A Far Country (27 page)

By the pond, she saw a man wearing a checkered shirt similar
to one Isaias owned back home, but it was new and brightly colored. Her eyes followed him until he was far away.

When the park closed, they filed along a thin sidewalk back to the bus. Alin asked, ‘Now what will you do?’

‘Cook for Hugo,’ she said absently.

‘No,’ said Alin, ‘not now. I mean,
now
—this month, this year.’

She shrugged.

‘You haven’t thought about it?’

I’m waiting, she thought. When he comes, I’ll decide.

‘You have to consider it,’ he said. ‘Or you will be stuck in the same place forever. I’m going to get a store, then expand, then maybe get two stores. Then I’ll go to school. A technical school, so I can learn to repair cameras, electronics. My mother believed that wrapping a baby in newspaper would make him grow up to be a doctor. But everyone knows you can’t just wait.’

‘Maybe I will go back to school,’ she said. ‘My father never went to school. My mother went.’

‘I don’t mean
school
, like a school in the backlands, just for reading. Anyone can read. I could read a book a day if I wanted. But you need a skill. You have to want to be something, or you will end up a maid like your cousin.’

As he began to describe a famous technical school in the Center, her thoughts drifted again. She had never considered one could do better than Manuela. Is this the way it is? she wondered. All the way along: a world full of people who want to know what you will be, what is your skill and what is your purpose. In the north, if a man had come and said,
What will you be? What will you do?
I would have laughed at this kind of person that lives all the time in the future.

‘You don’t have enough ambition,’ said Alin.

The wind was cool, and the park smelled strongly of fresh-cut grass. On a street corner, a little girl with wild yellow hair stretched out her arms and spun. Again Isabel was certain that most of her problems would be solved if Alin held her hand. It seemed as if it would rain, and she worried about getting home in time.

He came again. He took her on a train ride through the eastern settlements, to watch the shanties unwind over the hills; to the Center; to a skyscraper with views of the city.

She left the baby with one of the washerwomen, who promised not to tell Manuela, and Alin took her to a cinema, where there was a free screening sponsored by a bank. She had never seen a movie before. She was so overwhelmed by the seats, the high ceilings and the screen that when it started she began to laugh. ‘Shhh,’ said Alin. She was the only one laughing.

The movie was about a family of drought refugees in the backlands. The father worked a small plot of land on an abandoned homestead. The mother took care of the home; the children had never seen a town.

Halfway through the movie, the father was arrested and beaten. He had done nothing wrong, but he could not explain himself. The soldiers treated him as if he were a simpleton. ‘Speak up!’ they shouted, but he babbled incoherently. Watching, Isabel had two thoughts. The first was that he was hungry. The second unfurled slowly: It is not that he doesn’t know how to explain, it is that they don’t know how to understand his explanation. They are not watching his hands or his
shoulders, they are not looking at his hat and where it’s worn and where it’s broken. They are not smelling, because if they smelled his breath, they would know he is starving. They do not notice how he keeps his water gourd close to him, and protects it before he protects his face. He doesn’t have words because he has never needed words: his wife understands him without being told. At night, when they are silent, it is not because they are simple, but because he says what he needs to say in his posture, in how fast he eats, if he licks his fingers, if he sleeps early, if he cries. His wife knows just by watching his walk if he is proud or shamed. He can tell her everything by his walk. He in turn knows by how much broth she serves him what she thinks the days will bring. By the smell of her clothes, he knows if she is too exhausted to bathe. By the way she holds a child, he knows if the child is sick. Like him, her language, the language that has served since she was a little girl, is a language of gestures, postures and smells, and then speech, if speech is necessary.

The soldiers beat him with the flat edges of their knives. He moaned like an animal. Then one day he was released and began his walk home.

The lights came up. ‘It’s over?’ she asked.

Following the free screening, there was a lecture and a discussion also sponsored by the bank. A poster read
TELLING TRAGEDY: DROUGHT, MYTH AND REALITY IN THE BACKLANDS
. A panel of well-dressed men and women settled around a podium lined with glasses of water. ‘It is about the abuse of power,’ they said. ‘The domination of the strong over the weak. It is about a simple person in a world that is too complex for him.’ For a long time, they argued with one another.

After half an hour, Alin made a yawning motion, and Isabel looked back toward the door. They slipped out, bought sodas and watched the people in the street.

On the television, she watched Alexandre kiss Cindy on the lips. She thought gleefully, If Alin kissed me, I would let him, at least for a little while.

Alone, she practiced the steps to the dances for couples. She collected petals from the coral tree and wreathed them with a loose thread from the curtain. She arranged the crown on Hugo, whose cheeks glowed as if he were blushing.

Then she waited a week, and Alin didn’t return. She sat on the edge of her bed, her hands on her lap, ready to rise when he came. She tried to distract herself with the magazine or the baby. By the end of the week, she began to pace with worry. He learned who I really am, she thought, he learned I’m not the kind of person people visit, that I haven’t seen the world, that before I came here, I hadn’t even seen an apple. On television, she watched Cindy’s kind boss, once abandoned by her husband, find new love on a moonlit shore. She remembered her mother’s words: A man is like the rain, he’s worth nothing unless he stays. She considered what she would say if he came back: You broke a promise, You said you’d come and you didn’t, I waited for you, I thought I’d lost someone else, I could have been out looking for my brother, but I waited for you. I made a mistake, I trusted someone I didn’t know.

When another week passed and he didn’t come, she accepted Josiane’s invitation to go dancing. ‘The election is coming soon,’ said her friend. ‘After that it will be harder to see each other.’

Outside the banners of the campaign office, Isabel called
the pay phone by Junior’s store. ‘Do you want me to get Manuela?’ asked his cousin. ‘No, just give her a message. Tell her that I am with a friend tonight, a girlfriend. Give a kiss to Hugo. I’ll stay with my friend. I’ll be home tomorrow.’ Josiane took her hand and led her to the bus. From her stop, they walked down a long dirt street lined with container siding.

In Josiane’s house, a man slept on a floor crowded with thin mattresses. On the wall were taped magazine photographs of a snowy mountain lake and a woman on a bicycle. A curled figure lay on a single bed with a baby.

‘This is my little monster,’ said Josiane, scooping up the baby. ‘And that’s my mother on the bed. She’s sleeping. She has water on the heart so she always sleeps. When she doesn’t sleep she coughs and scratches her legs. It drives me crazy. All night she coughs. The one on the floor is my uncle—he works a night shift as a guard, only now he’s also sick. I sleep in the bed with my mother.’ Isabel held the baby. Her head lolled. She slipped her finger into her hand, but her grip was weak. ‘And the other mattresses?’

Josiane shrugged. ‘Half the time I can’t keep track. One cousin or another. People coming and going from the north.

‘Come,’ she said, and tucked the baby back into the shelter of her mother’s arms. Her mother didn’t wake. Stacked in the corner was a pile of brightly colored clothes. She pulled off the Candidate’s shirt and chose an orange top that stopped above her waist and was open between her breasts. She wriggled into it. Isabel chose the most modest top she could find, a bright yellow shirt with a high collar. Josiane gave her a miniskirt and a pair of heels. The shoes were too large, so they stuffed the toes with toilet paper. Isabel tugged at the skirt as she walked.

Josiane led her by the hand to a house where a pair of twins in black skirts and matching tops of aquamarine was dancing to a blaring radio. Their bodies seemed to overflow from their clothing. Above them, torn kites fluttered from a line. They danced to another song. Then they slipped off their sandals and slid into black boots that stopped below their knees. They sprayed each other’s hair until it hung in thick wet ringlets, and layered their mouths with maroon lipstick.

Isabel relented to their hands and sprays. Her curls swung heavily, the lipstick smelled faintly of perfume. She thought briefly of her brother. He would be angry, she knew. So would Alin. She looked for a mirror.

At midnight, they descended the hill. It had been raining and the ground was slick. They took a night bus, wobbling on their heels and tossing their hair as the bus shuddered through the streets. They got off on a block thick with discotheques. The traffic was slow, the lights of the clubs glittered in the street, the tires left prints like silvery tracks of snails. Isabel followed the girls’ rank of swaying hips up a staircase, past a group of boys in sleeveless shirts who stood by the door.

Inside, music blasted from a pair of giant speakers. The beat was furious, an electrified version of music that Isabel knew from home. Couples swirled with their thighs interlaced, hips pressed together. The twins were already ahead, dancing across the dark floor. Other girls emerged from the mass of dancers to greet them. A heavy haze of cigarette smoke hung in the room. Josiane beckoned Isabel forward and danced on.

They sat at a table off the dance floor, and a pair of older men brought glasses of warm cane liquor. Isabel hesitated. ‘Go!’ said one of the twins, kissing her cheek, and threw the
drink back in a single gulp. Isabel followed, grimacing as it burned her throat. Everyone laughed. One of the men leaned to Josiane and whispered something. His eyes didn’t leave Isabel, and a bemused smile passed over his mouth. He passed her his drink. ‘To the backlands!’ he toasted, and with everyone’s eyes on her, Isabel drank again. ‘That’s our girl!’ they cheered.

The men escorted the twins off into the swirling crowds. Isabel stayed with Josiane until other men came. When they asked her to dance, she shook her head. She felt naked in Josiane’s clothes and didn’t want to stand.

The twins returned. Josiane left. Josiane returned. All three girls disappeared, dancing, into the crowd. A pair of shot glasses were left with a thick meniscus of liquor, which Isabel drank. She felt herself beginning to sway with the pounding of the music.

Josiane returned, leading a man in a white shirt. She introduced him, but his name was drowned by the noise. When he greeted Isabel, he kissed her cheek, close to her mouth. ‘He was asking about you,’ shouted Josiane into her ear. ‘Other men, too, they all want to know who my new friend is.’ She winked. She shouted something else, but it, too, was lost. ‘I’ll leave you two alone,’ she said. The light shimmered on her lips.

The man pulled his chair next to Isabel. ‘You’re beautiful,’ he whispered. She could feel the warmth of his breath on her neck. It smelled sweet, antiseptic. He passed her a glass of beer and she drank it quickly. He smiled. ‘Do you dance?’ ‘A little … back home … not fast like this.’ She moved away from him. He was silhouetted by the dance lights, and she couldn’t see his eyes. He whispered again, but she couldn’t hear him. He took her hand from her lap.

She danced with him. She could feel his fingers glide to the bare space of the small of her back. A chain around his chest pressed into her shoulder. Light glinted from the dancers’ hair and the sweat on their shoulders. Her head spun. She felt his erection against her belly, said she wasn’t feeling well and went to sit. Now the table held a dozen empty glasses. She couldn’t remember how much she had drunk.

She excused herself and stumbled to the bathroom. A line of girls preened before a long mirror. She sought shelter in a stall and pressed her forehead against the door, trying to stop the spinning. She listened to fragments of conversation,
My God, girl, you’ve got gold feet … Girl yourself, you see who’s here? You see that little whore he’s with? … Shit, he is looking for trouble … He says Little Bird’s coming … Little Bird scares me … Of course he scares you—Little Bird would scare the dead …
She had forgotten how much time had passed when there was banging on the door and a voice shouted, ‘Hey, are you touching yourself?’ and she slunk out. She briefly stopped before the mirror, wobbling, and pushed past the girls to the floor.

Now the room was packed. She looked for a familiar face, but it was as if she had entered a door to a different discotheque. She spied what she thought was her table and wove toward it, no longer bothering to excuse herself as she collided into dancers. She was at the edge of the tables when she sensed someone weaving through the spinning crowd.

She froze. Her eyes searched the dance floor. There was only light and movement now, but beyond it all she sensed a new presence.
Isaias. Like that day on the hill
. ‘My God,’ she said aloud. She closed her eyes and the sensation vanished. ‘I’m drunk,’ she mumbled. A man bumped against her, spilling his
drink, which splashed on her knee and ran down her calf. She turned away. A girl spun past in a man’s arms. Where is everyone? she thought frantically. The room seemed impossibly vast.

She felt a hand on her elbow and turned. The man with the white shirt trapped her fingers in his. Fearing she would fall, she clung to him. He led her smoothly, floating her with his hand. At the edge of the dance floor, she turned, trying to see. ‘What’s wrong?’ he said, so close his forehead touched hers. ‘Nothing,’ she said, but she sensed it again, moving through the crowd.

She untangled her hand.