Without Borders (6 page)

To her left, Phillip struggled like a turtle on its back. “Guys? I think I need some help over here.”

Marisol waded into the pit after him, and Annie bit back her laughter. “Is this really happening?”

“
Sí.
Now, push through the mud,” Felipe said. “Do not lift your feet. Like this.” He let go of her and shuffled one hand against the other.

It worked. Annie scooted the two feet, and he pulled her onto solid ground. Her clothes and hair hung heavy with mud, and the chaos left her poncho shredded.

Felipe smiled and pulled at a tattered edge of the plastic. “You are trouble,
Americana
.” Even in her mud-soaked state, she couldn’t resist grinning at him.

“You ride here now, yes?” Juan scooted between them and patted the truck bed. He marched to the driver’s side without waiting for her response.

“What?” Annie looked to Felipe for translation.

“Juan keeps the truck very clean.” He scraped the mud from his pants. “It is his obsession. Now you will have to ride with me.”

Annie’s stomach curled in on itself. Growing up in the Midwest, she’d heard enough horror stories about people being thrown from the beds of pickup trucks to last two lifetimes. Maybe three. She knew she should protest and insist on riding somewhere with a seatbelt, but as she watched Felipe shove the truck out of the mud, a hint of his triceps peeked out from the sleeves of his shirt, and she forgot all her concerns.

“We will go slowly.” Felipe pulled the latch on the gate and held out his hand. She took it, and he launched her into the damp truck bed. Mud squished between her toes, but when he sat beside her, Annie nearly forgot about the missing seatbelt and her inadvertent mud bath. With every bump in the road, the truck heaved, and Felipe’s shoulder pressed into hers. Her mind refused to focus on anything else.

• • •

As they approached the village, the spiked pochote trees thinned enough for Felipe to make out the shapes of houses along the riverbank, gnarled and leggy on their stilts. The sun reflected off metal roofs, and mud dried in a thick crust over his blue scrub pants. Annie sat next to him, slowly morphing into a mummified version of herself. Her hair was a clumpy, brown mat on her head, and she pulled hunks of caked, drying mud from her shirt. Phillip was in better shape. His banana suit offered some protection, and his clothes were only brown at the edges.

The three of them rode in choppy silence for the final leg of the drive, and each time they hit a bump Felipe’s mind wandered to a new question.
Bump.
How many people would show up for the clinic?
Bump.
How many would it take to convince his mother he was ready to run
Ahora
?
Bump.
Would they have enough supplies?
Bump.
Why was he still thinking about the way Annie had looked up at him on the porch the night before? By the time they rolled to a stop in the makeshift town square, his head was overflowing.

At least thirty people waited. Some were familiar. Many were strangers. Some would have been waiting for days by the time
Ahora
arrived. Others would have walked miles with children on their backs and at their sides. The rest would have popped out of their houses and down the well-worn path to the one-room church where the clinic would take place.

“
¡Buenas!
” Felipe threaded his arms through his backpack and hopped from the truck. He stood taller as the villagers returned his greeting, grinning at him like he was a dear friend.

“A good turnout, no?” Marisol asked.

“
Muy
,” he said. “I will count them.
Madre
will want to know.” Getting the people in this miniscule town to trust
Ahora
had taken Melinda years. And in the short time since he’d taken over the brigades, the turnout had doubled.
Maybe this will convince her
you are ready
.

Two teenage boys escorted Annie from the truck, and Phillip hopped out behind her. A few curious stares flickered their way. This group was used to seeing the stray Americans
Ahora
towed along, but most weren’t encased in mud.

“The clinic is in the church. First we see the children. Women and men second,” Felipe told the Americans, handing out backpacks and bags of medical supplies.

A needle-thin man with a patchy black beard led their group to the church. Wide slats of wood formed the walls, and strips of electric blue paint peeled away from the exterior, revealing a rotting gray. The two teen boys followed closely behind, toting bags of medical supplies between them.

Inside the musty building, Felipe took a bag from the boys and set it on the first of the three pews. “Annie, you will do the mosquito nets this time.”

“What about the sex ed class?” she asked.

“Yes, she brought a plastic vagina,” Marisol said.

“What?” Felipe squeezed his eyes shut. “Never mind. You will do the classes after Sahsa. Those are the villages for sexual education. These are not ready. The people need more time. Marisol did not tell you?”

“No,” his sister answered. “I thought you would maybe have a change of mind.”

Of course she did. Marisol was always pushing, pushing, pushing.

“So what am I supposed to do instead?” Annie slouched into the pew next to the teenage helpers as Marsiol slipped away.

“Every child should take home a mosquito net.” Felipe opened the black garbage bag at Annie’s feet to show her the fine, baby blue netting inside.

“Okay.” She gave him a half-hearted smile and picked at a clump of dirt clinging to her shirt. “But I’ll still get to do the class?”

He nodded. “After the rest days. First, you need time to see how the clinics work. Do you know how to ask how old someone is in Spanish?”

“
¿Quantos años tienes?
”

“Good. If they are over eighteen, no net. We do not have enough for adults.”

She nodded.

“
Bien
.”

The afternoon was flooded with the tears of babies being vaccinated, the ailments of the elderly, and even a few serious injuries. One man’s pinky finger dangled at on odd angle, creating an awkward, constant wave. Felipe splinted it and gave him a shot of steroids while the man told him about his two-day hike to the clinic.

His patient disappeared into the crowd, and Felipe walked a lap around the room, checking in on Juan and Phillip as they cleaned teeth, then on his sister as she stuck needles into the thick thighs of infants. When he arrived at Annie’s table full of mosquito nets, a group of children hovered to her left, their cheeks and bare feet smudged with dirt.

“Everything is okay?” he asked.

“Sure. Just not sure what to do now. Everyone got a net.”

“Put the extras away and come to the exam area. You can observe, yes?”

“Really?” She scrambled to shove the nets into the bag.

Felipe ignored the flicker of hesitation sparking inside his chest and handed her the last of the nets. So far, Annie hadn’t complained about travel conditions or made jokes under her breath about the dozens of unsupervised children running through the clinic space. But it was early still. “Come.”

A girl of about fifteen waited in silence. Her feet scratched at the floor, leaving patterns and lines in the dirt. Her eyes were glassy with fear, and she didn’t wait for him to ask any of his usual exam questions. “I think I am pregnant,” she said in a swift mix of Spanish and indigenous Miskito.

He nodded, careful to keep his expression blank. “Why do you think you are pregnant?”

The girl pulled in her lips and shook her head. Felipe wasn’t sure if she was afraid to tell him or if she truly didn’t know. Neither option would surprise him.
There is one way to find out
. He handed her a cup and pointed her in the direction of the outhouse.

Annie nudged him with her elbow, the scratch of her pen audible even through the chaos of the clinic. “So what’s going on?”

“She thinks she is pregnant.”

“Oh.” She glanced at him for half a second, eyes wide, then went back to writing. “She’s young.”

He nodded. “What are you doing?”

“Taking notes.”

“And you are writing about what a good doctor I am, yes?”

Her cheeks turned pink, and when their patient returned, he had to push the smile from his face.

The three of them waited in silence, staring at the white stick bobbing in the cup of urine.
Negative.
The girl flopped back on the pew, as if the news left her muscles unable to hold tension. Felipe peered around the exam curtain. Almost everyone from the village was gone, so he slipped his patient a sleeve of condoms. She stuffed them in her pocket and darted off with a muffled thanks.

“What are you doing? You said we couldn’t—”

He laid a hand on Annie’s forearm. “Secret.”

She nodded and gave him a small smile. “Seems like I’m keeping a lot of your secrets lately.”

“Now you owe me a secret.” He began stuffing his supplies into the nearest duffle bag.

“I owe you?”

“
Sí
. You know two of my secrets, and I know zero of yours.”

She tapped on her bottom lip with one finger and rolled her eyes to the ceiling. “Okay.” She handed him a plastic bag full of tongue depressors. “When I was five, I had an imaginary friend. Her name was Brandy.”

“Everyone had an imaginary friend as a child. I do not think this counts as a true secret.”

“Yeah, but Brandy was mean. And we fought
all
the time. My dad even banned her from the house once because she made me cry.”

He raised an eyebrow. “You were a disturbed child, I think.”

“I know, right?”

The two teen boys from the morning reappeared in the doorway. They called out to Annie and waved their hands high above their heads, trying to grab her attention.

“I think you have some admirers.” Felipe nodded at the boys.

“Maybe they want to talk to you?”

“I do not think they are calling
me
the beautiful
gringa
.”

“Oh.” Her eyes widened. “They’re harmless, right?”

“
Sí
. But do not break their hearts.”

Her laughter trailed behind her as she wandered over to the boys and slid out the door behind them.

Once he finished securing his supplies, Felipe stepped outside. The bright afternoon sun stretched into early evening, and his stomach rumbled for dinner. In the church lawn, he expected to find a single villager with a kettle of rice and beans for the group to share. Instead, a horde of children surrounded Annie. To her left, the rest of his group watched, passing a black pot around the circle and ladling their plates high with food.

His stomach growled again, but he stood under the last rays of daylight and watched her fold sheet after sheet of notebook paper into miniature diamonds.

“What do you call this thing?” he asked, cutting through the crowd.

She shrugged. “A fortune teller, I guess. Want to try?”

“Okay.” He took the paper. “How do I make this fortune teller?”

“Watch.” Her fingers moved in an intricate dance, tearing off a strip from the bottom and folding the remaining square into points. Children buzzed around them, tugging on her and stumbling into one another, but Annie’s movements stayed smooth and steady.

Felipe tried to mimic them, but his fortune teller came out crumpled and torn at the edges. One side lay flat, while the other was deeply bowed. “I do not think mine will tell fortunes.”

She took one look at his disfigured paper and grinned. “It takes practice. The next one will be better.”

At their feet, a small girl toddled in the dirt, naked from the waist down. Her tiny upturned nose was a smidge too small for her face, and her thin, dark hair stood on end. Annie finished another paper contraption, and three more sheets of paper appeared.

“Okay, watch.” She handed him one of the pages and began folding again. He tried to focus on her technique instead of the way the beads of sweat collected at her hairline or the way she pulled in her bottom lip as she worked. He was so lost in her nearness and the folding that he didn’t connect the resounding escape of gas with the tiny, half-naked girl in front of them. The children screamed and jumped back as the girl left an enormous pile of poop in front of Annie’s flip-flopped feet.

“Oh my god.” She drew a hand over her nose and mouth, stumbling into him. “Is there something we should do?”

Before he could respond, there was an awful squealing, accompanied by the squish of hooves on the damp ground. Round balls of pink, splashed with brown and white, charged toward them. Felipe wrapped his arms around Annie’s waist and yanked her out of the pigs’ trajectory. The swine shoved and snarled at one another as they cleaned up the mess.

“Bacon is never going to be good again.” She laughed and twisted to face him.

Felipe stared at her lips, momentarily wishing he knew how they’d feel against his. “Come.” He clasped her hand. “I want to see Phillip’s face when you tell him about the pigs. I think nothing like this happened on his American television show.”

A surge traveled up his fingers as she squeezed his hand. “Definitely not.”

Before she climbed into the boat, Annie downed two Dramamine and said a small prayer for steady waters. Last year, on a spring break trip to Cancun, she and her roommates took an excursion that involved a small boat, choppy ocean waves, and a bottle of tequila. Annie’s breakfast came up before they stopped at the first snorkeling location, and she spent the rest of the afternoon on the floor of the boat, hoping for death.

But today it seemed that her prayers were working. The group’s first boat ride was smooth and slow, and the breeze was cool enough to feel like air conditioning.

The siblings shot Spanish back and forth over her head, too quick for Annie to catch more than one word every few seconds. She stared out over the riverbank as the drum of the engine filled her ears. In some areas, the stream narrowed, leaving barely enough space for their boat to make its way through. Branches, leaves, and vines stretched from one bank to the other, creating a dense tunnel that blocked most of the sun’s rays. The darkness was cool and quiet, and it made her eyelids heavy.