CHAPTER
Twenty
After changing planes in Atlanta and San Salvador, Sylvia arrived in Managua at ten the next morning. Weary and stiff, Sylvia got off the plane and ran into Harry’s arms. He looked tired, as always, but his eyes danced with the joy that he’d found since coming to Nicaragua. His work here was effective, she thought. People were impacted and lives were changed.
Her life most of all. An hour hadn’t gone by back in Breezewood that she hadn’t wondered what the children in the orphanage were doing, and if they missed her. Their lives were already so uncertain, and sometimes so tragic, that she dreaded causing them any more sadness.
“Did you bring the pictures?” Harry asked.
She knew he wasn’t asking about the shower, but rather about the grandbaby Sylvia had stopped off to see before she’d gone to Breezewood. “I took six rolls of film,” she said. “She’s the most beautiful baby you’ve ever seen.”
“And the shower?” he asked.
She sighed. “Well, there’s bad news. Mark got arrested. He’s going to serve a year in the juvenile facility.”
“Cathy’s Mark? What did he do?”
“Drugs,” she said. “He was selling them.”
Harry touched his heart. “I don’t believe it.”
“Believe it. Cathy’s a wreck. She postponed the wedding again.”
“After the shower and everything?”
“There was no shower. We had to call it off. Everybody still left gifts, but Cathy hasn’t even opened them.”
Harry quietly took the news in as he escorted her to the secondhand car they had bought when they’d first gotten to León. It was a 1975 Fiat Berlin. Half the time it wouldn’t run, but somehow it had gotten Harry to Managua today. A piece of plastic was duct taped to where the back window should be, since it had fallen out shortly after they’d gotten it. They hadn’t been able to replace the glass. He’d had an order in for a year now, but they despaired of ever getting it replaced.
She got into the old car and sat on the torn vinyl seat. As they drove the distance from Managua to León, she told Harry everything that had happened with Mark. When they reached León, instead of getting him to drive her home, she asked him to let her off at the orphanage. She needed to see the children.
She hurried in, and some of the kids spotted her and screamed, “Mama Sylvia!” She fell to her knees and hugged them all at one time, kissing them and exclaiming how she had missed them.
Julie, the other missionary wife who ran the orphanage, hurried into the room, as glad to see her as the kids were. Sylvia could see from Julie’s tired eyes that she was in need of a reprieve. Sylvia got to her feet and hugged her.
“Thank goodness you’re back,” Julie said. “Little Juan is sick. He’s been crying for you.”
“What’s wrong with him?” she asked. Juan was a four-year-old who had been abandoned by his mother, and he was continually struggling through an illness of one kind or another.
“Dr. Harry said strep throat. He gave him a shot this morning, but he’s still sick. I’ve had to try to keep him isolated from the other kids, but it isn’t easy.”
“Where is he?” Sylvia asked. “I want to see him.”
“He’s in the sick room,” Julie said.
She went into the room and found the little boy lying limp on his side. There were dark circles under his eyes, but his eyelids were swollen from crying, and a pink flush mottled his cheeks. She pulled up a chair, sat beside him, and stroked his hair until his little eyes came open.
“Mama Sylvia,” he whispered weakly. She reached down and gave him a hug so tight it lifted him into her lap.
“I missed you,” she told him in his language. “Tell me what feels bad.”
He didn’t have much energy to talk, but he gave her a rough sketch of his ailments, probably embellishing just a little. She could feel that he was burning up with fever. Harry had already given him Tylenol and had tried to cool him down, but now all they could do was wait until the fever broke.
She felt him relax in her arms, and she started to sing a hymn. “Jesus, name above all names, beautiful Savior, glorious Lord…” His eyes came open and he focused on hers for a long moment, then finally they closed, and she felt him drifting off to sleep. Poor child. Julie had undoubtedly been so busy with the other thirty kids in the home that she hadn’t been able to give him much attention. But now Sylvia was here, her heart almost bursting for this child who had been feeling so poorly, with no one to attend to him personally.
When she got to the end of the song, she pressed a kiss on the little boy’s forehead. “Get well now, Juan,” she whispered. “Mama Sylvia is here.”
CHAPTER
Twenty-One
Incarceration was nothing like Mark had envisioned. He had pictured himself lying in a cell alone, flat on his back on a bunk bed, listening to the radio with nothing to do all day but read and watch TV. Instead, he had to rise at five A.M., clean up his sleep area, and wait for a ruthless inspection. Then, like enlisted men in the military, they walked single file into the shower, bathed, dressed, then headed for breakfast—at which there was no talking allowed.
At seven A.M., they headed for their first meeting of the day, an affirmation meeting that Mark dubbed “spill-your-guts time.” Mark usually sat there with his mouth shut, listening to his cell mates talk about their drug addictions and their withdrawal, the babies they had fathered by several different girls, the foster homes they’d grown up in or the grandparents who had raised them, and Mark began to feel more and more different…even while he felt the same.
All their pasts were different, all their addictions and their demons. Mark found himself fighting the realization that everyone here had made choices that had landed them right where they were…including him. He didn’t want to admit that yet. He still wanted to blame his mother. She wasn’t going to get off the hook that easy.
He glanced at the kid named Lazzo, who slept in the bunk next to him. He was trembling more than usual today. He kept rubbing his hands on his pants legs and jerking his head as if to sling his greasy hair back…except that he didn’t have any hair anymore.
Mark looked over at him and whispered, “What’s the matter with you, man?” Lazzo didn’t answer. He just kept fidgeting.
The counselor leading them noticed that Mark had spoken. “Mark, do you have something to say?”
Mark shrugged. “No, not really. I was just watching Lazzo. He’s kind of freaking out over here.”
“What do you mean, freaking out?” the leader asked. He looked at Lazzo and saw the sweat dripping down his face, the trembling in his hands. “You having withdrawal, man?” he asked.
Lazzo just stared at him for a moment, then said, “Man, you gotta help me. I ain’t gone this long before.”
So Lazzo was an addict, then. Mark had no idea what kind of drugs the boy was addicted to, although he knew Lazzo would tell him if he asked. “It’s going to get worse before it gets better, man,” one of the guys said.
Mark didn’t know why everyone just accepted this. “Isn’t there something you can do? I mean, don’t they have some kind of medication or something?”
“He’ll be all right,” the leader said with a dismissive shrug. “Time to line up for movement to the school, everybody.”
Mark got up and watched Lazzo push himself to his feet. His face had a look of desperation on it, and Mark wondered how he was going to get through this dark tunnel if it really did get worse before it got better.
“I need to go to the infirmary,” Lazzo said.
The leader shook his head. “Sorry, kid.”
“But I ain’t feeling good,” Lazzo said. “My heart’s pounding. I need some help.”
Mark looked up at the guard blocking the door, wondering what he would do if Lazzo had a sudden heart attack and dropped right there. “Man, let him go to the infirmary,” Mark said.
“We’ll keep an eye on you, Lazzo,” the guard said. “If y
ou get really sick we’ll take you, but you don’t get to go just for the jitters.”
“But I can’t study like this, man,” Lazzo said, wiping his hands on his pants legs again. “Come on, you gotta help me.”
“In line, Lazzo!”
“Man, I’m telling you. I can’t go!” he shouted. “I have the right to go to the infirmary.”
“Buddy, you ain’t got no rights,” the guard said. “You in jail now. Did you forget? You give up your rights when you come through those doors. Now get back in line or you really will need the infirmary.”
Lazzo spat at him and uttered a profanity, and suddenly there were three guards on him, throwing him down on the floor as he fought and kicked and screamed for help.
Mark backed away, watching with horror as the closest thing to a friend he’d found in this place was subdued by three huge guards with weapons and handcuffs. But Lazzo didn’t stop. He just kept yelling and cursing and spitting and kicking with all his might as they wrestled him out of the room. It got quiet, as the remaining inmates lined up.
“Where are they taking him?” Mark asked the kid in front of him.
“To disciplinary, probably,” the kid said. “He ought to know better than to act like that even if he is withdrawing. Ain’t nothin’ worse than disciplinary.”
Mark frowned, wondering if Lazzo would be locked in a room that Mark had seen a year ago when he’d come here with his mother. Everything was steel and bolted down, and there wasn’t even a mattress on the bed. Maybe the guards feared that the inmates would tear off the cloth in strips and use it to hang themselves.
“I’m not going to make it here,” he whispered under his breath. But he didn’t dare say it out loud, for he feared that the guards would descend on him as well and teach him a lesson about the trouble his mouth could get him into.
But the altercation had given him an idea. Maybe if he was sick, they would let him go to the infirmary, and then he could sleep all day and just hang around and get out of school and work and all these stupid meetings. Maybe then life would be a little more tolerable.
As he sat in class that morning, studying the work that the prison teacher had given him, he tried to figure out some kind of illness he wouldn’t have to prove. Then he’d have easy street, at least for a day or two, before he had to get back to work.
Mark could vomit if he needed to. When he was little, he’d used that talent against his mother when he wanted her to feel sorry for him. She had thought he was just a sensitive child, when all along he’d just been pulling her strings.
He choked back a whole cup of water when they had their break, and when nobody was looking, he spat it out on the floor with a retching noise that drew the guards.
“I’m sick,” he said, on his knees and clutching his stomach.
“No, you ain’t. Get up and clean up this mess.”
“But I’m sick, man!” he said. “You don’t throw up unless you’re sick.”
“He ain’t sick,” a kid named Miller shouted. “I saw him gulping down his water and looking around to see if anybody was looking.”
Mark didn’t know what it was inside him that exploded, but he looked at the little snitch and decided he could take him. Without warning, he launched across the floor and head-butted him, knocking him down. The kid yelled and got back up, and his fist flew into Mark’s face.
Before he knew what hit him, Mark was beneath the rabid boy, fighting for his life. The guards broke it up before the kid could kill him.
“All right, that’s enough! Both of you, to disciplinary.”
Mark felt as if he was really going to be sick now, as he dabbed at his bloody mouth and let the guards drag him out.
CHAPTER
Twenty-Two
As soon as Sylvia was able to leave Juan, she hurried to the food kitchen where one of the ladies from town was already engaged in making the beans and rice they would serve for that evening’s meal. Maria was thrilled to see her, for she had been trying to do the work alone for the length of Sylvia’s vacation.
When the children and their parents began to arrive for the evening meal and Sylvia saw how many more now there were than when she’d left, she wondered why she had ever decided to stay away that long.
She dripped with perspiration and her heart was pounding with panic as they spooned out the last of the food—long before the line had ended. How was she going to tell these people that they couldn’t be fed tonight?
She looked into the eyes of the little boy who was next in line and realized she couldn’t do it. She would not turn him away. She tried to formulate a sentence in her mind, but her Spanish was too confusing, so she looked at Maria. “Tell them they’re going to have to wait a little while,” she said, “until we can make another pot.”
Maria looked up at her. “But there’s no more,” she said in Spanish. “That was all we had.”
“I have some at home,” Sylvia said. “I’ll go home and get it.” Even as she spoke, she wondered if she had enough. There were at least twenty more people in line. She knew this was the only meal some of them would eat all day.
Harry was in the kitchen when she got home. “I just came home to get something to eat,” he said. “Do you want me to make you something, too?”
“No!” she said. “There’re too many people at the kitchen. I’ve got to feed them—but we’ve run out of food. I didn’t realize we were out. I should have gotten some in Managua while I was there. I should have spent every penny I had…”
Harry rubbed his eyes. She wondered how long it had been since he’d slept. When she wasn’t there to nag him into taking care of himself, he never gave himself much thought. “I’ll send somebody back tomorrow to see if they can get some more supplies.”
She went to their pantry and started unloading the bags of rice and dried beans that she had stored there in case of another emergency. “I’ll feed them this,” she said. “They have to eat. You should see these children. They’re skin and bones.”
“I know,” he said. “I’ve treated most of them.” He went to the doorway that led to the little garden in the backyard. Sylvia hadn’t had much time to work in it, so she knew Harry was looking at more weeds than blooms. She doubted, though, that that was causing the sadness she sensed in his slumping posture. “What’s wrong, Harry?”
He turned back, leaning against the casing. “Sylvia, we’ve got to find a way to get the cash to buy more food.”
“I brought back a little,” she said, “but most of what I got from those churches was pledges. The money should be coming in soon, but we’ve got to find a way to get by until it does.”
“I was thinking…” He paused. “Maybe it’s time to sell our house.”
Sylvia almost dropped the groceries she’d been gathering in her arms.
“The Gonzaleses are out, and it’s empty,” he went on. “I know you probably left it spotless. We could call a realtor and have it listed.”
“Oh, Harry. I just don’t think I can do that! You should see it. It’s exactly the way we left it. You wouldn’t even know the Gonzaleses had lived there. Brenda and Tory took care of the flowers. And all the memories…”
“Our life is here now.”
“But I wanted to keep it in case we ever went back,” Sylvia said. “I just don’t feel right cutting off that connection.”
“Sylvia, think how many children that house could feed. And we don’t intend to ever go back, do we?”
Sylvia looked down at the food in her hands that represented the needs that had brought her to this country. She knew the Lord was using her here and would use her as long as she was willing. “No, I don’t intend to go back, either,” she said. “Being back just made me miss this place, and all the children…” She closed her eyes. “I can’t think about it right now. I have to get back to the kitchen and cook for those families.”
“Yeah, I’m going to go back to the clinic as soon as I eat,” he said. He reached up and touched her face. “Think abo
ut it, honey. The kids are all grown and settled. We’re here. There’s no point in keeping that beautiful home when we could sell it and raise enough cash to keep the pantry stocked for several years. And with the money coming in from the churches, we’d never have to turn anybody away again. Maybe we could even hire people to work in the kitchen. These people need jobs.”
“We’ll see,” she said. Then she scurried out of the house and back to the kitchen to feed the starving children.
CHAPTER
Twenty-Three
Cathy still felt God’s presence Sunday afternoon as she went to visit Mark again. Though the visit had ended badly the Wednesday night before, somehow her prayer time had convinced her that she could handle it today. Maybe the interval had mellowed Mark and made him realize that he needed his mother.
But the moment he came into the visiting room and she saw his busted, swollen lip, she knew that her hopes were in vain. She tried not to look shocked as she stood up and met him halfway across the room.
“Mark, what happened to you?”
“I got in a fight with some jerk who thinks he owns the place,” he said. “They’re animals here, you know. I’m the only human being in the whole place.” He threw himself down in a chair at the table.
She found she was having trouble breathing, and it was suddenly very hot. “Mark, I want you to tell me what happened.”
“I told you. The guy had an attitude problem and he thought I was in his way just because I breathe and exist.”
She wanted to scream out that an injustice had been committed against her son, that someone had to do something. “Did you tell the guard?”
“He was standing right there. He saw the whole thing.”
“He didn’t stop it?”
“Of course he stopped it, but by the time he did, I was already like this. I’m telling you, Mom. Animals. That’s who I’m living with now.”
He leaned forward, his eyes entreating her as he went on. “Mom, can’t you go to the lawyer today and explain to him that I got beat up last night, that I’m not going to make it in here? Because I’m really not. I’m going to die in here. If I have to stay here for a whole year, somebody will kill me or I’ll starve to death.”
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