by Ursula Pike
Days passed, and I kept getting messages that Lucas had stopped by to see me. Maybe he was feeling guilty for his quick rejection. I didn’t need his pity. Then one evening he came to my apartment and asked me to join him for dinner. I couldn’t think of a good excuse not to go. Over plates of rice, potatoes, and tomatoes, he told me he’d gone back to San Juan a few times with the other engineers and stopped by my house each time on the way out of town to see whether I wanted to come. He asked where I had been.
“Around,” I said. “I walked out there the day after…after we were there.” He looked me in the eye as if he had no memory of our conversation.
I tried to be a pleasant dinner companion instead of the sullen rejected girl I was. He was being nice. It was annoying. I noticed him watching me silently as the waitress took our orders and while I pulled money from my wallet. Was he studying me? What was he trying to figure out? I hoped he was having second thoughts. That he regretted what he’d said.
Leaving the restaurant, we stepped directly into the path of Rowena.
“Hello, Lucas,” she practically screamed, a smile spreading across her freckled cheeks. Wait—how did she know him? Earlier, she had asked me several times to introduce them. I didn’t forget. I did not want to introduce the smartest, whitest woman in town to him for fear that he’d choose her.
“Hello. Oh, do you know each other?” he asked, turning slightly toward me.
“Yes, we’ve met,” I said.
“Are we still on for tomorrow?” she asked him, ignoring me.
“Yes, of course. Come by the office at nine.” He turned to me. “Rowena is going to interview the engineers and me about our work.” My smile was as weak as I felt. We stood there in silence, looking at each other. Finally, Rowena said good-bye and skipped away. Or at least it looked like skipping. As though she was giddy about this white European connection they shared. I almost rolled my eyes, but decided against it. Lucas invited me to chocolates at his apartment, but I told him I was tired and needed to get to sleep.
“Thanks for inviting me to dinner,” I said. He leaned in and kissed my cheek. My arms almost betrayed me by reaching out and hugging him. Instead, I kissed his cheek and said good night.
A week later, I was awoken from a Saturday afternoon nap by someone pounding on my door. I was hiding in my little rented room. I did not want to see anyone. But it was Daniel. A lit cigarette dangled from his chapped pink lips, and his glassy eyes revealed that he had already enjoyed several rounds of chicha. He had been gone for a few weeks on vacation to Brazil.
“How was your trip?” I asked. I never told Daniel about my crush on Lucas. I didn’t plan on telling him about what happened while he had been away.
“Words cannot do justice to the amazing time I had.” This comment left me confused, but I knew asking again would seem uncool, as though I were an interrogating nerd. “But more important, let’s go drankin’, honey!” he said.
“Meet you there in a few?” I said. He relented, walking away. I had been living in Kantuta for almost a year, and he knew me well enough to know that I did not want to come out but that I would because he was asking me. Daniel inspired me to take every opportunity to have fun. When Daniel was around, I wanted to stay up all night to see the sunrise, grab the microphone in the karaoke bar, and eat the wrinkled chicken foot in my soup. To Daniel, life was about the experience. No guru ever had to tell him to Be Here Now because his feet and consciousness were already firmly planted in this exact moment.
Thirty minutes later, an open door, the sound of men laughing, and the acidic smell of fermented corn told me I had found the right place. The chicharia had a high ceiling and red wallpaper. Old women hunched around small square tables speaking Quechua. Young men sat on benches along a back wall, and a man wearing shiny soccer shorts flung his hands about wildly as he spoke. An engineer scooped out a gourd of chicha from a faded orange bucket and handed me the murky yellow liquid. It was sour, so I drank it down immediately. I submerged the gourd into the cold drink, and Daniel took the dripping scoop from my hand. I still wasn’t always comfortable with this charming man who seemed to be succeeding even when he was just sitting there. But I appreciated being drawn into his adventures.
After my sixth cup, I was thirsty for that sour taste. I stuffed several dry green coca leaves into the side of my cheek. The musty taste was always a surprise and woke me up a little. In about twenty minutes, I looked like a stoned chipmunk. Daniel disappeared out the door, but I didn’t care; I was feeling mellow. A middle-aged woman wearing a faded pollera came over to our side of the room. She eyed me and made a joke about one woman and all those men. It wasn’t acceptable for a single woman to go drinking with men. I knew that, but I also knew that I occupied a place of privilege in this town because I was from the United States. I could break rules.
Right then Daniel walked through the door with Lucas.
“Look who I found,” he said as he dragged Lucas to our table. Everyone including me stood up and greeted him. Daniel pulled up a table and threw out a small leather dice cup. It was time for cacho. I was happy to have a distraction. Cacho was a dice game like Yahtzee. Everyone in Bolivia played it, and it always involved alcohol. Lucas was as nice as ever, asking me how things were going at work and telling me I should stop by for hot chocolate some time. I said yes in that distracted, noncommittal tone I adopted whenever I wanted to say no. He watched me out of the corner of his eye, and I pretended not to notice. Someday we’d be friends again, but not tonight.
Time sped by as we indulged in the Bolivian trifecta of chicha, coca, and cacho. I was never very good at cacho, and my performance worsened as the evening wore on. My cheek bulged with a soggy wad of coca, and I dripped chicha on the front of my shirt. I felt less and less attractive with each round. I was the last person a cultured man would want to be with. But instead of pulling back, I dove deeply into this repulsive version of myself. I accepted all the chicha offered me and asked for more coca leaves. After a round of games that the Bolivian engineer won, Lucas stood up. He mentioned an early morning meeting and said his good-byes. I thought I might be happy when he left. It only reminded me that I was alone. The energy to stay and drink was gone. Five minutes after he left, I stood up.
“I’m tired, Daniel. I don’t think I can do this anymore.” Daniel waved me away, and I was immediately forgotten as the remaining cacho players pulled in closer around the table. I heard the dice tumble for the beginning of another game as I left.
Once home, I zipped myself into my mosquito net and pulled the sleeping bag over my head. My mind raced through the men at the chicharia, the rejection from Lucas, the struggle with my job at the Children’s Center, the knowledge that it would be a year before I could see my family and friends again. I stewed about all the ways I was disappointed with my life at that moment. I had been in Kantuta for less than a year, and things did not seem to be on an upswing.
“I lost every damn game of cacho,” I said. The sound echoed in my empty room. The streetlight outside the window illuminated the layer of dust on the cold wood floor. The stacks of books I wanted to read stood on the rough, unpainted table. My lumpy backpack leaned against the wall with clothes spilling out of it. This room was not a home, more of a temporary resting place. The combination of the alcohol and the coca coursing through my body at that moment caused a dark idea to slink across my consciousness.
Climbing out of the mosquito net, I considered the best options for killing myself. I flipped open my pocketknife and saw the streetlight reflected in the tiny silver blade. Crouching down on my knees, I pressed it against my left wrist. I hesitated for a moment, took a breath and then pulled it across the skin. The white scratch burned, but no blood came up. Standing up and turning on the light, I looked for something more effective. I kicked an empty plastic bag and found a disposable razor. I smashed the flimsy plastic housing, exposing the blade. Holding my breath, I pressed the blade to my left wrist and pulled it across. Success! This
cut was deep, painful, and red. A sense of relief bubbled up. I pulled the blade across the skin again. The blood made the blade and my fingers red. Again and again, I cut, trying to press it deeper into the flesh each time, but the skin was raw and ragged. I couldn’t see where I was cutting.
Then I stopped and exhaled. I looked at the streetlight. The cuts stung, and although I was bleeding, it wasn’t the gush of blood I had imagined. There were no tears on my cheeks, and no sound escaped my throat. Sadness wasn’t the overwhelming feeling I was having. It was ugliness. As though there was an ugliness inside me that I wanted to bleed out. An ugliness fed by shame and unworthiness. I was ashamed of everything that I did and said. I wished I had stayed in my room tonight and every night so as not to embarrass myself. I hated feeling that way. Yet I also loved the world and people. I didn’t know how to be in the world and not feel ashamed.
I picked up the blade and pressed it against the other wrist. With less force, I cut into my right wrist. The first cut was the most satisfying, the best. Each following cut accomplished less. Still, the pain in my wrists distracted me from the ugly feeling. Was that men’s voices I heard outside on the street? No, that had been the night of the festival of San Juan. Tonight there was no one and nothing outside. I dropped the blade. My legs ached from crouching on the floor. As the blood began to dry on my wrists, the skin around the cuts tightened.
Why tonight of all nights had I done it? Tonight had not been any more heartbreaking than last night or last month. Why had I stopped? Was I one of those cutters? I understood the relief the cuts and blood brought, but I wasn’t cutting to be cutting. I was tired of always failing.
I ripped a page out of my journal and wiped the blood off my wrists with the hard blank page. I dropped the bloody paper on the floor. Back on my mattress, I lay my head down on my pillow, and immediately after closing my eyes, I was asleep. I spent the night in a restless sleep full of dreams about dinosaurs chasing me across a field.
When I woke up, I flashed back to the question on the Peace Corps application. Have you ever been depressed or had thoughts of suicide? Hasn’t everyone?! But I knew what the correct answer was, and that was the box I checked. No. While other mothers may have warned their children not to drink or take drugs, my mother warned me not to kill myself. We both knew that there were plenty of reasons to do it. The poverty and uncertainty of our lives kept me from seeing the future as a bright place full of possibilities. The empty boxes of wine stacked outside the garbage can were evidence that my mother had her own way of dealing with this life. One day my mother caught me watching a movie about teen suicide. As the perky redheaded suburban teen cried about her terrible life, my mother reminded me that my grandmother and she would be very upset if I killed myself. Both of my grandparents had cheered my successes and hugged me when I needed it. And as far as I was concerned, my grandmother was the reason the earth revolved around the sun. Sparing my family the shame and hurt kept me alive back in high school and college whenever different ideas slunk across my consciousness. Now my family was far away, and it cost fifty cents per minute on a static-filled line to speak to my mother or my grandmother.
I rose and cleaned up the razor and the broken plastic. On the street below, men walked to work, and cholitas in their voluminous skirts headed to the market to buy the day’s groceries. I knew I was going to have to solve this problem for myself. Peace Corps was something I had wanted since high school. Maybe I was a failure in love and work, but I managed to get here and do what I dreamed of doing. I could not give up or give in. I took the blood-stained piece of paper off the floor, folded it up, and taped it to the inside of my journal. It would be a reminder of what I did. Otherwise, I would try to convince myself that it hadn’t happened, that I was OK when I wasn’t. I closed the book and put it on the floor.
I had to talk to someone. That was the promise I made myself. The official medical staff was out of the question because my service would be immediately terminated. I heard about volunteers being “psych vac’d” or evacuated back to DC for psychological reasons, and I imagined this would qualify. Peace Corps responded immediately whenever we had parasites in our intestines or injuries to our appendages, but I don’t remember being told about options for counseling. Not that I would have spoken to anyone connected to the organization. I hated the thought of admitting what I did (and failed to do), but it was the only strategy I could think of to keep myself from doing it again. Laura was hundreds of miles away, and I didn’t know when I would see her again. After everything I went through to get to Bolivia, I was determined to stay. Leaving would be failure.
I pulled on a thick sweater and walked down to the store for sugar and instant coffee. As I passed the post office, I noticed it was open. As wrecked as I was, I knew I had to go in and check for mail because it had been weeks since I had received anything.
“No, it hasn’t arrived,” the mailman said. He was wearing the same tan sweater he always wore. He frowned and asked, “Have you been crying?”
“No, I haven’t,” I said defiantly. I had been crying for hours, but I wasn’t going to tell him that.
“Your eyes are red. You look terrible.” He scrunched up his face. Then, having given his verdict, he turned and walked away. How rude! Why, I should tell that man…I stopped. I realized what a nice change it was to feel anger instead of despair for a moment.
I plodded through my days. Drinking my instant coffee, going to the Children’s Center, and returning home in the afternoon. I chose long sleeves to hide the scabs on my skin. The scabs fell off, and the skin smoothed out. I went for hikes in the hills behind the Children’s Center as often as I could get away. Walking had always been the best way to clear my head. All those weekend hikes in the Cascades with my mom taught me that there was no better way to stop obsessing about all the things wrong in my life than by ascending a hill on a dirt path.
A few weeks later, I found myself at Daniel’s house after another Sunday afternoon of drinking chicha. I sat on the cement patio, and he worked in his tiny kitchen using only the fading sunlight. He chopped vegetables and sang to himself, not quietly but robustly as if he were an opera singer in front of a packed theater. His house was much smaller than mine but right off the square, near the center of everything. The patio was covered with buckets, too many chairs, and one single tree in the middle, but it was comfortable.
He was making grilled cheese sandwiches. The campo cheese was from the store run by nuns. Campo cheese was hard, salty, and dry, but when heated directly in the pan, it eventually softened and became stretchy. Crunchy and gooey at the same time. When I bit into the sandwich, the toasted bread scraped the top of my mouth, and a trickle of grease ran down my chin. It was slightly rubbery, but perfect for this chilly night. The sky revealed the southern constellation of stars, different from the constellations visible from North America, but still only stars twinkling in the sky. I watched Daniel eat his sandwich while he turned the pages of a magazine. I wondered whether he was the one I was supposed to tell. As soon as I thought it, I knew I had to do it. His life seemed to be a series of triumphs stretching out before him toward the horizon. Would he have any compassion for why I did it? There would be no better time than right now. I started to cry, sobbing through my mouth full of melted cheese.
“What’s the matter? Is the cheese too hot?” he looked alarmed. I had never cried in front of him. I swallowed the mouthful of cheese and stopped crying. I was confessing my weakness, but I wanted to appear strong as I was doing it.
“OK, I’m going to tell you something, and you have to promise not to freak out,” I said sternly. I couldn’t believe I was about to tell this guy, the same charismatic, suave beauty whom I so distrusted when I arrived in Kantuta. The one who had warned me about getting too close before he even met me. But I could not stop.
“What’s the matter?” he said calmly.
“I am not telling you this to make you feel sorry for me. I’m just doing this because I know I n
eed to tell someone.” He put down his sandwich on the stone table between us and looked at me.
“Two weeks ago, I tried to kill myself,” I said, keeping my eyes focused on the cold cement floor in front of me. “Well, that makes it sound worse than it was. I slashed my wrists with a razor blade, but of course, I didn’t do it right and was never in any real danger.” I didn’t want to give him a chance to say anything, so I kept talking, only occasionally peeking at his face to see whether he was watching me. He was. I told him I did not want anyone else to know what had happened because someone might think I needed to be sent home. He lit a cigarette, took a drag and then handed it to me. Rubbing the back of his neck distractedly, he blew smoke up into the air above him. I talked about what I should have done, filling up the space with as many words as possible. I was trying to show that I was in control and not to cry, but that’s when I started crying again, harder. Daniel walked over to my seat and hugged me. The shame made me want to get up and walk away. I was relieved when he walked back to his seat.
“I’m…ah…I’m not sure what to say. Are you OK now?” I nodded my head yes. I exhaled and calmed down a little. He looked me in the eyes and asked what I wanted him to do. He had already done it by listening to me, by letting me talk. He promised not to tell anyone.
“But you have to promise me you won’t do that again.” I nodded. He asked to see the cuts on my wrist. I shook my head and pulled my sleeves down. I did not want him to look at them because maybe they wouldn’t be as ugly as he expected. Maybe he wouldn’t believe me. Or maybe he would and decide I needed professional help.
A slow Chet Baker song played on the tiny black Brazilian stereo. I had given him that tape. The smell of stale tobacco stung my nose, but the sensation of pressing my lips together, inhaling, and blowing out kept me from thinking about how much I had revealed. I hadn’t considered how he would react, only that I had to tell him. I didn’t want him to try to fix it. Telling him was part of how I was fixing it. I never wanted to burden anyone with the true details of my life.
