The Furthest City Light (20 page)

All of a sudden, I remembered I hadn’t taken my malaria pill yet. I tried to get up without making any noise, but of course it was impossible. I kept the sheet around me as I kneeled in front of my duffel bag searching for my bottle of pink malaria pills. I popped one and decided to take three Advils and another couple of Benadryls while I was at it. You can never take too many pills in the tropics. As I stood up, I felt a hand on my shoulder and almost screamed. It was Tomas, still grinning from that joke I never told him. Before I could say anything, he leaned over and kissed me.

“I love you, baby,” he said in broken English.

I was so flustered, I couldn’t remember the Spanish word for “go,” and my dictionary was still packed in my bag. Tomas leaned over for another kiss.

“Get out of here,” I told him in English, then remembered the highway sign on the border between New Mexico and Colorado.
Vaya con Dios
.
Go with God
. Under the circumstances, however, that seemed a little too kind. I backed up a few steps and pointed at my flimsy curtain. “
Vaya
,” I ordered.

Before Tomas could respond, Sonia entered the room speaking too rapidly for me to understand, but not for Tomas who left immediately.

“
Gracias
,” I said.

Sonia rolled her eyes and smiled apologetically. “He has many problems,” she explained, “but he won’t bother you again.”

“
Está bien.
” What the hell, a little breaking and entering with intent to commit sexual assault—I’d represented a lot worse. “
Está bien,
” I repeated, and she finally left.

I popped two more Benadryls and climbed into my cot, which sank to the floor. Suddenly, I missed Vickie and wondered if she’d forgiven me yet for ignoring her advice and coming here. A rooster crowed loudly. I checked my watch, but it was only a quarter to three. Nobody, not even the animals, paid any attention to the rules here.

Every time I sighed or took a deep breath, the bed squeaked. Why wasn’t the Benadryl working? I’d taken enough to knock out an elephant. I considered getting up and taking a few more, but I heard something clicking its way across the tile floor and decided to stay put. I hoped I’d zipped up my duffel bag. A few moments later, I could have sworn something fairly large, a chicken or a small dog, had hopped onto the bed and then off again, but how likely was that? Although I was lying perfectly still, I was sweating profusely. Maybe it was too hot to sleep? Although I knew nothing about science, it seemed plausible that the human body had some kind of built-in survival mechanism that automatically kept it awake when it was in danger of being parboiled.

Since I didn’t want to think about my comfortable bedroom in Boulder or why I’d left the public defender’s office, I decided to think about rock climbing. Often, when I had trouble falling asleep, I imagined all the moves on a difficult climb, where I’d placed my protection, what kinds of pieces I’d used along the route. If I stayed with it long enough, I could feel the rock against my fingertips, the air on the back of my neck, my hips shifting back and forth as I crawled up hundreds of feet simply for the pleasure of reaching the top. Because Vickie refused to even watch me climb, she couldn’t understand when I tried to explain that it was the only activity I’d ever engaged in that absolutely precluded thinking about anything except what I was doing. To me, it was the quintessential moving meditation. The world could be roaring around me, deafeningly loud, but once I’d stepped onto the rock and placed my first piece of protection into a crack and then clipped my rope to it, everything became quiet. And from then on, until I reached my belay point and anchored myself in, it was only me, my body, and my concentration: Where should I step next? Is that a good place to stick a cam? Am I getting too far from my last piece?

I was half asleep now, imagining myself leading a climb in Boulder Canyon, or perhaps I was already dreaming.

I’m moving steadily up the granite face and feeling the sun on the backs of my hands. Looking up, I notice the finger crack I’ve been following has ended, that there’s no place above me to put in any more protection. Maggie is about a hundred feet below, anchored into a sloping ledge high above the canyon.

“Maggie,” I shout, “it’s run out. I can’t protect it.”

“Well, you have to do something,” Maggie yells. “Look around you.”

I try to remain calm. Panic is my worst enemy. I look to my left, to my right, above and below me—nothing but smooth slick granite. My hands are beginning to sweat which makes my hold on the rock more precarious. First one, then both of my legs begin to shake uncontrollably, a phenomenon known as “sewing machine legs” among climbers.

“Shit,” I whisper.

“Are you all right?” Maggie yells.

No, but I will have to keep moving anyway.

My first morning as a
brigadista
in Nicaragua, I woke up with an aching back and a hangover from the six Benadryls I’d ingested during the night. I looked down and noticed the springs of my cot were touching the floor. It was already ten degrees hotter than yesterday and it was only six fifteen. I could hear Sonia humming to herself in the kitchen, and a low buzz of conversation from the house next door. Belatedly, a rooster started to crow and then someone drove down the street broadcasting a loud recorded message that sounded both urgent and colloquial. Although the sound was completely distorted, I assumed it had something to do with politics. After a single night, I already sensed that in Nicaragua everything was about politics, even the weather. Regardless, any further sleep was out of the question.

Before I could extricate myself from the bed, I noticed a large brown egg nestled in the sheets between my ankles. I picked it up and stared at it. It was smooth and slightly warm. Where the hell had it come from? Was it part of some strange Nicaraguan welcoming ritual? And then I vaguely remembered the chicken hopping on and off my cot during the night and finally squatting on my ankles. I’d assumed I was having some kind of anxiety dream about Central America. Well, better a chicken than some pathetic loser like the burglar I’d represented who’d fallen asleep on his victim’s bed. Or Tomas, my new Nicaraguan boyfriend.

After a few minutes, I got dressed and walked out into the kitchen. The early morning light was blinding. I shielded my eyes as if I were being subjected to a painful interrogation lamp. I wished I hadn’t lost my sunglasses the day before and made a mental note to buy another pair as soon as possible. And a fan since Sonia didn’t seem to have one. 

“Look,” I said to Sonia, and showed her the egg.

She smiled delightedly. “Ah, for your breakfast.”

I handed it over, my first contribution to the household. Not exactly an elk carcass, but it was something. A few minutes later, she served me a plate of rice and beans, and a soft-boiled egg.

As soon as I finished eating, I washed my plate and then checked the time. I had two hours to filter a couple of quarts of water and take a shower. At nine, I was supposed to be in front of the community center where a bus would take us to the language school. I went back to my room, ignored a lizard on the wall, and pulled out my brand-new forty-dollar water filter from my duffel bag.

As I was setting it up in the kitchen, a tiny elf-like woman carrying a heavy sack appeared in the doorway. Sonia immediately rushed over and helped her carry it to the table.

“This is my neighbor Amelia,” Sonia told me in Spanish. “And this,” she pointed to me, “is Rachel, my new guest from North America.”

“
Mucho gusto
,” I said, offering her my hand.

Amelia smiled shyly. “
Encantada
.”

Sonia then explained that Amelia had come over to make tortillas. She and Sonia were planning to make a huge batch and then try to sell them downtown. If I understood them correctly, they felt lucky to have scored the ingredients and worried it might never happen again. Amelia was barely five feet tall and extremely thin. Her thick black glasses were too big for her face and by the way she squinted, probably weren’t the right prescription either. I wished my Spanish were better and that I didn’t have to ask both women to slow down and repeat almost everything they said. I hoped the language school would help.

Amelia, especially, seemed curious about my water filter. As I started to pump, Sonia told her I was about to purify perfectly good drinking water. I was sure Sonia meant well. She just didn’t understand a simple but crucial North American concept: what was good for others wasn’t necessarily good for us. Later, I found out the water in Managua was chlorinated and quite safe to drink.

Meanwhile, my bottles weren’t filling with water. The women hovered near the stove whispering in Spanish. I kept looking at my filter, wondering why it didn’t work. Then, I realized I had to remove two tiny stoppers that prevented any water from flowing in or out.

“Ah,” I said, and made a big show of removing the stoppers. “Ah,” the women repeated.

But still nothing happened. I read and reread the simple instructions. It took another ten minutes to figure out I had it all backward, that the filter went into the empty bottles and the pump went into the bucket of water. Both women smiled politely as I poured myself a glass of purified drinking water. These are kind people, I told myself, and you have no business being here.

My shower didn’t go much better. I didn’t care about the lack of hot water, but the huge brownish red cockroach resting on the bathroom floor terrified me. It looked almost as big as my foot. I considered squashing it, but worried what might happen if I didn’t completely kill it. Finally, it scuttled behind the toilet and I lunged for the shower. I was only half finished when the water suddenly stopped. I waited about five minutes, but it never came on again. Luckily, I’d rinsed most of the shampoo out of my hair.

“What happened to the water?” I asked Sonia when I came back out into the kitchen.

She shrugged. “
Se fue
.”
It went away.
This turned out to be the standard explanation in Nicaragua for everything that ran out, didn’t work or broke down.

I noticed on my way to the community center that many of the homes on the block weren’t as nice as Sonia’s, that some of the roofs had caved in or parts of the houses were missing. As I passed the open field next to the center, acrid gritty smoke from a pile of burning trash filled my nostrils and made my eyes water. I found a spot upwind of the pile and waited for the rest of my brigade.

Within minutes, everyone but the student who reminded me of my cousin Robbie had arrived. Most of the group looked exhausted and grungy as if they hadn’t slept or washed for days, although I knew at least some of them had tried taking showers because they still had streaks of shampoo in their hair. At nine fifteen, Tim and Estelle left to check on the bus, which hadn’t arrived yet. There was very little small talk. Like me, everyone seemed to be waiting for their psyches to catch up with their somas.

Finally, the other college student cleared her throat. “Excuse me,” she said, “but does anyone’s bedroom have a roof?” She bit her lip and shrugged. “Mine doesn’t.” She was slim and cute, with delicate features and a beautiful complexion. I guessed she was about nineteen.

“That’s terrible!” the poodle lady exclaimed.

The sharp-faced woman shook her head. “Get used to it. There’s no money here to fix things. Everything goes to pay for the war.” There was a large gob of shampoo above her left ear. Normally, I tell people if their flies are open or there’s lettuce caught between their teeth, but if it isn’t fixable I keep my mouth shut.

The student blushed. “I wasn’t actually complaining. I was just curious.” She was obviously a nice middle-class kid, someone who could have spent her summer gossiping by the side of a pool but chose to come here instead.

“Well it’s still a bummer,” I said. “I have a large poncho if you need one.”

“Oh for God’s sake,” the sharp-faced woman muttered. “It’s not the rainy season.”

“Susan, she was just kidding.” The mild-mannered man who spoke was obviously Susan’s boyfriend or husband. Why was it, I wondered, that women like Susan often ended up with men who were teddy bears? Susan’s teddy bear was a heavyset guy with a full reddish beard that he stroked whenever he was about to speak. It sounds affected, but he was actually just a polite thoughtful guy who’d fallen for his opposite. Love is mysterious.

“Hey, you’re all still here! Why am I not surprised?” It was my cousin Robbie, who would have missed the bus by at least thirty minutes if it had been on time. He wore a blue and yellow Hawaiian shirt that was still unbuttoned and he looked as if he’d been running. “Sorry. One of the kids was playing with my alarm clock and broke it.” He wiped his face with the back of his hand. “God, it’s hot! Where’s the bus?”

When our two organizers, Tim and Estelle, returned, we learned that our bus had broken down and that it could be another hour before it was fixed.

“I think I might be having an allergic reaction to all this smoke,” the poodle lady said. She wasn’t exaggerating. Her face looked puffy and her cheeks were dotted with tiny raised bumps.

After a quick vote, we decided to move inside the center, which was empty. Everyone except the poodle lady sat down in a circle on the dirt floor, as if it were our first day of summer camp.

Estelle whistled to get our attention. “Okay everyone, why don’t we go around and formally introduce ourselves.” She paused, gauging our reaction. “And also, let’s say a few words about why we’re here.” She was wearing a T-shirt commemorating a demonstration in 1983 where 17,000 peace activists, myself included, had encircled the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons facility outside of Denver. I smiled at the memory. We’d sung and chanted for hours, a modern day Ghost Dance that left us feeling wildly hopeful. Although the plant was still making plutonium triggers, the publicity had hurt and the momentum to shut it down continued to build. Who knew, maybe this would turn out to be equally rewarding.