Somos todos Americanos, says Teresa. We are all Americans.
“Okay,” you say. Norteamericano.
Teresa ruffles your hair. Eres un gringuito lindo, she says in babytalk. The other waitresses shriek with laughter. Behind the counter, la jefa hides a smile.
Time is another popular subject. ¿Cuanto tiempo? everyone asks. “How long are you stay?” At 42 days or less from last menstrual period (LMP) methotrexate was administered alone without misoprostol. Abortion was successfully induced in 10 patients.
At first, you spoke only in the present tense: I arrive three weeks ago. I go to Machu Picchu yesterday. You bought a Spanish textbook, spent hours doing exercises: If the action is in the past and you can pinpoint it as to when or how many times it occurred, you will use the preterite tense. This refers to a single, contained act, not to be repeated. Like a mistake.
An action which occurred either repeatedly or over an extended period is considered to be imperfect.
Investigators have started to evaluate the use of misoprostol without mifepristone or methotrexate. Investigators have reported extremely high abortion rates at 56 and even 63 days’ gestation. These data have been previously discussed.
Then, of course, there’s the future. In Spanish, the future is a simple tense.
Nearly a month, and you’re still in the same town. Each night you consult the Lonely Planet, remap the trip, reassess whole countries. You ask yourself ¿por qué? You ask yourself what you’re waiting for. You tell a taxista you are doing research, something to do with ruins. You tell a persistent shoeshine boy you work for the C.I.A. Minutes later, seven boys crowd around. Pinochet! they cry. Allende! Bang bang!
“For why always you are alone?” asks la jefa. It is late morning, the breakfast crowd has gone, leaving you to squint at the newspaper.
No sé, you tell her.
“Where you are sleep?” she asks, and you tell her the name of the hostel—a dingy, water-stained place just steps from a charming outdoor market that reeks of animal blood and exhaust. When you walk out to the street each morning, there are freshly butchered rib-racks hanging on hooks, hogs’ heads impaled on sticks. The kid at the desk warns you to watch your wallet. Each night he asks, “You are look for girlfriend?” You pretend not to understand.
“You have take city tour?” la jefa says, hands folded on the table. The other waitresses huddle behind the curtain. Teresa sings along to the radio: Amor mío, no puedo vivir sin tus besos . . . La jefa calls out over her shoulder: ¡Basta!
You tell her you have taken the city tour.
She brightens. “My city, you like?” Her nails are newly polished. A thin scar forks across the back of her right hand.
Sí, you say. Pero . . .
She raises her chin. You don’t like these tours, you tell her, all the gringos packed into a van, shepherded through the attractions like schoolchildren at a museum. No soy gringo, you tell la jefa.
She puts a hand over your hand. Claro que no.
You want to know the city better. Its people. Nearly a month and you still feel like a foreigner, a scared kid standing at the edge of the surf. You gouge at the tabletop with a fingernail and say, Quiero comprender.
La jefa pushes back her chair. “Okay!” She moves across the room, throws open the shutters to let in cold morning sun. “Wednesday. I take you dance. Chicas,” she says, ¡Bailamos el miercoles!
There is a small commotion behind the curtain. A waitress sticks her head out. ¿Por qué no el jueves? A hand yanks her back and Teresa steps out and insists, plaintively, on Friday. La jefa stands over her ledger and pretends not to listen. There is much jostling and lamentation. She closes the book with a clap.
Bailamos el miercoles, she declares. ¡No sean niñas! “Return to work.”
The café quiets. La jefa inspects dishes on the countertop. You still can’t say how old she is—maybe thirty, maybe forty. She is fairer than the other girls, much taller. Perhaps this means she’s much older. Perhaps they are like trees.
There is pounding and clanging as a group of Israelis mount the spiral staircase. Waitresses flitter out, set menus before them. The Israeli men clown and shove each other, grab the waitresses around the waist; the women light cigarettes and ignore the men.
“At the discoteca I help you find beautiful peruana,” la jefa informs you. She leans out the window, looks both ways down the alley. Teresa refills your coffee, still singing: Amor mío, no puedo vivir sin tus besos . . . La jefa slaps the wall: ¡Callate! Teresa scampers off laughing.
La jefa turns back to you. “Why you no have a wife?” she says.
At 42 days or less from last menstrual period (LMP), you start visiting farmacias, lingering by display cases, pretending to examine different sunblocks, the many varieties of cotton ball. The pharmacists study you over their mustaches until, one day, you casually inquire about misoprostol. Misoprostol, you’ve learned, is also used to treat severe asthma. “Hypothetically, if a woman were embarazada,” you hear yourself say, “but she had asthma . . .”
The pharmacist puts his hands flat on the counter. He confers with his assistant in a corner. You can’t hear what they are saying, but it amounts to this: You are a gringo. They know what you do here. They have seen your kind lounging around the main plaza, lining up outside the discotecas at night. They have seen you in the fancy restaurants, drinking wine with the local girls. It is a small town. Your amigas at the café have taught you a saying: Pueblo chico, infierno grande. When la jefa is not there they fawn around your table. They pretend to swoon, hands pressed to foreheads. They stand in the door to the kitchen, backs to you, and caress themselves, then weep with laughter. The pharmacist doesn’t know this. He has never seen you before. But he knows one thing: Whatever a gringo is doing in his farmacia, it has nothing to do with asthma.
La jefa does not date gringos. Yo no soy brichera, she says, shaking a finger at no one. The discoteca is a dark, second-floor room decorated with lurid masks: demons, witch doctors, ghouls. A bank of cigarette smoke hangs over the bar; the music—Britney, Nirvana, early MTV novelties—is loud enough to shake bottles on their shelves.
Mira, she says disapprovingly. You look. Every Peruvian girl in the bar is surrounded by gringos, who shoulder each other aside and offer her drinks bought dos por uno. There are no Peruvian men in the discoteca. There are no older women, or poor campesinos. The bouncer downstairs makes sure of this.
“What’s a brichera?” you ask.
La jefa nods at the other waitresses. Como ellas.
Como tu madre, says Teresa, then nudges the unsmiling jefa. When Teresa goes to dance with Javier, la jefa explains: A brichera is a local girl who sleeps with gringos so she can eat at nice restaurants, drink cuba libres, and take trips to Lima, Machu Picchu.
“Sometimes, this gringo marry la brichera,” she shrugs. The café has lost two waitresses this way. You’ve heard talk of them—their new lives in Berlin, the money they send back to their families. As she watches the waitresses dance, la jefa has the stern face of a displeased mother. She sips a cuba libre. Earlier, you danced with her to an old song called “Things Can Only Get Better.” La jefa kept her arms at her sides, her eyes never stopped moving.
Es un sueño, she says now. “A dream. Usually is only sex. When this gringo return to gringolandia, she come here.” She points her chin at the crowded dance floor, the hallway, gringos in T-shirts, fleece jackets around their waists, leaning over peruanas dressed to the nines.
“It sounds like a game,” you say.
La jefa sucks her teeth. Es una profesión.
Try again: another farmacia, another hypothetical. Misoprostol is used to prevent gastric ulcers, you learn, in persons taking anti-inflammatory drugs. There was a work injury, you say. Mucha inflamación. Keep trying: your friend’s grandfather, terrible arthritis. What is the word for arthritis? What is the word for migraine? A farmacista crooks his finger at you. He leans over the counter and whispers: Weren’t you in here th
e other day?
It’s been six weeks since LMP. You’ve extended your plane ticket, started paying the hostal by the week. Each day the other countries you’d planned to visit seem farther away—as does your own. Schaff et al. [26] found in-home intravaginal self-administration to be safe and effective. Theoretically, the 400-µg regimen might have equal efficacy with fewer side effects.
This is just a theory.
On another theory, you venture across town to a smuggler’s market with the promising name El Contrabando. But all you find are new hiking boots, a dozen pirated CDs. You cram into the back of a combi, proud of yourself for taking the local bus: something a gringo would never do. City blocks drag by, storefronts crammed with plastic tubs and padlocks, dingy cafeterias, dogs with swollen teats lingering everywhere. In an unfamiliar neighborhood you spot a gleaming new farmacia, all glass and neon, a pyramid of shampoo in the window. You spend some time trying on cheap sunglasses, looking at yourself in the tiny mirror. You watch the farmacistas—young women in tight gray jackets and black neckties—handing strips of pills to bent old men. You choose the prettiest one and explain: You are new in town. Your novia is sick from the altitude. You explain, in deliberately broken Spanish, that they took her asthma medicine at customs. You are worried, you tell her, just the right vein of panic in your voice. She listens without blinking, compassion swelling under her coat.
Mira, she says quietly. She glances toward the back and touches your hand. She speaks very slowly. She says your novia should get a pregnancy test. Misoprostol can hurt the baby, she says. “You understand me?” she says, in English. She reaches under the counter and presses something into your hand: two condoms in unmarked wrappers. “There is bad girls here,” she says. In Spanish she says to be careful. She closes your fist over the condoms and straightens her hair. Buenas tardes, she lies.
On the street corner, you watch a mob of schoolchildren cross before a church. Boys in black pants and white button-down shirts, girls in skirts and cardigans. They jostle, scream, drive pigeons into the air. Schaff et al. [9] similarly reported a 97% success rate. The mean gestational age was 43 days’ gestation. Two months ago, you did not know these things. You could not have imagined knowing them. These data have been previously discussed. When they pass the church the boys cross themselves and kiss their fingertips. And it hits you: You have become a person who knows these things.
Walking back along the avenida central, you pass an unfamiliar building, pristine white stucco, a blue and gold plaque: Consulate General of the United States. You stand outside the entrance. I have a small problem, you practice silently. A guard in a black vest watches you. I’ve gotten into a bit of trouble. Could this possibly work? Before you pull the glass door open, something across the street catches your eye.
The pharmacy is no bigger than a coat closet, the shelves almost empty, one bare light bulb hanging by a cord. An old man sits watching a black-and-white television that reflects in his eyeglasses. His face is long, his hands thick and gnarled. He doesn’t look up as you speak. When you finish, he reaches back and pulls a strip of foil from a carton. He puts the pills in your palm, closes his hand over yours, squeezes until it hurts.
Be careful of la jefa, Teresa tells you. You are sharing a cigarette on the balcony of the discoteca. It’s the third time this week you’ve been here, maybe the fourth. When your amigas are too tired you come alone, lean against the bar, and wait for a peruana to smile at you. When you buy the girl a drink, she always says the same thing: Yo no soy brichera.
¿Por qué? you ask Teresa.
She won’t elaborate. Across the room, la jefa is taking off her coat. You haven’t seen her since yesterday afternoon, when she helped you with your Spanish exercises, beaming like a proud mother when you got it right. You still don’t know her age—you’ve been thinking late-thirties, but now, as she squints into the gloom, she looks younger, more hopeful.
¿Vamos a bailar? says Teresa. She pulls you toward the dance floor but you stop, like a burro refusing to be led. Tell me, you say. ¿Por favor?
When you leave the discoteca that night, la jefa insists on walking you home. For your safety, she says. “You no understand,” she says, waggling a finger. “This bad city. Ladrones do the choke—” she puts her hand to your throat, her other arm snaking around to touch your wallet. She presses you to the wall, close enough for you to smell her shampoo, smiles while she pretends to rob you.
You tell her not to worry. ¡No te preocupes! You flex your muscles, put up your dukes. Soy hombre, ¿no?
Eres tonto, she says, then touches your cheek. Pero lindo.
You walk in silence, flushed from the dance floor, the moonless sky stretched with cold. La jefa takes your arm. “What is wrong, cariño?”
Lights climb the hillsides outside the city—the barrios, the slums, where most of your amigas live. You ask what cariño means and la jefa says, “This means ‘friend.’”
¿No ‘amigo’?
Sí, she concedes. ‘Amigo’ tambien.
At your corner, you turn to her, the locked stalls of the charming market visible over her shoulder, one dim light above the door to your hostal. She regards you placidly as you hesitate. Teresa’s warning repeats in your mind but it’s hard to resist the current tugging you along. A taxi passes slowly, muttering down the avenida. The passenger window cranks down, the taxista leans across the front seat. The only word you can make out is brichera.
La jefa lurches toward you as though she’d been kicked in the back. Hijo de puta, she whispers. Then she screams it: ¡Hijo de puta! ¡Hijo de puta! chasing the taxi down the block. ¡A la mierda, maricón! The taxi’s brakelights come on and you catch up to her, grab her arm, lead her at a half-run into the courtyard. Her face is dark, her breath rasping. A moment later the car drifts past the doorway and stops in a cloud of exhaust. The taxista starts to honk the horn—long, slow blasts into the night.
“Never in my life I am call brichera,” she says. She shrugs off your clumsy embrace. Dogs are barking up and down the block. The office door opens; an unfamiliar face looks out, frowns, and closes the door. You stand in your T-shirt, panting in the sharp air. You decide to go speak to the taxista.
“Wait here,” you tell la jefa.
No, amor, she says, and grabs your arm. No seas estúpido. For a moment you’re off balance, disoriented. Then the taxi pulls off. Somewhere, a cat shrieks horribly, setting the dogs howling again.
You tell la jefa you’ll take her home, but she insists this is not necessary. You’ve both begun to shiver. You know what you’re going to say next; despite Teresa’s warning you can already hear yourself saying it.
“Well,” you say, “you can stay here.”
She looks at your face for a long time. No, amor, she says, then leans up to kiss you lightly on the lips. No soy brichera.
When given the option of office administration or in-home self-administration, 98% of women n=1053/1076) opt for in-home self-administration.
Need such a statistic be interpreted?
It has been 82 days since you arrived. Your money is running low. You’ve lost weight, your clothes are faded from the lavandería’s harsh detergent; at night they stink so badly of cigarette smoke you have to hang them outside your room. The bartenders at the discoteca know you by name. The shoeshine boys, the woman at the bodega—they all know you, when you pass by they greet you like someone who lives here. Not a turista or a gringo: something else.
It has been 47 days since LMP. On the table next to your bed sits a strip of foil-wrapped tablets. You have tried to discuss these four tiny items, to discuss the efficacies, side effects, and complication rates of medical abortifacient regimens. For example: Rates of nausea, vomiting, fever or chills, and diarrhea were 43%, 26%, 32%, and 23%, respectively.
Espérate, she tells you.
But you don’t want to wait. You want to discuss your role in this, your determination to do the right thing, and your concern for her well-being. Respectively. Y
ou want to tell her that 95% of women in Vietnam would recommend this method of abortion to a friend.
You do not want to discuss vaginal administration.
Espérate, she says. Three days ago she went to a public clinic, in a neighborhood far from her own. The gynocólogo, a young man from Lima, informed her that she was a stupid chica, then jabbed a needle in her backside. Maybe something will happen, he said, and maybe not. ¿Quien sabe? Now get out of here, he said. But nothing has happened. Your amiga in the shiny new pharmacy shrugged when you told her about this injection. Maybe something will happen, she said, and maybe not.
¿Quien sabe? Who knows? Not Schaff et al. Not Ngoc. Certainly not you.
Espérate, amor, she says. But you can’t wait forever. The problem must be discussed. You use the imperativo: Talk to me!
No es un problema, she says. Es un bebé.
Claro, you say quietly. Of course. You are a reasonable person. You are serious and responsible. But think of the consequences.
At this, she wrings her hands. Sí, she says. No puedo, she says. Twelve-hour days, six days a week to feed the two she’s got. But still, she says through tears, wouldn’t it be beautiful: our little medio-gringo?
You hold still, stare at the plane ticket on your nightstand. You are not the kind of man who runs away, you remind yourself. No soy gringo, you mutter.
Four days since the injection. Almost seven weeks since LMP. The injection isn’t working, you tell her. “The rate of success is zero.” You show her the foil strip again. You show her a sheaf of printouts, your notes scrawled in the margins. “With use of the standard abortifacient regimen, efficacy decreases with advancing gestation, even at <49 days’ gestation,” you tell her. (Italics yours.)
The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2014 Page 15
