Kate notices the bitter set of Sheila’s mouth.
Sheila continues, “Anyway, the guy wrote out the check there and then and I never saw his son again. The doctor made a mistake—had to go back in and clean it up. Thus the scar.”
“I’m sorry.” It is all Kate can think to say.
“So am I, believe me.” By this time Sheila is dressed and raking her fingers through her long tangled hair. Her face brightens. “Say, does this count for confession?”
“I’m no priest, Sheila, but I’m glad you told me the story.” She wishes she could tell Sheila her story. It lies inside her like a stone.
They walk back along the canal and catch Diane sleeping, stretched out on her back on a bench next to a picnic table. Flies buzz around the empty wineglasses on the table. Diane sits up. “Where were you guys? I thought I’d have to finish all this wine by myself.”
“We went to Achirana. We went to see that which flows cleanly to that which is beautiful,” says Kate, relieved that the somber mood has lifted.
“Well, what flows cleanly is this wine—so help yourselves, girls, and let’s eat.” While Diane begins unpacking the picnic bag, Kate grabs some cheese and bites into it, suddenly ravenous.
The afternoon stretches on, hot and shimmering. Kate lies back on the grass, feels the wine melting her arms and legs, and is soon asleep.
C
hapter Sixteen
Later that same night, lying sleepless on a cot in the corner of the hotel room, Kate stares at a patch of moonlight across the foot of her bed. She hears the deep breathing of the two women. She kicks the sheet away from her body, plumps her pillow and stares, wide-eyed, into the darkness. She has lingered long enough in this playground. Her money is running out, and she has just enough to get a bus to Lima. Then what? She has been gone from Santa Catalina for—is it four or five days now? She’s losing track of time. And worse, she is no closer to figuring out her problem than before. Would it have helped if she could have poured out her story to Sheila? There is a quiet intelligence in the young woman that Kate trusts. But she would probably think the whole struggle was silly.
She has found it impossible to love Tom and not desire him. In the moonlit room, she feels again the waters of Achirana swirling around her body, Tom caressing her. What had Christ said? If one part of the body offends God, cut it off. What could she cut off? Her body loves him.
Loving someone like this was new to her. She had been shy, tentative with Tom. She thinks back to those weeks after the exchange of their letters. She’d waited for Tom to return to Juliaca from Lima, not knowing whether it was dread or longing that gnawed at her stomach.
After the trip to Copacabana in February, the rains came. Still she waited for Tom’s answer to her letter. Kate knew this was really summer in South America, but it felt more like late autumn at home. She couldn’t get used to the idea that the seasons were exactly opposite in the southern hemisphere. In the Altiplano, distinct seasons didn’t exist. The cold was relentless year round. The only difference was between the sunny days with their brilliant light and the gloomy days when the storms rushed down from the mountains and swirled into the town with drenching wind and rain. Every morning she pulled on her long cotton underwear, grateful for its warmth next to her skin. Her room was not heated, and by the time she went down to stand in front of the gas heater in the living room, her hands were blue. Josepha and Jeanne Marie laughed at her as she stood huddled by the heater, for they had become accustomed to cold, or as Josepha put it, their hardy peasant stock made them more able to bear it.
Kate thought of her father who always claimed they were descendants of the kings and queens of Ireland. Could their castles have been as cold as this? As she put on her woolen cloak, wrapped a heavy black shawl around her head, and pulled on the rubber galoshes to protect her shoes, she thought she must look more like an Irish peasant woman than a queen. Then she followed the two sisters to church for morning prayer, meditation, and Mass.
Kate’s prayers were fervent, even fevered, these days. She prayed for strength to live her vocation, asking God to guide her through the new land she was in, a land with no maps and no stars. Another hemisphere, for sure. She prayed for Tom whose face floated before her, always slightly out of focus. It was better, she knew, that he was away. It was easier to love him from afar.
With the rains, she had fewer students each day in school. But she enjoyed the smaller groups, in which the children formed a circle on the floor around her while she sat in one of the little chairs. She read to them, and they told her stories of the old ways of their people. They loved music, and she had them sing songs in Aymara, trying to pronounce the strange words with them, making them laugh. They taught her to say, “Chaskiñawa,” pointing at her and laughing. It meant the one with stars in her eyes.
When she spoke to them about Jesus they were very quiet, their eyes shining. She discovered that Jesus’ parables made sense to these children of farmers and shepherds.
One day she read to them in slow, clear Spanish with Elva translating softly into Aymara:
If one of you has a hundred sheep and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine in the open pasture
