Blue (8 page)

But when she saw him on that last day, he looked miserable. They had missed each other's company all week, and had Skyped several times, which he loved, and she enjoyed it, too. But losing someone, even for a few months, was all too familiar to him, and no amount of reassurance could convince him that she was coming back. He was too scarred by his earlier losses, and his mother's death at five, to have faith that he'd see Ginny again. Everyone had abandoned him till then. His mother and father by death, and his aunt by choice.

She hugged him tight when she left him on the front steps of Houston Street on Sunday night, and she went home to finish packing her bags. She was leaving for Kabul in the morning, and she promised to e-mail him whenever she could. In the farthest outposts she often didn't have Internet access, but when she traveled to less remote areas, she did. She said she'd stay in touch with him, and two agonizing tears rolled down his cheeks when she left. She cried on the subway all the way uptown.

Becky called her that night to say goodbye, and had a knack for saying all the wrong things. Ginny's heart already ached after saying goodbye to Blue. The time they had spent together and the relationship they had formed so unexpectedly had been a rare gift to both of them, and Ginny was intending to continue it when she got back. And she'd been researching LaGuardia Arts high school for him, and wanted to convince him to apply when she got back.

She'd called the school and they had told her that students applied in fall and winter for the following year, and auditioned in November and December, and he was already two months past when final applications were due. Acceptances were being mailed that month. She had explained his unusual circumstances and been told that a special review of his situation might be possible, as a hardship case, particularly if he was as gifted as she said. They promised to explore the possibility of making an exception for him, while she was away, and would be in touch. She didn't want to disappoint Blue, so she hadn't told him yet.

“Thank God you finally got that kid out of your house,” Becky said when Ginny told her he was at a youth shelter. “I thought you'd never get rid of him. You're lucky he didn't kill you.”

“You don't know what you're talking about,” Ginny answered, in an irritated tone that masked her sorrow at saying goodbye to him hours before. She had her own issues about losing people, too.

“No, you have to stop doing crazy things like that. One of these days, someone will do you in, and no one will be surprised. And you didn't come out to visit Dad,” she said with obvious reproach in her voice.

“I'll come out next time, I promise,” Ginny said unhappily, her guard down for a minute, despite her sister's acerbic comments. “It's just hard for me.”

“It's harder taking care of him,” Becky said bluntly, “and he's getting worse. Next time might be too late—he may not recognize you at all. Sometimes he doesn't recognize me, and he sees me every day. He got lost again this week, and went out with no clothes on yesterday after his bath. I can't do this forever, Gin. We have to figure something else out soon. It's hard on Alan and the kids.” What she said was true and made Ginny feel guiltier than ever for not helping her.

“We'll talk about it when I get back.”

“When? In three months? Are you kidding? He goes downhill faster and faster every day. And you're going to feel like shit if he dies before you come home.” Her sister's words hit Ginny like a punch in the stomach.

“Let's hope he doesn't,” Ginny said miserably, feeling like the worst daughter and sister on the planet. She already felt like the worst wife and mother, for having allowed Mark to drive them when he'd had too much to drink and she hadn't seen it. And now she might miss her chance to say goodbye to her dad. But she could only withstand so much loss. She was a little bit like Blue that way, after losing Chris and Mark.

“Well, I hope that's the last of that homeless kid at least. That's one headache you don't need.” Ginny said nothing, Becky had said more than enough. She was depressed when she got off the phone, and already missed Blue. She hoped he'd be all right while she was away. She had done the best she could, getting him back into school, and living at Houston Street. It was up to him now to stick with it, and hang in until she got back. And then they could think about his future and high school in the fall.

She hardly slept that night, thinking about him, and he Skyped her the next morning before she left. He looked as sad as she did and thanked her for the fantastic laptop again. He was sleeping with it under his pillow, and even one night between his legs, so no one could take it from him. It was never out of his sight or his hands, even in school.

“I'll see you soon, Blue,” she said gently as they looked at each other on the screen.

“Just make sure you come back!” he said, scowling at her, and then slowly he smiled. It was a smile she knew she would remember every moment that she was away. And then as she looked at him, without another word, he pressed the button to disconnect Skype, and he was gone.

As often was the case to reach the places where she was assigned, Ginny flew from New York to London, and had a layover there. She hated the massive size and chaos of Heathrow, but knew it well. And she Skyped Blue while she waited. He was on a break at school, so they talked for a few minutes, and after that she dozed in a chair for several hours, and then caught the flight to Kabul. She slept for most of the trip and then took another plane to Jalalabad in eastern Afghanistan where an SOS/HR worker would pick her up to drive her through the Hindu Kush, through the town of Asadabad on the border of Pakistan, to a village along the Kunar River, where the camp was located.

Conditions were more rigorous at this camp than she remembered. For five years, they had functioned without the help of Doctors Without Borders, but they had started working there again, so they had good medical assistance, but the camp was more crowded than when she'd been there before. They had limited supplies, no comforts whatsoever, and, trying to meet everyone's needs, the atmosphere of the camp was stressful for the workers. But SOS/HR functioned as efficiently as it could in what was essentially a war zone, and had been for over thirty years.

Ginny's driver was a young worker in his early twenties, who was doing his master's thesis on the camp she'd been assigned to. His name was Phillip, and he had been studying at Princeton, and was full of innovative new theories and naïve ideals about what they should be doing there and weren't. She listened patiently while he talked to her about it, but she had far more experience than he did, and was more realistic about what they could achieve. She didn't want to discourage him but knew that most of what he was suggesting was twenty years away, if that. The situation in Afghanistan was intense, and had been for many years. Women were subjected to appalling abuses, and one in ten children died.

Ginny could hear gunfire in the distance as they approached the camp. Her driver told her that the camps in Jalalabad itself were even worse than here. There were more than forty camps in the city, mostly made up of mud huts and shanties, where people were dying from lack of food. Children seemed to be the hardest hit, and many families had gone there to escape the fighting in the provinces, only to die from lack of food and irregular medical care at the refugee camps in the city. It was hard to know which was worse.

After nearly three years in the field, Ginny knew that sometimes it was just about helping the locals survive the hardships that they faced, not teaching them a new way of life or changing the world. She was used to dealing with women who'd been severely wounded, children who had lost limbs or were dying of terrible diseases, or of simple ailments they had no medicines for. And sometimes their clients died just from having been through too much. Her work was about supporting them in whatever way she could, and doing what was needed.

As Ginny stepped out of the truck, she felt an enormous wave of relief wash over her. Being here, in a place like this, where nothing mattered except human life and the simplest of survival skills, brought everything down to the value of human dignity and life. And everything else that she had been through disappeared the moment she arrived. She felt needed and useful and could at least try to make a difference in these people's lives, even if the results would be less than they hoped for.

There were children wandering through the camp in barely more than rags, in plastic sandals or bare feet, despite the freezing cold, and women wore burqas. She had put one on herself the moment the plane landed in Jalalabad, so as not to offend anyone or cause a problem at the camp. She had lived and worked in burqas and with her head covered before. She had thought about Blue several times on the long flights, but faced with what she had to do here, he was all but forgotten. She had done what she could for him, but she had more important work to do now, and she needed her wits about her to focus on her job. The country was in a constant state of civil war. And she knew from Phillip that many of the insurgents were living in caves nearby, which didn't surprise her, either.

There was a medical station at the edge of the camp, and wounded civilians were frequently brought there. A shocking number of them died, too badly injured by the time they were brought in, and often with festering wounds that had received little or no medical treatment until then. Everything was as basic and rudimentary as it could get. Their supplies were brought in by helicopter once a month, and they had to make do with what they'd been given until the next drop. Doctors Without Borders came regularly to tend to the more seriously ill, and the rest of the time, the workers did the best they could with the materials at hand.

Ginny and Phillip were among the few nonmedical personnel in the camp. And in the past, on similar assignments, Ginny had been brought into the operating tent to hold bowls filled with evil dressings and bloody rags. You had to have a strong stomach to work there, and a strong back to do heavy work, often helping to unload trucks full of supplies and equipment, and above all you had to have a willing spirit and a loving heart. She couldn't change their living conditions, or the state of the country, but she could make them a little bit more comfortable in some way, and give them solace and hope. By being willing to live with them in the camp, and experience the same dangers, she told them through her actions how important they were to her.

Two little girls holding hands stared at her, then smiled as she walked across the camp to the main tent. Most of their equipment and supplies were old military surplus, but were functional and served them well. She was wearing heavy army surplus gear and rugged boots with a man's parka, and it was freezing, and had been snowing earlier that day. She was wearing the burqa over her heavy clothes, and whenever she removed it, she had an armband that identified her as a human rights worker, with SOS/HR's logo printed across it, and there were two men in the camp wearing the armband of the Red Cross. SOS/HR worked closely with them.

Ginny went to report her arrival and introduce herself to a burly redheaded Englishman with a huge mustache. He was sitting at a makeshift desk in the main tent with butane heaters around him. At night, they slept in tents, or in the trucks. The man in charge of the camp was ex–British military, and his name was Rupert MacIntosh. He was new since she'd been there, but he had been working in the field for years and was well known for his competence. Ginny was delighted to meet him.

“I've heard about you,” he said to Ginny when he shook her hand. “You have quite a reputation as something of a daredevil. I want no accidents here, I warn you. We do all we can to avoid them. I'd like to keep it that way.” He looked at her sternly and then grinned. “Fetching outfit, I must say.” She laughed at that, too, with her burqa over her heavy clothes, with hiking boots. He had also been told that she was very pretty, but it was hard to tell with everything she had on. She was even wearing a wool cap under the burqa. They dressed for the weather there and the heavy work they did, and nothing else.

He described the missions they had been concentrating on so far. A number of women and children had found their way to the camp, and the locals didn't like it when they refused to return home, to be mistreated again. But sooner or later they would have to. He told Ginny there had been a stoning in a nearby village two days before, of a woman who had been raped. She had been blamed for the rape, by “tempting” her attacker, and killed. The man had gone free, to return to his home. It was typical of the situations they had all encountered many times.

“Do you ride?” he asked her, and she nodded. She had noticed horses and mules tethered in a roped-off area, for when they went into parts of the mountains where there were no roads. She had also ridden while on assignment in similar places.

“Well enough.”

“That'll do.”

When she joined the others in the mess tent later, she noticed how many nationalities there were—French, British, Italian, Canadian, German, American—all human rights workers from organizations that were combining their efforts. The mix of nationalities made it more interesting to be in the camp, although everyone spoke English, and she spoke a little French.

The food was as bad and scarce as she had expected it to be, and she was nearly falling asleep in her plate, at the end of the meal after the long trip.

“Get some sleep,” Rupert said, patting her on the shoulder, and a German woman led her to their tent, where she was assigned a cot, one of six, just like Blue at Houston Street. Ginny found it comforting to be down to basics and living in such a rudimentary way. It put everything else into perspective, and one's problems ceased to exist. She had discovered that the first time she came here, on her first assignment. She was too tired to take off her clothes that night, and fell asleep as soon as she crawled into her heavy sleeping bag on the cot, and didn't wake up until dawn.

The next day she went to work in the tent she'd been assigned to, taking case histories of the children, with the help of a translator. They never got involved in local politics and had strict orders not to, and none of the insurgents had bothered them in the past year, although that could change at any time, as they all knew.

She'd been there for a week when they went up into the mountains on mules, snaking on narrow paths along a cliff, to find out if anyone needed their assistance, or to be brought down for medical care. They brought two unridden mules for that purpose, and brought a six-year-old boy back with them, and his nineteen-year-old mother. The boy had been badly burned in a fire and was disfigured but had survived. The girl left five other children in their hut with her own mother. Her husband and father hadn't wanted her to leave their village, but had finally agreed for the sake of the child. Her face was heavily veiled, and she spoke to no one on the way, and kept her eyes downcast. And she was quickly absorbed into the group of local women when they returned to the camp.

Ginny was busy from dawn to nearly midnight every day, but she never had a sense of danger. The people in the area weren't hostile to them, and the number of women and children in the camp kept growing. It was another month or so before she went to Asadabad, the capital city of Kunar Province, in one of the trucks with one of the German women, an Italian man, and a French nun. Rupert had asked her to send several e-mails from Asadabad, where they had Internet reception, since at the camp they had none. There was a Red Cross office that they were allowed to use. She walked in with Rupert's list of communications and reports to send. They gave her a desk and a computer to work at, while the others walked around town. After she sent Rupert's messages, she decided to check her own e-mail, rather than join the others for lunch.

She had three messages from Becky, reporting on their father's deteriorating condition, and asking her to call when she could. She had been in Afghanistan for six weeks by then, and Becky's last message was two weeks old. She had finally given up trying to reach Ginny, and sounded exasperated by her silence since Ginny couldn't receive e-mails, a fact Ginny had warned her of before she left. And there was an e-mail from Julio Fernandez at the Houston Street Shelter, and one from Blue that was only three days old. She decided to read Blue's first and opened it quickly. She had thought of him since she'd been there, but most of the time she had had more pressing things on her mind. Her days were very full.

Blue's e-mail began with an apology, and as soon as she saw it, she could guess the rest. He said that the people at Houston Street were very nice, but he hated all the rules. He wasn't crazy about the other kids, either. Some were okay, but one of his roommates had tried to steal his laptop, and it was so noisy at night he couldn't sleep. He said it was like living in a zoo, so he had written to tell her he had left. He didn't know where he was going, but he told her he'd be fine, and said he hoped that she was safe and would be back soon, in one piece.

After she read it, she saw there was another one from his school. It advised her that Blue had dropped out two weeks after she left. And the last one from Julio Fernandez said that they had tried to convince Blue to stay, but he had been determined to leave. He said that Blue didn't do well with their routine and was too used to doing what he wanted on the streets. He said it wasn't unusual, but it was incompatible with what they expected of their residents. So Blue had done exactly what Charlene had said he would, he had run away from the shelter and dropped out of school. And now she had no idea where he was and couldn't do anything about it. And she would be there for another six weeks. With so little communication available to them, and none at the camp, her hands were tied. And there was no way to track him down from here.

She answered Blue's e-mail first, and told him that she hoped he was okay. She made a point of telling him that she was fine. And she begged him to go back to the shelter and the school. She reminded him she was planning to come back at the end of April, and told him that she expected to see him at the apartment as soon as she did. She tried to reassure herself, remembering he had managed without her for thirteen years, and she was sure that he would survive on the streets for another six weeks, although she wasn't pleased with what he'd done. She was very disappointed that he hadn't managed to stick with it, particularly at school. But she'd see what she could do when she went back. In the meantime, he was on his own, and would have to live by his wits, as he had before. And she knew that he knew life on the streets well.

After that, she thanked Julio Fernandez for his efforts and said she'd be in touch when she got back. She wrote to his school and asked if they would consider it a leave of absence, and promised that Blue would catch up on the work when he returned. It was all smoke and mirrors, but it was the best she could do for now. And then she wrote to Becky and told her they had no means of communication at the camp, except radios that were used only for emergencies and weren't long range. She kept her e-mail to her sister short, then called her on the phone from the Red Cross office. Becky answered her cell on the second ring.