Stranger by David Bergen Page B

breasts were leaking, even though she had expressed milk that morning, and she was aware that the officer had noticed the wet spots on her shirt. Respectfully, he made every obvious effort not to look at her chest.
    She spoke to a lawyer, who advised her to hire an American lawyer. He said that he had no power over these kinds of things. It was out of his hands. He too made a gesture, and this gesture seemed to indicate the senselessness of the world. She saw many different officials. Some were greedy and wanted money for nothing, others saw her as a fool who had tumbled into a place of her own deserving, and one man treated her as a puta. He was interested in her.
    She rode the bus to the city and went to the US embassy and she inquired into the legal rights she had. She was told that even if the child was hers, she would have to go to the place of residence of the father and press charges against him. Even so, she might not gain anything. She had signed the papers allowing the child to be taken. The father had his rights as well.
    I N the weeks that followed the disappearance of Íso’s baby, there were rumours of a change of policy at the clinic: there would be no more contract births. But then the rumours subsided and everything continued as usual. Elena ruled in the same manner, with a feigned benevolence. A fresh deluge of barren women arrived fortnightly to take the waters. The keepers cared for their charges. The doctors in the outpatient clinic saw children with earaches and they saw campesinos with broken limbs. A new group of foreign doctors and nurses arrived—young and idealistic and brimming with notions of charity and goodwill. The salaries of the local workers remained the same. The clinic founder, Doctor August, grew richer.
    Ãso wrote Doctor Mann and his wife messages that begged for an explanation and a reply. No response came. She became wild and inconsolable. She slept and woke and her mother tended to her, and then she slept some more because she could not bear being awake. Eventually, she grew quiet and found a place where she might put the child. In her heart. She had no photographs, just a memory of that first night, holding her baby and then feeding her, and then sleeping side by side. It was her own mother who had told her that she must decide to be at peace. The baby was alive. The baby was taken care of. The baby was with the father.
    She no longer worked at the clinic. She took care of her mother’s tienda. In the evenings, sometimes, when she heard the sound of a Honda motorcycle approaching, she looked up as if expecting the miraculous, but then the motorcycle passed on and she returned to her books. She was now reading textbooks, biologyand chemistry. She had hired a tutor and would reapply soon for medical school at a university in the city. She had no doubts that she would be accepted.
    Six weeks after the child was taken, Elena contacted her and asked her to come by for a talk. It is important, she said.
    On the day of their meeting, Íso dressed in jeans and flat shoes and a white blouse and she pulled her hair back in a ponytail. She walked to the clinic, following the road that ran alongside the lake. Women were washing clothes along the shore. Children swam. The many boats that crossed the lake every day were like small white warnings against the high waves. It was very windy, and she was grateful that her hair was not loose. She wanted to appear composed and calm when she met Elena.
    She had not been back to the clinic since the day after the birth, when her mother had arrived to take her home. And so now, as she stepped into the silence of the entrance and walked past the tall plants that sat like guardians in their large clay pots, she found it difficult to breathe. She announced herself and sat in a chair that looked out over the inner courtyard. A woman, foreign, sat barefoot amongst the ferns. She was blonde and thin, as they most often were, and she was reading.