Panama (6 page)

"I'm writing about the Zone census for school, Mother. Nobody else is doing it."

Her eyes bore into me but I don't waver. I'm strong and I'm winning. First time in my life.

I'm shaking inside, but I know she's thinking about Mrs. Ewing's note and praise for my essays. Good, let her think about that. I also know that in her mind good grades are no substitute for finding a nice young man and having a well-rounded social life of some kind, any kind.

My words remind her that I'm the only student recorder of the census taking, a fact that annoys her but works. I see her wheels turning. She takes her time. She isn't uncomfortable in silence, but I am at the moment. I wait her out.
Think it over,
Mother. There's no reason for me not to go out as usual.
And then she speaks.

"Be careful," she says and slides a platter in between upright pegs on a shelf.

Unbelievable. It worked. I stood my ground and I'm free.

I duck out to the steps. Could I have done this a year ago? (If I could have, I would have.) But I don't waste time on the past or on the present small victory. I go on down the steps, and before I reach the tracks, I have to sit for a minute. I'm shaking. I'm breathless. Was any teen ever so restricted, so bound by obedience? After that little confrontation and bold fabrication, I feel myself smiling and I'm light as a feather, strong and free. I'm not afraid at all. I'm just shaking because what I did was risky. I'm a new person and it's a new world, and I don't mind that lying is nerve-racking.

I crouch on the steps until I see the last of the workers pass by, which is part of the plan. These are the men who plant dynamite in the trees to be cleared, an evening job. When they've gone by, I put on a slouched hat that I've scrounged from Father's closet and tuck up my hair. I'm taking a chance being out alone at night in the Zone, a girl by herself. But I'm no fool. I have a plan.

I complete dressing in my worker's gear and feel comfortable. I go down the last steps and begin making my way along the tracks in the darkness. I encounter the usual passersby—women balancing baskets on their heads, children scuttling around them, a single wordless worker hurrying along, one
borracho
weaving and humming to himself—I can't make out if he's American or a local. No one speaks to me—
great
—I keep my head down. My ruse is working. I may actually look a little threatening, which suits me fine. A small man, head down, wide-brimmed hat covering his face—I have the feeling they want nothing to do with me.

After a while I reach Federico's cabin and stop. Up the hill the light is on, but from below, the steep angle keeps me from seeing inside so I make my way closer from bush to bush, being careful to stay hidden. I find a large oleander and position myself behind it. I watch.

It's light inside. I hear voices and quiet conversation. Then I hear water. I make my way around to the back, find a hiding place, and see a figure in a makeshift shower—a bucket on a shelf tipped so that it pours water onto pieces of split bamboo, creating a dribbling stream. It's dark where I am and I move closer.

Federico is standing in the water washing himself, the light from inside the cabin flashing across his body, water sheeting off his skin, glossy. I don't move.

I stand hidden and watch the soap foam sliding down his arms and chest to his legs in the dark. His hair is wet and shiny, his arms and shoulders sunburned a dark brown. His hands slide into his armpits and across his chest—a beautiful, lean, powerful body. I don't move my eyes.

He replaces the emptied bucket with a full one, all this movement half obscured in the darkness, flashes of water on his arms and legs as he bends and lifts. The shower starts again, a stronger sprinkling of water, and he begins rinsing himself, swiping the water off his arms and chest with his hands, taking some careful time with the darkness between his legs, then standing straight and shaking his head like a dog.

The drops spray to the side, all this only half lit, flickering like a moviola. He takes a ragged but neatly folded towel from the sill of the window and wipes his face, runs it through his hair, and wraps it around his waist. He rests his hands on his hips and looks out at the night, standing still, a few drops of water from his hair on his shoulders, a few very dark hairs in the center of his chest drawn down by the stream of water running toward his navel, where the towel is tucked.

For a second he's looking directly at me. I hold my breath. My face is only half visible, his eyes on the foliage around me. Then he looks up to the sky and studies the stars, turns his body searching for the constellations. Another moment, then he looks in my direction again. I don't move, don't breathe. He reaches up, sets the two buckets upside down, and goes back into the cabin.

Two steps closer and I can see inside.

His head bobs when he pulls on thin cotton trousers with a drawstring at the waist, a kind of pajama. I work my way closer through the vines and bushes. I can see fully into the room, and I watch him sit at his table and begin writing. A letter, maybe, to his wife, his mother ... a girlfriend? Jealousy ripples through me—some kind of turmoil does.

I realize a roommate is on the other cot, a young man his age. They don't talk, only go on with their reading and writing. Federico looks stern and unapproachable to me, and worldly. I don't think I'll ever be able to speak to him or know him.

I stare, watch him a long time with a mix of excitement and fear—surely he's off-limits for me. I'm a small-town girl.

He finishes writing, puts away the pen and paper, and starts reading. Something makes him smile. He reaches for the pen and writes on a notepad. He has a warm, inviting smile. Then he goes back to reading and he looks aloof again.

Bugs are biting me and it's hot; I have to move.

I go as quietly as I can to the side of the cabin and take another long look. The lights glow. I can see the two heads reading. Some raucous noise comes from the adjacent cabins—less literate workers playing cards, laughing, talking. When bugs start gnawing on me again, I move farther away through the brush, careful, noiseless, and make my way on down the hill to the track. From there I look back a last time and I can no longer see them sitting inside. They've disappeared behind the angle of the hill, and I can see only the top of the cabin roof. All this has taken ten, maybe twelve, minutes, no more.

I start walking fast toward our house, head down, hat pulled low. American women are not allowed out alone at night and I know it. Everything I'm doing is risky.

I pass a noisy dollar house where the workers are getting drunk on the ninety-proof jungle hooch they brag about. No liquor is sold in the Zone on Sundays, and there's no gambling ever. I shouldn't even see all this. At night those laws must be lax. I wonder how the men can get up at four thirty after hard drinking like that, but of course the thought doesn't stick. All I can see is Federico's hand sweeping the water off his body—particularly the glistening drops on the darkness below his belly, almost lost in the shadows.

I've never seen Father naked except when he's scurrying from the bathroom to the bedroom, which is nothing like what I've just seen—the flashing movements of Federico in the jungle darkness, his muscular shoulders and strong back, nakedness clothed in shadows. I'm simmering, but then, everything simmers in Panama. It's hot, it's humid, and I'm all that.

"That was quick," Mother says when I walk in. It shocks me as though she woke me from a dream, then I remember that Harry and I are always out for half the night.

"I forgot," I say. "I have to get up early and collect leaves for a botany assignment. Harry walked me back."

"Mmm," she says.

This latest lie is not nerve-racking. I'm getting better at it.

I go past her fast, thinking surely she'll see something different about me, but she doesn't.

She says, "Sleep well," the way she always does, and I go up to my room raging with guilt and erotic excitement. I play the scene of Federico in the shower over and over in my mind as I climb into bed. There I write about it in great detail, my diary my one and only confidant. My handwriting is larger, looser. It's because I'm still a little breathless, but I decide it means something—I don't know what. I'm excited and unable to sleep, my body different, feeling different to me.

I get to know it, this new electric body of mine, accompanied by Federico's wonderful flashing image. A memorable night.

Next morning I make sure my diary is well hidden, remember that the payoff for lying is worth the risk, then my thoughts go back to Federico.

The following Sunday: a beautiful day, bright sunshine, a good breeze. I put on my best white dress and carry a parasol like a "lady" and I'm ready for the Tivoli family picnic.

"Very nice," says Mother. She must think I'm giving up my tomboy ways. Normally I would object to the dress (it's tight in the waist and bodice) and to white shoes, but no, I've cleaned the shoes without her asking and don't object to the dress. She has no idea why.

***

The park in front of the Tivoli Hotel is filled when we get there. The thirty-six-piece Isthmian Canal Commission Band is on the platform looking smart in white, playing their popular tunes: "Moonlight Bay," "Alexander's Ragtime Band." I'm not listening. I have a job: search the crowd for Federico's face. That's the reason for the dress and parasol and spotless shoes.

He will surely be there. Everyone is—school friends, their families, all the bosses and engineers, Colonel Goethals himself. He's chief engineer, head of the Commission. He never misses a function—white suit, shock of white hair, the boss of everyone.

Dr. and Mrs. Gorgas show up—he's the one who got malaria under control with quinine squads and oil gangs spraying pools and puddles long before we arrived. Marie Gorgas comes over to Mother.

"It's good to see you," she says. "When are you coming to visit?"

They were both teachers and have common school friends in the States. It's natural they should get together, become Zone friends, but Mother is very uncomfortable in social situations.

"Very soon, I promise," she says, but she'll find a way out, she always does. She'll put it off so long, it will be forgotten—standard operating procedure for her—and then she'll be free of the whole thing. Meanwhile they chat nicely and I continue searching the crowd.

I check people behind trees, sitting on blankets, walking arm in arm. I stare at tables and walk through the crowd on my own, leaving Mother and Father with their friends.

I fold my parasol, uncomfortable to encounter Federico decorated in a frilly dress that isn't really me. But it's better than being caught dressed as a man hiding behind his oleander bush. I haven't entirely kicked the tomboy demeanor but I do want to look good, like a pretty girl somehow. I stand very straight, as though that counts for something. I station myself at the edge of the gazebo.

The annoying tunes thump overhead. The band plays "Wait 'til the Sun Shines, Nellie." Children dodge through adults, and occasionally the loudspeaker announces one of them lost or calls out the name of the next event. This could be Dayton. But it's not.

I tick off each man's face—methodical, thorough—and then it hits me: Federico isn't here. He couldn't be.

H
E'S A LABORER.
How did I make this mistake? What was I thinking, or not thinking?

Federico can walk around town or even around the hotel, but he can't participate in this traditional Sunday gathering. He's a pick-and-shovel man. He and those like him have their place, and it's not here among the golden Americans in their weekend merrymaking.

This occasion is for skilled engineers and bosses and their families—Zoners. No diggers in this bunch. Harry can be here but not Federico. So can Father and shovel engineer Ned, who's already drunk and getting loud, but not Federico, even with his head full of philosophies and several languages and a face more European and excellent than anyone else's.
No laborer is allowed at these functions except to serve.
Where is my brain?

(I wonder if my risky night watching the Spaniard displaced my logic. I really wonder about that.)

I tell myself this could have happened to anybody in a haze of infatuation and hope I'm not becoming as dizzy as the girls at school. The blare of the band overhead is making me crazy.

I go to a cluster of trees where people have picnics spread on the ground and stretch out on the grass. I stare up through feathery leaves and doze off. No doubt the nap is some form of escape from the afternoon's embarrassing disappointment, but I wake up with something useful. A new plan and a good one. I know (think I know) it will work.

I'll provide Federico with books.

I look up in the sky and smile, unburdened, determined not to be overenthusiastic with this scheme. I'll consider each step, think it through, and proceed carefully. No dressing up like a man. No wild goose chase. Just this very sensible idea, and all I have to do is encounter him again, run into him, and I can do that. Somehow.

First, the books.
Books.

"I'll get you something you'll like," says the Zone librarian with a wink. She has no idea. It's the next morning and I want her to stay out of my business, but I smile and wait.

She comes back with a novel by Mary Roberts Rinehart,
When a Man Marries.
(I'm a magnet for this kind of misguided thinking. My age, maybe?)

"That's not quite it," I say. "I'm actually here for someone else. Could I browse?"

"I suppose so," she says, but she's not happy. I've threatened her librarian skills.

She allows me behind the desk and leads me to new books not yet shelved. They're stacked on the floor in a random manner. It's cool down there so I sit and go through them, taking my time, but twice the librarian has to step over me. I'm underfoot.

I begin shuffling through the stack faster and it's not promising: romance novels, mysteries, detective stories, adventures, espionage tales, a disaster book, biographies, a family saga, fantasies, an autobiography, a book on African wildlife, a new translation of the Bible (how 'bout that?), something on motorcycles, a comical farce with "Sure to Leave You Weeping with Laughter" ribboned across the front, then ...
The Interpretation of Dreams.
Ah.