an exciting life. I’m jealous.”
“His brother’s going to become a priest, so maybe he’ll decide to become a man of the cloth,” Papi said, and raised his eyebrows. If he was serious or facetious, I couldn’t tell. “You never know.”
“Better him than us.” Luis elbowed Papi again.
“I like priests,” Papi replied. “I haven’t ruled out the priesthood yet, myself.”
Luis snorted with laughter. “Only if he’s still a virgin,” he said. “Or else you can forget that. Is church boy still a virgin, Mercedes?” He thumped the table. The sugar bowl and glasses shook.
“Luis—that’s enough.” Papi pushed his chair away and wandered to the door, gazing over the moonlit valley. Luis’s laughter died. He hung his head, caught his breath. I ran upstairs.
One afternoon a couple of days later, Fidel held up the rosary I’d presented him, bought from a Catholic store downtown. He looped it over the rearview mirror. “Thank you,” he said. “I don’t go to church like I should.”
I sat tall in the back, kneading my skirt, chin raised. “I have a lot of after school activities coming up.” I searched for his gaze in the mirror. “You might have to wait for me.”
His eyes met mine and held them. “Whatever you say, princesa.” He slid on his sunglasses—Ray-Bans, brand new. Expensive for a driver. Then he cranked up the radio and drove, the long red beads slapping the dash whenever we hit a pothole.
I arrived home to find Papi in the living room, his hair neatly combed. A slight, pale woman, distinctly un-Colombian, was seated next to him. Inez chopped and puttered about the stove, chicken simmering. The mutts, Angel and Cocoa, trotted up to sniff my legs, their nails scratching the tile. “This is my daughter, Mercedes.” Papi arose, his touch light on my shoulder; his dress boots squeaked. The gringa beamed at the both of us, stood, and clutched her hands in front of her gray skirt. School applications covered the coffee table, forms and pens strewn on top. “Mercedes, this is Sister Rosemary. She teaches at the mission.”
She extended her palm, and we exchanged con mucho gustos. The poor attended the mission schools, so why was she here? Papi loathed the Church, after his divorce.
“I hope you get along,” Papi said. “From now on Sister Rosemary’s going to help you with your English and to prepare your applications, for two hours every day after school.”
I glared at him, anger expanding in my chest like smoke. “Two hours a day?” I said. “No thanks. It’s too much. ” I pleaded that I’d study extra on my own and ask the teachers if I could stay after school. My voice sounded shrill and strained, unlike myself. I ditched my school bag and stood there, arms folded.
Angel scratched and gnawed at a leg sore; in the courtyard, the ridgebacks and Cocoa tumbled and yapped in play. “Why don’t you go ahead and prepare?” Papi said to the nun. He instructed her where to find the office—at the top of the stairs between his bedroom and mine.
Papi then turned to me, motioned for me to sit. He peeled the purple bandanna from his head and balled it in his fist. “You really think I don’t know what’s going on? That I don’t know you’ve been running around with that boy? You haven’t even bothered with the forms.”
“I went shopping with Ana this week. Ask Fidel. He’ll show you the gift I bought him.”
He raised a hand. “Don’t cross me, hija.”
I drew a pillow onto my lap and picked at its fringed trim.
He sifted through the applications, held up a form. “These are complicated,” he said. “They must be filled out correctly, and my written English is not perfect. Besides, you have to pass a language exam. So I asked around. Our neighbors recommended the nun.”
He clenched and unclenched the bandanna. His expression was one of sadness. Why did he act as if this was the only hope for me? If Colombia was so dangerous, why hadn’t we already left? Didn’t he understand that I was bound to break out—pursue my own ambitions, however I chose? That if I went to the United States, I would somehow seek out my mother, her family? I could not see myself at boarding school and ignoring the possibility that she might be a few cities or states away. The dog whined in her throat. Finally he said, “Three days a week, then. But you had better be here at exactly four o’clock on those days, with your nose in those books. Monday, Wednesday, Friday.” He struck his finger to his knee as he named the days. Then handed me the bandanna and told me to dry my face and get upstairs. Tears wet my stiff yellow blouse. My brown vest gaped.
Sunday afternoon the house hummed and creaked, deserted but for the spinning fans and parrots in the courtyard cage. Papi and the men had gone to a horse auction, and the maids had the day off. I left and caught the bus on the valley road. Every time we creaked to a halt, I swallowed and tried to squelch the nausea brought on by the diesel fumes, cow manure, and fear. We passed where the bandidos had set up their roadblock, and I raked my sweaty palms over my thighs. My friends and I were forbidden to even ride the city buses in Cali’s center because armed bandits hijacked those, too, despite the police. But today the only presence blocking the road was a herd of cows. The driver honked, the cows trotted to the side of the road, and I exhaled in relief.
Manuel met me at the bus stop, on the corner of La Maria church where we had first kissed. He steered me across a courtyard with well-manicured rosebushes and into a smaller makeshift outbuilding—no more than a frame constructed of two-by-fours with plastic sheeting for sides and a roof and a few dozen folding chairs arranged in a semicircle. Young people streamed in after us. He refused to tell me what the meeting would be about, just said, “You’ll see,” and nodded toward the front. A young man dressed in a collared blue shirt and jeans stood there, hands on hips. He surveyed the assembly similar to the way Papi observed our alpacas from the fence. “My brother, Emilio,” Manuel said.
But for subtle differences, I might have guessed they were twins: Emilio stood a few inches taller and broader than Manuel, whose build remained slight, more boyish. Yet they had the same soft black hair, the same delicate jaw line and cheekbones, the same eyes.
Emilio called the room to attention. Bodies squeezed together; a faint odor of perspiration and cologne filled my nostrils. Carlos took the last chair by the entrance, and Ana slid onto his lap. Those gathered fell quiet.
The meeting turned out to be an open forum on how the Catholic Church advocated that the local community might peacefully defend itself against the two dominant rebel groups, the ELN and the FARC. Since January, attacks and kidnappings on the Church and civilians had sharply arisen across Colombia, but especially in the Andes region—incidents like the bus hijacking, as one young man brought up in a quivering voice, toying with his ponytail as he stood above the crowd. “How is turning the other cheek going to faze these so-called revolutionaries?” he said. Emilio reminded everyone that it wasn’t just the leftist guerillas who terrorized civilians, but the paramilitaries who infiltrated villages controlled by the ELN or the FARC, then rounded up and assassinated anyone deemed “sympathetic” to the guerillas’ cause. Despite the fixation of the politicians and media on the guerillas, the paras were responsible for a majority of the violence and horrific civilian massacres. “Sympathizers” included pharmacists who filled prescriptions for guerilla leaders, doctors who treated them, even bus drivers who had provided transport—ordinary citizens just doing their jobs who faced torture or death at the hands of the paras if they didn’t comply.
I had listened to enough of Fidel’s radio broadcasts to know both factions
