Nicaraguan Gringa. John Keith

at them and frowned—an unusual expression on his usually broad smiling face.

      After the service Mary Rutledge was shaking Sarah by her shoulders and screaming at her in a whisper, as only her mother could do. “Making fun of people who are different from us is the worst thing a person can do. I will not have you looking down your nose and laughing at the Negroes.”

      “I wasn’t doing that, Mother. I wasn’t making fun of him. I just got tickled at how he talked, and I couldn’t quit.”

      During the coffee hour after the service on the brick patio beside the church Father Sims found Sarah standing by herself close to the wall in the shade. Only a few younger costeño children worshipped with their parents at St. Francis, and none of them was Sarah’s age.

      “I find the British-Caribbean accents a little amusing, too, although quite charming. A reading from Isaiah . . . .” He poorly imitated the flat monotone and long “I” of the reader. “Do you know Taylor? He’s quite a nice chap.”

      “Not really. The costeños usually hurry off before the coffee hour to catch their bus downtown. I guess they’re staying late today to welcome you.”

      “Are there any activities for young people here at St. Francis? A youth group or Sunday School?”

      “No. There aren’t any children except for me.”

      “Well, we’ll have to remedy that. You stay there. I have something for you to take home.” Father Sims scurried with his cassock flapping against his legs across the parking lot toward the small vicarage where he lived. He brought out a hand of bananas to offer Sarah in order to placate her and perhaps bribe her to behave better in church. Perhaps he’d heard during his first week of cultural orientation that bananas didn’t grow well at higher elevations, and he had several heavily laden trees at the back of the vicarage garden.

      “No thank you. I really don’t like bananas at all.”

      As her mother approached them, Mary Rutledge overheard Sarah and shot her a withering look. In the parking lot, Mary read Sarah another diatribe. “You must always accept gifts graciously, Sarah. Refusing people’s gifts is almost like rejecting them personally. Just say, thank you, and smile and be pleasant and gracious. It’s almost as bad to spurn people’s freely offered, friendly gift as it is to make fun of them. I really don’t know what’s gotten into you today. I’ve tried to teach you to be polite and lady-like. Surely you understand that people’s feelings are the most important . . . .”

      “That little priest will soon learn to take off his cassock before the coffee hour, or he’ll burn up.” Sarah knew that her father was attempting to change the subject and alter her mother’s focus.

      “He’ll learn, George. It’s quite an adjustment for him, I’m sure.”

      “We should invite him to Quinta Louisa for a meal, Mary. Maybe Beatriz and Armando could join us for a little dinner party.”

      “That’s a wonderful idea, dear. I’m glad you’re going to give him a chance.”

      Even though Armando and Beatriz Chulteco were Nicaraguans from old aristocratic families that belonged to the Conservative Party, they had both attended college in the United States; and most of their close friends were North American and British expatriates. Beatriz’s mother had been the closest friend of Sarah’s grandmother, and Armando’s grandfather had befriended Sarah’s great-grandfather when he’d first arrived from England. Mary Rutledge often referred to Beatriz as her closest Nicaraguan friend; and when she was being honest with herself, she admitted that Beatriz was her closest friend in the world.

      Whenever she talked, Beatriz raised her arms and jangled her multiple bracelets and flicked her long, tapered fingers with manicured nails that testified that she had never washed a dish or pushed a mop in her life. “Come sit by me, Sarita.” Armando and Beatriz Chulteco did not have children, and Sarah was more than a goddaughter, more than a niece could have been to them, especially to Beatriz. “How do you like the new padrecito (little priest)?”

      “He’s nice. A little gawky maybe. Sort of like a scarecrow in his cassock.”

      “Wicked girl!” Beatriz hugged Sarah tightly against her. “We’ll have to get him started on the right foot.”

      Even before dinner was announced, with Sarah still sitting beside her, Beatriz had beckoned Father Sims and begun instructing him about how he must employ a housekeeper in addition to the part-time gardener that cleaned the church and lived in the little house behind the parking lot in order to guard the church.

      “I’m afraid I can’t afford servants on a missionary’s salary.”

      “Oh, Padre! A live-in maid costs only a hundred córdobas a week—that’s just fourteen American dollars. Surely you can afford that!”

      “Really? But I’m not sure I need . . .”

      “Of course you do. You can’t buy ready-to-eat food at the supermarket down here. Someone has to cook for you, and you can’t leave your house unattended. Ladrones, sneak thieves, will carry off everything. They’re not violent. They won’t hurt you. You are perfectly safe from harm in Nicaragua. Do not let me scare you, but they will get inside while you’re gone and strip everything bare.”

      “Perhaps I should consider it.”

      “I will take care of everything for you. I will line up some girls for you to interview. Do you speak Spanish well enough, or would you prefer a costeña that speaks English?”

      “I can get by in Spanish. I don’t think it would be appropriate to have a costeña, so many of them are members of my parish and even the Moravians all have family members in the parish.”

      “¡Como no! (As you say!) I always think of the Episcopal vicar as just the chaplain for my North American and British friends, but you have to care for them, too.” Doña Beatriz began speaking in her giddy, silly little-girl voice and tugging at her dangling gold earring.

      “Mrs. Rutledge says you know the American and British community better than anyone else in Managua. How can I meet them and invite them to church? I’m especially anxious to get something started for the children.”

      “!Claro que sí! (To be sure!), Armando and I are Catholics, of course; but I’d be delighted to help you. What did you have in mind for the children?”

      “A Sunday School for the younger ones. Some kind of youth group for the older young people.”

      “I’ll get you their addresses so you can drop them a note. I’d suggest setting up a meeting one afternoon at the American School when the parents pick up their children. They all go to the American School, of course.”

      “Even the Nicaraguan children?”

      “Claro que sí (To be sure), all those of a certain class, but most of them are Catholic.”

      “Would that make it impossible for them to be involved in a youth group, even a social sort of thing?”

      “Oh no. That might be quite feasible, if it wasn’t too religious.”

      “And then there would be the young people from St. Francis. The costeños as you call them.”

      “Now that might be a bit more difficult. They’re from a quite different social class, you know.”

      George Rutledge approached them. “Am I interrupting?”

      “Of course not, George. Do join us.”

      ”I need Beatriz’s advice and counsel.” George scowled at Sarah in a teasing way.

      “She’s been very helpful to me, Mr. Rutledge.”

      “Please call me George. Shoo, Sarah, I have something to ask Doña Beatriz in private.”

      Sarah scurried away but stayed close enough to overhear her father’s conversation. As an only child often left alone in the company of adults,