Bientens
for Maria Garrat
by Larry
Day
The professor's mention of two nickels triggered it. In an instant Eudora Welty's words patched themselves through to a dormant circuit in my memory, and a twenty-two-year-old missionary took the call. The class had been discussing Welty's book on writing. In the book, Welty describes how her mother saved two nickels that had covered her baby sister's eyes at the viewing before the little one's funeral. I lost track of the discussion at that point-I wasn't in class any more.
Artigas. That's the name of a town
on
But I do recall the baby's name-Maria Garrat. And I remember,
by extrapolation, what year it was. I spent nine months
in Trienta y Tres, three months in Montevideo, six months in Tacuarembo-that would
make it January, 1956.
It was summertime, and it was hot. We missionaries went
door to door asking for an opportunity to share a religious message
and offer a prayer. This was called tracting, and in Artigas
in the summer we tracted early in the morning and late in the
afternoon. Midday was for falling asleep over the scriptures.
Mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the noonday sun. Some
people in Artigas thought we were mad because we rode bicycles
while wearing suits and ties and hats. But we weren't crazy
enough to try to knock on doors in Artigas at siesta time.
One scorching day Sister Eva Escadun came to be branch at siesta
time. She rapped with the ponderous knocker that hung on the ten-foot
door of the large house that the church had rented near the center
of town. The reconfigured house gave the saints a place
to meet, and provided living quarters for missionaries. Eva was
a thin, shy teenager. She, her parents, and her brothers and sisters
were members of our small congregation. I answered Eva's knock,
and stepped out into the glaring sun and closed the door.
Mission rules didn't allow unaccompanied young
women in the house.
Eva looked down at her feet, and began to speak. Her sentences
were short and direct. Down in the barrio where she lived, a two-year-old
baby was sick. The family lived across the street from the
Uscuduns. How sick? I asked. Praying for sick?
Worse, she said. The doctor in Artigas had given up on her saying
it was just a matter of time. Maria's daddy took her across the
river to the Brazilian side. A doctor there who said he
could help. They say he saved the baby of a friend of Señor
Garrat's cousin Angelo.
Eva's laconic, ungrammatical narrative stopped. She looked
at her shoes for maybe a minute. It seemed longer.
The sun bore down on our heads. Then Eva raised her eyes, looked
into my face, and gave me the reason for her heat-of-the-day visit.
Money.
The Brazilian doctor wanted 4X Brazilian cruceiros, which was
2X Uruguayan pesos, which, as I calculated the rate of exchange
in my head, was X U.S. dollars. Less than the price of a
movie, milkshake and a hamburger with fries back home in Idaho.
How were they going to get across the river? Angelo's friend
had a rowboat. They wouldn't have to take the ferry.
Eva came back for money every there
or four days. She'd say they needed 2X pesos for one more trip.
The Brazilian doctor kept assuring them Maria needed one more
treatment.
A couple of weeks passed. Then,
Hector, Eva's eight-year-old brother, brought news.
Again it was in the heat of the day. He didn't have to knock.
For some reason, I was sitting on a chair in the dark hallway.
The door was open. I saw Hector walking slowly up the sidewalk.
He stopped and peered into the darkened hallway. Seeing me, he
spoke three words: "Murio Maria Garrat."
"When?"
"This morning. The velorio is tonight.
At the Garrat's house." Hector turned and walked
back down the sidewalk.
That evening my companion and I approached the house. It
was a slatted board structure on a deeply rutted unpaved street
in the poorest part of the barrio. A disassembled double
bed lay in the front yard. A mattress lay doubled over some
rickety bedsprings. The house had a thatched roof and dirt
floors. There were two rooms. From the back
room came the sound of wailing. The baby's mother, sisters and
neighbors sat side by side and knee to knee in the cramped space.
In their midst, Maria lay in a tiny wooden casket surrounded by
candles. Two bientens, the smallest coin in the Uruguayan
monetary system, rested on her eyelids.
My companion entered quietly stood in the doorway of the back
room. We spoke our condolences, then
bowed our heads, and I offered a short prayer. I reached
out and touched the Maria's mother's shoulder. As we walked
away from the house, the wailing resumed, and was mingled with
the barking of neighborhood dogs.
I was thinking, "Your gringo money didn't save Maria Garrat.
Two weeks ago, when Eva first came to the door, you could have
saved her. You could have flown her and her mother to a
hospital in Montevideo, instead of letting them take her
to some quack across the river. You could have given her
a blessing, you could have…"
I was still second guessing myself back there in Artigas in 1956
when something broke the circuit. My eyes came into focus.
The professor was still talking about Eudora Welty.
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