Vigil Read online

  The soldier kicked over the chairs and the only table in our hut, ripped the hammocks from the walls, and swept everything off the shelves, sending the world I knew and everything within it crashing to the floor. He crushed the remnants of my life under his boots, but he never laid a hand on the sewing machine and cabinet in the corner, covered with rich fabrics of purple and gold.

  He left for the next hut, and I was engulfed by a bitter silence.

  I don’t know how much longer I remained in the darkness with my knees pressed against my chest, my head bent over the whole of my body. It could’ve been days, or maybe just a few hours. All I remember is that my arms and legs were numb and I was only able to breathe in short, shallow breaths. Every time I thought of leaving my hiding place, I remembered my mother’s words. No matter what I heard or what happened, I was to wait until she came for me. We whispered to each other as we swung in our hammock that was strung between heaven and earth.

  “When are you coming back for me, Mama? What do I do until you return? Where are you now? Why aren’t you here with me?”

  “You must be patient, mija,” she said. “And you must remember that I will always be with you. Always.”

  I heard footsteps approaching from far away and a familiar voice, but my senses were so distorted that at first I was unable to recognize the sound as human. Eventually I realized that it was a man, calling out, looking for people. It was Father Lucas! Dear Father Lucas. He’d gone to San Salvador for a few days, and now he was back. Surely Mama didn’t mean for me to hide from Father Lucas.

  He called out again in a plaintive, shaky voice. “Is anybody here?” he said. “If you can hear me, answer me.” I wanted nothing more than to answer by springing out of the cabinet with both arms outstretched, but I was nothing but a paralyzed, compressed mass of flesh and bone, and I couldn’t even be sure if my eyes were open or closed. Somehow, I managed to wiggle my big toe and was able to edge it to the side of the cabinet. The movement of my toe loosened my foot at the ankle, and I was able to make a faint tapping sound that grew louder and steadier, but still I was unable to speak. My throat had frozen shut, and when I attempted to reply to Father Lucas’s desperate plea, I made a peeping sound that wouldn’t have passed for even the squeaking of a mouse. But miraculously, the robes were swept away from over the sewing machine and the doors of the cabinet slowly opened. “Ana, is that you?” he asked.

  I was unable to move, and since I was unable to speak as well, I answered him with my thoughts. “Father Lucas, I’ve been waiting for my mother to return. She told me to wait for her no matter how long it took, but I don’t think I can wait any longer.”

  “Sweet Mother of God,” he exclaimed, and then he reached in and pulled me out of the cabinet, as though he were delivering a deformed and hideous infant into the world. Gathering me to his chest, he covered my face with his hand and carried me out of the hut, but through spaces between his fingers I caught glimpses of the bloody corpses that lay all around the village. They were scattered about like laundry that had blown off the line during a violent storm. One boy wearing a single white tennis shoe had his hands tied behind his back. His stomach had been split open so that his intestines spilled out over the ground where he lay like a shiny mass of enormous pink and blue worms. I instantly knew it was Manolo because he was the only boy in the village who owned a pair of white tennis shoes and was the source of much envy because of it. I shut my eyes tight and clung to Father Lucas, no longer wanting to see the horrors beyond his fingers, but I would remember that one twisted ankle and white tennis shoe for the rest of my life.

  Muttering unintelligibly like a madman, Father Lucas carried me along the road to the village church and down the aisle, where he laid me before the altar. He knelt next to me trembling and clenching his teeth as he pressed his bloodstained hands against his forehead and then mine several times back and forth until both our faces were covered with blood and dirt. The tears streaming from his eyes created trails down his cheeks and throat, moistening the edge of his bloody collar. “Your mother told me that if anything should happen, I was to look for you beneath the cloth of the church. I didn’t know what she meant, and I told her not to worry, that nothing would happen. How could I be so wrong, Ana? How could I be so wrong?”

  He turned away from me to face the altar and he continued to weep and pray for a very long time as I lay like a fetus beside him.

  Two

  WITH BLEARY EYES, ANA glanced at the clock on the nightstand and was startled to see that it was nearly eight o’clock. She’d been sitting in the same chair without moving for over two hours, and when she rose and leaned across the bed to look into her beloved’s face, a hot twinge shot up the length of her spine. She dismissed it when she saw that he was no longer resting comfortably. Tiny fissures of strain were forming around his eyes and mouth, and every breath he took was a saw moving across his ribs. The pain medication she’d given him a few hours ago was obviously wearing off. As soon as he opened his eyes and was alert enough to swallow, she’d administer another dose. She reached for the pills among the forest of containers on the nightstand. Although she kept them well organized, she always double-checked the labels just to make sure.

  She opened the containers, took the pills out one by one, but kept them in the palm of her hand. She longed to exchange a precious word or two with him before he succumbed to the medication, which always made him sleepy.

  Her mind turned back to the prognosis Dr. Farrell had delivered just two hours earlier, although it seemed like long enough ago to have rendered it strangely unreal. He was unquestionably an excellent doctor and a wonderful friend, but it wasn’t the first time he’d been wrong. And wouldn’t anticipating death provoke it to come sooner than necessary?

  Ana felt a familiar heaviness gather behind her eyes, causing her vision to blur. With her free hand she began rubbing her temple in a vain effort to stall the migraine she knew was coming. Over the years, she’d learned to manage these headaches by imagining her pain as a beautiful twisting vine that grew through and around her, purging her of self-indulgences and reminding her that in this life there is no escape from suffering. No matter how far you may run or how deeply you dig in your heels, there is no escape.

  As the headache gathered strength and prepared for its final assault, Ana pondered why God saw fit to once again take away the most precious human being in her life. She knew it was a selfish question, but she was unable to detach herself from its mystery as she gazed at his emaciated form on the bed. She took in the feeble torso and limbs that had once been so sturdy. She studied the gaunt face, and eyes that appeared to be slowly sinking into his head. Could this be the same man with whom she’d laughed and cried for so many years? Was this the same man who could lift her up over his head as though she were a rag doll? It didn’t seem possible.

  When Adam opened his eyes, Ana smiled. She hadn’t seen those dark crystalline orbs for several hours, and it was a wondrous thing. As weak and dim as they were, they still filled her with inexplicable hope.

  He wanted to speak, but it took him several moments to focus and gather enough energy to do so. Ana’s hand formed a fist as she willed with all her might that his strength not fail him. There was so much they still needed to say to each other. He licked his lips and she nearly dropped the pills on the floor as she reached for a glass of water to moisten them. Her hand trembled as she brought the glass to his mouth, and she worried that she might spill it all over him before he was able to take a sip.

  “Ana,” he whispered, “I’m glad you’re still here.”

  “Of course I’m here. Where else would I be?” she said, smiling.

  He closed his eyes. “I dreamt that you left me.”

  “I will never leave you.”

  “In my dream you were dancing and climbing trees.”

  Ana took his hand and brought it to her lips. “This is where I want to be, not dancing or climbing trees.”

  When he opened his eyes ag
ain, they appeared to be cast in a different light, as though a gray sky were reflected in his gaze. “I want to dance, and climb trees with you, and…” He took a deep, labored breath and was unable to finish his thought.

  “Yes, I know, my love, I know,” Ana said, pressing his hand to her cheek. She tried to sound cheerful when she added, “Jessie’s plane gets in this morning, and Teddy will come too. I know he will.”

  He nodded and shuddered as he inhaled, trying to fight against the encroaching agony that would soon overcome him. Ana knew that if she didn’t give him his medications immediately it could take hours to bring his pain back down to a manageable level.

  She showed him the pills in her palm and placed them on his tongue one by one. Adam eased his head back into the pillow and fell asleep almost instantly. She waited for his breathing to become regular, transfixed by the rising and falling of his chest, until she was able to lean back in her chair and relax just a little, certain that he was resting peacefully and painlessly. As she too became filled with peace, she resolved that she would do whatever necessary to ensure that her beloved saw his son again, held him in his arms, kissed him, and told him how much he loved him.

  With that thought firmly in place, she stood and walked toward the window, amazed that her migraine was almost gone. Her gaze stretched across the expanse of the walled garden below. Every day it seemed different to her. The green of the trees and the grass was just a shade brighter or darker, depending on the quality of light that cast upon the leaves. The roses bloomed with cheerful new faces, and the azaleas appeared to quiver with the promise of spring.

  Ana thought back on Adam’s dream and frowned. Perhaps she should’ve told him that she too wanted to climb trees and dance with him as he did with her. This would’ve been the best thing to say, and she resolved to keep her mind clear and to stay focused on these moments that were passing far too quickly. Even so, she was unable to stop the images and sounds that assaulted her. She yearned to muffle them and vanquish them completely, but the past and the present were colliding in her head like a jumbled drawer of needles and pins that mercilessly pricked at her fingers whenever she attempted to reach in for just one.

  During the weeks that followed the massacre, I was neither dead nor alive. I hovered in a gray limbo, devoid of all thoughts and feelings, sounds and colors. I drifted in and out of consciousness. Although I realized that I was walking and moving around, breathing, and putting food in my mouth, eliminating the waste from my body, scratching my nose, and coughing from time to time. The only part of me that was still alive was the most primitive part, resilient in the face of the worst evils of man. I feared that the rest of me, the soulful part, had gone to sleep forever.

  Father Lucas had taken me to a makeshift orphanage before heading back to San Salvador. It was occupied by children of all ages who’d lost their families in the death squads, as I had. The most recent arrivals were vagrant ghosts floating in and out of the rooms and the yard without purpose or direction. Some of us could sit for hours in one spot, not bothering to move even if it should start raining over our heads. If we were to look up with our mouths open, we could surely drown. In some cases, children who were old enough to eat independently needed to be spoon-fed, or force-fed because not even hunger motivated them. This went on for several weeks, and eventually some of us began to thaw, and the blood started to flow through our veins, although some never recovered.

  But in some ways, this return to life was worse because I was able to direct my own thoughts again, and when I thought of my mother and Carlitos and Tía Juana and all my cousins, an excruciating pain spread over the whole of my body, as though my limbs were being torn from their sockets, as though my flesh were being ripped away from my bones, and I would only wail and moan for hours until I was too tired even to breathe. In this place there was only the hollow and agonizing question I would ask myself a hundred times every second of my life so that it became the very essence of my being: “Why? Why were my mother and all my family dead? Why had every man, woman, and child in my village been brutally murdered?” And even more difficult to comprehend, “Why was I still alive?” “How could this be?” I asked myself over and over again. “How could they be gone? Why did God take them from me?” There was no answer that could ease my agony. I was alone, and I would mutter for hours, “I am alone now. I am alone now,” not because I was at peace with the idea, but because I understood it. As it had been when I would open my eyes in the middle of the night to find that I was the only one listening to the night sounds, and watching the moonlight glow through the slats of our hut while everyone else slept, this is how I imagined it would be for the rest of my life.

  Like me, all of the children came from humble villages and were accustomed to few comforts. But even for poor children, the conditions were difficult to endure. There weren’t enough hammocks to accommodate everyone, and we slept three or four together depending on our size. Many more of us slept on the floor, and this was especially unpleasant because of the vermin that crept through the night.

  I was lucky to have been situated in a hammock with two other girls. One slept soundly, but Teresita cried herself to sleep almost every night while calling out for her parents. We all cried, but Teresita didn’t give way to exhaustion after an hour or two like the rest of us; she cried until dawn glowed through the gaps in the walls. Although she was bigger than me, I sang her the lullabies my mother sang to me, sometimes through most of the night. Teresita’s nightly vigil depleted me, but I always felt grateful when she laid her moist face on my shoulder and implored me to sing to her again. She reminded me that in spite of everything we’d lost, we were still human beings who could be comforted and offer comfort to others.

  Food at the orphanage was scarce, and fights often broke out when it was time to distribute the measly portions of beans and corn tortillas, especially among the boys. They were angrier than the girls and didn’t cry as much. If one boy were to look at another with the slightest hint of aggression in his eyes, or if he was bold enough to take the largest ear of corn, he would pay for it with a beating, if not at that moment, then later when we weren’t being watched.

  The priests and nuns who looked after us spent most of their time breaking up fights, cooking tortillas, shoveling dirt over the latrine, and shuffling us off between the few huts that comprised the orphanage compound, as though to trick us into believing that we were not truly confined. Because of the certain death we’d encounter, we weren’t allowed to go more than a few hundred yards beyond the huts where we slept. Despite the harsh conditions, no one, not even the toughest boys, dared to disobey.

  But when all was quiet, I often stood at the perimeter of the compound to gaze at the dense blue-green jungle that blanketed the hills as far as the eye could see, endless, beautiful and menacing all at once. At these times I sometimes heard my mother’s voice in the wind that swept through the valleys over the jungle trees. “Do not be afraid, mija,” she said. “Even if you can’t see me, I can see you.” And I held my breath and felt her embrace in the warmth of the sun, and for a brief shining moment I sensed her strength within me, but when I exhaled she was gone again.

  The intense logging that had carved out ugly brown patches into many of the mountainsides was not visible from there. It was hard to imagine that deep within the mysterious and tranquil shadows of the jungle, rebels and guardsmen were at war, shooting at one another with their guns or hacking away at one another with their machetes. And I wondered what the jungle creatures, the birds in the trees and the snakes slithering along the ground, thought of the turbulence that had infected their world. Were they as afraid as we were, or were they able to find a safe and imperceptible place to hide until the war was finished? I hoped so, and prayed that even the rattlesnakes that had always frightened me would find snug little holes where they could wait out the war in peace.

  Sometimes the sounds of battle reached the orphanage, and I quickly ran back into the hut and retreated to the f
arthest darkest corner I could find. I was no longer a little girl, but a brown beetle that I figured had to be the creature farthest from harm’s way. How wonderful to be a brown beetle that could at that very moment scurry beneath the feet of murderers without being noticed. “I wish I could be brave like you, Mama, but I’m only a coward. Forgive me, Mama. Forgive me.”

  And the soft hush of her voice filled me with peace, and eventually I was able to leave the dark corner of the hut.

  Most of the priests and nuns who looked after us were not accustomed to the harsh realities of rural life in El Salvador, and it seemed to me that some were even more broken than we were. Many had come from fine city homes in other countries, motivated by the noble goal of rescuing us from ourselves. But I doubt they expected that being heroic could be so unglamorous, that it would require them to defecate only a few yards from where they slept and to pick the worms out of their food.