5
Chapter Five
I dreamed that I stood on a platform before a vast audience. There was a hush as I opened my mouth to speak. No sound came, and in that endless second of my dream I remembered other dreams in which I had been frightened and had tried to scream but had found myself incapable of uttering a sound. The agony of the effort had awakened me. Now, in my dream, I decided that the simplest way of escape from this expectant audience was to wake up. Yet I felt a sense of undeniable obligation to them. I had come to say something, and they were waiting to hear it. But I could not remember the words. I stood as motionless and breathless as one does when he is about to sneeze. Then I began to squeak and creak. My dismay gave way to relief. Quichua! I thought. Such sounds as I had never heard poured forth from my mouth, and suddenly I awoke. The sound went on, and my mind groped to identify it. A donkey. That must be what it was. I had never heard a donkey bray, but the squeaking and creaking were followed by a recognizable heehaw, and then I heard the lash of a whip, the clanking of water cans and an angry shout. The donkey clopped down the road and I opened my eyes.
My own bedroom, in my own house. Indi Urcu. My mission station. I stretched my feet toward the corners of the bed, luxuriating for the first time in over six months in its comfort. It was my own, not the short, squarish Ecuadorian one I had used in Ambato. There was no one waiting breakfast for me. There would be no Spanish lesson today, no journey, no more half-unpacked living. I could settle and take possession of the whole house. I had a whole day before me. In fact, I thought, as I jumped out of bed, the whole town was mine now, and the Indians. A promising task, a life’s work. Through the window I could see the valley shining in the sun, mist rising above the rooftops of the village, and the Indians trotting by on the road. Always trotting—one leading a donkey, one pulling a pig tied by a leg, women with great nets full of clay pots, men with straw mats in rolls on their backs, towering loads of fodder and corn and hay. They were all in a hurry, and I felt that I, too, must hurry to meet them. I dressed quickly and flung open the front door, prepared to shout a glad greeting to the world. My enthusiasm was tempered when none of the passing Indians lifted his head to glance in my direction. Their burdens were supported by a band slung across the forehead, and they kept their eyes on the road.
From many an ancient river, from many a palmy plain
They call us to deliver their land from error’s chain.
From rivers and plains, perhaps, I thought, but not from the high Andes. Not this morning, anyway. Well, I reflected, it’s gratifying to see the Indians so industrious, so bent on the business of the day. I, too, have business—the King’s business—and they little know that it concerns them.
Breakfast was the first item, and I found enough food and utensils to make a hasty meal and then set about putting the house in order. Crates, barrels and trunks stood in every room, some of them unopened since that last day in the basement at home when my father had nailed down the lids. Friends and neighbors had come in to help pack, each one wanting a part in a missionary project which originated so close to home.
I sorted towels and sheets—a class of young, married women at my church had supplied them, along with a beautiful bedspread, “because even though you’re a missionary we want you to have some nice things”—and stacked them neatly in a foot locker in the back corner room which I planned to use as a sort of bath and storage room. The house had no bathroom indoors, but there was a faucet in the kitchen and an ancient flush toilet in a tiny shack at the back. I would buy myself an enamel basin and pitcher for indoor bathing. As I attempted to place some trunks and boxes parallel with the wall, I discovered that no corner of the whole house would have satisfied a carpenter’s square. The walls of each room appeared to be approximately the same length, but my boxes sat askew in the corners, and my brain seemed likewise set askew. There were too many doors. Each room opened into two others and I found it hard to decide where I could place a dresser which I did not yet have. I pushed a trunk against the biggest piece of wall in the bedroom and hung a mirror over it. I had wondered, as I packed this mirror, if my having it might be indicative of an unseemly vanity in a missionary, but decided to bring it anyway, unable to visualize a five-year term on the field without so much as a critical glance at my own face.
I pulled things out of the trunks and thought—sometimes with amusement, sometimes with real affection and gratitude—of the people who had given them to me. A case of insect repellent and six embroidered dish towels from an old-maid schoolteacher who had taught me when I was in the third grade; a parka from a man who had once done some climbing in the Andes in Chile, and a pith helmet from a group of Girl Scouts who thought that Ecuador was all tropical jungle; tablecloths of all colors, odds and ends of dishes, camping equipment from Army surplus stores, old costume jewelry to trade with the Indians, Bible pictures and flannelgraph figures for teaching Bible stories “in places where you can’t speak the language,” as one eager Sunday-school pupil suggested; a braided rug made by a shut-in who collected scraps of wool and silk and nylon and tulle and cotton from her friends and worked slowly day after day twisting them into ovals of all sizes. “You’ll want something pretty down there for your house. They won’t have anything like this in South America, will they?” I had assured her that they wouldn’t, and I spread the rug now on the floor of the front room on the right—this would be the living room. It made a bright mottled spot on the rough wood, and I decided that it was not so bad after all.
I went back into the bedroom, realizing that I was not carrying out my work in a very orderly fashion, and began to make the bed. Frances Rogers, wife of the director of my mission board, had written to tell me to bring a bed—if there was one thing a missionary needed after a long, hard day it was a good bed, and Ecuadorian beds were “impossible.” I had been a trifle inclined to sneer at this kind of advice. I wanted to identify with the natives; I even wanted to suffer somewhat. But Frances was the wife of my boss, as it were, and I capitulated.
I took a look at the living room and decided it was hopeless to do anything there until I bought some furniture, so I began clearing the breakfast things from the dining room. A door led outside to the lean to kitchen at the back, and it was inconvenient to have to open the door, go outside, open another door and take the dishes into the kitchen, but it was out of the question to eat in the kitchen. There was no room for a table and it was without any windows whatever. If I closed the door it was like a dungeon; if I left it open it was too cold. There was nothing in the kitchen except a tile wood-burning stove with a rusted iron top, and a very low concrete sink with a single faucet. Everything was in need of an energetic scrubbing and sweeping and scouring, but at last it was acceptably clean and I felt I could properly introduce all my shiny new utensils and set about washing the dishes. I had a bright turquoise plastic dishpan, hot water from the stove and Ivory soap. Mrs. MacDonald had included the soap in her box of supplies, and although it was admittedly expensive I told myself that missionaries were justified in using it after I saw the alternative—dark brown blocks of waxy substance with bits of straw, paper or fluff embedded in them. It would be positively dangerous to use that for dishes. Maybe for laundry, but certainly not for dishes. You owe it to yourself, all the missionaries said, to keep healthy, and I agreed that they had a point; but then, had I a right deliberately to separate myself from the people I had come to serve? If they could use this soap all their lives, couldn’t I? Was it legitimate to spend the Lord’s money on expensive imports which could only widen the gap between us? Oh dear, I thought, why must life be complicated by such trivialities?
I plunged my hands into the hot, soapy water and began rotating the dish cloth, a gift from my niece, a nine-year-old who saved her allowance so that she might help her missionary aunt, just as I had once done. The lonely mission station, the civilized soap; the dark kitchen and the shining pots and pans; the cold tile floor and the hot dishwater—these things jumbled themselves happily in my mind, a nice mixture of mortifications and gratifications.
It was very quiet in the kitchen. I could hear nothing from the street, for a high wall surrounded the back patio on three sides and the house was wedged between two other houses, part of a solid row of whitewashed walls which filled the block.
A patch of sunlight was sliding down the far wall of the kitchen. Indi Urcu, Hill of the Sun. A lovely name, and this morning it seemed to me a lofty, shining place.
Great is Thy faithfulness, O God my Father,
There is no shadow of turning with Thee. . . .
All I have needed Thy hand hath provided—
Great is Thy faithfulness, Lord, unto me.
I hummed the tune as I went from room to room, jotting down little tasks to be done, things to be bought. Such trivialities had at last become synonymous with missionary work, for I had arrived in “The will of God for my life.” It had been a magic phrase, a thing sought after, prayed about and worried over since I had reached the age of accountability. I wanted to shout my achievement from the housetops, but the next best medium of announcement was the prayer letter, which I must mail right away. I took it out of the typewriter, read it over, decided it was quite a good letter, and imagined it being read aloud in missionary meetings (“Here’s one from Margaret Sparhawk, our new missionary in Ecuador. She works with the Quichua Indians”—they will have trouble with the pronunciation of that name, I thought). I saw the letter tacked up on church bulletin boards and beside maps of the world, a colored pin marking the little country of Ecuador, a ribbon stretched to a photograph of myself at the side. Over the map a large caption read: “Unto the uttermost parts of the earth.”
As I folded the letter and put it into an airmail envelope I thought of Mavis, who would mimeograph and mail out copies for me from Des Moines. She was a secretary who had worked at the Bible school I attended, and had offered to do this for me even though she worked all day and did the cooking and housework for her invalid mother. The Lord wouldn’t let me go to the mission field,” she had said, “but He will let me do this much for you. I would count it a privilege to have this tiny share in your work.” Bless her, I thought, God bless her! She’s probably praying for me even now.
The MacDonalds popped in as they had said they would, their cheeks rosy and their eyes shining as they came up the walk to the front door. They had had a good night with my landlady; she had let them read a portion of Scripture to her before they retired and at breakfast they had given her a Gospel of John and elicited a promise to read it and to keep a watchful eye on the new missionary. They told me that they would drive up whenever they could for a visit, that I should keep my door and gate locked and not open the windows at night; be careful not to walk too fast or too far in this high altitude; wash my hands as soon as I came in after a trip to town or to Indian houses, and not eat any raw vegetables without scalding them first. All these instructions had been given me by other missionaries in Ambato and I listened politely, but a trifle less earnestly than I had the first time.
“Goodbye, Margaret dear girlie,” Mrs. MacDonald said. “Remember we’re upholding you every morning” (she rolled the r’s beautifully) “before the Throne of Grace. The Lord will keep you. Write to us.”
There were no Indians in the streets as I made my way toward the center of town. They must be already in the market place, I decided, doing whatever it is they come to do. It was a white man’s town and I was sorry about that I wished there were such a thing as an Indian village, with little houses in a circle, where I could live in their midst and be a daily testimony for Christ. But mountain Indians had no such villages. There might be a cluster of houses here and there, but it was not public as a town is public, and an outsider did not simply move in on them. I had read with envy of missionaries in Africa who lived in villages with the people, or in compounds near the villages into which the natives streamed by the hundreds seeking help of one kind or another. Someday I might have their advantageous position, but the first step was learning to know the town where the Indians did their trading.
It was very cold when the wind whipped down from the heights, but the sun shone fiercely when it was still and I was alternately too cold and too warm. The market place was bustling with Indians when I arrived, all of them impervious to the weather, with heavy ponchos and shawls. Nearly every individual, man, woman or child, wore a hat—great wide-brimmed white ones, dark fedoras, misshapen basins, shallow-crowned sombreros; some of them were set at a jaunty angle, tilted toward the forehead, others were crammed straight down to the ears. There were people wearing two or three hats, one on top of the other—perhaps they meant to sell some of them, or had bought a hat for a friend and found this the simplest method of carrying it home. Babies wore hats like their parents’ or knitted caps. A few women had cloths folded in the shape of a hat, or cloths laid across the crowns of their hats. Some wore cloths over their hair with a hat sitting precariously on top. The throng of buyers and sellers was a dark, moving sea, bobbing with disks and bubbles.
I skirted the crowd, noticing that very few wore anything on their feet. How did they endure the icy dew of the mountains and the clammy cobblestones of the town?
My first stop was the post office, where I wanted to mail my prayer letter. Two of the women who sold stamps in little kiosks said they had no airmail stamps. A third found one with difficulty. “But, señorita, no one sends airmail letters from here,” she explained. Mr. MacDonald had arranged for a post office box for me and I found that mail had been forwarded from Guayaquil and Ambato. There was also a notice of a package that could be retrieved from the window. This was not a simple matter, I discovered. First I must produce my cédula de identidad, then fill out a form which required a government stamp, and the stamp had to be purchased from another window. There was a line of people at this window, standing humbly waiting their turn. I could see no one behind the grill. I joined the queue and at that moment a well-dressed white man came up behind me, hesitated a moment, and then strode forward to where an Indian stood. The man snatched the Indian’s hat from his head and flung it across the hallway, keeping his chin high and his eyes straight in front of him. The act nearly took my breath away and I watched aghast as the Indian stepped silently from the line and the man calmly moved into the empty place. Not a word was spoken, not an eyebrow lifted that I could see. No one, in feet, had apparently noticed. The Indian was a small man with a slope to his shoulders. He wore calf-length white trousers which flared out above his deeply creased insteps, and a ragged poncho of a nondescript dark hue. Bereft of his hat he looked frightened and ashamed, and he crammed it quickly on to his head again, went back to pick up his bundle, and then came and stood quietly behind me. I wanted desperately to speak to him but I knew it was impossible. Perhaps he spoke only Quichua, and if he knew Spanish I dared not use it before so many white people. What, indeed, would I have said? My heart was like a cold stone in my chest and I found that I was clenching my purse till my fingertips were white. I turned halfway around to give him at least a sympathetic glance but he was occupied with his bundle.
When I finally reached the window the man lifted his hands with a circular motion, palms upward, and said, “There are no more.” What should I do? I asked. “Come back at five o’clock, señorita. There will be more stamps at five.” He was so cheerful, so satisfied in the consciousness of doing his job well that one could scarcely be displeased with him. This was the way things were done in Ecuador, and the sooner I learned to accept it, the easier life would be. I turned away from the window and started toward the street. A woman swathed in black from head to toe laid a gnarled hand on my arm.
“Just a little token of love, please, señorita, for the love of God. Just a little charity for the love of God, I am poor . . .” I groped in my mind for the Bible’s sanction as I fished in my purse for what she wanted. “Give to him that asketh thee.” A coin in her hand shut off the petition. She murmured, “May God pay you,” and walked away.
There was an overpowering stench of urine as I stepped into the street from the post office. The walls of the building had a number of abutments which provided a modicum of privacy, and this encouraged the townsmen to make use of them. I began to walk toward the little food store I had seen as the MacDonalds drove me through the town toward my house.
Partly blocking the doorway of the store were two glass cases in which I saw rolls, some greenish-colored sugared balls, round white cheeses, and empanadas. I went inside. The woman who was reading a newspaper behind the counter pulled herself up and leaned over the worn board toward me.
“Buenos Mas, señorita. What little thing?”
“Various things,” I said, studying my list, which I had written in Spanish lest I forget the words for the items I needed. Then I remembered I had not returned her greeting. How many more times would I make this blunder?
“Buenos Mas,” I said sheepishly.
The shelves were packed with cans, bottles, packages, many of which bore familiar American labels, but the prices horrified me. Two and a half times as much as one would pay in the States. I eschewed the foreign imports except for a few things which seemed indispensable—a package of tea, a can of instant coffee, detergent and toilet paper. It gave me pleasure to buy the cheap national foods such as rice, flour, dried beans and peas, sugar, butter, cheese and bread. The woman went over to the doorway to measure out the sugar, which stood in a burlap sack with the top rolled part way down. Sacks of grains I did not recognize stood beside it as her display of goods, for the store lacked a show window, or, for that matter, windows of any kind. The open door provided all the light and display space it had.
Over the counter was a large sign which said:
Goodbye remedies!
With one of our healing bracelets it is no longer necessary to use medicines. These bracelets will cure any disease, pain, or sickness. s/100
The woman came back with a sheet of newspaper containing the coarse, yellow sugar. She laid it on the counter and skillfully began twisting the edges together to form a neat, tight package. She saw me reading the sign.
“They are very, very good, señorita. I have sold many of them, and they cure anything.”
“Is that so?” I replied. “It is just a bracelet which one wears?”
“Yes. I will show it to you.” She went into a back room and returned with a bracelet, a very ordinary-looking cheap plastic circle.
“You must wear it all the time,” she said, “and you will find that your sicknesses disappear gradually. Why, my sister-in-law was dying with diseased kidneys. She bought one of these—she didn’t have the money but I gave her credit—and she was absolutely cured in two weeks. Absolutely cured. I know many who have been cured.”
I smiled and assured her that though I was not sick now the bracelet was indeed interesting.
“You are visiting here, señorita?” she inquired.
“No, I have come to live here.”
“To live here?”
“Yes, if God wills.”
“Ah, how good. You are an American?”
“Yes.”
“And how is it that you come here?”
“I am a missionary.”
“A missionary! Ah, how nice. But you are not alone?”
“Yes, I am alone.”
“But—your family?”
“My parents live in the United States.”
“Your parents are alive?”
“Yes.”
“Both of them? Mother and father?”
“Oh yes. They are both alive, and my brothers and sisters live there, too.”
“And they do not mind that you have come so far away?” She looked at me curiously, moving back to lean on the shelves behind her and folding her arms.
“No, they do not mind.”
“But—you are alone . . . you are single?”
“Yes.”
“Have you children?” The question startled me a little.
“Oh no, señora, I have no children.”
“Ay, señorita. Not even one?”
“No, señora, not even one. You see—I am single.”
A small smile played in her eyes as she looked intently into my face, then appraised my entire person.
“Ay, what a shame. How sad to be alone. But you are a missionary, no?”
“Yes. I am going to be a missionary to the Indians.”
Her hands fluttered and dropped to her sides.
“To the Indians ?”
“Yes, señora. I have much interest in the Indians.”
“But señorita! The Indians have no souls! They are not souls. Do you think, señorita, that the Indians are like the rest of us?”
“I think they have souls. I want to teach them about God—about Jesus Christ”
“They will not learn, señorita. They will never understand you. It would be better—much better—to teach us. We need to learn. Indians do not need to learn. Only to work. They are like animals, isn’t that true, señorita?”
“In my opinion, we all need to learn. But Indians can learn too. They are human beings like the rest of us. They are not just animals, señora. Christ died for them, too, did He not?”
“Perhaps. Who knows if it is so? But then what do they care if He died? They don’t go to church. They don’t listen to the priest—only to be baptized and married and buried do they go to the priest”
“I hope they will listen to me. I believe God has sent me. He can help me.”
“Well, señorita, you are valiant! God doesn’t make them listen to the priest, but perhaps He will make them listen to you! Well, may you have good luck. We are here at your service, señorita.” She handed me the groceries one by one, for there were no paper bags to be had, and I put them into my basket “Until another day, señora, and thank you.”
“At your orders, señorita. Until later!”
When I had succeeded in finding a seamstress and a shoemaker, and had bought a broom and some straw mats, I went back to my house. Approaching it on the street, I decided it was an attractive little house with its whitewashed walls and tiled roof, and it was, above everything, mine. When I went inside, it was not really warm, but there was shelter from the dry, cold wind outside, and there was privacy. I put my basket on the table and sat down to read the mail.
“We have put your prayer card with the pictures of you on our church bulletin board. We prayed for you by name last Wednesday night and the pastor mentioned you in his Sunday-morning pastoral prayer,” said a letter from the church secretary at home in Pennsylvania. The rest of her letter dealt with local church gossip and a visiting missionary whose ministry was “a blessing to us all. Ralph Stone went forward on the invitation to dedicate his life to foreign missionary service. Three others stood to say they would pray for the Lord’s will for their lives.”
The chair I was sitting in, for a foreigner who had known foam rubber and form-fitting construction, was far from comfortable. I shifted my weight, trying to make myself fit the shape of the chair, and tore open another letter. This one was from a college friend. “I can only try to imagine you there at your station, actually beginning on the missionary work you have looked forward to for so long. It must be thrilling. Remember when we were in the Africa prayer group and you thought you were going to Africa? Well, the Lord’s ways are not our ways! Praise the Lord!” One from a former Sunday-school teacher: “We miss you here, Margaret, but we are thankful you have followed the Lord. Do let us know what your house is like. It is hard to picture you there, way up in the Andes, alone. May the Lord give you grace and wisdom and strength as you commence your work for Him.”
There were some family letters, one of which enclosed a recent snapshot of my aunt, standing under a jacaranda tree in India with a group of eager children at her feet. There was a magazine containing reports of mission work among lepers in India, orphans in Korea, illiterate slum children in Rio de Janeiro. “The Heathen for Our Heritage,” read the title of one article. It told of a meeting in Malaysia which Muslims had attended. “History was made that night as between 350 and 400 people turned out to hear the Gospel of Jesus Christ! Beloved, the seed is still growing for we receive reports of many people asking questions, coming to the services, and souls are being saved. God is giving us the heathen as our heritage! Pray for us!”
I marveled at the author’s assurance of accomplishment, his candid claim to an extraordinary part in God’s eternal program. Would I ever be qualified to make such claims? The activities of the day hardly seemed the antecedents of any history-making achievements. I gathered up the empty envelopes and realized I had no wastebasket. I put them in a pile in a corner and wrote “wastebasket” on my shopping list.
The day had come and gone, and the Indians were again passing my front gate, oblivious, returning to the hills of home, their grains and potatoes and fodder exchanged for kerosene, salt—what else did they buy there? Iron plow blades? Cheap cloth? Bread? They were still trotting, the children tagging behind, bearing like their elders burdens of varied sizes and shapes. I watched them go up the hill until their hats were mere specks against the shadowed fields, and longed to let them know in some way that they had a friend in the white man’s village. I had had some vague understanding during my stay in Ambato of the distinction between the Indian and the white man, but it was not until today that I realized the magnitude of the gulf fixed between them. It dawned on me, moreover, that having chosen the Indians as my people I was now to be identified with the despised. The white people, who had always been polite—sometimes to the point of obsequiousness—would perhaps come to hate me. Would it be possible to befriend both classes without offending either? I wondered. “I, the Lord, have called thee.” If this was true, might He not lead me in paths that He Himself had trod? The Scripture said of Him that He was “despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief.” Would I shrink from such a calling? No, Lord, no—only give me an entrance with the Indians; let me accomplish what You have sent me to do.
For a long time the Indians streamed back up into the barren, gashed mountains where their homes were. They lived in the cold, scratching a hard living from hostile soil. I could hear the soft padding of their bare feet and the occasional clink of metal or creak of hemp, but few voices reached me. Was their silence hostile or fearful because they were in the white man’s world, or were they just as silent within the mud walls of their homes? What pleasures did they know? Was there anything to laugh about in their lives?
I watched a young woman hurrying up the road, her hands nimbly spinning a skein of wool. A baby, wearing a soft felt fedora identical to his mother’s, jounced on her back, one little brown foot patting her hip and one hand patting his own hip as he rode in the shawl sling. They seemed contented enough, but what of the baby’s future? What kind of life had he to look forward to? And what did the mother know of lasting peace? I had something to tell her, and how gladly she would hear it when I had the chance!