9
Chapter Nine
In the three weeks before the Guayaquil conference I visited the Chimbu hut as often as I could, sometimes when Pedro was at home, sometimes when he was not. Rosa was always in or near the house, always working—cooking, spinning, carrying water, carding wool, husking com—but she learned to accept my coming though she did not clearly understand that her language was incomprehensible to me, or that I wanted to learn to speak it. White people did not speak her language, she knew, but perhaps because she herself had never had to learn it she did not understand why I had to. Was it not perfectly “hearable”? She had certainly not come across a white person who wanted to speak Quichua in preference to Spanish. So my questions and antics, intended to elicit Quichua phrases, she took as a white person’s whims, not to be fathomed or challenged. Pava, although she was very quiet and as busy as her mother, missed nothing, her great black eyes following every movement of mine while her hands went on scraping the steel combs over raw wool or beating the dirt out of the tangled piles with a rod. Jorge usually managed to disappear just before I came into the house, but Romero joined in with my work as though it were a game.
“Señorita!” he would call, popping out from under a sheepskin. ‘Who am I?”
“You are Romero!” I would answer, in Quichua, proud to remember the pronoun and verb form.
“You are Romero!” he would repeat roguishly.
“No, I am Margarita.” This required two different forms.
“She says, ‘I am Margarita, I am Margarita,’” he would chant, mimicking exactly my faulty intonation, for it was no easy thing to forget the English way of answering a question and to reproduce accurately the Quichua intonation. When Romero imitated me, however, I caught the difference, so his mocking proved a great help.
He taught me to count up to ten, but when I thought I had it, he would deliberately confuse me by counting with me and skipping a number. He would point to his foot and give me the word for hand, or to his head and say, “hair.” I wished ardently that I knew how to scold in Quichua.
I visited other homes as well, but I had not worked out any plan for covering the territory I called my own—it was for too vast. Any contemplation of a systematic coverage would have discouraged me. I merely set out in whatever direction my mood dictated, having asked God beforehand for guidance to the right places, trusting that circumstances, mood, weather, chance encounters on the road might indicate the ones to whom God wanted me to speak. Long ago, when the servant of Isaac sought a wife for his master’s son, his prayer was that the woman of whom he should ask a drink might be the one whom the Lord had appointed. It seemed to me a fairly reliable method of guidance: let the one to whom I speak be the one.
Each home I visited seemed a duplicate of the last, and the Indians themselves hardly differed in their response. They were overawed at the presence of a foreign woman and listened very politely but noncommittally to whatever I said, whether it had to do with the weather or their crops or salvation through Christ. They nodded in solemn agreement and said “St, señorita,” and I knew that some missionaries would accept this as an indication of their hunger for God’s truth. Sometimes things worked together happily and I would come upon a man or woman at just the right moment—when he was resting from his plowing or she from her water carrying—and they would be willing to listen for longer than usual. I would bring the conversation around to their need of a Savior and they would agree and then, at such times, I could readily believe that I had been led. More often it seemed that nothing had worked very well and I returned to my house disheartened, feeling that I had gained little either in friendship or in language data. These were the times, I decided, when I had not been led. My faith worked best when things worked as I had planned.
I was to blame, of course, I confessed privately. Two things were wrong—two, at least. I was uncertain as to exactly what I ought to be doing, and I was still lacking in spirituality. I looked forward to the missionary conference in Guayaquil, where I might once more be with English-speaking people and learn from older missionaries how to go about my work, and I hoped that the meetings would provide spiritual fortification.
My vagueness about the course my work should follow made me uncomfortable. I was always sure what needed to be done in my house. It was a pleasure to get up in the morning, cook breakfast, clean and straighten things, shop for food, collect mail, do errands and write letters. It was when those things were finished and I was at last free to do missionary work that I found I did not know just what missionary work was. But of course this is all a part of it, a physical framework for spiritual operations, I told myself. All that one does is to be done “to the glory of God.” How familiar the idea was to me. Yet somehow one had to divide it into categories—one could not qualify either for financial support or for prayer support simply by washing dishes in another country. There had to be, besides this inspiring view of housework, a demonstration of deeds accomplished, worthier causes pursued.
I had heard of missionaries’ having servants so that they might be “free to do the more vital things to which God had called them,” and this sounded altogether justifiable. When I stopped to consider what vital things I would do if I had a maid the answer, surprisingly, was not ready, but I was confident that I would surely find something. There would be some program, some method or means or project I could adopt besides my present pursuit of the language. The real work would begin, I ventured to believe, when the language was conquered—but then, one read of so much that missionaries did without knowing the language at all! I would have to confer with Woodrow Rogers to find out just what the mission policy was. How stupid of me not to have inquired more carefully before I launched out alone! If I just knew the policy. . .
But then there was still my lack of spirituality, of which, God knew, I had plenty of evidence every day. Why, the very evening of the day I had first visited Rosa I had come home elated, praising God for progress, and as I turned the key in the lock a fingernail snapped. Damn it all! was my immediate response, followed by shock in thinking how shocked everyone would be to know that such a word was even a part of my vocabulary. Of course I had not said it aloud—the word was forbidden at home, was not so much as admitted to thought—but I had thought it, and I thought it again when, a minute later, as I was searching for a nail file to repair the damage, the bureau drawer stuck first on one side, then on the other, and suddenly jerked out and dropped to the floor with a bang.
“Missionaries are human beings, after all,” was a phrase I had heard, and at that moment it struck me as being so patently ridiculous that I wondered if anyone had ever really uttered it. Human beings! Dear God, what else could I or anyone else have thought? Could we have imagined that they were superhuman, perhaps, or ex-human? People who had turned into something else, subject no longer to human passion and temptation, invulnerable to the ordinariness of living? My mind jumped back to the missionary homes I had visited since coming to Ecuador—the squalling babies, rickety ironing boards, endless discussions of hepatitis and maid problems and customs difficulties. But, I argued with myself, God wants more than this. He offers us something higher and richer, and by His grace I will appropriate what He offers, I will be spiritual-minded, even if I am a human being. Now and then my thoughts dwelt on a suitably spiritual level (it seemed easier when I was with the Indians than when I was at home) but I was not the missionary my friends hoped I was, of that I was certain, and I wanted desperately to qualify.
The MacDonalds took me to the Guayaquil conference in their jeep and as we bumped over the roads and ate oat cakes and tea in the grass we talked of the work and I told them about Pedro and Rosa and my hopes for them. They were amazed that I had gotten as far as I had with the Chimbus. “Why, that’s wonderful! Why, what a story! It took us months to get into any Indian homes! Oh Margaret, the Lord is good, isn’t He? The Lord sent you here!” said Mrs. MacDonald, “and He will fulfill His purposes, for the Indians, and for you, dear girlie.”
When we reached the port city they took me to the home of Joe and Jenny Twombley, a couple sent out from home by the same mission as mine, who had recently written to invite me to stay with them during the week of conference. When Joe opened the door there was an odor of fried fish and vinegar, mingled with the steamy smell of clothes being ironed. We went along a dark hallway to the dining room, where a middle-aged woman stood hunched over an ironing board, her cotton housedress clinging to her perspiring back, her hair pasted in wisps to her forehead. The belt was missing from her dress though the loops which should have held it were there. She stopped ironing long enough to shake hands with me when Joe introduced us.
“Guess we’re Ecuadorian now,” she said, laughing. “We always shake hands!”
“Myrtle works in the Oriente—you know, the eastern jungle,” said Joe, “with the Quichuas. You two’ll have to get together and compare language notes. Have a powwow or whatever you call it. Here’s Jenny—and our future halfback, George.”
His wife came in from the kitchen with a very plump, beaming baby in her arms. The baby flourished a spoon with applesauce on it. Some of it got on his mother’s hair.
“Oh, Georgie baby, be careful, honey. Come on out in the kitchen, Margaret, while I just finish up a few things, then we’ll be ready to eat.”
The kitchen was a tiny sort of cave—tinier and darker than mine—with a black sink in one corner and a gasoline pressure stove propped on a packing crate, on which stood the frying pan with the fish I had smelled and a pot of something boiling. Jenny began to bustle around, stirring things and getting out dishes, so I offered to feed George. I was greatly relieved to find that he had been fed. Jenny said there was nothing to do, really, so I went and stood by the open back door, where I saw a large rat sitting calmly in the middle of the narrow patio, nibbling a bit of garbage. He made no move when I appeared. There was a tree in one corner of the yard which threw its shade over most of it, but not a blade of grass redeemed the slick hard surface of mud. The only green besides the tree was the mold which colored the mud.
“I suppose you’re used to these rats out here?” I asked.
“Oh yes—aren’t they awful? Guayaquil’s full of them, but you do get used to it all, I guess.” Another one ran along the foundation of the house which backed up to the other side of the yard. Piercing Latin music came from a cheap radio behind one of the bamboo walls of the other house. The volume was turned up full and the music seemed ceaselessly to repeat the same five notes.
“About ready, Mommy?” Joe called to his wife.
“Yes, right away,” Jenny answered. “If you’ll just take George, Daddy—here, put him in his high chair. Go to Daddy, Georgie. Here’s a cookie. Want a cookie, Georgie?”
When the meal was ready, we sat down at a heavy wooden table covered with a plastic tablecloth—the same one, I noted, that had been on the table when I was here before. It was hideous, really. On the first occasion I had viewed it and the heavy plastic dishes and steel flatware as good, practical missionary equipment—didn’t I have the same sort of things in my baggage, all but the plastic tablecloth?—but now I couldn’t help feeling that they had carried the denied of niceties just a bit far. This downright ugliness—the sticky rice piled in the bowl, the gray-green peas and greasy fish, the careless appearance of the women—was it necessary? Must soldiers of the cross look as though they had just survived a pitched battle? Was this what was required of us?
“Fold your handies, Georgie,” said Jenny.
“Fold handies, George, we’re going to thank Jesus,” said Joe, bowing his head, watching to see whether the baby was prepared to pray. The baby put his two fat hands together and Joe asked the blessing and then began to serve the food.
A child began to cry.
“Oh—Sandy’s awake. Will you get her, Joe?”
There appeared in the doorway a child of about three, wearing only underpants, her hair a tangled mat of straw, her face stained and contorted with crying. She kept crying. Jenny reached for her, but she stood on one foot and bawled. This set George to crying loudly too, and the parents tried in vain to quiet them.
“I guess it must be the heat. They’ve been doing this every day now. Maybe the water. Come to Mommy, Sandy.” Sandy stopped crying for a moment, then caught sight of me and burst into fresh yells. Myrtle tried.
“Come to Auntie Myrtle, baby. Auntie Myrtle take baby bye-bye. Go bye-bye, Sandy?”
The two babies screamed, the three adults tried all their tricks. The music outside was as loud as ever, as unremitting. The heat inside was suffocating. Poor Joe and Jenny, I thought. They were kind to invite me, but they had their hands full. I might have done them a favor by refusing their invitation. Well, here I was, and I would try to make the best of it. It was the meetings I had come for, at any rate.
The conference was to begin the next morning, but the regular prayer meeting of the Ecuadorian church took place that evening and I went with the Twombleys.
The church was a square room with unpainted wooden benches and a green concrete floor. The walls were pale green and there was a text printed across the front, La sangre de Jesucristo nos limpia de toda maldad. (The blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth us from all sin.) An upright piano stood on one side, an elaborately carved wooden pulpit occupied the center, and at the left was a large piece of white cardboard with a picture of a thermometer painted on it, indicating the progress of a Sunday-school memorization contest. I had sat in countless similar rooms and squirmed on the benches as the congregation sang and the preacher preached—churches ranging from the plain community church in Pennsylvania to country schoolhouses where I had held services when I spent a year in rural home mission work. I thought now of the blue-and-gray carpet in the first Sunday school I attended, and the brand-new smell of the little low varnished chairs on which we Beginners sat, peeking through our fingers at the patent-leather shoes on the carpet next to our own, and then of marching round the rows of chairs singing, “Dropping, dropping, dropping, dropping, hear the pennies fall, every one for Jesus, He will take them all.” I used to ponder just how He would do that. Did He really need them? I was told that He did, in order to get His work done. It made me feel sad to think of God waiting for our pennies. Mr. Lewis was the superintendent, and he always had an “object lesson” for the children. I remembered the glasses of colored water and the padlocks and different-sized spoons and posters and boxes and diagrams of hearts and crosses and crowns and clouds which he used for teaching us spiritual truths. I could not remember much about what those objects were supposed to illustrate. I watched and listened enthralled until he came to the part which began, “And now, boys and girls, this little box is like. . .” Then I would start studying his round steel-rimmed glasses and his tiny, neat mustache, and remember how he looked at his desk in the bank where he worked. My father had taken me in there one day and Mr. Lewis had admitted us behind the brass fence and then into a great, gleaming round door which led to a vault lined with little steel boxes, one of which belonged to my father. To have been permitted to pass that monstrous door seemed a very great thing to me, and I stood hushed in the sanctum, wondering why he had not told us about this round door instead of about cardboard boxes.
In the next Sunday school I attended, my teacher began each class by hissing, “All right now, girls, le’s jes’ have a word of prayer.” I remembered nothing of what she taught us but could not forget the grammar she used. (“Oncet I read about a clock that all the works into it was made outen wood.”) But she was, I understood, a “faithful soul,” and I was therefore expected to listen to her Sunday after Sunday.
It was the missionaries who spoke on special occasions in these Sunday schools to whom I listened with close attention. They told us about teaching little black or red or yellow boys and girls about Jesus. They taught us to sing “Jesus Loves Me” in half a dozen languages. I responded to the appeals they made, and dreamed of sailing to some far-off land where people waited under palm trees, straining their eyes toward the horizon until I should arrive to tell them what they longed to hear.
It was now long past the hour announced for the beginning of the prayer meeting, but only a dozen people had gathered. An old man opposite me at the back was reading a small New Testament, holding the book close to his eyes and moving his lips slowly. Several women with their hair in braids were talking in low tones. A young couple and a few children made up the rest of the congregation.
Soon Woodrow and Frances Rogers arrived. I had met them only briefly before, but had been impressed with Frances’ ability to look fresh and cheerful at all times in so hot and depressing a city as Guayaquil. She looked the same now. She was about thirty-five, plump and neat and self-assured. When she walked into the church her heels clicked lightly and her bracelets jingled.
“Margaret! How are you?” she said, coming over to where I sat waiting for the meeting to begin. “Oh, I’m so glad you got down to the conference. Well, how do you like it up there? How does this heat seem to you after being up there in those cold mountains? Woodrow! Here’s Margaret Sparhawk! Excuse me a minute, Margaret—I have to go speak to these people.” She sidled through to the aisle to greet some Ecuadorians, speaking not loudly, for we were in church, but not in a whisper either. Things seemed to be quite informal.
A few more minutes passed and a gray-haired missionary lady arrived whom Woodrow introduced to me as Miss Blake. She did not take time for more than the formalities of greeting me, and then went to the piano and began to leaf through some gaudily colored paperback chorus books before she began to play. The sustaining pedal on the piano was not functioning. She struck the keys briskly, as though they were the heads of naughty schoolboys which needed rapping, and the plink-plunk of the chords had a curious honky-tonk quality, even though I recognized the tune as one we had sung in English at a Bible conference, ‘The Whole Wide World for Jesus.” She played with great earnestness nodding her head up and down, as she looked first through her bifocals at the music, and then down at her hands.
A few more people straggled in and sat down diffidently as close to the back as possible. Then a door at the front opened and three men emerged—two short Ecuadorians dressed in black suits and black ties, and Woodrow Rogers, tall and bony and dressed in shirt sleeves and a bright bowtie. They went up the three steps onto the platform and the younger of the Ecuadorians stepped to the pulpit and began to speak in a very loud oratorical tone. There was a rustle of hymnbooks, Miss Blake thumped a brief introduction, and the congregation began to sing. This was followed by a prayer, led by the older of the two nationals. His voice rose and rose, then fell in little swoops till it reached the amen, in which several members of the audience joined him aloud. There was an audible sigh, a soft scraping as feet were rearranged, another rustle of hymnals. There was a second hymn, a third, then the announcements and offering and finally the preaching, the same routine followed in every church service I had ever attended.
The speaker took a long time finding the place in his huge Bible. He cleared his throat, looked out over the sparsely scattered audience, pushed his glasses down on his nose in order to look over the rims, surveyed the audience once more, cleared his throat authoritatively, and turned his eyes down to read through the glasses. He read a few verses and then spoke, gesturing widely with both hands, slapping the Bible now and then, adjusting his glasses, pointing skyward and then at us, pausing to find his place in the Bible again, turning over a leaf of notes, emphasizing with great clarity every consonant in the name Cristo, pronouncing it as though it were an indictment on his listeners. There. He was finished. The Gospel had been preached. There followed a period of prayer which was open to the floor and all of the adults present took part, all of them alike intoning their phrases as the men on the platform had done, everyone joining in to put a period in the form of an amen to each prayer.
Woodrow was asked to pronounce the benediction and we opened our eyes. The meeting was over, and the people began to move around, speaking to one another, fussing with hymn-books, collecting Bibles and purses. Most of them smiled and offered their hands to me as they passed. I said, “Buenas noches” and “Mucho gusto” and waited for Joe and Jenny, who were talking with the Rogerses. Myrtle and Miss Blake had their heads bent together over a large folder which looked like a Sunday-school lesson manual. Myrtle looked up.
“Hello, Margaret. Come and meet Miss Blake.”
“Yes—we met just before the meeting.”
Miss Blake put out her hand. “I didn’t shake your hand, though. In Ecuador we always shake hands.” She smiled at me, revealing yellowish but original teeth. Her handshake was very firm and brief. “We’re glad to have you with us. Where is it you’re working?”
“With the mountain Indians—not far from Wairapamba, where the MacDonalds live.”
“Well, that’s a needy field. A very needy field. You’ll have to learn Quichua, you know. That’s the first thing you’ll have to do.”
“Yes, I’m very much hoping to find an informant to help me.”
“Miss Blake has been in Ecuador for thirty-seven years, haven’t you, Miss Blake?” Myrtle said. “She worked with national pastors here in Guayaquil for some time, visiting homes and jails and handing out tracts and teaching Bible classes in some of the believers’ homes. Now she’s in Riobamba.”
“Riobamba’s a needy field, too,” said Miss Blake. “I do the same sort of work up there, but there’s a lot of opposition. A lot more than there is down here on the coast. This is a modem city, more open and tolerant. But we have some wonderful opportunities in Riobamba. Praise the Lord for that”
Joe and Jenny were ready to go, and I went with them, pondering what might be the true nature of the work of God.