“Because hesitation is not the same thing as meditation. Because doubt is not the same thing as patience. Where were you going when you ate french fries with ketchup in the back seat of the car?”
Juliet holds still, arms clasped around knees, toes pointing to the ceiling. “Sunday drive,” she says.
“Ah,” says Charlotte.
“I remember when we drove over the creek,” says Juliet. “It sounded like thunder, and the water was washing over the bridge, and we stopped and my mom was mad that we got out and looked, but my dad wouldn’t let us fall in.”
Charlotte is staring at Juliet as if Juliet were form and shape and shadow rather than girl. The bed rocks under her shifting hips; she settles herself more deeply. “Your dad has his arms around all of us,” she says.
Juliet doesn’t like this, but it sounds true enough.
“Look.” Charlotte holds out the page and Juliet sees herself, curled and floating. In the sketch, Juliet’s eyes are closed in her tilted head; her hair is much longer than her real hair and it flows around her body.
Charlotte gives Juliet the book and the pencil. “Your turn. You draw me.” She poses with her head on an angle, one shoulder dropped. “Don’t lift the pencil. Don’t look at the page. Keep your eyes on me and draw with one single line.”
I can’t, Juliet thinks, but the lone line presses onward, intertwines with itself like thread that will never be unwound. Who would want this thread unwound? It makes a sprawling-here, crammed-there heap of a picture. Part woman, part map.
“The shoreline and the sea,” says Charlotte. She rips the page from the book and tacks it low, near her pillow.
———
When it is time to go home, Juliet sprints from the Roots of Justice guesthouse to her own new house, just down the street. She never walks when she can run. Children who have gathered in a neighbour’s yard to watch a television propped in a window turn their gaze to look at Juliet instead.
Both guesthouse and Juliet’s new home lie under the shadow of a hill carved with the giant letters FSLN , the abbreviated name of the ruling party. But while the yard at the guesthouse is bare dirt shaded by high, heavy foliage, the yard at home is bright and sunlit, the house surrounded by palm-fronded coconut trees out front, a grove of banana varieties beside the kitchen, and spiny lime trees out the bedroom windows. The rooms in the guesthouse are crowded, but at home Juliet and her brothers can run races through the long central room and around the sunken indoor courtyard that stinks of Emmanuel’s urine. Gloria has given up trying to stop him. She lets him run naked like any Nicaraguan toddler.
Not everyone approves. The Roots of Justice office has been squeezed, for reasons of economy and convenience, into the front room of Juliet’s home. Volunteers come and go, using the Friesens’ kitchen and bathroom like their own, and some of them hold opinions about children and hygiene that run counter to Gloria’s.
Gloria doesn’t fight directly. But she has an expressive absence of smile, a twitching eyelid, a way of grabbing a passing child and thrusting him or her into the midst of a conversation like a pawn into a battle zone: “What was that you were saying about feces? This is useful information, Juliet. Something about pinworms?”
The office is for grown-ups, but Juliet knows what is there to be found: words. Every surface is littered with stacks of field notes, newsletters, clippings, purple mimeographed government forms, yellow pads of foolscap beside the telephone with messages jotted in Gloria’s looping hand. Words are like candy, if candy was free for the taking, and Juliet will read anything — signs, cereal boxes, books on any subject; she has no awareness of boundaries, no compunction about snooping, no care for the dangers of evil.
In stolen moments, Juliet reads what must be the worst of it, tracking a volunteer’s scrawl across the page.
Juliet holds still, arms clasped around knees, toes pointing to the ceiling. “Sunday drive,” she says.
“Ah,” says Charlotte.
“I remember when we drove over the creek,” says Juliet. “It sounded like thunder, and the water was washing over the bridge, and we stopped and my mom was mad that we got out and looked, but my dad wouldn’t let us fall in.”
Charlotte is staring at Juliet as if Juliet were form and shape and shadow rather than girl. The bed rocks under her shifting hips; she settles herself more deeply. “Your dad has his arms around all of us,” she says.
Juliet doesn’t like this, but it sounds true enough.
“Look.” Charlotte holds out the page and Juliet sees herself, curled and floating. In the sketch, Juliet’s eyes are closed in her tilted head; her hair is much longer than her real hair and it flows around her body.
Charlotte gives Juliet the book and the pencil. “Your turn. You draw me.” She poses with her head on an angle, one shoulder dropped. “Don’t lift the pencil. Don’t look at the page. Keep your eyes on me and draw with one single line.”
I can’t, Juliet thinks, but the lone line presses onward, intertwines with itself like thread that will never be unwound. Who would want this thread unwound? It makes a sprawling-here, crammed-there heap of a picture. Part woman, part map.
“The shoreline and the sea,” says Charlotte. She rips the page from the book and tacks it low, near her pillow.
———
When it is time to go home, Juliet sprints from the Roots of Justice guesthouse to her own new house, just down the street. She never walks when she can run. Children who have gathered in a neighbour’s yard to watch a television propped in a window turn their gaze to look at Juliet instead.
Both guesthouse and Juliet’s new home lie under the shadow of a hill carved with the giant letters FSLN , the abbreviated name of the ruling party. But while the yard at the guesthouse is bare dirt shaded by high, heavy foliage, the yard at home is bright and sunlit, the house surrounded by palm-fronded coconut trees out front, a grove of banana varieties beside the kitchen, and spiny lime trees out the bedroom windows. The rooms in the guesthouse are crowded, but at home Juliet and her brothers can run races through the long central room and around the sunken indoor courtyard that stinks of Emmanuel’s urine. Gloria has given up trying to stop him. She lets him run naked like any Nicaraguan toddler.
Not everyone approves. The Roots of Justice office has been squeezed, for reasons of economy and convenience, into the front room of Juliet’s home. Volunteers come and go, using the Friesens’ kitchen and bathroom like their own, and some of them hold opinions about children and hygiene that run counter to Gloria’s.
Gloria doesn’t fight directly. But she has an expressive absence of smile, a twitching eyelid, a way of grabbing a passing child and thrusting him or her into the midst of a conversation like a pawn into a battle zone: “What was that you were saying about feces? This is useful information, Juliet. Something about pinworms?”
The office is for grown-ups, but Juliet knows what is there to be found: words. Every surface is littered with stacks of field notes, newsletters, clippings, purple mimeographed government forms, yellow pads of foolscap beside the telephone with messages jotted in Gloria’s looping hand. Words are like candy, if candy was free for the taking, and Juliet will read anything — signs, cereal boxes, books on any subject; she has no awareness of boundaries, no compunction about snooping, no care for the dangers of evil.
In stolen moments, Juliet reads what must be the worst of it, tracking a volunteer’s scrawl across the page.
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