The Juliet Stories (2 page)

Nothing can shift this feeling of goodness, not even the man in black pants stumbling through his gate. Juliet sees his feet in torn plastic sandals, his damaged toenails. She sees that his zipper is down, perhaps broken, and she sees the exposed and flaccid flesh within, pale as a dried cob. There is a whirring in the air, a collective gasp, as the man reaches heavily for Gloria. Her body spins sideways under his weight, baby Emmanuel loosened from her grip, slipping, falling.

Freddy: running past Juliet like a shadow, running at the man, fists shoving gut. “
¡Vayate,
viejo!
”

The man’s cheeks hang pouched. He staggers a step and collapses. The children — the others, not Juliet, not Keith — explode with laughter. Boys pelt the man with pebbles.

Gloria’s body hunches, pinched shut. Time abandons them to one steeply turning moment, slowly, slowly, pinning them here until they wake — it is like waking — to Emmanuel’s howls in the dirt. Gloria cannot lift him: her hands shake, her wrists, a shudder that shoots up her arms and rocks her whole body. Juliet tries. She will carry him the way the Nicaraguan girls carry their little brothers and sisters; but Emmanuel is not a Nicaraguan baby. Livid, veins popping from his neck, he kicks Juliet and yanks her hair. She talks to him in a baby voice — “No, no, bad boy, bad Emmanuel” — and renders him ever more furious. His uncut nails scratch her face.

“Put him down, for the love of God,” Gloria says. “Stop trying to help.” Being angry at Juliet steadies her, and she grabs Emmanuel into her own arms and squishes him to her chest. “Poor baby, poor baby, poor little dropped soul.”

Emmanuel’s tantrum continues unabated. This soothes Juliet.

They step over the man, around him, away, Freddy’s hand in the air near Gloria’s shoulder, but not touching her skin. Her long, dark hair hangs loose and smooth all the way to her waist, a veil behind which she hides, and Juliet thinks: She’s crying.

“
¡La casa de los gringos!
” Freddy waves his arm in grand offering.

But the gate is padlocked shut. Emmanuel is a glowing force field of rage. Gloria wrenches the metal catch and wails: “Could this possibly be right?”

Freddy frowns politely. He has delivered them. Confusion spills all around Gloria, that is what it seems to Juliet. Only a moment has passed. The gate is locked, but there is the wicker sofa on the porch, the clump of coconut palms growing out of a raised bed in the otherwise bare front yard, the walled back garden. This is the right house.

In confirmation, Renate staggers out, hair askew. “Good God!” Because she is a missionary, she makes it sound like a prayer, not a swear.

“The gate was locked, Renate, it was locked!”

“I see that.” Renate turns a key and they file past with their crumpled clothes, their dusty legs. “The maid must have locked it. I could hear you from a mile away.”

The gate swings shut on Freddy. He is cool, sparkling water. He winks at Juliet. “
Adios, chelita linda
.” But he loiters, as before, watching them.

“What’s this?” Renate snaps the padlock shut. What, not who.

Perhaps Gloria cannot hear over the screams. Gently she lays Emmanuel on the tiled porch, strokes soaked hair off his forehead.

“His name is Freddy,” offers Juliet. “What’s a
chelita
?”

“
Chel-ita
.” Renate breaks down the word. “
Chele
is the root;
ita
means little; ends with an
a
, feminine form — so, ‘little girl.’ Little white girl. It’s not very nice, you shouldn’t say it. They use it for people who look like him: different.” She claps her hands, off you go, as if shooing away a bothersome animal, turns and says loudly, “You have to be careful. Set clear boundaries. You can’t let them take advantage.”

Renate is not addressing Juliet, but who else is listening? Keith hangs on the fence, waving goodbye through the metal grating. Emmanuel has wrung himself out, and Gloria lifts and cradles him in her arms, carries him into the house without a backward glance.

Juliet finds them in their bedroom. Gloria kneels beside Emmanuel, who sleeps, utterly relaxed, on Juliet’s bed. Gloria’s hands are on her knees, palms up, head erect.

“Mom,” says Juliet from the doorway.

“Shhh,” Gloria frowns.

“Renate wants to know if you want a drink.”

“In a minute.”

Juliet waits.

“I said, in a minute, Juliet. In a minute, for the love of God.” Gloria is not a missionary. Her prayers are swears.

In the kitchen, Renate pours fresh lemonade squeezed by the maid. “Does your baby brother often scream like that?”

“I guess so.”

“Did you have fun at the park?”

Keith is not helping out.

Juliet darts a glance at Renate, and away; no one has warned her that this looks sneaky. “I don’t know,” she says finally, speaking the truth. But what she really doesn’t know is that there are questions grown-ups don’t want answered truthfully; grown-ups will accept a polite yes, but what they really want is confirmation of their suspicions, suspected moral failings guilelessly revealed, though this will bring the child no favour. Nothing will. In this context, the child is immaterial to the grown-up, useful only as an unwitting spy or pawn.

Renate turns to Keith and observes, “You have spilled something on yourself. The maid will wash it for you.”

Keith obediently removes his shirt. He hasn’t got another.

“Oh, but you shouldn’t have, you shouldn’t have,” Gloria grieves when informed of Renate’s action. She is not upset that Keith must spend the rest of the day half-naked, Juliet knows. She is offended that the maid should have to do anything extra for them.

“Don’t be ridiculous!” says Renate. “How else would we get our work done? You’ve no idea, Gloria.”

Renate adds in a confiding tone, “You mustn’t pay your girl too much. She will be more than pleased to work for a nice American family. It’s cruel to pay them more than they will be able to earn when you are gone.”

There is silence.

“Work!” says Renate, emphatically and cryptically. She is finished, and Gloria has made no reply.

Juliet never expects to understand fully. She listens, she squints down dark-walled passages lit by cracks of flitting sunshine, following through intertwining tunnels her mother — in conversation with another grown woman. Mystery is a shroud over words, phrases, entire paragraphs, over facial expressions and gestures, over inexplicable laughter, chilly quiet. Usually, though not now, cups of coffee are involved, and a dreamy exhaustion, kitchen chairs pulled up to the table, sugar spilled and brushed onto the floor, interruption and return, laughter, a hushed “Now when did this happen?” to alert Juliet’s ear. This exchange is different, because Gloria and Renate are not friends. They are not leisurely. But it is somehow the same, because they are women. They are speaking, with words or without, of puzzles that do not yield to easy solutions.

It is February, 1984.

Ronald Reagan is the president of the United States of America. He is fighting the commies. Commie is short for communist, a thick plank of a word that is used often and ominously on American television; on American television communist means evil. But Juliet takes her definition from Gloria, who says that communists are people who share everything. (Imagine fighting against people who share! It is the punchline to a joke. Juliet writes a skit on the subject, and Keith plays Ronald Reagan with gusto: “I declare a war on sharing! There will be no more sharing!”)

Juliet loves and craves definitions. What is the specific meaning of each heavy word that falls from the sky? But a definition is not an answer. It is temporary shelter, a camp that is put up and broken down. The more she knows, the frailer the originally stable definition, as its meaning comes stamping into her brain shadowed with everything it has been and will ever be, everything connected to it.

Nicaragua is a country shaped like a triangle where it is hot and never snows; also, they are having a war. Managua is the capital city, where it is safe to live except for the volcanoes and the earthquakes. The Sandinistas are in charge and they might be commies, but that would be okay — see definition of a communist. The Cold War is America versus the USSR; somehow this matters, even though Nicaragua is neither of those places. The CIA are scary Americans who sneak around and do bad things, playing nasty tricks on people; they might be anywhere, even pretending to work for the Roots of Justice. The Roots of Justice is going to stop the fighting in Nicaragua; Juliet’s parents work for the Roots of Justice. They will bring Americans into Nicaragua to protest against the Contra war.

Freedom fighters: what Ronald Reagan calls the Contras. The Contras: masked men who stab Nicaraguan babies with bayonets, which are knives attached to the ends of their guns. The Contra war: the Contras are fighting against the Sandinista government. Ronald Reagan is paying, but nobody knows. Everyone needs to know. A protest is a way of telling, yelling when no one is listening.

Pay attention!

In Indiana, Juliet marched in a protest and got on television, carrying a sign decorated with a crayoned blue and green ball beneath a rainbow:
PLEASE DON’T BLOW UP MY WORLD
. It was a spring day, sunshine and a chilly wind. They walked down the middle of the street and stopped for speeches in a park. Juliet was excited, and then bored, and then hungry, and then she had to pee, and then she was excited again, and mildly jealous, because her best friend, Laci, had been chosen to speak at the microphone. Laci was supposed to read a poem about flowers, but her voice shook and she forgot and instead cried, “Please stop making bombs, please stop making bombs!”

Others were crying too. But they are still making bombs, as far as Juliet knows.

Juliet’s parents believe they can stop the Contra; at least, they believe they have to try. That is why the Friesen family have come to Nicaragua. They have come to stop Ronald Reagan. They will take ordinary Americans to the border towns where Contras ambush and murder ordinary Nicaraguans. The ordinary Americans will not let that happen. They will stand, peaceful and strong, in between. They will wear matching green T-shirts and they will hold hands and sing songs. They won’t get hurt.

Ronald Reagan and his freedom fighters won’t want to hurt ordinary Americans.

Juliet would like to go too, to stand in the line and hold hands and sing. Juliet’s mother says she won’t be able to. Juliet will stay with her brothers in Managua, where it is safe and no one is being killed.

“But what about you?”

“I will stay too.”

“But what about Dad?”

Tonight the Friesen family sleeps on the floor, in the room like a womb sheltered and dark, lit by the glow of mosquito coils, orange in the breeze. Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, the Friesen family rises to eat dry toast and drink
café con leche
(even the children; Gloria says they may) and to clog Simon and Renate’s toilet because they’ve forgotten that paper is not to be flushed: more work for the maid.

In the afternoons, no water flows from the taps. The quick-falling evenings summon enterprising swarms of mosquitoes; Renate promises it will be worse in the rainy season. For every meal of every day, even for breakfast, the maid prepares and serves
gallo pinto
, red beans fried with rice, yet no one grows tired of eating it.

Finally, an evening that stands out from the blur of temporary routine and heat-stupored stasis: Renate hosts a dinner party and invites the three other Roots of Justice team members, who live in Managua too. At last they have something to celebrate, especially Renate and Simon: the Friesens have found an apartment. The maid serves buttered squash and fresh corn tortillas and a vat of
gallo pinto
, and for dessert, Renate surprises everyone by preparing her specialty, baked Alaska.

When the moment arrives, Renate switches off the lights and emerges from the kitchen balancing a mounded confection lit spectacularly on fire. In the glow of blue flame, her angular face floats pale and eerie. The smell of burning rum pervades the air.

An impromptu cheer erupts from the emaciated Roots of Justice team members: Andrew, Jason, and Charlotte.

“I’ve never had a baked Alaska,” says Gloria. “Everyone tell Renate thank you, please.” She is speaking to the children, who understand.

“Thank you,” Keith and Juliet echo as the flame burns into nothing.

From Gloria’s lap, baby Emmanuel emits a dull rumble. His bedtime bile is rising.

“What an unexpected treat! And here in Nicaragua, who would have imagined it. Tell Renate thank you,” Gloria repeats, as if deaf.

“We did,” says Juliet, and Renate frowns as she dishes out miraculously unthawed ice cream revealed beneath meringue topping. Juliet senses displeasure, distaste, but she does not know why.

Renate passes the first bowl to her husband.

“When exactly are you able to move out?” Simon wonders, licking his spoon before anyone else has been served.

“Imminently,” Bram promises. He has rented them several rooms on the second floor of a seminary located in the broken downtown core. He can’t sit still. He plucks Emmanuel from Gloria’s arms, pacing the room and hurling the fussy baby into the air until Gloria warns he’ll be sick. But the rented apartment is only the beginning, a shining omen of all that’s to come, and Bram’s list grows with each toss, grand and grander: “And we’ll find ourselves a real office, and a proper house for you volunteers. We’ll buy desks, furniture, a truck, a bus. We’ll need a bus driver. We’ll get these kids into a Nicaraguan school, learning Spanish — right, kids? And our office will have everything we need. Telephone, typewriter, computer, tape recorders, cameras, walkie-talkies . . .”

Everyone looks at Juliet’s dad, and their faces are flushed with sweet sugar and sweeter promises. Like Juliet, they believe him. They do not doubt.

“Bedtime,” says Gloria, ending it all. She takes Emmanuel from Bram. “You’ve gotten him all worked up.”