*****
When Beth wandered downstairs for breakfast the next morning, she still felt more than half asleep. She had dressed and showered in a haze and was now hoping that a cup of coffee would keep her eyes from drooping closed completely.
Still, she had to admit that a good sleep and the promise of a good meal made her feel less irritable than yesterday. The same, apparently could not be said for Brent Eisner. When she entered the dining room where several of the volunteers were seated around the table, she spied Brent eying them all with a sullen sort of grimace on his face.
When she sat down with a plate of fruit in hand, he turned his eyes towards her. Thinking that she might as well be civil, she tried smiling at him. She received only a skeptical wince in return before he looked back down at his plate.
She continued to stare at him as he ate, at a loss for why he seemed so hostile to the presence of volunteers from Beth’s church. Pastor Paul, in stark contrast to Brent, seemed positively giddy at the idea of having more help around the home. He spent the entire meal telling them, in great detail what he had planned out for the day.
“The building team can start work on the new school house as soon as breakfast is finished,” he said. “The quicker we can get that up, the better. If we can get it finished by fall, we can have several more kids from the village come to learn at the school.”
“So, it's not just orphaned from the home who go to school here?” Beth asked the pastor curiously.
“Oh, no,” he said. “You see, the quality of education here tends to be better than the state-run schools. We’ve been able to accommodate several children from the village who are able to pay a small maintenance fee. But, with the new school building, we’ll be able to accept more. And, depending on how large we’re able to make it, we might not have to charge tuition anymore.”
“But...the kids we’ll be teaching during the summer aren’t from the village, are they?” Beth asked. Though she was fairly confident in her teaching skills, she was a little intimidated by the idea of having to teach a larger class than expected.
“Oh, no,” Paul said as Beth heaved a sigh of relief. “The full school day doesn’t start again until September. The kids from the village will come then. We just continue the English classes for the children living here, at the home, during the summer. We don’t want them to lose their language skills.”
Beth nodded both in understanding and relief as she took one last bite of pineapple, which, truthfully, tasted better than any she had had in the States.
“In fact,” Pastor Paul said seeing her empty plate. “Why don’t you take a little tour and see where you’ll be teaching. Classes don’t start until tomorrow, but Brent can get you familiar with the building in the meantime.”
At the sound of his name, Beth saw Brent look up from his plate. He looked between Paul and Beth as though dreading whatever task he would be sent on.
“Brent,” Paul said genially, apparently missing the apprehensive expression on Brent’s face. “You don’t mind taking Beth on a little tour, do you? It would be nice for her to see where she’s working.”
Once more, Brent looked between Beth and Paul. Beth could see the wheels turning in his mind; she could tell that he was trying his best to think of something, anything he could say that would get him out of this task. Apparently coming up empty, his face fell before he answered:
“Sure. I guess I can do that.”
“Great!” Paul said. Beth now wasn’t sure if the pastor was just completely oblivious to Brent’s obvious reluctance or had become so used to it that he had chosen to ignore it completely.
“Why don’t you two get started on that while I take the building team out back and show them what they’ll be doing,” Paul said, standing from the table and gesturing to the other volunteers.
Beth stayed in her seat as she listened to the cacophony of chairs scraping against the wooden floors. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed that Brent stayed seated too. It was only when the last of the volunteers made his way to the door that Brent heaved a sigh and stood.
“I guess we should get going,” he said, his voice sounding flat. “Follow me.”
Silently, Beth stood from her chair and followed him down the stairs to a basement-like structure. Brent did not speak as they descended into the darkness. The only move he made was to turn on the lights as they reached the bottom landing.
When they did, Beth could see two nondescript wooden doors standing in the middle of a long hallway. Brent moved to the first and opened it.
“This is your classroom,” he said, once again flipping on the light switch.
Beth entered a, mostly blank room with one blackboard and about ten small desks facing, what she assumed, was a teaching podium at the front. Brent moved to a cupboard standing at the right side of the room and opened it.
Beth watched him look through several large boxes.
“As you don’t speak Spanish,” he said as he continued to dig in the metal cupboard, his voice slightly amplified. “You’ll be working with the more advanced English students. They’re pretty fluent. They just need exposure to English literature and immersion practice.”
“I guess you’ll be teaching the other kids then,” she said as he pulled out a box.
“That’s right,” he said setting the box on the nearest desk. He began rifling through this the same way he had looked through the cupboard only a moment before.
Beth was beginning to feel a sort of tension in the silence that passed between them as he shuffled through seemingly endless amounts of paper. Feeling slightly anxious, she decided it was best to break the silence as soon as possible.
“I’ve got to admit, I’m a little surprised,” she said.
“By what?” he asked distractedly.
“By the fact that you speak Spanish,” she said. “I just didn’t expect someone who…”
“...someone who looks like me to be fluent?” he asked coming up from the box and turning to her with an accusatory glare. She felt her face flush and almost immediately looked down at her feet.
“Well...yeah. I guess so,” she said.
“That just goes to show you,” he said. “You shouldn’t make assumptions about people based on their level of skin pigment.”
She would have laughed if he hadn’t sounded so harsh and accusatory as he said this. Instead, she felt her hands ball into fists.
This was one of the moments when she wished she could be like those tough women she saw on TV. The ones who always had witty comebacks for this kind of comment. The ones who didn’t let men or anyone else look down on them.
But, she wasn’t like those women. Truth was, she never had been. She was, instead, plagued by a desire not to rock boats, and never to be the source of conflict.
So, instead of telling him off, as she was sure she should have done, she continued to look down at her feet as she said: “Sorry. I didn’t mean anything by it.”
“Don’t worry about it,” he said a little more gently. When she looked up at him, he was giving her a dismissive wave of his hand as he set the box aside and went to get another from the cabinet.
The tense silence fell over them again. Again, Beth felt a sudden urge to break it. Though, she was more hesitant now, seeing as her last attempt at conversation had gone awry.
She didn’t know why she wanted so badly to be able to have a civil discussion with Brent. After all, it was clear that he wanted nothing to do with her. Though she wasn’t quite sure why.
Maybe that’s why she felt the need to talk to him. Because of her nearly obsessive need to please, people usually liked her. She did everything in her power to make sure that they liked her. The fact that this one person didn’t, made her all the more desperate to win his admiration.
Besides that, she knew that she would have to work closely with Brent over the next two months. They wouldn’t be able to do that if their relationship was not, at least, civil.
“Do you teach any oth
er subjects besides English?” she asked hesitantly. “During the regular school year, I mean?”
He didn’t look up at her but kept searching through the second box, occasionally taking stacks of paper out of it.
“I teach just about everything,” he said. “We’re chronically understaffed here. So, I’ve done it all at one point or another.”
“I didn’t expect that,” she said. “I know our church takes mission groups here all the time. And not just for the summer.”
“That’s the problem,” he answered, a bitter undertone to his voice. “There are plenty of people who want to come down and help for a month or two. Mostly so they can say they did something. So they can feel good about themselves. But, almost no one wants to stay down here permanently and try to make a real difference.”
Beth felt her face flush with a hint of guilt this time. She knew that little speech included her as well. And, though she felt a righteous indignation about Brent having judged her motives for coming without knowing anything about her, she also felt a tiny hint of relief. At least now she had some idea of what might be causing his hostility.
There was a moment more digging before Brent finally emerged with what he’d apparently been looking for. He picked several colorful folders out from the box, walked over and placed them in Beth’s arms.
“Here,” he said unceremoniously. “Those are the lesson plans we use. Look them over before tomorrow. If you want to decorate the classroom, there are some things you can use in the cabinet. Feel free to look through them.”
Before he had finished speaking, he started heading for the door.
“Sorry to cut this short,” he said not sounding sorry at all. “But, I’ve got lesson plans to put together too.”
With that, he opened the door and walked out. Beth could hear his heavy footsteps moving up the stairs as she stood, slightly dumbfounded, holding the folders that had been shoved into her arms.
Clearly, he wasn’t going to be one for friendly chatter around the water cooler.
With a shrug, Beth realized that it was something she would have to deal with. And she remembered what the Scripture said: “Bless those who curse you.”
She said a quick prayer for Brent. Afterwards, she decided, for the time being, simply to stay out of his way unless absolutely necessary.
She sat down at one of the small desks and opened the red folder that sat at the top of the stack. If she was going to show Brent that she was more than a temporary “feel good” missionary, she would have to put plenty of work in.
*****
Time flew by so quickly. It was already July. Beth had been in Mexico for a little over a month, though it hardly felt like it.
The weeks had passed in a busy haze of lessons, planning and helping with the school building project. She found joy in her work. She was also more than a bit proud of herself when she realized that she had barely cried over her mother once since she’d come; something she had done almost daily when she had been back home.
But, here, she was able to focus on her students, who proved to be a hundred times more enthusiastic and attentive than the ones she had observed back in the States as a teaching student. In one high school English class she had observed back in Oklahoma, for example, most of the students sat back in their seats staring up at the teacher blank-eyed, or giggled and passed notes with their friends. Only one or two students were truly absorbed in the lesson.
The opposite seemed to be true here. Not only were most of her students interested in the short stories by Ernest Hemingway they were reading, but they also seemed fascinated by her teaching. In the three weeks since she’d been in Mexico, she’d lost count of the number of questions she’d been asked about life in the United States.
Most of her students were teenagers, so most of them wanted to know what college in the States was like. They were also anxious to hear what clothing trends were popular and how most Americans felt about the latest movies to come out of Hollywood.
Feeling respected and admired like that was a nice change for Beth.
To her surprise, she’d even begun to pick up some Spanish. She’d learned more in three weeks than she had in four years of Spanish class in high school.
This was mostly due to her students. Interested in learning what they were talking about, she asked some of her more trusted students to translate when the others spoke in Spanish after class. That was how she learned that, while it was simply ‘miss’ or ‘senorita’ in class, most of her students called her “Senorita Rubia” among themselves.
This was roughly translated as “Miss Blonde”, due to her light hair, with which her students and the younger children at the home seemed endlessly fascinated. Not a day seemed to go by when at least one of the children did not ask to touch the blonde locks of her hair. This, in addition to her bright blue eyes and light skin, made her something of a novelty.
All of this, including Paul’s helpfulness and her students’ eagerness to learn made her regret that she had only accepted a temporary position here. After only a few weeks, she could hardly imagine leaving the home behind.
Especially now that even Brent had started to warm to her. She supposed after he realized that she wasn’t going to bail out after the first week, he should at least behave civilly to her.
He now answered all her questions about lesson plans and schedules helpfully without a hint of bitterness. Once they’d even had a quick discussion about the weather in this part of Mexico.
“I expected it to be hotter this close to the equator,” Beth had remarked one day, as she helped supervise the younger children on a nearby, makeshift playground.
It was a sunny, breezy day. The light wind kept the air around them slightly cool and pleasant.
“It’s because of the mountains,” Brent said. “We’re higher up here than a lot of places in Mexico. That’s why they call Cuernavaca ‘La Ciudad de la eterna primavera’. The city of eternal spring.”
Beth smiled, partly because she was nearly able to translate the phrase in Spanish for myself before Brent provided the meaning, and partly because she’d gotten Brent to say something to me that didn’t have to do with work.
That was the end of the conversation, however, and he hadn’t said anything that wasn’t “good morning” or related to their work since.
Beth was surprised, therefore, when, one morning, a little over a month into her stay, Brent chose the seat next to her at breakfast.
He’d never sat next to her before. Indeed, he still seemed to avoid her at meal times. But, this morning, he plopped down without looking at her as though this was a completely normal morning ritual.
“Pass the toast, please?” he asked without looking at her. Still gaping at him slightly, she shook her head, closed her mouth, and grasped the plate of toast to hand to him.
“You seem like you’re in a friendly mood this morning,” she said as she gave him the plate. She meant for her voice to sound accusatory. She meant to ask him, in a very subtle way, what had caused this change.
“Do I?” he asked lightly, still not looking at her as he passed the plate of toast back into her hands.
“Yes,” she answered. “Is there something going on that I should know about?”
She took a piece of toast and put it on her own plate. Her eyes remained on him as he chewed his toast, thoughtfully and took his time answering her.
“Yes,” he said with a swallow. “Pastor Paul said that he wanted to talk to both of us after breakfast.”
“Did he say what it would be about?” she asked.
Brent merely shrugged and continued chewing on his toast. Beth discovered a strange feeling that he was not being totally honest with her, though she did not know why.
Maybe the pastor had decided that she wouldn’t be needed anymore. Maybe they were going to send her back home.
Beth tried to tell herself that that was highly unlikely, bordering on paranoid. All the same, her stomach remained tied in knots throughout th
e rest of breakfast and she found that she couldn’t eat much more than the few bites of toast she had already nibbled.
When breakfast was over, Pastor Paul did indeed call Brent and Beth over to a small enclave just past the kitchen. He said he wanted to “speak to them a minute.”
As Beth followed the pastor into the enclave, she felt as though she were walking in slow motion. As though each step might spell out her doom. It wasn’t until she stopped in front of the smiling man that she told herself to get a grip and stop being so dramatic.
“I was wondering,” Paul said, his voice as genial as ever and devoid of any dire warnings. “Would you two be willing to plan a trip for the kids into the city this coming weekend?”
Beth felt a sigh of relief just as she noted the tension Brent began to hold on his shoulders.
“The building team needs to work on the main part of the house and, obviously, we can’t have the kids here for that,” Pastor Paul continued. “I’ve got a pastor friend who’s willing to take us and the kids in at his church in Cuernavaca. It’s much bigger than what we’ve got here.”
Beth barely spared a glance to Brent before smiling at Pastor Paul.
“Sure,” she said. “I mean, I’d be happy to help.”
“It’d be nice to go into the city,” Brent answered. Beth was surprised to hear more than a hint of enthusiasm in his voice. “I haven’t had the chance to go in a while.”
“Great!” Paul announced with his usual energy. “I’ve rented two minibuses. We’ll have them here on Saturday afternoon. We should make it into Cuernavaca by nightfall.”
With that, he moved out of the enclave and back to the main room with the usual sprightliness in his step.
“Well,” Beth said, now very aware that she was completely alone with Brent. “A trip with the two of us and almost fifty kids. That should be interesting.”
“It’s not very far,” Brent said. “We can make it down the mountain to Cuernavaca in forty-five minutes.”
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