by Lia Conklin
“This one I need to take,” she said, fixing her gaze steadily on Amelia. “Hello, Ana? How have you been?”
Over the next five minutes, Amelia tried to piece together a conversation from Connie’s one-sided questions and exclamations. By the time the conversation was over, Amelia could barely keep herself from jumping across the table and grabbing the phone.
“What? What? What is it?” She demanded when Connie finally ended the call. “What’s going on?”
Connie looked at her with the same big eyes she’d worn since reading the caller ID.
“I can’t believe it. I really can’t believe it,” she said shaking her head.
“What? What?” Amelia repeated, about ready to strangle the answer out of her.
“Your father, Amelia. It’s over. I mean the major legal stuff is over. It’s just small potatoes now.”
“Really, Connie? That’s how you’re explaining this to me, using vegetables?”
Connie laughed. “I might as well explain it using dingle berries for all the sense it’ll make.” She took a long dramatic breath. “They charged your father.”
“Oh for God’s sake, Connie! With what? What did they charge him with? Conspiracy? Treason?”
“With tax evasion! Isn’t that the darnedest thing! What they won’t think of next! Let’s just hold someone in jail without charges for eight months and then charge him with tax evasion!” she laughed shrilly, and then suddenly she was out of her chair pulling Amelia up on her feet.
“It’s over!” she said, jumping up and down, her hands on the sides of Amelia’s shoulders, making her bounce up and down as well. “It’s over!”
Amelia didn’t feel the exuberance Connie felt. Nor did she feel the truth in her words. It wasn’t over. It wouldn’t be over until her father looked her in the eye and took accountability for what he had done to them. To her. Even to those beat-up bodies left in Honduras. To all of them. And even then, she couldn’t be sure it would be over. How could the damage this man had delivered upon so many ever be over?
Chapter 82
When that day finally came, Amelia didn’t know what she would feel more at the sight of him: anger or the sense of retribution. But when he entered the room on the other side of the safety-glass partition, she was stunned to realize that all she felt was pity.
He was so thin, and now that she saw him without his cowboy boots or hat, she realized he wasn’t much taller than she, this giant of a man she had tried a lifetime to reach. Today she not only reached him but looked at him from the summit beyond.
Her imposing father, a little man in an orange jail suit, smiled at her in a way she had never seen before, surprise and joy radiating from every angle of his face. How she would have loved to see him look upon her with that smile just once before in her life. It seemed it was the first time he ever really saw her. Yet she felt no joy.
He picked up the receiver as he sat down in front of her, so close she could not remember a time he had been closer. The lines on his face were so deep they mimicked the furrows he had plowed upon their Honduran mountainside to prevent the rains from washing away the fertile topsoil. His eyes were a watery blue, like the Honduran sky minutes before the sun burned away the morning fog.
“Hi, Dad,” she finally said into the receiver that felt so cold against her ear.
“Amelia,” he sighed. “I can’t believe it’s you. And look at you,” he said seeing her belly for the first time, “I…I didn’t know,” he stammered. “You’re going to be a mother. You look beautiful.”
He was wiping at his eyes, and it took Amelia a moment to realize they were tears and not mountain raindrops. The only time she had ever seen him cry was after the explosion, and then only once. But here, he was like their mountaintop home—vulnerable to the elements, exposed to the stars, his only barrier the transparent safety glass between them.
“Daddy,” she consoled before she could stop herself. “It’s going to be okay,” she intoned, unconsciously stroking the glass between them. “I found you.”
“Amelia, I can’t believe you’re here,” he repeated, the morning sun finally drying the mist from his eyes. “When they took me away in Houston, I thought it would only be for a few hours. Weeks later I was still there, wondering what they were planning to do with me. I didn’t even get to make a phone call, if you can imagine. Then they transferred me to the MDC. They said I wasn’t actually being charged with anything, that I was a ‘material witness.’ I didn’t even know to what crime. They said since I lived in Honduras I was a flight risk, so they couldn’t let me go. They assigned me a lawyer, but I only got to see him at my first and only court appearance. I didn’t see him again until I got here to Minnesota nearly eight months later.”
He was shaking his head as he relived his story, running his free hand through hair that loosely covered his pale scalp. Amelia waited, patient for the first time since she had returned to Minnesota.
“I got my lawyer back when they charged me. I was surprised because after weeks of interrogation, I was sure they were going to charge me with terrorism. But no, tax evasion. My lawyer tells me they have a pretty tight case. Seems like I wasn’t too good at keeping the books for the newspaper. I don’t know. Might be so. I’ve always paid more attention to the journalism. Funny thing is, they set bail at two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, something unheard of for petty tax evasion. My lawyer says it’s because I’m a flight risk. I need ten percent to meet the bail bond, but I haven’t had anyone who could help me out.”
“Until now, Papa,” Amelia said, interrupting for the first time. “I have the money.”
“Yeah, I know. I wanted you to know about it before, Amelia, but I was worried that things would still be too dangerous for you. I got so many threats, and even after the explosion, they said they’d come after you, too.”
“Who daddy? Who said that?” Amelia implored, her face nearly pressed to the glass.
“I figured that after so many years things had cooled down, that it would be safe to visit,” he continued, ignoring her question. “I had already missed thirteen years of my little sister’s life, including her yearlong struggle against the cancer that finally took her. I couldn’t miss her funeral as well. And it was time for you to have your own life. I had protected you too much already. It was time to let you go.
“There’s other money too,” he continued. “I hid it because I was afraid the FBI would confiscate all of it under the guise of ‘terrorist assets’ or something of the sort. I wanted to tell Connie, but I was afraid to implicate her in any of this. I was sure they were just waiting for an excuse to bring her in. Luckily, she’s steered clear of the whole conspiracy thing and most of the more controversial anti-war reporting. I don’t think she’s even on their radar any longer, and I want to keep it that way.”
“Hold on, Papa,” Amelia interrupted. “You’re talking about the safe, aren’t you? I already have it. I figured it out and just like I thought, you decided to bury it rather than keep something that important in a corporate institution.”
He was smiling at her.
“That’s my Amelia,” he chuckled. “You’ve gone and figured it out. So now tell me, how did you find it?”
“Let’s just say not even a gag order can keep Toby quiet!”
They smiled at each other for a moment, and Amelia remembered suddenly this same moment repeated so many years before. She had just shown him the article she had written for her elementary newspaper about her favorite librarian.
“I used to wonder,” she had written, “why God gave Toby such a very big body. But now that I know her, the answer is easy. How else could she have room for such a very big heart?” Her father had smiled up at her afterwards as he smiled at her now. Though Amelia wanted to stall, extend that moment in both directions, she knew that a moment shared, or perhaps repeated, is only that. So, she let it die like so many other moments she had wished to covet.
“Who killed them Papa?” she nearly whisper
ed into the receiver, placing her hand upon the glass as if it could penetrate both the pane and his resolve. “Please tell me the truth.”
His smile disappeared as he sighed and looked away. “The only truth is that they’re gone,” he replied softly. “All other truth is irrelevant.”
“Not to me. I have to know. They would want me to know,” she insisted.
“Let it go, Amelia. Let them go. I, as well as anyone, should know it is not always noble and courageous to seek the truth, not when it condemns others to die. You know it too. I see it in your eyes.”
“You could have never seen it coming, could you have Daddy?” Amelia pleaded, wanting more than anything for him to proclaim his innocence. But he could not.
“Oh yes, I could,” he declared, nodding his head vehemently. “With all my knowledge of the evil struggle for dominance, I knew best of all what could happen. I knew and yet…” he stopped, looking around wildly for some answer other than the one he knew. “Yet,” he finally cried, “I didn’t stop! I kept digging deeper and deeper! Even after the threats on both sides, your mother pleading for me to stop… I searched on,” he confessed, his voice now a hoarse whisper, “for some elusive gem coated in gunpowder. But you Amelia,” he continued urgently, “can stop. Let it go. The truth is they are gone. Trying to find meaning in their deaths can only bring you closer to yours.” He looked down at her stomach then, as it pressed against the glass. “You and my grandchild have a whole life to live. Let that be your truth.”
“I can’t, Papa,” she cried. “I’ve come too far not to hear it from you. Don’t you owe me that much? Was it Rashid Rauf, Daddy?” She stared into his eyes for his answer, but all she could see in their milky pools besides her own desperate reflection was his resolve.
“I owe you a lot of things, Amelia, but a death sentence is not one of them. I’m sorry. I can’t tell you. I love you too much.”
As he continued to hold her eyes with his, his last sentence penetrated her consciousness. She had searched years for the knowledge it professed, and she finally knew the truth: he loved her. Why had he never told her that? Why had he kept her at a distance with such indifference all these years? Why had he abandoned her, too, when her mother and brother already had? Now was her chance to ask those questions.
But looking straight into his eyes, she knew he did not have the answers. He was not a mountain of a man; he was this small man in an orange jumper, imprisoned in a life that had more questions than answers. Without the answers, he had forged ahead like she had, seeking them—sometimes following an illusion, other times gut punched with the truth but forging ahead nonetheless, creating fissures that could not be mended, breaks that could not be healed. She had come so far to find the truth in these and many other unanswered questions, but the real truth had been simple: an answer to a question she had not thought to ask.
As he moved to stand, Amelia drank in the power of the answer she had received. And as she watched the guard grab her father’s upper arm and lead him away like so many months ago, a feeling of loss overwhelmed her. She knew this time she would not abandon him. She had learned a truth from him that mattered more than all those he would never reveal, and she had discovered one about herself: she loved her father, and she had forgiven him.
“I’ll post bond, Daddy!” she shouted through the glass as he and the guard approached the door on the far end. “You’ll be out of here tomorrow. I promise!” As the door slammed shut behind them, she stared at the space into which his slumped figure had disappeared. All too soon, the knowledge of the other suffering he had caused a thousand miles away would press upon his already burdened shoulders. This would be his journey, she realized, but he would not face it alone.
As she turned to go, she felt it for the first time. It hit her lowest rib like a sledgehammer, though it was but a gentle nudge. She rubbed her hand across her protruding belly, the past and the future intertwined within her womb, co-conspirators in an enigmatic plot that prodded her forward all the while it called her back. She finally knew which direction she would choose.
Both.
Epilogue
The chimes that announced Amelia’s entrance were a far and much fairer cry from the whistles and bells of her earlier visit to the casino. She had wormed her way through the dense smoke of the gaming lobby, each ding of a fortuitous wager and the rattle of its subsequent release of coins making her jump, until her heart was palpitating even more than her mission warranted. The woman she had asked had been unwilling to cooperate at first, but upon seeing what Amelia carried, had softened and written the information on a scrap of paper. Amelia was both relieved to have the information and disappointed to learn she would have to spend another day in the rental car.
But finally, she was there, and the chimes that welcomed her made her heart flutter as much as the din of the casino had made it palpitate. She found herself surrounded by eagles, buffalo, and beautiful dark people peering at her from behind frames and from sculpted eyes. But she did not return their stares. Instead she found herself moving to the back of the gallery, towards the silhouette of a woman seated upon a pedestal, her tarnished iron form bowing a head of molten hair that flowed down the length of her back, her arm gently cradling the rusted metal of an enlarged belly, her plaque unabashedly proclaiming her title: Amelia.
Amelia stood in front of the statue, unable to breathe, so tangible was the sadness, loneliness, and tender regret emanating from this symbol of motherhood. Her symbol of motherhood.
She knew even before she felt the lock of hair lifted from her neck that he was there. And as he entwined the tendril between his longing fingers, she embraced a new chapter in her life. And your new chapter, she thought, smiling upon the bundle that slumbered in her arms, will be authored as it should be, with the wisdom of our pasts guiding the tender pen of your future.
The End
About the Author
I grew up in rural Northern Minnesota, raised on a small, dysfunctional farm under the direction of an eccentric father. My subsequent life experiences were equally unique (and dysfunctional!). Little wonder I was not at a loss for real-life, made-for-fiction material from which to create my debut novel, Authoring Amelia.
During high school, my father moved to Mexico and later Honduras. The few letters I received from him fostered within me a fervent desire to know Latin America. I got that chance after college, first traveling through Central America to visit my father and his new family in Honduras, and later living for a time in Mexico. As many Americans traveling for the first time in a developing country, I was struck by the rawness around me, confounded by the concurrence of intense beauty and vitality alongside gut-wrenching ugliness and despair. The image of the foal sucking the teat of its dead mother in the novel is an image that will remind me forever of the interconnectedness of these two extremes.
Once back in the States, I decided to utilize my Spanish skills to teach Spanish-speaking adults English. Soon after, I became a full-time educator, teaching English and basic skills to adults from all over the world. I am in love with my profession of twenty years and equally in love with each and every student who passes into my classroom.
To further my abilities to both teach English and teach others to teach English, I earned my Master’s in Education in 2014 and went on to earn a PhD in Post-Secondary and Adult Education in 2017. I also have several professional publishing credentials to my name: What’s Next? (New Readers Press, 2012), a phonics-based reading series for adults; Bridging English Language Learners to GED Prep (New Readers Press, 2017), a set of teaching guides for GED teachers; and the Future Advanced student book (Pearson, 2020), that I designed from cover to cover and for which I authored several pieces.
Though my own life provided substance for the novel, Authoring Amelia is a work of fiction in its entirety. Through this strong, vibrant young woman, I was able to explore the coexistence of the callous nature of life alongside its deepest moments of grace. And Amelia? Well, she rose to t
he challenge, determined to reconcile these opposing realities and make from them one reality all her own.
