Page 8 of Girl in the Water
She was waiting for the girls to come out for a swim as they usually did, but time seemed to stretch endlessly like the rain forest itself. The humidity was already oppressively thick in the air, pushing down on her, making her tired.
Even as she watched—eyes forward, attention focused—every cell of her body was aware of the man behind her in the small kitchen.
Tap, tap, tap.Phil Heyerdahl was typing away on his laptop at the table.
She glanced back. “Sounds like it’s going well.”
Phil looked up from his laptop, rolled his neck, his shoulder muscles shifting under his tanned skin. His short blond hair stood up in spikes from running his fingers through it as he worked. He looked hot and handsome in a geeky kind of way.
He was writing a book on thesoldados da borracha, rubber soldiers.
During the World War II rubber boom, the Brazilian government had forced tens of thousands of people to the region to harvest white gold, aka rubber. They were promised they’d be treated as war heroes, returned home after the war, and given housing. But the government reneged. The jungle killed most of the rubber workers. Some of the survivors made new lives for themselves in nearby towns and villages. Only six thousand found their way home at the end.
“Did you know the US government paid a hundred bucks for every worker the Brazilian government dragged here to supply latex to US factories?” Phil went back to typing. “We needed rubber for the war.”
Carmen and Phil were both twenty-three, one year out of college—Carmen from Penn State, daughter of Brazilian immigrants, Phil from Stanford, son of two professors. They’d met in Africa the year before, working for a charity that installed wells in remote villages.
They’d both planned on doing a year of volunteer work between college and entering the workforce in the US. But by the end of the year, they were in love—with each otherandwith volunteer work. So here they were, in Brazil, in the Amazon rain forest, hundreds of miles from the nearest hospital, helping to build a clinic while Phil wrote his book on the side, inspired by a nearly hundred-year-old local priest who’d ministered to thesoldados da borrachaback in the day. Father Angelo had personally administered last rites to well over a thousand, and he had a little notebook with the names of his dead carefully recorded.
Phil was obsessed with the story. He was happy here. They both were. Although, they would be happy anywhere as long as they were together.
Carmen looked back across the black river, at the girls who spilled through the back door at last and jumped from the deck into the river, a short six-foot drop.Splash. Splash. Splash.A bamboo ladder tied to the deck would help them climb back.
Rain dripped from the sky, stopped, then dripped again, as if the weather couldn’t make up its mind. At least they were in the dry season. In the rainy season, a good downpour could last for days, and the river would rise, probably all the way to the red house’s deck. The girls wouldn’t need the ladder then.
Carmen rubbed her aching arm. “I want to do something to help those girls.”
“It’s a private school for orphans.”
He’d actually gone over one morning the week before, knocked on the door, and inquired—to set Carmen’s mind at ease. An older woman had responded and told him that she ran the school, explained what they were.
“What else was she going to say?” Carmen tapped her foot again, watching the girls splash in the water. “You were wearing your clinic volunteer shirt. She was probably afraid that you were the kind of foreign do-gooder who would try to interfere.”
Sometimes she worried about Phil. He was more of a geek than a warrior. A writer at heart. Was he strong enough for this kind of work?
She watched the girls swim.
Once again, they were rough on the skinniest one, who was also the prettiest, tall compared to the others. She was the newcomer and had the saddest eyes. For some reason, Carmen kept seeing herself in the girl. Maybe because Carmen had been as skinny at that age. From chemo and radiation.
“It can’t be a brothel,” Phil said. “The girls are way too young. You haven’t seen them close-up. I have.”
Carmenhadseen them. Every time she had to go across the river for something, she made a point to walk by the place. The property was fenced in the front, but she could see through the gaps in the bamboo fence.
She loved Phil’s gentle heart for thinking the girls were too young, but she knew there were men with darker hearts who wouldn’t think so, not for a minute.
She chewed her bottom lip. “How about the men who visit?”
“Mrs. Rosa said they were the school’s patrons, local businessmen.” Some doubt crept into Phil’s voice at last. But then he said, “I’ve seen the police over there. If something bad was going on in that house, they would have dealt with it.”
Carmen could only shake her head. “The police are customers, like the others.”
When she’d met Phil in Africa, they’d both been naïve and innocent in the ways of the world. What she’d seen there had changed that.
Africa was a vast continent, with amazingly prosperous countries like Botswana, South Africa, Morocco, Tunisia, and others, cities as modern as London and Paris, but aid workers went to areas that hadn’t caught up yet. The parts Carmen had seen were where young girls were walking miles to school and being raped on the way, but took the risk and went anyway, because they wanted to learn so badly.
She’d seen girls in puberty dying of infections from female circumcision. Preteens being married off, then dying in labor because their bodies weren’t developed enough yet for pregnancy, and because there was no doctor for many miles.
Carmen had lost her innocence in Africa. She’d spent most of her time in homes, talking to women, helping them, while Phil had been with the well equipment, surrounded by men, explaining how things worked, and how to take care of everything once the volunteers left. Phil hadn’t seen as much real life as she had.
