Revolution (11 page)

It occurs to me now: How did I not drive him away?

It was exhausting being nervous. I looked forward to the day I wouldn't have to be afraid.

*   *   *

As for him, it wasn't his fault that he had to do everything for me or I would fall apart. He didn't seem to mind my dragging around after him. He kept his independent spirit. He helped me, hurried me, included me in his tedious, endless political and theological debates. “She makes a point,” he'd say, then resay whatever I'd said so it made sense. He'd sit squinting at an Internacionalista interlocutor—the squint that let me know they didn't have a chance. George would nod, listen, squint madly, until the Internacionalista wound down and quieted. Then with a few easy steps he'd take their argument to pieces. Sometimes people would never speak to us again after George was through with them. A Mormon once packed his things and left town in the middle of the night. An atheist once became violent, kicked George, who yelped in surprise like a puppy.

George grew sullen sometimes, and this could last for days. He'd barely speak, sit alone, sink deep into himself. He'd ignore me. He may have been reacting to me: I was beginning to have small fits of rebellion. Or maybe he just needed a break from my neediness.

“What's wrong?” I'd say, following him down the street. Maybe he was sick of me following him everywhere?

“Are you mad at me?” I'd whisper to him at a protest.

“I'm trying to listen here,” he'd say, lifting his chin.

Maybe he didn't like me anymore?

Or worse, maybe it had nothing to do with me at all.

*   *   *

Once we showed up in a town with no hotels, George and I and some Internacionalistas—a scientist lady, a man from Canada, a woman from Austria. We were standing in the street, holding our belongings in our arms, not sure where to put them down. At last a Nicaraguan family left their window and came out of their house.

“All right, all right, you guys can stay with us,” they said. “But get out of the street, for Christ's sake. Do you want to get run over by a
burro
? Ha ha.”

It was just one big room up there, where the family put us, and this was upsetting because I was certain George was going to run away with one of the Internacionalistas, even though they were all in their thirties and very unimpressed with George and me. And George was upset because who should the scientist turn out to be but another big fat feminist, just what George needed. The feminists seemed to do nothing but order me not to listen to George, order me not to stay with George, not to marry George—I told everyone we met that we were getting married. The scientist Internacionalista thought our engagement was a hoot and said that if George wanted a doll to play with, she'd give him a Barbie.

“Come sit here,” she said to me and patted the bed, “and let me tell you the story of soccer. I invented it, in fact, when I was eleven. In my school the boys played football and the girls played hopscotch. I wanted a game we could all play together, so I made up soccer.”

“You did not invent soccer,” called George from the other side of the room.

“Yes, someone else invented it before I did,” she said. “But I didn't know it, had never seen it. So technically I invented it too. As a way we could all play together.”

“That isn't how we use the word ‘invent,' ” George called.

*   *   *

That afternoon the feminist scientist kept walking around the room naked. Both of the Internacionalista women did. I was amazed.

“Wow,” I said. “That's pretty neat the way you walk around like that.”

“Who cares how I walk?” said the scientist. “You could walk around like this all day and we'd be bored to tears.”

I took my dress off and walked around in my underwear. She was right. No one seemed particularly interested, not even George, who was dehydrated and flattened to the bed. He wasn't feeling well and had diarrhea. My coming-of-age story, if I had one, would be right here. It didn't involve a loss of innocence or man's inhumanity to man. It was me taking my clothes off and marching in a circle around the room. Somehow I knew—nothing specific, I just
knew
—I wasn't who I would be. More of me was coming. It doesn't seem like much, but there it is. The slow shift in the tectonic plate of my soul began. I wouldn't always need him. I put my dress back on before going out.

MORE OR LESS, 2001

Many years after I pulled my dress over my head and knew there was more, I didn't feel like there was more. It was 2001, and maybe there was even less. I had my dress over my head again and my swimsuit on. I was looking down at my body. The same size but older. I was on a tourist beach in Panama, sitting on a hotel patio among the kinged and queened Europeans: the Norwegians, the Belgians, the Brits. They were gathered on the patio, running up from the beach, shaking sand out of their hair, settling down to drinks and backgammon. They all looked like George. He used to wear a kind of pants that later became popular for tourists. I kept catching glimpses of the pants and I always thought it was George. Everywhere I looked I saw ghosts of him that lasted for half a second and then were gone.

The Europeans were speaking broken English, as they do when an American arrives, because of course (they assume) no American knows any language but their own. “This holiday,” said one. “I walk in mud to the beach and get sunburn and sand flies and ants to attack to my feet. I in mud walk back. This holiday is harder than work.”

“This holiday,” said another, “I could have building a ship and sailing away on the money I spend on rum and cigarettes this week.”

I stirred my drink with Panama's plain flag on a stick. “I had a holiday once,” I said. “Not far from here, during the revolution in Nicaragua.”

The Europeans paused, turned to me.

“The country was full of guns. There were soldiers all over the streets,” I said. “Fourteen-year-old boys with grenades.”

A standing European took a seat. No one else moved.

“There were food shortages, war,” I said. “Old-line Soviets walking around.”

I may have been laying it on a bit thick.

“I worked for the Sandinistas.” Well, I sort of did.

“And in Managua,” I told them, “you could drink the water from the faucet.”

“Aso?”
The Europeans' eyebrows went up. Hey, this was too much. From the faucet?

I nodded. “They filled the water with chlorine.”

A European raised his drink. “Now that's an adventure.”

“Oh, not so much.” I smiled. “Tell me one of yours,” I said, wickedly—for who in this crowd could beat me?

The Europeans looked at each other. “Raccoons attacked to our tent one night, but it's not much to compare.”

 

PART FOUR

SICK OF THE REVOLUTION

TIRESOME

The Internacionalistas were so happy. Nineteen eighty-seven was the year we romped in the sun and played in the streets. The Nicaraguans loved us. We all laughed at each other's jokes even when we didn't understand them.

But sometimes the revolution became tiresome for the Internacionalistas. Managua was tiresome. Every day the restaurants and stores ran out of food. The rice had rocks in it and we all chipped our teeth. No one had air-conditioning and we had to share the fans.

Of course it wasn't as tiresome for us as it was for the Nicaraguans. The Internacionalistas were a hell of a lot happier about the revolution than the Nicaraguans. We could go home anytime we liked. The Nicaraguans were stuck. “Nineteen eighty-seven? Ah, yes,” a Nicaraguan will tell you, “that's the year we had no toothpaste. We brushed our teeth with salt. We had no—what is the word?—
jabón
, soap. We washed our clothes with the seed of a tree.”

But the rocks in the rice, the shortage of water, that was nothing compared to the war, the draft, year after year, all their young men dying off or running away, no one getting any richer, promises sinking like stones. The revolution was a pain in the ass, if we wanted to know the truth. And on top of that there were also all these tiresome Internacionalistas around, who expected much and became disappointed.

The Internacionalistas, well, we knew we could be tiresome. It wasn't our fault we were tiresome. We were just standing there, not doing anything, not wanting to be tiresome, and there we were, tiresome.

The Nicaraguans felt the same way. They were just standing around in their own country, in their own
town
, and here come these Internacionalistas, calling it tiresome. Hey, Sandalista, we didn't ask you to be here. Whose revolution is this anyway? Freeloaders is what you are. Why don't you stay in your room if you're going to go around with a face like that?

*   *   *

So after George and I held signs at the embassy protests, after we spent our Sundays at the church, after the bikeman gave us the boot, after we'd been in Nicaragua a month or more, I got dysentery and did stay in our room. It was around then that things took a turn for the worse.

I lay on our bed and came out only to use the bathroom. The bed was made of giant rubber bands stretched across a frame. A burlap sack covered the rubber bands and the sheet was pulled over that. The burlap rubbed through to your skin. The pillow was heavy and hard, stuffed with sawdust. The heat was like a fist. I was dizzy, bored, depressed. I lay on the bed, irritated with George, irritated with Nicaragua, irritated with God, who was getting pretty tiresome Himself. I listened to the Internacionalistas talk outside our room all day. They never stopped talking about the revolution. Did they have nothing else to talk about? Was it the only thing that had ever happened on the Earth? You could tell what kind of Internacionalista you were dealing with by their similes. “This sure's not like Detroit!” they said. I stared at the ceiling, could think of no reason for the comparison. It was a syllogism. A is not not-A: This sure's not like Iran! Nobody drops and prays to the call of the muezzin. At least it was more logical than the ones who said, “This is exactly like India!”

Then I got dehydrated and vomited thin strings of bile.

Then I just stood over the toilet gagging.

“This revolution is a drag,” I said. I didn't say, “I want to go home.”

BLACK MARKET

Then George started trading dollars on the black market.

“Oh, yes,” I said. “Fine. Mr. Moral. With his principles.”

First he'd told me we wouldn't trade on the black market. If there was one thing tearing apart the revolution, he'd said, it was corruption—bribes, black market, crime. “We'll play fair,” he'd said, “and in this small way we'll be revolutionaries, revolutionaries of the economy.”

Well, there isn't anything so revolutionary about obeying the law or, for that matter, breaking it, but fine, good, agreed. We will be revolutionaries by obeying the law, George. No black market. So then what was he doing trading dollars on the black market right here in Managua?

“All right, all right,” he said. “We can't all be perfect, can we? Have you seen the markup on the córdoba? It's absurd. If they're going to make it impossible for us, what else are we supposed to do? Are we supposed to starve while everybody else eats?”

Okay, so that one thing. Trade dollars, nothing else. So what was he doing buying food on the black market? Stolen military tins and plastic packets of peanut butter?

“Somebody's going to buy the stuff,” he said. “It may as well be us because at least at heart we're trying to help the revolution.”

But somebody stole that from the soldiers. The Sandinista soldiers, the good guys.

“Well, it's stolen already. We're not going to find them and give it back. Besides, the soldiers probably sold it. What do they want with the stuff? And these plastic packets travel well. Who knows the next time we'll see peanut butter or the next time we'll be dropped off on some dusty crossroad with nothing to eat? In fact, it's probably stolen from the Contras. No way is this Russian-issue peanut butter. Have you ever seen a Soviet eat peanut butter? This has got to be United States Army issue. Reagan peanut butter. We're taking food from the enemy and putting it in the mouths of the revolutionaries.”

Fine, buy black-market food, that one other thing, but nothing else. So what is this, was he actually bribing that clerk?

“Now look, do you know how much it costs to extend our visas? How are we supposed to help this fine revolution if we have to pay all our money just to stay? We were going to spend the extra money inside the country in any case, so what's the difference?”

But bribery? What would God have to say about that? That must be the limit, that must be over the limit.

“Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's, render unto God what is God's. It's easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than a rich man to enter the kingdom, Debbie. Remember Jesus at the moneychangers, turning over the tables. Use your head, Deb.”

So bribery, as it turned out, that wasn't the limit. Smuggling, that was the limit. Except that wasn't the limit either. We could do anything. We could steal, we could look into faces and lie, we could forge documents, we could pull tricks and run. It was fine, it was part of the revolution. It was our Christian duty.

TO BLUEFIELDS

George and I set out on the road to Rama. I didn't know why we were going to Rama. I couldn't see any sense in it except that it was the mouth that led to Bluefields, a place he wanted to go—there was the promise of an interview with the leader of the Miskitos, if we could make it, the promise of an interview with the mayor. I couldn't see any sense in that either.

The more resistant I was to whatever he wanted to do, the more determined he became, and, in turn, the more difficult I got. We could be like this about everything.