“It was only one letter, but she carried it up the stairs like a sack of bricks.” From The Lacuna, by Barbara Kingsolver, p. 358.
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It was only one letter, but she carried it up the stairs like a sack of bricks. The handwriting on the envelope was the lady doctor’s, from Boston, the one with the liquid black hair and long brown legs. Dr. Navya Barsar. Throughout the summer and into the fall, Sydney had been Dr. Barsar’s silent shadow, following her at a close distance as she walked up and down the steep cliffside path into town.
If she closed her eyes, Sydney could almost hear the soft slapping sound of the doctor’s leather thong sandals against the bottoms of her feet. The doctor’s feet were a marvel. Finely boned and flexible, with elegant toes capped in little dark rounded toenails. They were painted a shade that, at first, appeared a glossy nut brown but, upon closer inspection, was a rusty purple, the color of the trembling wands of pollen at the heart of a stargazer lily.
Dr. Barsar arrived first, some weeks before her colleague, Dr. Nash, on a tiny motor boat from the next island, which itself was a short seaplane ride from St. Martin, the closest place with nonstop flights from the United States. Sydney had watched from the wharf as the doctor negotiated with the boat’s pilot to help carry her equipment. There was a lot of head-shaking, the man squinting in the sun and pointing up the steep dirt path to the summit at the center of the island. To the place where Sydney lived with Gamma Gay.
The doctor seemed unconcerned. She produced a floppy straw hat from her bag and, in the circle of shade it produced, peeled off two American dollars from a roll of bills. Observing the man’s unbroken scowl, she peeled off one more for good measure, and they were off, balancing countless canvas bags and metal containers like fishing tackle boxes on their arms and across their backs. Sydney had scurried along behind them, watching carefully to see if they dropped anything.