In the orphanage courtyard, a teenage girl hung out laundry. I laughed with her when a pillowcase caught the breeze and slopped onto her face. Pausing between sheets, she raised her hand as a visor against the sun's glare and scanned the weaving mass of brown- and black-haired children jumping, tagging, and shrieking — exulting somehow in a freedom fed only by Mexican sunshine.
One little girl didn't bounce or jump or laugh. Marisella sat on the curved top of a rusty jungle gym, a still figure above her climbing, leaping peers. She watched with a stone face as I walked to the base of the jungle gym. The sun blinded me until Marisella moved so that I was in her shadow. Tangled hair framed her face in a fuzzy halo, backlit by bright sunlight.
I climbed halfway up the jungle gym and let my foot slip on the bar, leaning out, teetering as if I were about to fall. In mock horror, I shouted, "Peligro!" I had seen a "Peligro!" sign on the mesh fence of a Mexican power station — the exact shape and color of a "Danger!" sign in my world, north of the border. Children scattered from the jungle gym, laughing at me. All except Marisella. A dimple twitched her cheek. I reached up and tickled her. She stepped a bar lower, then another so the tickling would be more convenient for me. And she giggled. I backed down the jungle gym, still tickling, and she followed me all the way to the ground. We lay in the dust at the bottom of the bars, laughing together. Then Marisella jumped up and stood over me. Again I saw the halo.
"Peligra!" she shouted, and she ran off across the courtyard. All of the children called me Peligra for the rest of the week.
It seemed odd that Marisella was the kid I liked most. Why not Carlos, sitting on a barrel reading the same book over and over? Why not little Elise who had curls and wore a grubby piece of yarn tied over her sweater as a belt? But it was Marisella, watching me from a distance, rarely laughing — Marisella, with the brown eyes that showed nothing — she was the one.
A volunteer at the orphanage, I was there for less than a week, and the place needed work. For two days I painted my way around the back wall of the grounds, outside the locked double gate. Behind me, cliffs cut down to the Baja shoreline. As I brushed blue paint over stucco, little heads popped in and out of the window bars. I watched for Marisella, but if she was there I didn’t see her.
My last day at the orphanage, the children seemed to look right past me, as Marisella had in the beginning. I suppose they were accustomed to gringos coming in and out; there were no tears for my departure, no hugs goodbye. But Marisella hovered. If I went to help another kid, Marisella watched, waited for me. She wanted to turn the jump rope, but the older girls were frustrated because Marisella wasn’t strong or tall enough to get it aloft. I squatted down behind her, our heads at the same level, and reached around her body to put my hand over hers on the rough end of the rope. Together we turned while the big girls jumped and sang rhymes I didn't understand, pounding the memory of that day into my heart with each beat of the rope on the dirt.
Then my bus pulled up. Someone opened the orphanage gates, and children swarmed to the street, touching the tires, running fingers along the striped detail, spreading their palms on the headlights. The big girls dropped the jump rope and ran through the open gates, but Marisella stayed with me, holding on. I held on too. My body formed a touchless hug around Marisella, our only real contact on the frayed end of the jump rope, both of us gripping the rough fibers, my hand over hers.
Marisella let go. She walked away from me then, away from the jump rope, the gate, the bus — as if an invisible cord pulled her back to the bars. The jungle gym looked like a giant birdcage to me, a birdcage with no door and flightless Marisella perched on top.
The driver honked. I hurried to the bus and got on. Marisella sat alone on the jungle gym. I waited for her eyes to focus on my window — I wanted one last wave. The older girl herded little ones back inside the gate, and before it closed I thought I saw Marisella's head turn in my direction, her hand lift off the jungle gym. But it was too late. The gates closed, and soon my bus turned onto the highway, headed north out of Baja.
I dug a small date book and pencil from the bottom of my backpack, thinking I would write an 'M' on every other Tuesday to help me remember. I'd learn some more Spanish and send letters. Postcards, at least. Sure, I'd miss a couple of weeks here and there, but I would write. That way, when I came back over Spring Break — or maybe not until summer if things got busy at home — well, she would still know me.
But the pencil tip was broken. I had no way to sharpen it.
Did the orphanage get mail delivery? Maybe not. And it was such a long bus trip, all the way back down to Baja. I bent the corner of a page in my date book. But only a tiny fold on the very edge.