Juventud. Vanessa Blakeslee

my chin. “I refuse to live in fear,” I said, a quip of Manuel’s.

      He flicked off the radio and twisted around to face me, the rosary beads dangling from the mirror, red as blood. He said, “That’s not what I’m talking about. Things quickly get out of control, even the best-intended messages of peace. Strong words bring about a strong response, sometimes.”

      “Isn’t that the idea?”

      His face softened as he glanced over me. “Just be careful, princesa. You know who your father is.” Then he unlocked the doors, and I sprang onto the sidewalk.

      The car coasted away and turned the corner. I paced until Manuel roared up on his moto a minute later, no helmet, to my irritation and dismay—I was coming to learn that he often left it behind when dashing around, preoccupied. But I said nothing, just smiled and swung onto the back. Soon we were weaving in and out of traffic, and the brief yet eternal afternoon hours stretched ahead.

      The apartment appeared much the same as on my first visit, dim and stuffy. Beats drifted low from the stereo, the singers’ voices faint. I started for the bedroom, but Manuel drew me back and shook his head—Emilio was home, napping. In the half-lit hallway we clung together, kissing; he steered us over to the sagging couch. I slid my hands to his stomach, the soft cotton of his T-shirt a contrast to the firm muscles underneath, sliding farther, until he pulled back and regarded me with a playful smile. He started telling me that he found me so mature for my years, so beautiful. “But I’ve never met another girl like you,” he said. “You’re bold. And I’m honored that you want me to be your first. But right now, with what the Church is facing—I can’t just forgo my beliefs and pretend it doesn’t matter. Do you understand?”

      I told him yes even though I didn’t and kissed him again. His hips and the hardness underneath his jeans pressed against me, his hands running up and down my body as if they couldn’t get enough. He reached underneath my skirt and felt me.

      “How is your brother going to take vows as a priest?” I kissed his neck, inhaling his scent. Cedar and musk. “Is he crazy?”

      “No, not crazy. He just has extraordinary faith—from his habits, mostly. The first hour of every day he prays and studies. Some thought of the saints as crazy, you know?”

      How easily he forgot that I wasn’t Catholic. I wasn’t even sure if I’d been baptized. I said, “Lucky you’re not up for the priesthood.” Grinning, I gripped him through the crotch of his jeans. “I’m afraid you wouldn’t make it.”

      “I wouldn’t?” he said, laughing. “Let’s just say it’s not my calling.”

      “But your brother is so attractive. You both are. Girls must have chased him.”

      “Oh, they did. But he made up his mind for good, last year. I think they’ve left him alone since then.” He drew me close and kissed me again, slow and sweet. Then he said, “You never told me what happened the other day with your father. What did he tell you?”

      “Nothing you don’t already know,” I answered, my tone mischievous.

      “Tell me,” he said. He tickled my ribs and I snickered but drew back, slightly annoyed at the shift to conversation and the frustration we had worked up together. I guided his hand beneath my underwear. “I’ll tell you later,” I whispered into his ear.

      He gave me what I wanted then, or at least the most we could accomplish, and I had my first sweet release of pleasure in that shadowed apartment on the sunken couch, with his brother, asleep in the next room. Only Emilio might not have been asleep because a few minutes after we had finished, he shuffled out, squinting. We were sitting up then, hands to ourselves but disheveled. Emilio muttered a hello and sank into his desk chair. He rubbed the sleep out of his eyes, picked up one notepad, then another. Manuel raised an eyebrow and shot me a half-smirk as if to say, that was close. I sat up with my skirt smoothed over my knees, but I liked the idea that Emilio might know what had just happened, and was possibly tempted by our exploits.

      “What you showed me at the meeting was a start,” I said. “Do either of you know anyone else I can talk to? What about the priest you mentioned, Father Juan?”

      Emilio frowned. He tore off a sheet of notes, crumpled them in the trash. “That won’t be easy,” he said. “He spends most of his time in the mountains, remember? Trying to catch village boys before they get recruited by the FARC and ELN.”

      ”But which group would have an interest in kidnapping me? That’s what Papi’s most worried about. I’ll look for information—I just have to make sure nobody’s around.”

      “Watch yourself,” Manuel said, and picked up his guitar. “Diego’s not a stupid man.”

      “Well, what do you suggest?” I laughed. “That I interview him? Set up a tape recorder?”

      “Not at all.” Manuel adjusted the strap, tugged the strings. “Because if you ask too many questions, he might wonder if you have other aims against him—to expose him.”

      “Expose him?” I asked, and caught the laugh in my throat. “What good would that do?”

      “Because the world needs transparency,” Emilio cut in. “The end of lies will be the end of this fallen world, and the beginning of the new Earth.” His fingers tapped the rigid, dark cover of a book I assumed to be the Bible.

      “Look, I just need to know the truth for my own sake,” I said. “Until then I can’t even think of inheriting the hacienda one day.” To Emilio, I asked, “Why is it so important to you? About my father?”

      He sneered, as if my question was both absurd and juvenile. “To you I’m just the leader of La Maria Juventud. I don’t think you realize what being an activist requires. Let’s just leave it at that for now, okay?” He swiveled in the chair, knees wide, a pencil playing between his fingers. Part of me disliked his haughtiness, but when he regarded me I felt that twinge again. An attraction.

      “And I should be looking out for what, exactly?” I asked, a hint of sarcasm in my tone.

      “Changes of routine, unannounced trips somewhere, visitors.” Emilio let the last word hang in the air like a question.

      I told them about the woman’s voice outside Papi’s bedroom door, the light steps on the stairs. “Doubtful,” Emilio said. “Way to go, Diego. Getting lucky on his hot date.”

      I winced. Good thing I hadn’t disclosed Papi’s confession. Emilio hunched over his notebooks, Manuel tinkered with a new song. I told him how captivated I was by the set he and Carlos had played at the rally. “Really?” he said. He’d been composing lately, he told me, and sometimes he had to leave his work in the shop to jot them down, the calls for peace, justice, and togetherness more fervent—and the most joyful, exhausting experience he’d ever had. I longed to tell him what he had told me at the rally: that I loved him in return. But Emilio sat there, scrawling away amidst Karl Marx and Thomas à Kempis, stabbing notecards onto a bulletin board.

      At our next meeting, I asked Sister Rosemary about baptism, and sins that couldn’t be forgiven. If I had been baptized, I was sort of halfway there, she told me with a laugh, but I hadn’t been fully inducted into the Church out of my own free will, another sacrament altogether. The baptism should be relatively easy to find out. There were two types of sins—small or venial sins, such as missing church or lustful thoughts, and mortal sins, like killing, stealing, and adultery. But when I asked her about excommunication, she cocked her head and eyed me suspiciously.

      “Excommunication?” she asked. “For that you must do something, or many things, which cut yourself off from God, and in turn the community no longer allows you to belong. You cannot go to mass and receive the Eucharist. Perhaps you have heard mention of this in the news, that the archbishop has threatened the guerillas with excommunication?”

      I hadn’t but nodded anyway—not off to a good start, I thought, in the venial sin department. “So to be excommunicated, a person would have to commit