Juventud. Vanessa Blakeslee

you will.” She leaned forward and placed her hand lightly on my forearm. “These questions— what’s troubling you?”

      Papi’s voice boomed from the doorway. “I thought you were supposed to be speaking English,” he said, his tone upbeat, joking. “Isn’t that what I’m paying for?” He wore a two-day beard and his pants were streaked with dirt. This was unusual, as he liked casual clothes but also had a penchant for appearing neat.

      “Indeed, sir,” she said, and jumped of her seat. “Mercedes just needed some clarifications.” She gathered our materials. Papi blocked my attempt to brush past.

      “What are you bugging the nun about, eh?” He reached over to pinch my cheek but I ducked.

      “Nothing,” I said, smiling. “Just questions about American schools.”

      “You’ve been seeing this boy every weekend,” he said, stepping back into the hall. “I hope you’re not in love with him.” He sounded bemused, facetious. I pictured him in the alpaca field, the sun in his eyes and his work shirt splattered, a gun in one hand and a body pooling blood at his feet.

      Downstairs reeked of bandeja paisa, and I grimaced. Although I loved chicharrón, the greasy combination of fried pork and dirty rice gave me a stomachache. Inez bustled about, her long braid swinging across her back. I asked about my baptism, if she recalled it.

      “Of course,” she said. She sliced an avocado; her fingers wielded the knife deftly.

      “How could I forget? Your mother didn’t want anything to do with it. She was Jewish, you know. But your father insisted.”

      That night I found a verse in the Bible borrowed from Inez: Revelation, Chapter 21. “Behold, I make all things new …They are accomplished. I am the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end.” I read further about the second coming of Jesus but recoiled at the idea of God as a great external power whom we were to rely on to rescue our bloody mess, showing up to judge humanity one day. If we were to be rescued we needed to do it ourselves, the same way Manuel and Emilio had worked to create the peace rally; I didn’t see anyone coming to save us. A final judgment would only be useful if it meant all of us examining ourselves, seeing how we’d done and how we might do better—more of a final observation. But then what was final with God? I liked the line about God being the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. Perhaps because of the poetry, I read it over and over again.

      I met Gracia at La Iglesia de San Francisco, near the municipal theatre and her dance studio. She showed up in tight black exercise pants, her backpack slung over one shoulder, listening to her battered old Walkman half tucked away, wires disappearing beneath the bag’s zipper. She was either crazy or fearless or both, and somehow the thieves hadn’t ripped the headphones from her ears yet. I scolded her; she stuffed it and the earphones away and zipped up her bag, laughing. Then she exclaimed that she had news. “I might be going to the dance academy in Bogotá next term,” she said, her words rushing out almost on top of one another.

      I asked her what she was talking about; she had mentioned nothing of this until now. The possibility of my going to school in America had sparked her to investigate the Bogotá dance academies, she said, where the teachers hailed from Spain, Argentina, even the U.S. Her parents enthusiastically approved. She didn’t want to get her hopes up, but she had just mailed the applications and audition tapes. She added, “I haven’t told Ana yet, so don’t say anything.”

      “What about Esteban? Aren’t you in love with him?”

      She grew quiet. “I am,” she said. “He could move there with me, I suppose.”

      “Don’t you want to marry him?”

      She laughed. “I don’t know if I want to marry anyone. They all end in unhappiness anyway, like my parents. But this opportunity I just can’t pass up.” She explained how recruiters from international dance companies visited the Bogotá academies, searching for new talent.

      “Who knows where it will lead?” she said. “I’m not going to dance at that restaurant forever.” We walked for a moment in silence, skirting the rubble of the crumbling sidewalk. I was taken aback not only by her news, but that she had told me before Ana. This marked the first time she confided in me outside the company of her cousin, and I couldn’t help but feel pleased at this turn in our friendship. And of course, I bemoaned that we would miss her.

      “Oh, you’ll probably be in California or somewhere else, a thousand miles away by then,” she said. She asked about the American schools. I told her the applications had been mailed, although my aunt had introduced the idea about finishing school in Costa Rica. “The lesser of two evils, I suppose,” she said. “But other than Manuel, why don’t you want to get out of here?”

      “Live in the cold, where it snows? And have to speak English everywhere I go? No.”

      “Maybe I just think differently because of dance,” she said. “A dancer has to be able to move around—and I mean both ways, with her body and with travel, if she wants to perform for great audiences and become famous.”

      “Is that what you want?”

      “What artist doesn’t?” she said. “We sacrifice too much for anything less.”

      We crossed the plaza near the theatre, the farmacia just beyond. An old man in a tatty suit crouched on a crate with a large, mysterious box and microphone, singing into a karaoke machine he must have lugged around with him from corner to corner. A plastic container sat near his feet, a few coins at the bottom. He had a harelip and missing teeth, not one of the uprooted peasants but a desplazado of another sort. Into which category did he fall, sinner or saint? Who were we to ever judge another when we could not know a single experience of anyone, let alone all the experiences that shape a life?

      “Do you think Ana will marry Carlos?” I asked.

      Gracia frowned. “I’m worried for her,” she said. “For instance, with the birth control.” We crossed the street, Gracia charging ahead in her espadrilles. “I’m afraid she won’t use anything or something will go wrong with those flimsy condoms. I can just see it.”

      We entered the store, the shelves behind the counter crammed with medications. Many could be bought without a doctor’s prescription. Gracia fished inside her bag, produced a thin pastel box, and gestured for the clerk to assist us. He asked how many we’d like. Gracia and I exchanged glances and burst out laughing. “Three,” she told him. To me she said, “That should have you covered for a few months.” I paid for the supply out of my Christmas money, about thirty U.S. dollars.

      On the sidewalk I opened one of the boxes and peeked inside. “Good luck,” Gracia said. “And if Manuel doesn’t come to his senses and forget this idea of sexual sin, then I suggest he enter the priesthood like his brother.”

      At home, bedroom door latched, I read the pill package three times. I couldn’t take them for another two weeks, which felt as far away as Christmas, and so stuck the pack in my purse pocket where the maids or Inez weren’t likely to stumble across them. I didn’t mention the pills to Manuel during our phone call that night, either. Instead I asked him if Emilio could obtain more solid information. “I know my brother can come off as arrogant sometimes,” Manuel said, “but I promise he’s not bluffing. He has all sorts of connections with political groups, government. I know how important finding out the truth is to you. It would be for me, too.”

      Moments after we hung up the phone rang again, and I expected to hear his voice. He likely had forgotten to mention something, or to tell me again that he loved me, which he had not said since the rally.

      But whoever spoke sounded gruff and robotic, hardly human. “If you want to keep your nice life on the hacienda, Mercedes Martinez, you better stop hanging out with La Maria Juventud.” He stopped then, breathing raggedly—the armed guerillas of my nightmares suddenly transfigured, real. The alien, electronically altered voice somehow reminded me of the man with the karaoke machine from earlier, but this was someone who knew about me. The blood rushed in my ears. I