or were mute, some had been burned over their entire bodies. No noses or ears. Syphilitic babies and mongoloids in their teens. The assorted afflictions spilled together from room to room, out into the courtyard into the lovely unkempt garden.
“There are many things needed to do,” Miss Dawson said. “I like feeding and changing babies. You might read to the blind children… they all seem particularly intelligent and bored.”
There were few books. La Fontaine in Spanish. They sat in a circle, staring at me, really blankly. Nervous, I began a game, a clapping and stomping kind of game like musical chairs. They liked that and so did some other children.
I hated the dump on Saturdays but I liked going to the orphanage. I even liked Miss Dawson when we were there. She spent her time bathing and rocking babies and singing to them, while I made up games for the older children. Some things worked and others didn’t. Relay races didn’t because nobody would let go of the stick. Jump rope was great because two boys with Down’s syndrome would turn the rope for hours on end without stopping, while everybody, especially the blind girls, took turns. Even nuns jumped, jump jump they hovered blue in the air. Farmer in the Dell. Button Button. Hide-and-go-seek didn’t work because nobody came home. The orphans were glad to see me; I loved going there, not because I was good, but because I liked to play.
Saturday nights we went to revolutionary theatre or poetry readings. We heard the greatest Latin American poets of our century. These were poets whose work I would later love, whom I would study and teach. But then I did not listen. I suffered an agony of self-consciousness and confusion. We were the only Americans there; all I heard were the attacks against the United States. Many people asked questions about American policy that I couldn’t answer; I referred them to Miss Dawson and translated her answers, ashamed and baffled by what I told them, about segregation, Anaconda. She didn’t realize how much the people scorned us, how they mocked her banal communist clichés about their reality. They laughed at me with my Josef haircut and nails, my expensive casual clothes. At one theatre group they put me on stage and the director hollered, “OK Gringa
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