Found in Translation (8 page)

A
leesha, take a look. What’s wrong with this picture?”

I pointed first to her luxurious Tweety Bird sleeping bag, unzipped moments ago for the first time, releasing a beautiful smell that reminded me of a new-car interior. Her full-sized inflatable pillow lay on top of it.

Then I pointed to my unadorned section of dirt, painted in the dullest of authentic earth tones and overrun with a variety of little creepy-crawlers.

“Good thing your clothes are already filthy, huh, girl? If you plan to sleep on the ground right there, maybe you shouldn’t bother putting on clean nighties. And I’d plan on using plenty of bug spray before you go to bed.”

Then she gave a thumbs-up, as if her advice would make up for my lack of bedding.

I couldn’t tell if she was trying to be funny.

We’d already done plenty of laughing, and the joy of our friendship had more than made up for having to brush my teeth in the dark; rinse my mouth with bottled water only to have trouble finding somewhere to spit it out without spraying someone; and wipe my foamy mouth on my sweatshirt sleeve like I did when I was little.

Aleesha’s support today almost kept me from griping about having to go beyond the perimeter of the field carrying the shovel to “do my business.” She warned me in no uncertain terms that if I wandered too far in the wrong direction, I might end up entangled in a sea of seven-foot cacti where no one would find me until morning, quivering painfully with a quiver’s worth of needles stuck indelicately in my tender posterior.

Being so slight of build has its disadvantages. I lacked the protective padding Aleesha had and wore so well. Those cactus needles would have struck several vital organs without taking time to introduce themselves to my skin on the way through.

Although Rob—father and grandfather that he was—had supposedly “seen it all,” I’d rely on Aleesha for medical attention on that part of my body. And how we would laugh about me getting into one more avoidable predicament.

But should I laugh now or not?

Once again, Aleesha read my mind—or my face, anyhow. “Girl, I’m just having fun with you. I’m afraid Tweety Bird wouldn’t approve of us sleeping together.”

“I’m glad to hear that. I wouldn’t, either.”

“But you don’t really plan to sleep on the bare ground, do you?” She must not have caught on yet that I didn’t have a choice.

“I’d rather sleep standing up.” I didn’t mean to sound so serious. I was just tired.

“White girls can do that?”

Aware that she was teasing me as much as I was teasing her, I gave her a “black girls can’t?” look that was pretty convincing if I do say so myself. “Only when we’re tired of sitting down all day. But it helps if we have something to lean against. We’re not cows, sheep, or horses, you know.”

I couldn’t keep from giggling then, and we laughed together. Several of our nearest neighbors peeked at us from their sleeping bags with an exhausted, “can’t you shut up and let us sleep in peace?” look in their half-closed eyes. But we were too tired to shut up, and they must have been too tired to verbalize their complaints.

“Girl, we gotta find you something to sleep on before you start sleepwalking and trip over somebody important—like me.”

I shrugged, clueless. For warmth, we could move closer to the fire, but the temperature wasn’t a problem. Softening the ground and making it clean enough to lie on? That was something else.

“Hey!” she said. “That first truck brought bedding for the villagers, right? Maybe they didn’t take it all yet. We might find something lying around on the ground where they unloaded.”

I had serious doubts about the villagers leaving anything usable lying around. Those folks wouldn’t be fussy. After all, they were starting housekeeping from scratch—without houses at that.

“Come on.” Aleesha grabbed my elbow with one hand and a small flashlight with the other.

If flashlights aren’t at the top of the list I’ve never seen, they should be.

We picked our way carefully among sleeping bodies that sprawled out this way and that. When the girls cleared trash to lay out their sleeping bags, they filled the gaps between them like masons slathering concrete between bricks in a wall. Stepping on the girls would have been safer for us, although not for the girls.

We must have spent ten or fifteen minutes reaching the cactus-less door to the field. I wouldn’t have wanted to make that trip without a flashlight.

We clasped one another’s hands—black fingers intertwining with white, white with black—and giggled all the way to the tractor trailers.

“When two friends hold hands while walking together,” Aleesha reworded the familiar scripture verse, sing-songing it in a little kid voice, “if one falls down and goes boom, they go boom together, and they can’t help one another up again because they’ll both be laughing too hard.”

We spent twenty minutes checking the boxes on the ground. Nothing.

The two eighteen-wheelers that had come with us contained building supplies. Only one of them was open, but we decided to check it anyhow. The floor of the trailer looked fifteen feet high. As short as I am, climbing up would be a literal exercise in futility. But Aleesha managed it easily, and she reached down and pulled me up.

Yep, just construction materials. If worse came to worse, I could borrow a sheet of plywood to sleep on. I wouldn’t have to lie directly on the ground then. But as difficult as navigating among the sleeping girls had been, I could just see the two of us carrying a heavy sheet of plywood without bashing one or more girls in the head.

Would I have to sleep in the truck? And be that far from the facilities? No way!

Then Aleesha flashed her light on a small box near the door. There we found it—one lone blanket nearly hidden in the shadows. Somebody had apparently tossed it there—a reject. What better choice for someone like me who felt like a total reject in her teammates’ eyes?

Will things be any better at the end of two weeks?

“You seem down now,” Aleesha said after we lowered ourselves to the ground. The blanket draped over my shoulders like a flag on the casket at a military funeral. “We’ll pray.”

She didn’t ask if I wanted to. She took for granted that prayer was the only cure for my mood. I was going to learn a lot from this girl.

So we cleared enough litter to kneel in the dirt and started talking to God. Although I don’t recall our prayer time completely, I remember begging God for peace and contentment. And thanking Him for His forgiveness.

I felt like He and I were looking at each other—eyeball to eyeball—and I imagined Him saying,
People despised and rejected My Son, too. Let Him help you with your rejection.

We prayed for the other team members the way Jesus prayed for His enemies. “Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they’re doing.” But at least my enemies weren’t putting me to death. Not yet, anyhow.

Amen.

Once we got back to our sleepsite, Aleesha couldn’t stay awake long enough to help me unfold my blanket. I was just glad she spotted it. Watching that dark lump cuddled in a nearby Tweety-covered sleeping bag with her face turned heavenward and her mouth curled into a smile couldn’t have been more reassuring.

W
ith Aleesha asleep, I was stuck with my own company. Exhaustion tended to make me irrational and pessimistic, but I’d never experienced those problems so profoundly.

My depression came back big-time. It was like Aleesha and I hadn’t prayed at all.

While flapping my borrowed blanket to unfold it, I responded to each loud report of the material with an unspoken curse. The wool felt rough and stiff after years of confinement in some long-forgotten closet or drawer—that’s how I pictured it, anyhow—and the mothball stench was a noxious gas contaminating air that had been pure a moment earlier.

Why hadn’t the donor used a sweet-smelling cedar chest instead?

When I was about to conclude she’d sewed the blanket shut as a cruel joke, it billowed to its fullest, and I spread it out on the ground. While waiting to see if the mothball vapors would make me barf or pass out, I wondered if I dared to sleep on it.

Although the stink would eventually dissipate in the open air, I didn’t expect it to happen tonight. What could possibly make my life more unbearable on the first day of a “life-changing” mission trip? Pastor Ron hadn’t warned me that “life-changing” might mean “life-giving.”

Kim Hartlinger, what are you doing in Mexico? What really? Will this trip be the second ministry of your summer to go sour?

I felt sorry for myself, and I detested that, but I couldn’t turn off the negative feelings. Where was that sense of peace God had given me half an hour earlier?

I dropped to my knees on top of the blanket—not to pray this time, but to lie back and try to unwind.

I landed faster and harder than I’d meant to. My right knee buckled under me, and I did a shoulder roll onto my back, jarring my head so hard on a rock hidden beneath the blanket that I thought my upper and lower teeth had jammed together permanently.

I bolted upright so fast my equilibrium went haywire. I covered my mouth with both hands to keep from saying several of my choicest swear words more than once.

Antagonizing the other girls more than I already had, especially in the middle of the night after such a long, exhausting day, wouldn’t win me any points. As much at fault as I’d been, I needed to act civil—no matter what they thought of me.

Or I of them.

These eighteen-year-olds weren’t like the kids back home. I’d been naive enough to expect them to be similar—despite our denominational differences. Well, so much for love and forgiveness within the Christian family.

Christian unity? What’s that, Rob and Charlie?

As I sat on the blanket nursing my injuries, I breathed a quick prayer of thanks that my un-Christlike language apparently hadn’t awakened anyone, and then I added three postscripts of sincerest apology, one each to God the Father, Jesus Christ the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Although I detested my susceptibility to swearing, I was thankful God forgave that sin more easily than Mom and Dad ….

“Kim, what kind of example do you think you set for others—especially younger kids—when you talk like that? Do you want them to grow up thinking that’s the proper way for a Christian to speak? Yes, they’re just words, but are they the right words for a Christian to use? Jesus’ call to follow Him is an invitation to be your best. You never know whom you may offend or give the wrong impression to. You might even drive somebody away from Jesus with inappropriate word choices.”

I wished they’d reword that sermon. I’d heard it often enough I could say it along with them.

Oh, they were right about swearing being inappropriate, of course, although I thought anyone it might deter was in worse shape than I was. But I never argued with Mom and Dad. Not about swearing, anyhow. Why should I? Even I could see that it didn’t have any positive aspects.

But hearing filthy language off and on all day every day of my senior year hadn’t helped. I didn’t have the courage to complain to my schoolmates about the way they talked. So I let their words sink deep into my subconscious, take root there, and sprout as noxious weeds in an otherwise well-cultivated verbal garden.

Usually at the most inopportune times. Like at DFW this afternoon and just now when I bashed my head on the rock.

Worst of all, though, I wasn’t always conscious of cursing. Sometimes I didn’t remember doing it. At least I never took God’s name in vain. I was sure of that. But I was scared I might do it yet and have lightning strike me some sunny day—like an unseen hand zapping an annoying, unsuspecting mosquito.

Figuratively, if not literally.

I needed to kick this swearing habit, and I needed to do it yesterday. I’d made a fresh start at orientation. I was proud of holding my tongue when I didn’t feel like it. But … I’d just blown it again.

Only thirteen precious days remained for giving up cursing. Could I do better tomorrow? I’d have to. After all, tomorrow would be another day. For both me and Scarlett O’Hara.

I reached under the blanket to examine the rock I’d hit my head on and snickered without amusement at finding myself between a rock and a hard place in more ways than one. My confidence about how much I’d accomplish on this trip had evaporated with the change of projects. Why didn’t I feel more enthusiastic about Santa María when I felt so sure God wanted me here?

Why had He brought me this far and let roadblocks and detours keep popping up? The worst one was my own self-doubt. If I couldn’t live up to my own expectations, how could I ever hope to live up to God’s?

If God had wanted to close the door on this trip, why didn’t He do it before I left home? At least I’d be lying comfortably in my own bed without a budding headache rather than tossing and turning on a stinky old blanket in a dirt field in the wilds of Mexico among a bunch of snobby Christian girls.

Not that the boys were much better. But at least they were out of sight in their own field.

Touching the back of my head as delicately as if it were made of butterfly wings, I winced in pain. But at least I couldn’t find any traces of blood—wet or dried—on my scalp or in my hair.

I’d inherited some outstanding physical traits from my Vietnamese mother. Not just the glossiest head of black hair a girl could hope for, but also dark brown eyes and slightly darker-than-normal Caucasian skin that resembled a permanent low-grade tan. Each summer, I worked hard at improving on it. Since my face didn’t have any Asian features, nobody knew about my mixed background unless I told them.

Because I had so much of my dad in me, I looked like an all-American hybrid. At least I didn’t get his boring, pale blue eyes. How often I wished I’d inherited a few inches of his height, though.

An all-American hybrid?

Yes, but I also looked vaguely like the natives of Santa María, who weren’t nearly as dark as some of the Latinos I’d seen. The exterior similarities didn’t do much to make my interior feel the least at home in my new surroundings, though.