Cave of Little Faces. Aída Besançon Spencer

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      “Note them on the map,” suggested Basil.

      The innkeeper produced a pen and made sweeping circles and arrows on the little partial page map in the light-fingered library book that belonged in Massachusetts.

      “We won’t miss it,” said Basil.

      “That’s because I’ll drive,” decided Star.

      So, with two bottles of water, a couple of grape sodas, and the innkeeper’s best wishes, they headed out to discover the power of the waters of the lake. But, little could they know that the real discovery that might change their destiny, bring them fame at last, and even potentially provide a bit of fortune was just beyond the lake and waiting for them later that afternoon.

      3

      Home and safe in her apartment, Jo brewed herself a cup of tea—apple tea tonight, because she needed energy to deal with all the thoughts jostling each other for primacy in her mind. The big bruiser shouldering out everybody else, of course, was Finance, which is probably every minister’s mental bully: How am I going to afford everything I want to do for my people? “You can see clearly that you need more money!” it lectured her in its severe tone. “How do you expect to run a ministry on pennies?” As usual Jo had no answer. Her salary was a gracious, but simple, start-up grant from the church—read: Pastors Ron and Toni’s tithing off their own salaries because they saw the need and believed in Jo ever since she’d been the local Hispanic community organizer for Richfield, fresh out of Richfield State with a degree in social work and a lot of dreams. After several years, when the dreams of fixing everything had crashed into reality and she had come to realize that change was dependent as much on the internal as the external, she felt the weight of that divine call to help her people become something even more than simply middle class, and Ron and Toni had taken on a new role as mentors. They had been the ones to guide her to Boston’s Center of Urban Ministerial Education (known affectionately as CUME). It turned out to be a perfect fit and even gave her an internship at David B, funded, she suspected, again by themselves. They were a couple in their 60s and had swiftly become her role models of how to give yourself to ministry, but she still felt badly that she was drawing so much off their already modest, divided salary as a clergy couple. But she’d joined the great weekend migration of mainly Korean seminarians from Boston to scattered churches in New Jersey and, after three years, naturally segued into a part-time position as the new pastor of the fledgling Spanish congregation of David B. Jo had even attracted a few donors, like, of course, her dad, who also didn’t have much, and stepmom, and a steady anonymous donation she feared was coming from Lawrence Fennelman. That was troubling. . . .

      But finance was not the only concern demanding her attention. Back in seminary, she had promised herself she was going to equip her congregants with ministry skills, in the same way she had tried to develop the job skills of the people she had served when she was a community organizer. She wanted to teach them to preach and to visit and to minister to people in the hospital. Those she attracted to her services, however, were mostly the same ones who had once depended on her as their advocate and they were mainly interested in learning English to get better jobs than factory work (at which fingers were severely at risk) and domestic dead ends (slaving for the rich folks in nearby towns). Jo was working on grants to fund the center and to buy computers with educational software—which was all doable—but grants took time away from ministry. It was the all too familiar terrain of her old job.

      She frowned. The problem was clear: She was turning back into a community organizer without the office or the status or the inside pull. She was more of an outsider now—a sectarian minister, welcomed, of course, but no longer mainstreamed into the social work community. Plus, most of the Spanish community was Roman Catholic and attended Our Lady of the Angels, the big Roman Catholic Church on Center Street. To them, a woman pastor was incomprehensible, and even some of her little flock, she feared, thought of her more as a nun or as their former community organizer back to serve them with a collar now.

      Jo put a cinnamon stick into her apple tea—she really needed a lift tonight. Sure, she thought, Mercedes Del Rio, the Pentecostal minister, pulled this off beautifully at the mission down on Second Street, but Pentecostals were now accepted players in the Spanish religious community. Who ever heard of Presbyterians? Jo shook her head. Well, none of this was getting these papers evaluated. Whenever she got into an I’m-not-doing-enough-am-I-really-helping-maybe-someone-else-should-be-here-doing-a-better-job-than-I-am spiral—something that had plagued her even when she was a community organizer—she’d found that, if she buried herself in some small concrete task she had to do, the doubts would get shelved and—miraculously—sometimes somewhere in the process her subconscious (led by the Holy Spirit, of course) would suddenly suggest a solution she hadn’t thought of before which would break the whole dilemma open. So, “Time to evaluate the student tests!” she snapped to herself, and mentally told Finance to put a sock in it right now.

      Jo downed the tea, poured another cup, stirred it around with the cinnamon stick, and slapped down on the table the English reading assessments that she had done individually that evening, interviewing student by student, while she had the rest of the class paired up and puzzling through a simple assignment, trying to help each other pronounce sentences like “Should I take your dog out for a walk?” “What time would you like dinner, Madam?” “How much does this cost?” “May I have a hamburger?” “Where is the bathroom, please?” “You do remember Thursday is my day off, don’t you?” in an accent somewhat recognizably North American. Jo spread the assessments out on the table, wondering whose to look at first. Maybe I’ll do Nilka’s first, so I can get encouraged, she decided, and shuffled through them for it. That’s when she saw the corner of an envelope peeking out from the bottom of the pile.

      Jo fished it out. What on earth was this? It was very official looking. Oh, right, this had been on her desk when she’d arrived for class. But, with everybody milling around and asking her questions, and she trying to lay out her lesson across the desk in little piles through which she could move seamlessly along as she made the most of her three-hour class time, she’d forgotten all about it.

      What exactly was this? The return address was embossed with an impressive title: “Dr. Angel Moreno Cueva de Piedra, Licenciado, Abogado, y Notario.” Jo automatically translated it in her mind, “attorney and notary public.” She slit it open and read her full name spelled out after the Spanish equivalent of “Dear”: “Estimada Señorita Josefina Anacaona Archer y Mencia.”

      Oh, oh, she thought, this doesn’t sound good . . . and it wasn’t.

      “With a heavy heart,” she read, “I am writing to you to inform you that your beloved Uncle, Señor Saul Inti Archer, is no longer leading us, but is now communing with Atageira, the Creator of heaven and earth, whom we also call YaYa and with YaYael, God’s Son and our Savior.

      “Before his departure, since he had no children, he left with me a will, naming you as the heir of his property and along with it his position in the Province of Independencia in the Dominican Republic, which is your birth country.

      “Please come immediately to meet with me and his beloved trustees at his home on the beach of Barahona, where you visited and spent many happy hours with him and your family during your growing-up years.

      “I know this will come as a shock to you and, perhaps, an inconvenience, but a passing makes its own schedule, and it is imperative that you, as the only living heir, come immediately, or as soon as possible, as there are many serious issues involved that must be thoroughly discussed before you can take control of your inheritance.

      “With great respect,

      “I СКАЧАТЬ