“Vamos,” he said, shoving her toward the open doorway.
Beatriz got up to protest.
“Para eso—”
The guard, who was called Puento and was usually docile and amiable, shoved Beatriz against the wall.
A crying baby can test a new parent’s patience, according to Mother & Baby magazine.
Where was Puento taking her?
After he’d locked the door behind them, another guard walked up to them carrying Joelle at arm’s length. Later Maruja would tell her that FARC guerrilleros were particularly nervous about getting sick, since there were no doctors around to treat them.
The jittery boy literally dumped Joelle into her arms, then motioned her toward the feeding room. He ushered her in at a safe distance, giving Joanna a small shove in the back with the rifle butt. He slammed the door behind them.
Joelle was swimming in sweat.
Every breath produced a strangled, raspy gurgle. When Joanna put her ear to Joelle’s chest, it sounded like someone dying of emphysema.
Where was Galina?
Joanna pounded on the door—once, twice, three times. Eventually, Puento opened it, looking intent on pounding something back.
Joanna asked him to get Galina to come immediately, right now, this very second.
No response.
She asked for a rag instead, nervously pantomiming the act of wringing one out. She couldn’t tell whether Puento understood her, and if he did, whether he cared.
She’d say no. He slammed the door in her face.
Minutes later, though, he returned with a piece of filthy cloth. He threw it in her general direction.
She’d neglected to ask for agua—fortunately, the rag seemed damp enough without it. Joanna went through the now familiar ritual of unwrapping and undiapering her baby, trying not to notice her nearly blue skin and hummingbird shiver. She wiped her down the way Galina would have.
“It’s going to be okay,” she whispered to her daughter. “We’re going to get home and see Daddy. You’re going to like New York. There’s a merry-go-round, and in the winter we can ice-skate. There’s a zoo with polar bears and monkeys and penguins. You’ll love the penguins. They walk kind of funny.”
She held her baby the entire night. Most of the time Joelle screamed and moaned and gurgled. Those were the good moments. The terrifying ones were when Joelle slipped into sleep and her breathing seemed to stop altogether.
Once, when Joelle was clearly and demonstrably alive, basically screaming her lungs out, Puento opened the door and looked in with a nearly murderous expression. He raised his ever-present Kalashnikov—that’s what Paul said they were called, Russian-made rifles, ancient and unreliable—and pointed it straight at Joelle’s head.
“I’ll make her stop. She’s sick. I’ll get her to stop. I promise.”
He lowered the rifle and shut the door.
Joanna must’ve nodded off.
She woke up when someone shook her by the shoulder.
It was Galina.
The first thing Joanna noticed was the utter lack of crying, the absolute and shocking quiet. The second thing she noticed was that there was no Joelle in her arms. Gone. For one heart-stopping moment she thought her daughter hadn’t made it through the night. That Galina had come to tell her that Joelle’s body had been taken away, buried in some field.
She was about to start screaming when she saw her.
She was lying peacefully in Galina’s arms.
She was breathing better, not normally, no—but absolutely, unequivocably better.
“I got her medicine,” Galina said. “Liquid drops. Antibióticos. She’s going to make it, I think.”
Galina had traveled over one hundred miles, Joanna would learn later. She’d called a doctor she knew—she’d gotten a farmacia to open up and give her the drops.
She’s going to make it, I think.
Joanna’s new mantra.
Joelle had grown noticeably cooler, her cough had quieted to manageable, she’d mostly stopped shaking.
Galina watched Joanna feed her. Galina seemed oddly transfixed, even mesmerized. Maybe it was lack of sleep, Joanna thought.
No, this was different, as if she were borne away by memory.
Joanna remembered.
I had a daughter.
“Galina?”
It seemed to take a minute for Galina to come out of her reverie and actually answer her.
“Yes?”
“Your daughter. What happened to her?”
Galina turned, cocked her head at an awkward angle, as if she were trying to hear something from the next room. Or maybe it was from somewhere further away.
“She was killed,” Galina said.
“Killed?” Joanna wasn’t prepared for that word. Dead, yes, but killed? “I’m so sorry—that’s horrible. How, Galina? What happened?”
Galina sighed. She looked away, up at the shadow of the crucifix still visible on the wall. She made the sign of the cross with a slightly trembling hand.
“Riojas,” she whispered. “Have you heard of Manuel Riojas?”
TWENTY-FIVE
Galina was staring at mother and child.
She was thinking:
Holy Mary, Mother of God.
For just a moment it was like that picture on my bureau. Faded almost to black and white after so many years, but suddenly come to life. Yes.
It was me. And her. My child.
She was back in my arms. She was that young again.
Just a niña. My niña.
Was she ever that small?
Was she?
You can remember, can’t you?
CLAUDIA.
Clau-di-a.
Her name was like a song. Scream it down the streets of Chapinero around suppertime, or down the stairs of their apartamento after school, and it was hard to keep its singsong rhythm out of your voice—even when you were good and mad. Even when you were pretending to be mad, because Claudia hadn’t done her homework yet, or she was late to dinner.
It was impossible to really be mad at her. She was that kind of child. The gift from God. She always got around to doing her homework eventually, and she always did it well enough to get As.
She might be late for supper too, but when she arrived, out of breath and suitably contrite, she’d barrage them with a dizzying recounting of the day’s events.
Turn down the radio and eat, Galina would say.
But the truth was, she enjoyed listening to the radio more than she enjoyed seeing her scrawny daughter eat.
Claudia was one of those oddly aware children. Precociously sensitive to the world and to most of its inhabitants. An unrepentant toy-sharer, even after her favorite doll—Manolo the bullfighter—had his leg torn off by the bratty girl down the hall.
She was the kind of child who wore out the word why.
Why this, why that, why them?
In a country like Colombia, Galina always believed why was a word best avoided.
Maybe it was destined, then, that when Claudia got to La Nacional University—with honors, of course—she’d fall in with a certain crowd. That when she started getting answers to those persistently indignant questions—like why do one percent of Colombians control ninety-eight percent of the wealth, why has every program to alleviate poverty and hunger failed miserably, why were the same people saying the same things in the same positions of power, why, why, why—she’d align herself with those who might do something about it.