away. “I thought we agreed not to interfere with each other.”
Allen rolled his eyes, and then turned to Estelle. “If most people don’t mind, I’d like to go back to the original question. Are the Contras really operating in Managua?”
Estelle nodded. “Absolutely. Since the Contras look like everyone else, they can easily slip into Managua or any of the other cities. There’s sabotage going on all over the country.”
Meanwhile, the men had begun to argue and were pointing at the buildings, which seemed to shimmer in the distance. Their voices rumbled like distant thunder that might or might not be heading our way. Tim, who was standing in the middle of the group but not saying anything, kept glancing in our direction. After another few minutes, he motioned Estelle to join him.
“What now?” I wondered out loud.
“Nothing good,” Liz murmured.
When the argument was over, Tim and Estelle nodded and then walked back to us. From their careful expressions, we guessed there was more bad news, although we had no idea what it could be. In vain, we tried to brace ourselves.
“Listen,” Tim said, “I hate to tell you this, but the men t
hink it would be much easier to work on the trucks if they were closer to the buildings. So it would be, you know, much easier for them to push the trucks over there if we unloaded all the sand beforehand.”
“What?” Allen exploded.
“You’re kidding, right?” Richard asked, his shoulders slumping at the thought.
Tim shook his head. “I’m afraid not.”
“Jesus Christ,” Liz said.
Veronica looked as if she might start crying. “Wait a minute, don’t the trucks have some kind of lever or something that you pull to dump whatever’s in them?”
“Not these trucks,” Lenny snapped.
“I can’t believe it,” Allen said. “We’ve just wasted the entire day.”
Susan raised her hand as if she needed permission to speak. “Excuse me, but there’s a war going on, remember? People die, bad things happen. What did you expect, Girl Scout camp?”
Although part of me would have loved to hurl a fistful of sand at Susan’s face, the more mature, let’s-cut-to-the-chase part that had spent the last twelve years convincing thousands of clients to cop a plea when it was in their best interests understood the simple truth: we would all rather tear each other’s hair out than start shoveling again. So I picked up my shovel, held it above my head and advanced in Susan’s direction. Everyone, including Susan, looked alarmed.
I stopped a couple of inches in front of her and said, “Okay, do you really want to keep pissing everyone off, or do you want to help me start unloading all this sand before it gets too dark?”
No one said a word. After a long moment, Susan had the smarts to pick up her shovel and start marching toward the farthest truck. “Well, what are you waiting for?” she called over her shoulder. “The fucking sand isn’t going to get unloaded by itself, is it?”
***
On Thursday, the cordoba—Nicaragua’s national unit of currency—was devalued to about half of what it had been worth the day before. In 1912, when it was first introduced, the cordoba was worth a dollar. Since the revolution, the currency had steadily lost value and now, with this latest move, it would take approximately 10,000 cordobas to equal a dollar. Coming from the United States where inflation was relatively slow and predictable, this was mind-boggling.