Should smallpox break out, these were the very multitudes that would be most afflicted. I doubt these poor souls understood how the vaccine worked, but perhaps they felt some tender influence. A fleeting glimpse of love as Don Ángel cleansed their arms, as Don Francisco spoke to them calmly about the procedure, as I held them with my eyes. We are here with you, brothers and sisters, you are not alone.
Fifty-three days we traveled in the outlying provinces, setting up juntas that would vaccinate fifteen new carriers every ten days, a rotation that would ensure continuance of the vaccine for each new generation. Between sessions our director rode out to local ranchos to inspect sick cows. How wonderful it would be if the cowpox could be found on this very soil and so ensure a native supply of vaccine from here on out!
At each stop the local authorities provided us with carriers to the next village. It was my task to care for them, though by now I did a little of everything that was needed. I also looked after our growing pool of future carriers to the Philippines—twenty-six in all, Don Francisco had estimated. Most of these boys came from families who released them to Don Francisco on the strength of a plea by a local dignitary or church official. For some reason we could not find enough orphan carriers among these poorest of villages. Perhaps it was as Juana had remarked in Puerto Rico, all the poor had were their children, whom they were not willing to abandon.
As I had my boys. Just the thought was enough to bring on my tears.
PUEBLA DE LOS ÁNGELES: This could be a deathbed scene: a gaunt, ill-looking lady lies propped up on pillows, a man, no doubt a doctor (we have seen him before), taking her pulse. All about her, hung like draperies from the walls of her chamber, are the scenes of her life like the stations of the cross, her girlhood, terminating in a bad illness; her young womanhood in what looks like a hospital and then, an orphanage. On and on, so small are these cameos we might almost miss them.
No window has been opened, no lantern lit, so where is the light coming from? Above, as if through the porthole of a ship or a hole in heaven, we see another woman, as yet unborn, peering down upon this scene. She seems intent on knowing the fate of the woman who lies ignorant of a future sister. Or perhaps this looming soul needs only a tint of crimson, a touch of gold, a look of hope to carry back into her own canvases we may someday soon be reviewing.
In late December, we returned to Puebla after our exhausting tour of the provinces. The bishop generously lodged us in his own Episcopal palace. That very night, I collapsed in bed with a high fever. Perhaps knowing that my work was over, my body allowed itself the rest it sorely needed after weeks of travel and work. Indeed, we were all in need of a respite. Our director decided we would spend Christmas in Puebla before continuing to Mexico City.
As I lay in bed, I had time to think about the future. Lieutenant Pozo had said he would be back within the new year. But the news reached us while we were in Puebla that war had broken out with Great Britain. Spanish ships were being commandeered into the Armada. Would the lieutenant still be able to return as he had promised? Where would I settle in the meanwhile? Already, word came from Mexico, several of my boys had been adopted by Creole families. Perhaps the ones still left in the Royal Hospicio could be transferred to Puebla, where we could await the return of the lieutenant together.
I had no doubts that the boys would be welcomed in this hospitable city. While I had been traveling with Don Francisco, I had left Benito in the care of the bishop. Upon my return, I saw how good the interval had been for my son. He had grown an inch, I was sure of it, and looked stout and strong. But it was more than his health, he seemed happy in this warm and welcoming place. Bishop Gonzales was quite taken with the boy’s intelligence and spoke of a possible future in the church or in some other worthy profession. “Perhaps you would like to be a doctor like our benevolent Don Francisco?” the bishop quizzed him.
The boy shook his head. He wanted to be a big, fat bishop like the bishop.
“Hush!” I scolded, but Bishop Gonzales laughed his booming laugh. “Out of the mouths of babes,” he reminded me. “We should all have such a one around to keep us honest,” he added. I was not sure a child’s presence was any guarantee of self-knowledge. After all, I had been graced with hundreds of orphans and I still had difficulty seeing the speck in my own eye, even though many a child had pointed it out to me.
“So, Doña Isabel, you must consider settling here,” Bishop Gonzales persisted, as if he sensed the plan I had been making as I lay in bed too weak to join him and Benito in the festivities of the season. In spite of the war, a blessed child was being born again in the Bethlehem of our souls and his arrival had to be celebrated.
The day after Christmas, our director announced that we would be departing the following morning. He could not have been surprised to hear that I was not well enough to travel, for I had been absent from all the gatherings of the last few days. But I don’t think our director understood illness as a reason to keep from fulfilling one’s mission. He himself was ill with the dysentery, and had been for the last six months, and still he had vaccinated over sixty thousand souls in America, found cowpox in the valleys near Durango and Valladolid, and set up a network of juntas of vaccination. He was ready for the next challenge.
He did not know that challenge would now be me.
When he entered the sickroom, I could see from the shock on his face that he was surprised to see me in such altered condition. We had all been so caught up in our work, and he particularly, he had lost sight of his own health and of the health of those around him.
“Your hard work has taken all your strength, Doña Isabel. I feel I am to blame. I pushed you too hard.”
He himself looked thin and haggard. Perhaps he should also stay several weeks here in the city of the angels and rest. But our director was eager to proceed to Mexico City and continue on his way. “This man is not to be trusted, Doña Isabel,” Don Francisco explained. “The sooner I complete my duties here, the better.”
Hearing him say so, I felt afraid for my boys should anything happen to me. “Please promise me, Don Francisco, that you will see to it that the boys receive their promised legacy.”
“You have my word, Doña Isabel. To be sure, they will all soon find new homes.”
“And Benito,” I worried. “Lieutenant Pozo has made arrangements to return.” Don Francisco’s look was that of a suspicion confirmed. “He would take in the boy, I am sure of it.”
“I see,” Don Francisco studied me a long moment. It must have seemed incredible to him that this scarred skeleton might command the heart of a lover. “But I see no reason for you to be making plans for your demise. In fact, I forbid it! A whole half world awaits us. We have much work still to do.”
“We?” I questioned. A year ago the promise of our mission together had brought me out of an old life to this new one. But my work was over. Soon, the viceroy would grant me the five hundred pesos due me for the year I had served the expedition. With that sum, I could settle down in this city of angels with my Benito and whatever boys still needed a home and await the return of the kind lieutenant. I remembered Juana’s prediction in Puerto Rico. I would have a happy life. I was ready to claim it.
“We cannot go on without you!” Don Francisco’s voice had taken on a pleading tone. His face wore a worried look. “But we shall talk of this on our way to Mexico City. We will delay our return for a few more days until you are back on your feet again.”
“You are the angel of our expedition,” Don Francisco added in parting. At the door, he raised a hand in farewell. “Do not desert us, Isabel!”
I did not promise him anything, but I could feel myself sinking into feverish dreams, giving in as I always had to him.
7
The first few moments happen so quickly, Alma feels as if she’s caught in a current that suddenly sweeps her off her feet and carries her wherever it is going. She is dragged across the porch by two, three, could be four playground-bully-type guys who have run out of
the clinic. “¡Por favor! Don’t!” she cries out, as if she can make them stop, as if she has any power now that she has surrendered herself to this force.
Once inside, she is shoved so hard she falls on the floor of what seems to be the clinic’s waiting room: aqua blue plastic chairs bolted in place, several potted plants, a poster announcing that AIDS can happen to anyone.
This could be a free clinic in Vermont. But it isn’t. Lined around the walls are four or five men with kerchiefs or ski masks covering their faces. The ski masks are ones that Richard brought down. The bag of clothes from the secondhand shop had been full of ski masks and baseball caps. Alma had questioned who in the tropics was going to need a ski mask. “They can roll up the bottom part and use them as caps,” Richard had argued, demonstrating. “It gets chilly in the mountains.” Mad River Glen, Killington, Stowe—how strange the names of these winter resorts seem on the heads of armed men.
Alma knows nothing about firearms—all she has ever seen up close are Richard’s shotgun and the sheriff’s little gun that looked like a toy poking out of his holster. But these men are holding serious-looking guns. Briefly, it crosses Alma’s mind that these might be the bad elements Don Jacobo talked about.
She is about to repeat again that she is not armed, but the one with a jaunty red bandanna covering the bottom half of his face is screaming, “Check her out!”
Oddly, it’s not the gun he aims at her as much as his high-pitch scream that scares Alma, and for a moment, she loses heart. What the hell did she think she was going to accomplish throwing herself in the hands of these thugs?
Meanwhile, the man guarding Richard has pulled him back inside and is yelling at him to shut his fucking mouth. And Richard, what is Richard saying? She can’t make it out with all the screaming, some scolding about why she had to go do something so stupid and almost get herself killed.
One of the ski-masked men comes from the ranks and yanks Alma to her feet. He starts patting her down roughly. They must think she’s some sort of suicide bomber, coming in with explosives to blow them all up. Maybe the general who is not a general is right, and these young men have been watching too much cable TV.
There is nothing to discover on her person—she has long since dropped the coffee cup she had in her hand, which she carried into the compound with her, not thinking to leave it behind. But then everything happened so quickly. Until the last moment, she had no idea that she was going to jump over those sandbags. Some vague notion had seized her that she might make a difference. Maybe she could listen to their stories, offer to write them up, send them to a publisher, and bring a protective cordon of readers to their cause. You’d think she’d been the one who was watching too much cable TV or reading the printed equivalent, best-selling inspirational memoirs and manuals.
Now Alma wishes she had planned ahead, stuffed the pockets of her light jacket with her jewelry—though she doubts she’d get far in this company with a charm bracelet or her high school graduation ring—brought along a toothbrush, sleeping pills, her bag of trail mix. Her frisker pulls out the PowerBar she carried on the trip down in case she got hungry on the plane as well as her journal and what she had forgotten was in her pocket—Starr’s cell phone she’d taken off the crate in their bedroom this morning in case she decided to make that phone call to the sheriff.
“It’s a cell phone,” she explains because the frisker is staring down at the little gadget, forehead creased, as if he suspects it might be a grenade. Any moment now, he’ll hurl it out the back window and blow up one of the dormitorios where the imprisoned patients have begun calling out again that they are hungry.
“And cigarettes?” the red-bandanna guy asks her. “Where are our cigarettes?”
She wants to answer him, especially with that gun he keeps jabbing in the air at her. But she has no idea what he is talking about. “What cigarettes?” And then, of course, she remembers the deal Camacho told them about last night—the kidnappers had wanted cigarettes, meals, visas in exchange for releasing the women. Haven’t they already gotten those cigarettes? They can’t be that dumb, releasing the women before they had some part of the bargain in their hands.
This is how the idea blooms in her mind.
“I’m the journalist,” she explains. She can almost feel a wave of calm come over the group, with one exception, Richard, whose eyes are boring into her, wondering what she is up to. She dare not look over at him for fear she will betray herself.
“A journalist?” The guy isn’t totally convinced. “For what paper?”
“El noticiero, but I write for American papers, too.”
Masked as they are, Alma can tell they are happy to know they have gotten the widespread attention they wanted. “What’s your name?” The red bandanna seems to be the one doubting Thomas.
Mariana, Alma almost says, but stops herself. Mariana is attractive. The newspaper is probably savvy, prints the journalist’s picture by her column. Not even by a long stretch can Alma pass herself off as the honey-skinned, thirty-something, black-haired celebrity. “Isabel,” she tells him, hoping he is not a detail man who will ask for a last name that won’t match up with whatever Isabel—if there is even an Isabel writing for El noticiero.
“Isabel,” he repeats the name, looking her over with narrowed eyes, as if assessing the probability of Alma being an Isabel who is a journalist from El noticiero as well as an American paper. But there is convincing proof: the journal, the entries thankfully in English, so he can’t read it and realize this is a private journal in which Alma talks about her feelings, her shock about Helen, her phone call with Lavinia, her saga novel that never got written, her buried antidepressants. But what seems to end all disbelief is the cell phone, which he must assume she uses to call in her columns to the newspapers. If he asks for further proof, Alma will just phone Tera and dictate a manifesto.
“I’d like to interview you,” she addresses the guy with the red bandanna, as he seems to be doing most of the shouting and bossing around. “Readers want to know what it is you want—”
“We told them what we want!” the guy snaps back.
“Remember,” Alma reminds him, her heart beating so loudly she is sure it is drowning out her voice, “you spoke with officials. I need the story direct from you.”
“Okay,” he says the word in English. “Okay.” He lets his gun fall to his side. “Take him out back,” he orders the young man handling Richard.
“Un momento.” Richard holds his ground. Alma beams him a look that pleads with him not to blow her cover. He beams back: I’m going to kill you when this is over! But he goes along, no doubt thinking Alma is part of some elaborate plot cooked up by the army with the help of U.S. advisers. “I want to ask about my wife,” he says in Spanish. “It is easier for me in English.”
He is not exactly given permission to speak in English, but on the other hand he is not shoved away. Alma speaks up in a flat, matter-of-fact voice as if the information she is communicating is nothing to her. “Your wife is well. She wanted to be by your side. She was told that she would be eating leftover turkey with you in a few days. She did not call your sons so as not to alarm them. She says she loves you and to just go along—”
“Ya!” the red bandanna is getting nervous at this much talk he doesn’t understand. Richard is shoved down a hallway that seems to lead out onto a patio where the rest of the staff is being held. She can hear talking and movement from back there, a little radio with the overinflated voice of a DJ announcing the next bachata, then, of course, the voices of the patients calling out from their dormitorios.
“The first thing to tell the world,” the red bandanna tells her after his young comrades have taken up their posts at the windows, and he and Alma have sat down in two of the plastic chairs, the cell phone in the empty chair between them; the PowerBar seems to have been confiscated. “The first thing to tell them is that we are sick of being utilized. They come with their empty promises and build this fucking jodida clinic and b
ring in all the pájaros and putas so we all get sick, millones de dólares, to test their drugs and our children die because they cannot get medicina for a little fever that would cost us una fortuna to buy!”
Alma writes hurriedly, trying to keep up with what he is saying, to give a credible performance as a journalist. He is not very eloquent: fucking fags and cunts. If this is the best the group can do for a spokesperson, they are not going to get the following they need. But through the broken sentences and curses, Alma sees the little spark of human yearning. How can she blame him? She remembers telling Richard on their first date when he had explained what it was he did, consultancy for development projects in the triage nations of the world, that if she had been born one of the poor in her own homeland she would have had blood on her hands by now.
He had seemed startled to hear her say something so fierce. “But what would that accomplish?”
“Nothing,” she had agreed. “But I’d kill, I would, if that’s what it took to feed my children.”
He had raised his brows and said nothing. Well, there goes a second date, she thought to herself. But she couldn’t let it go. This periodic homeland rage that would crop up out of nowhere, even though she had been in the United States almost forty years, this feeling that her own luckiness was off the backs of other people, not because her family had been exploiters but because the pool of the lucky was so small in that poor little place that God forgot. In the United States there was a larger pool of luck, and the overspill trickled down: extra toilet paper in the stalls, soup kitchens, social service programs, sliding scales, legal aid, free clinics, adjunct teaching posts and arts enrichment grants so that people like Tera, like Helen, like Alma before she lucked out with her novels and marriage to Richard managed to scrape by.