Vidalúz sat on the terrace under a yellow light, reading. Her huipil like a beacon. Mosquito coils burned nearby. As soon as she saw them, she strode to the gate and opened it.
“Buenas noches, buenas noches, mis amigos,” she said. “I am not expecting you—hear my English, Father Ryan? Catarina—bienvenidos.”
Kate hugged her. They laughed for no other reason than pleasure at once again meeting. It felt good and peculiar to laugh. She felt a tug of guilt about laughing, about being alive. Dixie parked the jeep while Vidalúz and Kate walked arm in arm toward the cottage.
“Como está? Como está?”
The two women sat down on a bench, the jasmine tree low about them, its white blooms like scraps of cotton in the dark.
Vidalúz took Kate’s hand. “I am sorry to hear about your friend, Catarina. Very sorry. This is bad news.”
“Gracias. It’s been hard.”
“Sí, muy duro. I understand.”
They sat in silent companionship.
Then Vidalúz said, “These are difficult times.”
Dixie walked from the jeep toward them on a flagstone path.
“May we stay the night with you?” he said.
“Sí, sí. Estás en tu casa. I am glad to see you. I may return with you. To Antigua.”
“Why’s that?” Dixie said, sitting down beside her. The three of them faced the grassy yard, the stars above, the palm trees lining the fence, their trunks painted white and glowing.
“Father Ryan, I have prayed. I have written a letter to the president of Guatemala. I have talked with our friends. I believe that I must sit down on the street in Guate and insist that they let Hector go. This is what I must do.”
“Ah, Vidalúz—”
“Believe me, I know what God is calling me to do.”
“Have you talked to any reporters?”
“Reporters are coming here—there has been trouble in a village across the lake.” She lowered her voice; she spoke with gravity. “Soldiers killed a man who was studying the village. A sociologist. The reporters will make time for me as well as that situation.”
“Did we know him?”
“Señor Solano. He was from the University of San Carlos. Did you know him?”
“No.” Dixie hung his head dejectedly. “I didn’t know him.”
“I spoke with him a week ago. He was a good man. Muy intelligente. He told me a story, which I will tell you.” She cleared her throat. “If you want to hear?”
“Sí, sí. Por favor.”
“Not long ago, in Africa, anthropologists discovered the perfect remains of a woman’s body. These bones are the oldest bones they have ever found. This woman broke her thigh bone somehow. What the anthropologists believe is wonderful is this. Her broken bone healed perfectly—what do you call it, the word for that?”
Kate said, “Knit.”
“Yes. The bones knit perfectly. And this is proof, he tells me. Proof of compassion long ago. Someone put the bone together. Someone took care of the woman. For at least six weeks, he said, while she healed.”
Dixie sighed a long sigh. “That’s a good story,” he said. “I wish I’d known him.”
“It is not just for Hector that I go to the capital,” Vidalúz said.
Kate wished she felt as secure in her own decisions.
Vidalúz said, “And you, Catarina? Now—”
“I’m going home. To my mother’s.”
Vidalúz said, “When?”
“Soon,” Kate said. She took a deep breath, as though to underscore her decision. She did not look at Dixie; she watched the stars instead. “There’s Orion,” she said, almost to herself. “Orion’s still up there.” Paul had taught her the stars and Orion was all she could remember.
“Vidalúz,” Dixie said, “we must talk.”
“Many things will happen in the morning,” Vidalúz said. “The reporter from the Miami Herald is coming. A friend has already made this arrangement.” Vidalúz patted Kate’s hand. “You will share my room with me again? Sí?”
“Me gustaría mucho,” Kate said.
Vidalúz said, “We must talk before you go. And this may be our only opportunity.”
Dixie said, “You need witnesses with you. Everywhere you go.”
“I know that,” Vidalúz said patiently. “We can work out the details in Antigua. But for now, pasa buena noche.”
Vidalúz excused herself; Kate promised to join her.
When Vidalúz had shut the door to her room, and her light behind the striped curtains had come on, Dixie said, “Come walk around the grounds with me.”
“Not tonight,” Kate said. “Please. It’s too hard.” The sentimental odor of the jasmine condensed around them.
He touched her knee, met her eyes. “I want to be near you.”
“I can’t do this….” Kate stood up.
Dixie said, “All right.” He too stood up, jingled the coins in his pockets. “Sweet dreams, my dear. God bless.”
“Likewise. Sweet dreams.”
Kate retrieved her rucksack from the jeep and went to the whitewashed room she shared with Vidalúz. A fire crackled in the corner fireplace. Vidalúz had made the room homey, lived-in, with a vase of wildflowers, her embroidered and ironed huipils hanging in the open closet. She sat up in her narrow bed, under rumpled rosettes of sheets and blankets, where she had nested, gotten up to tend the fire, nested again, surrounded by her books and papers. She had taken her hair down. She read in the burnished lamplight.
Kate changed her clothes and got into bed. Vidalúz turned out the light. They lay awake beneath the stout dark ceiling beams. Kate spoke in a pliant probe, her voice quiet, suggesting that Vidalúz did not have to respond.
“Are you afraid? You must be.”
“I have no choice. When you have no choice, fear goes away.”
Kate did not believe that. She thought of the boys on the transport truck, where they might be, their mouths, their eyes, gashes of fear. “What do you think will happen?”
“I do not know. Terrible things have happened. The Harvard University was here—did you know that? They were studying the criminal justice system of Guatemala. They have gone. They have given up. Because they say tenemos las leyes. We have the laws. But there is no will to enforce the laws. No will. Publicity is what we need. No more hiding.”
“How has it been, hiding here?”
“I do not like living like this, like a nun, but spoiled. While my husband—sí, pues, who knows, only God knows.”
The firewood had fallen; no flames arose; there were only fierce coals. No one said anything. A dog barked from beyond their environs, not close enough to be a nuisance. The kitchen was not too far from their room. Kate thought she heard Dixie in there. Filling a kettle. Keeping his own vigil.
Think of the difference between torture and death. The gulf between the two. The desire one induces for the other.
Think of that.
Vidalúz said, “Where have you been?”
“Nebaj. Xamamatze.” Kate scratched her upper back, then the small of her back. She squirmed.
“How were the people at Xamamatze?”
“All right, I guess. Alive. I could not tell if they had much hope.”
“My ancestors were slaves there in the highlands.”
“Slaves?”
“The Spaniards made them slaves. They branded them.”
“Sweet Jesus.” She scratched, rolled her shoulders.
“Is something wrong?”
“I am eaten alive with bedbugs.”
“From Nebaj?”
“Yes.”
Vidalúz sat up on the edge of her bed in her long cotton gown. Her feet did not touch the floor. “Let me see.”
“I’ll be all right.”
“Let me see.”
Kate sat up and in one motion turned around and untied a ribbon, allowing her nightgown to slip down around her shoulders. Vidalúz switched on the light and perched on Kate’s bed. “How do they look?” Kate said.
“Angry.”
Kate smiled.
“I know what you need,” Vidalúz said.
“What do I need?”
“Wait here.”
She slipped out the door and was away no more than two minutes. She returned with a vial of amber oil, a blue Chinese bowl, a white washcloth. She had run water into the bowl. “This is menta. Mint. It will give you some relief.”
“How do you know?”
“My mother taught me to do this. She picks the mint near her house. This is the oil of mint. I noticed this the other day—this will be useful, I thought. And here you are, with such a problem—”
“Menta.”
Vidalúz made a wash in the bowl with a few drops of the oil and the water. She daubed the wash on Kate’s bug bites. The mint wash stung and that felt good. Vidalúz worked caringly, talking as she ministered to Kate.
“My grandfather was a leader. His father también. They went up to the sacred mountain. They made our ceremonies.”
“Where is your grandfather now?”
“My grandmother is a widow. My mother is a widow. Two of many.”
Vidalúz pressed the mint wash against Kate’s skin.
“This moving I do,” she said, “we have been forced to move many times. We are easier to control if we live close together.”
Kate said, “In Chiapas, I worked in a camp of Guatemaltecos—Casa Buena.”
“I have heard of Casa Buena.”
Music started up, an intricate net of feeling, from a room far away from theirs: saxophone, no words. Vidalúz said, “I do not think Father Ryan is feeling well.”
“Perhaps not,” Kate said.
Vidalúz set the bowl on the nightstand between their beds. She folded the washcloth. Kate covered her bites, tied up her nightgown. They turned out the light and went back to bed.
“I could see him, down the hall. He was sitting in a big chair in the dark.”
Kate said nothing.
“Catarina—why did you not stay in Chiapas?”
“The army attacked the people. It was dangerous. And North Americans were not allowed to be there.”
“Where did you go?”
“Nicaragua. I went with a man I thought I loved.”
“Love is a luxury.”
“You love Hector.”
“My love for Hector cannot be separated from our work.” Vidalúz rose up on her elbow and stared in the dark at Kate, her face velvety in the shadow light. “Was your love of this man like that?”
Kate shook her head, almost violently. “No.” Then she too came up on her elbow and faced Vidalúz across the narrow space between their beds. “But I can imagine love like that.”
“Sí, es dulce, es terrible,” Vidalúz said.
“I admire you.”
“Don’t admire me. I don’t have a choice. To whomever much is given, much shall be required.”
They lay back in their clean narrow beds.
“Are you better?”
“Yes, thanks.”
“We will do this again in the morning. Before I go to the dock to meet the reporters.”
“Muchas gracias, Vidalúz.”
The saxophone music had swelled and faded. “Your mother,” Kate said. “What happened to your mother when your father died?”
“She lost the land we had. My father’s papers were not in order. She wants to start a market shop, a stall—she wants to sell sewing things. She loves lace and thread and ribbons. But she has no money to begin. She lives with her sister’s family in Sacapulas and dreams of this.” Vidalúz yawned, a delicate giving up.
Kate tried to enter the sleepy breathing of Vidalúz, the way you change your stride on a walk to be in synch with a friend. She wanted to rest that peacefully. But the thought of Dixie and what Vidalúz had said of him kept rearing up before her in the dark. She was accustomed to a nightcap every night, or almost every night, to soften her bones, to make them relinquish the day, the struggle. At night she thought about drinking more than any other time.
“Vidalúz?” she said in a hushed voice.
There was no reply.
Kate swung her legs stealthily over the side of the bed. She put on her glasses, groped into her rucksack for her hairbrush, and brushed her hair—three, four strokes—and decided against wearing her sneakers, though she knew there were scorpions about. She didn’t want to feel that clunky, with sneakers on under her night-gown. She felt modest enough; her gown was gathered at the bodice and yoke, made of creamy flannel, worn soft with washing. She slipped on a pair of clean socks. And she was out the door, closing it with exaggerated care.
She stood outside the room, getting her bearings. She was at the edge of the patio, with a bathroom right next door. The main rooms of the cottage lay around the corner to her left. She turned the corner; a light was on in the kitchen at the end of the courtyard. Corn and squash grew there, as well as many flowers, marigolds and pansies, lobelia and snapdragons. On a wooden column a string of miniature white lights—oddly Christmasy—lit her way.
The kitchen, electricity, sky-blue ceramic tiles in a design someone had planned quite carefully, mums in an Italian flowerpot, fruit in a bowl—the night was still possible, interesting.
“Hey, where y’at, kiddo?” Dixie said.
“Are you all right?”
“I’m just awake,” he said. He stood at a large window of twelve panes, framed with blue plaid curtains. “Watching this dog.” He nodded toward the yard. “And he’s watching me.”
Kate went to his side. A black mongrel looked eagerly up at the window, his eyes so black you couldn’t tell them from his fur. “See his tail wagging,” Dixie said. “He wants to be taken in.”
“Does he belong here?”
“I think he’s Gabriela’s watchdog. She lives over there.” A servant’s house the size of a one-car garage was situated not far away. A floodlight lit the yard between.
He took her hand. Gave her a sidelong glance. Arched one eyebrow questioningly. His hand felt square and compact, warm and padded. He said, “You smell like herbal tea.”
“Vidalúz washed my back with mint.”
“Did it help?”
“Uh-huh.” Her knees trembled.
“This feels good, doesn’t it?”
Kate watched the dog intently. “It does.”
He patted her hand and let go. He said, “I’m hungry, are you?”
They left the window; Dixie rummaged in the refrigerator; Kate sat at the table and lit a novena candle. The clock on the wall above the sink ticked loudly. Dixie slapped tortillas, a slab of cheese, a plastic bag of grated cabbage, on the counter. He opened the cupboard and took out an ornately decorated can of olive oil. “This won’t be fancy.” He set a cast-iron skillet on the stove and lit the gas with a long kitchen match. “There’s wine.”
Indeed, there was a half-full bottle of red wine on the counter, behind other bottles, sauces, vinegar, honey. Whoever owned the place had real wine glasses, neatly lodged in a slotted wooden rack overhead. Kate said, “I meant what I said about not drinking.”
“Well, then. All right. I won’t offer again.” Then he said, “Juice?”
And she took the glass of orange juice he offered.
“It’s hard to be cheerful,” she said.
“That’s the best time to aim for it,” he said. “When it’s hard.” He grated cheese over four tortillas. “Besides, you’re out of here. On to the rest of your life.”
“That’s true.”
“Tell me what it’ll be like—where you’re headed.”
“Michigan?”
“You don’t sound so sure.”
“First of all I’ll go to my mother’s. In Indiana.”
“What will that be like?”
“I imagine they’ll fuss over me. My aunts and my mother.”
“Describe the place.”
“It’s where Maggie and I grew up.” Ordinarily she would have said, Maggie and Paul and I. But she found herself leaving out Paul. “It’s green right now. It’s so lush that the weeds grow over the roads if the county doesn’t trim them. And my mother’s roses will be blooming. Climbers. White ever-blooming climbers. Used to be there wasn’t anything much out there—it’s seven miles from town, but I hear they’ve built a McDonald’s.”
Dixie made a face.
“The low road of Western civilization.” He poured oil in the skillet and eased one quesadilla into the sizzle.
While he cooked she told him about her mother and her aunts, the three of them living together in the house they had inherited from their parents; painting the gingerbread trim a different color every few years; Aunt Dodie knowing all the news from Saint Ann’s, where she worked in the parish hall; Aunt Mary Lou keeping house for them all and selling her crafts at every crossroads craft fair in the summer. She described their summer place, a fixer-upper on the Blue Star Highway near Lake Michigan. But she left out how difficult she found them, how she dreaded becoming them, how her moves and decisions had been a lump-sum revolt, so much, against them.
“And your father?”
“Never knew him. He left before I arrived.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Fact of life.”
“And Maggie’s family—they live there too?”
“Her mom lives down the road. She runs a beauty shop.”
“And Paul?”
“He lives in town. He works at Eli Lilly. In a lab. He’s a chemist.”
“Was he your childhood sweetheart?”
“Mmm. You might say that.”
“How do you feel about seeing him?”
“Not so good. His telegram was pretty mean.”
The grainy corn smell made the kitchen more like home. She had gotten used to watching him wield a spatula. “Is he generally mean?”
Kate thought that over. She sipped her juice. Then she said, “I don’t really know him anymore. It’s been a long time.”
“That’s a generous way of looking at it.”
Kate smiled. “I’m putting on a virtuous front for you.”
When he finished grilling the quesadillas, he dimmed the light, then bowed his head for just a silent few seconds, and she did too.
“What did you say? For grace?”
He said, “It’s short and sweet. ‘Feed my spirit. Make me whole.”’
Dixie watched her eat.
Kate carefully spread a teaspoon of salsa over her quesadilla. “You are making me self-conscious,” she said.
“How’s Vidalúz in there?”
“She told me about her mother.”
“She’s a wise old gal.”
“She wants to start a business—did you know that?”
“A hundred bucks’d get her started. That’s the work Jude’s doing. Setting up a bank for low-income women.”
Kate thought of the money she and Maggie had saved and lived on for years. They had been frugal even in high school, always saving back a portion of whatever they made waiting tables or babysitting.
“I didn’t know that.”
“She doesn’t talk about it much.” Then, “I know people at home who spend a hundred bucks on a bottle of wine with dinner.”
“How do you support what you do here?”
“Like that,” he said. “Money from friends mostly. I go back—to New Orleans. Or Cleveland, near my last parish. And someone’ll throw a party, a fund-raiser. The liquor flows. There’ll be food like you wouldn’t believe. Homemade everything. I might show some slides. Then the checkbooks come out. It’s usually enough to keep on with things six months or so. It doesn’t take much to keep me alive. The rest goes for supplies. And Vidalúz. And Lino. And various projects.” He put down his knife and fork. “Let me tell you what’s up with that. Since you won’t be here. To see with your own eyes—”
“Tell me.” She had finished her quesadilla and witnessed his headiness, the way his voice warmed to his subject. He had a kind voice. She watched from lidded eyes and thought, How providential, just this night, to be here with the comfort of him.
“I’m buying an old dairy farm, a goat farm, not too far from where we were this morning. Mary’s House it’s to be called. It has a lot of potential. There’s space. For maybe a clinic. And a library.”
“The church is doing this?”
“Not exactly. It’s being funded by friends. At least the initial purchase. They’ve agreed to buy the place, deed it over to me, no matter what I decide.”
“How good of them.”
“Kate,” he said, leaning across the table, “I wish you could see it. It’s up on a hill, with the mountains right there. It has a fairly new hacienda—the old one was burned down during the violence—with new stainless steel cheese-making equipment.”
“Do you know how to make cheese?”
“I’ll learn.”
“Will you write me? Send me photos.”
“Sure. I reckon I can do that.”
A silence ensued. He searched her eyes frankly, put out his hand across the table.
Kate looked down, ignored his hand, and tucked hers under her thighs.
“I’m happy here,” he said. “I don’t want to go back to the States. I don’t much like the choices there. So I don’t do Mary’s House out of some heroic love of the Maya. I do it because I want to find a way to live here once the pope and I part ways. Though I wouldn’t mind at all if some Cajun chef set up shop in my neighborhood.”
“You could be that Cajun chef.”
“I’ve got other fish to fry.”
“Is that a blender on top of the fridge?”
Dixie got up and brought down the blender. It was made of heavy chrome-plated steel and glass. “Prototype.”
“Is there milk?”
He opened the fridge and brought out a tricornered carton of milk. “What else do you need?”
“Platanos—” She pointed to the blackening bananas in the fruit bowl. “An ice cube—”
Dixie opened the freezer and nudged one ice cube from its blue tray.
“Who owns this place?” Kate said. “Is she famous?”
“She works for someone famous. Her uncle worked for the State Department. This was his.”
“Ah, the mystery of it all.”
“I do it that way to protect you.”
Kate got up and started for the counter.
With one imperative finger, he sent her back to her chair. “Now, you sit there and let me make this for you.” He peeled the bananas and plopped them in the blender. The blender growled. They could not speak above the noise. He leaned against the counter, arms folded, and he watched her, smiling, and she felt the lack of anything protective between them. She went to the window. The dog had disappeared.
Dixie poured her drink into a tall glass. He watched her take a big gulp.
“It’s good.”
“I do believe you’re starting to feel better,” Dixie said.
She wasn’t ready for that. She wasn’t sure it was fair.
“Oh, you don’t have to feel better,” he said, as though reading her thoughts.
“No, I am.” She thought about what she could say that was true.
She went to him and let him hold her. She cried.
From his back pants pocket, he took out a clean cotton handkerchief folded into a square. “Give me your glasses,” he said. She did what he said. He folded the temples of her glasses carefully and laid them on the counter. He lightly stroked her cheeks and under her eyes with the handerkerchief. “You’re okay, you’re okay,” he said. “You’ve seen the worst of your lot for a while.”
She reared back, tried to smile. Her face felt quizzical, exposed. “You think?”
“I do.”
She wanted him to hold her again, but she was afraid.
“Have you ever,” she said, “made love with a woman?”
“I’m makin’ love with one now.”
“That’s not what I mean. You know what I mean.”
He put his arms around her again. She could feel his heart beating. He held her tightly; they trembled. “Right now that’d be more than I could bear,” he said. And then he let her go, a slow release. He patted her cheeks, checked her eyes, patted her shoulders, smiled.
She went to the five-gallon agua puro bottle, poured herself a glass of water, and drank it down. The clock buzzed: it was ten o’clock. She felt drowsy, cleansed. She thought about home—her original home, her mother’s home—and she thought about the pleasure of turning on the tap and drinking water right from the spout. She thought about hot water, all the things she hoped she would never take for granted again. Dixie began doing the dishes, humming, filling the dishpan, squirting dish detergent.
“I like this,” he said. “Being with you in the kitchen late at night.”
They were on different tracks, she thought; her feelings did not go by in an orderly parade; they seemed to wreck within her. A pile-up. Damage done. She felt panic at all she could not undo.