At eight the next morning Eric arrives in a light blue Mercedes. I don’t like riding in expensive cars, especially when I am going to be driving through places where people can’t afford bicycles. But I have no choice.
We drive along a twisty, dusty, mostly dirt road. The day is windy and dust is flying around us like a plague of locusts. I keep hoping that dust will cover the car, nick its sleek exterior, and hide its identity; but that Mercedes symbol proudly precedes us wherever we go. The dust seems to slide off the car as if the finish has been done in ScotchGuard.
Above the road on both sides of us are terraced fields of beans and corn. The women working in the fields look like paintings, each wearing nearly identical splashes of color. Like the women from many indigenous villages in Guatemala, the Chichi women wear matching huipiles, blouses made from rectangular weavings with openings for the head and the arms. You can know a woman’s village by the huipil she wears. The Chichi huipilesare decorated with brilliantly colored flowers.
Chichicastenango sits in a valley; its buildings are whitewashed adobe; its streets, cobblestone; its roofs, red tile. The steps of Santo Tomás church, which is the focus of the plaza, are filled with women selling flowers and lighting incense. Eric buys me a lily, paying nearly as much for one as the seller was asking for the whole bunch. The village smells of sweet wood, burning in the cooking stalls, of incense from the religious ceremony that is taking place on the church steps. The streets and alleys are a huge palette of oranges, bananas, melons, papayas, and flowers in every imaginable color.
Eric and I wander in and out of the fruits and vegetables, along a passageway of weavings, down alleys of leather and woodcrafts. I buy some candles and a wrought iron candle holder. Eric buys a wool blanket for himself and a floppy hat for me. Then we wander over to the Mayan Inn for a lunch of grilled meats, cheese, black beans, salsa, and fried plantains. Eric is easy to be with, relaxed, bright, comfortable with himself. It’s a great day; I like this man.
In the car going home we talk about ourselves. He tells me that he plans to live the rest of his life in Guatemala. He lives in a big house in the outskirts of Guatemala City, surrounded by a tall fence. He has a pool, a maid, and a Mercedes. He says he’s discovered paradise.
He has been here for three years without ever going back to the United States. “And I never will,” he says.
“How can you be so sure?” I ask, surprised at the conviction in his voice.
He looks at me with a smile on his lips but not in his eyes, “I am wanted for bank robbery in Texas.”
The following Sunday is my forty-ninth birthday. It will be the first time in my life that I’ve been away from family on my birthday. There are no cards in the mail, no gifts, no one to give me a birthday hug or take me out to dinner. I feel empty and sad. I don’t want to be alone on my birthday.
I think about telling some of my ex-pat friends, but they’ve only known me a few months. Besides, I am spending less time with them and more with María and her family these days. It is not a surprise that I feel more comfortable with the indigenous community; the privileged life of the ex-pats feels lofty and too exclusive for me, though they are quite willing to include me in their world. When I am with them, I find myself recreating a persona that is reminiscent of the me I no longer want to be.
I decide that on my birthday, I will invite María and her large family to my apartment for hot dogs and beans; but I do not tell them that it is my birthday. Fifteen people show up, twelve kids and three moms. When they arrive, I see Doña Lina, my landlady, peering across the yard at us, disapprovingly.
I have bought a small gift for each guest. No one has a clue what the party is all about . . . but we eat and sing (not “Happy Birthday”). And they open presents. When they leave, María reminds me of her daughter’s birthday party on Wednesday.
As soon as the gang walks out the door, my landlady knocks. She is not happy with my having filled her house with indigenous people, but she doesn’t say so. Instead, she asks me how I know them and if I have ever been to their home. She offers a gratuitous warning, “Be careful. They think nothing of stealing.”
Then she invites me for lunch on Tuesday, two days from now. This is the first gesture of friendship she has proffered, and it is a significant one. She tells me she would like me to meet some of her friends. Until now, our relationship has consisted of polite greetings and the exchange of rent money. I’m hoping the luncheon will be the beginning of a new relationship. She will be the first friend I have in the Spanish (white) population of Antigua.
The invitation is for doce (twelve) y media, except I hear dos (two) y media and I show up two hours late. By the time I get there, lunch is over and her friends have gone home. I apologize profusely, explaining my mistake. But the significance of the invitation, the embarrassment in front of her friends, and the rudeness I demonstrated in not showing up ruin any possible relationship. She no longer talks to me when she sees me in the yard or on the street. I am disappointed. I’d been hoping a relationship with her and her friends would give me an insight into the Spanish population; but it isn’t to be.
The next day is Diana’s party. María’s village is a short bus ride into the hills. I arrive with a birthday book for Diana (she is one) and a bottle of bubbles for the other kids. As I walk toward the small adobe structure, I can hear the clapping of tortillas. It’s the sound of villages in Central America, someone clapping a tortilla into its round, pancake shape before it goes on the grill. I’ve been hearing the sound for months. Now I’m about to do it.
María’s mom patiently demonstrates. We are sitting in the cookhouse, which has a dirt floor, open walls, and a tile roof. In one corner there is a wood fire heating a pot of beans with bits of meat, and throwing its flame and sparks whenever the wood is turned. A second wood fire is being fed and getting hot for the comal, a rectangular steel griddle that will cook the tortillas.
We are sitting at a slab table pulling off blobs from a huge pile of masa dough and rounding them into balls between the palms of our hands. Masa is made from corn; it’s halfway between cornmeal and corn flour, finely ground and mixed with ground lime and water.
Mamá puts the ball of masa into the center of one palm. Then, using a rhythmic clapping motion, she turns her hands, clap, clap, clap, clap, clap, in opposite directions; then back, clap, clap, clap, clap, clap, clap. The dough grows rounder and flatter until finally, clap, clap, you have a tortilla around ten inches across. Each new tortilla gets put onto a growing pile of tortillas waiting to be cooked. There are three of us slapping and twisting in the tiny, smoky hut filled with the sweet smells of burning wood and bubbling beans. And soon, the tortillas are flipped onto the comal, and the smell of toasting tortillas dominates the room.
As the younger kids and a couple of the men string streamers around the lower tree limbs and chase bubbles around the yard, and four women clap and cook in the hut, two of the sisters are attached to their backstrap weavings, working the threads into beautiful patterns. The loom is attached to a tree on one side and the other side is held in place by leather straps stretched around the backs of the weavers.
By the time the guests arrive, about twenty-five in all, there are three piles of cooked tortillas, each one about a foot and a half high. When the food is ready, Mamá hands each guest a tortilla. The tortilla is both a plate and a spoon as bits of it are torn off and used to pick up the beans that have been plopped in the center of the disc.
I am watching the guests line up for beans when I hear my name. Mamá is holding up a tortilla with raggedy edges and holes in the middle. She laughs.
“This one is Rita’s.”
Everyone, including me, joins her laughter. I collect my tortilla and she goes back to passing the others out until the next malformed tortilla appears.
“Rita!” she calls. “Esta es tuya.” This is yours. More laughter.
By the time she finishes, I have six tortillas in front of me. But more important than
the tortillas is the sense we all have that I am becoming a part of them.
I study weaving with Mamá (after five hours of classes, my tablecloth is six inches long and two feet wide). I help María and some of the teenagers improve their selling-English. I play with the kids (María’s daughter and her nieces and nephews).
I discover that the family, and many others in the village, have benefited from the Christian Children’s Foundation. One of María’s sisters is taking sewing lessons paid for by the foundation. She brings me a skirt she has made. A younger sister shows me letters from her sponsor. They are carefully pasted into an album with a quetzal bird on the cover, its long tailfeathers nearly hanging over the edge. Then she runs to show me some of the new clothes she’s been able to buy. CCF is real, more than just an ad in a magazine.
One morning I arrive in the village to work on my weaving. Before I am down the steps of the bus, four teenagers are all over me.
“Tienes que acompañarnos a la playa.” You have to come with us to the beach. “No puedes decir no!” You can’t say no!
Several families have rented a bus for a weekend holiday at the beach. They want me to join them. I am honored by the invitation and excited by the prospect of spending three days on a family vacation.
A week later, the loaded bus picks me up in the plaza at seven in the morning. María has saved me a seat. Three hours out of Antigua we have our first flat tire. The second flat tire comes an hour later. We arrive at the beach community just before dark.
One of the men (there are four) goes off to find us a hotel room and the women spread colorful but threadbare “tablecloths” on the sidewalk. Some of us sit on the sidewalk, others sit on the curb, feet in the street, and we open up the food that was packed that morning. There are fourteen of us in the family group; we take up most of the sidewalk. Other tourists, forced to walk around us, make comments that I cannot translate, but I know what they are saying.
As we sit on the ground, cars blowing exhaust in our faces, we eat, tossing the papers and wrappings into the street. It is hard for me to throw garbage into the street; I can feel the years of conditioning pulling on my arm as I toss. I think about picking up our trash and finding a garbage pail; but I think again. I am a friend, not a teacher. If I pick up after them, I am making a judgment that says I know better than they. Even if I walk with my own garbage to a pail, I am making a statement.
I am an invited guest. I do as they do.
Before we are finished, two girls in braids and white embroidered blouses stained with dirt come by selling drinks in plastic bags. Everyone except me buys a drink. I don’t like sweet, sugary drinks, so I’m carrying bottled water.
Sitting on the curb and spilling over into the street, we are taking up a parking space. Cars drive by looking for parking spaces and honk. No one moves. Then suddenly a car swoops in and nearly amputates five pairs of legs. We jump up, spilling things all over the street. The driver screams something unpleasant at us as he steps out of the car and crosses the street. No one in our group says anything. This is not a country where indigenous people confront the Hispanic population.
Finally José comes back from his hotel search. There are no rooms. His brother-in-law joins him and the search continues. We wait on the sidewalk. An hour later, the men come back. They have found a room . . . one room for fourteen of us.
After a walk on the beach and some splashing in the water, we go to our room. It has one double bed that sleeps five and floor space for six more. Three of us sleep in the hall outside the room.
I am in the hall when the procession begins in the middle of the night. Everyone is vomiting, the babies are crying, adults are dry-heaving. We all go to the beach, which is down a hall and out a door. The ocean tide is coming in. There are drunk noises coming from the bar next door. Under the full moon, thirteen of my family stand, vomiting.
I go into the bar and buy as many big bottles of water as I can carry. As the sun comes up, some of us are back in the vomit-smelling-room-for-fourteen. I decide to stay on the beach. I wrap my eyes in a sweatshirt and try to sleep. By nine, everyone is on the beach, the mothers washing clothes in the ocean, the children playing in the water, screeching with glee in the waves. That night, the room is quiet and the hall is cleaner.
We leave at noon the next day. There is only one flat tire on the way home, but there are no more spares. This time we sit for two hours on the side of the highway. Luckily, no one is selling drinks in plastic bags.
As I sit there in the hot sun, sweating and dirty, surrounded by the adults, holding one of the babies in my arms, and feeling as close as I have ever felt to people from another culture, I realize that I have left no space between me and them, no room for anthropological distance. I feel as though they are family. Their pain is my pain; their joy, my joy. And it feels right.
It is clear that I am far more a mother than I am an anthropologist. This odd and messy weekend has helped me to define what I want to do in my travels: I want to know many cultures . . . from the inside.
Meanwhile, back in Antigua, between weaving, touring, and breakfasting, I have completed a thirty-two-page children’s book called Stop Those Painters! It’s about two guys who can’t control their urge to paint. They begin with walls and move on to chairs and stairs and toys and boys and teachers and cars and trucks and policemen and, finally, as they stand on the wings of a jet plane, they gleefully paint rainbows in the sky. It’s my first book as a nomad, inspired by the colors and the rainbows of Guatemala. I send it off to New York.
A month later I hear from my agent. Scholastic wants the book. I will be able to live for five months on the three thousand dollars they will pay me. I decide to go to the States for a few weeks, to visit my kids and my parents.
Mitch has settled in Manhattan after his year in Singapore. I see him several times during my visit. It is wonderful to hear, face to face, his stories of studying and playing in Singapore; of visiting China, where he took classes in Mandarin; of touring Asia with a softball team; and of visiting Bali. He is working as a journalist in New York, and I’ve never seen him so happy.
Jan is still in Colorado, working as a journalist on The Vail Trail. I call to make arrangements to visit her, but she tells me that she’s coming to visit me in Guatemala. Great! I can’t wait to introduce her to my world.
I spend a week with my mother and father in Connecticut. They are careful what they say to me about my new life. I know they would prefer to have their daughter married; I also know that they don’t believe me when I say I’m very very happy. They know better; women are only happy if they have a husband. It’s the way life should be. My mother tells me she recently sent a birthday gift to my ex-husband. She doesn’t say it, but she is hoping for reconciliation.
My brother, who is three years younger than I, married and securely settled in a well-furnished home and his own successful business not too far from my parents, takes me to the airport shuttle when I leave.
“Not ready to return to the ‘real world’ yet, huh?”
When I tell him I am in a real world, it’s just not his world, he smiles knowingly. “I give you another six months. You’ll get it out of your system.”
They do not understand that the more I live it, the more I want it.
But Jan seems to understand. She backpacked with her best friend for six months in Europe when she was a junior in college, and my life is her dream, though I’m sure she would configure it differently.
Two weeks after I return to Guatemala, she arrives. For one month, she plays with the babies, dines with the ex-pats, meets a whole crowd of backpackers, and crafts a young adult novel.
Together, Jan and I travel around Guatemala by bus, and we take a plane trip to Tikal, a Palenque-like Mayan ruins in northeast Guatemala near Belize. The best part of it all for me is getting to know Jan as an adult.
Three days after Jan leaves, while I’m still missing her and feeling an emptiness in my apartment, Henry sits down next to m
e on a park bench. An Australian agronomist, he has just arrived from Nicaragua, where he has been working for the last six months. He’s fortyish, small, angular, and friendly. He’s in Antigua to take a break from Nicaragua and to study Spanish.
He’s come to the right place. There are so many language schools in town that some days I think every native in Antigua is teaching Spanish. Signs, fliers, posters, children, adults all promote schools and teachers.
Henry’s plan is to study intensively for two months and then go back, overland, to Nicaragua. The Sandinista government has offered him a job advising cooperatives on agricultural matters.
I ask him about Nicaragua. The Reagan government has been telling Americans that the Sandinista government is a serious threat to the free world and that the Nicaraguan people are virtually prisoners of a communist regime.
“It’s a hard place to live,” Henry says. “Mostly because of the U.S. embargo. Every one is hurting. There’s no food in the markets, no medicines, no parts for machines. And no professionals . . . they all left with Somoza. The whole educated class moved to Florida.”
As an agronomist, Henry has a skill to offer. Apparently, there are thousands of Henrys from all over the world who have come to Nicaragua to help out. Ever since I arrived in Guatemala, I’ve been listening to their stories, so different from what I read in the U.S. newspapers.
I’ve been thinking about going down to see for myself, but I haven’t wanted to make the trip alone. It’s a long and possibly dangerous trip through Honduras. And I don’t know how the Nicaraguans would treat an American. It is, after all, my country that is training and arming the Contras, who are dropping American bombs on the people. Henry would be a great escort. I am trying to decide if I can ask him to take me along when he says, “Can you recommend a place in Antigua where I can stay for a couple of months?”
Tales of a Female Nomad Page 7
