Kate was also dispatched to investigate the import store. Using a skinned knee as her excuse, she skipped swimming one Saturday morning and went with Joan instead. At first, Kate scoured the shop like a detective looking for clues, following Joan around and scrutinizing every item that seemed to catch her mother’s eye, but soon she was finding her own objects of delight, exclaiming over clever soapstone figurines from India, holding up little leather bags from Brazil and crocheted dolls from Mexico for Joan to see. Not until the clerk — a gray-haired Mennonite lady — went into the back room to look for an undamaged pair of tiny jade elephants, did Kate remember her mission. “So where’s the lady in the sari?” she whispered pointedly to her mother.

The clerk had never heard of a woman in a sari. Joan asked about the woman with the long black braid. The Mennonite lady had never seen her either.

Joan looked up from a rack of handmade greeting cards. “I don’t know,” she said. “In the back room maybe. Sewing something.”

But she wasn’t. Kate asked. The clerk had never heard of a woman in a sari. Joan asked about the woman with the long black braid. The Mennonite lady had never seen her either. “But you know, dear,” she said, “we’re all volunteers. Some of us work only a couple of hours a week. There must be plenty of people working here that I don’t know about.”

“Of course,” said Joan, giving Kate a look that said so there.

The lady went on. “If they don’t work on Saturday morning, then I wouldn’t ever see them.”

“I think I’ll take this sika,” Joan said quickly.

“You’ll take what, dear?”

“This.” Joan pushed a pile of knotted jute across the counter.

Kate placed herself squarely in front of the clerk and asked, “So you work here on Saturday mornings?”

“That’s right.”

“Every Saturday morning?” Kate said.

“Sure do.” The gray-haired Mennonite lady hunted under the counter for a suitable bag or box, adding in a muffled voice, “You know, I’ve wrapped up more of these plant hangers for your mother than I can count.” She straightened up again and smiled at Joan and Kate. “Your house must be like a hanging garden.”

The bag from Guatemala led Joan to the meeting, or, at the very least, to the poster announcing the meeting, by slipping off her shoulder right next to the kiosk outside the library. When she stopped and turned to hoist the bag up again, she was nose-to-print with a yellow flyer pinned to the cork board in such a way that she never would have noticed it had she been hurrying past. The flyer announced a meeting of the Central American Human Rights Advocacy and Earthquake Relief Group that very evening in the basement of the Unitarian church on Gilbert and Main.