A Far Country (19 page)

I
n late July, a month after Isabel’s arrival, Manuela came home with news of work. It was election season, she said. ‘The job is only on the weekends, so you can still watch Hugo during the week. You’ll miss church, I know, but there isn’t any other way.’ She gave Isabel directions to a campaign office in the Center and woke her early the next morning.

At the office, a man asked what she could do. ‘Do you know typing? How is your math? Have you worked with a campaign before?’ The office was crowded with boys and girls her age. ‘I can read,’ she said, ‘and write with a pen.’ She prayed he wouldn’t ask her to show him. ‘You’ll be a flag waver,’ he said.

She didn’t expect to start right away, but he gave her a shirt and cap in the colors of the party. He said, ‘We drive through the city all day. If we pass you and you are not waving the flag, you will be docked half your pay. You are allowed to stop waving only when the traffic is not moving. You are never allowed to set the flag on the ground, although you can rest the base of the pole if you like. You shouldn’t do anything that could reflect poorly on the Candidate. You can break to eat lunch at
noon, but no more than thirty minutes. If you lose the flag or it’s stolen because you’re careless, you’ll have the value of the flag docked from your pay. The value of a flag is three days of waving.’

She filed behind the others into a van. It stopped at the busiest intersections and let them out one by one. Soon Isabel was left with the foreman and another girl. She hoped she would be next—she didn’t like how he had held her arm when he helped her into the car. When they stopped, he motioned the two of them out. He gave them both flags. ‘I want you both on that traffic island—you, there, and you, there. Stay in those places. Don’t talk. If you talk, I’ll know.’

On the corner of a wide avenue with tall buildings, they waited for the light to turn. ‘Ever done this before?’ asked the girl. Isabel shook her head. ‘Then watch out for the mirrors—they come close—and careful with the flag. Once mine got caught on someone’s grille and almost threw me into the street,
and
it broke,
and
I had to pay for it. And we can’t talk—he’s serious about that. He’s docked my pay before. But we can talk at lunch.’

The traffic was heavy when they took their spots on the island. The flag was gold, with the Candidate’s name flanked by black stars. Carefully, importantly, Isabel smoothed out the hem of her shirt and tried to stand as tall as she could. Around her, the street reverberated with the sound of honking and roaring motors.

Scarcely a half hour passed, and her arms began to tire. She looked at the other girl, who was shimmying her shoulders as if she were dancing to music. The girl signaled to rest the base of the pole on the ground as she waved. The traffic grew worse. From passing cars, she heard whistles or boos. ‘Go home!’ shouted one. ‘How can you work for that animal?’ Another
shouted, ‘You are a traitor to your class!’ Isabel didn’t understand what this meant, but, to be safe, she waved slower.

In the late morning, they were joined on the island by a pair of old men. They wore placards that read
ROCKET CHICKEN
and hats with chicken beaks on the rim and tails behind. They had tired, furrowed faces that reminded her of her grandfather. The placards showed a bird running with a plate of cooked chicken on its outstretched fingers. Does the chicken know what it’s carrying? Isabel wondered. She tried to make herself smile, but the more she stared, the more the image disturbed her. The men shuffled uncomfortably. Someone probably told them: No resting the placards! She thought, I’m lucky I have a flag.

The sun glinted off the sloping glass walls and formed mirages in the intersections. Soon Isabel could not see the end of the avenue for all the pollution. It was hot; the air clung to her like a wet film. I know how to bear heat, she told herself. But it was different from the dry heat in the north. By late morning, her nose and eyes were burning. She was dizzy and was afraid she might fall. She sat cross-legged on the island. Did the man say anything about sitting? But the exhaust made sitting worse than being on her feet. How many days do I have to do this? she wondered. When her feet began to ache, she paced back and forth along the island. I used to walk for hours, she thought. She crouched until her legs grew numb. The other girl had tied her shirt above her belly and turned her hat brim backward on her head. When she came close, Isabel whispered, ‘You can’t do that.’ The girl laughed. ‘Of course I can; they like it better. It’s the sexy style.’ She let the flag sway in her hands, spun it and let it fall, only to catch it again. She dipped it into the street and whirled it away as the cars charged.

At noon, they slumped against the huge roots of a ficus that broke through the mosaic of the city sidewalk. The girl said, ‘You’ll be okay. I used to hate it, too, but it’s better than other jobs. The secret is pretending you’re a famous star and not just a flag waver. The day goes by, you’ll see.’

The girl’s name was Josiane. She was sixteen. She lived with her mother in New Jerusalem, in the Settlements, not far from Isabel. She had six brothers and sisters. She waved flags for two parties, she said, it didn’t matter. They paid well because no one wanted charges of cheating their campaign workers. During the week, she worked in a doll factory and sold bus passes in the evening. She was born in the north but came to the city when she was seven. ‘You know,
that old story
,’ she said. Isabel shook her head. ‘Like you, I bet,’ said Josiane. ‘Drought, parrot perch …’ She laughed and waved it away with her hand.

Black hair fell down her neck in ropy braids. She had long, thin arms, and spoke with her hands. ‘Street’s crowded,’ she said, turning her palm up and tapping her fingers together. Or: ‘Watch your pockets with that one,’ this time pointing her lips to a boy with a stocking cap, placing her thumb on her thigh and sweeping her painted nails past.

With a wink, she showed Isabel a book she brought to read on the bus. It was called
Traveling Fire
and was Number 27 in the Young Passion Collection. On the cover was a shirtless man caressing a girl in jeans and a bra. It was about a girl named Marina and a traveling cowboy named Thyago Firestorm. The spine was broken at chapter seven, “The Burning Desire.” It was heavily annotated: someone with a pink pen had underlined ‘her burning love’ and ‘her famished heart,’ and stars flanked ‘their unquenchable passion.’ In the margin where the famished Marina is prohibited from seeing Thyago,
a different pen had written,
Let them be!
The pages were bent and the print smudged. She had inherited it from a cousin, who had inherited it from a coworker. She would be happy, she said, to pass it along when she finished.

Isabel’s eyes drifted to the word
kiss
. She read slowly, moving her lips. Marina was panting like a mare, she learned.

Josiane interrupted, ‘Do you always read like that?’

‘Like what?’

‘With your mouth. You don’t have to say the words, you know. You look like my mother when she tries to read.’

Isabel felt herself blushing. ‘Sorry.’

‘Sorry? Sorry for what? Just some people might think you’re simple.’

She applied lipstick with the smell of watermelon, and pursed her lips.

In the afternoon, Isabel began to cough and couldn’t stop. She left the island to wet the top of her shirt in a fountain by the ficus and lifted it over her mouth. Back in the street her breath was moist and cold. She hummed through the wet fabric and tried to dance like Josiane. She gave up. She forced herself not to watch the clock. Her gaze flitted moth-like over the crowds. She occupied herself by trying to imagine the city people in the north: the men in the suits trying to make their way through the thickets, the women getting their pumps stuck in heavy mud at the creek.

Late in the afternoon, she saw a young man with her brother’s gait. It can’t be Isaias, she scolded herself. He’s not here, he’s on the coast. She ran along the island until she saw his face.

She stopped waving and then let the flag hang over her so that it shaded her from the sun. She made it flap gently back and forth over her forehead.

At the end of the day, the man in the van shouted at them from across the street. They retraced the long path through the city. The seats filled with the other flag wavers, their shirts stained and crumpled.

At the office, the man made them wait outside while he spoke on the telephone. He came out only when one of the boys banged on the window. He read their names from a notebook and thumbed bills off a roll. When he read Isabel’s name, he said, ‘I’m docking you half.’

‘Why?’

‘For wearing a mask.’

She stared dumbly. Behind her, Josiane protested, ‘Mask? It was her shirt. It wasn’t a mask!’

‘Same thing. It was a shirt serving as a mask. It’s against the rules.’

Josiane shook her hands at the ceiling. ‘Since when was there a rule against wearing a mask?’

‘It’s part of the rule about shaming the Candidate.’

‘How does a mask shame the Candidate?’

‘He’s the incumbent—it doesn’t reflect well on the cleanliness of the city.’

‘Man! The
air
doesn’t reflect well on the cleanliness of the city!’

‘Rules are rules, don’t worry, there’s always tomorrow.’ He turned to Isabel. ‘Do you always let your friend speak for you? You shouldn’t hide your pretty mouth.’

The girls took the bus to the New Settlements. On the way, Josiane cursed the foreman. Isabel bit her lip and stared around the bus with horror. ‘Come on,’ said Josiane. ‘Get it out of your system.’ Laughing, Isabel repeated the words. She cursed the Candidate, too. Josiane cursed even louder. Isabel cursed so loud that she almost shouted it. An elderly woman
turned with a stare that reminded her of her mother, and she was quiet the rest of the trip home.

The next morning, she wore her good shoes and arrived early to work, hoping to meet her friend, but Josiane arrived just as they were boarding the van. This time, she held Isabel’s hand. They sat at the back and again were the last to descend.

At lunch, Josiane spoke without stopping. ‘You wouldn’t believe it,’ she said, ‘but I just had a baby four months ago.’ She lifted her arms. ‘Not bad, huh? She’s at home with my mother. I had to spend two weeks in the hospital before she was born. I should have spent more time, but the private hospitals wouldn’t take me. Thank God things came out all right, because the baby pitched her tent a bit too close to the door.’

‘What?’

‘Well, that’s my explanation. Something about the sac not setting down in the right place—you’re from the country, so you probably know.’ She put her hand on Isabel’s knee. ‘Of course, I spent a lot of time wondering: How did that happen? Then I figured it out: it’s because I had sex in a hammock. Don’t look so embarrassed! I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking: in the north
everyone
has sex in a hammock. Of course! But
there
the body gets
used
to putting the baby in the right place, like a sailor learns to walk on a boat. But
here
, we sleep in beds, and we aren’t used to it, and if you get impulsive like me and insist on doing it in a hammock’—she tapped her fingers against the ground—‘if you haven’t thought through the consequences like I have now, the body doesn’t know where to put the baby.’

‘That sounds complicated,’ said Isabel.

This generated a long series of stories from the hospital, about a girl who gave birth to a clump of grapes, two babies attached at the nose, a baby with a single eye, another who entered the world with skin like a Carnival jester. She stopped talking only to catch her breath.

For lunch, Josiane mixed powdered formula with drops of water until it became a sweet paste. She gave Isabel a taste from a spoon. ‘It’s from an aid center for the poor,’ she said. ‘I told them I had twins.’

A man in a suit came and unfolded a little piece of paper by a pay phone. When Josiane began to talk again about her baby’s birth, he put his hand over the mouthpiece and said, ‘Hey, can you keep it down? Not everyone needs to hear your disgusting story.’

‘Not everyone needs to use the phone next to me,’ she snapped. Isabel flinched, but the man left.

Josiane described a fair in her neighborhood. There was a Ferris wheel and a ride called the White Tornado. ‘I bet you’ve never seen anything like the White Tornado,’ she began, and then she looked up at the clock. ‘No! Just like yesterday. I talk and talk and now we’re late. To be honest, I hate this. Yesterday I made it sound like I didn’t mind because you looked desperate, but now that we’re close friends, I’ll be honest: I’m not very good at this. I’m better at impatience.’

Back on the island she twirled the flag above her head. Once again the cars swarmed. ‘Hey, sweetheart! I like it just like that!’ shouted a man as his car idled at the light, and Josiane stopped and, smiling, flashed him her middle finger.

At the end of the day they collected their pay. Isabel tucked it deep into her pocket, and Josiane took her arm. ‘You don’t
have to go home yet, do you? Can you stay with me? I don’t want to go home now.’ She led Isabel to a plaza where a day market was being dismantled. Heavy ropes of tobacco scented the air. ‘Is this what it’s like?’ Josiane asked. ‘What?’ ‘The north. I was so little when I left. But everything they sell in this neighborhood is from the north. They even used to have musicians on the weekends.’

‘Not anymore?’

Josiane shook her head. ‘No, the police chased them away.’

‘All of them?’

‘All of them. Why are you so excited? It’s just music. I have a radio if you want to listen sometime.’

Josiane went to flirt with a clerk in a grocery store and returned with a bag of hard candy. She gave a piece to Isabel. They sat on a bench and watched the store shutters rattle shut. Josiane broke piece after piece of candy in her teeth. She told a story about her aunt from the north, a laughing old woman with bead-wrapped wrists that clattered as she moved. She had moved to the coast, where she had grown fat. She owned a little black mutt who curled into the folds of her skirts. For two years she hadn’t eaten breakfast because a doctor said she suffered from the Sugar and the Blood. She had great pillowed breasts and seemed weightless when she danced. ‘They said she was my favorite aunt. That I would be like her, if I stayed.’