Chapter 11 - Sweet Haven

SO IT was not until several weeks had passed that she found out about the woman called Mother Martha and, for the moment, understood. It took that long to dig it out, for almost at once, the patter, the transactions of everyday life, restored a measure of normalcy to their home. Fish or chicken, which would it be; check the piano for termites; get the dog to shut up, please. Through the mundane, she had found it possible, not to forgive, but to forget the very real presence of Daniel. That was what she said to herself, many times a day, with exaggerated emphasis—Oh, my husband’s still here, I hadn’t noticed.

There had been the unpleasant business of sharing a bed with him. At first she slept in Antonia’s room, the spare room now, lying on the narrow bed with the blankets about her throat. For three nights she stared up at the shadowy ceiling, the dark startlingly relieved, in places, by tiny paste-up stars that glowed. She lay there and listened to the rain. Unable to sleep. On the fourth night, she came home from the school exhausted and, without bothering about supper, entered the master bedroom out of habit and fell across the bed in her day clothes. She was unconscious, dreamless, for hours, and then, awakening before daybreak, realized that her husband was curled up on his side, at the very edge. She had not heard him come in. She understood at once that to avoid him she need only retire an hour before normal. Tormented by conscience and the ups and downs of a mid-life crisis, he might stay in his study smoking until half past one, to rise long after she had dressed and left for the 7:00 a.m. flag-raising ceremony. She took to going to bed earlier and earlier, sometimes at 8:00 in the evening. Her body had never craved so much extra sleep. She would get up before five and, avoiding the kitchen or living room, lest the servant find her, seek refuge in Antonia’s room, the only private space in the house. She chose not the overhead fluorescent light, but the ancient reading lamp. In this hot circle of light she wrote out her lesson plan for the day to come. This was a ritual she had never reneged on, not in the forty years she had taught school. Sometimes she surprised herself with a wetness in the eyes that fell upon the neat, upright letters of her script. She wrote with such intense and deliberate pressure that, on occasion, the ball point ripped through the page.

One cold, rainy morning, coming back from the kitchen with some ginger tea, she realized that Naia had crept into the room. She and the girl had not spoken much since that day at the Hollands’. She had let the girl know, through her implacable silence, what she thought of the betrayal, and of Emily and Rinky’s religious talk sessions, simply an elaborate way of trawling for gossip. Now she knew that the time for reconciliation had come. Her granddaughter lay on the bed, knees drawn up, eyes wide open. Her breathing was audible, through her mouth, as a child might breathe who has just been crying, but there were no tears.

“That day I came home late without my blouse,” said Naia. “I didn’t get into a fight.”

“I know,” said Luth.

“You can’t know everything that I do, everything that I think. You’re not that powerful.” The girl looked at her with an expression she had never seen before. What was it? Contempt? Pity?

Luth thought about her own daughters, how they had approached a confession tangentially, dropping a hint one day, another a couple of mornings later. Something was not right—this deep and resonant sadness was out of place in a person so young.

“Why don’t you tell me what really happened, Naia?” she said carefully.

“That old witch,” the girl began. “That gospel teacher. She wanted to kill me.”

THE missionaries had materialized one afternoon outside the Social Studies classroom. The blonde one was in her twenties, short, apple-shaped, and broiled pink. The other was maybe four decades her senior, thin, tall, with a severe mouth and a stiff white hairdo.

The old one called herself Mother Martha. She wore an unfashionably long gray skirt, a thin cotton blouse with a collar, and high, heavy black shoes with a T-strap for support. The other was called Valerie. “V-a-l-e-r-i-e,” she spelled carefully, as though they had never heard of the name. Her tank top revealed the shocking expanses of her upper arms. Her breasts and belly bulged through the spandex fabric. She was not even ashamed. Until then, Naia had always thought religious persons covered their bodies up as much as was practical in the heat—that was certainly the case with the old one, the important one, who waited regally while her fat sidekick spoke to the Social Studies teacher in nasal tones that made the class giggle. Naia thought the young woman’s demeanor arrogant, as though she expected Mrs. Galvez to stop the Social Studies class there and then, that they might claim the space before the blackboard and preach whatever gospel it was they were peddling. Naia was used to having sessions interrupted with neither warning nor logic, the weary teachers giving the floor to guest speakers and college student politicians beseeching the class for votes. She was aware that there were different sorts of Christianity, each claiming to be superior to the next. She had already concluded that, with their thin noses and southern accents, the women were there to convert the class en masse—it was what Americans did. Besides, word of these preachers had spread among her classmates. These women had already done the rounds of Donostia public high schools and, invoking the Holy Spirit, performed true-life miracles on the shabby adolescents.

No one could describe in terms precise enough for Naia what those miracles had been.

The final bell for the day rang at last, and without being summoned, the women, one fat, one spare, entered the classroom and stood, backs straight, examining the rows of fifteen-year-olds as Mrs. Galvez explained what they had come for. Mrs. Holland appeared in the door and lingered for a few minutes, as though to make sure Mrs. Galvez got everything right, and at the sight of her, Naia bowed her head, feeling a burning guilt.

Neither of the white strangers smiled. The effect was unnerving. Naia had never met a foreigner who did not immediately smile down at her. She turned her head as surreptitiously as she could to survey the class, trying to envisage her peers as the two strangers might. She looked at Marvin and Alan, Iris and Irish, Honeylet, Rommel, Ian, Paolo, Maite and Jazzmeeh. There were twenty-five others, but she dared not twist around to account for the entirety of the class.

She perceived her classmates, suddenly, with new eyes, with the eyes, she fancied, of the visitors. She saw them as a collection of wilting white shirts and quizzical expressions, of transfixed faces that were clear-skinned or pimply—faces that were in many different shades of health but always described as brown. She saw black hair that was bobbed or braided, scraped back with a colorful band or shaved close to the scalp, straight or curly, fine or wiry—but black anyway. She smelled them: a strong, healthy odor of vinegar with a sly base note, the scent of certain mysterious plants her kung fu shoes crushed when, en route to the parade ground, she took short cuts through the brush at the back of the school.

Naia, gaining her bearings, realized the foreigners were staring, not at her classmates but at her. Heat suffused her face. All other persons in the room had been transfixed by the visitors. Mother Martha caught her gaze and continued to hold it long after regular folk would have politely glanced away. Her eyes did not match her blouse. The blouse was a mousy shade of gray, but the eyes were a blue Naia had never seen before, not in the summer sky nor in the tropical sea nor in the bolts of cloth down at the Sunshine Mart. They were a subtle hue from a colder, more complex universe, and though pale, they glinted with menace.

She bowed her head in confusion, for she was ashamed. Her hands came up to smooth the plaits of hair on either side of her head. She could smell the lotion that her grandmother made her smear over her arms and face as protection from the sun, for it was crucial for a drum majorette to have pale skin, to be beautiful and distinct from the hordes who ogled her snappy booted progress down Donostia’s streets. The lotion smelled of candy. Of night blooms. It was not a clean smell. It was an odor that might hang around a loose girl in her twenties. Naia felt that Mother Martha, who looked into her so intently, could discern even this.

“Boys, move the desks,” Mrs. Galvez said.

The air was rent by the noise of wood scraping over gritty concrete as, one by one, the long tables were dragged to the back of the room. Each row of displaced students joined the restless company waiting alongside the wall. No one dared venture into the space created in the middle of the room. Naia was among the last to stir. She stood half a head taller than the girls on either side of her. She was often picked out of lines for this fact.

“Boys, you are dismissed,” said the teacher.

There was a momentary silence, born of confusion. Then, in a great hooting, shoving, guffawing wave, the youths quit the classroom to stride off down the central quadrangle to freedom. Someone bolted the door behind them. Someone else began on the windows, slamming the old-fashioned wooden jalousies shut. Both tasks were performed by the teacher’s pets, thought Naia, who had never been one herself.

“Girls,” Mrs. Galvez announced. “This afternoon you will be slain.”

No one could explain exactly how the experience had gained that name. All Naia had heard was that the miracle began with an impassioned prayer. And now this was exactly what Mother Martha and Mrs. Galvez and Valerie were doing. She looked nervously about. All the other girls had closed their eyes, as bidden. Lips were parted, bodies swayed gently to keep balance. The whispered words of one classmate came back to her: “They pray over you, and then you cannot help it: you fall over back, as though a spirit had thrown you down, and then you are slain.”

“Which spirit,” Naia had hissed back, and the girl—she was called Irish—had flashed her a frightened look: “Don’t say things like that, Naia. You are not as strong as you think. They have mighty powers on their side. They will have you speaking in tongues, like that girl at Central.”

“And who translated?” Naia had forged on. “How do you know what she really was saying? And if they’re all that holy, why is their terminology so criminal?”

Abruptly the prayer broke off. Mother Martha scanned the room. The young girls continued to sway, their faces calm, their arms relaxed, palms open at their sides. “I feel resistance,” the old woman said. “The Devil perches on the shoulders of the proud and beautiful one.”

Naia squeezed her eyes shut. Clothing rustled. Heat and three separate human odors came and went. The foreigners and the teacher were pacing, deliberately, between the girls. Naia’s nostrils quivered—someone had stopped directly in front of her face. She fought the urge to open her lids. Not even a fraction. After a long, long moment, the person moved off, and the prayer began again.

“Children, clear a space,” the old woman said. “The Spirit has come in this room. He shall triumph over the Horned One. Come to me, one by one. Come and be cleansed by my touch. The rest of you, open your eyes now and observe the handiwork of the Lord.”

A shout came from one corner. “I am ready, o Lord, take away my sins.” There was a thump. The girls leapt. It was Jazzmeeh, on her knees, tears already streaming down her cheeks.

“Foolish child,” Mrs. Galvez said. She grabbed Jazzmeeh by the armpits and hauled her back to her feet. “Not there. Not yet.” They stumbled to the center of the room, where Valerie and Mother Martha waited. The girl’s nervous giggles subsided, and she shifted her weight from one foot to the other, her smile sheepish and expectant, as though she stood in line for a free and long-promised ice-cream cone.

In a movement at once firm and tender, Mother Martha took the girl’s head in both her hands, staring searchingly down into the square brown face. “Oh yes, something lurks,” she said pleasantly. “Down in there, down behind those sweet little eyes.” A hard and urgent voice came suddenly from deep within the old woman’s frame: “By the power of the Holy Spirit, I command you, leave.”

A gasp rose from the watchers. Jazzmeeh’s eyelids fluttered, and as her knees buckled, Valerie caught her and, with surprising agility, laid her down on the concrete floor.

There was no need for Mrs. Galvez to appoint another volunteer—the young girls began to crowd the missionaries, each hoping to be spotted next. By the power of the Spirit, Mother Martha slew Honeylet, Maricor, Theabel, and Daisy in quick succession, holding their faces steady as she gazed into their eyes. Her fingers, long and deft, traced the soft hair at their temples, the fine skin at their jaws, as though they sought some secret point of contact, and then they fell still. But Naia noticed the woman’s fingertips turn even paler as, lightly and surely, she pressed the young girls’ flesh against their skulls.

“The Lord works miracles for those who surrender to him,” Mother Martha said. “Examine yourselves, children. Are your bodies healing? Is there some action the Evil One prevented you from performing all your lives?”

“My keloids are fading,” Honeylet called out.

“I cannot run,” volunteered Theabel, for one of her legs was shorter than the other.

“So run,” said Mother Martha, but there was no warmth in her voice. Nonetheless, Theabel picked herself up and did an awkward lope around the room and down the corridor, reappearing a few moments later with a sheepish smile, rolling her eyes expectantly toward Mother Martha.

“Good girl,” the old woman said, but Naia could have kicked her, for she had known Theabel since kindergarten, and they had played tag and jumped rope all the way to the sixth grade, and she knew for a fact that the little bitch was as competent as the rest of them. The truth was that Theabel was a toady and that was one flaw that would never be fixed.

One by one, the girls were lowered to the concrete, into a random quilt pattern of white-and-red checks. Some lay stunned and rolled their eyes to the ceiling, and some moaned and thrashed their limbs, so that their pleated skirts rode up over their thighs. One or two wept and arched their backs, bracing their heels against the floor, their moans so affecting that soon more of the girls had joined in, sighing and crying out like twenty R&B singles played at the same time.

And then only three girls were left standing, and it was Naia’s turn. Someone caught her by the elbows and propelled her stiffly the meter or so toward Mother Martha; she had not realized how closely she had gravitated.

“I feel defiance in this one,” Mother Martha murmured.

The teacher replied, “Ah, yah, she misuses God’s gifts.”

The cold fingers explored either side of Naia’s face, the area of her throat beneath the curve of her jaw that she had never been conscious of till now. She jerked her face from side to side to dodge the probing touch. You could slit a fellow’s throat from ear to ear, she thought, recalling the crime novels on her aunt’s bookshelves. There’s a special artery below the jawline that transports blood to the brain. Sever it, press down gently on it, and you interrupt that flow of blood. The body goes into a faint.

“Look at me. Look at me,” Mother Martha said. Surely Naia had never seen such eyes so close before. So blue, such a true color, nothing like the flat images in magazines. Tears sprung to her own eyes at the gaze of this old, ruthless woman. And then she felt herself going under. The room darkened, and a pair of huge breasts loomed over her forehead. Valerie the assistant was bearing her down. In the haze of her near faint, she kicked blindly, lashed out with one of her famous high-stepping legs, and connected. She was shod, today, not in her shabby kung fu shoes but in a beautiful pair of ankle boots her aunt had sent in the mail, and one scandalous stiletto heel caught the unsuspecting Mother Martha in the shin. The old woman crumpled to the floorboards. Through the fog around Naia’s mind came a harsh cry and a thump and a scrabbling sound. As she fell, a thick knee that she recognized to be Valerie’s clubbed her in one ear. Now she, too, was on the floor, on one hip, her palm scraped where she’d flung out a hand to break her fall.

The old woman lay on her side, her groans of pain gaining vigor as it became evident that Naia was scrambling to her feet, shoving at the fat assistant who lay stunned on her back. Fighting the teacher now, hurling herself this way and that as three of her classmates ripped at her hair, snatched at her skirt, whirled her out of her blouse.

“Serpent, serpent!” Mother Martha rasped.

“A devil!” some girls cried. “A devil’s possessed her!” and others wailed, “Catch it! Do something!” as they miraculously came back to consciousness.

In a trice, Naia broke free of them all, wrenched the door open, and hurtled down the corridor pursued by screams.

“Bring her back!” the old woman rasped. “Don’t just stand there, you monkeys, bring her back!”

The wooden boards thundered beneath her feet. Her heart thumped in her chest. She skipped down the sagging wooden steps, hurdled a low plant border, made a snap decision and headed for the basketball court, where a group of students her age were undergoing their afternoon ordeal at the hands of the senior cadet officers. They were training to be officers next year. Some were struggling through squat jumps and others sweated through push-ups and still others circled the court with wooden rifles slung across their shoulders, as their fifteen-year-old superiors harassed them like pit bulls. All activity ceased as Naia plunged into their midst, leaping nimbly over several prostrate bodies. Behind her, her pursuers collided with plebes and officers alike to a great roar of outrage. But she was not free, not yet. The cries of “Demonyo, demonyo” continued behind her and seemed now to be coming from all sides and she punched her way through a knot of faceless boys who grabbed futilely at her arms. But another sort of cry was rising in counterpart, a sniggering, mostly male, athletics day chorus—“Go, Naia, go! Go, Naia, go!” She turned a corner, saw doors, a flight of stairs, a corridor, a waiting boy. The boy caught her; he was her height, wiry, and very strong. He whirled her into a dark space, slung her gasping, too shocked to scream, against a wall. He shoved the door shut, hanging back on the knob at the last minute that no slam might be heard. He locked it with a key from a massive ring. She trembled, gasping for breath, for life itself. They were in the armory. The wooden rifles were black columns in the gloom. In the hallway, running feet, confusion, hysteria, laughter. Fists pounded on the door. Someone tried the knob.

“What are you doing,” she cried as the boy advanced on her. “Shut up,” he said. Fists assaulted the door once more. She whimpered. He stood behind her, trapping her legs in his own, and clamped a cold, nervous hand over her mouth. Sweat slicked every surface of her shaking body.

“Shut up,” said the boy again. “Shut up, don’t move, shut up.”