Guatemalans turn and stare, wondering, I guess, why a woman would be running randomly in the streets when she could be using that energy to haul water, carry babies, till the earth, balance baskets on her head. The next day at the market, a woman points at me, then mimics running and smiles. She tries to get me to buy a colorful embroidered blouse that, although beautiful, is really for a smaller person. I shake my head, knowing my small backpack is already full, and I thank her. Leaving the market, her little girl comes running up behind me, pushes the blouse under my arm, and in English says, “For you.” I turn and see the mother, who waves me on.
I consider going back and giving her some money, wondering why she is doing this. Does she pity me? I look up again and she shakes her head and smiles. I put the blouse to my heart and nod.
GRAND CANYON BIRTHDAY
1978 (age 26)—Colorado, Arizona
The line to the park entrance station is long. My faded coral ’62 Corolla putters quietly as we inch along, no AC, all windows down so that Bandi-Lune, my black Lab, and I can catch any breeze that comes along. I watch the ranger shake his head over and over, and see some cars make a U-turn and drive away. Finally, I’m eye to eye with the guy in a weird hat.
“Ma’am, our campgrounds and lodging are completely full. You can take a short drive and see some of the canyon from view points, but right now,” he glances at his watch, “you barely have two hours before you would have to leave the park.” I can tell he’s tired of repeating the same thing over and over.
“Well,” I say, thinking quickly, “I’m meeting some friends who arrived a few days ago and already have a camping space.” I keep a straight, no nonsense face.
Lucky for me he doesn’t ask for more information. I pay the entrance fee and drive on through. Bandi happily hangs her head out the window, a dog ready for an adventure.
I can only stay one night at the Grand Canyon, then need to hit the road tomorrow. I’m on my way to Los Angeles to begin my studies for a Masters in Recreational Therapy at the University of California Northridge.
Yesterday I left Denver, heading west after going to Carolyn’s wedding. On the very first mountain pass I had a flat. Luckily, I had looked in my trunk while at the ranch where we all stayed for the wedding, and realized my spare was under a bunch of crap. Unfortunately, when I unloaded it all on the grass, I was in front of the porch where Carolyn’s parents, Cal and Kaki, and a bunch of their friends were sitting with evening martinis. They were thoroughly entertained. It looked like I was having a yard sale of clothes, books, pillows, blankets, camping gear, and kitchen items; all the stuff I was carting to California for my big move. But I had repacked it all and put the spare on top, making it a breeze to later get that spare out and onto my wheel, right before a high-altitude afternoon rainstorm unleashed.
After changing the flat, I realized I wouldn’t be able to clock the ten hours to the Grand Canyon, but might make it to Monument Valley, on the Utah/Arizona border, to camp out there. I unfolded my map, checked the route, and guesstimated the time. The days were long, and I liked the idea of returning to that same Monument Valley park where, in 1974 right after graduating from college, Nancy and I had visited while on a road trip in my Dad’s old VW camper that he miraculously had let me borrow. Despite this detour, I still hoped to make it to the Grand Canyon the next day, my birthday.
Four years earlier, Nancy and I had arrived at Monument Valley on a sweltering summer afternoon and decided to first check out the funky old building near the park’s entrance. Ours was the only car there. A young Navajo girl, maybe ten years old, had some jewelry and a few other items spread out on a tattered blanket. I bent over to look at her wares and saw the girl had a nasty wound on her arm with flies buzzing around it. I asked if she spoke English and she nodded yes, so I pointed to our VW camper and said I would like to clean her sore if she’d let me. She immediately stood up, and we walked over to the camper. I slid open the side door and got out the first aid kit. Telling her everything I was doing, I cleaned it up, applied some ointment, then lightly taped on some gauze to keep the flies off. She never smiled, but she didn’t resist a thing. She had skin the color of deep earth and huge round eyes that took in the whole sky.
After Nancy and I checked inside the building and learned all the campsites were open, we drove down and picked one with the best views and a picnic table in the shade. The place was vast, what I thought a moonscape might look like, with towering cinnamon-colored rock monuments. A silence draped over it all, interrupted by an occasional crow’s call. Nancy and I settled in at the table after our picnic dinner, both writing in our journals. Suddenly another sound sliced our serene scene, an old pickup truck rattling into the empty campground.
We watched it come down the road directly to our campsite. When a large Navajo man got out, we both put our pens down and came to attention. He walked the narrow dirt trail to where we were sitting and barked, “Who cleaned my daughter?”
Earlier Nancy and I had talked about how my doing that to the little girl without permission might not have been a good idea. It hadn’t even occurred to me at the time; I just wanted the flies off her sore, to get it cleaned and covered.
I gulped and answered, “I did.”
The guy reached into his pocket, took out a humble pinion seed and bead necklace, and carefully laid it out on our picnic table. Then he nodded and left. He never smiled. I almost fainted.
That necklace is with me right now, in a box with other treasured items underneath my now flat tire in the trunk. Suddenly I could feel the presence of that little girl and her father, and how he went out of his way to express gratitude.
The next morning, on my birthday, Bandi and I left our Monument Valley campsite in search of a grocery store and a place to repair my flat before landing at the Grand Canyon. While I drove, I considered anything else I might want to add to my birthday spread: a bottle of champagne, some red wine, a tin of smoked oysters, delicious cheeses, fresh bread, olives, and a few fruits and vegetables. Just like the picnics Carolyn and I frequently devoured while traveling together in Europe. Oh, and dark chocolate. Most of this I had already purchased in Denver.
As I drive around the Grand Canyon camping area, happy for my full ice chest and a chance to stay here, I hope to find a campsite where the people look friendly and there is a spot for my tent. Geez, some of the sites already have two to three cars there, a bunch of motorcycles, or RVs with a gazillion kids. Finally, I see a campsite with no car, two tents, and four people—three guys and a girl about my age. This might work. I pull in and tell Bandi to stay.
“Hey!” I say in my friendliest voice. “I was wondering if I might share this campsite with y’all, since the campground is full. Maybe I could pitch my tent right over here,” I point to an empty area that is still part of this site.
I see them all look at each other and mumble quietly. The girl nods at me and says, “Yes, yes.”
“Thanks so much! Do y’all have a car, or shall I park right here?” I want to be considerate, and not just because I want to camp here.
Again, low murmurings and a pause before she answers, “No, no car. Park there.”
It occurs to me that maybe they are foreigners. I notice their big backpacks and brands of shoes don’t look familiar. Normally people would be asking who I am, where I’m going, something.
“Do you live in the states?”
Again, they all look at each other and mumble some more, until the girl looks up and says, “No. We are … français.”
“Oh, you’re French! C’est incroyable! Parce que je parle français. Vous êtes tous français?” I can’t believe my luck, two days in a row! This is better than having my spare handy when I had a flat!
I introduce Bandi-Lune to this group of dog lovers who play with her while I pitch my tent. As they are pulling out their pitiful supply of dried food, I ask if they would please join me for a birthday dinner I have on hand. Bien sûr! One of the guys helps me with my ice chest. Si
nce I’m moving, I also have dishes and silverware with me and, of course, wine glasses.
Their eyes get bigger and bigger as I lay out all the food, pop the cork on the wine and suggest we save the champagne to go with the chocolate. I have enough food in my ice chest to last several days, but I am delighted there is plenty to feed five in one elaborate meal. My new French friends are hungry, but they are grateful to a fault, repeating their expressions of gratitude until I tell them to stop. I’m loving speaking French, and when one of the guys pulls out a joint, I tell them this makes it a fair exchange!
We eat and drink and talk and laugh and toast and toke until the moon is out and the stars twinkle. I feel the lure of my adventurous move west to the Pacific, to Los Angeles, divorced and ready to expand and explore the world. I’ve got a grant and a job at the university. I feel like I have something to offer, that I’m worth something. This is a good birthday!
One of the single Frenchmen and I have been flirting all evening. We take an evening walk together along the canyon’s rim, then return to stand in front of the blue world of my tent. He must have been hoping for a fling like this on his journey. With utmost consideration, he politely pulls a condom out of his back pocket. I unzip the door to my tent, and we slide inside.
WOULDN’T I HAVE KNOWN?
1979 (age 27)—Los Angeles and Morro Bay, California
For almost six years I’ve been a physical education teacher in Austin, then Los Angeles, loving my work with children. The last school where I taught was for pregnant girls, the job that ironically showed up when I applied for any physical education teacher position in LA. By now, though, I had given up the pursuit of my master’s as well as my grant, then dropped off a nationally recognized track team I had been running with. My plans, so grand at the Grand Canyon just a year before while on my journey to California, had been abandoned.
It had begun as a casual affair with one of my track teammates, Dan, and ended in another pregnancy. The powerful cayenne mix prescribed by an herbalist to stimulate a miscarriage worked, though painfully. My pregnancy and miscarriage didn’t hinder Dan’s training. Why would it? He barely blinked when I told him I was pregnant.
“What are you going to do?” he asked, while lacing up his racing flats. He never asked again, and we never went out again. He saw me at practices, so must have assumed I had “taken care” of the pregnancy. Not his problem.
At least I’d managed to find the P.E. position in LA. The public school was conveniently located directly across from a Catholic home where many of the young female students from around the country came to live and have their babies, then return home better girls for having kept their secrets. Pregnant girls were “on a trip” or “staying with grandparents for a while.” Once again, I thought of the boys or men, moving on to the next girl, with no such interruption in their lives. Not their problem.
Children having children. The average age of my students was between thirteen and fourteen. I did my best to help their young bodies handle weight and discomfort and an impending birth. Five classes a day, each with ten to fifteen adolescents and teens. My students and I had lots of one-on-one times, where girls would cry about what had happened, often with a father, an uncle, a brother, a neighbor, a pastor and, in the best of situations, a boyfriend. I asked other teachers what they heard, and it was similar. “What do we do?” I beseeched my colleagues. Nothing, I was told. Parents are too far away, and it’s too complicated.
“Just help the girls be calm and healthy. It’s the most we can do.”
The most we can do, I thought. Because it’s better not talking about this stuff. Don’t want to get anyone in trouble, girl or perpetrator. Let the girl feel sufficiently shamed, and maybe she’ll get her head on straight and avoid this situation next time. Like it’s all her responsibility.
One day, when my life and teaching these girls was feeling particularly overwhelming, I popped some acid before going to work. Leaving for my school, I had noticed some acid on the counter in the apartment where I now shared a room with Richard, the new guy I was dating. I recognized the familiar downward spiral I was in and thought maybe the acid would help me understand my tight tangle of feelings. I needed something big and fast, even if it could mean suicide for my teaching career. Would it matter? Everything felt fucked up anyway.
At school, I let go of class schedules and plans for the day and sat quietly with one student after another, listening to their stories and letting them cry. Although I knew taking acid was a horribly irresponsible thing to do—and the heartache, desperation, anger, and confusion I heard that day were almost more than I could bear—something remarkable happened. Seeds of compassion for others and myself took root. My heart grew stronger from sitting with and listening to my students, more so than from all the miles and marathons I had ever run. Their sadness was also my sadness; and somehow in a way I couldn’t yet fully recognize, their stories were my own.
Teaching pregnant girls was too hard for me, and I quit after a semester. My own pregnancy scare at fifteen, illegal abortion at eighteen, and then the induced miscarriage, all of these kept popping into my head while working with those pregnant girls. At the time my own history of sexual abuse was still buried. All I felt was a strange discomfort that I couldn’t quite put my finger on—like there was something I wanted to remember but didn’t want to remember—beyond a swell of anger around my students’ innocence and the cavalier way families stashed them across the country for months. Outta sight, outta mind.
Clocking fifty to one hundred miles of running per week during the past year with the track team pretty much ended my periods. It got to where I couldn’t recall the last time I even had a period. I vaguely remember thinking one heated night that I probably couldn’t get pregnant anyway, so why use my diaphragm? Besides, Richard—the current boyfriend—complained that he could feel it. Gradually he started encouraging me to not use it, and I finally complied, thinking it wasn’t really necessary anyway.
Now I am pregnant, again.
“You’re probably a little more than twelve weeks pregnant,” the clinic doc informs me. “A bit late for an abortion, but we could do one if it’s in the next few days.”
A deep sadness engulfs me that I push down, down, down in efforts to desensitize.
Not having a period regularly made it hard to know I was missing one. Swelling, full breasts triggered a memory of earlier pregnancies. Although abortion is now legal, for some reason I’m hesitant. Richard already has a child somewhere out there who he’s barely in touch with, and I don’t want to join the challenge of communicating with him for the next eighteen years while raising a child. I’d be crazy to have a baby with this guy. Perhaps there is a trace of sense left in my head.
Just before meeting Richard, Dave and I had decided to meet at the Grand Canyon and, while hiking the huge chasm, share our escapades from the last few years. On my return to Los Angeles, beautiful love letters ensued. Although I enjoyed Dave’s earnest pursuits, by this time I was able to manage an expanded perspective on what felt like a familiar situation: the harder I was to get, the more Dave seemed to want me. While we were still married, one night I walked into our living room to discover Dave engaged in all-out physical frolics with a gorgeous mutual friend. When I asked for a divorce, he discouraged me with teary eyes, but I didn’t have any feelings left to feel.
Why would I put myself back in that situation?
After that Grand Canyon rendezvous, I met Richard—a tall, handsome blond dude—while roller-skating on Venice Beach. Sex took on a whole different flavor with this lover, whose last girlfriend was in the latest spread of Playboy magazine. I let my other pursuits pale in the face of sexual exploration on this California adventure. Plus, it felt like a timely way to sever the ties with Dave.
What I hadn’t figured on was another pregnancy, one of the few predictable consequences in my increasingly unpredictable life. I may only be three months pregnant, but this baby feels full and flowering insid
e. No, I don’t want to stay with Richard, but I sense the roots this baby has already put down. An aching sadness wells up inside me, backed by a loneliness and despair about what I can’t seem to make right in my life. I had even given my dog Bandi-Lune to one of Richard’s friends, so I could gallivant around with this crazy guy, and I miss her terribly.
“I’ll drive you to the clinic,” Richard offers, his voice still laced with relief that I am having an abortion. Wow, I think, that’s the first time a guy has offered to do that. Then I remember when I told him I was pregnant his quick response was, “You’re not going to have it, are you?” I feel hollow and empty despite these heavy, throbbing breasts, and a tight, round belly. I say no thanks to the ride. What else can I say? I need heart, not heartlessness. I think about throwing myself off Morro Rock into the ocean here in Morro Bay, but decide I can’t do that to the baby. But I can schedule an abortion. Don’t think about it, I coach myself. Stay numb.
Several months ago, I called my parents to ask if I could bring Richard home for a visit, and Dad responded by calling me “a filthy slut and whore.” Somehow this didn’t surprise me, though I wasn’t sure why he got so angry about my request. Still, hearing my dad call me a slut and a whore made me spin, perhaps a little more out of control. Mom was on the other line but didn’t say a word.
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