Contents ( 49)
- PROLOGUE
- ONE
- TWO
- THREE
- FOUR
- FIVE
- SIX
- SEVEN
- EIGHT
- NINE
- TEN
- ELEVEN
- TWELVE
- THIRTEEN
- FOURTEEN
- FIFTEEN
- SIXTEEN
- SEVENTEEN
- EIGHTEEN
- NINETEEN
- TWENTY
- TWENTY-ONE
- TWENTY-TWO
- TWENTY-THREE
- TWENTY-FOUR
- TWENTY-FIVE
- TWENTY-SIX
- TWENTY-SEVEN
- TWENTY-EIGHT
- TWENTY-NINE
- THIRTY
- THIRTY-ONE
- THIRTY-TWO
- THIRTY-THREE
- THIRTY-FOUR
- THIRTY-FIVE
- THIRTY-SIX
- THIRTY-SEVEN
- THIRTY-EIGHT
- THIRTY-NINE
- FORTY
- FORTY-ONE
- FORTY-TWO
- FORTY-THREE
- FORTY-FOUR
- FORTY-FIVE
- EPILOGUE
- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
- ABOUT THE AUTHOR
I nodded.
“So now you go, Lily, with your machete, and you cut down the good kind and bring it to me. Like you’re alone and need to survive, okay? We’ll be here, waiting. There’s no rush.”
“Yes, Miss Lily, we will be here wanting to know your decision, over,” For God’s Sake said.
The bamboo garden bathed me in golden green light. The stalks seemed to vibrate as I studied them. Standing vertically as they were, it was impossible for me to see the striations—were they there or not?
I took a whack at a stalk. Like trying to break a stone. I put my shoulder into it. Finally, I freed up a two-foot-long segment. Holding it inches from my eyes under the dim patch of light, I turned it, searching for the glittering strings of gold. But there was nothing. Just smooth, green flesh.
“I think this is the good kind.”
“Okay,” Omar said, walking toward me. He took the section of bamboo, held it in front of his face, gave it a quick turn, and handed it back. “Go ahead. Drink it.”
After cutting off the top as he had, I brought the strange container to my lips. Hesitated. “Are you sure?” He hadn’t really looked at it in the light, as far as I could tell.
“No. That’s not going to work. Are you sure? I’m not here, okay? For God’s Sake isn’t here. You’re all alone. Only you and the jungle. And you’re very thirsty, you’ve been walking for miles, you’re dying, and you must drink. Show me what you do.”
I walked around with the stalk, in a strange, dull panic, my heart beating fast and light. I held it up in every kind of light I could find, which wasn’t much: a little dim, dimmer, full shadow. I saw no glittering gold stripes, but still . . .
“What do you think? Is it the good kind?” he said.
I nodded, suddenly nauseous with fear.
“Then drink.”
I glared at him, my lover, the dearest person in the world to me, my only real connection to this foreign wilderness. What if I was wrong? Why didn’t he look at it in the light and make sure? What game was this, really? But, good Lord, I needed water, even my cells were thirsty.
I held the hard, smooth plant to my lips and drank every last drop.
TWENTY-ONE
“She wouldn’t go by ‘Francie,’ ” FrannyB said. The big woman gestured at the gaunt figure of FrannyA, who sat bent over her intricate task, squinting through smudged granny glasses. “Way too stubborn for that.”
At an antique children’s chair and desk joined by rusted metal workings, FrannyA stitched the words to a psalm into a burlap place mat. Thin gray wisps escaped her tight, small bun and stuck to her damp neck. The palm thatch chapel where she sat was open to the jungle on three sides; a crotched sapling supporting its eave pole, from which FrannyA’s wooden Christ statue hung motionless. A black chalkboard made up its one wall, the alphabet neatly written across the top in capital letters, small ones just below. Another half dozen torn-up chairs and desks faced the board. Perched on a lectern, a two-foot-tall parrot missing most of the feathers on its chest clutched a six-volt battery in one talon, its gray, trapezoidal tongue nudging off the white corrosive powder as it tried to take a bite out of the silver metal.