“You don’t believe that, do you?”
“I believe there’s a connection between that well and this mountain.”
I scanned the squalor walking around me. “But wouldn’t it help these people to have clean water?”
She answered without looking. “Yep.”
I spoke as much to myself as her. “That doesn’t really make much sense.”
A chuckle. “Welcome to Nicaragua.”
The third patient was a woman who might have been in her fifties. She was skinny, had lost about half of her teeth, and she had been beautiful before the sun weathered her. Her hair was turning gray, and whenever she smiled, her lips hooked on two of her remaining teeth. Paulina hugged her when she saw her. The woman spoke quietly but quickly. Leena listened and then reached for me. She said, “Charlie, I’d like you meet my good friend Anna. She’s lived here twenty-seven years.” I held out my hand and she shook mine. Her hand was frail, calloused, and tender. Leena handed me a pair of needle-nose pliers and ushered Anna toward me. “She’s got a tooth that’s giving her some trouble. I’m going to run in here and check this little pregnant girl to see how far along she is, and Anna needs you to pull her tooth.”
With that she turned and began walking off. “What!”
She laughed over her shoulder. “Don’t worry, she’ll show you which one hurts.” She held up a finger. “And don’t pull the wrong one. She doesn’t have too many left.”
Leena disappeared through one of the worn wooden doors, and Anna stared up at me with beautiful blue eyes and hands crossed. I held up the pliers and asked, “Which one?”
She wrapped her hand around my hand, which held the pliers, and gently pointed to a top rear molar. Then she opened wide and stood waiting. Isabella stared up at me, sucking on a piece of candy. Paulina had disappeared, and a line of hopeful, tired, and sick people waited on me to pull Anna’s tooth so that I could get to them. I opened her mouth wider with my left hand and gently placed the pliers on the tooth in question. “Is that the right one?”
She made no response.
I asked again. “Sí?”
She nodded.
So I gripped what remained of the abscessed tooth and tightened the pliers as best I could. The smell coming from her mouth could have gagged a maggot. I held my breath and tried not to. Careful not to hurt her, I pulled gently. Thankfully, the pliers gripped, and the rotten and infected tooth slid from its hole in her jaw. As the blood and pus drained, she took the tooth from the jaws of the pliers and slid it into her pocket. Smiling, she spat, patted my shoulder, and walked off. Over the next hour, I pulled nine teeth while Isabella watched in muted curiosity.
As the line dwindled, a small boy came to me limping. His big toe was red, infected, and there was a hole in it about the size of a pencil lead. I asked him to sit and poked around a bit. He tried to act tough, but I could tell it hurt him. Leena encouraged him to let me look at it. He stiffened and gritted his teeth. I felt like there was something stuck up in his toe, but I couldn’t get at it without hurting him. Seeing the muscles of his jaw flex, I squeezed his toe like I was popping a zit. At first, nothing. I stopped to get a better grip, and he took a deep breath and held it. I knew it was hurting him, so something had to be stuck in there. Finally, I pressed with both thumbs, and he let out a small cry. When I did, pus oozed and the tip of something stuck through his skin. His eyes were teary, but I showed it to him and asked Leena to ask him if I could keep going. He nodded and pointed at his toe, then poked me in the arm and nodded some more. I took that as a good sign and squeezed one more time. This time, white-and-green stuff shot out followed by a thorn. I took Leena’s tweezers and slowly pulled it from his toe. His eyes grew wide as I held the thorn—nearly three-quarters of an inch long—in front of him. He smiled wide. We bathed his foot, massaged as much antibiotic ointment into the hole as we could, and then wrapped it in a bandage with strict instructions from Leena not to walk barefoot for at least a week. He nodded and carried the thorn in the palm of his hand to show his mom. When he walked off, his chest had puffed out a bit. He looked up at me. “Gracias, Doctor.”
The words swam around in my head. When they came to rest, so did the meaning. I turned to Leena. “What’d he just call me?”
Leena whispered, “I think you’ve made a friend.” A sly smile. “And more than one.”
“What do you mean?”
“Anna is quite taken with you.”
“That’s some…lady.”
“Let me tell you something about that lady. When her husband was sick last year, the medicine he needed was very expensive. Most people in his condition die. But Anna would work all day in the coffee plantation, then walk down the mountain at dusk to the peanut fields and work all night, by moonlight, digging up peanuts with her bare hands. She slept in the field for an hour or two before dawn; then she’d hide her peanut bag and walk back up the mountain to check on her husband and then make it to work on time. It’d take her three to four days to fill a hundred-pound bag with peanuts, and for that bag, they’d pay her ten dollars.”
“And her husband?”
“Healthy as a horse—thanks to her.”
When we’d finished, we packed up and moved toward the dwellings. The dwellings were about the size of a closet. Bunks on one side. They were made years ago from raw hardwood. Over the years, use had smoothed the wood, and oil in hands and bodies had turned it dark. People in the States would have paid thousands for the beauty of this wood. Those living in it would have paid thousands to be rid of it. The plantation filled a small shoulder off the southern end of Las Casitas. The owner’s house was a large plantation house equal in size to Colin’s house on the coast. Paulina walked me toward the middle of the building where a channel or walkway cut through the middle proving that just as many people lived in the middle as on the outside. The air was still and the heat oppressive. She waved her hand at the dirt, grime, shoeless kids, and snotty noses. “Don’t let your eyes fool you, these are proud people. They have nothing, but what they do have is kept. The dirt is swept in neat lines, they’ve sought out and placed smooth river stones at their front doors to wipe their feet and welcome guests, fresh bananas are hung above their beds, their clothes may be dirty but they’re folded neatly. The men wear belts, they remove their hats when they meet you, and the women wear scarves to cover their heads.”
I understood what she was telling me. I just couldn’t understand why. “Why’re you telling me this?”
“I am pointing out the difference between poverty and squalor.”
“How so?”
“You can be poor without living in filth.”
We walked into the row houses, which were more like a giant barn with dozens of stalls barely wide enough for a single horse. She explained, “These are for the younger workers with less seniority. Or”—she pushed on a door—“older ones who sell their homes on the outside when they are too old to work.”
Inside, a hammock stretched from wall to wall. In it sat what was once a man. Skin draped across bones. Barefoot. His shirt lay unbuttoned, pants were pulled up to his thighs, but his groin and bottom were exposed. His hands were large and had been muscled at one time. On the floor next to him sat a half-full bottle of water.
The door swung and light slowly entered the room. When the old man saw Paulina, he smiled and his eyelids closed and opened slowly. His lips were chalky white, and his tongue seemed swollen and stuck to the roof of his mouth. He made an attempt with his hands to pull his shirttail over his groin but was unsuccessful. Judging by the soaked hammock and the smell permeating the room, he’d been too tired to rise so he’d urinated on himself. She pulled off her pack, held his hand—letting her index finger rest on his pulse—and knelt on the ground next to him, whispering quietly and never letting her eyes leave his. Every few seconds, he would nod and his lips would move, but I couldn’t hear him. Isabella stood behind me outside the door, listening but not looking.
Keeping her eyes o
n the man, Leena pulled some baby wipes from her pack and began to gently bathe the man’s torso, arms, groin, and legs. Then, with delicate tenderness, she bathed the man’s bottom and penis.
When she finished, the old man patted Paulina’s hand and then placed his hand on her forehead as though he were giving her a blessing. She rose, kissed his forehead, his cheek, and then his hand.
When she walked out, a tear trickled down her face. She stopped at a basin to wash her hands, but collecting herself, she said nothing and offered no explanation. In the ten minutes she was with him, Leena’s smile never left her face, yet in that room I saw nothing to smile about. Finding him naked, she’d dressed him in honor and dignity. And in dressing him, she’d undressed me.
I’ve seen a lot of things in my life, many I’m not proud of, but until that day, I’d never seen the face of an angel. Maybe for the first time, I saw one in that room. Sadly, if the angel of mercy had visited him today, I had a feeling that the angel of death wasn’t far behind. I think he knew that, too.
And the tear trailing down her cheek told me that Leena knew that most of all. She caught the disconcerted look on my face. “You want to say something?”
“No, well yes. It’s just that no one seems overly affected that that man is lying there dying right in front of their eyes. As if they’re not surprised.”
“People here don’t feel entitled to perfect health.”
“Yeah, but shouldn’t they? I mean, isn’t it a worthwhile goal?”
“Sure. But at what cost?”
“Well, at any cost.”
“That’s where you and them differ.” She held up a finger. “I’m going to let you in on a little secret. When I first traveled to the States to study, I was struck by how everyone I encountered spent their days working feverishly to make enough money to buy a better tomorrow. Here, people are content—they buy what they need today and leave tomorrow to God. These people don’t have a death grip on their life here. They hold it loosely because they’re not in control of it in the first place, and—” She paused, weighing her words. “In their experience, it can be ripped from their hands no matter how tightly they squeeze it.”
Somewhere in there, I clued in to the fact that for people like me, there is an undoing that occurs here. A breaking. Like dropping a glass rod. It is the sound of the shattering of our assumptions when we learn that our pretending, our masquerading, is all vanity. As if we have any control over any of this. I, like most everyone I’ve known, spent most of my life furiously attempting to protect myself from the truth, from the undignified bottle beneath the hammock. Truth is, we can’t protect us. These people don’t suffer from the illusions that I have built up to insulate myself—namely that death won’t come for me on a hammock in Nicaragua when I don’t have the strength to stand so I pee in my pants. That somehow I deserve different. As if my money or social status could buy me, could guarantee me, a dignified death. These people know that they are born, they might grow up, might be given in marriage, might live long, might laugh, and might know love, but they all know that they will die. That what they see here is fleeting. I, on the other hand, don’t think much about it. I looked around me, at all the eyes staring down on that skeleton of a man, knowing they don’t have that luxury. Nor do they pretend to. The contradiction was striking. I have lived my life fighting against a tidal wave of forces that I am powerless to defend, like a man standing at the ocean’s edge, swatting at the waves. I can no more turn back the tide than I can light up the sun.
* * *
She knocked on a few more doors and poked her head into rooms where two women nursed babies. Leena smiled widely as the babies gorged on their mothers’ milk, and the tired women made no effort to cover their breasts in my presence. I stood back until Leena beckoned me forward. She then dug into my pack and left several large bags of rice and beans and several bottles of cooking oil. The mothers nodded and smiled and repetitively thanked her. One of the girls had the remains of a black eye, which she was careful to hide from me. For the next hour, we stopped, Leena talked, and we unloaded rice, beans, and oil. The only thing better than the feeling of less weight in my pack were the smiles that small portion of food produced in those who received it.
Woodsmoke wafted through the interior. Dogs watched from a distance as Isabella led us through the living quarters. Finally, we turned toward the kitchen, a large building centered around an enormous wood fire. Large pots of rice and beans and corn sat simmering on iron grates suspended over the fires. Large, sweaty women worked the pots and poked the fires with long sticks. In the corner, two teenage girls worked feverishly making tortillas. A second fire glowed beneath a sheet of steel. The girls would dip their hands into a bucket of what looked like cornmeal and water, pound out a flat cake-like thing, and then drop it onto the hot sheet. They’d let it sit sixty to ninety seconds on one side and then flip it.
Paulina hugged the women and the girls and spoke quietly with each, listening and nodding. When they offered food, she refused, but when the young girls pointed toward the tortillas, she looked at me and must have seen my mouth salivating. She nodded; the girl quickly picked one off the hot sheet using only her fingers and handed it to me. Paulina nodded. “It’s okay.”
One of the women dipped a large spoon into the boiling beans and offered. I held the tortilla under while she dribbled goodness on top. Then I folded it and sank my teeth into it. I guess my smile betrayed me because the women laughed loudly, and evidently the delight on my face and absolute approval of their cooking made me an instant friend. They offered more, but Paulina quickly shooed them and ushered me out, laughing.
We continued walking out of the living area into what looked like the working part of the plantation. Large warehouses, tractors, and various pieces of oiled and rusty heavy equipment lay scattered about. Above us, huge trees shaded our walk. Flowers bloomed like peacock wings in the branches, and as I stood mesmerized, I noticed the birds shooting like F-16s between the branches. I shaded my eyes. “What are they?”
Isabella answered me. “Parrots.”
Farther off to my right, maybe several hundred yards, I heard a strange sound that was loud and can only be described as a howl. “What was that?”
Paulina spoke as she walked. “Howler monkeys. There’s one directly above you.” I stopped and stared upward, where I was met by two eyes staring back at me. Paulina snapped her fingers and made some whistling, clicking noise with her mouth that I’d never heard. The monkey jumped as if shot out of a cannon. It danced from tree limb to tree limb until it landed on the ground, where it ran across and, to Paulina’s great delight, climbed her like a tree and perched on her shoulder.
I adjusted the pack on my shoulders and shook my head. “This place should sell tours.”
Behind me, the little boy who’d had the thorn in his foot appeared from around a tree. He was dragging his mother—a skinny young woman carrying an infant. He pointed at me and proclaimed loudly, “El doctor!” He tugged on his mother’s shirt. “El doctor!”
I waved and she eyed me from a distance.
Paulina nuzzled and spoke quietly to the animated monkey, who drifted from shoulder to shoulder to arm and then to the top of her head. He was constant motion.
With another click of her lips, she set him down and he disappeared into the trees, swinging from limb to limb as we walked.
“I guess you and he have done that before?”
“No.” A knowing smile with a single shake of her head. “Just met.”
We walked into what looked like a garage where they repaired the tractors and heavy equipment. A man working on a large tire, with an enormous wrench in his hand, smiled widely when he saw Leena. He limped around the tire, and she extended her hands in the same way Isabella had with me. He bowed slightly and then she hugged him. His eyes lit.
She spoke, he nodded, and after a second, he sat in a chair while she knelt and began rolling up his pant leg, exposing a nasty wound. She rinsed it wit
h bottled water, then cleaned the wound. Finally, she gave him an injection above the wound, covered it in a greasy antibiotic ointment, and wrapped it in gauze. She finished by giving instructions, which included politely, and with a smile, pointing at him to do exactly what she said. He nodded and pulled a small bag from next to the chair and gave it to her. She rolled it up and stuffed it into my pack, then kissed his hand and walked me through the back of the warehouse.
Beyond us, a large concrete world—half the size of a football field—opened up to us. Huge sheets of black plastic had been spread across the concrete, and men with brooms and rakes were spreading coffee beans in single rows across the sheeting. Leena spoke. “The first harvest of beans is coming in. They’ll spread and sort across these sheets, where they will dry. Then”—she led me by the hand—“they are bought in here.” We walked into a separate building where a huge belt-fed machine shook large sifters filled with beans. The noise was deafening, and the air was filled with dust and pieces of hull. The earth vibrated with the movement of the machines. “Where the husk is broken, leaving only the bean.” She continued walking, leading me by the hand out the back where a row of a dozen or so people sat sorting beans into bags between their legs. “They are then sorted into grades of bean. The best are sorted and sold as single source, organic, and fair trade, although I find little that is fair about the trade that occurs here.” When she said this, her tone turned acerbic. She continued. “The lesser or imperfect beans are sold to larger companies for ground coffees throughout the Americas.”
Leena spoke to several of the workers sorting beans, who waved or smiled at her. We exited out the side and down a hill that took us through a chicken coop holding several thousand chickens.
The sun was falling as Leena led me to a pot of water sitting off to the side of a fire where the embers glowed red and white. She touched the water with her finger, then pulled a bar of soap from her pack, and we washed at the water. She made me scrub my arms nearly to the pits, my face and neck. Isabella, too. When finished, we shook dry, shouldered our packs, and began descending the hill through the coffee plants. With the smell of the plantation still wafting around us, Paulina stopped and listened. The sound of an engine. A diesel. Grew closer. Paulina pulled us behind a large tree, and we squatted as a newer white Toyota 4-wheel drive HiLux with roof racks and aggressive tread mud tires climbed up the mountain. Leena leaned around the tree to get a good look at the driver. She whispered, “That’s the foreman.” Her face grew tight, and she spat, “Can’t afford clean water for his workers, but he can drive a new $20,000 truck.” She paused, shaking her head. “He doesn’t allow us here. Says we’re bad for business. For morale.”