The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2009

22 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / J U LY- A U G U S T 2 0 0 9 a USAID officer who was going to inspect a nearby agricultural project. I had sent her a note that I was com- ing, but I had no way of knowing whether she had received it. Clouds of ocher dust chased our vehicle up the dirt road and settled on my hair and shoulders when I was dropped at the edge of her village. Crossing the square in front of the church, I could see a group of very pregnant women seated on low benches in front of a mud and thatch building. Kat was speaking to them in Guarani. I gathered from the posters behind her that she was talking to them about birth control. As the women struggled to their feet at the end of her talk, she turned and smiled when she sawme watching her. “Well, hello, Mr. Diplomat. To what do I owe this honor?” “Kat, you’re not supposed to be teaching these women about contraception. You’ll get yourself thrown out of the country!” I hadn’t meant to start our conversation that way. I had planned to say how wonderful she looked and tell her my sister had mailed me a copy of The Feminine Mys- tique , which I had almost finished and wanted to talk to her about. But I was gripped by a sudden fear that she might be sent home for breaking this sensitive taboo. I didn’t want her to leave. She stared up at me, hands on her hips, eyes unread- able. “These women are desperate. One came in this morning bleeding and vomiting. She had tried to abort her baby with a curandera’s potion. She is 29, has eight children, was delirious with fever and was carrying her youngest, a 1-year-old with dysentery. He weighed 14 pounds and died in my arms just two hours ago. The mother is still in the health center. The doctor can’t stop the hemorrhaging, and we have no blood or plasma. Hell, we don’t even have a refrigerator. How can I just sit and watch this?” Dark clouds rolled in as she spoke. “The rain will come soon and the roads will be closing. You’ll have to stay with us tonight,” she said. Kat’s host family welcomed me warmly, and one of the servants prepared a rawhide cot on the covered patio where I would sleep. Soon after the evening meal of fried manioc and tomatoes, her family along with the rest of the village extinguished their kerosene lamps and went to bed. The rain had stopped, and I drifted into a fitful sleep until Kat, her face framed by a starry night sky, woke me gently, her fingers stroking my hair. She was sitting on the edge of the cot wearing a thin silk nightgown. “You will never understand,” she whispered. “You shouldn’t have come today.” I reached up to touch her face and gently pulled her down. She brushed her parted lips against mine, and we melted into a wordless tangle of teeth and tongue. Kat opened the folds of her gown and allowed me to caress her until a door creaked inside the house. Rising quickly frommy cot and pulling her nightgown around her, she walked in silence back to her room. By the time I awoke, she was dressed and saddling her horse for the three-hour trip to a school in the countryside. Women in rural Paraguay still rode sidesaddle, but Kat had purchased an English saddle in Asuncion and trained her horse to accept it. She was the only woman in the village, perhaps in the entire country, who rode “like a man.” The morning sun had baked the road into a hard brown crust after last night’s rain. She swung into her saddle and looked down at me with tears in her eyes. “The roads are open again. Your friend should be here soon to get you. I am so sorry — about everything.” As I reached up to take her hand, she wheeled her horse, kicked him into a gallop and buried her face in his mane. He carried her down the only road out of the vil- lage and vanished with her into a stand of palm trees. Several men on the Acahay town council did complain about her talks at the health center, and a few weeks after my visit she was transferred out of the country. Just be- fore I went on leave the following December, a Peace Corps friend who knew us both invited me for a bowl of fish soup at the Lido. When we finished our meal and our beers, he handed me a small package with a Lesotho post- mark. “This came for you.” It was a paperback copy of Norman Mailer’s book The Prisoners of Sex , with a note scribbled inside the cover. “Dear Mr. Diplomat, read this. You need it! – Love, Kat P.S. I know I was right to do what I did, and so do you. P.P.S. You’re a great kisser!” I didn’t reply and never tried to find her. I don’t even know if she passed the exam. She was too impetuous; it would never have worked. I am so sorry, Kat, wherever you are. ■ F O C U S I didn’t reply and never tried to find her. She was too impetuous.