Page 273 of What We Brave
"That's not the same."
"You're right. Yours is worse. You have good intentions though. That counts for something."
She laughs. Full, surprised, the kind that makes her cover her mouth. And for a second I see exactly where Laine comes from — not the cooking, not the competence, but the way joy moves through her whole body when she lets it.
"You're terrible," she says. "I see why she likes you."
"It's the only reason."
She swats me again. I steal a piece of mango from the cutting board and dodge out of the kitchen before she can get me a third time. I'm off to find some trouble.
The circle of women is set up under a massive tree on the east side of the village. Eight, maybe ten women sitting on low stools and overturned buckets, working on what I'm pretty sure is a loom type situation. Bright threads — red, yellow, deep blue — stretched between wooden bars, fingers moving in patterns I can't even begin to track.
Laine's already there. Cross-legged on the ground next to an older woman who's showing her something with the thread, their heads bent together, speaking in a mix of Spanish and Kaqchikel that Laine navigates like she was born into it. She wasn't. But she grew up in places like this — different country, different language, same rhythm.
She looks up when I walk over. Smiles. It's almost the real one. Almost.
"Hey. Want to try?"
"Absolutely."
The women make room. Someone hands me a set of threads and awooden doohickey - a shuttle- and starts explaining in rapid Spanish that I catch about forty percent of. Something about tension. Something about pattern. Something that might bedon't mess this up.
I mess it up.
Within three minutes I've tangled two colors together and created what looks like a very small, very ugly knot.
Good. Perfect.
This is exactly the kind of low-stakes disaster I needed. Something I can fail at that doesn't matter. Something that isn't Blake on a roof or Laine's hands shaking or the conversation that's coming tonight like a freight train.
The woman next to me — Rosa, I think — takes it from my hands, untangles it in about four seconds, and hands it back with a look that saystry again, gringo.
It's not my fault. As soon as I learned it was called a shuttle, all I've been able to picture is a little car driving through the threads and I forget what I'm supposed to be doing.
"Wow," Laine says. "That's impressively bad."
"It's abstract. I'm making abstract art."
"You're making a mess."
"Why are you always so mean to me," I whine dramatically, batting my eyes at the lady next to me.
The women are laughing. Not at me —withme, mostly, though Rosa's definitely laughing at me and I respect that. I try again. Get about six passes before the thread slips and I lose the pattern completely.
A girl — maybe seven, eight — slides off her mother's lap and comes to stand next to me. She watches my hands with enormous brown eyes, then reaches over and corrects my grip on the shuttle without saying a word.
"Thank you," I say in Spanish. "You're better than me."
She nods. Very serious.Obviously.
Laine's watching us. That look on her face — soft, open, the one she gets when something lands exactly right. Then it flickers. Goes somewhere else. She glances past me toward the job site, and the softness tightens into something else.
Worry.
"He's fine," I say quietly.
My hands are busy with the thread. That's good. Keeps them from doing what they want to do, which is walk over there and plant myself next to him like a fucking guard dog.
