manicured nails that testified that she had never washed a dish or pushed a mop in her life. “Come sit by me, Sarita.” Armando and Beatriz Chulteco did not have children, and Sarah was more than a goddaughter, more than a niece could have been to them, especially to Beatriz. “How do you like the new padrecito (little priest)?”
“He’s nice. A little gawky maybe. Sort of like a scarecrow in his cassock.”
“Wicked girl!” Beatriz hugged Sarah tightly against her. “We’ll have to get him started on the right foot.”
Even before dinner was announced, with Sarah still sitting beside her, Beatriz had beckoned Father Sims and begun instructing him about how he must employ a housekeeper in addition to the part-time gardener that cleaned the church and lived in the little house behind the parking lot in order to guard the church.
“I’m afraid I can’t afford servants on a missionary’s salary.”
“Oh, Padre! A live-in maid costs only a hundred córdobas a week—that’s just fourteen American dollars. Surely you can afford that!”
“Really? But I’m not sure I need . . .”
“Of course you do. You can’t buy ready-to-eat food at the supermarket down here. Someone has to cook for you, and you can’t leave your house unattended. Ladrones, sneak thieves, will carry off everything. They’re not violent. They won’t hurt you. You are perfectly safe from harm in Nicaragua. Do not let me scare you, but they will get inside while you’re gone and strip everything bare.”
“Perhaps I should consider it.”
“I will take care of everything for you. I will line up some girls for you to interview. Do you speak Spanish well enough, or would you prefer a costeña that speaks English?”
“I can get by in Spanish. I don’t think it would be appropriate to have a costeña, so many of them are members of my parish and even the Moravians all have family members in the parish.”
“¡Como no! (As you say!) I always think of the Episcopal vicar as just the chaplain for my North American and British friends, but you have to care for them, too.” Doña Beatriz began speaking in her giddy, silly little-girl voice and tugging at her dangling gold earring.
“Mrs. Rutledge says you know the American and British community better than anyone else in Managua. How can I meet them and invite them to church? I’m especially anxious to get something started for the children.”
“!Claro que sí! (To be sure!), Armando and I are Catholics, of course; but I’d be delighted to help you. What did you have in mind for the children?”
“A Sunday School for the younger ones. Some kind of youth group for the older young people.”
“I’ll get you their addresses so you can drop them a note. I’d suggest setting up a meeting one afternoon at the American School when the parents pick up their children. They all go to the American School, of course.”
“Even the Nicaraguan children?”
“Claro que sí (To be sure), all those of a certain class, but most of them are Catholic.”
“Would that make it impossible for them to be involved in a youth group, even a social sort of thing?”
“Oh no. That might be quite feasible, if it wasn’t too religious.”
“And then there would be the young people from St. Francis. The costeños as you call them.”
“Now that might be a bit more difficult. They’re from a quite different social class, you know.”
George Rutledge approached them. “Am I interrupting?”
“Of course not, George. Do join us.”
”I need Beatriz’s advice and counsel.” George scowled at Sarah in a teasing way.
“She’s been very helpful to me, Mr. Rutledge.”
“Please call me George. Shoo, Sarah, I have something to ask Doña Beatriz in private.”
Sarah scurried away but stayed close enough to overhear her father’s conversation. As an only child often left alone in the company of adults, she’d developed the skill of acute hearing for eavesdropping.
“Sarah’s been feeling a little isolated and lonely lately. I was thinking of organizing something . . . a party or some such . . . for some of the children her age.”
“That fits right in with what the padre and I were discussing. We might kill two birds with one stone, as you North Americans say. Don’t you think so, Padre?”
Father Sims nodded in agreement.
“You know Halloween is coming up. I realize it’s not a Nicaraguan custom; but I remember how thrilling it was for me when I first went away to boarding school in the States. I’d never experienced anything like it. Do you think we could have a costume party for the children here at Quinta Louisa? Would you be willing to help Mary organize something like that?”
Beatriz clapped her hands and shook her head so violently in her excitement that her bracelets and earrings jangled together in a tinkling chorus. “Of course! ¡Ciertamente! (Certainly!) It will be great fun!”
“Perhaps you could help get some costumes for Martín and Flora’s boys and some of the other children from the village and some of the costeño children from the church.”
“¡Dios mío! (My God!) George, that’s just what I was trying to explain to Reverendo Sims. That just won’t work. You can’t treat your workers as equals. Even Mary knows people of different classes can’t socialize together. You should know better. You’ve lived here all your life. Sometimes I think Mary knows more about handling servants than you do. Bless her heart! I love her better than ripe sugarcane with that North Carolina drawl.” Beatriz’s voice had once again risen in pitch to a little girl timbre.
The logistics proved too difficult for transporting the costeño children who attended St. Francis from the central city to Quinta Louisa, but George Rutledge insisted that Martín and Flora’s boys and the children from the village should come to the Halloween party. Beatriz Chulteco would have nothing to do with their costumes. Mary Rutledge had to find something for Flora’s boys to wear and searched for scraps of cloth for costumes that Martín could take to the village for the coffee workers’ children, but Beatriz provided all the decorations and many of the refreshments for the party.
The Chultecos came for an early supper before the party at Quinta Louisa. Some of Sarah’s classmates came at dusk, but it was dark when the workers’ children arrived in masks carrying torches. As the villagers entered the garden in their frightening costumes with painted faces and masked eyes, she clung to her father and was not in the least delighted with the pleasant feeling of squeamish awe that he had told her he had enjoyed as a boy during his first experience of Halloween.
One of the boys from Sarah’s class came over to comfort her. His name was Carlos Vargas Allen. His mother was a North American friend of her mother, although his father was Nicaraguan. Carlos was shy and smaller than the other boys in her class, and she’d rarely paid any attention to him. He patted her on the shoulder. “It’s all right, Sarah. I’ll take care of you. I won’t let anything bad happen to you.”
