James Siegel - Detour

“Maruja. What . . . ?”

“He had a son . . . that’s all. Shhh . . .”

“What happened to him? Tell me.”

“He became sick.”

“Sick?”

“Cancer. Leukemia, I think. He wanted to see his papa one more time. Before he died.”

“Yes?”

“It was in the newspapers,” she whispered. “On the television. A big kind of national soap opera. They let Rolando watch. The talk shows. He saw his son on TV speaking to him, pleading with them to let him go.”

Joanna tried to imagine what it must’ve been like for a father to witness his dying son on TV, but gave up because it was too painful to contemplate.

“People came forward—how do you say . . . los famosos. Politicians, actors, futbolistas. They volunteered to take Rolando’s place. Take us, they said, so Rolando can be with his son. He had a few months to live.”

“What happened?”

Maruja shook her head—Joanna’s eyes were getting used to the dark, and she could make out the vague outline of Maruja’s pointy chin.

“Nothing happened.”

“But the boy . . .”

“He died.”

“Oh.”

“Rolando watched his funeral on TV.”

Joanna wasn’t aware she’d begun crying. Not until she felt the wet mattress against her cheek. She’d never been much of a crier. Maybe because she spent most of her workday getting other people to stop, even as she secretly resented their public displays of weakness. But now she thought it was both terrible and wonderful to cry. It made her feel human. Knowing that she was still capable of being moved by someone else’s tragedy, even in the midst of her own.

“Rolando?” Joanna asked. “How long has he been here?”

“Five years.”

“Five years?”

It didn’t seem possible. Like hearing about one of those people who’ve survived for decades in a coma, kept alive in a kind of suspended animation.

“When his son died, Rolando became very angry with them. He doesn’t listen. He talks back,” Maruja said, as if she were snitching on another child. Joanna wondered if Rolando’s defiance made life difficult for Beatriz and Maruja. Probably. “He ran away once,” Maruja whispered. “They caught him, of course.”

Ran away. The very sound of it caused Joanna’s heart to quicken—what a mysterious and exotic notion.

To run away. Was such a thing possible?

She heard some more slapping, yelling, what sounded like someone being slammed into a wall. Joanna shut her eyes, tried not to picture what was going on in that room. Rolando was tied to the bed, Maruja said.

She imagined what running away would be like instead—how it would feel. She pictured the wind at her back, the scent of earth and flowers, the dizzying sense that every footstep was putting distance between her and them. It was such a delightful dream she almost forgot whom she’d be leaving behind.

Joelle.

They had her baby.

The fantasy dissipated— poof. She was left with an empty ache in her chest, the hole that’s left when hope takes off for parts unknown.

Eventually, the slapping subsided—a door slammed shut.

She had trouble getting back to sleep. Maruja and Beatriz were slumbering away, but she remained obstinately awake. In a few more hours it would be morning and Galina would bring Joelle to her, and together they would feed and change her.

It was something worth holding on to. Even in this place. Sleeping three to a bed, and in the next room a man tied up like a barnyard animal.

She dozed off but was awakened what seemed like minutes later by the crazy rooster who seemed to crow all hours of the day and night.

JOELLE HAD A COUGH.

When Galina placed her in Joanna’s arms, her little body shook with each tiny eruption.

“It’s just a cold,” Galina said.

But when Joanna tried to feed her, Joelle refused the rubber nipple. Joanna waited a few minutes, tried again, Joelle still wouldn’t eat. She kept coughing with increasing and violent regularity. Each cough caused her deep black eyes to go wide, as if she were surprised and affronted by it. Joanna pressed her lips to Joelle’s forehead—something she’d seen friends do with their own children.

“It’s hot, Galina.”

Galina slipped a hand under Joelle’s T-shirt to feel her chest, then laid her cheek against her forehead.

“She has a fever,” Galina confirmed.

Joanna felt her stomach tighten. So this is what it’s like, she thought. Being terrified not for yourself, but for your child.

“What do we do?”

They were in the small room Galina always took her to for feedings. Four white walls with the faint impression of a crucifix that must’ve once hung over the door. They walked her there maskless now, something that had both comforted and terrified her the first time. It had seemed to make an astonishing statement to her: You’re in for the long haul. There was no need to play hide-and-seek with her anymore.

When Galina put her hand on Joelle’s forehead, she pulled it away as if it were singed.

“Wait,” she said, and left the room.

She came back waving something. A magic wand?

No. The thermometer she’d purchased for them in Bogotá. Joanna numbly let Galina remove Joelle’s diaper—her thighs were chafed and red. Galina placed her stomach-down on Joanna’s lap and told her to hold her still.

She gently eased the thermometer in.

When Joanna saw the mercury climbing, she said, “Oh.” An involuntary response to naked fear. When Galina took it out and held it up to the light, it was nudging 104.

“She’s sick,” Joanna said. This wasn’t the little fever babies get from time to time. This was for real.

Galina said, “We need to sponge her down.”

“Aspirin?” Joanna said. “Do you have baby aspirin here?”

Galina looked at her as if she’d asked for a DVD player or a facial. They were obviously somewhere rural—a place where the guards were relaxed enough to watch TV at night and not really bother to stop Maruja, Beatriz, and Joanna from talking to each other. A place as far away from a stocked pharmacy as it was from the USDF patrols looking for them.

Her daughter’s fever was sky-high. It didn’t matter. They were on their own.

“Please.” Joanna heard the pleading in her own voice, but this time it didn’t surprise or disgust her. She would beg on hands and knees for her baby. She’d offer to give her right arm or her left arm, or her life.

“If we sponge her, it’ll bring her fever down,” Galina said, but she didn’t sound very convincing. The worry lines in her face had taken on an aspect of true fear. Joanna found that far more terrifying than the sight of the soaring thermometer.

Galina left in search of a wet rag.

How strange, Joanna thought. That Galina seemed able to effortlessly change back and forth between kidnapper and nurse, first one, then the other.

She came back carrying a pewter bowl filled with sloshing water. Somewhere she’d found a small hand towel, which she liberally soaked while sneaking worried peeks at a still-screaming Joelle. She wrung it out and began gently sponging her down. Joelle didn’t cooperate—she twisted and turned on Joanna’s lap as if the touch of the rag were physically painful.

She was screaming in anguished, heartbreaking bursts. Her tiny body quivered.

Joanna grabbed Galina’s hand. “It’s not helping. It’s making it worse.” The wet rag hung down limply, drops of water softly hitting the rough wooden floor.

Pat, pat, pat.

“Look at her, for God’s sakes. Look at her. ”

“It’ll bring the fever down,” Galina said. “Please.” But she didn’t attempt to yank her arm away. What would the guards think if they saw Joanna with her hand wrapped around Galina’s bony wrist?