9

We wake early. No signs of stirring from Pelochucho’s room. Ben and I walk to the beach for a morning surf check—a ritual that’s become more about procrastination than actual forecasting. We take a seat on the stone staircase that leads down to the sand.

“Small.” Ben yawns. He’s brought along his multitool and a bit of tie wire to fix my broken flip-flop.

“This is Pelochucho’s monster swell?” I hand him the bad sandal. “The one we’re sticking around for?”

Ben shrugs. “Surfing’s a way of life. Waiting is part of it.”

I run my finger through the sand at the bottom of the steps. How many days and hours did I spend thinking about sand in the past two years? How far the men would have to carry it and how much, whether it was fine enough to aggregate the cement. That was river sand, of course; you can’t make concrete with ocean sand.

“Here we go.” Ben fashions a sort of wire pin to keep the rubber plug from pulling up through the flip-flop’s sole.

“I’m not going to get lockjaw from that, am I?”

“If you do, then it’s time to buy a new pair.” He hands the sandal back to me.

“Thanks.” I slip it onto my foot, then rise and take a couple steps. My toes hardly feel the wire. “It works.”

“Course it works.” Ben grins. “I may not be an engineer, but I’ve got a few tricks up my sleeve.”

Peseta wanders up to join us, a T-shirt draped over his head. “No waves,” he says.

“No waves,” we repeat in unison.

Peseta looks as frustrated as we are, though he hasn’t entered the water in years.

“Ben,” I say. “Would you mind if I take the Jeep and go to Cara Sucia? I feel like I need to say some good-byes, at least to Niña Tere.” Now that we plan to stick around here a few more days, I can’t justify not returning to my village one last time.

“Today?” He takes his eyes off the hapless surf. “I don’t mind. Want me to go with you?”

“That’s okay. I’ll do it on my own.”

Ben nods. “Not like you’ll be missing much here.”

*   *   *

El Salvador’s coastal highway, the Litoral, is the smoothest and fastest stretch of road in the country. Eastbound, not many miles outside of La Libertad, I cross the Santa Cruz Bridge, where the women of Cara Sucia—my former neighbors—do their laundry in the dry season. I crane my neck to try and spot a familiar face, but speed makes everything a blur.

I find my turn and head inland. The engine winds hard with the quick gain in elevation. The landscape grows familiar. Coastal sugarcane and coconut plantations give way to hills full of corn and beans, a few cows and pigs, humble houses of adobe walls and red clay roofs.

Soon I pass the tiny refugee camp of El Terrero. Their community—which had been a lovely hamlet tucked deep into a valley that runs parallel to this road—was demolished in the earthquake. The residents now live along the dirt shoulder in shacks made from black plastic sheeting and corrugated metal. Over the shelters hangs a homemade banner begging help from both God and the government.

Seconds later, I’m in Cara Sucia proper. A few heads turn as I park next to Niña Tere’s house and climb out.

A young man named Chago, who was a tireless worker on the aqueduct, turns and smiles, looking confused by my presence. What does he think? That I still live here? That I’ve returned from vacation? Who knows what rumors might’ve followed my exit.

Across the street, a blue-and-white cross is planted in the courtyard, covered in flowers. It’s the spot where Felix died. His grandmother must’ve built the memorial.

“Niña Tere?” I round the corner of her house. “It’s me, Malia.”

Her dog, Rambo, howls. His claws click upon the packed dirt of the floor.

“Come in, child.” I recognize Tere’s voice. Then I hear Nora’s excited squeal: “Niña Malia!”

I enter the house that is, in many ways, the beating heart of my time in El Salvador. It looks as I remember it: thick adobe walls whitewashed on the inside. Wooden beams and columns—all milled by machete—hold up a roof made of red clay tiles and bamboo crosspieces.

Upon my arrival in this village, Niña Tere took me in—long before I’d become a local celebrity with the aqueduct, back when the rest of the Cara Sucians wanted to trade me for a white male, a real gringo. I stayed here for several weeks while Tere helped me arrange for the house I eventually rented. I continued to eat with them almost every day.

Niña Tere’s husband, Guillermo, lives in Texas and works construction. He sends down generous remesas—mainly for Nora’s tuition at the private school in Los Planes. Niña Tere is a natural entrepreneur. In addition to his earnings, she mends clothes for extra money, sells tamales and bags of sweetened fruit drinks at all the local soccer games. She serves as secretary for the village council and is the only reason that body gets anything done. The other members are more interested in making speeches and granting titles. Without Tere, I doubt the aqueduct would have enjoyed its year of fruitless construction.

“Have a seat.” She uses her hand to dust off a plastic chair. “Did you bring hunger? We’re about to eat lunch.”

I nod and sit down.

“Will you stay here tonight? Do you need to bathe?” She gestures toward the cistern behind her house.

“No, Niña Tere.” I look down at the table, then finally raise my eyes. “I came to say good-bye. I’m leaving El Salvador.”

She grimaces for a half second, then nods. “I understand. With the earthquake, it must be very difficult.”

“There’s no time or money to finish the aqueduct. It simply doesn’t make sense.”

“Indeed.” Her voice chokes up a tiny bit. “Pues, we were lucky to have you. I’ll get the soup.” Niña Tere disappears into the small and smoky outbuilding that serves as the kitchen. Nora and I sit alone at the table.

“Is that your car outside?” Nora asks.

“More or less,” I say. “You remember Don Benjamín? It belongs to the two of us.” Ben and I never spent much time here, but I made sure to introduce him. “We’re going to South America, in that car.”

“That’s a long way,” she says.

“It’s a very long way,” I agree.

Niña Tere returns and places steaming bowls of soup before us: rice, potato, squash, the small dark leaves of chipilín—a wild herb said to be healthy. The stringy lace of egg white promises a hard yolk somewhere at the bottom. On her second trip, she brings a dish of salt, a stack of fresh tortillas, and a couple of quartered limes.

When I first arrived, I found the Salvadoran custom of hot soup in the sweltering midday hours ridiculous. Now it feels nice, familiar. How many days have I eaten this same meal here at this table, on this same red-and-white oilcloth? Surely, this time will be the last.

“How are things?” I ask. “With the village council?”

Niña Tere shrugs. “Not much interest in the water project. All you hear about is the earthquake now.”

I tear a tortilla in half and touch one of the corners to the coarse salt in the dish. “What do you mean?”

“The council solicits help from different agencies: clothing, plastic, food, things like that.” She speaks without enthusiasm. “That’s taken up most of their time.”

I’m confused: Cara Sucia’s homes fared relatively well during the quake. The village is in much better shape than its surrounding communities. More homes are standing than not. Certainly, there’s no lack of housing or food.

“It’s foolishness,” Tere admits. “Somebody brought out a load of blankets and mattresses last week, and people went crazy. They didn’t have enough for everyone, so they cut them in half. Can you imagine? What do you do with half a mattress?”

“But most people here have bedding, right? They should’ve taken those things down to El Terrero,” I say.

Niña Tere shakes her head, as if this episode exhausted her reason long before I learned of it. “People like free things,” she explains.

Nora commits to her soup, a few grains of soft rice stuck to her chin. I try to remind myself that this isn’t my problem anymore.

Once my soup is finished, I lean back in the chair. Niña Tere brings a soccer ball–shaped watermelon from the kitchen and sets it in the center of the oilcloth. It’s so ripe that when she touches the blade to one side, the entire shell splits all the way around.

We suck down the fruit until I think I’ll burst, gossiping and reminiscing. Niña Tere laughs out loud, recalling the sight of me in muddy work clothes, heading off to supervise all the village men.

“We’ll never see something like that again, not in this village,” Niña Tere says, nodding her head.

“Something like what?”

“You.” She points at me with her lips. “A North American, from Hawai‘i no less, coming down to work for this community.” She laughs aloud and claps her hands together. “While the rest of us are trying to sneak into your country to find work.”

We share an awkward second of silence.

“I should go,” I tell her.

“So soon?”

We say our final good-byes. Each gives me a hug.

I climb in the car but drive only a few doors down the road and stop again.

My old house already looks abandoned; vines climb the walls and front fence. I find my key and walk through the yard. A half dozen bats fly out as the door swings open. The inside looks much as I left it. The same shattered coffee mug lies across the floor. The same long crack reaches up between the cinder blocks. The only difference is the fresh bat guano, spread about the walls like hasty brushstrokes.

I’ve been living out of the backpack I grabbed on my way out of here last time; luckily, it was still half-packed from an earlier weekend trip. Now I gather up some spare clothes and other valuables and stuff them into a larger bag. I make sure to take a sweater and raincoat for the cold legs of our South American journey. At the doorway, I pause for one last look around my old home. Then I pull the door shut and leave the place to the bats.

There are other friends in this town to whom I owe good-byes. But I’m simply not up to it. I drive back to La Lib with the windows all the way down. The air feels nice against the soup-caused sweat that covers my skin.