Member-only story
Rosa’s Colors 3
Costa Rica 1975
Rosa spent most of the weekend in her room, reading Gone with the Wind in Spanish, imagining herself a North American “Belle” rather than a Central American peon. She readily identified with Scarlett O’Hara; after all they were both petite brunette beauties with tiny waists and fantastic green eyes. Somehow the book cheered her, even though she didn’t live in an antebellum mansion and was merely the daughter of a sometime servant rather than having a “Mammy” herself.
But by Friday morning when there was no word from Menendez, her “Fiddle Dee Dee, I’ll think about it tomorrow” attitude began to fizzle. Her feigned self-confidence vanished, and Rosa realized she was an extremely lonely girl.
She was hardly able to concentrate during her French and Algebra classes, and Latin American History served as fifty minutes of blankness.
Back at the dormitory no message had been left with Matron. Rosa looked at the wall clock and saw 2:30, 2:45, 3, 3:15. At 3:30, Matron knocked at her door, telling her to pick up the phone in the lounge. Rosa almost leaped down the hall. She didn’t even wait to hear the voice on the other end of the receiver before exuberating, “Oh, Don Diego, I am so happy you called. I thought maybe you had forgotten your little Rosa.”
