Saving the World (49 page)

Out of guilt or a sense of responsibility, Emerson can't do enough for her. When the boys arrive at the Las Américas Airport, Emerson goes out with her. She spots them coming through Immigration. Their first time in her country and probably their last. Why would they ever come back? And Richard so wanted them to fall in love with this place! To come volunteer for a week while he was on site. But the gene for personal passions does not get passed on by blood.
Not an opinion,
but an intuition
. How to pass on that intuition? Alma wonders. Only by story, if at all.

As she watches from the glass partition, Alma realizes she is looking at her stepsons with a new intensity, trying to find traces of Richard. They are built like their father, slender and not too tall, though they seem tall here, surrounded by the shorter Dominicans. How bereft they all look, glancing around as if they are lost in this place of color and noisy crowds and oppressively bright sunlight.

Watching them, Alma is reminded of her wedding day, ten going on eleven years ago. They were just boys—Sam was only twelve, for heaven's sake—all of them trying to be happy for their father's new life, which is now over.

Interestingly, Sam is the only one to bring his girlfriend with him. Soraya Guzmán. A Latina, must be, maybe Mexican, maybe Ecuadorian, hard to pin down. “I was born here, I mean, the States,” she answers when Alma asks where she is from. You know, the brown skin, the last name of Guzmán.

Fair enough, Alma thinks. A strong, no-nonsense woman, just what Sam needs right now. Of the three sons, Sam is the one who has given Alma the hardest time, fiercely loyal to the past—the true, original family, his father's second marriage being an aberration, his violent death proof of this error. And yet, over time, Sam will be the son who stays in touch. David and Ben, both friendly, tolerant sorts, will disappear from her life except for occasional communications.

But all three will keep their promise: next summer on Snake Mountain.

“Doña Isabel, a visitor from Spain!” Benito was calling out.

My heart leapt with joy. After six long years of sacrifice and waiting, I was to be rewarded, after all. Lieutenant Pozo had come back to keep his solemn promise!

I was in bed that morning, a bad morning, of which there were many since my return from the Philippines. I had held off my own home coming to go, village by village, returning my charges: six from Valladolid, returning five; five from Guadalajara, all accounted for; one from Querétaro; six from Zacatecas; five from Fresnillo, returning four; two from Sombrerete; one from León.

My work completed, Viceroy Iturrigaray had granted me permission to settle in the city of the angels with my son, allotting me a stipend until I regained my health. Of course, what I hoped was that the lieutenant would be waiting for me and the stipend would prove unnecessary, though helpful. But no word had come from Lieutenant Pozo during my absence. So began the long wait—six years since our parting in Veracruz!—which this morning, as I heard my son's summons, I was convinced would end with gladness.

“Doña Isabel!” Benito kept calling from the front room. He knew better than to yell like that. It seemed I was back in La Coruña, unable to curb the wildness of my little boys as they stampeded down the hallways, announcing the arrival of Doña Teresa. When we returned from Manila, a
letter from Nati had been waiting for me, written the year before. Our benefactress had taken ill with a catarrh and died; Nati's own sons had been pressed into the navy; one son had been wounded at Trafalagar; a grandson had been born.

“I will be there presently,” I called from my back room. Quickly, I dressed and brushed my hair. In the glass, I appraised myself. How would I look after a six years' absence? Far too thin, gray in my dark hair. But the sun and sea and the years themselves had been kind to me, just as Don Francisco had promised. The fresh air had invigorated my skin, so that the marks were less disfiguring. Or perhaps I had learned to live with my pocked face at last.

Don Francisco and his promises … Some of them had come true, I thought as I slipped on my shoes. We had gotten news even before we left Manila that he had made it back to Spain. The only one of us to return! He had been received by the king—when we still had our king, honored at the court. But then Spain had been overrun by the French and our king had gone into exile; the world across the ocean had crumbled.

I could hear Benito chattering in the front room, a boy of about eleven now. Strange, the boy was usually more of an observer than a talker. When questioned, he often took moments to consider before replying. Although in many ways he had thrived under the bishop's direction and advanced in his studies, my long absence had hurt him. It seemed at first the boy had asked constantly after me. Then, abruptly, his questions had stopped. After my return, though I earnestly petitioned him and sometimes punished him, he would no longer call me mother. Not that there was any disrespect in his address. He used
usted
and always preceded my name with
doña
. I might have saved thousands upon thousands from the smallpox, but I had failed him. Was it possible to act in this world, I wondered, without hurting someone?

“Doña Isabel works with cures,” I heard the boy saying. “She nurses the sick when she feels well herself. Mostly, she's sick, though. She has a weak heart, and some days she has to stay in bed all day long.”

I hurried my steps. By the time I could greet my suitor, my son would have driven him away.

“Good day,” I said, entering the room. My first glimpse of the lieutenant, I thought: he is no longer as tall as I remember him.

Don Francisco!

I reeled with surprise and shock and seemed to be about to prove my son's pronouncements by fainting on the spot. Our local doctor had indeed diagnosed a weak heart and advised that I guard against anything that might excite me. How to keep life at bay in order to go on living?

Don Francisco came forward and led me to a chair. “I never thought I would see you again,” I confessed. How had he made it out? Of course, I was thinking, if an older man could get through enemy lines, why not a younger lieutenant?

“I was lucky,” Don Francisco was explaining. He had fled from Madrid when the French invaded, following the Junta Suprema to Seville and, when Seville fell, to Cádiz. It was this very junta, the only legitimate authority while Napoleon had our king in chains, that had authorized him to come to New Spain. He was on his way to the capital and had stopped in Puebla to say hello to his old friend, Bishop Gonzales. What a surprise to hear that Doña Isabel and her son were living across the courtyard in the old porter's cottage!

“I see you have made a home here.” Don Francisco gestured with a sweep of his hand, a gesture more suited to the court than to this humble house at the entrance of the Episcopal palace. He was not as ill or old as when I had last seen him in Manila. He must have gotten new teeth. And his face was fuller. He had begun wearing a wig—I believe it was a wig. Perhaps he had lost his hair?

“You look well,” I noted. “How brave of you to come see after us.”

He bowed, acknowledging my compliment. “What have we to lose but our lives, which are not ours to keep anyway?” he observed. He went on to detail his losses. His home in Madrid had been sacked; the Botanical Gardens with all his specimens from Canton and Macao had been overrun; the Royal Biblioteca with the Spanish-Chinese dictionary he had donated and hundreds of prints of medicinal plants were now part of Bonaparte's booty. His wife had died.

This last piece of news came at the end of such a long litany, I almost
missed it in the outpouring of his story. Poor Doña Josefa, to have awaited her husband for three years, only to leave the life they might have shared! “I am sorry to hear of your loss,” I intoned in consolation.

“The invasion, the destruction of our home … She never did want to leave Madrid.” He had refused the chair I offered him. His was a brief visit. He was eager to reach the capital, to ascertain the disturbing rumors circulating in Spain. The colonies were in rebellion. The vaccination juntas were falling apart. The vaccine itself was dying out. He looked around, suddenly anxious to combat this encroaching disaster. I saw the plainness of our home through his eyes—the bare walls but for a simple crucifix, the benches stacked by the door for our patients. The old porter's cottage had become our vaccination center here in Puebla. Benito and I had been granted the rooms in back. Bishop Gonzales had been kind.

As we spoke, the boy had been intently studying our visitor. He had heard about the lieutenant who would return and become his father. Was this the man? If so, why didn't I throw my arms around him? Why didn't I usher the boy forward to meet him?

“Benito, you remember Don Francisco?”

The boy thought a moment before nodding, probably sensing that was the polite answer I wanted him to give. But Benito had last seen the director five and a half years ago. Only vaguely did he recall the expedition, the Atlantic crossing, the wonderful time he had had in Havana with the Romay brothers.

“Of course, he remembers the adventure of his life!” Don Francisco laughed. “And the other boys?”

I told him about the Coruña boys, four remaining in the new Escuela Patriótica, moved over from the Royal Hospicio. The Mexican boys had been returned. All but two, who had died on the journey home.

Don Francisco's face darkened. “I wondered that I had not heard from Gutiérrez.”

What use was it sending reports to Spain when so few ships were getting through? Upon our return from the Philippines, Viceroy Iturrigaray had ordered us to remain in New Spain until a peace had been reached. He had been generous, which had surprised me, granting me a pension
and permission to live in Puebla, paying the other members in the capital a stipend while they waited to return home. Either he had received an admonishment from the court after Don Francisco's return and before the court itself fell or our poor treatment earlier had been on account of the director's temper.

I tried to explain our present circumstances, but I could see Don Francisco thought he had come back to the country he had left five and a half years ago. Now plots were rife to free ourselves before Spain fought off the French invaders and beat us back into subjection. “We are ourselves in revolution,” I ventured. “You will see when you get to the capital,” I added. “Dr. Gutiérrez and your nephews and Don Ángel Crespo … they will tell you—”

“I noted you did not include Don Pedro Ortega. Is he not in the capital?”

“Don Pedro died in Manila.” The same fevers that had almost killed Don Francisco. “He fell ill while he was vaccinating with your nephew in the islands.”

“And Gutiérrez didn't recall him?”

The case was building against our substitute director. How to bank these fires before they raged into a temper? Don Francisco would need all his tact if he was to survive in today's Mexico. I could see the years had not softened his character.

“Everything was done for him. He died peacefully in my arms.” In spite of the time that had elapsed since that day, my eyes filled with tears. Don Pedro had left behind a widow, two sons. He had saved so many lives. A whole world made better by his sacrifice. But his wife had lost a husband and his two boys a father. No one in the world could make that up to them, not that anyone would try.

Except Don Francisco. I had forgotten that about him. His ferocity for justice made him at times pigheaded but it also made him our champion. The forgotten, the downtrodden, the helpless, and powerless—he would not desert us. He would be the one to try. “We must be sure his wife gets his pension.” Don Francisco took up the fallen man's cause. “All the more reason why Gutiérrez should have notified me.”

His mind was already set against his old friend whom he had left in
charge when he departed from Manila. The pigheaded, vain man was back. This is what I found so tiring about him, I remembered. One adored and detested him in the same breath. There was no middle ground.

He did not stay long—he had many leagues to go before darkness fell. But he would be back through Puebla on his way back to Spain when he was finished. He promised to look in on the boys at Escuela Patriótica and bring me news of those adopted by families. As for how long it might take him to rebuild the vaccination juntas and restore the vaccine to New Spain, that was anybody's guess. He had alluded to the fact that he was also trying to win the hearts of the colonists back to their mother country.

Don Francisco had never taken his challenges in small portions. In that respect also, he was still the same.

“Doña Isabel, it has done my heart good to see you again,” he said warmly, pressing my hand in farewell.

Benito and I watched from our door as our visitor mounted the carriage that was waiting for him by the bishop's house. “That's not him,” the boy concluded.

“No,” I murmured. Another disappointment for the boy, or so I thought.

“We will be fine, Mamá.” He patted my back as if I were the child.

Mamá!
I tried not to show too much pleasure. Change would come in its own time and in the smallest increments. Hadn't I said so once to Don Francisco?

And sometimes it would not come at all. It was finally clear to me that the lieutenant would not be coming back. That the life I now had was to be my life, with Benito for a time.

I
N THE YEAR FOLLOWING
Don Francisco's visit, we were all caught up in the revolution that swept through the countryside. North of us, in Dolores, Father Hidalgo rang his church bells, calling his poor parishioners to defend themselves against the oppressive rule of the Spaniards. Eighty thousand marched on the capital, cutting throats and burning fields along the way, a trail of blood and death that terrified even those sympathetic to their cause from joining the rebels.