The Heart Is Not a Size by Beth Kephart Read Free Book Online

daughter. One daughter and no job. You’d have thought she could have gotten more right.
    I watched her, I couldn’t help it. I thought about how bizarrely doppelgängerish Riley and her mother were—the same slivered nose, the same wide cheeks, the same model-worthy jaw. Riley’s mom had bleached her freckles. She’d had her forehead smoothed to silk by dried and purified botulinum toxin type A. She’d put everything she had into being beautiful, and Riley had committed exaggerations of her own—punching all those holes into her earlobe, striping her hair shades of neon sun and Mars red, painting her nails the colorof some witch’s brew. And yet, a perfect stranger would identify them as family. In a couple of years they would be confused for sisters. That particular day, in early May, Riley was wearing an extra-large T-shirt over a pair of baggy jeans. Her mother wore a skin-tight camisole and a waist-hugging, flared Gypsy skirt.
    “The point is this,” Mack was saying “We’re not just there to help. We’re there as emissaries of our country, exemplifying the best of America. Everything we do will be watched—what we wear, how we eat, how we are with one another, what we achieve, what we leave behind. Process is as important as outcomes here. The intangibles will weigh in against the facts.”
    “So, and, like…” It was Jazzy, wild Jazzy, waving her hand, taking the stage. “What exactly will we be doing once we’re there? I mean, what seeds will we be planting?”
    “Your question is my segue,” said Mack. He stood and walked to the light switch, darkened the room. He turned our attention to that part of the wall that was empty of transformation pictures as he flicked on the ancient projector. An aerial map of Anapra came into view. A couple of word slides on landscape andtopography that described how Anapra, the squatters’ village at the edge of Juárez, slouched downward from some hills that were made of stone and crumbling to sand. Finally Mack got to Jazzy’s question, a smile on his sun-creased face.
    “Right here,” he said, indicating the top of a hill with a pointer, “is a tiny community church, a community kitchen, the house where the community pastor and his family live, and also a soccer field, monkey bars. Between the buildings here”—he pointed—“is a narrow stretch of dry, white earth. It’s there that we’ll be putting up a bathroom.”
    “We’re building a pastor’s bathroom?” the kid named Corey asked.
    “It will be the community’s bathroom,” said Mack.
    “The whole community?” asked Mrs. Marksmen, whose face, so frozen smooth, could not express the shock her voice emitted. Riley caught a glimpse of the frozen look too. I heard her drop one flip-flop. Disgust, maybe. Or shame.
    “Two toilet stalls for men and two for women,” Mack explained. “A one-for-each shower on either side.Running water for people who have little to none. A place of dignity and well-being beneath a sweltering sun.” Mr. Buzzby would have called this oratory. Mack seemed delighted with himself—complete—and stopped.
    “We’re building a bathroom ?” Sophie repeated, not to verify but to question the logic.
    “In two weeks?” asked Sam. Sam had, it was clear, recently blonded his hair. Bright shoots of it flew off his head like comet tails.
    “We’ll be getting a bathroom facility under way,” Mack clarified, with the practiced patience that comes from doing who knows how much time in his profession. “We’ll level the land, pour the foundation, raise up the walls, hammer in a roof.”
    “And what happens when we leave?” I wondered aloud.
    “We’re planting seeds,” Mack said. “Remember? After we leave, we trust the community to carry the momentum forward.”
    “Transformations,” Riley murmured.
    “Yes.” Mack nodded. “Yes.”
    “But where”—it was Corey again—“do we get what we need in a place like this? I mean, two-by-fours? Nail guns? Concrete