Nicaraguan Gringa. John Keith

unlocked and unwatched, they wouldn’t violate the code of proper behavior, not with a gringo patrician.

      The older boy led them in the direction of the local pulpería, a small, one room shack where candy and bottle drinks and tortillas and cakes and cigarettes were sold. It would be the obvious place to take them, the obvious place for them to begin making their inquiries even with his help. George wrinkled his chin at Mary and Sarah.

      “You do not get any more money unless we receive some good information.” George then turned to Mary and Sarah. “Are you sure you want to come? It would be better for you to wait in the car.”

      “We’re coming with you. Here, take my hand, Sarah.”

      They passed the pulpería and turned down an alley between the tightly clustered houses on the street. Sarah saw a family living under a plastic and tarpaper tent inside the corner of a crumbling building with only two walls left. Such a degraded hovel was not allowed in sight of the street; it must be hidden from the slightly more respectable poor dwellings. The boy stopped at a door even rougher and cruder than the others, made from unpainted boards that were uneven at the bottom with cracks between them.

      “Open up. Open the door, old woman. These North Americans gave me a córdoba to lead them to someone who could tell them about the boy who was shot on Sunday night.”

      The old woman who appeared at the door might have been eighty or ninety or two hundred years old. She possessed an ancient frame rarely seen in Nicaragua. The thick muscular body that made the age of poor women indistinguishable from forty to seventy years of age had shriveled. The thin, leathery, solemn face had crumpled into a thousand creases. The small hard hands and feet once like crude tools had twisted and contorted. The black hair had turned to a hoary mass of white that few women with predominantly Indian features ever lived to display. She leaned with both hands on a stick and wore two ragged sweaters and a shawl, even though the temperature was close to a hundred degrees. Her hut was like a dark, dank cave. The dirt floor at the back was rutted. The ground in the front had been leveled, and tiles had been laid over the bare earth, but they had not been grouted together. A tijera (canvas cot) was folded against the wall. Crude benches and stools were scattered among various jars and pans and pots and glasses, some turned over, many lying randomly on the bare earthen floor at the rear. There was no window, not even a hole covered by a shutter. The stench that came through the open doorway was sickening; and Sarah felt and tasted the darkness, a damp forbidding darkness.

      “Bueños dias, señora. I am Señor George Rutledge. We took a little boy to the hospital when he was shot on Sunday night.”

      “What do you want, gringo devils? We don’t have any money to pay you and give the hospital. I don’t know anything about all that trouble.”

      “We don’t want any money, señora.” Mary’s voice was soft and gentle unlike her husband’s stern tone. Sarah thought that her father wouldn’t have spoken so gruffly if he hadn’t been embarrassed by exposing her to this seedy neighborhood. “Please, señora, we’re looking for the mother of the little boy who was shot, so that we can tell her that he’s getting well.”

      “His puta (prostitute) mother lives at the back of the barrio by the field where we throw our garbage, since she moved from Casa Fuqui.” Another reference point for directions was Casa Fuqui, the whorehouse used by the U.S. Marines that had occupied the country during the 1920s and 1930s until they’d put Anastasio Somoza García into power. Casa Fuqui itself, like the little tree, had also disappeared long ago; but the stories about the U. S. Marine occupation were frequently revived and retold, especially by the secret, subversive groups that wanted to overthrow the Somoza regime. “The boy will show you, if you give him another córdoba. He is my grandson.”

      The boy led them to a house that was even shabbier than the old woman’s hovel, with a dirt floor and another rough, unpainted door and a thatched roof, also without windows. A pit for cooking, like a primitive barbeque grill, was dug outside in the yard. A toddler hugged the leg of the woman who opened the door. The little girl was also filthy, like the other children Sarah had seen in Barrio Arbolito. Her mother was a light-skinned woman with Spanish rather than Indian features. Her blouse and wrap-around skirt were dirty and ill fitting. The space lacked any walls and was divided into places for eating and sleeping by a blanket hanging from a rafter and a woven reed mat. The house smelled sour with the same odor of the old woman’s house.

      The Rutledges introduced themselves to the woman presumed to be the injured child’s mother. Mary asked her to tell them her name. ¿Como se llama? (How do you call yourself?)

      “Me llamo Blanca. (I call myself Blanca: my name is Blanca).”

      “The little boy who was shot is your son?”

      “Yes, señor. Do you know if he is alive? I was told some norteamericanos (North Americans) took him away.”

      “Our family drove him to the Baptist Hospital. He is recovering well.” Mary’s tone continued gently and consolingly.

      “How old is he?” Now George also spoke to the mother more softly.

      “He has four years.” Clinging to her was the little girl that she had carried in her arms the night of the attempted coup who seemed to be about two or three years old.

      “What is his name?”

      “He is César.”

      “Did you know that he had been taken to the Baptist Hospital?”

      “Yes, señora, I knew that someone had taken him to the hospital.”

      “But you haven’t been to visit him?”

      “I thought that someone would bring him home if he did not die. I was afraid they would make me pay money at the hospital if I went to see him.”

      “We are paying for his care. Would you like for us to take you to the hospital now to see him?”

      “I cannot leave his little sister, señora. Will you bring him back to me when they make him well?”

      “I don’t think . . .”

      George was interrupted by Mary who also responded to him in English before replying to Blanca in Spanish. “Never mind, George. Of course we will. We will go to the hospital right now and see how he is recovering.”

      “Mary, it’s late. It’ll be dark by the time we get home.”

      “There’s time, George. We must do what we can to help these poor people.”

      When they inquired at Baptist Hospital, they learned that the little boy was ready to be discharged. By the time they finished the paperwork and paid his bills it was growing dark even in the city; and by the time they left César with his mother the night was totally black without any streetlights to guide them on the primitive roads through Barrio Arbolito.

      “We must do something about that little boy, George. We can’t leave him in that condition.”

      “You can’t take care of every poor urchin in Nicaragua, Mary. It’s impossible.”

      ”I can take care of those that God drops into our lives, like little César.”

      “Mary . . . Mary.” George’s voice was exhausted. He knew better than to argue. He knew that he had already lost another battle. “Are you all right, Sarah?”

      “I’m fine, Daddy. Thank you for letting me come with you. I’m going to do everything I can to take care of poor people in our country when I grow up.”

      “It’s not our country, sweetheart. We’re just guests here in Nicaragua. We try to take care of the people entrusted to us, like those in the village that work on the coffee finca for us, and Don Martín and Doña Flora and their boys; but we can’t take care of everyone. It’s not our responsibility.”

      Sarah knew that her father’s words were actually directed to her mother through her, to whom he was ostensibly speaking.

      As they drove through the gate at