Not a Chance

by Michelle Mulder

  I shrug. “Neither am I, but I still like swimming in the river.”

  She says nothing at first. Across the narrow strip of pitted pavement, a toddler in a grubby T-shirt and a diaper waves at us from outside a wooden hut. We wave back, and he runs screeching to the nearby cookshack. The smell of sautéed garlic is making me hungry.

  “It’s different for you,” Aracely says. “People don’t mind so much what you do.”

  Because you’re foreign. That’s the part she doesn’t add, because she knows it would sting. We talked about this last summer, when I told her I didn’t feel like I fit in here anymore.

  “For a while, it was the same with me,” Aracely continues. “People made exceptions, and they didn’t mind me hanging out with you and doing what you did.”

  I frown at her. “What are you talking about? You were born here. Everyone in your family was born here.”

  “You know what I mean.” She waves at her scar. She’s told me before that her family has been less strict because they feel sorry for her. That must be what she’s talking about now.

  We walk a few meters along the paved part of the road—not a car in sight—and step onto a trail between the bushes that leads down to the river. The berro grows in low green patches where the water meets the shore. Aracely doesn’t stick to this side of the river though. She takes off her worn, pink flip-flops and wades across to a little island in the middle. The water moves too fast for berro to grow there, but we can see anyone who comes along, and the current will drown out our words.

  I flop down on a big rock. “So what’s the news?”

  My friend’s face splits into a grin. “I’m getting married.”

  I gape at her. She smiles back, a shy smile, like she can’t believe her luck. My eyes flicker down to her flat stomach, and she swats me. “No, not yet, Dian. What kind of a girl do you think I am?”

  Not one who would be happy about getting married at fourteen, I want to shout, but I can’t get the words out. Her smile falters a bit and her eyes dart to the side, as though maybe we should ditch this conversation and look for berro after all. “I’m sorry about your dad’s plans,” she says. “I mean, I know he wanted to help and everything, and it was good to know I had an option if I couldn’t find anyone who…”

  She keeps talking, but I’m not hearing her anymore. An option? It wasn’t an option. It was a future. A future way better than getting married at fourteen. And now she’s throwing it away?

  Aracely’s staring at me, waiting for me to say something.

  “Who?” I blurt out. “I mean, who’s the groom?” I trip over the last word.

  I know it won’t be a stand-up-in-church kind of wedding—the priest hardly ever comes here, so weddings are basically big parties and then the couple moves in together—but people still talk about brides and grooms. No one has any papers to say they’re man and wife, but everyone in the village acts as padrinos, or godparents, of the marriage. No one doubts its officialness.

  “He lives on the other side of the hill. His name’s Vincente—Vin for short.” Aracely uses the same hushed whisper that Emily uses when she talks about Cody. “He’s not like other guys around here. He’s going to be somebody. When my uncle came to visit a few months ago, he told Vin about a mine near Santo Domingo. Vin figures if he works there for a year, he’ll have enough money to build a house here, so he left for Santo Domingo a few weeks ago. Before he went, he asked Papá if we could marry!”

  “And your father went along with it?”

  “Of course!” Aracely snaps. “We just haven’t told anyone yet because we’re waiting to hear that Vin has a job. A year at the mine, and he’ll be able to get some land and help Papá with the farm. Why wouldn’t we get married?”

  “For a thousand reasons!” I say. “Because you’re only fourteen. Because you barely know him. Because you could study in North America and never have to worry about money again.”

  Aracely stands up and brushes off her skirt. When she speaks, her voice is hard. “You know I appreciate your family trying to help, and it would have been fun to see your country. But I wouldn’t have been happy. I never wanted to be that far from my family. I love it here. This is my life.”

  “But it doesn’t have to be!” I shout. “Who gets married at fourteen?”

  “Shhhhh! What’s the point of coming all the way down here if you’re going to shout to the hilltops? And I’m not getting married at fourteen. I’ll be fifteen by the time we get married. Legal age.”

  I kick a stone and send it sailing across the river. It lands with a plop. I feel like I’ve been dropped into a National Geographic documentary on underage marriage. We studied it in Social Studies this year, as part of a unit on children’s rights. The United Nations wrote a big long document about kids having the right to education, health care, food, shelter and all sorts of stuff. Anyone under eighteen is considered a child, according to the UN, and kids aren’t supposed to get married.

  “You don’t understand,” Aracely says.

  “Uh, yeah. No kidding.” I keep kicking stones. She wades back across the river, pulls a plastic bag from her waistband and stoops to yank at a patch of berro.

  I stomp across to where she is and snatch handfuls of the little plant from the water. “I can’t believe your father agreed to this.”

  “What’s he supposed to do?” She’s the one who’s shouting now. “Who else is going to marry me looking this way?”

  I stare at her. Part of me can’t believe she’s serious, but the bigger part of me, the part that’s known her most of my life, that has watched her try to hide her scar in a million ways, knows she means what she says. I make my voice gentle. “You’re more than your scar, Aracely. Anyone who meets you can see that.”

  She looks up at me, tears in her eyes, tiny berro leaves and their little roots dangling from her hands. “But not everyone’s willing to look at this for the rest of their lives. Vin doesn’t care, and if I marry him, I won’t have to leave my family behind. I don’t want to be some gringa who doesn’t belong here anymore, Dian.”

  I look at her but don’t know what to say.

  She turns back to the berro, rips out another handful and heads back to the main road.

  I follow her and try to get a conversation going again, but it doesn’t work. She answers with stiff politeness, like we’ve only just met, and I know she’s waiting for me to take back everything I said against the marriage.

  I’m not going to though. I’ll never forgive myself if I don’t find a way to stop the wedding. I only hope I can do it without losing my best friend.

  Three

  I should be exhausted. I woke up at dawn, rode in the back of a pickup truck over bumpy roads for three hours to get to Cucubano, hiked down to the river and back with Aracely and stayed up late talking to people from all over the village. My eyes should have closed the instant my head hit the pillow. But hours after I turn out the light, I’m still staring up into the darkness.

  The darkness is different here. It’s absolute. Nothing distracts me from the terrible images flying around in my head. Aracely at twenty, with a baby on one hip and a toddler clinging to her leg. At twenty-five, skinny, with bags under her eyes and three more kids. By Mom’s age, forty-three, she’ll be a grandmother. And what if this Vin guy cheats on her? Lots of men here do. Will Aracely put up with that too, because she’s afraid to be alone?

  I must fall asleep at some point, though, because the next thing I know, a rooster’s crowing. It takes me a few seconds to figure out where I am. I bat away the mosquito netting, tiptoe past my snoring parents and let myself into the medical clinic-classroom next door.

  The bicycles are behind a stack of boxes. Bike thieves in Canada would turn up their noses at these old clunkers. Half the paint’s chipped off them, their handlegrips are held on with brightly colo
red electrical tape, and they’re heavier than any bicycles I’ve ever lifted.

  But riding them is still faster than running, which is why they’re here. Every year, the priest in Ocoa lends us two beat-up mountain bikes so my parents can get around in medical emergencies. They’ve used the bikes a few times: once when María Castillo was in labor, and once when Dad needed to pick up more medical supplies and was about to miss the only bus into the city—two hours away. Mostly, though, the bikes sit at the back of the clinic, collecting orange dust.

  My parents don’t want me riding them. They say it would set me apart as a rich North American because no one else has a bicycle. This year, though, they’re letting me work on them, at least, hidden away behind the clinic where I won’t attract attention. I brought all my tools from home, and a friend of the priest sold us some parts before we came to the mountains.

  I poke my head out the door and look both ways. The sun’s barely up, and for once, no one’s around. I push the green bike around the side of the building, and as usual I can smell the outhouses before I even round the corner. Everything else about the spot behind the clinic is perfect. It’s private—just two outhouses and a patch of ground fenced in by hundreds and hundreds of Rafael’s coffee trees. The sounds of Rafael’s pigs and donkey will drown out any noise I make. The stench I could do without, but I’m willing to live with it.

  I lean the bicycle against the wall of the clinic. The chain needs greasing. The tires need air. The brakes need tightening. Beyond that, I’m hoping I can find—or at least invent—some deep mechanical problem that’ll keep me going all summer. I need to do something that takes my mind off Aracely, something familiar that reminds me of home. Working on bikes is what I’d be doing in Canada if my parents hadn’t insisted on bringing me to another country to wear someone else’s old clothes and live the life they want me to lead.

  I told them I didn’t want to come. Months before they booked our flights, Grandma said I could stay with her if I wanted, and she even gave me tips on how to convince my parents. “You’ve got to put things in their terms,” she said. “Use language they’ll understand.” I borrowed their favorite parenting book, Raising a Confident Teenager, and stole a few key phrases. Then I wrote my speech, memorized it and practiced in front of the mirror. By the time I sat down with my parents at our February family meeting, I thought I stood a good chance of convincing them.

  “My time in Cucubano has taught me a lot,” I said, my hands clasped under the kitchen table. Every-thing was riding on this one conversation. “I feel it’s time for the next step in my personal growth. The bike shop says I can volunteer four times a week this summer if I want to. They’ll pay me in bike parts. I’ll be doing something I’m passionate about, we can donate the cost of my plane fare to a new well for Cucubano, and our family’s carbon footprint will be way smaller this year.” Under the table, I crossed my fingers that this would work.

  Mom took off her glasses and rubbed her eyes, like this was all too much for her. She looked especially tired that night. She spends her time in Canada working at a medical clinic and being part of seven different environmental organizations. She’s always home for family meeting, though, no matter what else is going on in her life. She takes notes that she posts on the fridge afterward, and we all pretend we can read her handwriting. Sometimes I wish I could tell her to just skip our meeting, take a hot bath and go to bed early. I really think it would do her good. I don’t think she wants to hear that though.

  As Mom massaged her temples, Dad chewed his lip. He was still wearing his spandex shorts from the bike ride home from work, and his salt-and-pepper hair was wavy from being crammed into his helmet. “Dian, thanks for sharing how you feel—”

  I winced. Acknowledge how they feel before telling them what to do. That’s chapter three in the parenting book, and it’s never a good sign for the kid.

  “I want you to know,” Dad continued, “how important it is to us that you come along this summer.”

  Make her feel valued. Chapter two.

  Mom pushed her notepad to the center of the table and leaned toward me. “This is a family project, and you’re coming, Dian. That’s just the way it is.”

  Establish authority. Be firm. Mom was headed straight to the end of the book, and if I didn’t say something soon, the discussion would be over.

  “How is it a family project?” I tried to sound conversational, curious and, above all, not confrontational. “Sure, I see you more because you work right next to where we live, but you work most of the time. And I’m with Aracely’s family, and whenever we’re in the same room, you’re talking about patients and I’m pretending not to hear because it’s confidential.” That part’s not much different from life at home in Canada, actually, except that in Cucubano we’re all living on top of each other for two months straight. I go from relative freedom here, spending most of my time at Grandma’s house and occasionally clashing with my parents when they’re home for family meetings, to practically living in their pockets. I don’t even have my own room there.

  My mother pushed away from the table and opened a cupboard. “I don’t know what’s gotten into you, Dian. You’ve been so argumentative since you quit your clubs.”

  I groaned. It always came back to this. A month earlier, I’d quit the four environmental and social-justice clubs I’d been part of since I was seven. I was sick of talking to the same people about the same stuff all the time. It was bad enough that my parents were always writing letters to the editor about everything from Canadian mining regulations to my school not using recycled paper. Add to that my lack of cell phone, new clothes and family vehicle—as well as my campaigns for the same causes that my parents ranted about—and it was no wonder that kids at school said I’d grow up to be just as much of a wack-job as my parents.

  I quit the clubs because I want a life. I don’t have to spend every spare moment saving the world. Instead, I spend my time fixing bikes. I love finding exactly what’s wrong, making a few changes and having the whole bike working again in just a few hours. Bikes are simple and fixable. Unlike the rest of the world. I’ve tried to explain this to my parents. I’ve pointed out that I’m still doing something sustainable, but I might as well be building SUVs or pesticide sprayers or submachine guns for all the difference it makes to them. Whenever we argue, it comes back to the clubs.

  “I’m not more argumentative,” I said. “I’m just more sure of what I want. I want to work at the bike shop. I’m happy here. In Cucubano, I don’t fit in, and I never will.”

  “Don’t you know how lucky you are to travel?” Mom asked, slathering jam on bread. “How many people would jump at the chance to spend a summer in the Dominican?”

  I laughed. “You make it sound like we’re going for palm trees, beaches and endless buffets. That’s not Cucubano. No one could call that a hot-spot destination.”

  She frowned at me, bit into her sandwich and gazed out the window, like her mind was moving on to other things.

  Dad grabbed the pen Mom had left on the table and rolled it around in his fingers. “The teenage years are crucial, Dian. We’ve talked about this. The most important thing now is to spend quality family time together, and that’s what we’re going to do this summer.”

  “Why do I have to go to the Dominican Republic for that? I’m here all year round, and we never spend time together. What makes you think we suddenly will if we change location?” I was on my feet now. “And what’s the point of family meetings if no one wants to hear anything I have to say? Are you done telling me how my life is going to be? Can I go now?”

  Dad gave me a pleading look, the kind that means he’s doing his best and I’m just not cooperating. Mom snapped out of her window gazing and blinked at me. “I know this is tough for you, Dian. It’s tough being a teenager.”

  Thanks. Thanks a lot.

  “We appreciate you co
ming,” Dad said.

  “I know, you said that already.” I grabbed a jacket and headed for the door.

  I didn’t speak to them for the next three days. (It took them awhile to notice, because they were hardly home.) Eventually they decided I could work on the emergency bikes while I was in the Dominican. If they expected me to be overjoyed, they were disappointed, but I did start talking to them again, mostly to continue my campaign against coming here.

  I reasoned. I yelled. I screamed. I slammed doors. I even considered doing something to get arrested, but everything I thought up seemed rather stupid, and in the end I decided that even Cucubano was better than a juvenile detention center.

  That was before my only friend here stopped talking to me.

  One of the worst things about Cucubano is how much time I’ve got to think about stuff, like Aracely getting married. So far, I’ve come up with exactly zero ways to stop this marriage.

  The very worst thing about Cucubano is that from here I can’t talk to Grandma or my friend Emily or anyone else who might understand.

  The only people I can talk to are my parents.

  Four

  "You’re kidding,” Dad says. His Spanish is perfect but heavily accented. It makes me cringe to hear it, but my parents refuse to speak English—or let me speak it—while we’re in the Dominican Republic. Dad shakes his head. “She’s getting married? Just like that?”

  “Not right away,” I say. “Next year. Legal age is fifteen with her parents’ consent.”

  Dad looks as stunned as I feel, but my mother is picking at her food, silent. I stare at her. I’ve seen her fly into a rage about toilet paper being made from trees, but she says nothing about Aracely throwing her future away?

  We’re sitting around the teacher’s desk in our classroom-bedroom at dinnertime on our second day in Cucubano, eating rice and beans. If we drop so much as a grain, we’ll attract cockroaches, which are as big as a flash drive in this country, but we’d still rather eat indoors than outside, where Rafael’s chickens come to eat off our plates.