Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for Thou art with me. Psalm 23:4
The
rhythm of the merengue does not hint
at the forced patience of the people.
Its fire laughs spinning in bright colors ‘round and ‘round. Yet wait.
Another circle reels, dancing to the heart-wrenching song of birth,
love, and death- linked together with heavy chains that try to weigh the
dancers down. One chilly night I step
into this dance, rather clumsily and confused, just up the road from the grey
rows of refugee camp where my husband and I live, working with an international
relief and development organization. I
join the circle of the rehydration room, where even my beloved and wise friend
Ramona has lost three babes to its vicious sway.
The room juts off the entry to the same
small health clinic where my daughter Nicól first entered San Jose de Ocoa nine
months ago- ah, another wait, my first hupomoni-
remaining under- with the Dominicans- a forty-two hour wait celebrated by
breathing-room-only crowds to greet this blue-tinged novelty. Once again I step into the clinic’s mawing
jaw, this time cradling a limp child.
Vomiting and diarrhea has ripped four pounds from her overnight. A brusque nurse straps her into place. Stained and flood-pocked walls close in
tightly around the circle of planks strung with IV bottles. Twelve bottles, twelve limp bodies with only
a flicker of eyelash or a faint tremor.
2”x 4” boards hammered into the wall form a shifty bench to prop up
mothers filled with a grievous calm, refined and polished to a sheen from this
life of theirs which stretches across the island to Haiti, across the
tear-salty oceans, across the ages.
reality
this
patient circle of eyes
like
so many glistening olives
pooled
in the pain which shadows
the
common human experience
round
gleaming olives
lacking
warmth
olives
have no warmth
and as
we settle uneasily into
our
designated eighteen inches of board
we
each hide our fear and bewilderment
and
loneliness
We can each protect
ourselves by fussing a bit with our children.
Nicól looks translucent, a ghostly waif, strapped in line alongside
equally feeble dark glowing bodies. I
straighten her cloth diaper and stroke her bald head. Both set her apart in this fetid room. Dominicans love to stroke her baldness as
they cluster behind me, around me, oh so closely everywhere we wander in this
dusty town. Round olive eyes cannot help
but gaze unblinkingly at this white woman and her white baby. The only whiteness in their collective
experience is found in bright Dallas silks on their small television screens or
peering cheerfully from Gerber food cans.
With a deep breath, I tighten my jaw and drag my line of vision upward
to these watching eyes. I smile weakly
out of habit. It certainly isn’t a
smiling sort of situation but I have no training or forethought for this
moment. I need to settle in and sort
through the moment. There are few
options, and one most definitely is not snatching my child and running for the
Santo Domingo airport. I stop standing,
hunched. Wretchedly looming at six feet
tall. Conspicuous in my
awkwardness. Instead I kneel on the
sticky tile floor. The close contact brings to mind a previous hospital visit
and the wade through two inches of sludgy river with a veritable flotilla of
soiled bandages, wrappers and tissue, to be slapped onto a delivery table still
warm from a previously splayed-legged woman.
The floor, albeit sticky, is dry.
Dry and hard as I squirm, adjusting weight and pressure from knees to
toes and back again.
Sweet Nicól so
close. I count the drips. Irregular.
Very irregular. None of the one,
one thousand, two, one thousand of my nursing days
in distant Flagstaff, Arizona. I can see
the veins in Nicole’s lids. She isn’t sleeping, but
she hasn’t the strength to open her eyes.
Her fingers lay slack in my hand.
The olive eyes still weigh heavily on my bowed blond tangles. Not hostile, yet too distant to even be
curious. Just watching. Reluctantly I slide to my feet and join the
propped-up bodies lining the wall. I
return the distant curiosity, willing friendly compassion into my gaze. Dominicans don't greet and politely drop
their eyes. The matched looks last much,
much longer than a shy American can bear.
I delicately shift my attention to the setting. Actually, now that I am peering out away from
behind my private discomfort, the room fairly shivers with low-grade activity -
shuddering arms and legs, low whimpers as vomit trickles out of parted lips and
the furtive wipes of damp rags smoothing away bubbling diarrhea. Giardia’s distinct sulfurous twinge hangs
heavy in this world far from Pampers and
lightly-scented wet wipes. Actually the
stench battles in and amongst us. A
broken-hinged door opens permanently into the toilet room and the multi-brown
mound volcanoes from the white porcelain moat.
It is clear that once again the water system is out in San José de Ocoa.
no one
knows no one
we are
all from separate villages
on
different hills surrounding Ocoa
perhaps
a face or two is familiar
from
the market square
strung
with freshly slaughtered cows
covered
in raisen-pie flies
patient
dangling chickens await
a
swift swipe of machete
we are
all strung here waiting
in the
land of mango heaps and guandules
and
cans of sardines
Dusk fades in the lone window of the
adjourning waiting room and we settle in.
I dutifully fuss at the occasional nurse about the broken regulator in
Nik’s IV bottle but it seems fairly trivial in this environment. A few lunch pails are brought in by relatives,
but most of us merely swallow and shift our belts. At least I won’t need to use the restroom in
my dehydrated condition. That’s a little
trick I’ve learned in this country; if I don’t drink I won’t need to use the
never satisfactory bathrooms. It is going
to be a long night, but our attention is sucked away from our dry throats to
the twelve babies struggling at the cellular level.
This room is also a battlefield of mine on
another, yet related front, and I am the only woman wrestling with the dangling
tubes and straps in order to breastfeed.
The last curtain of polite disinterest had been rent as the dark eyes
watch la americana wage an ungraceful
war on Nestle’s multinational food conglomeration. Slick advertising with blond women dressed in
doctor coats has convinced Dominicans that all good mothers use formula for
their children. I know that proud shiny
pyramids of empty cans line each and every house no matter how humble or
isolated they are. A traditional
Dominican photo is of the one-year birthday celebrant seated proudly in front
of the triangle of financial sacrifice.
This insidious lie is directly responsible for most of these babies
being here tonight. Formula is diluted
with river water which is seldom boiled because firewood is scarce and it is
served diluted for economy strengthened with sugar and peanut oil. Hardly a formula for producing sturdy,
resistant bodies. I am hardly a sweet
picture of maternal bliss scrunched over the unsanded boards, but the point is
made, and a respectful murmur marks my discomfort. Deep within I somehow know Little Nicól will
leave this room unscathed and restored, but few other other mothers have this
assurance. Death is too common, too
likely. In this valley less than half of
the children make it to five years of age.
The night wears on. No conversing with each other. Nothing to say. Every topic is weighed and found superficial
and distasteful. The only sound is
breaths of comfort kissed over a child’s brow.
Waiting marked by the unsteady drip of clear liquid in twelve bottles.
Until an explosion of sirens and lights and
screams and music and slamming strikes the hospital door. A bus load of drunken baseball players has
run off a ravine and pickup truck beds of them are being hauled to the hospital. A few lay quietly on stretchers lost on a
lonely path of stoic pain, but most are raining curses down on the hapless
candystriper sorts who were left to fluttering ineffectively like the tattered
moths around the bare bulb which hung from a wire. I certainly do not begrudge them the
curses. Raw bones rip through sooty
sweat-gleaming flesh mingled with pulsing blood. The scene is ugly, and doctors
are not hurrying to help from their air-conditioned homes on the other side of
town. Suddenly someone spies the norteamericana and the tone shifts with
a screech. A twisting avalanche squeezes
through the door and sweeps over me. Que bella.
Que ojos. Que vaya conmigo. There
is no personal space in this country, and the men jostle and grope me freely. I huddle down, unweeping, longing to push
through the nightmare. Finally the young men notice that I am not the Farrah
Fawcett who smiles through tousled hair from every barroom wall. Several doctors finally arrive and slowly the
rumble next door subsides and silence once again drapes itself over the twelve
mothers propped against the weary walls, waiting for dawn. One little boy convulses weakly as his body
squeezes every last drop of moisture from his cells.
his
mother weeps
this
is her only child
her
whole world lies trembling
flailing
for another breath
and
she bends hopelessly over him
sobbing
to the now less-distant eyes
now
only weariness separates us
as we
watch this little boy’s life seep away
the
only light dimly wavers
in
from the waiting room
and
here we ourselves
wait
With a low moan, the young mother hefts
herself onto the wobbly planks and curls over her child. A low grade panic grips the pit of our
stomachs, but we are immobilized, perhaps by our own fear. We do not reach out to build sand castle
walls against this tide. We lament our
cowardice, but freeze doe-like. Only one
sound presses past the gut-wrenching mourning- a soft hymn weaves through the
thick air. Glancing over to the most
worn of women, I catch her eye and smile in agreement. The corito
does not waver. I can only muster a soft
echo, but the gentle words cut across the looping wires and wraps hope like a tejido shawl around the trembling
mother. The sobs subside. The hope offered is not realized in the
present. The boy is going to die. Nor does it make paved-in-gold promises for
the distant future. The song offers up
the hope of love. The very pulse of
passion beyond animalistic urges is testimony of a greater purpose, a greater
will outside of teal green walls flecked with squashed bugs. The very fact that a song of love can float
in the midst of bleak weariness is proof of some existence beyond. Imaginations cannot create new colors; they
must work with what exists.
This wind of
love cannot be seen, and yet its effect can be witnessed and held to a
shriveled breast. We are comforted by a
presence more concrete than the walls that surround us. Life’s cadence is irregular and unrelenting. Yet wait.
In its oscillating circle of birth and life and death there is the
steady undertone of love which beats faithfully past deep nameless grief to
wildly thrusting hips and stiletto heels, punctuating out rippling circles of
life.
The rehydration room. Thirty years ago He was with me. And I will never forget. I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me.
