The Necessary Beggar (8 page)

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Authors: Susan Palwick

BOOK: The Necessary Beggar
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“No,” Zamatryna said. “No, that wasn't what she said, Papa, she didn't say that—”
“Why can't you leave?” Lisa said. The other adults had roused themselves now; Macsofo pulled Poliniana and the twins, who looked bewildered, to the other side of the tent. “Why won't they let you leave the camp? Please tell me. I want to help you. Zamatryna, will you ask him?”
She didn't have to ask him. She already knew. “They won't let us leave because we can't tell them where we came from. We don't have papers and they don't know our language and we can't—we can't prove our city was ever real. So we can't leave and we can't go home. We have to stay here.”
“This woman has to go away,” Erolorit told Zamatryna in their own language, and then said in English, “I am sorry, but you must leave our tent. My daughter is upset. You cannot come back here.”
“I'll sponsor you,” Lisa said. “My husband and I can sponsor you to stay here. We're a church. We can do that. We can help you get out.”
Erolorit shook his head. “I am sorry, but no one can help us get out. We are trapped here. You cannot sponsor us unless we can convince the Army that we cannot go home, or unless we can show them where we came from. It is too complicated. I am sorry: you have to leave now. Please do not come back here. My daughter is too upset.”
“No!” Zamatryna said. “Don't make her go away! She's nice! She's my friend! I like her!”
“Hush,” Harani said, putting her hands on Zamatryna's shoulders. “You are trying to be kind,” she told Lisa, “we know that, my husband knows that, but it would be better if—”
“I'll go,” Lisa said. “Of course I will, if you don't want me here. I'm sorry I've upset you.” She stood up, gathering her books of word games and
putting them back into her tote bag, which showed a cartoon child kneeling in front of an X. Zamatryna saw that her hands were shaking, and when she spoke again, her voice was shaking too. “Good-bye, kids. Good luck. I hope I'll see you again sometime.”
Then she was gone, and Zamatryna, angry and bewildered, looked up at Erolorit. “Why did you do that? She was our friend!”
“No, I don't think she was. Her husband said—”
“He wasn't even here, Papa! And she never said anything mean about burning forever, even if he did! Why did you send her away?”
“Because you are my child, not hers,” Erolorit snapped, and Harani murmured something Zamatryna couldn't make out.
“Peace,” Timbor said. He stood clutching his damp towel. “Peace, all of you! Zamatryna, come here. Come sit on my bed. I want to talk to you. The rest of you will listen too, but Zamatryna will sit with me, eh?”
And so she sat on his lap, and Timbor hugged her and said, “Little one, we have grown distracted by our grief, we grown-ups; we have yearned so after Darroti, who is no longer with us, that we have not paid enough attention to you and to your cousins, who are right in front of our eyes. And so it has been easy to let the American woman talk to you for hours and tell you her stories, and perhaps, yes, certainly she was kind to do so. But all good parents want to be with their children when their children are upset, and so I think that when you began to weep and you were with her, and not with us, Erolorit blamed himself for not being the person to whom you had voiced your pain. And if there is fault there, it lies with us, not with her, but Erolorit grew angry with her as a way of being angry with himself. Zamatryna, do you understand?”
“No.” She felt as if she understood nothing here. She had understood things at home. Had the door into exile done something to her brain?
Timbor sighed. “Never mind. I suppose I should not have expected that you would, for you are still very small, for all that you have a big mind and a big heart. You will understand one day. Erolorit, am I right?”
Erolorit stared at his hands, clenched in his lap, and didn't answer. Harani touched his shoulder and said, “Timbor, even if you are right, it is more complicated than that. We have lost our home and we have lost our brother, and if now we lose our children to this new place and these people, what will we have left?”
“That is exactly right,” Timbor said quietly. “And yet we have no choice. For this is our home now, and theirs, and we must hope that they do well here. It is the only home they will ever have, for we cannot go back. And we must all learn to live in it.”
“Even if we never get out of the camp?” Macsofo's voice was bitter.
“Even then. If we never leave the camp, then the camp must be our home, and we must live in it fully. And so from now on we will do what everyone does. We will send the casseroles away and eat in the cafeteria tent. We will no longer remain by ourselves, for if we do that, how will we ever find anything to replace what we no longer have?”
“There is nothing here to find,” Erolorit said. “We have been here long enough to know that.”
“And yet we must keep looking,” said Timbor with a shrug. He picked up his towel, folded it, and handed it to Harani. “This is partly my fault. I have wept too much.”
Zamatryna's mother shook her head. “No, Timbor! How can you say that? No one could blame you—”
“Perhaps not. But it is time for all of us to learn to live with our loss, rather than dying of it. I am your elder, and I have spoken. Tomorrow morning we will have breakfast with everyone, in the cafeteria tent.”
And so they did: breakfast and lunch and dinner, and school as usual, although smoke now hung so thickly over the camp that everyone's eyes watered and grew red. Even though the actual fires were no closer, the smoke was so bad that the Army had begun to make plans to evacuate the refugees after all, to another place farther out in the desert. There was more truck traffic in and out of the gates than usual; the refugees were told to pack their things, although no one was sure when the move would take place. The transfer kept being delayed because the Nuts were making trouble at the new site. Several of them had disguised themselves as Army people and torn down a stretch of fence. And so the refugees waited, while everyone coughed and choked, while infants and the elderly wheezed. The hospital tent was full to overflowing, although it provided no shelter from the smoke.
Even though Timbor claimed to have done with weeping, his damp towel somehow never dried. The family took to passing it from hand to hand, wiping their faces with it, covering noses and mouths. The sun, when they could see it at all, shone as a small, bright red disk overhead. There were no stories, no casseroles, no ice cream: only smoke, and confusion, and fatigue. It was such a strange, dreamlike time for all of them, a time out of time, that the wonder of the towel that refused to dry went by without comment. Wonder would have taken energy, and they had none left to spare.
They packed their things as they had been told to do, although there was little enough to pack. They had been told that their section of tents would be evacuated on a Thursday morning in late August, although areas of the camp had prepared to move before and then been postponed. But on that
Thursday morning they were ready, standing in line in the murk with many others, trucks towering in the gloom ahead of them. Around them moved other vehicles driven by trusted volunteers, collecting tents and supplies to take to the new camp.
Step by step the line moved closer to the trucks. Zamatryna, one hand held by her mother and one by her father, Mim-Bim crawling ceaselessly in her pocket, could make out the olive-green canvas now, the ugly metal tailpipe jutting out from behind the truck bed, the deep pattern of the tiretreads. She wondered if they would have a bigger tent in the new camp, if the air would really be any better. Her chest hurt.
Step. Step. And then suddenly there was a great boom and a rushing wind, and screaming, a great outcry of voices, people running and cursing, someone nearby yelling in English, “What's happening, what's happening?” And the smell of new smoke. Flames: Zamatryna could see flames, could hear sirens now. What was happening? Her parents clutched her hands as people around them ran; the soldier supervising their truck had fled, and people were getting out of the truck now, running off into the smoke and the howling, and Timbor was saying, “Is everyone here? Are we all here? What happened?”
“Bomb,” someone running by them shouted. “Someone set off a bomb.” And the howling got louder and so did the sirens, and vehicles were driving very fast in every direction, raising yet more dust, and suddenly Lisa was next to them, her eyes wild and her face smudged with dirt.
“Zamatryna. Are you all here? Is everyone here?” It was the same question Timbor had asked. Zamatryna stared at her stupidly, saw Lisa counting them, her lips moving. “All right. Get into my van, come on, get in, all of you—”
She pushed them toward the van. Erolorit resisted and Lisa said to Zamatryna, “This is your chance to get out of here, do you understand? Tell your father that! Get into the van. There are blankets in the back, I was ferrying blankets to the new place, get under them. Hurry!”
“Do as she says,” Timbor said, and they did: clambered into the van and under the blankets, which smelled like smoke and wool and other things: spoiled milk, peanut butter, soap. The floor of the van was very hard. Zamatryna lay cradled against her mother's stomach, and then the van door slammed shut and the engine started and they were being driven away, very quickly, too quickly, the van jouncing their spines as it hit every pothole, while Lisa wept and railed in the front seat. “Oh Lord, Lord, sweet Jesus, help me, forgive me Lord, you know I'm doing this to help this poor family who doesn't have a place to call their own, keep us safe Lord and don't let us
get caught and help me figure out what to tell Stan, oh Jesus help all the poor burned people, how could they do it, who did it, it must have been a Nut who snuck in a bomb oh Lord save your fallen people and protect them, protect all of us and please dear God don't let the Army catch me smuggling these people out or I'll be shit on toast, Lord, and I don't want to go to jail again but this might be their only chance, dear Jesus who has mercy on sinners have mercy on me and all of us and protect these poor people, God, help me protect them because that's what your Son would have done, Jesus, that's what You'd do and I'm just trying to follow You even if it means breaking the law, oh God, how am I going to explain this to Stan?”
The prayer went on and on, rising and falling, until finally the road smoothed out and the jouncing grew less and Lisa stopped praying and said, “The radio, there will be news, why didn't I think of that,” and there was a click and voices filled the van, people talking about an apparent terrorist attack on the refugee camp outside Gerlach. A truck bomb had sparked fires which were now sweeping the compound. At least fifty people were dead.
“Oh God, oh dear Lord,” said Lisa, her voice thick with tears. She turned the radio off again. “Oh, all those poor people! I'm sorry. I can't stand to listen to it. You back there, are you okay? Are you all okay? Please tell me you're okay.”
“I want to sit up,” Poliniana said.
“No, sweetie, I'm sorry, you'd better stay down. Stay hidden. Stay under the blankets, all right? And if we get stopped, don't talk, whatever you do, okay?”
“Where are you taking us?” Timbor asked.
Zamatryna heard Lisa take a deep breath. “I'm taking you to Mama's house. You can stay there while we figure out what to do next. It's a bit away from town, by the river, and it's on a chunk of property so there aren't any neighbors right there; that will help. It's filled with old-lady stuff, but it's better than the camp. There are a bunch of rooms and two bathrooms and a kitchen. Oh sweet Jesus, I'd better call Stan. He'll be worried sick about me. Where's my cell? Okay, here it is… Stan? Yes, it's me, I'm all right. Honey, I'm fine. I'm fine. I got out. No, I'm not coming home. I have to go to Mama's house. Would you meet me there? Just meet me there, please. Go over there now and turn on the AC, all right? Stock the fridge with sandwich stuff, and make some lemonade. No, I can't come home first. No, I can't tell you why. I'll explain when I see you. I'm fine. No, I'm not hurt, I promise. No, I'm not in shock, or maybe I am, I guess I must be, but I know what I'm doing, really. I'm fine. I love you too. I'll see you in a little while, sweetheart.”
It seemed like more than a little while; they lay on the hard floor of the van for what felt like days. Toward the end Zamatryna, exhausted with fear and bewilderment, managed to doze. When the van stopped, she woke up and poked her head out of the blankets.
Trees. That was the first thing she saw through the windows of the van. There were trees here! Her heart gave a great leap, for if there were trees, perhaps there would be grass and flowers too. “Trees!” she told her mother, and Harani nodded, looking dazed.
“He doesn't like this,” Macsofo said grimly. They were all sitting up now. “I don't think he'll let us stay.”
Zamatryna blinked, wondering what her uncle meant, and then saw that Lisa was outside the van, talking to her husband, who kept shaking his head. He was wearing blue jeans and a shirt with a picture of a frog on it; he looked a lot less scary without his black clothing and the symbol for silence, but Macsofo was right: Stan clearly wasn't happy. He and Lisa were standing a few feet away, but they moved closer to the van now, until Zamatryna could hear them.

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