Chapter 6 ~ Help
A Tale of Two Times: Volume 5 ~ The Wild Way
~ 1 ~ After dinner, Bridget went straight to Alberto’s bed. She piled up the bed pillows against the headboard and plopped herself down with her back against them. With her arms wrapped around her knees and her chin resting on them, she stared at Alberto, who had been watching from the foot of the bed, blinking.
"Alberto, before we do anything else, I want you to tell me everything about this big story you’re working on. What was your reason for going to Texas?”
Alberto knew nothing about Bridget’s own trip to England with Esmerelda. He knew only that Bridget came and she went, and that they were not sweethearts.
She smiled at him, toying with the large ring-pull of her sweatshirt. “You do stuff. I want to know about it. There’s all night ahead of us, and you’ve got liquor for when the wine wears off. Tell me everything about how you work as a journalist and how you uncover secrets.”
She had touched Alberto’s vanity. Finding a story, digging it out, following leads, revealing things (He glanced at the zipper on Bridget’s sweatshirt.)—that was what he lived for. If a story brought him money and fame, so much the better.
He slid himself onto the bed, next to Bridget, and assumed roughly the same position as hers against the headboard.
“I’m your special audience, Alberto. Start at the beginning.” Bridget had guessed that he had one big story, after what she had heard from Esmeralda, and receiving from her that magnificent treasure from England.
“It started in the Student Union… “Alberto began with a full description of the false seduction of Fr. Haldane by Rhoda Knox and Yohanna Okubo, as he had witnessed it. At first, Bridget was mesmerized. Then, as Alberto’s story progressed, she began asking questions. She dug out from him, among other things, everything that he had learned from David about General Smith. Then Alberto described to her his brilliant interview of Rhoda and Alice.
Oh, my God! What is going on? Bridget saw that unusual good luck had as much to do with Alberto’s success as did his skill as a journalist.
When Alberto was beginning the story of his trip to Texas, Bridget interrupted: “Alberto, I’m truly amazed by your journalistic skill, but right now I’ve got to use the bathroom. Open the bottle of tequila and make us something.” She returned to find that Alberto was waiting to use the bathroom himself. On the table were two glasses containing mixed drinks smelling of tequila. Bridget sipped hers after nibbling on a chunk of bread. While Alberto was in the bathroom, she poured out most of the remainder of her drink. After he had emerged, she said, “Alberto, before you tell me about your Texas trip, let me see one of your shorthand notebooks.”
He had been preparing to fast-forward through the Texas story, but his vanity was stoked by the opportunity to again show off his skill. He removed from the top of his backpack’s contents, the notebook that he had used on his bus trip. He handed the notebook to Bridget and got back on the bed next to her. “This is the notebook I used in Texas.“
Bridget glanced through it. “Your notes look like organized scribbling. Can anyone else read them?”
“Only my dad. I learned that shorthand from him. He was a big newsman in Argentina, and he taught me journalism.”
“Really? All my dad did for me was pay my tuition. He wanted to get me out of the house so I wouldn’t embarrass him. Okay, Mr. Newsman, tell me about your adventures in Texas in pursuit of the truth about this mysterious Rhoda Knox.”
Alberto told Bridget how he had figured out that Home Ranch must be Rhoda Knox’s base of operations. He had been writing to his father about the story, since it had become so strange and complicated. His father had been fascinated. He had offered some good suggestions, telling Alberto that there was a place in Texas called Home Ranch, which had a reputation for being mysterious, and that Alberto’s distant cousin Diego Mendoza was said to be working there.
“I tried telephoning Home Ranch from my office, Bridget, and I found out the Ranch doesn't have a listed number. You can call the nearby Aeronauticas Company, and they’ll send a message to Home Ranch, so I talked with someone at Aeronauticas who told me I should write to my cousin at Home Ranch. I wrote and explained to Diego that I’m his cousin and I’m a journalist wanting to write a story about Home Ranch because I’ve heard it’s an interesting place. He wrote back telling me he can’t invite me to come because Home Ranch has a strict news coverage policy. So I took a bus down to Texas to see if I could talk my way in or sneak in somehow, and at least look around. I got off the bus at the ‘Home Ranch stop’…” Bridget stopped him when he began recounting his interview with Juan. She asked him to read the interview out of his notebook, and she followed his finger on the page as he translated the shorthand.
Unexpectedly, Alberto burst out in a tirade against the driver of the dusty Chevy, “the high and mighty Queen of Home Ranch. That old bitch could have helped me. But no! She had to get on with her feel-good charity work for poor Mexicans. I’d thought for a moment that she really wanted to help me, but she’s not natural like EZ. She’s all fake holiness. Madame Knox! Home Ranch is probably just a high-class brothel, with its own airfield!”
Bridget bit her lip and quickly slipped off Alberto’s bed. “I’m feeling sick, Alberto… Not tonight.” She grabbed her clothes and ran into the bathroom, locking the door. After dressing, she picked up Alberto’s hair-trimming scissors and opened the bathroom door. Alberto, wearing only his sweatpants, was standing with his arms crossed in front of the front door, clearly intending to block her exit. Coldly she said, “Open the door, Alberto. I’m skilled in martial arts, and I’ve got a sharp weapon. I can cut up your beautiful body and I can scream really loud. Lots of people will hear me say that you tried to rape me after luring me here for an interview. Your career is over if you don’t let me out of here.” Open the door NOW or I’ll scream!”
Bridget slammed the front door behind her and smiled at Alberto’s curses:
“Shit! God-dammed bitch!”
She shoved Alberto’s scissors through the slot in his mailbox in the row of mailboxes near the building’s entrance.
~ 2 ~ On the next day Bridget slipped into Alberto’s office while he was out, leaving on his desk her crystal flask of Elixir. With it she left a note: “Ask EZ about this. You’ll be pleased to know how much bigger your story is, than you’ve imagined.”
Kane had given to Esmeralda a much smaller flask containing a different potion—one designed to actually reverse her aging process. Bridget had overheard him saying to Esmeralda, “With your seasoned wit in a young body, you will be far more delightful than your childish companion.”
Recalling that comment as she hastened from Alberto’s empty office, Bridget shuddered. I’d much rather age and die normally than live with those two until Hell freezes over. She slammed the door behind her, rattling the glass of its window and feeling an elation that she did not understand. Wandering into the Student Union, where the noon crowd had not yet begun to gather, she felt hungry but she did not want to eat. After purchasing a cup of coffee she looked around, needing someone to talk to and knowing that sometimes a stranger is easier to confide in.
Bridget’s eyes fell on Yohanna Okubo, about whom Alberto had spoken in his story about the tempting of Aden. She had talked with Yohanna a few times about student matters concerning the League of African Students, and she had sensed that Yohanna did not have a good opinion of Esmeralda. Esmeralda had made clear to Bridget her feelings about Yohanna:“That Black princess! Her father is some kind of king and I’m sure he has slaves. She’s the richest hypocrite in New City University. She makes a show of virtue in her tailor-made Westwood clothes, and she lives in a palace in a Hispanic barrio—not in a Black ghetto—near a Catholic Church. There’s a heliport on her roof. And she has bodyguards…” Bridget had been amused by that envious tirade.
“May I join you, Yohanna?”
“Hello, Bridget. Please sit down. You and I have worked together on some committees; what is the business which we have to do today?” Yohanna was surprised that Bridget had approached her.
“It’s not campus business, Yohanna. I just need to talk to someone.”
Yohanna looked more closely at her. Then she reached across the table and took Bridget’s hands, genuine concern on her face. Bridget had imagined that expression on the face of the lady offering assistance to Alberto at the Home Ranch bus stop; she broke down, sobbing. Her attempts to confide in her older sister and her mother had always resulted in them screaming at her. Yohanna said kindly, “Come outside with me, Bridget. We can find a bench in the shade which will be a better place for a good talk.”
After helping Bridget to her feet, Yohanna slipped an arm around her shoulders and guided her outside and along the path to the eucalyptus grove dividing the campus and the Keep. On the long uphill path, Bridget’s life story began pouring from her, with an occasional encouraging question from Yohanna or an anecdote from Yohanna’s own experience. In the grove, they sat on a bench facing the campus, and Bridget began an account of her seduction of Fr. Aden, as Esmeralda’s understudy.
It became clear to Yohanna that in fact, she and Rhoda had set up Fr. Aden for Bridget and Esmeralda. Her interest sharpened with Bridget’s description of the trip to England and the Son’s House. I must tell Rhoda about this! Or am I under the seal of the confessional?
Bridget completed her confession by relating Alberto’s account of meeting the rich Señora at the Home Ranch bus stop.
Dear Lord! Rhoda and I have made Bridget our Shield Friend by drawing her into this. We have an obligation now to care for her.
Bridget said, "When Alberto began cruelly attacking that good lady who had helped him, I hated myself. I was at last seeing things clearly, and I had to flee to a better place. I knew I had to get out of the maze that I’d helped others get me into—first, by getting rid of the Elixir. I could feel its evil right through the glass—like a foul odor leaking through to my hand! I left it on Alberto’s desk, with a note telling him to ask EZ about it. Now I feel like I want it back—and at the same time I don’t. It was a bad thing, for me to give it to him, because it suits him like it suits EZ. It really works, Yohanna! I’ve seen its work on EZ. I’m scared!”
“That is a healthy fear, Bridget. I, too, know about the Elixir, and I know what it does to people in Africa.” How is it that you have seen it work, in so little time?
“You do? You know about it?” Bridget was startled. Realizing that an ordinary person would not have believed her story, she looked closely at this woman to whom she had confided only because she wanted someone to listen to her. In Yohanna’s eyes there was no hidden deception or malice like that in Esmeralda’s and Kane’s. With increasing relief, her trust in Yohanna growing, she asked, “What are those people like?”
“Some are the worst sort of witchdoctors, Bridget.”
“Are there good witchdoctors?”
“Yes, but we are all Catholics now. That is the right side of an exorcism on which to be.”
“Exorcism?” Bridget smiled.
“The casting out of demons and that sort of thing,” said Yohanna seriously. She took Bridget's face gently between her hands and looked into her tear-filled eyes. For an instant, those eyes flashed emerald, and tranquility transformed Bridget’s face.
Yohanna, however, was straining to force a smile at her as she inwardly groaned under the approaching Shade impulse of …Mortimer Kane—Swinthila! The Shade impulse was passing to her through Bridget, from Esmeralda. Yohanna felt a sudden, terrible apprehension which poured out into her entwinement with Rhoda. Hidden behind her smile at Bridget was Yohanna’s silent scream to Rhoda for help!
Rhoda was at once personally present to Yohanna, in a new way. Rhoda, what are you doing?
“Deflecting Kane’s impulse, which would otherwise overwhelm you, and breach your Burden.”
I know! …Rhoda, Kane’s impulse is no longer approaching me!
“That’s good. It means that Ricardo and I are wrangling with all of it. Mortimer Kane is Ricardo’s special Burden.”
Rhoda’s personal presence was gone. Yohanna was trembling as she pulled a handkerchief from her purse and offered it to Bridget. She felt herself stretched and strengthened in a new way by Rhoda’s sudden intervention.
Bridget dried her eyes. “Thanks, Yohanna, for listening. I feel much better now." Then, nearly whispering, she said, "May I ask you one more thing, Yohanna?"
Yohanna took her hands. “Oh yes, anything that I can help you with, Bridget.” She was experiencing the light-headedness that follows a sudden, brief brush with death.
"Do you know a good confessor? You know—a priest who won't come down on me. It's been over a decade. You know me now, and what I've been doing.” Shrugging her shoulders, Bridget said, “This is not the kind of person I want to be.”
Able now to fully focus on Bridget, Yohanna answered confidently, ”I know the right priest, Bridget. He is my confessor at St. Anselm’s, a wise older gentleman who is sweet like a good grandmother. I can drive you there now. He is never far from the confessional."
“Let’s do it, Yohanna, before I lose my nerve.”
The two young women descended the stairs, leaving St. Anselm’s Catholic Church. Bridget smiled wordlessly at her, and Yohanna asked, “Bridget, are you hungry?"
“Yes. I haven’t eaten a thing yet today.”
“I thought so. Let us walk to Rosa’s Taco Shop, from which you can see my place. I eat occasionally at Rosa’s, sitting right next to the sidewalk in the open air. From there we can enjoy the cheerful bustle around us while we eat the best tacos in the city.”
“Here in the barrio? …Sure. Let’s go. …It’s just that I grew up in the white part of Orange County."
“Near Disneyland?” Yohanna smiled.
“Yes, in the hills above it.”
“People are much friendlier here.” In Spanish, Yohanna said, “Bridget, I think that you must know some Spanish.”
Bridget replied in Spanish, “I studied it for three years in high school.”
“Your Spanish sounds good to me. Today we will be Spanish speakers.”
They walked along, in Bridget’s new world, in Yohanna’s familiar neighborhood, stopping to eat in Rosa’s busy taco shop.
“That’s the best Mexican food I’ve ever eaten! Yohanna, do you really know everyone in the neighborhood, and all about them, too?”
“That is nearly true, Bridget. It is the way in which I was trained. I am from a Head family in …my tribe, and we in the Head family must know about everyone who lives around us so that we can truly understand their needs and how they can be enabled to help themselves.”
“Why did you tell Rosa, when she brought us our food, that I’m your ‘secret friend’?”
“It is because Rosa sells information to investigative detectives and to news people. Because I have called you my ‘secret friend’, she will not tell anyone about you. And if someone asks about you, Rosa will tell me about it, because then I will pay her well.”
“Where does Rosa get her information?”
“She gets it from those humble people who work invisibly for the rich and powerful, who buy tacos from her. She gives them a discount for good stories. When she learns about matters concerning overt crimes, she does not charge the police for the information which she gives to them.”
Bridget was seeing new aspects of Yohanna. She said, "Esmeralda said that your father keeps slaves, Yohanna.”
“Well, Bridget, our rule is that everyone who wants to eat must work, if he or she is able, so I think that we are all slaves to our stomachs.” Yohanna laughed. “Come to my place, Bridget. It is now the hour at which I am expected back. You can help me to do some of my slave’s work."
They walked up the slope from Rosa’s Taco Shop to Yohanna’s family compound.
“What about your car, Yohanna? It’s still parked at the church.”
“Oh, I think that my car has been parked at my place by now.”
“Who would do that for you?”
“One of my bodyguards, who are also my cousins.”
Bridget shook her head.
~ 3 ~ “Yohanna, how many people are guests here? We’ve been changing beds for hours!” Bridget issued her complaint with a grin. “But I bet your room is nicer than all of these guest rooms, even if you are a housemaid on the side."
“It is like a small hotel, is it not? There are always many guests here, and seven different families live here. Most of the families are related to one another distantly enough so that marriages are possible between the younger folks. Since the Okubo tribe is a Head family, we appear to the world to be wealthy, as it is the Head families who must deal with the ‘makers and shakers’ in order to steer a course for the Clan."
Bridget mentally set aside Yohanna’s information about tribes and the Clan. Looking from the window, she said, “I admire your beautiful courtyard below, but a lot of it is vegetable garden. There is a woman tilling it using only a spade. My father uses a rototiller to till our garden at my house. He never uses his hands when he can use a machine to do the job. And he hires Mexicans to pull the weeds.”
“Bridget, we believe that physical work is good for us, even though it is not fun. We do not use machines where we can use our hands and our minds to do the job. Working and eating together makes us feel good about who we are. That is what I have been taught, and I find that it is true. The lady with the spade is my mother, whom you will meet later today; she wants to know what I have been doing.”
“Do you tell her everything?”
“Yes, mostly. She always has questions, and sometimes she has good advice.”
“Yohanna, my experience has been so very different from yours! I learned that I have to make my own way in the world and take care of my own needs first. …May I stay here for a few days, just to work and eat? I don’t want to go back to where I was, in New City University—not yet.”
“Of course.” Yohanna smiled.
“Can we talk some more, Yohanna?” Bridget turned away from the window to help Yohanna finish making the bed.
“Certainly. After I show you my room, we can find some shade in the courtyard in which to talk.”
“This is my room, Bridget.”
Bridget looked around. “Oh. Yohanna, you’re the real princess here, bodyguards and all, so I thought your room would be grander.”
“It is, in a way. See: It has two entrances.” Yohanna went to a slightly larger door across from the one through which they had entered. She opened it to reveal a short hallway opening to a large parlor. There was a handsome window on one side of the hallway, and a closed door on the other side. Yohanna opened the door, to a pleasant sitting room. “This is my private room for receiving guests; the large room at the end of the hall is the Head Family parlor.”
Bridget had noticed that there were several people in the family parlor, some of whom were reading at small tables. Others were gathered in small groups on casually-arranged sofas and chairs, conversing among themselves. All of them appeared to be Africans, except for a few whom Bridget thought looked like Arabs. She was a white girl, lost among them, but she was not lost as she was lost among the people with whom her parents mingled in Orange County. The people in the parlor paid them no heed, and Yohanna took Bridget’s hand, leading her back into her bedroom.
“This is a strange place, Yohanna, that I think I might take a while to get used to. I feel like you don’t have much privacy here.”
“I understand how it is that you might think so, Bridget, but we are all family, in one way or another.” Yohanna smiled. “And we are good-mannered communists, without the Party.”
Bridget laughed, “Sometimes, when my father is watching the news, he indulges in tirades against the ‘damn Communists’. He’d have a heart attack if he knew I was living among Black communists!”
“Well, I surely am not endorsing the Soviet Union, and we do, unlike the Marxists, support that which they call class distinctions, by having institutions like my Head Family.”
“Is your Head Family like the Party?”
“Oh, no. In the Clan, the Head Family is simply that part of it which meets the world. This requires us to look and act rich and powerful, and (This, I like.) stylish.” Yohanna opened a sliding panel in her bedroom, to a semi-circular walk-in closet. As they walked into it, this room holding Yohanna’s wardrobe seemed to Bridget to be larger than Yohanna’s bedroom. She was dazed by the magnificence of the large array of apparel from which Yohanna was able to choose. Then her attention was drawn so fully to a magnificent tiger-fur cape, that she did not hear Yohanna request that Bridget allow her alone to retrieve any item that she wished to examine more closely.
Impulsively, Bridget reached out to the fur and stroked it, wondering if it were artificial. It looked—and felt—so soft. It felt alive! Recoiling in shock, she cried, “It’s alive! Its muscles were moving!”
Yohanna calmly removed the tiger-fur cape from its hanger. In her two hands, she held it out to Bridget. “Stoke it again.”
After touching the soft fur warily at first, Bridget began stroking it more confidently. “It feels like it’s just animal fur now, Yohanna. Before, I was touching a big living animal.”
“As a guard cat, a dead tiger would not serve well, would it, Bridget?” Yohanna smiled enigmatically, returning the tiger-fur cape to its hanger. She hung it in the closet. Bridget looked around, certain now that the closet was bigger than the bedroom. She shrugged her shoulders, laughing to herself. “Yohanna, you really are a witchdoctor.”
In the shade under a skillfully-pruned plum tree, the two young women talked for over two hours, occasionally standing up to walk together around the courtyard.
“Yohanna, there are so many twists and turns in the path among these little arbors and gardens, I don’t see how so many of them can be packed in here.” They had returned from one of their tours of the courtyard, sitting again under the plum tree.
“It is rather like Disneyland, is it not?”
“I guess so. Yohanna, there’s one of my relationships that I haven't told you about. I want to tell you now.”
Yohanna sensed the debate which had taken place within Bridget. “There is much time yet before dinner,” she said, taking Bridget’s hand encouragingly. Sitting side-by-side on the bench, they watched large golden fish swimming in a small nearby pond.
“My relationship is with one of the instructors at the University. He takes a lot of field trips in the desert, for his research, and I meet up with him frequently, when he’s out there alone. His wife never goes along.” Quickly, Bridget added, “They don't have any kids, but…”
“Victor!” The exclamation had burst from Yohanna in spite of her resolve to remain neutral. She said quickly, “He is not truly married, Bridget. They only live together.”
“Oh! Do you know him well?”
“I do not know him well, but I know him as one of the graduate students in biology because my boyfriend, Hans, is a biologist. Sometimes the biologists gather at the large home of Victor’s girlfriend, Esther, where there is space for dancing.”
“Is she faithful to him, Yohanna?”
“I do not know of any unfaithful behavior by her.” Sensing Bridget’s genuine concern for him, Yohanna asked, “Bridget, do you truly care for Victor?”
“Yes. He’s the only solid guy that I know… well.” Bridget’s eyes dropped. “I wonder if he really loves me.”
Yohanna squeezed her hand. “Bridget, will you trust me—as a good witchdoctor?”
“Yes. Haven’t I already done that, Yohanna? You lifted a burden from my heart this morning when you looked into my eyes. In that bewitched moment, you were my true, good mother—not like the one God gave me.”
Yohanna smiled. “Thank you. Bridget, I would like to know about Victor and Esther through your memory of Victor. Then, I may be able to answer your question about him. While I am holding your head briefly between my hands, you must think only of Victor.”
“Alright; I’m thinking of Victor.” This felt to Bridget a little like playing a parlor game.
“Bridget, look through my eyes now, at your memory of Victor in some particular situation.”
For a moment, Bridget focused on a memory of Victor, her head between Yohanna’s hands and her eyes looking through Yohanna’s. She felt and saw Yohanna start, seeming to be very much surprised by something that she had learned.
Yohanna released her.
“Do you really read minds, Yohanna?”
“No, Bridget, but I can read some memories. Truly, I do not know your memories as you do. By that, I mean that I cannot read your subjective understanding of your memories. I recall your memory as if it were of my own experience, which makes it difficult for me to understand, although I do have some skill in interpreting another’s memories.”
“But how can you learn anything about Victor, then, from my memories? I admit that I wish Esther were unfaithful, but I didn’t even know her name until you told me.”
“I was able to jump to Victor’s memory from yours.” Then Yohanna realized that what she had just now said so naturally, indicated that she had gained a new ability to jump Living Memories. It was among the things which she had gained earlier when she had felt stretched by Rhoda’s secret visit! “I was able to make the jump because you are truly intimate with him. I think that Victor does love you. I have been able also to jump from Victor’s Living memory to read a little of Esther’s.”
“My God! Yohanna, if Esmerelda had your power, she’d blackmail the whole University!”
“Oh, that cannot happen. Only a truth-teller can read the Living Memory.”
“That’s a part of Victor’s appeal for me, Yohanna. He’s like a truth-teller, but different. There’s something so solid about him, and I feel it in the way that he really loves those stupid old trees that he studies. There’s no pleasure in them, like in making love, that I can see; they don’t do anything except grow, I guess. On my own, I don’t get it or feel it, but Victor has said to me more than once, ‘Just, think, Bridget, this old stand of junipers is real. They’re just there. Isn’t it incredible!’ He’d put his arm around my shoulder, and we’d just stand there for ten or fifteen minutes, looking at his trees. I’d get a kind of contact high from that, and it seemed to come to me from the trees, not from Victor. Still, he had to be touching me, for me to feel it.”
“That is different! I think I know what it is that you mean, Bridget. …Does Victor know that you ‘play around’?”
“He doesn't talk about it. He’s always happy to see me, but I’m sure he does know. My impression is that he thinks of me as his secret girlfriend. None of the other guys do.”
“Well, my impression is that he loves you.”
“Yohanna, how much of his memory about me did you read?”
Hearing the concern in Bridget’s voice, Yohanna said, “Oh, I have not read anything intimate between you two. I have sought only to learn about Victor’s fidelity to you, not about his experience of you. The memory which I have read is that of Victor greeting Esther after you had visited him in the desert recently. When he was meeting her, Victor was feeling his love for you, not for her…”
“Yohanna, how do you know what he felt?”
“It is true, Bridget, that most of our feelings are hidden, yet the basic ones are much the same for all of us, especially sexual feelings. It is what you let them mean for you that is subjective. Victor visualizes strongly, and visual memory is easy to read. He was visualizing your face while he was talking to Esther. Also, in his auditory imagination he was telling himself that he loves you, and not Esther.”
“I want to believe you, Yohanna. May I test your ability to read my memory?”
“Yes, Bridget; I think that it is fair for you to test me once. What is the situation which you wish me to read?”
“A couple of days ago I talked to my father on the telephone. Can you tell me the place to which he said he would be traveling?”
“I do not know your father; that is a problem for me. From what telephone did you call him?”
“From one of the pay phones in the Student Union. I always call him reverse-charge, and not from my own telephone. If he wants to talk to me, he has to accept the charges. If not, at least he knows that I’m alive, which is about all that he or my mother really care to know.”
“There are three telephones in a row in the hallway of the Student Union. Do you remember which one it is from which you called?”
“The one that’s on the right when you’re facing them. It has just enough cord for me to stand with my back to the wall so I can see if anyone is trying to listen.”
“I do that, too, Bridget. Look through my eyes now and remember that call… Paris! He asked if you wanted to go along with him, and the offer seemed to make you feel sick.”
“Wow! Yohanna, you can read memories! Is everyone who lives here in your place like that?”
“No. I am the only one. And even here in my family’s house, there is only one other person who knows that I can read the Living Memory. That person is my mother. My ability is a blessing, Bridget, and it is a curse.”
“Why have you shown it to me, then? You hardly knew me when I sat down at your table in the Student Union. I just wanted to talk to someone.”
“That is a long story. Bridget, I have played a hand in setting up the situation in which you have been involved with Aden Haldane and Mortimer Kane. I owe you our protection. You are our Shield Friend.”
Bridget remembered now, everything that Alberto had told her about Rhoda, Yohanna and Aden.
“You said ‘our’ in a funny way, Yohanna. Who do you mean?”
“I mean Rhoda Knox and me. You have heard about Rhoda. She and I set up Fr. Aden for the situation into which you have fallen. It was not a wise thing for us to do.”
“Was it Rhoda’s idea?”
“Yes, it was.”
“I do feel safe here, Yohanna, in your house. I don't want to go back to New City University yet. May I stay here, really?”
“Yes, Bridget, you may stay for as long as you want, but the work includes gardening.”
“That’s fine. I have a little experience in pulling weeds; I feel like I’m the Mexican in my family. …In a way, Yohanna, I’m glad you did your foolish thing to Aden.”
Yohanna smiled. “My foolish accomplice, Rhoda, is half-Mexican; she pulls weeds, too, and she is very good at pruning.”
“Victor is Jewish, I think, but it doesn’t matter to me.”
“It might matter to his mother, Bridget.”
“What?”
“That you are not a Jew.”
“Well, you said your boyfriend is white, and that’s okay with your family.”
