The Day Valentina Died

Callia's phone wasn't working.

That was not surprising, because it never did.

Carrie had found an old phone in a coffee shop, either discarded or lost and not worth replacing. The battery had died, and even after she used the free chargers in the library the screen had remained blank. But she found it a useful prop, especially when she was on dark streets or in questionable company. Loudly giving out her location to her (non-existent) big, strong son and insisting he come pick her up seemed effective as a temporary deterrent.

Sometimes, navigating the downtown pedestrian traffic with her oversized shopping bag in one hand, she scrolled through imaginary texts with the other, just to blend in.

Sometimes she carried out long one-sided conversations, just because she missed talking to someone.

Now she sat on a bench waiting for the 3:48 local. The slanting sun warmed her cheeks, and she closed her eyes.

"No, you listen to me. I need those orders by 5. No excuses. That's 5pm today, not 6:30, not tomorrow. Got it?"

Callie jerked her head up to see a middle-sized, middle aged man pacing alongside the tracks. He held no phone. She remembered the first time she had seen someone conversing loudly to the empty air via a bluetooth speaker--she thought the man must be hallucinating. Though the technology had become commonplace, it still irked her.

"Didn't I just say no excuses? We had an agreement. I don't care how you solve your little problems. Just get those orders done. Do you understand?"

Pause.

"I said, do you understand?"

Pause.

"Hello? ... Did you just hang up on me?"

Carrie was not the only one watching in amusement as the man swore, yanking out his phone from his overcoat pocket to redial. Then he swore some more.

He turned to Carrie. "Can I use your phone? I need to make a call."

She shook her head, pointing to her blank screen. He asked the next person on the platform. And then the next.

The volume on the crowded platform bubbled to a boil as the number of people confounded by lifeless phones grew exponentially. Some rushed into the station, others headed back to the street, others stood with expressions as blank as their phones.

Carrie leaned back on the bench, taking in the show, her hands settled smugly on her lap. After all, her phone still worked just fine.

Under his thick quilts, Aaron held his finger over the green phone icon. He wanted to hear Maria's voice. He wanted to grip the phone imagining that it was Maria's hand. He wanted not to have to imagine. To have her fingers entwined with his, to have her lips on his, to have her --

He clicked the screen-off button. No. That was exactly what he could not want. He half sighed, half groaned, and his brother snuffed in his sleep and rolled over.

What exquisite agony - knowing she was strung to him by this invisible cord that he could only thrum at night, when he was alone under his covers, and most prone to the temptations that led to the ban that kept his phone secret and silent until the night.

A burner phone, she had called it. It burned in his hand. As he might burn for keeping it.

But this is my last time, he told himself, and this time he meant it. Because this time he didn't have a choice. She was getting on a plane in a few hours. When she landed on the far side of the world, she would call her parents, and then she would turn it off. For three months. She had told him that if he wanted to say goodbye, this night was his chance.

He didn't take her departure personally. The only departure that had mattered was when she left the Community, to go to college. He was proud of her vision, awed by the audacity of her goals. And -- slightly envious of her courage to take steps to achieve them.

When she left, they were just good friends. After failing to persuade Aaron to come with her, Maria had insisted that he let her give him a phone. Their romance grew night by sleepless night, text by intimate text, call by whispered call. By day, he was the dutiful, if sleepy, member of the Community. By moonlight he was bound by invisible cord to Maria.

How could he say goodbye? How could he not?

He clicked the green icon.

"I was so worried you weren't going to call. It's almost boarding time."

"I almost didn't," he confessed in a practiced low whisper.

"I'm already so far away, what's a little farther?"

"You could still be living next door and I'd still miss you, if I couldn't talk to you."

"But you'll think about me, right? And I'll think of you, every night. We'll have a wordless communion."

"When it's midnight for you, it's morning for me."

"You know what I mean. Our connection transcends time."

Aaron made a mental note to look up "transcend" in the big dictionary.

"You can't just turn on your phone once in a while?"

Maria sighed. "You know it wouldn't matter even if I did turn it on. There's no cell service in the Outback."

"You know, you could have studied the effects of climate change someplace with cell towers."

"You're sweet when you whine. Pathetic, but sweet."

She said it lightly, but he could detect a whiff of irritation.

"I haven't said it enough, but ... I'm really proud of you. What you're doing is important, truly. Almost worth not talking to you for three months."

She answered in a strange accent, "The problems of two little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.”

"Huh?"

"Oh, for heavens sake. Find a way to watch Casablanca while I'm gone."

"Maria ... I ..."

She said nothing, waiting for him to finish.

"I ..."

Still, she said nothing.

He looked at the phone. It was blank. That was it, then. She was gone.

Aaron threw back the covers and lay awake for a long time. Maybe this was for the best, he told himself. The constant fear of discovery was wearing on him. Maybe this sudden cut-off was punishment for keeping the phone. Or just a warning?

For the best -- this is what the Elders had said when Maria deserted the Community. She was a corrupting influence, and had she stayed, she would have dragged others down with her. She would come to a bad end, they said -- like her big sister Carrie. Carrie had abandoned Maria and their peaceful home for the big city life. And no one had heard from her since.

There were rumors--just rumors, mind you, that she had lost everything and spent her days wandering the streets. That's what came of rejecting the Community and following the path of temptation.

Aaron slid the phone deep under his mattress. Maybe he'd toss it in the outhouse tomorrow. Or maybe he'd find a better hiding place, and turn it on again in three months.

Until then, he would keep company with the yearning silence of his thoughts. And perhaps even sleep at night.

Carolina and Maria's mother Isabel had escaped with them from El Salvador. She came under the protective wing of a cabinet-maker--who happened to be an Elder -- and then, under the smothering hand of the Community. When she was deported, incidentally after she began hinting that she might look for a more suitable place to raise her daughters, the other mothers were honored to share responsibility for their care.

Isabel had returned to live with her sister Valentina in the slums of San Salvador. Desperately poor, they had one another, and the sustaining thread of their love for Carrie and Maria. Isabel always hoped to reweave herself into her daughters' lives somehow. As the decades passed, she imagined them reaching adulthood in the Community, becoming mothers who could whisper secrets of their abuela in their children's ears.

One day she heard Valentina shouting from the street. "Isabel! Isabel! Camila heard from her cousin Ariana in the States that her neighbor's son knows Maria! They are in college together. In fact, Maria is almost graduated!"

"She got out," Isabel breathed. Then, "What about Carolina?"

Valentina shook her head. "But Camila said we could use her phone to call Maria, and then we can track down Carolina."

Valentina knew that Isabel's sobs were the only language in which she could speak her joy.

Isabel reached Maria the next day, a marathon conversation in which it seemed the whole barrio had to have their turn with the cellphone. Maria spoke no Spanish, so the whole conversation was conducted via Google translator, which further added to the length.

Isabel learned about Maria's passion for environmental science and her plans to study the impact of climate change in extreme ecosystems. Later, she borrowed the cellphone again to research the unfamiliar terms, and to do a background check on the college.

"I'm supposed to leave for this amazing study abroad program in Australia," Maria said the next time her mother and aunt had a chance to talk in more privacy. "But I want to come see you. I can't wait. It's been so long ..." Her voice dissolved into tears.

"No, no, you must not come here. They'll never let you back in," said Isabel.

"And you can't live here," Valentina put in, hovering over the phone's speaker. "It's too dangerous."

"Finish your studies," Maria said firmly. "This is why I brought you to the States to begin with, so you could stay safe and learn and have a fulfilling life and be happy. And that's what you are doing. We are so, so proud of you, little one."

"I won't be able to call you while I'm out of the country ..."

"It's just three months. And then we have your whole life to catch up."

"When I get back," Maria said, "I'll go looking for Carrie. I promise."

Valentina took the phone. "Please do one thing for us. Don't tell anyone you found us--especially in the Community. It could cause problems for you."

Maria imagined Aaron, waiting under the covers to talk to her. "I promise, Tia Valentina."

They had another long and loving goodbye with Maria while she waited at the airport for her flight. Isabel wept after they hung up. Valentina went to return the phone to Camila.

Shortly afterward, Camila banged on their door. "You broke my phone!" she bellowed. She held it out accusingly. "See, it won't turn back on. You're the last one to use it!"

The women were still arguing when another neighbor came rushing up. "Stop fighting, stop! She didn't break your phone. It's happening everywhere in the city. My wife just got off the bus from work and told me that everyone's phones went dark at the same time."

As was the way of their barrio, the homes emptied as people gathered to make what sense they could of the news. Of course everyone mourned the ability to contact loved ones who had emigrated elsewhere. But few people owned working cell phones, and internet access was unreliable, so for most of the neighborhood, the impact would be second-hand.

Suddenly Valentina raised her voice and waved her arms for attention.

"Friends! Listen to what I think. In our barrio, we get our news from one another. If we need to tell someone something, the message gets passed until it reaches them. We don't sit around looking at tiny screens all day like they do in the rich neighborhoods. We make our own lives. We take care of one another. And this is our strength."

All were quiet, listening. The secret of Valentina's underground involvement in community organizing was widely known and fearfully guarded. A single dissident could cast a long and dangerous shadow.

Valentina lowered her voice. "The world out there -- those who have the power and the riches and the guns -- what do they have without their phones? They can't use their power to tell people what to do. Their money disappears in the air. They can't send out their guns. They will fall apart, while we remain strong!"

She searched her neighbors' faces. She knew them all, she loved them all, yet she also knew that any one of them could be an informant. It was worth the risk.

"Right now the city is facing chaos. We have no idea how long our advantage will last. Now is the time to use it. I'm going to plan to take action, if anyone wants to join me." Abruptly, Valentina turned and went inside.

Isabel did not go inside. Two thoughts circled, hawk-like: How will Maria contact me if she needs me? How will we find Carolina?

Carrie hugged herself as she waited for the women's shelter to open, wishing the wind would ease. Of all the weather she was exposed to, she dreaded chill wind the most. Nothing good came on the wind.

A newspaper slapped against her leg. She pulled it off, then to pass the time, browsed the text. Mostly it was about the worldwide phone outage. Blah, blah, blah.

She had only the front page and the back page, which featured global news. Normally this would not interest her, but it was a distraction.

"Uprising in El Salvador"-- that caught her attention. She knew that her roots were Salvadoran, though the details were fuzzy.

The article described a human rights group called Voz del Pueblo (Voice of the People) that had come out of hiding to march through the city and encircle the government offices in San Salvador. One line in the last paragraph made Carrie's breath catch.

"Dissident leader Valentina Morales was killed when a vehicle crashed into the crowd. The driver denied intent to cause harm, claiming they lost control of the vehicle when they were looking in the glove compartment for a map."

Carrie closed her eyes, feeling the air sting her cheeks. She wasn't sure why, but the world suddenly felt very, very small. She could hear the wind strike a mournful chord.