Animal Dreams - Barbara Kingsolver [105]
“You should let her come home. She hasn’t done anything wrong. She’s being punished for an act of bravery.” He isn’t sure whether he has just spoken in Spanish or English.
Sí, the voice answers after a moment. Claro que sí.
“Where is she?”
No estamos seguros. We think they must have taken her into Honduras, where they’re camped. A large patrol has gone to look for her. Thirty people, more than half of them from the village where she lives. There were more who wanted to go. Even an eight-year-old boy. Hallie has many friends.
Even an eight-year-old boy. Thirty people.
The words are so much fine dust suspended in the air before him, in the long, trapezoidal block of sunlight from the window. He examines the dust. He sees the word “Hallie.” It was Codi who stood up and danced on the slide.
“You should let her come home,” he says again. He can remember precisely the muscular line of Mrs. Navarrete’s disapproving jaw. “Let my daughter come home now.”
The voice rejects this statement, says nothing.
He touches the corner of his eye and is surprised to find moisture on his fingertips. He stares at an iron coal bucket beside the fireplace, trying to recall its history, how it came to him. He thinks, for no reason, that this iron coal bucket could save his life, if only he could remember. He remembers instead that he no longer delivers babies, the telephone call could not possibly be Mandy Navarrete. It is a woman from another country, who knows his daughter. He is trying hard not to look at the dust in the air but the sun has illuminated each particle so that it glows. Each word burns.
“Is there something I can do?” he asks finally. “I know she has friends in the Ministry of Agriculture. Do they know?”
“Everyone knows. Our Ministry of Agriculture, your Ministry of Agriculture.” There is a pause. “You understand that this occurs every day. We’re a nation of bereaved families. The only difference this time is that it happens to be an American. It happens to be Hallie.” The voice weakens again, and he waits, and it goes on. “We sent a telegram to your President and the NBC. We think if they are embarrassed enough by their contras, they could do something.”
If they are embarrassed enough.
“Wait. Let me take down the number where you are. So I can call you tomorrow.”
“I’m in the office of a church in Managua. Nobody here knows anything. You can call the Ministry of Agriculture if you want. Or your President. He is the responsible party.”
He understands that she is being as helpful as she can. She is a kind, tired voice. He doesn’t want her to hang up, because then his life will begin. There is a pause while she talks to someone else who is there with her, and then she returns to him and says, “I’m sorry.”
“Is there anything more? Besides waiting?”
“I’m sorry. There is nothing.”
Carefully he puts down the receiver and looks at the air in front of the window in this empty room. The dust. He listens inside himself for a long time before he understands that it’s the teakettle that is screaming.
COSIMA
21
The Tissue of Hearts
Hallie was somebody’s prisoner. Whether my eyes were open or closed, I saw her with a white cloth tied tightly over her mouth. That’s the only image that would ever come.
If she couldn’t scream, I did. I was in every way unreasonable, especially with the kids at school. Even at the time, I was lucid enough to be thankful that Rita had dropped out. One member of my family had already yelled at her; she didn’t have to know that neither one of us had all our tires on the road.
The students had tried to be cooperative. They went to Tucson to assist the Stitch and Bitch Club, as I’d requested, and found the city to be a superb adventure. They discovered a video arcade; Raymo sweet-talked more than ten young women into buying piñatas; there were rumors that Connie Muñoz gave Hector Jones a hand job in the back seat of the bus on the way home. What did I expect? They were teenagers. I knew that, but still I screamed at them because Black Mountain was poisoning