“Her name?” The voice comes back over the radio.
I give my full name. The guard struggles to pronounce it.
The voice crackles on the radio. “Send her in.”
* * *
I’m sent through a metal detector and directed to American Citizen Services. In the waiting room, I’m given a number and shown a seat. After several minutes, the woman I spoke to on the phone the day before, Elaine, comes and finds me. She shows me into a white-walled, windowless room lit by fluorescent tubes. We sit at either end of a table. I’m a little concerned that the wire in my sandal might scrape the nice floor. On the wall behind Elaine hangs a series of corny patriotic photos in frames: Mount Rushmore, the Washington, D.C., skyline, a screeching bald eagle.
“All right, fill this out.” She hands me a clipboard with a form several pages long. “What do you have for documentation?”
I show her the same cards and papers that I showed the guard outside. She chuckles at my Che wallet.
“Let me make a copy of these.” She leaves the room.
I spend some time alone with the form, the clipboard, and a pen bearing the State Department seal. What should I put down as my address? I’ve used the Peace Corps office for so long. I can’t even remember my father’s street number in Honolulu. What is the mailing address for La Posada?
Elaine reenters the room a few minutes later. Her heels click hard against the tile floor.
“So you’re a Peace Corps volunteer?” she asks.
“I was,” I say.
“Good for you. I served in Tonga, years ago.”
The idea of Peace Corps volunteers in Tonga sounds funny to me. I knew lots of Tongans growing up. But I nod and smile, feigning interest, doing my best to establish some sort of rapport.
“Did you just close your service?” she asks.
“ET’d, actually.” It’s the first time I’ve uttered the Peace Corps code for quitting.
“Oh.” Elaine doesn’t seem to know how to respond. “I’m sorry.”
“You shouldn’t be sorry,” I say. “It made sense. The project I was working on, it was destroyed by the earthquake. I had only a few months left. The handwriting was on the wall, you know.”
She nods. “And now what?”
“Surfing,” I say.
“Right.” She raises my driver’s license to study it. “You’re from Hawai‘i, aren’t you?”
“My boyfriend and I planned to go to South America. We hoped to spend a year or so.”
“That sounds wonderful.”
I nod. “The trip of a lifetime. But we were robbed the night before last. Now, I’m not sure we’ll make it.”
Neither of us speaks. I drop the pen on the table and the sound echoes like thunder.
“So.” I try not to come off as desperate. “How long do you think this will take?”
“This paperwork has to be sent to Washington for processing, and then the passport must be shipped back. It could be a while. And as you know, the embassy has other priorities at the moment.”
I study the screeching eagle in the photo behind her. “Can I ask you something?”
“Of course.”
“Is it exciting to be working here right now, with the earthquake and all? Do you enjoy it?”
She sighs. “It’s less boring than my last post; that’s for sure. But it’s frustrating as well. And stressful. There’s more at stake, I suppose, more chance for success and for failure.”
“Right.” It seems a stupid question almost as soon as I’ve asked it. “Remember what you told me yesterday, about the emergency passport to fly back home?”
“Yes.” She looks puzzled. “The one-month option. The one that you weren’t interested in?”
“Out of curiosity, how long would one of those take to process?”
“Not long. Could be the same day.” She cocks her head to one side, perhaps considering whether I’m a quitter at surfing and traveling as much as at Peace Corps work. “Is that something you might want to pursue?”
“Just curious is all.” In truth, this is the first time I’ve seriously considered simply going back to Hawai‘i. “I look forward to hearing from you.”
“Malia.” She says my name sternly as I rise to leave. “I’m sure you’ll get to South America someday.”
* * *
Outside the embassy’s tall white walls, I pause and stare at the visa line. It isn’t hard to imagine a Mayan temple standing on this spot. An entire caste of disposable laborers already lines up. Well-fed guards stand over them, looking superior. And the high priests are hidden somewhere inside, along with their cryptic means of receiving orders from their far-off gods.
I try, with a strain like a mental push-up, to put myself in the place of those poor Salvadorans in the line, to appreciate the couple hundred dollars I have left, the car, the father in the States who could send me more money—if I could only bring myself to ask. I could even walk back inside the embassy, opt for the temporary permission, and return to the United States within the week.
Back at the Jeep, the clock on the dashboard shows that it’s still early. I don’t feel like returning to La Lib just yet, to pass another waveless day waiting for my future to start. Without deciding to, I find myself crossing town. Traffic is light at this time of the morning. Within a few minutes, I come to the familiar stretch of Boulevard de los Heroes and find a parking spot in Metrocentro’s ample lot.
Across the boulevard, inside the Hotel Intercontinental, I buy Ben the rolling tobacco he didn’t ask for. I walk up a nearby side street into a residential neighborhood. It’s a place I’ve been to only one other time—the night before last. My feet seem to find it on instinct, by sense of smell. Soon enough, I’m standing at the front gate of Alex’s apartment.
But why? I regret what happened between us two nights ago. I truly do. Still, Alex has been a big part of my life here. I need to close this chapter in a satisfying way, not with a hurried hungover exit.
Also, one part of me wants to know what he meant about my staying here, and about the job that he wanted to offer me last week. Even if my mind is made up, even if I have chosen Ben and our epic trip, I should at least know what that decision means, what my options are, or were.
Too nervous to ring the bell, I stand outside for a span of several minutes. I break open the sack of Dutch tobacco meant as a gift for Ben. With shaking hands, I roll a too-loose, too-damp cigarette and smoke it there on the sidewalk. The sound of a high-pitched pan flute startles me. The flutist turns out to be a man with a mobile knife-sharpening cart. He rolls past and stares, curious as to what I’m doing here, whom I’m waiting for.
Finally, light-headed from the tobacco and an empty stomach, I ring the buzzer beside Alex’s name.
“¿Quien es?” I hear through the intercom.
“Alex? It’s me, Malia.”
There’s a pause. “Hold on a second. I’m coming down.”
Though it’s late morning, Alex looks as though he’s just awakened—which shouldn’t be a shock, considering his schedule.
“You want to come up?” he manages to say.
“Yeah.”
He’s already made a pot of coffee, so we spend the first few minutes fussing over spoons and cups and milk and sugar. Alex wears only the sweatpant shorts he’s slept in. The scars along his arms are visible but look less striking to me now.
“So,” I say once both of us have our coffees and are seated—me on the bed, Alex on the single plastic chair at his multipurpose table. “No work today?”
He shrugs. “We’re trying to rotate our days off throughout the week, so services don’t dry up on Saturday and Sunday. I’ve been spending a lot of nights in Zacatecoluca.”
“Do you like it?” I ask.
“Zacatecoluca?”
“No, the job. The lifestyle.”
He looks into his coffee mug. “I don’t stop to think about whether or not I like it very often. But I suppose that I do, yes. It’s busy, you know. The work is va
lued.”
“That’s good. You seem happier now, compared to before.” I catch myself staring at his forearms and will my eyes back to his face. “At first, when they sent you back down here from D.C., I was a little outraged.”
He brings his coffee mug up to his lips and holds it there.
“I didn’t think it was responsible to send somebody in your … your condition straight back after a few weeks of therapy.”
“Maybe they shouldn’t have.” Alex lowers the cup and forces a smile.
“But now it seems like a perfect fit.”
“I suppose that’s true.” His eyebrows rise. “My ‘condition’ is probably best described as depression.”
It’s the first time I’ve heard him use that word.
“The doctors, they see it differently from the way I do. But I’ve always felt that at the heart of it was an inability to pretend.”
He pauses and looks about the room, as if the words he wants are written on the walls or ceiling.
“To pretend what?” I ask.
“Ever since I was a teenager, I’ve seen everything in life as a sort of slow, senseless withering toward death. People who are happier than I am—at least it feels this way—are able to pretend that’s not the case, or maybe they forget or ignore it long enough to function.”
I’m not sure what to say to that. His tone is calm and measured.
“With the job I have now, I don’t feel I have to pretend anymore. The fallen villages and the refugee camps, they’re exactly what I believed the human condition to be all along. It’s as if some sort of veil or tinted glass is finally removed from my vision—some layer of distortion that I always knew was there. Don’t get me wrong: It’s nice to bring food, and medicine, and clothing. But honestly, I feel like my real job is simply to witness it all. To confirm that this is the state of the world. To ignore nothing, and deny nothing.”
And in that instant, his Red Cross job seems as selfish and indulgent as surfing. “I’m glad that works for you.”
“The more I think about it, the more I’m convinced that some of our ideas behind development and aid are flawed. It’s sort of a twentieth-century construct that we do good works as a means to an end. Before that, people did them as charity, as penance. It was a way to get into heaven, or to gain enlightenment. It was about you, the giver, not about the receiving end. I’m not sure we’ve adapted so well to the secular, results-oriented version.”
“Maybe not.” Some of what he says rings true, but I’m in no mood for his philosophical musings.
He smiles and puts his coffee cup down on the table. “It’s good to see you, Malia. I didn’t want our final good-bye to be that morning a couple days ago.”
“Neither did I.” My stomach feels dry and cavernous.
Alex refreshes both our coffees.
“Do you remember what you said at the Peace Corps office last week?” I ask.
“I said good-bye.” He puts the now-empty coffeepot on the table.
“Before that. You mentioned that the Red Cross needs engineers. That I’d be perfect for the job. That was why you came looking for me, right?” I take a sip from the warm cup.
“I guess I remember saying something like that.”
“Is it still an option?” My question comes out sheepishly. I try to picture it. Could I do relief work long enough to cash up for both Ben and me? How many months might that take?
“A job? For you?” He looks surprised. “Not exactly. I mean, we’ve gotten a lot of people in place since then.”
“A lot of engineers? People who speak the language? Who have experience in the sort of water systems that were crushed?” My voice turns loud and defensive.
“Look.” He holds his palms up, as if to say, Don’t shoot. “Something could come along; that’s always a possibility. But things are different now.”
“It was like five days ago you told me this.”
“That morning at the office, I tried to find you because of a rumor that you were about to terminate your service. I was convinced I could sort out a situation for you like mine—working with the Red Cross for a few months until your service was up, then come aboard officially.”
“So, why not come aboard now?”
“Because you quit, Malia!”
I don’t have a response for him.
In a lower tone, he continues: “It doesn’t mean anything to me—two or three months, one acronym instead of another—but the bosses take that stuff seriously.”
Whether or not this is true, it makes me feel small.
“What’s all this about anyway? Aren’t you going to South America? What happened to your trip?”
I let out a deep breath and look at the floor. “I lost my passport, and all our money. That night I spent here with you, somebody broke into our hotel room and ripped us off.” I emphasize the here and the you, hoping he might see this as his problem, too.
“Fuck.” Alex winces and bares his teeth. “I’m sorry. Have you been to the embassy?”
“Of course. They’re working on it, but it could take weeks.”
“So this job is, what, the consolation prize or something?”
“It’s not like that.” I have no patience for his judgment. “I want to know what my options are. You offered me something once, not so long ago. I came to see if the offer was still good.”
He looks down at the floor and sighs. “I don’t think that’s the right attitude for this sort of work, to be honest.”
“What attitude?”
“You know, a plan B kind of thing. You need to be committed for this relief stuff.”
“Don’t lecture me, Alex.” After all, he was the one who spent nearly two years getting sick, hardly working at all.
His face goes blank. He’s clearly content with his moral high ground. That one squiggly vein along his temple throbs.
“Well.” I stand up. “I guess this is good-bye.”
“Good-bye, Malia.” We share an insincere embrace. As I leave his apartment, I realize that this is, in fact, a worse farewell than the hungover walk of shame I performed two days prior.
At the Pollo Campero in Metrocentro, I use a big chunk of my remaining money to buy two boxes of fried chicken.
On the way out of the neighborhood, I get stuck in an awful traffic jam. The Jeep inches along the Boulevard of Heroes for over an hour, avoiding vendors, beggars, and clowns. A window-washer boy practically throws himself under the wheels before I hand over a coin. All the papers feature the Monkey-Faced Baby above the fold. The needle on the gas gauge leans dangerously toward empty. I feel something like a nervous breakdown creeping its way up my spine. Is there an eject button I could press to launch me high above this car and this country and parachute me someplace safer? If I took a razor to my own forearms, might I wake up in a hospital bed, with concerned professionals hovering about, a passport, an important job, and an apartment in the city? What might it take to finally get something like that—a sense of purpose?
The traffic untangles, and I find a gas station on the outskirts of the city. I fill up the tank and buy a six-pack. It’s almost noon. I still don’t feel any desire to return to La Lib. Instead, I head down a less-traveled route south of the city, through Los Planes de Renderos, past Panchimalco. Two beers later, I find myself on the old, familiar road to Cara Sucia.
The village looks quiet, as though the residents are all busy working. I wonder if I’m the only one in this country with nothing to do all day long. I park alongside Niña Tere’s house, hide the other beers under the passenger seat, and take out one of the boxes of fried chicken.
“Niña Tere?” I call out at the doorless entrance to her house. Rambo barks and howls from inside. Has he already forgotten my scent and come to think of me as a stranger?
“¿Sí?” she calls back from the kitchen.
“It’s me: Malia. I came to visit you.”
“Come in! Sit down!” She emerges from the kitchen and finds a rag to dry her wet hands.
“I brought Campero,” I say.
We go inside and take seats at the wooden table with the red oilcloth.
“I thought you’d be gone by now,” she says. “Down in South America or someplace.”
“Soon,” I say. “Not quite yet. There’s been a little problem with my passport. But I’ll sort it out.”
She is back out of her seat, fetching us plates and utensils, reheating some of this morning’s tortillas in the kitchen. I smell beans boiling over a wood fire and realize I’d rather have her home cooking than the fried chicken.
“How are you, Niña Tere?” I ask.
“You know—fighting for our beans, like always.” She drops a plastic plate and a fork in front of my place and hers.
“Right.” I bite into a drumstick. Grease soaks my fingertips and the sides of my mouth. I swallow the first bite and ask, “Where’s Nora?”
“School.” Niña Tere uses her lips to point back in the direction I’ve just come from.
I take a visual inventory of this house, where I spent so much of my time in the past two years. This table is not only where we ate our meals but where Niña Tere showed me how to make tamales and pupusas. There’s a spot out back where we roasted cashews from the trees in her little parcel down the valley, the cistern where we all washed our clothes. The level of the water is low, and the cistern itself is partially covered by a sheet of corrugated metal. Above it, a single pipe with a water tap stands erect, like a rigid cobra waiting to strike. It was the responsibility of each householder to run the pipe from the street to his or her house. Many had already done so before the earthquake hit.
“How’s the water situation?” I reach into the box for a thigh.
“Bad as ever.” Niña Tere tosses her chicken bones at Rambo, who catches them midair, chews, and swallows. “We’ve been washing in Santa Cruz. The mayor sends a truck every so often; they fill a barrel or two for each family.”
I follow suit with the bones—tossing them to Rambo, who stands at attention by our table—and recall the burden of living here during the dry season.
“They say there’s a lot of money coming into El Salvador these days,” I tell her. “Other countries are donating. Maybe they’ll finish the project.”
Kilometer 99 Page 14