But this problem we face, there’s no escaping it.”
I asked what had happened earlier with the young alpaca, lost on the mountainside. He had hacked through the brush for two hours before he found the creature, he said, but the little thing had slid down a slope and broken both its hind legs. He’d had to shoot it on the spot. I told him I was sorry before I hugged him good-night. I imagined the flight attendants in their snug skirts—stumbling up the jungle paths, heels sinking in the mud, faces smacked with insects and heat. Were the guerillas the same men in fatigues and machine guns as the ones who’d stopped the bus, spray-painted ELN PRESENTE across the back? Don’t move, they’d barked, voices muffled behind black knit masks. They had sounded much more frightening than Papi at his worst, yelling at me for sneaking off.
When I called Tía Leo later that night, Jacki answered. I had long admired my cousin—she surfed as well as any boy, and belly danced. Since her father had died, however, she was helping her mother more: managing tenants, selling off land. They’d heard about the hijacking and were worried for us. I told her it was just Colombian craziness but that Papi was determined to send me away to school, adding, “That’s why I want to talk to your mom.”
“That poor cabin crew,” Jacki said. “Did I tell you I might be working for Taca? Mami got me the interview. I just got the call back.” Four hundred girls had applied for six spots, she said, and now she was in the final group of twenty-four. I asked why the job was so competitive. She said among other skills you had to speak excellent English.
Jacki prattled on, but her news distracted me. Of course, an airline like Taca would require employees, especially flight attendants, to speak Spanish and English—no problem for my cousin since she was half-American, raised with a father from Arizona. Hard to believe Taca wouldn’t hire her, with her thin, athletic build, gringa features, and knowledge of both cultures. Did she find me a peculiar cousin, half-American, but with a foreigner’s choppy grasp of English? In what ways might I be different, had my mother stayed? Would I be more worldly and poised? Outspoken? Would she have hovered over my studies and agreed with Papi that I go away to boarding school? She might have enrolled me in dance classes, or stayed up late with me, watching American TV rather than the telenovelas Inez and the maids blasted in the laundry room, that I knew by heart. I’d met few Americans, had seen even fewer in Cali. What did it mean to be an American? Why wonder, when Paula had fled this valley of armed teenagers at roadblocks and most other gringos did the same? The only exception being diplomats and special forces.
My aunt picked up. When I asked how she was, she said, “Ah, well, I knew this year wouldn’t be easy. So many bills. Now I’m managing a few rentals owned by Californians—that’s keeping us afloat. If only I’d taken some business courses or something years ago, and not left everything to your uncle. The tenants and taxes—I had no idea. And you?”
I asked if she’d persuade my father to let me stay with her and finish school. She remained quiet for a few moments. “I will,” she said, “but only if you promise to take seriously the benefits of an education in the United States. Look at Pilar.” Jacki had disregarded obtaining her degree there like her older sister. But now Pilar lived in LA, had a career she loved in television production, and earned a salary unheard of by Costa Rican standards. By the way my aunt spoke, Pilar might be helping them financially. Tía Leo doubted my father would listen. “He can be such a stubborn goat,” she said. Her tone, sorrowful and frustrated, penetrated the phone.
“Is that what caused difficulty with the family?” I asked. “With your parents?”
“No,” she said. “He betrayed them about something, and they turned their backs. Everyone did, even me for a while. Only after what happened to them”—emotion caught in her throat—“did he and I reconcile.”
“You know, Papi has never told me the story. About your parents.”
“It’s a long story. But I prefer not to tell it over the phone.”
A beat of silence hung between us. “Well, I’d like to know something,” I said.
My aunt’s dogs barked; she yelled for them to be quiet. She said, “Okay, then. Diego had betrayed them twice with promises. The third time he asked our parents for forgiveness, they didn’t give it. They may have welcomed him back, in time, but I think the hurt was too much for them. And the shame of his deeds upon the family—can you imagine? He might have proven himself otherwise, reconciled, but no. Too late. His heart hardened. Then the guerillas came through.”
“ELN or FARC?”
“FARC,” she replied. “They were kidnapped, taken into the mountains. They died there.” Her voice quivered. “After this happened, Diego believed he had brought it on them. When they died, neither had forgiven the other. So your father never forgave himself. I don’t know that he ever will.”
“Other relatives?” I asked. “In Colombia?”
“Panama and here,” she said. “Many left in the eighties and early nineties. Our Martinez cousins, your great aunt and uncle, even abandoned property they couldn’t sell in time. Then after what happened to our parents, the remaining relatives fled. Between the guerillas and the cartels—it was a bloodbath. Only your father stayed.”
I thanked her and told her I wished we might talk more. “Come to Costa Rica, daughter,” she said. Hija—she often called me that, even though I was not her own.
I explained how I was in love. She laughed. “Ah, I see now why you’re not leaving. You must visit, yes,” she said, “but I also meant for school.” Then she informed me of how many gringos, Americans and Canadians but also Europeans and British, had recently relocated to Costa Rica, and how many good private schools had cropped up there. “If you went to American high school here, you wouldn’t be so far away, and you would get the education your father wants. Should I mention this to him?”
I told her yes. At least Costa Rica felt familiar, and I would be close to Tía Leo and Jacki. I might even live with them, visit Cali on weekends. Hardly thrilling but a viable compromise. She promised to call Papi soon, and we hung up.
For a long time I remained at my window seat, legs drawn. My grandparents’ bodies—had they ever been recovered? She hadn’t mentioned the deaths of their two brothers—had they crossed Papi and ended up behind the alpacas’ shed? Fatigues-clad youth marched the faceless figures of the grandparents I had never met—forced them to their weakened knees in a half-lit thicket, then pressed guns to the backs of their gray heads. Shots cracked, and the malnourished bodies tumbled down, lost forever in the impenetrable brush.
Papi and Luis had been right. The morning radio commentators talked about how the hijacking—only the third in Colombia’s history—had already paralyzed the country. Since the ELN and the FARC had never before targeted domestic air travel, flying had long been deemed the safest way to avoid roadblocks and kidnappings on rural routes. I didn’t even know what the Valle de Cauca beyond our plantation looked like—several times a year, I flew with Papi to Bogotá or to Barranquilla if he had business there. For years, Ana’s family had kept a beach house on the Caribbean, in Santa Marta, and flew there on weekends. But I couldn’t imagine that they would risk a trip after this. Colombians who needed to travel could now only trust the international airports with high security, or private aircraft.
One afternoon Fidel dropped me off at Ana’s house. I’d told Papi that I needed to see her to plan a surprise party. This was partly true; I was helping Ana with her ideas to celebrate Carlos’s birthday, but over the phone. Instead I met Manuel in front of the church on his moto. The walk would have taken us forty minutes at most. He drove fast. We darted around patches
