“Mostly I taught literacy. They sent me to a language immersion program when I first went so I could teach people to read the Bible in Spanish, but the church was also interested in ‘lifting people out of poverty.’” I make the quote signs in the air, although she can’t see them.

  “That meant a ‘job readiness’ program, for men wanting to work in the mine. My assignment was to teach them to read some words in English. I can’t dignify what I was doing with the name ‘English as a Second Language.’ It was just a few ‘useful’ things like ‘Slow.’ ‘Stop at the white line.’ ‘Look both ways.’ ‘Caution.’ ‘Poison.’ ‘Do not open without permission of your supervisor.’

  “The teaching wasn’t going very well, in Spanish or English. At the same time, everyone was talking about this great literacy program in the villages, up in the hills. All kinds of people were learning how to read and write. It was always labelled communist, because it was ‘out there’ in guerrilla country. One day when the village teacher was in the town, I went in search of him and asked him if he would teach me how to teach.”

  My eyes have closed again and now, on my inner movie screen, I see Nicolás’s face that first day, closed, suspicious. “He didn’t want me anywhere near his program, but his method, educacíon popular, starts with the learners talking about their lives. There were a lot of things the women didn’t feel comfortable discussing in front of a man. Not that I knew anything about the things they wanted to talk about either, female bodies, sex, pregnancy … but he took me out to a village where a new program was starting up and began to teach me how to teach.”

  I take a few minutes to watch clouds floating by the window.

  “I don’t know how to describe what happened to me. A revolution, a conversion, an earthquake. My world turned upside down. I certainly began to see the mine in a whole different light. The mission church figured I was ‘going native,’ turning communist. They were going to send me home. So Rosa, one of the matriarchs of the village of San Marcos, where I was teaching, took me in to live with her family.

  “I should never have shown my face in Inco’s company town again, but I got a message that the church was holding a stack of letters from friends and family back home. Rosa tried to talk me out of it, but I was homesick. I wanted them. She sent her son, Ramón, to walk with me. Once I got there, he was to stay out of sight, watch from a hiding place at the edge of the jungle.

  “Oh, Judith, if a genie came out of a bottle and offered me three moments of my life back to do over, this would be the first one. The letter thing was a trick. When I realized this, I had to be quick on my feet to get away, and I couldn’t do it alone. Ramón ran out of the jungle shouting and waving his arms to divert them. He got away with me, but he was recognized.

  “Rosa turned pale when we told her. She knew, Ramón knew too, but they wouldn’t say anything. It was Nicolás …” My voice cracks again. I swallow. “He explained to me. Ramón was part of a group trying to organize the miners.

  “He went into hiding in the hills, but a military patrol found him a few weeks later. I tried to comfort Rosa and Ramón’s young wife, Mía. She was in my literacy class. I figured since he hadn’t committed any crime, they would let him go. I was so, so naïve.

  “Ramón’s body was dumped in a field just outside the village. I won’t even try to tell you what they did to him, Judith. No one should have that picture in their mind. I wish I didn’t. I will also never forget Rosa wailing. I tore her heart out of her. I may even have pointed the paramilitaries toward San Marcos.…”

  I have no more words. If Judith can hear me, it’s only sobbing now.

  ***

  My need for Judith’s quiet, hopefully listening, presence stays with me all through supper. I barely taste the soup and bread Bara serves me, barely look up at her. I know my eyes must be red. They feel like they’re full of sand. She doesn’t push, though. Just nods when I say I want to go to bed and rises to clear the table.

  In the bedroom beside the bathroom, I expect my open suitcase to be sitting on the bare mattress, my small piles of ratty clothing ranged around it, but that is not what I find. The mattress has been made up. The bedside table has been set beside the bed, holding the lamp and box of tissues from beside Judith’s bed in the alcove. My suitcase sits, closed, beside the dresser. I pull open the drawers to find my clothes folded and arranged inside.

  I turn to find Bara in the doorway.

  “What have you done?” I ask her, my voice peevish even to my own ears.

  “It’s time you have a proper bedroom, Lucy.”

  I cross to the closet and pull it open. On the rail, only my navy slacks and spare skirt. “Where are Judith’s clothes?”

  “We moved them to the closet in the bedroom across the hall.” She points. “We thought you’d be happy.”

  “I don’t want the place to change. When Judith — ”

  “I know, but please don’t worry. We’ll put everything back the way it was.”

  I ignore her until she leaves, a terrible thought forming in my mind. As soon as she calls goodnight up the stairs, I almost run into Judith’s study.

  The bedside table has been cleared off. I open the drawer and find Judith’s murder mystery, the marker, thankfully, still in place. But the bed itself is neatly remade, sheets and pillowcase clean. Tears starting again, I lie on top of the blanket, bury my face in the pillow. Nothing but laundry soap. I am sobbing again, picking up where I left off at Judith’s bedside, but this time there are no tissues handy.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  The day of the demonstration is cool and windy, and my knees ache. Mister Ten Percent has a cloth body by now, his face painted. One of the taller young men carries the frame on his shoulders so that the puppet towers a good five feet above the crowd. Two young women manipulate his hands on long sticks, one holding his sack of money, the other a scroll labelled “The Law.” And so Mister Ten Percent comes to life, dancing down Spring Garden Road, leering and rolling about from side to side, ruling the world.

  Cindy walks along in front of him, waving to the crowd. She’s a celebrity, moving in a knot of reporters and admiring young people. Her face is shining, but not as much as Patty’s, hovering just behind her. Cindy doesn’t see me, but Patty does, grins a bit wider and points at Cindy. I give her a thumbs-up.

  ***

  I tell Judith about it, fresh from the excitement, winded from the walk. “Remember when we used to do that sort of thing? Poverty. Apartheid. Gay rights. I don’t remember ever making anything like that Mister Ten Percent puppet, though. I walked behind him, watching him bob and bow to the crowd along the sidewalks. They made him look so scornful.

  “Oh, Judith, it was loud and young, a whole new generation demanding redistribution of wealth. Good thing; it’s a lot more concentrated in their day than it was in ours.”

  ***

  Robin has come out for the demo, but now that I have a bedroom, he’s practically living in Judith’s study. And I find myself drawn there, again and again, to hover at the door.

  This time, he turns to look at me. “Lucy, stop fussing out there. Come in.”

  I pick my way along the path through the papers. Robin has been placing file cards on top of the piles, each labelled in black marker: Levellers and Diggers (England) 1649; Highland Clearances (Scotland) 1770s–1850; Northwest Rebellion (Canada) 1885; Michoacán (Mexico) 1869–1904; Women’s Land Title (Tanzania) 1990–present.

  I sit on the edge of the bed — a bit awkward, since we have to talk around the end of the freestanding bookshelf, but there is nowhere else.

  “I’m figuring it out, Lucy. She’s collected all these papers and books about people resisting privatization of land in different times and places, and she’s writing case studies. Those are all in the computer.”

  “Any idea what she’s after?”

  “Well, there’s an introduction, explaining that she’s trying to answer her own questions about how and why corporations and governments force land privatization on people, and what works and doesn’t when people resist.”

  “Robin, I’m uncomfortable with this.”

  He looks up at me, marking a spot on the page he’s been reading with one long forefinger. “I’m not moving anything, Lucy.” He waves his other hand at the piles on the floor. “Everything’s exactly where it was.”

  I sigh.

  “Don’t worry.”

  I do worry, though. Maybe I should warn Judith.

  ***

  I retreat to the living room and pick up the newspaper someone has left on the arm of the chesterfield. My eye falls on an editorial about the Chicken Campaign graffiti. After the first two or three nights, a week or so apart, there hasn’t been any more. The editorial writer suggests that the vandals are getting bored with it. “It was fun on summer nights but now the weather is getting cooler.” He, or she, even suggests that the police have gotten it under control.

  ***

  Althea sits quietly in the plastic visitor’s chair, back to the window, head bowed as if praying. She looks up when I come in. “Hi, Lucy, I’m glad you’re here. I need to go.” She holds out her hand.

  I take it and squeeze. “Not talking to her?”

  “I was. Ran out of things to say.”

  “I know what you mean.” I squeeze her hand again, then move around the bed and sit down in the other chair. They have Judith lying on her back today.

  “Do you know what she makes me think of?” says Althea. “One of those Egyptian mummies.”

  I lift my finger to my lips.

  “Oh yeah.” She puts her hand over her mouth for a second. “Sorry, Judith.”

  We sit quietly for another few minutes. What she said is true, though. Judith is drying up. Her skin kind of hangs over her bones. She’s breathing through her mouth, which chaps her lips, and her teeth are turning brown.

  I’m embarrassed to blather on in front of Althea the way I do when I’m with Judith alone, but Althea is on her feet anyway, gathering her things. She gives Judith a gentle kiss on the forehead, waves to me and then she’s gone.

  Judith’s hand is under the blanket and I don’t go after it, just talk. “Judith, I want to warn you about something, for when you’re ready to come home. A young man who’s involved in the Chicken Campaign, Robin, he’s interested in your research on land privatization. He’s reading some of it. I’m letting him, because it’s lighting some kind of fire in him. He’s truly interested, and he’s not moving anything out of the piles where you have them, and, well … I trust him. With that, anyway. When you come home, if you want help with your research, I’m sure he’d do it, or if you want everything left alone, that’s what we’ll do.”

  I watch Judith. Her eyes twitch under papery lids. At least she won’t be caught completely by surprise when she … if she … .

  “Judith, last time I told you something I’ve never told anyone before, how my naïveté killed Ramón. It weighs on me, though not, in the end, the heaviest.

  “Rosa continued to take care of me. She did it for the village. Ramón’s death led to a bitter debate about whether I brought them danger by attracting the attention of the paramilitaries — they were getting closer and closer to the mine by then, burning down villages, murdering the people — or, and Rosa argued for this, my presence, as an outsider, a Canadian citizen, brought them safety. I was a witness. Nothing could be done to them in the name of a Canadian company with a Canadian watching. The debate went on, but Rosa was the matriarch of the village, they listened to her, at least then … .”

  My voice has creaked to a halt. I pause, taking in deep breaths to free it again.

  “Mía disappeared, Ramón’s wife. She was pregnant. I often wonder about that baby, hers and Ramón’s.…”

  Now my voice gives out completely. The deep breath trick doesn’t work, sounding more like choking, or sobbing.

  ***

  On the way home, I think about the Guatemalan adoption files. They have been sitting in my suitcase since I came to the house, untouched. I could work on the dining room table. After all, we eat in the kitchen, apart from that potluck to celebrate the first graffiti night.

  That plan falls apart the minute I walk through the door. There is an awful clatter in the dining room. A sewing machine, set up at the end of the dining room table, a head full of dreadlocks hunched over it, dark hands pushing fabric through the needle. Bara and the one with all the bits of metal in her face have fabric spread across the other end of the table and are going at it with huge shears. Two more machines sit on the floor, waiting for the cutting to be finished.

  “What’s going on?”

  I’m not sure they can hear me, but Dreadlocks stops and looks up. Blessed silence.

  “Hi, Lucy,” Bara straightens from her work with the shears and brushes aside the blonde hair that has fallen across her face. She introduces the young women around the table, Jane, Alyson, whatever, whatever. The names slide out of my head as fast as they come in. “And, of course, you know Cat.” But my eyes had found Cat long before the introduction. She looks up briefly and then bends again to her task of pinning red shapes to black cloth. Her already brown skin turns a shade darker.

  “We’re making Chicken Campaign flags.” Bara picks up a big, bright piece of cloth to show me, the chicken on the scales of justice, neatly appliquéd. “Maggie found this article.”

  “For a paper, for my textile class,” adds Metalface.

  You sew? I think, without sewing yourself to the fabric?

  Bara practically shines with excitement. “Some women in Norway, there was this referendum on nuclear power. These women were against it and the polls said most women were, but they were too shy to speak out, so they made flags. They ran the logo of the anti-nuclear campaign up every flagpole in Norway the night before the vote.”

  “And they won,” says Metalface. The rings in her lip and eyebrow rise up and stand out when she smiles.

  ***

  I retreat upstairs, but the noise follows me. “Lucy,” Robin calls from Judith’s office. He eases his long frame free of the computer chair, picks up something from the corner of the desk and comes to the door. “Who’s this?” He holds out a photograph. I recognize the couple from the more formal portrait Bara found in the basement. The man we figured is Judith’s father, too jolly, his clothes awry and his arm around the shoulders of the woman who must be Judith’s mother. She is dressed for a party with jewellery and lipstick. She is rigidly straight, a tight smile on her lips, nothing in her eyes.

  Robin looks at it. “I wonder if that’s Judith’s parents?”

  “Where did you find it?”

  “There are photos tucked in between some of the books on the shelves.”

  “That’s odd.” I scan the spines of the books, row after row, covering the walls.

  “And this one, Lucy?” It’s smaller, a casual snapshot of a little girl dressed in her Sunday best: a frilly dress and crinoline, Mary Janes. She smiles tightly, self-consciously at the camera. “Is it Judith?”

  I look at the narrow, delicately boned face. “Could be.” I take it from him. It’s faded to the watery oblivion of early colour prints. When did colour film come along?

  “Does Judith have kids?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “Must be her, then. And look at this one.” He hands me a very small photo of a newborn. A girl, judging by the pink blanket. Coffee skin, Black features. It looks like one of those photos the hospital used to take in the nursery. It’s been handled, the emulsion worn off along the bottom and right edges.

  “A child of one of her clients, maybe? Or someone she worked with in the community.”

  “You should take these to the hospital, describe them to her. If you still think she might be able to hear you, that is.”

  “Hope so.”

  I place the photos carefully in my pocket. Back in my room, I sit on the side of the bed and take them out, look at them more closely. I think the little girl is Judith, and then I don’t. The man and woman have to be her parents. At least, the woman has to be her mother. And if the man is her father, what was he like to inspire such discomfort, perhaps even fear, in her mother?

  I spend the longest time looking at the small photo of the baby. Why keep a picture of a baby you barely know? Between two books? And handle it often?

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  “The dress looks white now, but it might be yellow, or pink. It has, what was that kind of needlework called? On the bodice. And little, white ankle socks. It’s what we all looked like dressed up back then. Smocking. That’s what it’s called.”

  Judith is on her side again, curled up a little. The sun falls on her returning hair, almost an inch long now, a lighter brown than I remember. An Egyptian mummy, Althea said. Or perhaps the extremes of human life, a premature baby or an ancient crone.

  “Judith is this you? Can you remember being lifted up onto a chesterfield to pose?” I finger the photo. Or did you do the lifting?

  “I was pregnant once, Judith. I almost didn’t come home because of it. When I realized I wasn’t missing periods because of stress, or how little food I was eating, I told Rosa.

  “‘Is that so bad?’ she said. ‘Many babies are born to single mothers. Go home. Your mother will care for you.’ My eyes must have been huge because, in that moment, I saw it all, how my parents would react, especially my mother, if I came home pregnant, a ‘fornicator.’ And not just that, but the baby would be brown. I told Rosa I’d stay in Guatemala, since she’d just said there were many babies born to single women there.”