Panama

by Shelby Hiatt

  "I will be."

  He leans in and gives me a kiss on the cheek and embraces me again. He needs to say something—I see him searching.

  "Bring me books tomorrow?" is what he finally says.

  Books. "Of course," I say, trying to sound like nothing is different and I don't come from a sheltered life and I'm not naive or in an outrageously heightened state.

  I go up the steps, affect a business-as-usual manner, and from inside the porch look down at him through the screen door. I raise my hand and he gives me a little nod, then turns and walks away.

  It Is a New World

  Fifty-One

  I sit with Mamie Lee Kelly, the best known of all Americans on the Isthmus. The local madam. And I've done my homework. My diary is full of thoughtful entries on my new life—what I have to do, have to learn, how to proceed.

  Miss Kelly comes from New Orleans and runs the Navajo, a brothel on I Street in Panama City. She's lusty, large, and voluptuous, and she appears to be very capable. This makes me confident.

  "Hell yes, honey, I can tell you a whole shitload of things to do," she says. She leans back on her red velvet settee and draws hard on a cigarette. She cocks her head to one side, grins, and looks me over. "Got yourself a young man?"

  "Yes. And there's no talking to my mother..."

  "Course not. Not her business." Mamie grins widely again. "Mothers don't know everything and they usually know the least about what they should know the most." I'm not exactly sure what she means. "Sex!" she says and laughs.

  Sex can be dangerous—I know that. A foolish mistake will always be with me, can shame and destroy Mother and Father. There's no need for that. Mamie can get it all under control. She goes dead serious.

  "How old are you, again?" she says.

  "Seventeen."

  "Mmm." She looks me over carefully. "You've done it with him?"

  "Yes. Once. I'm not pregnant."

  "Good, you're lucky. And smart—you're here. Good girl. Sorry you can't work for me." Another big laugh. I take the suggestion as a compliment. A couple of her "girls" sidle by in tatty chenille dressing gowns, pasty faces, and stringy hair, but it's early for them at eleven in the morning. They're just getting up. Others walk by in the hall with cups of coffee and what look like corn-bread muffins. They glance in and dismiss me with surly looks.

  The place is strange and I lied an hour earlier to get here. Told Mrs. Ewing I felt sick and she sent me home. I'll need another lie tomorrow to get back in class, but it will be only a half lie—my time of the month and discomfort, et cetera. Perfect. A love affair is no simple matter and it isn't all romance.

  "I'll tell you something, sweetheart," Mamie says. "There's an old method just right for you. Dates, acacia, a little honey—grind them together, dip it in cotton wool, and put it right in there. Acacia ferments, becomes lactic acid—that's a worldwide spermicide." The laugh again. "Just right for a worldwide young man ... where's he from?"

  "Spain," I say, and I don't smile. "I suspect sperm are the same everywhere."

  Her face goes straight and she says, "I really am sorry you can't work for me."

  Fifty-Two

  There is everything in Panama among the locals. Making my way through the vendors outside the Navajo, I find acacia quick enough. I know I won't find it at the commissary. Honey and dates Mother has at home—she makes wonderful date bread. The acacia is cheap and there's plenty.

  Later in the evening, alone in the kitchen with Mother's mortar and pestle, I blend my little concoction and wonder how long it will be good. If fermentation is so important, maybe age is a good thing, and I regret not asking Mamie about that. But I conclude that if it's such a crucial matter she would have told me. I can make small amounts as needed. I'm ready.

  But I don't hear from Federico for several days.

  Up to now that hasn't been unusual, but after what happened in the gazebo, I don't know what to think. He isn't there after the art class either. I wait in the darkness outside a long time, then go back inside and chat. (What era was Poussin? And what were the politics? I love the way you're doing your hair.) I have to escape.

  He isn't at the Tivoli when I pass there on Sunday with Mother and Father.

  He isn't at any of our regular meeting places, which baffles me, and I toughen myself for the worst. I resolve not to be a whimpering sissy. I can barely make myself imagine what this could mean.

  More days go by.

  He's dropped out of sight. I can't sleep. At school I can't concentrate or work. I have to do something.

  It's one more time along the track at night after another "sketching on the steps" excuse for Mother—slouched hat and jodhpurs.

  I climb the stairs to his cabin. I feel nervous and out of place, much worse than the first time I went there. Everything seems so complicated. I never imagined how sex could complicate things. At the door I can see his cot. It's empty—only Augusto is there.

  "Augusto..." He looks up, surprised. "Federico no está...?"

  "Al hospital," he says and lets me in.

  "Hospital?"

  He explains. Ancon Hospital, ward 30. It's serious. I sink onto a chair.

  Frederico got feverish while he was working, Augusto tells me, and couldn't swing his pick. The doctor came, examined him, and wanted to know if he believed in God, because he was going to die.

  "Why would a doctor say a thing like that?"

  Augusto doesn't know, but the doc wrote up the papers and put him on the train to the hospital. In the ward he was so weak with fever, the nurses had to hold him up. They gave him an ice bath and he told Augusto he thought he really would die.

  "You've seen him?" I say.

  "The next day. They were making him drink quinine every two hours." A vile, bitter liquid—I shudder for him.

  "Could I see him, do you think?"

  Augusto doesn't think so.

  Fifty-Three

  "No, no visitors."

  "I'm a relative."

  "No. No one goes in the typhoid ward." That's where he's been moved.

  The nurses' station is busy, and the women in white are moving fast. There's very little casual conversation—everybody's courteous but preoccupied.

  "Isn't there anything I can do?" I'm pleading with the nurse, hoping she'll see something in my eyes—fear for his life, desperation, something.

  She's sympathetic and says for me to leave a note and she'll make sure he gets it. I'm grateful for that and she gives me paper. "Thank you, thank you."

  I crush the first note and write another. I crumple it, too, remembering a nurse will have to read it to him, can't be too personal. The next note says something about finding out from Augusto the night before, he shouldn't give up hope and it begins to sound like I'm saying he's at death's door.

  I tear that one up and write another. I take my time. I'm more positive, talk about getting well, efficient nurses, skilled doctors, advanced medicines, he'll be out in no time. It sounds good.

  "I'll take it to him right away," says the nurse, and she puts it in her pocket and moves on with her tray. This is a busy place. Federico might die.

  He Doesn't

  Fifty-Four

  "I was so delirious with fever and weak from not eating that it wasn't read to me for days," Federico says. We're walking in the hills, only a few people wandering by. "I was dying and I wasn't afraid."

  His first day out of the hospital and he's with me. Who else does he have? Augusto working, Miguel dead, I'm the one. His near-death sickness is over, he's getting well, and we're a couple. It's been a nightmare for me. Worse for him.

  I'm in my best white dress with a parasol because I know he likes it. It's clear to anyone who sees us that I'm his woman, because we're walking together, a form of courting in the Zone.

  But we're not consciously courting—at least, he's not. He needs to talk about what's happened—the weeks of awful illness, the hospital treatments, how he felt the whole time—and I'm the one to hear it. I've
never been so elated. Peaceful, too, though I've lied to Mother. She thinks I'm helping Mrs. Ewing.

  "It's not a bad thing to know about yourself—that you're not afraid of dying," he says. "I had terrible dreams. Black ugly shapes and voices—I don't know what they were saying, but talking loud and swarming at me, and all I wanted was to go to sleep. I wanted death, back to before I was born, just to get out of the nightmare."

  We walk slowly, the backs of our hands brushing from time to time, no other contact. "Then, after days of that—I don't know how long—I heard the night nurse talking to me, could barely hear her voice. And I came out of it a little, and she helped me drink some milk, the first thing I'd had in days, then I went back to sleep. But there were no dreams anymore, and I began to drink milk every day and I started wanting to live because the nurse kept talking to me and her voice was kind. She made it sound like it mattered to her—my living..."

  "It matters to me," I say.

  "I know." He smiles. "That's when the nurse asked if I wanted to hear the note you dropped off. She asked if it was from my girl."

  "And you said..."

  "Yes." He doesn't look me in the eye, just smiles.

  We pass a tourist couple in colorful clothes. They look German. Probably weekly arrivals, in on the Hamburg-American Line.

  They watch us pass, and I know we are a handsome couple. Federico doesn't notice, though. "Everything smells good again," he says and breathes deep.

  It's dry season, hot but not insufferable. The air is heavy with the scent of exotic flowers and local food.

  The women we pass glance at Federico, a handsome man who looks better than the others in spite of being pale and thin from his ordeal. Or maybe because of it.

  I puff with pride. I wish we could hold hands, but it would be too daring, a worker and an American girl, though no one would guess he's on the labor force. Instinctively we observe the rules of our dangerous liaison.

  "Then what?" I say.

  "They put me on a regular diet and gave me pajamas."

  "You had no pajamas?"

  "Only a hospital gown. Pajamas meant I could get out of bed and move around. But I could barely walk. I needed a nurse on each side to hold me up. I walked every day and ate. I ate a lot—porridge, eggs, bread, melon. I was getting well..." I nod and smile, completely content.

  Fifty-Five

  He's wearing a beautifully tailored white suit.

  "Where did it come from?" I ask.

  "A doctor. A reader like you. I promised to loan him several books, some from you. We have the same favorite philosophers, and this doctor, American, said it was rare to find really informed readers among the Zoners. Of course he was surprised to talk with me, a worker. We had long conversations. It made the time pass."

  "Books, huh?"

  We exchange an intimate smile.

  He tells me the doctor is a "devoted Hegelian." "Imagine discussing dialectic in this morass of—" Federico stops himself. "I won't complain. I'm happy to be alive and he gave me the suit. He's put on weight and can't wear it."

  The suit is a very fine light wool. "Absolutely cool in the heat and the fit is nearly perfect, except for the length of the pant legs. He arranged for the alterations."

  Through the streets of Ancon we walk. I listen to his story, love being close to him, take pride in the looks we get, both of us in our best white garments. Quick nods from passing businessmen, jealous looks from two young women on their way to the commissary, obsequious nods from vendors. We appear to be tourists. Then, at one of the vendors' carts, the truth bites us.

  "Dos," Federico says and pays for the guava drinks with silver coins. And there it is: he's a silver-roll employee. Only Americans are paid on the gold roll. Everyone else is silver—two lines on payday.

  The vendor looks perplexed, a worker, not working, in such a fine suit? But the vendor goes back to his cart and we continue walking. I dismiss the little event. No one else knows the color of coins in Federico's pockets.

  We pass Mamie and get a double glance. She gives me an approving smile, then moves along. I pretend I don't see her.

  ***

  Finally, back in his cabin, Federico slumps on his cot and breathes hard. I can see how weak he is. He's trembling.

  "You should rest," I say.

  He looks at me suddenly and sees my worry. "Can you come back tomorrow?"

  "Of course. What do you need?"

  "Nothing ... you."

  A walloping flop in my chest. "All right," I say.

  He pulls me to him and gives me a chaste kiss. I'm afraid he'll feel my heart going and know that I'm shaking because I'm still not sophisticated about any of this, especially this day of reunion and secretive walking and not really knowing who we are together.

  He must perceive all that because he gives me a smile as he watches me leave, and for that I'm grateful.

  ***

  Outside the cabin, walking along the track, I make the quick assumption we're still a couple, lovers after all these weeks. I'm important to him. The books are important, but I am too now.

  I'm soon walking on air—that's exactly how it feels, and those sappy expressions that always made me roll my eyes, they're right on the money. Who's the fool now? And the long, enthusiastic entry in my diary that night sounds like a fool's babble. That's fine with me.

  Fifty-Six

  Next day in his cabin: "She runs a brothel and knows about these things," I say to Federico. "I trust her."

  He's smiling, almost laughing, and pulls me against him. "You really aren't like anybody," he says—that perplexed/amazed look again.

  "I'm a tomboy."

  "But I don't see that in you. There's no boy in there..." He begins peeling off my clothes piece by piece, smiling, looking at me, enjoying the looking especially when I'm stripped down to nothing. He pulls off his own clothes and I see how thin the sickness made him. He lays me on his cot, then puts himself beside me and presses my back to his chest. He tucks his knees behind mine and we're quiet together, his hand on my belly just grazing the bristle between my legs, his sex neatly fitted against my backside.

  It's midafternoon, still two hours until the work whistle goes and another forty-five minutes after that until Augusto arrives. We have plenty of time. As for Mother, she thinks I'm still at school doing special-assignment work. And the work camp where we are—nobody is around; it's empty. We're alone in limbo.

  He holds me quietly, breathing softly. A jungle bird squawks somewhere and dogs bark. A double explosion goes off in the Cut. He begins to caress me, his strong grip gradually pressing me to him.

  We make love in a different way, not with the desperation I felt from him in the gazebo, but slowly, something luxurious that takes a long time.

  I am an apt pupil and have no sense of time or place, no sense of the heat except our own, and I'm lost in sensuality. I follow his lead—I'm willing, focused, totally without self-consciousness, and I can't imagine we'll stop, ever, my sexual fever so roused, my brain so numb. Our sexual play goes on a long time, or it seems to, judging by my limited experience, and then it does end as it should and I find I like the viscous warmth he's pooled on my belly in spite of what I've told him about Mamie, and I rub my hand in it and across my breasts—a slick, wonderful feel. He watches me do that with a look of pleasure and slight amazement, and we are finished. I've pleased him, and he has most certainly pleased me, which wasn't hard to do—I can see he likes that. I'm good at this.

  I feel my body settle and we lie quiet, like dolls in a box, on that tiny cot, drifting, half dozing, with no thoughts—none for me, anyway.

  In time we begin to talk about my parents.

  "They have no idea," I say.

  "What if they find out?"

  "They can't. They cannot."

  It's a serious matter—we know it.

  We watch two beetles wobbling along the windowsill beside us. It makes us laugh—sexual camaraderie again. Everything is all right.

  G
oing Steady

  Fifty-Seven

  The next weeks of his recovery we spend in long erotic afternoons. I learn a lot and he's happy.

  After sex we talk about how isolated we both feel; he's literally distant from the people he knows and cares about, and I feel remote from my parents even though I see them every day. He won't talk about his family, but he tells me about friends in Madrid.

  "We sit in cafés and rail against Spanish politics and the Church and the whole mess ... We're on fire, all of us. Our little band is not so little anymore from what I hear, and it will be even bigger when I go back."

  It sounds important and worldly and weighty to me. "Our neighbors, the Wrights, they're my little band, I guess, but they're not remotely rebellious. Wil and Orville Wright, the fliers—you know them?"

  "The brothers Wright?"

  "Next-door neighbors, my best friends." Frederico raises his head and looks at me with frowning disbelief, and I realize that without trying I've impressed him at least as much as his country's miserable Church has impressed me. "I grew up hanging out with them, not with my school friends or my parents. I can't talk to my parents at all."

  He's still on the boys. "The Wrights?" He can't believe it.

  "They lived next door is all."

  "Amazing." He laughs and gives my chin a jiggle. "Listen, you're not supposed to be able to talk to your parents. Every generation is different. We have to find parents in the life we lead."

  "Is Miguel the father you found?" I can say this kind of thing to him now—sex does that.

  "I guess he is—was."

  A moment passes and I say, "How did it happen?" He knows I mean the explosion that killed Miguel.

  He sits up and braces his arm across me. We're both shiny with sweat from sex and dry-season heat.

  "We were leaving for the noon meal—fifty-two holes loaded, charges tamped in, fuses set, everything ready. Nothing was different that I remember, just another day. The last holes went down fifty feet through solid rock for two hundred yards along the Cut, but there was nothing different about that. It's a big blast to set but we do it all the time. It was supposed to go off while we were at lunch, and then, when we were still climbing out..."