Читать книгу Nicaraguan Gringa - John Keith - Страница 11

Earthquake and Revolution:

1972–1979

Where Do You Belong?

International flights from the United States arrived in Managua in the morning and returned in the afternoon so that anyone traveling beyond New Orleans or Miami would usually schedule a connection to arrive at a final destination late at night or else stay in one or the other port city overnight. Not only would George Rutledge need to schedule a domestic flight for Sarah after clearing customs in Miami or New Orleans, but she would have to change planes again in Atlanta before flying into Greensboro, where college officials would meet her. It would be almost impossible to do in one day. George pondered and fretted over Sarah’s itinerary. He wanted to accompany her, but it was a difficult time to leave the new coffee-processing plant unattended.

After dithering for almost a week George decided to call an old college friend who lived in Miami to ask if he would meet Sarah’s plane and let her stay with his family and take her back to the airport the next morning. The telephone call took almost three hours to complete over the landlines from Central America through Mexico. “I know it’s a terribly lot to ask, but . . .”

Before George could finish his request his friend had enthusiastically agreed to the plan. He was one of the few friends from George’s college years who had kept in touch with him and the only such friend who had sent condolences after Mary’s death. He seemed to be genuinely pleased to be able to do something to help George and delighted to be able to meet his daughter.

Of course Sarah protested vehemently and assured her father that if she was old enough to go away to college she was old enough to change planes or even take a taxi to a hotel for the night, but secretly she was relieved that someone would meet her and take care of her. She had never visited the United States without one or both of her parents beside her. Her anticipation of going to college and leaving her father and Nicaragua both thrilled and terrified her, although she confided none of her feelings to anyone except Guillermo.

It was raining when George and Sarah arrived at the airport, but the shower was typically brief. The sun came out and the sky cleared as the airplane rose over Xolotián (Lake Managua). Sarah had seen Momotombo and Momotombito from the air on previous flights; but looking down on them now she was shocked at how ordinary they seemed. Momotombito looked like a toy boat in the middle of a pond floating beside Momotombo like sloop moored on the shore. On their frequent drives home from Masaya, Momotombo always seemed magical looming ahead of them, as if the highway would crash into the base of the huge volcano with wisps of smoke blowing from its peak to complete the eerie effect. Sarah felt an aching desire to look up at them at sunset from the Masaya highway and wondered how long it would be before she saw them again. “Will I go to Masaya during my Christmas holiday?” she wondered and immediately swore to herself that she would. It seemed to be ages in the future, already in a distant land, the land she had just left.

George’s college friend and his family in Miami were kind and solicitous as if she were some exotic bird that had flown into their patio. Their small talk was polite, but she found nothing of interest in their conversation. She struggled to remember the names of the two younger children and how to spell them, so that she could write the requisite thank you note prompted in her conscience from her mother beyond the grave. The officials from the college who met her plane in Greensboro were equally kind and polite and unmemorable, and Sarah began to wonder if her imagined adventure of college would continue to be pale and insipid compared to her life in Nicaragua.

Then she met her roommate.

“So you’re the foreigner they assigned to room with me” were the first words she spoke to Sarah. “You do speak English, don’t you?” were the second words out of her mouth.

“Yes. My mother was an American from nearby here in North Carolina. My father’s British. I went to an American school in Nicaragua where the classes were all taught in English.”

“Is that where the pigmies come from? Nicara . . . Whatever?”

“I believe you’re thinking of Nigeria. Nicaragua is in Central America, although I don’t believe Nigeria is the part of Africa where pigmies live either. By the way, I’m Sarah Rutledge.” Sarah extended her hand, which the large girl grasped limply.

“I’m Bebe. Bebe Jones. My real name’s Barbara, but everybody calls me Bebe. I’m glad you’re not a Negro, ’though I guess that would’ve been aw’right, too, the way things are going nowadays.”

Sara felt a chill rundown her spine. Bebe was perhaps the plainest girl that Sarah had ever seen. Although she didn’t feel any innate sympathy for her, Sarah resolved to befriend her and be as kind and understanding as possible.

“Are there any black students at Elon?”

“I don’t know. Not that many, I guess. I’ve seen a few walking around. They started coming to my high school last year. I don’t think any of them are here at Elon though. I didn’t know any of them very well. We never talked much.”

“I don’t know anyone at all here. I didn’t have a single name to write on the application where they asked for roommate preferences. Is that how it was for you?”

“Oh, I know plenty of girls in my class that came here, but none of ’em wanted to room with me. I just told ’em to put me with anybody. They asked me if I’d be willing to room with somebody from outside the United States, and I said sure. I just wondered whether you’d be able to speak English and if you’d be white or not.”

Sarah and Bebe kept very different schedules. Sarah preferred early morning classes, and Bebe slept late. Often Bebe was still asleep when Sarah returned from her second or even third period classes, and Sarah tried not to wake her. Sarah studied at night in the library; and Bebe studied in their room, although Sarah wondered whether Bebe studied very much at all.

By the end of the second week of classes Bebe had been accepted into a group of friends—Sarah overheard a wag in the cafeteria refer to them as the ugly sisters. They gathered in Sarah and Bebe’s room almost every evening while Sarah was at the library. Whenever Sarah returned to their room, Bebe’s friends usually left. Sometimes Bebe left with them. Sometimes she stayed and fiddled with things on her desk. Sarah tried to ask Bebe leading questions about her classes and her friends, but Bebe’s laconic responses didn’t lead to an extended interchange.

Sarah enjoyed some pleasant conversations with various students in the cafeteria, but none of them led to real friendships. She didn’t feel that she was a member of any social group. One evening using the payphone in the student lounge and aching from loneliness she tried to call Carlos Vargas at the college where she’d been told he’d matriculated; but when she failed to track him down from leads by people who recognized his name and after several calls and running out of change, she gave up the effort.

Several times Bebe asked Sarah if she wouldn’t prefer to room with someone else; and Sarah always replied that she was happy with Bebe as a roommate—however unhappy she actually was—because she felt sorry for Bebe and didn’t want to be rude.

Then one evening after she returned from the library, Sarah found their room completely rearranged. Bebe and her friends were nowhere in sight. Sarah’s desk had been shoved into a corner where it was almost inaccessible, and her books had been piled underneath it. Her dresses were hung in a different order in her closet, and even personal items in her chest-of-drawers had obviously been rummaged through. It suddenly dawned on Sarah for the first time that Bebe wasn’t seeking reassurance in asking if Sarah wouldn’t prefer another roommate. Bebe wanted to room with someone else. Until that evening the thought had been inconceivable to Sarah, who had believed that rooming with Bebe was an act of pitying mercy on her part.

Because it was only a few days until the Thanksgiving holiday, Sarah decided to wait until she returned to campus before taking any action about her roommate situation. If only she could have flown to Managua and talked with her father and Don Martín and Father Richard and Doña Beatriz, Sarah would have known what to do; but the time was too short and the expense too great for such a trip. Sarah also believed that if she should go back to Nicaragua now she would never return to the United States.

Sarah had been invited to spend the Thanksgiving with her mother’s older brother and his wife, her Uncle Walter and Aunt Beth, on the family farm between Burlington and Durham where her mother had grown up; but she didn’t think that she could talk to them about the horrible situation with her roommate. When Uncle Walter and Aunt Beth had visited them at Quinta Louisa several years ago, they sat with their hands folded in their laps and said very little. Their eyes wandered around the room like people waiting in a strange bus station unsure of their schedule for departure. Perhaps if she could wander by herself in the woods and listen to the birds and see some wild animals as her mother had told her that she used to do, the land itself would offer her some answers; but Sarah knew that the birds would not be as beautiful as those in Nicaragua and that the animals would be secretive and quiet, unlike the chattering of her impudent monkeys.