But I was painfully aware that was never going to happen. I would always be alone. I was an Igbo twin whose other twin had been thrown into the bush. I had no attachments.
Then I wondered what their butts would look like when the doctor had shaved them apart. Would they have a scar? Would one butt cheek be flat and the other round? Would the spot where the other twin had been feel numb, the exposure to the world not natural to them?
Would they ache for one another like a phantom limb? Would they feel each other’s pain even when absent?
The next Monday at school Shelly pretended she didn’t know me. My feelings were hurt, but I sat on the edge of the cold concrete picnic bench and didn’t hear the Bluebirds call me names.
I had questions I would never have the answers to. I worried how the separation went. Did it hurt physically as much as I knew it did inside their hearts? One twin got only one kidney. Would she be weaker? Could one survive without the other? What if one survived, but the other one died? It seemed there was always a sacrifice.
I still wonder about Shelly and her adopted twin sisters. American missionaries were prevalent in South America. Adopting the deformed, Shelly’s parents were doing God’s work. I also had a sense they were neglecting Shelly. She wasn’t friend material. I would have to find another friend.
When I said I make friends with anyone, good or bad, I believe this is true. These experiences, these moves we made, new schools, new adults, new people showing up constantly, forced an extroverted persona to come out. But attachments, being truly attached to someone, to let them inside me—like the twins who shared that butt cheek and kidney—that has been the hardest lesson. A lesson I am still working on. A curse that I may never be able to break.
Christmas Bird
He continues to smile expectantly. I take a step back. I don’t want to catch whatever he has. He is a disturbing out-of-uniform Santa.
—Augusten Burroughs, You Better Not Cry: Stories for Christmas
The door to Mom’s sewing room had stayed locked for what seemed like months. I could hear her in there, the Singer machine’s shu, shu, shu. But under no circumstances was I allowed in. That meant the only way into the family room was through my bedroom. When Juana went up to the roof to her own apartment, when Marty was home for Christmas, or when anyone wanted to sit in the family room to listen to music or go down the back staircase to the swimming pool, they had to go through my bedroom.
I didn’t mind it, as I liked having people in the house. When home for Christmas, Suzanne shared my room and my double bed as we did in the States. Christmas was my favorite time, not just for Christmas’s sake, but because everyone was home. All family members were present. For the time being.
On Christmas Eve I was lying in my bed with my eyes staring into pitch black. The house was silent after we had all returned home noisily from the Mickeys’ Christmas party. A good expat party flowed with alcohol, and afterward everyone had fallen into their respective beds and passed out. Except me. I was only nine, so my alcohol consumption hadn’t reached their levels yet. I lay in my bed hoping beyond hope that I wouldn’t pee in the bed while Suzanne was in it and that this second Christmas without Santa would be worthwhile.
Suzanne’s snore made a tiny whistle as she inhaled. Then I heard a scuffling sound, like something heavy being shoved across the family room’s Berber carpeting. The sound would stop then start again, as though the shover didn’t have the strength to push as far as they wanted.
“Suzanne!” I whispered, then nudged her.
As tipsy as she was, I knew my attempts were futile. Still I had to try. Someone was moving furniture in the next room. “Suzanne, someone’s out there.”
“Who?” she mumbled.
“I don’t know,” I said. “They’re scooting something.” I thought of the neighbor’s house that had been stripped clean to its baseboards by burglars. I’d heard about burglars who sprayed something in people’s rooms that made them sleep so soundly they didn’t even know they were being robbed. It didn’t matter that we were all here at the house.
I had it all figured out: the thief could come up the back spiral staircase from the garden and in through the back family room door. The stereo equipment, speakers, books, sleeper sofa, our Christmas tree, and all the gifts under it, all of it could be being swiped right now as we lay sleeping. Or as everyone else did.
I heard it again. Somebody, or something, was out there.
“Suzanne!” I tried again.
“It’s Santa, Amy.” She rolled over.
Santa? I’d pretty much put that fantasy away. But what if it was Santa? Wouldn’t it be important to believe? Everyone was definitely asleep except me, and that would be when he’d come. He could be in there placing gifts under the tree, or it could be the burglar snatching every ribbon-tied box. Or a spook. Whoever it was, I reasoned, Santa bringing gifts or a thief stealing them, or a banshee, it wouldn’t be prudent to surprise him.
I lay there with my eyes wide open, holding my breath so that if it was the thief or banshee, he wouldn’t know there was a little girl in the next room. The scooch, scooch continued.
I must have fallen asleep, because light crept in from the windows that faced the side street, and I heard the whirring of the mourning doves that perched outside my window now. The strangest sound of all was the silence from Avenida del Prado. Christmas morning in this Catholic country, and everyone was at home, not on the road.
It must have been Santa, after all, because the sun doesn’t shine after a house has been burglarized. I confirmed I hadn’t wet the bed and stayed still for a moment listening. When I heard no scooching, I crawled out of bed, not caring whether I woke Suzanne now. As my feet hit the teal shag carpet, I noticed the door between my room and the family room sat ajar. It had been closed tight before we climbed in bed.
I peeked through the crack in the doorway. The family room looked untouched. If there had been a thief, he didn’t take the big furniture. Then I pushed the door open wider. The dollhouse had been positioned so that when I opened the door I could see straight into the four-room house. A Barbie house. A perfect Barbie house. Was it for me? It had to be for me. I was the only one who played with Barbie.
I couldn’t catch my breath. I knelt down, peered around the inside of the house. The front wall and roof were open, the house cross-sectioned for easy access. Every single thing Barbie could want was inside that house. Barbie’s dream home. Two bedrooms upstairs and a kitchen and living room downstairs.
Across our family room from where I had planted myself in front of the dollhouse, Juana stepped out through the rooftop door. She was dressed in another starched-stiff red cotton dress with tiny white forget-me-nots scattered across it.
“We do Christmas in our pajamas,” I told her.
Juana wore black communist shoes like I wore with my school uniform. She walked through the prohibited sewing room and out of my face.
I went to get my Barbie and Ken to see how they fit in their new home. I could hear Marty coughing in the tiny room off the family room where his twin bed had been shoved up against the wall. He’d started meditating since he’d been going to TASIS, and he didn’t like to be bothered in the morning, so I didn’t call out to him as I wanted.
Back in my room, as I dug inside my closet for my favorite Ken and Barbie, Suzanne stretched across the bed. “Are we getting up?”
“I am,” I said, excited. “You should see what I got.” And I ran back to the family room. Juana had gone downstairs to make the coffee, and sounds came from the bathroom revealing that Mom and Dad were up and about.
Back in the family room, I let Barbie and her beau examine their new home. The bedrooms each had a twin bed the perfect length for Barbie and long enough so Ken’s feet didn’t have to hang off the end. Mattresses and pillows came with slip-on pillowcases to match the sheets and bedspreads. The trim on the pillowcases was identical to the yellow polka dot trim on the sheet. The yellow bedspread was the same
sunny yellow polyester as the sundress Mom had made herself the summer before last. I recognized her details—her intricate piecing together and stitching with colored thread, the straightest of lines from her black Singer sewing machine. So this was why the sewing room had been off limits.
“Do you like it?” Mom said as she came into the family room wearing her peach-colored satin robe, carrying her coffee in one hand, her gold slip-on genie slippers on her feet.
“I love it!” I said. “Look how they fit.” I placed Barbie on her bed and Ken on his. On the bedspreads Mom had incorporated pleats and quilting to make it custom-fit Barbie’s bed.
All four rooms had been wallpapered. Barbie’s resembled the yellow contact paper in our kitchen drawers. Ken’s ruby-and-navy plaid wallpaper pattern matched his crimson bedspread and teal sheets and pillowcases.
Suzanne stood behind me now. “You know Ken’s not anatomically correct,” she said.
My dad came in behind her. “That’s why they have separate bedrooms.”
I didn’t know what “anatomically” meant, and I didn’t care. I had the world’s greatest dollhouse ever. Built just for me and Barbie and Ken.
The Barbie living room had a long couch, the square throw pillows reminiscent of the aquamarine polyester dress that no longer fit me. “That couch is long enough for Ken to nap on,” my dad said. “Santa made sure he could fit.” My father still wanted me to believe in Santa. He would have been happy if I believed in Santa for the rest of my life. But I knew it was Mom and Dad who had built this house for me. Mom doing all the hours of sewing.
Each of us found a place to sit in a semicircle around the tree. As I shoved the dollhouse closer to where I wanted to sit, the familiar scooch, scooch reminded me of what I had heard the night before. I situated myself next to the house and next to Mom, but then Juana came and sat between us. Trying to be good since it was Christmas morning and wanting Mom to know how much I appreciated my gift, I didn’t say anything and left Juana and her smell of borax alone.
Our elaborate gift giving went on and on. I kept track of how many gifts Juana got. Only a couple. Mom bought her a new hair comb with engraved silver across the bow. “You have such beautiful hair,” Mom said. “I thought the silver would look nice against the black.” I thought her hair looked like black plastic straws and that the comb should have come to me instead. I had an awful feeling inside, as though I were the worst daughter ever, a selfish child. How could I be so selfish when the dollhouse was a thousand times better than a silver hair comb?
My father went around the room giving out gifts, and the floor filled with wrapping paper. When it appeared all the gifts had been distributed, Juana said, “There’s one more gift.” Yet under the tree was nothing but piles of torn, flashy, metallic red and green paper. “It’s for you,” Juana said, poking me in the shoulder. “Behind the speaker,” she said, pointing to the oak Akai box. I expected some cheap trinket from the market.
Behind the speaker, under all the tossed wrapping paper, I found a red plastic net bag tied with a twist tie. Inside was a green ball, but it shuddered and wiggled. My father reached over with his Swiss Army knife and quickly snapped open the springy cross-hatching.
The green ball oozed out, and Suzanne screamed, “A parrot!”
A green lorito. When I squeezed him out of the plastic netting he scurried to a safe place behind the sofa. A place so out of reach no one could get to him. With my face on the floor peering under our yellow-and-black plaid sleeper sofa, I spotted one tiny round black eye blinking at me. Marty and my dad pulled the heavy sofa away from the wall. Up against the baseboard, the soft, olive green feathered parrot shivered and looked up at me as if to say, “Is this it? Is this the end?”
“Juana wanted to get you something,” Mom said. “She wanted you to know she likes you.” Sure, she wanted me to like her so I’d back Mom on getting her a visa.
I crawled after the bird as fast as I could. I scooped him up, afraid I’d scare him more, but held him next to my chest. I rubbed the top of his silky head with my fingertip and slowly his shuddering subsided. The two of us stayed like that.
“Can’t you say thank you?” Mom said.
I looked at Juana, and her yellow-toothed smile crept open. The bird trembled in my hands. I couldn’t bring myself to say it. I erased the idea that this little green fellow could come from her.
Pretty Bird remained my parrot’s moniker until I could think of something more clever, which I never did. Marty claimed my new parrot said Pretty Bird when he chirped, and if Marty said it was a good name, then I would leave it. We didn’t have a cage to put him in, so I used the atrium off the warm kitchen. Pretty Bird was free to move around. His wings were clipped, something I didn’t quite understand. Over time, he got to know me. If I moved slowly, I could reach my finger out while he would gently pinch the flesh of my finger between his beak. Then, gradually, if nothing spooked him, he’d step one claw, then the other, onto my finger and let me bring him up to my face where we would kiss, beak to lips.
I am going to put that on record as my best Christmas ever. And it didn’t even include Santa. Or at least I realized Mom and Dad were the best Santa ever. The gift didn’t make me trust Juana any more, and I kept my eye out for more of her bedevilment, but now I had my own small companion.
Fig. 4. Amy handing out candy at Yagua Village in the Amazon. Courtesy of the author.
Our Best Imitation of Gringos
See You Later, Alligator. After ’While, Crocodile.
—Bill Haley, songwriter
We had flown to Iquitos. Iquitos, Peru, is the world’s largest city not accessible by road, the most isolated city in the world. I identify with Iquitos, with its ability to grow without the normal method of influx. Isolation I understand.
We were taking a family trip, all five of us, to the Amazon. As usual, I can’t recall all the details, so I call my mom and dad.
“It was a package group deal,” my mom says.
“We took a boat downriver to the small native village, and we met the people there. I made a deal with them,” my father says.
“You didn’t have it planned?” I ask. Did we just wing it, like the time we tried to go to the Galapagos? The closest we got to any blue-footed boobies was spending the weekend on the beach in Ecuador watching fishermen fight off flocks of seagulls and their guano. I had forgotten to bring my bathing suit and had to swim in the ocean in my underwear.
“He’s making that up,” my mom says. They are talking to me on the speakerphone. Both at the same time.
“We stayed at that Dutch couples’ lodge,” my mom says.
The trip was a package, complete with an organized visit to a native tribe, organized crocodile hunt, organized trail blazing, and all meals included. Opportunities to see the Amazonian wildlife up close and personal, the brochure probably read.
The lodge is clear in my mind—a long hut complete with thatched roof and a veranda encircling it. Straight out of Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom or Disney’s Jungle Adventure ride. Or Grey Gardens after its demise.
“Was I the only kid?” I ask my mom, because in my mind I am alone in my bunk for much of the trip.
“Marty was with us,” my dad says.
“He wasn’t a kid,” I say. He was headed to a small liberal arts college in Oregon.
“Suzanne and Marty and Stephen,” Mom says. “It was a holiday trip. They were home on vacation.”
“Stephen wasn’t with us, I am sure of that.” I am adamant.
Mom pauses. “We were living in the hotel. Weren’t we?”
“No, we went when we were living in the house.” Our timetables are set by location, by hotel versus house within each country, each hemisphere.
“Our second year of living in Peru, then,” she concurs. I feel a bit of relief in confirming Stephen had not been on this trip.
“Stephen is who told me there was no Santa Claus,” I remind my mother.
“Who?” my father asks.
“Stephen told you there was no who?”
“Santa Claus,” I say a little louder to compensate for hearing loss.
“He’s a felon, you know,” Mom says. “Went to prison.”
“Serves him right,” I reply.
“His dad has his own reality show now. I heard him on the radio,” Mom says, referring to Stephen’s dad, the governor.
Today’s American wildlife.
At the end of 1973, I wobbled between boat and land. Greeting us at the bottom of the steps to the veranda stood a rotund animal the size of hogs I’d seen in Texas. This hog wielded a proboscis, like an elephant, but smaller like the size of my nine-year-old forearm. His snout lifted as though waving hello, otherwise he didn’t budge. He seemed fat and slow, and I wanted to wrap my arms around him when his little rhinoceros ears flickered and he wiggled his prehensile snout.
“That’s a tapir,” the Lodge Lady told me. She could tell I was as puzzled as probably most gringos were by this tubbo the color of a chestnut horse, his fur wiry and not really fur at all, but more like balding steel wool. I had never heard of a tapir before.
A few feet away the anteater was much more focused on the ground as he vacuumed with his own long snout. Resembling a hunched over Cousin Itt from the Addams Family, he waddled off away from us. This was like a zoo without bars. Although I had never been to a zoo.
When We Were Ghouls Page 19
