Detour

TWENTY-FOUR

Nothing had been said to her. But she knew just the same.

Galina might’ve told her it was going to be all right, but it wasn’t all right.

It was monotonous and deadening and endless.

Every moment, at least, that she wasn’t holding Joelle in her arms. Those moments, by contrast, were achingly life-affirming.

She got to experience those moments only twice a day—for morning and evening feedings. Galina would bring her to another room in the farm—she was fairly sure it was a farm, since she could hear roosters and chickens and the bleating of cows and sheep. She could smell them too—mixed in with the unmistakable odor of freshly turned manure. She’d been born in Minnesota, farm country, and her olfactory senses had been honed on those earthy smells.

When she asked Galina what happened—whether Paul had delivered the drugs like he was supposed to—she shrugged and didn’t answer.

No answer was necessary. He had or he hadn’t, but Joanna knew that she needn’t be packing her bags anytime soon.

It was the routine that saved her—those morning and evening feedings, waited for with a tingling anticipation. It was routine that was murdering her too, bit by bit. The sameness, the torpor, the sense of unyielding and unbroken siege.

Her emotions, raised to the sky by Galina’s whispered assertion, were all dressed up with nowhere to go.

She was losing weight too—she’d become familiar with certain bones in her arms and rib cage she hadn’t known were there.

One night she heard a furious slapping from somewhere in the house. Followed by someone moaning—a man.

She sensed Beatriz and Maruja awake and listening next to her on the mattress.

“Who’s that?” she whispered.

“Rolando,” Maruja whispered back.

“Rolando,” Joanna echoed the name. “Who’s he? Another prisoner?”

“Another journalist who’s become the story,” Maruja said.

“Like you?”

“No. Not like me. Bigger. His son . . .” And her voice trailed off as if she’d fallen back asleep.

“His son. What about his son?”

“Nothing. Go to sleep.”

“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?

Joanna let go.

When Galina finished, she felt Joelle’s forehead again. “A little cooler, yes?”

But when Joanna felt it, it was like touching fire.

Galina diapered Joelle, lifting her off Joanna’s lap, rewrapped her in a rough wool blanket. Joelle was still wailing away—her red face clenched like a fist—as Joanna rocked her against her breasts and shuffled back and forth in the small space allotted to them. She sang to her, barely above a whisper.

Hush, little baby, don’t say a word,

Mommy’s gonna buy you a mockingbird.

If that mockingbird don’t sing . . .

Her mother used to sing that to her. She’d play the James Taylor, Carly Simon duet on the living room stereo and dance around the Castro Convertible with Joanna in her arms. It had always made Joanna feel safe and adored.

It wasn’t working with Joelle.

She’d stopped screaming, but only because she’d cried herself out. When she opened her mouth, there didn’t seem to be enough energy left to emit a human sound.

Galina said, “I have to take her now.”

“No.”

“They’ll get angry if I don’t.”

Joanna was too scared to notice, but later she’d turn Galina’s words over and over in her mind.

They’ll get angry if I don’t.

The first tiny admission that in the us-versus-them dynamic of the household—Maruja, Beatriz, and Joanna versus their guards—there might be another them too.

Galina and her.

Galina would’ve left Joelle with her, only she couldn’t because they’d get angry.

In a world devoid of tangible hope, you grasped at verbal straws.

She gave Joelle back to Galina. She was led back to her prison, otherwise known as their room, where Maruja and Beatriz saw the expression on her face and asked what was wrong.

WHEN EVENING FEEDING CAME AROUND, GALINA SHOWED UP AT the door looking ghostly pale. That wasn’t the alarming part.

She was Joelle-less—that was the alarming part.

“What happened? Where is she?” Joanna asked.

“In her crib. She finally cried herself to sleep. I didn’t want to wake her.”

She took Joanna to the feeding room anyway, past two mestizo guards playing cards—one of them a girl with chestnut skin and shimmering black hair that fell to the small of her back. After Galina shut the door, she said, “She has pneumonia.”

“Pneumonia?” The word resounded like a slap. “How do you know? You’re not a doctor. Why would you say that?”

“Her chest. I can hear it.”

“It could be a virus? Just the flu?”

“No. Her lungs—they’re filled with flúido.”

Fear gripped Joanna and refused to let go.

“You’ve got to get her to a hospital, Galina. You have to. Now.”

Galina stared at her with an expression that under different circumstances Joanna might’ve termed tender.

It was the tenderness shown toward the hopelessly brain-addled.

“There are no hospitals,” Galina said. “Not here.”

THAT NIGHT JOANNA COULD HEAR HER DAUGHTER SCREECHING.

It made the guards unhappy. It got on their nerves. In the middle of the night one of them pulled her off the bed, where she’d been holding Beatriz’ hand to keep from running to the door and screaming at them.

“Vamos,” he said, shoving her toward the open doorway.

Beatriz got up to protest.

“Para eso—”

The guard, who was called Puento and was usually docile and amiable, shoved Beatriz against the wall.

A crying baby can test a new parent’s patience, according to Mother & Baby magazine.

Where was Puento taking her?

After he’d locked the door behind them, another guard walked up to them carrying Joelle at arm’s length. Later Maruja would tell her that FARC guerrilleros were particularly nervous about getting sick, since there were no doctors around to treat them.

The jittery boy literally dumped Joelle into her arms, then motioned her toward the feeding room. He ushered her in at a safe distance, giving Joanna a small shove in the back with the rifle butt. He slammed the door behind them.

Joelle was swimming in sweat.

Every breath produced a strangled, raspy gurgle. When Joanna put her ear to Joelle’s chest, it sounded like someone dying of emphysema.

Where was Galina?

Joanna pounded on the door—once, twice, three times. Eventually, Puento opened it, looking intent on pounding something back.

Joanna asked him to get Galina to come immediately, right now, this very second.

No response.

She asked for a rag instead, nervously pantomiming the act of wringing one out. She couldn’t tell whether Puento understood her, and if he did, whether he cared.

She’d say no. He slammed the door in her face.

Minutes later, though, he returned with a piece of filthy cloth. He threw it in her general direction.

She’d neglected to ask for agua—fortunately, the rag seemed damp enough without it. Joanna went through the now familiar ritual of unwrapping and undiapering her baby, trying not to notice her nearly blue skin and hummingbird shiver. She wiped her down the way Galina would have.

“It’s going to be okay,” she whispered to her daughter. “We’re going to get home and see Daddy. You’re going to like New York. There’s a merry-go-round, and in the winter we can ice-skate. There’s a zoo with polar bears and monkeys and penguins. You’ll love the penguins. They walk kind of funny.”

She held her baby the entire night. Most of the time Joelle screamed and moaned and gurgled. Those were the good moments. The terrifying ones were when Joelle slipped into sleep and her breathing seemed to stop altogether.

Once, when Joelle was clearly and demonstrably alive, basically screaming her lungs out, Puento opened the door and looked in with a nearly murderous expression. He raised his ever-present Kalashnikov—that’s what Paul said they were called, Russian-made rifles, ancient and unreliable—and pointed it straight at Joelle’s head.

“I’ll make her stop. She’s sick. I’ll get her to stop. I promise.”

He lowered the rifle and shut the door.

Joanna must’ve nodded off.

She woke up when someone shook her by the shoulder.

It was Galina.

The first thing Joanna noticed was the utter lack of crying, the absolute and shocking quiet. The second thing she noticed was that there was no Joelle in her arms. Gone. For one heart-stopping moment she thought her daughter hadn’t made it through the night. That Galina had come to tell her that Joelle’s body had been taken away, buried in some field.

She was about to start screaming when she saw her.

She was lying peacefully in Galina’s arms.

She was breathing better, not normally, no—but absolutely, unequivocably better.

“I got her medicine,” Galina said. “Liquid drops. Antibióticos. She’s going to make it, I think.”

Galina had traveled over one hundred miles, Joanna would learn later. She’d called a doctor she knew—she’d gotten a farmacia to open up and give her the drops.

She’s going to make it, I think.

Joanna’s new mantra.

Joelle had grown noticeably cooler, her cough had quieted to manageable, she’d mostly stopped shaking.

Galina watched Joanna feed her. Galina seemed oddly transfixed, even mesmerized. Maybe it was lack of sleep, Joanna thought.

No, this was different, as if she were borne away by memory.

Joanna remembered.

I had a daughter.

“Galina?”

It seemed to take a minute for Galina to come out of her reverie and actually answer her.

“Yes?”

“Your daughter. What happened to her?”

Galina turned, cocked her head at an awkward angle, as if she were trying to hear something from the next room. Or maybe it was from somewhere further away.

“She was killed,” Galina said.

“Killed?” Joanna wasn’t prepared for that word. Dead, yes, but killed? “I’m so sorry—that’s horrible. How, Galina? What happened?”

Galina sighed. She looked away, up at the shadow of the crucifix still visible on the wall. She made the sign of the cross with a slightly trembling hand.

“Riojas,” she whispered. “Have you heard of Manuel Riojas?”