Chapter 26 #2
At that moment, Suzanne wasn’t just Suzanne, and she wasn’t just someone who was insufferably rude and hypocritical.
She was everyone who had ever made a decision for me.
But I wasn’t the same Dee. I opened the door, locked it from the inside, slipped out, and shut it tight behind me.
Tomás had been blocking the door and staggered when it opened.
When Suzanne saw me, her face filled with rage. “What kind of stunt is this, Dee?”
“Justice Alliance will contact Ethical Coffee International about decertifying Alegre immediately following this video.”
“We’ll do no such thing.” She tried to push by me to the door.
“I think you’ll feel differently once you’ve seen the whole video.” I watched her wrestle with the locked door.
Frustrated, she turned back on Adrián. “Let me in this instant! You see that she was in there.”
“This is highly irregular, Miss,” said Adrián. “Neither of you is allowed in there. I’m going to have to take both of you back to my office so we can straighten this out.” Adrián pulled a walkie-talkie out of his back pocket and took a step into the shadows, pretending to call security.
Suzanne turned back to me. “Just who the hell do you think you are? Let me in that goddamned booth or I’ll fire you.”
“Go ahead.”
Suzanne’s body went rigid. “Do you realize what I could do to you? I’ll have you blacklisted from every nonprofit in San Francisco, LA, New York, DC.
Every city in the whole goddamned country.
” Fury ran through her body like an electric shock.
“And not just the nonprofits. I know people everywhere. You’ll be working in a laundromat if you don’t let me into that room! You’re making an enemy for life .”
“We’re not turning off this video.” I could feel my cheeks redden, but I didn’t feel scared.
I felt great . “And when it’s over, there will be three hundred witnesses that Justice Alliance has exposed Café Alegre and intends to lobby for their decertification.
Plus, who knows how many thousands are watching the livestream.
So you’d better start considering your options. ”
I pushed by her to see what was happening with Manuel and Clara. Suzanne followed me. We both stopped at the edge of the wings, amazed. Héctor, Ramón, and Professor Ramírez were hustling Don Manuel out of the room as he screamed bloody murder.
“Get your paws off me! I wish I’d burned down your whole goddamned farm!” Several attendees were recording his rant with their phones.
Clara looked toward the wings and caught my eye. She smiled: Got the bastard. I smiled back. Suzanne grimaced.
I turned my attention to the screen. Photos of Café Alegre flitted by; pictures of kids in the fields, exhausted laborers, the black boxes. The audience gasped at the pesticides.
“Oh my god,” said Suzanne, as a photo of Manuel came on the screen, carrying his shotgun.
“Is Café Alegre really a happy place to work?” my voice asked .
“When they have conditions equal to that of a conventional farm?” Photos of tired and sunburned pickers flashed across the screen in quick succession.
“And when a corporate farm like Café Bavaria sells their surplus as fair trade, organic coffee through a backchannel arrangement with Café Alegre, one has to ask, is there any difference at all? Or is Café Alegre merely one more sad face in the deceitful visage of global exploitation?”
Suzanne closed her eyes in pain, realizing she had been checkmated.
I turned to her. “Go back there and put on a happy face. Accept their congratulations.” I smiled, just a bit smugly.
“Who knows, maybe this will work out for you. Maybe you’ll get more visitors on the Truth Trips.
You were so shortsighted about this. Even if all you wanted was power, this was the right move.
Taking down Alegre could make you a legend. ”
“I’m already a legend,” she said, all ice. “Something you’ll never be.”
“The thing is, Suzanne, that was never my goal.”
I turned away from her and walked down the steps on the side of the stage, determined to watch the end of the video alone.
I looked at the audience and scanned the front row.
Matías was sitting with his head in his hands.
I wondered briefly if he regretted his decision, but I realized I didn’t care.
I looked away from him and toward the screen.
This moment was too special to waste on him.
The documentary was ending, and I felt like I was tracing a circle that was finally closing.
I remembered something my grandfather had said to me the year before he died.
He had told my mom he was taking me to the park, but he took me to the Holocaust Museum.
When my mom found out, she was furious, because she thought I was too young.
But my grandfather said I had the obligation to know.
My grandfather didn’t treat kids any differently than he treated anyone else.
I remember we were looking at a photo of a young girl around my age.
She was staring at the camera with big lost eyes.
She had a yellow Star of David sewn into her shirt.
Behind her the streets were empty except for soldiers.
“Images change people’s perceptions of the world,” he said.
“They start wars. They end them. They can be their own revolution.”
I looked at the screen and thought how true that was.
That photo had framed the way I saw everything.
I could never look at suffering again and see it as remote, because in some way, that little girl was me.
I remembered something else my grandfather had said.
He quoted Bertolt Brecht: “Art is not a mirror held up to reality, but a hammer with which to shape it.”
I looked at the photos. My hammer. I was flooded with relief.
I finally understood how I could help shape the world I wanted to see.
The video finished and the applause was deafening.
I scanned the audience. There was the Professor in the back, beaming, with Adrián, Tomás, Mario, Clara, Héctor, and Ramón.
My people. To hell with Camus and Sartre; I wasn’t alone.
When I looked at their faces, I was filled with pride, affection, and a little uncertainty.
What would happen next? Would I get a new job here?
Would Adrián and I work out long term? I didn’t know. But I did know one thing.
I had thought throwing myself over a bridge would make me a new person, but it hadn’t.
I had thought standing up to guards or stealing documents or facing down the barrel of a gun would make me brave, but they hadn’t, either.
It was while watching the credits fade from view, and seeing three hundred people with tears in their eyes, sixty of them holding squawking plastic chickens, that I finally understood that I had never needed to be a different person .
I had just needed to become the person I was always meant to be. I had just needed to be roasted.