Endless Chain (11 page)

“Was?”

“Am.” He couldn’t—didn’t want to—deny it. “Am,” he repeated.

“And you lost your job because you don’t believe a training ground for military dictatorships is a good thing?”

“There’s a difference of opinion about this, of course. Many good people believe the school is necessary. I happen to think they’re wrong, but I understand their take on things. I didn’t lose my job at The Savior’s Church because we disagreed. I lost it because I was arrested at the annual protest at the Fort Benning gates. I stepped over a line I shouldn’t have stepped over, and I was convicted for it.”

She was staring at him. He wasn’t sure what she was thinking. He understood that, for many people, wilfully flouting the law, no matter the cause, was unacceptable. No matter that Gandhi had brought England to its knees and India its freedom by nonviolent resistance. No matter that Martin Luther King and his compatriots had made civil rights a national priority by facing dogs and fire hoses without fighting back.

He tried to explain but not to apologize. “I did it in the heat of the moment, and I came back from my sentencing to find I no longer had a job. My decision was not popular.”

“You went to prison?”

“We expected the first-time offenders, people who had not been arrested before, to get probation, although of course we knew that wasn’t a sure thing. That’s what I expected. I didn’t expect…” He shrugged. “The judge decided otherwise. Dozens of us were sentenced together. Priests, nuns, farmers, teachers. I was in a minimum security facility in Pennsylvania for six months. Club Fed, they call it. Unless you’ve been there.”

Usually when he talked about his time in prison his throat closed and his hands began to sweat, and he was glad they didn’t now. He still had attacks of claustrophobia in the middle of the night, slept with the hall light burning, opened doors and windows whenever he could, avoided crowded restaurants and long lines at sales counters.

“You said you wanted to change the world, that you believed change was your mission at The Savior’s Church.”

“I was young and full of myself.”

“In the end, what did you learn? That trying to change the world will only get you in trouble?”

He thought for a moment. “No, I learned that nothing is about
me.
It’s about God and God’s plan. Unfortunately, I didn’t take much time to consult the Almighty. I went to Fort Benning because it seemed like a good idea, but I didn’t put much thought behind it or make sure that was my path. I saw an injustice and waded right in. I didn’t think for long, and I didn’t pray. Ever since, I’ve spent a lot of time wondering if I did what I did for the right reasons. Was that my calling? Or was I acting on impulse, showing how courageous I was by putting my future on the line?”

“And you lost everything.”

He was sorry those words hadn’t been uttered as a question. “If I gave that impression, I didn’t mean to. I’m still not sure what I lost, Elisa. I certainly lost my job. Maybe I lost the only chance I’ll ever have to make a difference on a wider scale. I don’t know. For a while I lost my self-respect, because I acted impulsively and didn’t think about consequences. I nearly lost Christine. I did lose my freedom. The School of the Americas continues to flourish.”

“Then you’re sorry you went that day. I can see why you would be.”

On this, at least, he was sure of himself. “No, I’m
not
sorry I marched that day, even if my reasons might not have been clearly thought out. And although it was inadvisable, even melodramatic, to step across that line onto the base without praying hard enough, I’m not sorry I did that, either. My life changed in an instant, but I’m not sure it wasn’t supposed to.”

“You’re not sorry you’re here? That now you’re in a small church in the country?”

That was less clear. He tried to explain. “I’ve probably told the story badly. But the truth is, I still believe deep in my heart that what I did that day was right, even though prison was a nightmare. Will those months change anything? I don’t know. Do I wish I was still in Atlanta, preaching to thousands on Sunday-morning television?” He shrugged once more. “I’m not sure of a lot of things now. I haven’t stopped wanting to make a difference with my life, but is that ego talking, or is it the still small voice inside me?”

When she didn’t speak, he was sorry. He didn’t expect anyone else to understand what drove him or even his ambivalence about the consequences. But he had expected something of Elisa, some hint of understanding, perhaps. He didn’t need it to validate what he had done or the struggles he still faced, but he would have liked it just the same.

“I don’t expect
anyone
else to see this from my perspective,” he said. “Very few people I’m close to do.”

“What you did…” Her voice was charged with emotion. “It was
right,
Sam.
Everything
you did, whether you were absolutely clear about it or not. You spoke for people who have no voice. And your words and your actions will ring in ways and in places you will never know. How could your God want less of you?”

She got to her feet. He was so surprised, he didn’t know what to say. He sensed that if he asked her what she meant, she wouldn’t tell him. She started down the steps, but just below him, she turned. She touched his shoulder. A brief, gentle touch. Her eyes were stormy with emotion.

“Don’t let anyone tell you that you made a mistake,” she whispered.

She was gone before he realized that he was still sitting on the steps staring at her slight figure retreating in the distance.

A
doncia was having a party. Or at least that was how it looked when Elisa drove up and parked beside the mobile home on the first Wednesday in September. She had stayed late at church last night cleaning and setting up for meetings, including the quilters’ weekly bee, so there was no reason to hurry in this morning.

Her biggest mission today would be a thorough cleaning for
La Casa.
Tutoring was scheduled to begin next week, and volunteers would arrive over the weekend to set up and make sure all the supplies were in order. Elisa wanted to be sure that everything was ready.

Adoncia and several friends from the park were sitting at the sagging picnic table under the lone tree that graced her lot. Fernando and Maria were splashing in a plastic wading pool. The women were drinking coffee and dunking
biscochitos,
the anise-flavored cookies that were Adoncia’s specialty. Salsa music spiced the air from a portable radio.

Everyone enthusiastically greeted Elisa in Spanish and made room for her at the table. Despite Elisa’s protests, Adoncia went inside for another mug and returned with a pot of fresh coffee.

“We came to congratulate Adoncia,” Inez told Elisa. She was Adoncia’s age and newly married. Elisa was glad to see she had been included, since the young woman was pretty enough to have worried the other women in the park at first.

“Congratulate?” Elisa glanced at her friend. “For what?”

“Diego gave me a ring.” Adoncia held out her left hand and wiggled her fingers.

Elisa duly admired the small diamond, which must have cost Diego a large part of a month’s salary. “Are you setting a date?”

Adoncia gave a mysterious smile. “Not until we have, how do they say it here, a meeting of the minds?”

Elisa was sure she knew what that meeting would be about.

Patia, who was also young but worried no one due to a wide girth and protruding teeth, took another cookie and passed the platter. “I’d like to have a meeting of the minds with my Manuel. He says when I have babies I don’t need to see a doctor, that childbirth is natural, and when I have pains, he will take me to stay with his aunt. She has delivered babies before.” She rubbed her belly. “My sister says he is crazy.”

Elisa had met Manuel and found him both rational and concerned. This attitude surprised her, but she suspected it had more to do with a lack of insurance than with superstition or custom.

“When the time comes,” she told Patia, “we’ll find you a doctor right here who will help for whatever you can afford. There are too many problems an aunt might not know how to fix. A doctor is better, or a good midwife.”

“I had a midwife,” Adoncia said. “For Maria. She was as good as a doctor.”

“But she was a trained midwife, and there was a hospital nearby, right?” Elisa said.

“You know so much about these things,” Inez said. “You knew what to do when I had cramps. No one else could tell me.”

“What did you tell her?” Adoncia asked. “Me, I take aspirin and complain as loud as I can.”

“Inez is allergic to aspirin,” Elisa said.

“I turn red, like a berry,” Inez said.

“I told her to try oregano tea,” Elisa said. “Boiling water, oregano. Let it steep and strain it. It helps some women.”

“It helped me,” Inez said. “The doctor had nothing to try except patience.”

“How do you know so much?” Patia asked. “You were the one who told my sister to eat yogurt when she itched down there all the time.” She pointed under the table.

“She itched on her feet?” Adoncia said.

“No! In places above her feet.”

Adoncia was grinning. “Her knees?”

“Adoncia,” Elisa chided. “She had a yeast infection. From too many antibiotics for a sore throat. You can stop pretending you don’t know.”

Everyone laughed.

“Yogurt?” Adoncia said.

“And cream from the drugstore. The yogurt helps keep it from coming back.”

“How do you know so much?” Patia repeated.

Elisa noted the interest on all their faces. “My sister is a midwife. I used to help with her patients. She taught me a lot. I wanted to be a nurse, but my life went in a different direction.” That part, at least, was true.

“I wanted to be a movie star,” Patia said. She waited a moment as everyone struggled silently for a response. “You think I’m not joking?” she demanded.

Everyone laughed, and the subject changed to recipes and Brad Pitt as more
biscochitos
and hot coffee made the rounds.

After the other women had gone home, Elisa helped Adoncia clear the table. Inside, she washed the dishes, while Adoncia dressed the children. When they were happily settled in front of the television, she came into the kitchen to put the newly dried cups and saucers in the cupboard.

“You have many sisters, many
convenient
sisters,” Adoncia said. “And your life changes each time you tell the story. I don’t think you have a bad memory, Elisa. I think you have bad memories.”

Elisa was surprised. She and Adoncia had never talked in depth about her past. Adoncia had seemed to understand it was off-limits.

“Part of being here,” Adoncia continued, “in this country, is putting the past behind us, yes? I have done this. I have buried my Fernando. I no longer cry for my family in Mexico. But I have secrets, too, and stories I would rather not share. Once Fernando came after me with a knife when he had been drinking too much. He wanted to kill me. I have never told anyone about that night, but I have a scar right here to remind me.” She pulled down the neck of her blouse and showed a jagged scar across her breast. Clearly it had never been stitched, and it had not healed perfectly. “I told Diego I fell when I was a little girl.”

Elisa put her arm around Adoncia’s waist in comfort. “I’m sorry. I’m glad Fernando’s not here to threaten you anymore.”

“Diego would never hurt me. This is part of why I love him so much.”

Adoncia slipped her arm around Elisa’s waist and squeezed, and for a moment the two women just stood together, glad for each other’s friendship.

Adoncia pulled away at last. “I love
you,
too, Elisa. And I will never hurt you. Someday, if you want to tell me the truth about yourself, if you need to tell somebody, I will be here waiting.”

Through the years, the house that was known as
La Casa Amarilla
had undergone many renovations. Elisa could only guess what had been added and what was part of the original dwelling. It was hard to imagine a family living in a fraction of this building, as the original settlers must have. Of course, she had been in mountain villages with homes that were smaller than the living room here, homes with large families that still made room for strangers in need.

But this was different. There had been no village here, only a lone house separated from its neighbors by distances it might have taken a day or more to cover on horseback. No grandmothers or cousins lived nearby to discipline a child who was misbehaving. No uncles or brothers lived in the next house to help with harvests or a winter supply of firewood.

As she vacuumed and dusted, mopped floors and scrubbed bathrooms, she wondered what those settlers would think of the house and community now.

Once the children arrived the house would be dirtier, but today she finished everything except the kitchen in an hour. Once there, she scrubbed the double sinks, removed everything from the counters and sponged them clean, wiped the stove and checked inside to be certain the oven didn’t need cleaning, too. She scoured the refrigerator, threw out the old ice in the freezer and put fresh water in the trays.

Almost everything went smoothly. The old-fashioned walk-in pantry was the only trouble spot, overlooked by the volunteers or assigned to someone who hadn’t wanted to do the work. The shelves were thick with dust, and old mousetraps—luckily empty—remained ready and willing in the corner.

She began by throwing away the traps and a few food items that hadn’t been removed when Martha Wisner left the house. Then she hauled a chair into the narrow space and climbed up to begin dusting, closing the door into the kitchen so the dust wouldn’t undo her good work. One bare bulb lit the area and shed just enough light to let her see what she was up against. She removed the top layer of dirt from the highest shelves, then climbed down and proceeded to the lower shelves, shaking her rag often into the plastic garbage bag she’d brought with her.

With the first layer removed, she went back into the kitchen and filled a bucket with water and detergent, and brought it back into the pantry. She set the bucket on a lower shelf, soaked a new rag in it, and began to wipe down the shelves, stopping often to soak and wring it out again, until the water was too dirty to be helpful. Two more trips to the kitchen for fresh water and she finished the top round of shelves.

Disaster struck on the second level. Leaning forward to reach a corner where two shelves connected, she lost her balance. As she fell forward, she threw out both hands to grab a shelf, hoping to break the impact. The chair tilted, and as she fell against the shelf with all her weight, it came loose and flipped over, toward the wall behind it. She went with it, her hand slamming against the wall.

The accident was over in seconds. She was grateful to find that only her arm was scratched and her ankle throbbed slightly, because she had landed so hard on it. The others shelves had remained in place, and the disaster that had flashed through her mind, every shelf following the one she had dislodged, had not occurred.

“¡Carajo! ¡Me lleva quién me trajo!”

The expletives were mild enough, but she felt better. She tested her ankle and decided it would be fine. The scratch wasn’t even bleeding. Then she looked at the wall.

A section was missing, as if it had never been there.

For the briefest moment she wondered how one small woman could have knocked out an entire section of wall-board. Then she realized that wasn’t what had happened at all.

She removed the shelf that had flipped, then another and another. And in a few minutes, her suspicions were confirmed.

She wondered if Sam was available to see what she had discovered.

Sam was just about to start on his lunch when Elisa stepped into his doorway. “Do you have a few minutes?”

For a moment he was afraid she had come to resign. She’d been doing the sexton’s job for a week now without Marvin, and he was worried she might find it too difficult. One glance at her expression set his mind at ease. Elisa looked unruffled. If there was news, it wasn’t bad.

He got to his feet. “Have you had lunch?”

“I thought I’d eat when I got back to Helen’s.”

“I brought enough for two. I’ll share. What do you want to show me?”

“It’s over at
La Casa.
”

“We can eat on the porch. It’s a good afternoon for a picnic.” He lowered his voice conspiratorially. “But we can’t let the quilters catch us. They’ll find out I don’t work every single minute.”

She laughed. “You’re sure you have enough lunch?”

“Plenty.” He held up a Rambo lunch box. “It’s packed full.”