Animal Dreams - Barbara Kingsolver [134]
Mrs. Kimball brightened as if I’d offered her a peppermint. “I’ve called that before. They have the nicest little girl on that line, she’ll tell you anything you want to know.”
“That was my sister you talked to. Hallie Noline.” I was amazed by the coincidence, but then again probably half of Tucson had turned to Hallie for advice. And half of Nicaragua. “That was part of her job,” I said. “She did that for six years.”
Mrs. Kimball looked around at the neighboring seats as if Hallie might turn up for consultation. “Well, do you mean she’s quit? I just thought the world of her.”
“Yep, she quit. She left the country.”
“Left the country?”
“She went to Nicaragua.” Everybody in this country should know her name, I thought. During the Iran hostage crisis they had a special symbol on the newscasts: a blindfolded man, and the number of days. A schoolchild glancing up from a comic book would know that this story was about them. But a nation gloats on the hostility of its enemies, whereas Hallie had proved the malevolence of some men we supplied with machine guns. Hallie was a skeleton in the civic closet.
Some people knew. I’d gotten a card from a nun in Minneapolis who had known Hallie. She was one of several thousand people who had gone down to Nicaragua for just a week or two, she said. They helped pick coffee, or if they had training they did other helpful things. The idea was just to be there in the danger zone, so that if the U.S. should attack, it would have to attack some of its own citizens. This nun, Sister Sabina Martin, had helped give vaccinations. She met Hallie at the clinic in Chinandega the day Hallie brought in a child who’d drunk paraquat from a Coke bottle. Sister Martin and Hallie sat with the child the whole day, and she said that although I might not think it possible, she felt she’d come to know Hallie well during that time. In some circumstances, she said, an afternoon can be a whole life.
“Oh, well,” Mrs. Kimball said, after quite a while. “You must miss her.”
“I will, when it really sinks in. She hasn’t been gone that long.”
“I know what you’re going through,” said Mrs. Kimball. “I lost my sister in 1965.”
I hadn’t told her Hallie was dead. Mrs. Kimball had seized the subject of death all on her own. “I’m sorry,” I said, not really wanting to be encouraging, but you couldn’t just ignore it, either.
“She’s been dead all this time of an aneurysm and there are still days when I think, ‘Oh, wait till I tell Phoebe about that!’ Before I realize. I always think it’s harder to believe they’re gone when it’s sudden.”
“My sister,” I said, and then stopped, afraid of the lie I was about to tell. I was going to say, “isn’t dead.” I heard an old voice in my head, the teller of tales: I am a cello player running away from home. We are from Zanzibar, we’re from Ireland, our mother is the Queen of Potatoes. I was through constructing myself for other people. I didn’t say anything.
Several seats ahead of us, a teenage couple had begun necking enthusiastically. You couldn’t blame these kids, the scenery was boring and would drive you to anything, but they made me feel hopelessly alone.
“Well,” Alice said, apparently remembering it was garden pests we’d agreed to talk about. “What would you do for the slugs?”
“I really don’t know, I’m not that good with plants.” I considered the problem for a while. “I think what Hallie used to do was put out beer for them, in little tin cans. The slugs are attracted to it and they fall in, or something. I know that sounds crazy but I’m pretty sure it’s right.”
“Well.” She stared at me thoughtfully. “My husband and I aren’t drinkers, but I guess I could go out and get some beer for the slugs. Do you know what brand?”
“I don’t think it matters. I’d get whatever’s on sale.”
“All right, I’ll do that,” said Mrs. Kimball. She opened her magazine again to the incendiary four o’clocks, but then closed it right back up, holding the place with her finger. “You ought to try to keep in touch with your sister,