in the darkness.
After everyone left that night, Sarah came whimpering and sobbing to her father’s bed; and he clasped her and held her tightly in his arms for almost an hour despite Mary’s protests in the twin bed beside them. He told her that she was safe and secure and that no phantoms of the night would ever be able to hurt her.
The weekend before Sarah’s fourteenth birthday her mother asked her how she would like to celebrate. Sarah was aware that her father still blamed himself for the Halloween fiasco and that her mother continued to be preoccupied about her lack of social ties and friendships with her peers; and Sarah intended to take full advantage of their guilt.
“I’d like to go down to the Eskimo on Saturday night.”
“Saturday is impossible, as you know very well. I’ll talk with your father about Sunday evening when there are fewer rowdy people on the streets.” Since George Rutledge’s parents were killed in an automobile accident on the steep mountain road coming back from Managua, he’d resisted driving into the city at night, especially on the weekend, unless it was an emergency.
When Sarah and Mary allied in a united front to persuade George, he protested as usual. “You know we don’t go into the city at night. Besides with the elections coming up, a political rally is scheduled in the central plaza.”
As his wife and daughter persisted and his feelings of guilt about the Halloween fiasco were recalled, he relented. “I’ll call someone at the American Embassy and see if they think there’s any problem because of the rally.” George’s friend at the American Embassy told him that no inflammatory demonstrations were anticipated and that in fact a large dinner party with many American guests was planned that night at the Gran Hotel. George had forgotten that he and Mary had been invited and had declined to accept the invitation to the dinner party, but he did agree finally to honor Sarah’s birthday request.
A few years earlier the Eskimo ice cream parlor had been built within sight of the National Cathedral but away from the Central Plaza where the Conservative Party was scheduled to hold a rally opposing Anastasio Somoza Debayle’s candidacy for President of the republic. The plate glass windows and plastic covered seats and chrome-plated metal strips around the counter and stools and table edges seemed even grander and more elegant than the pictures of such places in the United States that Sarah had seen in magazines. The North American and British teenagers, who were several years older than Sarah, came here for a soda or sundae after their dates at the movies. Chic Nicaraguan boys, especially those who attended the American School, also brought their dates to the Eskimo.
Sarah didn’t have a boyfriend, and no boy had ever tried to sit beside her even when a large group went together to a movie on a Saturday afternoon. She hoped that some teenagers might be at the Eskimo on that Sunday night, January 22, 1967, although they would have been more likely to be encountered on a Saturday night. At least she could fantasize about someday having a date and being accepted by the “cool kids” and luxuriate in her imagination at the only place in Nicaragua that felt like a part of the youth culture of the United States. (Even though her father often told her, when she babbled rhapsodically about the Eskimo, that the American Embassy and the ambassador’s residence were actual properties of the United States, they certainly felt to Sarah more like any other big Nicaraguan office building and mansion.)
George Rutledge finally found a parking space on the street and hired an urchin to guard the car with a payment made more for extortion than for security. They began walking toward the Eskimo when they heard the noise. Firecrackers and backfires from old buses and trucks could be heard in the night several times every hour in Managua, but careful practice had taught George to distinguish their sounds from gunfire.
Sarah felt her father grasp her upper arm so tightly that it hurt and saw him reach his other hand toward her mother. “Back to the car, as fast as you can walk!”
George might have chosen any of a dozen routes out of the city; but habit took him on his customary route to the South Highway through narrow lanes with high curbs and extraordinarily high sidewalks, hardly wide enough for a single person to balance against the tiny wooden structures. The houses in the old neighborhoods were constructed from wood rather than from the concrete and stucco used for houses built later in the city. The walls and shutters were unpainted; but from the bright green or yellow or blue or red doors, now all open, soft light splashed into the street.
There were no street lamps, and the middle of the road was dark; but people crowded onto the narrow sidewalks and spilled off into the edge of the street, laughing, singing, drinking, and shouting. Women and girls in tight dresses and high heels stood alone or in pairs, never more than three together. Occasionally one of the bright doors would bang shut with a squeal and a high-pitched laugh. It was a prostitutes’ district. Even young teenagers like Sarah felt a giddy amusement and delight knowing that it was the putas’ (prostitutes’) neighborhood without their parents’ awareness of their comprehension of such things. Riding down the middle of the street, she imagined being involved in the bawdy joy and lascivious pleasure, as if she were standing on the sidewalk with the revelers.
“I’m sorry, Susi (her father’s baby name for her), we’ll make it up to you. Maybe we can take some of your friends to dinner at Los Ranchos next week.”
“That’s all right, Daddy. You tried. I shouldn’t have insisted so much.”
Suddenly they heard shots and saw people run from doorway to doorway. The merry voices became shrill with fear and then muted into whines and cries as the doors closed and the crowds thinned and darkness transformed the street into a black tunnel of terror. Only the headlights of the old Austin picked out a few cringing figures, no longer dancing, now staggering into some opening before it was locked against them. A woman ran across the street in front of them carrying a young child in her arms with another young child who held her hand. The older child couldn’t keep up with her, and she dragged him by the arm. Then he fell. She paused for only a moment and bent down and tried to lift the fallen child, but she could not manage both children, and she ran into one of the last open doorways abandoning the injured child in the street. They could see now it was a little boy. George swerved to avoid running over the small body and then accelerated.
“George! Stop!”
“We’ve got to get out of here. They’ll shoot us!”
“Stop!” Mary was screaming and opening the door of the car as if she intended to jump out while it still sped along. “We have to see about the child.”
George stopped and put the car into reverse. Even before he had stopped again, Mary had leapt from the already opened door and was running toward the fallen child in the street. George followed his wife immediately out of the car, and Sarah slipped out behind her parents and saw a wound and bloodstains on the little boy’s shoulder and realized he had been struck by one of the bullets. He was small, only three or four years old, with a dirty, flat, sweet Indian face. Sarah could smell the big chocolate stains around his mouth and thought of the chocolate soda she had been prevented from ordering at the Eskimo. She began to cry.
“Sarah, get back in the car. Right now!”
Sarah obeyed her father, but from the car window she looked down at the little boy in the street. He was wearing a ragged shirt but new shorts. He was barefooted. Sarah’s mother put her head down close to his face and chest. “He’s breathing, but he’s unconscious, maybe he fainted or is in shock.” His eyes were closed, but little bubbles of saliva gurgled out of the corner of his mouth. Blood ran down his right arm. His right hand twitched. Sarah could hear gunshots still striking and ricocheting in the distance.
George knelt beside his wife. He was shaking. “¿Tu madre? ¿Dónde está? ¡Vámanos con
