Raffy crossed out Manatee and wrote Airuwe at the top of the action plan and pinned it to the wall by the front door. The next morning, the girls made a start on number one.
Clearing out the old fish pond for Airuwe to live in was harder than they expected. Raffy hadn’t used the pool since Mauricio had died, and it was choked with weeds and full of green water. It took the girls all day to pull out the weeds and scrub the pond clean, in between feeding Airuwe and cleaning his tank.
Refilling the pond was a problem, too. Raffy had an old hand pump, so they could pump water from the river, but it was really slow and hard to use. The pond was still only half full by the end of the afternoon. Then Raffy suggested that they set up two huge tarpaulins to run rainwater into it and help to fill it up.
Overnight, rain hammered on the veranda roof and cascaded out of the gutters. By morning, Airuwe’s new home was full enough to put him in, as soon as the sun had warmed the water a little.
The sun was out as they carried Airuwe down to the pool. He had been much more wriggly when they’d taken him from the bath, and Manuela didn’t want to risk him falling from her arms, so they carried him in a wet sheet, holding it like a sling between them. Tintico gamboled alongside, sniffing at Airuwe through the fabric and “uffing” encouragingly. When they got to the pool, they lowered the sling in and waited for the manatee to swim out into his new home. But he didn’t move.
“What’s the matter with him?” said Libia. “Doesn’t he like the pool?”
Manuela looked down at the calf and saw, instead, herself as a baby: alone in her crib and longing for the comfort of her mother. Without another word or thought, she slipped into the pool and eased Airuwe out of the sheet and into the water. She floated beside him and he cuddled in close.
“I know how it feels,” she whispered to him. “I know.”
“You really are a manatee mama,” said Libia. “Here, give him his bottle.”
The water came up to Manuela’s shoulders. She put one arm around Airuwe and held the bottle to feed him with the other hand. His face was out of the water and close to hers. He looked at her carefully. This time, he didn’t fall asleep once and finished a whole bottle in half an hour.
Airuwe got more used to being fed from a bottle. He would accept it from Libia and Raffy, but it was only Manuela he liked having in the water with him. He grew stronger as his wound started to heal, and he began to explore his pond. He made use of different parts of it at different times of day, depending on whether he wanted the warming power of the sun or the cool of shade.
Like the parents of small babies, Manuela and Libia fell into a routine of feeding times and sleep. Granny Raffy helped out when she didn’t have patients to see and sometimes did the nighttime feedings so the girls could get a proper sleep. In return, they helped with Raffy’s chores, feeding the macaw chicks and the sloth, cooking, and cleaning. Neither Manuela nor Libia had ever spent so much time with Granny Raffy, away from the village. Libia missed her brothers and sisters and the bustle of her busy home, but Manuela felt she now understood why Raffy liked living at Riverbend, where every day began with a storm of little green parrots in the treetops and ended with Granny Raffy’s gramophone music drifting over the dark river.
Angelina came to visit. She didn’t tell Libia off at all for disappearing in the middle of the night. In fact, in her dreamy way, she seemed to have forgotten altogether about how the manatee had come to be at Granny Raffy’s. She was quite happy for Libia to live at her granny’s house for a while, at least until the boat to school started running again.
Uncle Luis visited, too, with Gonzaga and Jorge. They brought a share of their fish catch and the supplies that Granny Raffy had ordered from Puerto Dorado, including big bags of milk powder for the hungry manatee.
Luis said that Gomez was trying to pretend he’d sold the calf in Puerto Dorado, but that everyone in San Larenzo knew what had really happened. People were thoroughly enjoying the fact that Clink-Clink had been outwitted by a couple of kids.
Manuela worried that Gomez would try to take the calf back.
“He’d have to get past Raffy first!” Luis laughed. “Anyway, he wants to save face. My guess is that he’ll get his money back from Silvio and forget the whole thing.”
“Is Papa still angry?” Manuela asked.
Luis nodded.
“Are you angry, Uncle Luis?”
“Me?” Luis grinned. “You know me, Frog. Me and my boys, we take life as it comes. Silvio’s a hothead, but he’ll cool down. You’ll see.”
But Silvio never showed his face nor sent any message, and Manuela wondered if her father would be angry with her forever. Had he really meant it when he’d said that he didn’t want her?
Libia decided that Airuwe needed to go to school. “He needs to learn about all the other creatures he’ll be sharing the river with, like fish and caiman and dolphins,” she told Manuela one morning while her cousin was in the pool with the little manatee.
This was a typical piece of right-but-wrong Libia-ness. Manuela raised her eyebrows but said nothing.
The next morning when Manuela came to feed Airuwe, there was a long pole leaning over the pool with several models made of sticks and plastic packaging dangling from it.
“That’s a gamitana, that’s a pacu,1 and that’s an electric eel,” Libia said.
They looked a little like fish, Manuela thought, if you looked with your eyes half closed and your head on one side, but not enough like the real thing to teach Airuwe anything.
All the same, Libia added to Airuwe’s “school” every day: more fish, a turtle, and even a pink dolphin, although that was made from chicken wire and cardboard, so it could not be left out in the rain. Tintico growled at the models, and Airuwe took no notice of them at all.
“He doesn’t even look at them!” Libia said, disappointed.
“Never mind, Libia,” said Manuela. “I like them.”
Libia smiled. “You know what, Frog?” she said. “You’re much nicer now that you’re a manatee mama.”
Even though Airuwe didn’t look at Libia’s school, Raffy’s patients did. The dangling models attracted their attention, and pretty soon the pool had become Raffy’s waiting room. Airuwe and his school prompted people to talk about their lives beside the river: the biggest fish their father caught when they were little, or the time they found a huge nest of turtle eggs, or when a hoatzin2 landed in the canoe. They told stories, too, about tapirs3 turning into manatees and dolphins coming out of the river to take human wives. But most of all they talked about Airuwe, about what a fine creature he was and what a shame it was that there were so few manatees nowadays. Perhaps, one old fisherman suggested, it was because there was no longer the right sort of ceiba tree for manatee caterpillars to eat.
“I think we’ve made a start on number three on the action plan!” Manuela whispered to Libia.
“Yes.” Libia smiled. “This is a school for humans, not manatees, after all.”
The rainy season continued, and the river rose toward its highest level. One evening, Raffy sat with the girls beside the manatee pool. Towering clouds reflected the setting sun onto the surface of Airuwe’s watery home. His wound had healed into a white flash over his back, like a streak of lightning, which showed clearly when he was close to the surface.
“Will the scar fade?” Manuela asked her granny anxiously.
“I’m not an expert in manatee scars, china!” Raffy replied. “But I don’t think so.”
“It’ll make him so easy to hunt!” Manuela almost wailed.
“But it’ll make him really easy to tell from other manatees!” said Libia.
“Either way,” Raffy said, “if you want to keep your promise, you’ll have to work more on number four of the action plan. I think you should start by inviting everyone in San Larenzo to come and see Airuwe and his school. Who knows? Silvio might even come.”