With a slight nod of his head the sergeant indicates the bus station; then he swaggers across the street to the bar.
Alone again, Kate feels dizzy. She’s had nothing to eat since breakfast. She grips the jacket. The money Peter had given her would be gone as soon as she bought another ticket to Lima. Then what?
As she enters the bus station, she sees an Aymara couple slumped against each other, fast asleep. Three young girls, carefully made up and dressed in wool skirts and bright shiny blouses, their good shoes stored carefully in mesh shopping bags at their side, sit laughing together in a corner of the cramped room. They look at Kate in surprise and stop talking, watching her as she steps up to the ticket window. She counts out the few remaining soles and then asks the tired-looking clerk where she could find a place to wash her hands and go to the bathroom.
“Sí, sí, madrecita. Hay servicios atrás,” he motions vaguely toward the back of the building.
Kate finds an overgrown garden in the back. She sees a small outhouse and, as she walks closer, she hears a steady stream of urine, as if from a horse, splashing into a hole. The door slams, and a slight, dark man with a cane lurches past her in silence. Kate holds her breath as she enters the falling down shed. In the solid blackness the stench is unbearable; Kate gropes her way to the wooden hole, holding the skirts of her habit out of the unseen muck.
She closes her eyes, trying not to breathe. For a moment she thinks she will faint. There is no water to wash with and, of course, no toilet paper. Well, what did you expect? This is the way the poor live. You thought your life was austere when you entered the convent and took a vow of poverty, but now you are beginning to see what real poverty is. The jeering voices of Peter and the sergeant mingle in her mind. Reaching into the deep pocket of her habit, she finds her handkerchief. She tears it in half and carefully puts one part back in her pocket, thinking she might need it later. Using the other half to wipe herself, she then peers at the white cloth to see if her period has started. Please, God, no, not that. She throws the scrap of cloth into the dark hole beneath her. She hurries out, and in the garden breathes in the cold night air. The moon is rising over the tops of the few eucalyptus trees, coating everything with silver. She stops for a moment, lifting her face to the beauty of the night.
Hearing a truck backfire in the street, Kate panics and runs. She cannot miss the bus. When she sees that no one in the station has moved, she crosses the street and enters the only open store. The woman behind the counter is startled; Kate realizes she must look like a grimy, bedraggled ghost in the harsh light of the single bulb hanging from the ceiling.
“Por favor, señora, do you have a place where I might wash my hands? I have been traveling all day.”
“Oh, madrecita, of course. You can come into my little room here in the back.” The woman is kind, and leads Kate into a small room with three beds pushed together in one corner. In the gloom, Kate can see three or perhaps four pairs of eyes staring out at her from under the covers. “You should all be asleep by now,” the woman whispers as she leads Kate to a small sink in the corner; she hands her a clean white towel, embroidered with tiny blue cornflowers. Kate examines this salute to beauty, and feels her eyes fill. She is dangerously close to hysteria. Pushing back her veil and headdress, she splashes cold water on her face. Her scalp itches under her veil, and she smells of sweat. She rolls up her sleeves to wash her arms, and gratefully scrubs her hands in the cool running water.
As she leaves the room she looks over at the children in the bed, their white teeth gleaming in the darkness. The woman at the counter glances at Kate as she emerges from the bedroom. Kate smiles at her. “Mil gracias, señora, that felt wonderful. Could I please have three bananas and an orange?” Looking around the shop, she feels in her pocket for the last four soles. “Also, I would like a wedge of cheese, two pancitos, and two bottles of Coca-Cola.”
Above the racks of Coke is a faded poster of a smiling blond, blue-eyed American girl, dressed in a skirt and sweater and black-and-white saddle shoes, perched on the hood of a car with a Coke in her carefully manicured hand.
The woman follows Kate’s eyes to the poster and begins to laugh softly. “She looks a little like you, madre, no es cierto?” She continues to laugh as she opens the bottle of Coca-Cola carefully; she wraps the rest of Kate’s purchases in clean brown paper and ties the package tightly with string. “Buen viaje, madre, have a good trip.” Kate feels her watching her as she crosses the street. She wonders if the the woman was laughing at her naivete.
Now it is dark. Kate stands under a swinging light bulb, waiting for the bus to the city.
Finally, the bus rolls into the station, already half full with passengers from Arequipa. As Kate climbs on, on she notices two young, fair-haired women in the second seat behind the driver snuggled fast asleep under their sleeping bags. She makes her way to the back to an empty double seat by the window.
The town slides away as the bus pulls into the winding mountain roads that will take them down to the coast. Kate gingerly holds the open Coke. Finally she takes a long swig; the sweet warm
