Found in Translation (20 page)

She trembled from head to toe. Although I wondered at first if she was having a seizure, I concluded that terror had overwhelmed her and left her powerless to escape.

Anjelita approached her. I thought she was going to help the fallen child up.

But she snapped at the older girl with such rage that the other children ran off, leaving their friend behind. “Crista,
no soy
maldita!” Anjelita screamed those words repeatedly as if she couldn’t get them out of her system: “No soy maldita!”

The strength and depth of her venom shocked and terrified me. When she quieted down again, I held her close and wiped the tears away with my shirtsleeve. She’d never seemed quite as small and vulnerable before.

I remembered that she’d preceded her first “No soy maldita!” with another word, one that sounded like KREES-tuh. I was afraid she’d used Jesus’ name in vain until I remembered my lesson about amigo and amiga. KREES-tuh had a feminine ending, so she wasn’t saying Christ.

Maybe KREES-tuh was the name of the girl who’d angered Anjelita and still lay cowering on the ground.

Mahl-DEE-tuh. What is mahl-DEE-tuh? That word—or was it several short words grouped together?—sounded vaguely familiar, yet I couldn’t place it. Not unless … wait. It sounded ever so vaguely like
maudite,
which was French for … for what? I’d learned hundreds, maybe thousands of French words in high school. How could I make myself remember this one?

Instead of frustrating myself further, I let my mind go blank for a moment, and the answer came almost immediately.

Cursed! Maudite meant “cursed”! Maybe mahl-DEE-tuh did, too. That made sense. If that bratty Crista had accused Anjelita of being cursed, then … of course. “No soy maldita”—Anjelita must have told her, “No, I’m not cursed!”

Where would a child get the idea that someone as precious as Anjelita was cursed, anyhow? That question required amazingly little thought.

As limited as my past contact with kids was, I knew American children tend to repeat what they hear at home. Whether that was also true in Santa María’s culture, I didn’t know, but where would a child acquire such cruel attitudes except from the most important adults in her life?

Or from other children who’re quoting their most important adults.

If I was right about parental prejudices infecting their children’s attitudes toward Anjelita, why did they feel that way?

She was just a child—a normal child, as far as I could tell, in every way but one. Surely the villagers didn’t think her missing arm was a sign of being cursed. Such a barbaric idea belonged in biblical times, not now.

And yet—as Pastor Ron had pointed out on numerous occasions—the world was probably no less barbaric now than in Jesus’ day.

So why should I be shocked to discover that people still equated misfortune with punishment? Punishment can affect the innocent as much as it does the guilty. Sometimes more. What sin did the villagers think little Anjelita was being punished for? Who had committed it, and when?

And if they didn’t believe in the God I knew, loved, and served, who did they think was doing the punishing?

Once more, I fretted about the villagers’ spiritual needs. My heart ached for them to know and love my God. But without any knowledge of Spanish, reaching them would require a miracle equivalent to the parting of the Red Sea. God hadn’t provided a Spanish-speaking Aaron to translate for me, and I didn’t think He would.

Although I would keep looking for a way to witness to the villagers, the immediate need was changing the children’s attitude toward Anjelita. If I could reach them, they might reach their parents. If my theories were correct, that is.

I reached into my jeans pocket for a small container of acetaminophen. I’d browbeaten myself into a medium-sized headache dwelling on deeper issues than I normally think about. I looked at the ground where Crista was still cowering. She hadn’t moved. Petrified by fear, she hadn’t attempted to escape. My angry glare bound her as securely as a ship’s rope.

Crista couldn’t take her eyes off my cast. Maybe she thought I was permanently disabled, too. She probably had vivid images of horrendous injuries beneath my cast, or maybe she thought the cast itself was the injury. Covered with vivid purple and written all over, it must have looked horrible to someone who didn’t know what it was.

Despite my anger—or perhaps because of it—God began nudging me.
Lord, no! You don’t expect me to be this flexible, do You?

I knew the answer before I asked, though.

Although I was still hugging Anjelita, I freed my good arm and beckoned Crista to join us. She didn’t respond. Her face was dripping with sweat—and probably not just from the heat.

Anjelita must have thought I was crazy to act friendly toward Crista, but we looked into one another’s eyes as we’d done so often that day, and I want to believe she saw God’s love there, even though she didn’t understand it.

I said in a near whisper, “It’s all right now, Anjelita.”

And it was. Anjelita smiled at me and then turned to Crista and motioned for her to come join us. She didn’t hesitate this time.

During a prolonged three-way hug, I let Crista—I encouraged her to—examine my cast. She’d apparently never seen one before.

Then came the moment of truth. Anjelita extended her stub to Crista and, after what sounded like a bit of gentle coaxing, Crista touched it so lightly with one finger that she probably didn’t ruffle a single feathery hair on Anjelita’s arm. She ran her hand over the smooth skin on the stub and then examined Anjelita’s upper arm.

She held her own arm up for a closer look, apparently comparing it with Anjelita’s, and her eyes opened wide with fascination. I could almost read her mind. “Duh! Is this all we’ve been afraid of?”

After hugging Anjelita with both arms, Crista kissed her cheek and started to leave. But then she came back and kissed me, too. When she scampered off, her step was light.

Moments later, all of the children returned. Whether they would accept Anjelita now, I couldn’t say, but at least the fear had disappeared.

With the confidence of an experienced teacher, Anjelita carefully taught me each child’s name. After pronouncing a name slowly and distinctly, she made me repeat it until I got it right.

Of course, with my Georgia drawl, a mind soaked to capacity in the rules of high school French, and a little stumbling over my own words, I couldn’t say how right “right” was. Maybe that’s why my efforts to master the kids’ names tickled them so much.

Even Anjelita laughed with them.

Although she seemed willing to share me with these would-be friends, she was determined to control our interaction. When Estéban and Felicita tried to get my attention and tell me something without going through Anjelita, she shook her head, her long dark hair blowing this way and that in the breeze, and said no along with other words she spoke too quickly for me to jot down.

I understood
mi amiga,
though—
my friend.
Anjelita wanted to be the children’s only means of access to me. If I’d been God, she would have insisted on being the high priest. That didn’t surprise me as much as it disturbed me.

These children may have given up believing Anjelita was cursed, but they didn’t argue when she said no. They jumped back as if being near her was like sitting on a treetop during a thunderstorm.

But she always smiled again. Soon. The danger was past. The children resumed whatever they’d been doing, their apprehensions forgotten. I hoped these incidents would soon lessen in frequency and severity.

Close to suppertime, Anjelita ran to greet a village woman I hadn’t noticed before. They smiled, kissed, hugged, and giggled. The “and what have you been doing with my daughter?” look she gave me wasn’t exactly a stare, but it didn’t contain a single detectable hint of warmth.

I recognized my name in the conversation between Anjelita and her mother. I didn’t see anyone around who might be her father, though; I wondered if he’d died in the tornado. She dragged her mom over to where I was waiting, pointed to her, and announced, “Señora Rosa.”

Wanting to show Rosa how pleased I was to meet her, even if she didn’t feel the same way, I walked forward to hug her. But she backed up as if trying to avoid physical contact. I stopped as if I’d encountered a police roadblock.

Her reaction didn’t bother me at first. I knew other people who didn’t hug strangers. Nonetheless, I came from a family, a church, a whole town full of huggers; and no one remained a stranger long. The women hugged one another. The children not only hugged but pecked one another on the cheeks, grown woman style. Even the men were as apt to hug one another with a masculine clasp as they were to shake hands. They often did both.

The more I thought about it, the more Rosa’s reaction drained the joy from my heart like water dripping from a soggy paper cup. In my head, I knew better than to take it personally, even though my heart didn’t always listen to my head.

But more than rejecting a harmless hug, Rosa seemed indifferent about—perhaps
resistant to
was more accurate—meeting me and learning my name. Had I unwittingly gotten into the middle of a family squabble?

Maybe Anjelita had disobeyed her mother by being gone all afternoon and Rosa was blaming me. Yet the way mother and daughter had greeted one another was not the way parents and children act when they’re upset.

Despite her dark cloud-covered reaction, Rosa was a beautiful woman in her late twenties or early thirties, and Anjelita looked very much like her—the same perfect skin, dark eyes, and long, shiny hair.

Anjelita rarely stopped smiling, but Rosa hadn’t smiled once. Strange.

As friendly as the other villagers had been, my presence apparently pleased them. They acted like I was one of them, and I felt at home. Rosa couldn’t have been more the complete opposite.

I wanted to reach out to her—to get closer. Her life story would be fascinating, especially regarding Anjelita’s handicap. But even if by some miracle—and that’s what it would take—she grew to accept me, how would I be able to hear it?

My linguistic limitations had become a double curse. I couldn’t witness to the villagers, and that was a huge issue. But I couldn’t communicate with Anjelita’s mom and establish a favorable relationship with her, either.

Despite my best efforts to be warm and pleasant, Rosa was the only unfriendly villager I’d encountered. At least she wasn’t openly hostile. And she didn’t turn her back on me.

But neither did she show the first small sign of interest.

Maybe she’s just cautious around strangers,
I tried convincing myself.
Cautious and perhaps scared. I can understand that. I can relate to that. As far off the beaten track as Santa María is, she’s probably never seen very many unfamiliar people. Perhaps none before this North American invasion.

But my ragged feelings rejected the idea.
In that case, why hasn’t everyone in Santa María reacted the same way?

I wondered if Rosa knew Jesus as her personal Savior. While I’d known some truly grumpy Christians—many of them became youth workers—I believed Christians who tried to live in the center of God’s will were apt to have a discernable spirit of love, hope, and patience that even the severest hardships—and the most incorrigible of teens—can’t destroy.

But I couldn’t detect that kind of spirit in Rosa.

Or in Geoff, for that matter.

C
harlie approached me after supper when no one else was around. Even though he looked more serious than usual, I was no longer apprehensive about anything he or Rob might say. That was a major improvement over orientation.

“Kimmy …” He hesitated, apparently unsure what to say. I stayed quiet and let him think. Only Rob had addressed me by that nickname until now. I hoped the whole team wouldn’t start using it.

Lord, I told poor Millie Q. that nobody would ever call me Kimmy. Please give her the grace to forget she ever met me.
Boy, would Dad have had a fit if he’d heard Great-Aunt Kimberly’s name desecrated that way.

“Kimmy,” Charlie said, “we need your advice. There’s a small problem.”

Oh, fiddle-dee-dee! What’s up, Charlie? When
I instinctively drew back, I probably looked like one of the children retreating from Anjelita when she said no. That story had made the rounds at supper.

“Don’t worry. You haven’t done anything wrong. You’ve been terrific, and everybody has praised your positive spirit and willingness to do the most menial of tasks without fussing ….”

Although I should have just said thanks and waited for him to continue, I didn’t. Fatigue from my first day’s efforts had increased my impatience. I wanted to make him talk faster. But God had some things to say during Charlie’s pause.

Be patient, Kim, or I’ll start calling you Kimmy.
That really got me.
Just listen to the man and wait for him to finish. I didn’t give you one mouth and two ears for nothing, you know.

But I couldn’t wait.

Kimmy!
God said before I deliberately disobeyed Him. “I’m happy to do whatever I can,” I said. “So what’s the ‘small problem,’ and how can I help?”

“It’s that little girl, the one with the missing forearm.”

“Anjelita? My little friend?”

“Yes, her. Anjelita.”

Charlie pronounced her name accurately. Maybe he’d studied a little Spanish when he was in school.

“What about her? There’s nothing wrong with her, is there?”

He shook his head and smiled with unquestionable reassurance.

“She hasn’t done anything wrong, has she?”

“Not
wrong
wrong,” He sounded like he didn’t want to tell the whole truth. “But … she’s too young to work in the construction area. She’s a child, and even the finest children are sometimes, uh, heedless. You couldn’t see this, but she caused several nasty near misses this afternoon.”

I gasped audibly.

“The team members hesitated to say anything. They know how fond you are of—what’d you say her name is again? —Anjelita and how much fun you have working together. Everybody got a charge out of watching the two of you, but team members had to react quickly several times to protect Anjelita from danger.”