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Sick of the Revolution.By Deb Olin Unferth- - - - - - - - Part Three My boyfriend had several older brothers, the eldest of which had been a hippie and the rest of the brothers thought that was cool. They were sorry they had missed out. They all still listened to the music and wore the floppy hats and talked about how the eldest had had all the luck. One of my boyfriend's favorite songs was about a man who is arrested for littering. There's a line in the song that goes, "After the ordeal ...," and he enunciates it slowly and with a drawl: "After the orrrr-deal ..." The singer is referring to being arrested for littering, but since the song is really about the Vietnam War, that line seemed to my boyfriend to refer to that, too. My boyfriend liked that line. He thought it was funny and he said it all the time and since he said it, I did, too. The idea was you said it instead of saying: What is going on here? This is unbelievable, how can this even be happening? Instead of saying that, you waved an arm at it, backwards, like the situation was behind you, already over, and you said with a drawl, After the orrrr-deal ... - - - - My boyfriend lined up a revolution job for us in El Salvador. In those days it was called a revolution—the Salvadoran Revolution. Nowadays people call it a civil war—the Salvadoran Civil War. As it happens this was during the part of the Salvadoran Civil War when the villages were being scorched and the villagers were being rounded up and killed by military forces. It was supposed to encourage the villagers to not be angry at the military and not want to overthrow the government in charge. That, or it was supposed to get rid of the problem of the villagers altogether. But sometimes what happened was that a mother and father would be killed and there would be a child left over, hidden, who would come out later and walk to another village, maybe with a little brother or a sister or a friend in hand. So this orphanage had been set up just outside the war zone. I believe it was at the edge of the department Chalatenango. It was somewhere around there. The kids were taken there and then they rode in little buses over the hills each day to local village schools and then they rode back and everybody agreed not to bomb them or shoot them, even though these kids were nascent insurgents, sympathizers by birth, so people said, and in fact the military did bomb them, just the once—killed the kitchen, before we arrived—after all, the place was filled with a bunch of growing FMLN guerrilla fighters, so what did they expect? The problem is then the war moved over a little so then the orphanage was right in the middle of it and then the paro began so the buses stopped running and the kids couldn't go to school or leave the premises at all. This is about the time my boyfriend signed us up for the job. - - - - At the orphanage we held all-night prayer vigils. What is that? I wondered. This was my first night at the place. There was a Salvadoran woman whom I will call Bea who ran the orphanage and was always ready to tell me what was going on as if I were the stupidest person around, which I likely was. An all-night vigil, she said. You know, prayer. What for? Por la guerra. For the war. Have you heard we have a revolution going on? Well, I didn't think that praying all night was going to help, not to mention how smart is it to keep 8-year-olds up past 10, but, OK, let's all pray for the war. What initiative we'd show God, what enterprise. - - - - I was a Calvinist-Marxist-Kierkegaardian Christian. To put it in a way that accurately reflects my inaccurate understanding: Calvinists believe that God has already decided your fate. You can pray or strive or whatnot and you should, for some reason, but there isn't much you can do about a thing. The liberation theologians, on the other hand, believe that fate has not yet been determined. We must take (armed) action on earth, seize the promised land, force the future. I often found these two combined to be confusing, but luckily they were balanced by a dose of Kierkegaard: Yes, you're right, the thing is absurd. Who could believe such nonsense. But if it made sense, what would be so special about faith? At the orphanage they weren't any of those. They were evangelical: Let's just sit here and pray, by God. Maybe we'll get what we want by pleading. - - - - So my first night we all sat down together on the floor. We lit candles and we sang songs to God. Please take care of everybody, we prayed. You are so wonderful, God, we said. Outside, the shooting started up, which surprised me. I hadn't realized how close we were to the fighting. It sounded like it was right outside. Now I could see the sense in an all-night vigil. Explosions shook the floor and the children began crying. These were the children whose villages had been burned to the ground, their parents pulled away, shot or tortured, while they hid in a bush and watched. I had no idea what I was supposed to do. - - - - I tried to come up with projects. It was at the orphanage that I had the idea of planting a garden. I had done something like this in the second grade—not outside, but in little cups at our desks, some indestructible vine. There was plenty of dirt and grass around El Salvador. Go ahead, said Bea. I guess she decided not to point out that these kids had come from agrarian villages. A man came once a week to bring supplies and when he did he took me to a town where I could buy seeds. I was happy with my industriousness. I was ready to direct the orphans. They surrounded me. They looked on curiously. I was crouching on the ground. My boyfriend came over. What are you planting? he said. I held up the packages. Flowers? he said. They didn't have any vegetable seeds? He took the packages. He read them slowly, one by one. You think they have a shortage of flowers? I put down my little spade. No, no, he said. By all means. Bring on the flowers. I'll sit right here and watch. - - - - My boyfriend was a real hit. You should have seen him out there running around in circles with the boys. Making them do push-ups. They loved him. It was awful. They were scared of me. A girl who couldn't pat a tortilla. Who could barely carry water. Who couldn't sew. I was a disaster. I was scared of them, too. - - - - The truth is it didn't work out. I won't say what I did to result in my dismissal. I was 18, OK? Let's just say that my ideas about Christianity were more liberal than Bea's (they weren't allowed to dance or wear makeup, to give you an idea) and I knew a few things that teenage girls like to do for fun. They kicked us (me) out after a couple of weeks. The paro was over by this time. It had been over and started and over and started and over by this time. The man came and drove us away from the orphanage. He dropped us off on an empty road and left. - - - - Well, I said to my boyfriend. We stood on the road with our backpacks. We better figure out how to get out of here. How can you be fired from a job that doesn't pay? My boyfriend was marveling at this. I looked up and down the road. I squinted. Which way do you think we should go? Didn't you do any baby-sitting in high school? It wasn't my fault, I said. OK. Whose fault was it, then? I never said I wanted to come here. Oh, I see. He was really working himself up. He was throwing his arms out and shouting. I see. It's my fault. That's it, I said. I'm leaving. We can't stay here, now can we. He gestured to here—a bowl of blue, a stack of clouds, a road running over a summit. Nothing. Not even a pig scratching around. Not even a rooster. I turned and started walking. Where are you going? he called. Hey, he said. Where do you think you're going? I yelled across the flat of field. Away from you! Fine! I hate you! I screamed. I hate you, too! he screamed back. He walked off in the other direction. I kept walking. I was so upset I could barely see. I wiped away my tears with violent swipes across my face. Not even a telephone pole on the horizon. Just a white sky. I walked on, crying and hiccupping, down one hill and up another. I was angry and ashamed and I hated him with the freshness of wet cement, a new imprint, a hand coming down on my mind and marking it. I shifted my stupid backpack and walked on. Who did he think he was, bringing me to a place like this, the bully? Oh, I'd show him. I imagined myself telling the story to a blurry assemblage of strangers, defending myself, explaining. I stopped. I was at the bottom of a hill. I turned around, but my view was blocked. I couldn't see him. The tears started coming again. Far off was a line of mountains. Not a town in sight. I had no idea how to get home. I went on. I came to the top of a hill and looked back. He had stopped and was standing, a lone figure on a hill, the one vertical object. The hum of mosquitoes, the sweep of valley air. He was looking toward me. I kept going, but more slowly. I increased the distance between us by smaller increments. I looked back again. He was walking in my direction. I went even slower. I strolled past thin white birds standing in the fields. He followed, and in this way we went over the hills. Finally I stopped. I brushed the dust from my dress and turned to face him. He came closer and closer. He was right in front of me. Marry me, he said.
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