“She cannot even get to San Pedro for vaccinations,” Rafael says one night, gripping my arm. “Valentina’s brother is wanted by the government—she would be arrested. Should a baby in this time die of diphtheria?”
I’ve spent the day helping Valentina with caring for the new baby, changing her dirty diapers and rocking her to sleep when she cried. I picture the tiny, swaddled infant sick with a fatal and preventable illness and cringe. “Of course not,” I say. I’m worried, now. “SWB knows about the baby. They’ll call Doctors Without Borders, I’m sure—”
“Even if she gets the vaccines,” he continues, cutting me off, “what hope is there for her? Growing up like this? What will become of her?”
I sigh. “There’s always hope, isn’t there? You have hope, or we wouldn’t be discussing this.” I stretch out on his bed, yawning. Overhead, I stare at the mosquitoes fighting to pass through the net, lured by the smell of our warm flesh.
He doesn’t answer. His father’s death has embittered him, and a dark and tortured version of Rafael has replaced the buoyant idealist I first encountered outside the base. I think of myself before and after The Cancer, and work harder to understand his pain.
“Look,” I say. I prop myself up on my elbow and tuck a loose curl behind his ear. “I know how hard it is, with your father. I’ve been there, Rafael, I know. With my mother—”
“How can you stand it?” he cries out suddenly. He grabs me, and his skin is hot, almost as if he is burning with fever. “How can you stand it, when you remember?”
He kisses me roughly, preventing me from answering. Haunted by my own memories, I yield willingly, melting into him. His hands wander over my body, stroke my cheeks.
“I want you with me,” he says, his hands weaving in and out of my hair. “You could help me. We could be a team, like they say on American television.”
A team? Confused, I lean against him. “I don’t know, Rafael.” I run a hand along his arm. “The traffickers—”
“Don’t worry about the narcos,” he says dismissively. “Leave that to me. You can do good work. Deliver more babies. Help more sick people.”
I sit up straighter. “Are you asking me to stay?” I ask, stunned.
“Yes,” he says simply. “You belong here. With me.”
Stay. Not go back to Dad, to college. I think of the joy on Valentina’s face when she held her baby for the first time; of Rafael’s hot skin against my own; of escaping my own past, leaving the demons behind indefinitely. Forever.
“I don’t know,” I say softly.
“Think about it,” he says, pressing his lips against the back of my neck. “I love you, Catalina.”
I love you. No boy has ever said that to me before. “I love you, too,” I respond, my breath catching. And at that moment, I mean it.
He pulls me down, his mouth hard on mine. I give in to him, reveling in our twosome, as my mind is wiped temporarily clean of its slate of worry and grief.
...
I feel something crawling on my arm and flick it away with a shudder. I don’t look to see what it was, sparing myself that particular horror. Margo, Taylor, and I are on our way from the village to the base—tonight, I’ve decided not to stay with Rafael. I need some time to think, some space.
The evening air is thick with insects of every kind, creatures I have never seen or even read about. I catch sight of one that looks exactly like a leaf—green and shiny and shaped like a spade—only it has nearly-hidden legs and constantly whirring antennae. The noise is astounding, a veritable symphony of bugs with the occasional bird or other unidentifiable, but definitely not human, sounds mixed in.
“Everything okay?” asks Taylor politely. We’ve been overly formal with each other since our argument, speaking only in stiff, prim tones. Margo rolls her eyes; she’s not one for formality, no matter what’s transpired.
I shrug, pulling the sleeves of my shirt down over my hands. I can feel the mosquitoes hovering hopefully nearby, and hate the feel of bites on my fingers: they are the hardest to scratch.
“How come you’re coming back with us?” asks Margo bluntly. “Trouble in paradise?”
I don’t answer immediately, searching for the right words. “No,” I say slowly. “No, the opposite.”
“Opposite?” Margo frowns, then covers her mouth in horror. “You’re not pregnant are you?”
“Pregnant? No!” I shake my head furiously. I brush aside a leafy branch, flinching as an angry bird swoops suddenly down, squawking in indignation at the disruption.
“Then what?” Margo stops, her hands on her narrow hips. “What’s going on?”
“He’s asked me to stay,” I admit. I don’t look at her.
“Stay?” Taylor pipes up, his voice tinged with horror. He adjusts the cap he’s wearing—a makeshift mask made of a mosquito net attached to a visor. He looks ridiculous. “Stay? Cat, have you lost it?”
“I’m not like you,” I retort. I’m still not sure myself if I want to stay or not, but I don’t like being judged by Taylor. “I’m not going home to a hotel fortune. My mom is dead, my dad is useless, and here I have the chance to help out.”
Margo stares at me open-mouthed. I want to warn her that actual flies may get in, but she reaches over and grabs my arm, tight.
“Cat,” she says, sounding alarmed, “you’re not thinking rationally.”
Rationally. Manic. Bipolar II. Denial, anger, acceptance…I feel something inside me snap.
“Why should I be rational?” I shout back, and I hear my voice echo in the overhead tree canopy. Somewhere, a macaw answers me back, cawing loudly. “Where does it get you, really, in the end?”
Taylor and Margo are looking at each other the way my classmates did after the hockey-stick incident. I bristle defensively, avoiding eye contact.
“This thing with Rafael,” Margo says carefully. “It’s just a thing. It’s hot, but you’re, like, seventeen. Think about what you’re saying.”
“It’s not just Rafael,” I protest. “When I helped Anna deliver the baby—”
“A baby that is lucky to be okay, given that she did not have access to any kind of health care,” Margo answers calmly. “Did you know babies are supposed to get stuff when they’re born? Eye drops and shots and—”
“I get it,” I snap. “Which is why I should stay. Help get the country back on track.”
“Not to sound like a shrink,” says Taylor, speaking up, “but it isn’t your job to save the world, Cat.”
Margo nods. Her eyes are full of sadness, without the hardness I’ve come to expect. “I know you lost your mom,” she says, “but that wasn’t your fault. And neither is Valentina’s baby, whatever happens to her. Or Calantes, for that matter.” She gestures around her. “This place is a bigger problem than we can fix, any of us.”
I think about her words. Calantes is poisoned as surely as if the narcos were spilling their drugs directly into the Amazon. Just like the cancer that took my mom, that destroyed her body. Is there, again, no way for me help? No way to stop the poison?
Margo gently places a filthy hand on my arm. “It’s not your fault,” she says again. “I understand why you’re here, and why you feel that way. But you couldn’t save your mother, and you certainly can’t save this place. What if you died, Cat? Rafael wants to align with the drug traffickers. How would your mother have felt about that? Is that what she would have wanted?”
I bristle again at this reference to my mother, what she would have wanted. Margo didn’t know my mother.
But she’s not wrong, a little voice whispers in my ear. I try to brush it off, like a pesky insect, but it persists. What would Mom have wanted? My thoughts wander to my mother in her last moments, how angry she would be with me if I died now, how disappointed. It feels like a knife being twisted deep into my gut, and again I feel lost. Why? I want to scream at
her. Why did you leave me?
“I don’t know,” I mutter, kicking at the dirt. It puffs up in little clouds around my boot, disturbing the insects living beneath it. I notice some kind of spider scurry out of the way, something that would ordinarily frighten me. Now, I just stare at it with distaste. I don’t have the energy to be afraid of spiders anymore.
“Look, Cat.” Taylor’s voice is hard—none of the gentleness that Margo has affected. It’s like they’re playing a game of good-cop bad-cop with me. “We come here, we try to do a little good, we leave. It’s shitty, but that’s how it is. Call me jaded, call me whatever you want, but when my time is up here, I’m out. This isn’t my war.”
I say nothing, walking faster now, ahead of my friends. I can imagine the worried looks they’re exchanging behind my back, and I feel tears of anger and frustration prick at my eyes.
Margo jogs to my side. “Cat,” she says worriedly, “you don’t…you don’t want to die, do you?”
Dr. Shapiro’s words come back to me, something about grief and the desperate desire to join a lost loved one. I don’t believe in that, but the thought of dying doesn’t repulse me the way it probably should. If I died, who would miss me? Would my father notice? Who would mourn me, the way my mother would have?
Back at the base, I nod goodnight at Melody, who is lying awake in her cot, staring at the ceiling. She hasn’t opened up to me again since that night, but we have a tacit understanding between us, an unacknowledged sisterhood of pain and loss. When she notices me watching her, she whispers her goodnight in return and rolls over onto her side, away from me.
When I fall asleep, my dreams are twisted and full of confused imagery: I lie on the jungle floor in the throes of labor, Rafael at my side. Margo and Anna work together to deliver the baby.
“It’s a girl!” cries Margo, handing me a swaddled infant. I look down at my baby, who has the face of my mother before she died, complete with a little knit chemo cap. Heart pounding, I awake with a start. It’s still night, but I don’t fall back asleep.
Chapter 23
Before
“Close your eyes,” says Mom, carefully dusting my lids with shimmery eye shadow, pale pink to match the dress. “This is going to look fantastic. I watched a video on YouTube.” In front of her is a neat row of brushes in all shapes and sizes. The vanity looks like an art-supply-store display.
“I can’t believe people take the time to post these things,” I say, trying to remain still.
“You sound like Dad.” Mom shakes her head. “How old are you again?”
“Ha.” I try not to move as she pulls out an eyeliner pencil. “Careful with that thing.”
She looks brighter, more alive, than she has in ages. Her cheeks are flushed with color, and her eyes have their old light in them. Her forehead is crinkled with lines of concentration.
“When I’m done with your makeup, I’m going to do mine like this, too,” she says. She steps back and examines her work critically. “We’ll take some pictures. I’ll put on that black dress I wore to Lily Fowler’s wedding.”
“Really?” I smile, remembering how lovely she looked then, before the cancer and the chemo and the rest of it. She’s still beautiful, of course, but it’s not the same. The memories of before, it’s almost like they’re of someone else.
“Yes. I want some nice pictures of us tonight. I don’t want to stand next to you in these disgusting yoga pants. God, I miss getting dressed and going out.”
I don’t say anything—I’m rendered mute as Mom reaches for a pinkish lipstick and applies it liberally to my gaping mouth. It feels weird to have someone else do this. I try not to drool.
“There!” she says triumphantly. “You look like a model.”
I turn towards the mirror. My face is transformed: my eyes are bigger and more luminous, my cheeks pink, my lips full. My hair is thick and loose in soft waves about my shoulders—Mom set it in rollers and carefully brushed it out, lovingly combing each curl. I look like someone else, someone older and elegant and sophisticated.
“Thank you,” I whisper. I can’t stop staring at my reflection. “It’s amazing. How did you do this?”
“Don’t be silly,” she says, waving her hand dismissively. “You provided the raw material.” She rises slowly from her seat opposite me at the vanity, using the table to steady herself. She is frail these days, unwell. She tries to hide it from me, but I can see the gasps for air as she executes even the simplest of tasks; the little winces of pain when she thinks I’m not looking; the hollowed-out cheeks and dark circles around her eyes from not eating or sleeping. And the seizures. I’ve gotten used to a lot, accepted things I never thought I could. But the seizures I can’t get used to. Each time, I want to cry, scream, hide from her.
When things started to get really bad, Dad convinced Mom to give radiation a shot, just one more time. Just to see if it helped. Almost immediately, her hair began to shed again, to release a little bit at a time. Not like with the chemo, but we’d notice more hair on her pillow, on her hairbrush, in the shower. After the third treatment, she put her foot down.
“I’m dying,” she said flatly. “There’s nothing anyone can do about it. And if I’m going to die, I want to die with hair. I only have a little dignity left.”
We didn’t argue. Dad wanted to, I could tell—I know a part of him still irrationally believes that she’s not beyond hope—but even he knew better than to say anything. She’s on some pretty heavy painkillers now, to cope with the pain, along with some other stuff: anti-seizure drugs, anti-anxiety meds, sleeping pills. Dad doles them all out to her daily in three shifts. He’s got one of those little pill-organizer boxes with dates and times on them.
“Let’s go get your dress,” she says now. She takes my hand for support and retrieves the delicate pink creation from its hanger. Carefully, I step inside, and she zips me, brushing my hair out of the way so it doesn’t catch. I hold her hands as I step into a pair of her high heels, teetering precariously.
“Caitlin.” Her voice catches as she stares me up and down. “You look beautiful. Beyond beautiful.”
I check my reflection and do a double-take. I look like I’ve been Photoshopped; the transformation is remarkable. Mom’s face is radiant.
“It’s even better than I imagined,” she whispers.
I glance at my phone: it’s four o’clock. Kevin is picking me up in less than half an hour. Against all expectations, I am getting excited. I feel a flutter in my stomach, like a thousand butterflies are trying to escape.
“I’m going to do my makeup now,” Mom says. I help her back to the vanity. “We’ll take some nice pictures before Kevin gets here.”
I watch her carefully powder her face, then highlight her cheeks with blush. I used to love watching her put on makeup as a kid. When I was really little, I used to stand on a step stool, studying intently as she dusted her eyelids and puckered her lips. It occurs to me that this may be one of the last times I have the privilege of observing this ritual, so I stare unabashed, committing her face and actions to memory.
When she’s done, I brush her hair, twisting the front back with a small barrette. I find the dress she’s looking for, and it’s my turn to help her into it. Standing next to me in front of the full-length mirror, she beams at the woman looking back at her.
“There I am,” she says quietly. She turns to me. “I hate being ugly.”
“You could never be ugly,” I say firmly. I squeeze her hand and direct her attention back to the mirror. “Look at us. We should be in, like, a magazine.”
“We do look pretty hot,” she agrees. She goes over to her dresser and rifles through one of the drawers for her camera. “Let’s get some pictures.”
She beckons loudly for my dad, who is downstairs, reading. He emerges, looking taken aback at the pair of us.
“You look stunning,” he says, his voice
catching. “Both of you.” He smiles tenderly at Mom. “What a great idea.”
“I thought it would be nice to get some pictures,” she says, handing him the camera.
We snap a variety of shots—some serious, and some decidedly not, as we stick our tongues out or strike humorous poses. We all laugh easily, something that hasn’t happened in months. Finally, the doorbell rings, and my dad answers it.
“Hi, Mr. Marks,” says Kevin shyly. He’s wearing standard guy prom-wear, a rented tux. He looks nice enough, if slightly awkward, clutching a wrist corsage.
“Hi, Cat.” He smiles at me, relaxing slightly. “You look great.” He offers me the corsage, his cheeks flushing deeply. “I hope this is okay. My mom picked it up.”
“Thanks,” I say, slipping the white rose onto my wrist. “It’s perfect.”
We stand somewhat stiffly as my parents take a variety of traditional prom photos. It’s all a bit weird, but my mother looks so thrilled, I can’t help but grin back.
“Have fun!” she says brightly. “Don’t hurry back. Stay out as late as you want!”
I smile good-naturedly. “Thanks,” I say, grabbing my purse. “But I doubt we’ll be out all that late.”
Kevin shuffles his shiny shoes against our hall carpet. “I have a midnight curfew,” he mutters. “My parents are really strict.”
“Totally fine,” I say, relieved. I have no intention of partying into the wee hours. “Let’s go.”
...
The prom is well under way when we arrive. I find Tess and Jake, and the four of us snag a table well away from the dance floor where we enjoy some canapés and fake champagne.
“What is this?” I ask, making a face. “It’s awful.”
“Non-alcoholic sparkling wine,” says Jake knowingly. “My uncle has a drinking problem. We buy this for him on New Year’s Eve.”
“I think I would have preferred a soda,” I say, putting my glass down. I look around. Everywhere, students in their finery revel, dancing enthusiastically to loud, cheesy dance music I can’t identify and snacking on bacon-wrapped scallops. Some have clearly been trading the fake alcohol in favor of the real thing: a surprising number are surreptitiously sneaking sips from concealed hip flasks. There’s a rumor, of course, that someone has spiked the punch, but it’s not clear whether that’s true or not. Not many people are drinking it, regardless; it looks less like punch than runny ketchup.
Undiscovered Country Page 21
