by Ursula Pike
“Your husband?” I asked, motioning to him.
“We are not married,” he said before she could answer. Two small children ran up and huddled around talking to her. The band began to play again, and I could not hear anything else that he said. Her lips curled into a rumpled smirk. We seemed to be sharing a laugh as if he were her flirty boyfriend and his behavior was annoying yet expected. I had seen this before. Flirtatious husbands sitting next to their wives, but it always seemed to be a joke. Their wives would chastise them with a quick swat, and we would all laugh. There was even a popular song about a husband who tries to cheat on his wife but keeps getting denied, and in the end returns to his wife. Daniel laughed as he crossed the dance floor with a pretty young woman. In a few months, Kantuta would be part of his past. I had nine months left in Kantuta, but knew it was going to be less interesting without him.
The air cooled down as afternoon became evening. I was glad my layers of flannel protected me. Strings of small twinkling lights hanging across the patio suddenly flicked on and made the dance floor magical and bright. I was about to slurp down another cup of chicha when I saw the Bolivian man toasting me with his own cup. He was persistent; I had to give him that. I toasted him back and drank it down, barely tasting the bitterness as I handed the glass back and wiped the last drops off my lips with my finger.
Then dinner arrived. Like all good Bolivian hosts, they made massive amounts of food: rice and a spicy sauce, potatoes, and chicken. Thank God for the meal, because with each glass of chicha, I was getting wobblier. I needed food. I joined Daniel eating his plate of rice and chicken at the back of the patio. We sat there in silence, savoring our food and enjoying the moment.
A cueca came on, and I grabbed Daniel. Cueca was the traditional Bolivian folk dance, and everyone crowded onto the patio. The memory of the plump white anthropologist bobbing around during training teaching us the cueca flashed in my head. In training, this had seemed like a quaint custom, something nervous children demonstrated on a stage for “Indigenous day.” But this dance was alive. We circled each other on the crowded patio, laughing and making exaggerated moves. Everyone else twirled napkins, but we shook our hands as we danced.
The guy with the goatee finally asked me to dance. I looked for approval from the woman who’d been with him, but she was dancing with someone else. I decided to follow him. It was hard to guess anyone’s age in Bolivia because even young people looked weathered, but I guessed he was about twenty-eight like me. He began by leading, taking a step and expecting me to follow. I was surprised when he responded with flexibility as I took a step in my own direction instead of following his lead.
“You know how to dance well,” he said, not leaning in too closely, as we sat down. I rolled my eyes and smirked. I was a terrible dancer and knew it. We chatted while not getting too close. Fernando was his name. Someone brought us glasses of beer, and as we sat he told me that his brother had attended the Children’s Center when he was younger and how it had helped him when times were tough. I had only been half listening to him, but this caught my attention.
“Your brother? Was at the same Center where I work?” I asked. He nodded his head yes. No one had ever admitted this to me. In Kantuta, the Children’s Center was seen as a place for poor kids from the countryside. There were plenty of townspeople who received help, but not once did anyone tell me that the Center had helped someone in his or her family. Was that where I’d seen Fernando before?
“El es tu dueño?” he leaned in close, and I felt his face brush against my hair. He pulled back and motioned with his chin toward Daniel. He was asking whether Daniel was my dueño, which literally means “owner.” This was a common word for boyfriend that I had heard many times. I recognized the casual sexism in the term, but at that moment, with the alcohol lighting me up from inside and his dark eyes staring into mine, I wasn’t about to launch into some takedown of the hidden gender bias in his word choice.
“Amigos, no más,” I said as we watched Daniel dancing.
The band played the first few lines of a cueca, and Fernando pointed to the dance floor. I hesitated, not sure what to do. Even if he had a girlfriend, wife, or whatever, this was innocent. Hot, but innocent. I told myself I was just storing images and generating fantasies I could recall later when I was alone in my mosquito net. I might as well enjoy the moment, take this opportunity. I looked around for Daniel, but he was already with someone else.
Fernando led me to the center of the crowd, already starting the cueca. As the song swelled, he patted down his pockets in search of the requisite napkin. The cueca required accessories—specifically, a napkin to twirl in the air. My pockets were empty too, and by now all the people around us had found a napkin. He stopped moving, touched my hand, and pointed upwards. I looked up and realized we were dancing under the grape arbor. With everyone swirling around us, he reached up over my head and gently plucked two small leaves. The sweet smell of the grape broke over us. He stepped in closer and handed me the tender green leaf. We stood together like that for a moment. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up as I took the delicate little leaf from his hand. I thought of myself as immune to romance, a hardened woman who was realistic about everyone’s true motives. But this worked. It was romantic and cheesy, but also sweet. He winked, and I tried to hide my smile by looking down. We twirled our leaves around in the air. The woman he was with was gone by the time we sat down. I remained on the floor with him for every dance.
With each passing moment, I was more interested. I stopped looking away coyly as he stared at me. Things had never gone well with a Bolivian man for this long. It had been a very long time since things had gone this well with a man from any continent, for that matter. This was fun. Unadulterated joy.
“Me aceptas o no?” he asked, his arm resting on the back of my chair as we took a break. His voice was scratchy. He was asking me if I accepted him, but I didn’t exactly understand what he meant. I looked into his lovely face and thought of a number of things I would be willing to accept from him right at that moment. None of which he could give me here on this crowded patio. I sighed.
I held up my index finger to tell him I would be right back. Daniel was standing by the door sharing a cigarette with an old man.
“Daniel, do you think it would be safe to take one of these guys home with me tonight?” I leaned against the door and asked him. I phrased it as a question because it seemed too bold to simply tell him that I was taking someone back to my house. The truth was, I had never taken a stranger home with me before. Never ever. Not in Bolivia or in the United States. The Movie Channel’s repeated showings of Looking for Mr. Goodbar right about the time I reached puberty had traumatized me. Imagine being a thirteen-year-old girl watching Diane Keaton getting killed by a stranger she had picked up at a bar. I limited my casual dalliances to men I knew.
“Which one?” Daniel asked, his eyes only opening halfway. I motioned with my head back at Fernando. Daniel tried to focus his eyes in the general direction.
“Darling, I think you should take several of these guys home with you,” he said. Daniel turned to the old man and asked in Spanish, “Right!?” They both threw their heads back and laughed.
“Are you OK?” I asked. He motioned with his cigarette toward the door, but did not answer. He lived one block away, and I wondered whether I should help him get home. Part of me wanted to tell him to come by in an hour to make sure I was still alive. But I knew he’d be passed out by then.
I walked back to my seat next to Fernando. I motioned with my head toward the door. The wide-eyed look he gave me might have been shock. Maybe Bolivian women didn’t do this. At least not Bolivian women in Kantuta where everyone lives at home until they get married. I was not a Bolivian woman. It would not be a good idea for either of us to be seen leaving the party together, so we left separately.
We stumbled to my house. I shut the door quietly behind us in case my neighbors were home. The dancing and food had sobered me up
a little, and I felt I needed to keep my wits about me. There were all those warnings to watch out for lecherous men who seduced gringas, and here I was dragging a Bolivian man into my empty house. Did that make me the letch?
I fumbled for the keys to my room as his eyes darted nervously from my hand on the door to my face. He was as anxious about this as I was. Was this how the men at the running of the bulls felt before they walked out into the ring? He stepped close enough for me to feel his breath on my neck. Any guilt I felt about what I was doing faded as he put his arms around my waist and kissed me. The pins in the lock released, and we pushed through the door. My room was dark except for the light from the streetlight coming through the window. I could feel him more than I could see him.
We sat on the hay mattress that doubled as my couch. We went at it, greedily grasping handfuls of flesh, kissing and unbuttoning in an uncoordinated rush to get to the good stuff. I reached under his shirt and ran my hands up his bare stomach and chest. He was smooth and strong. He pulled his shirt over his head and threw it down. He tried to kiss me deeply, and I resisted, turning my head. Here I was with this gorgeous man in my room, all to myself. What was I waiting for? But I wanted to take a microsecond. I had to make sure I wanted this. I was sober enough to realize that this was no small thing. There were implications beyond this room. It took me half a second to decide that oh my God of course I wanted this. I turned my face and pressed my lips against his. I took off the layers of flannel and khaki clothes that had been protecting me all night. As he started to untie his boots, I stuck my hand out and stopped him.
“You have to leave your boots on,” I told him. I had instantly decided it would be less serious if he kept his boots on. He complied, and, now that he was unhindered by any clothing except his unlaced boots, I pulled him toward me. A stalk of hay from the mattress stuck me in the butt but was immediately forgotten. This was not about foreplay or slowly getting to know each other’s bodies. This was about getting as close as possible to another human being while keeping a few steps ahead of my conscience.
The smell of his strong, sweet cologne mixed with the scent of the cheap cigarettes we had shared all night. It reminded me of boys at junior high school dances. They doused themselves in cologne, then awkwardly pressed in to me as Loverboy and Foreigner blasted from tinny speakers. I had been careful with those boys, never going further than a few kisses and gropes. I knew everyone expected me to follow my mother’s example and become a pregnant teenager, but I had no intention of fulfilling their preconceived notion. I clutched Fernando’s torso tightly, closed my eyes, and stopped worrying about what this all meant. His strong legs pressed against mine. He kissed me deeply, and I pressed every part of my body into his. I tried to hold it there for as long as possible.
“Oh my God, I needed that,” I said in English afterwards. He laughed. I smiled even though I had no idea whether he understood me. I wasn’t joking. Over the last few months, I had started to feel like an alien. Lonely but surrounded by people. I would probably never see him again, but I was here with him now, and I was grateful. At this moment, my identity didn’t matter—who I was, who I wanted to be. The weight of trying to change something, help someone, was lifted, and I was simply another human being. We lay next to each other on the lumpy mattress as he ran his finger down the length of my arm. He kissed me and stood up. He dressed and tucked in his shirt.
“Are you an athlete?” I asked, in Spanish.
“I play soccer,” he said and mimed kicking the ball into the goal.
“I sometimes jog, out at the landing strip.” I had no idea why I said that. I was nervous and, never having been in this situation before, unsure of what to say. I dressed quickly and stood up, hoping he would understand that it was time to leave.
“I know; I’ve seen you,” he said, and kissed me. He’d seen me? Then I remembered who I was in this town. Of course he knew who I was. I may have felt unimportant and invisible, but because I was from the United States, I most definitely was visible. I walked him to my front door and peeked out to see whether anyone was there. The yellow light illuminated an empty street. With a quick nod, he stepped through the doorway. I looked the other direction to make sure no one saw him. By the time I looked back, he’d disappeared around the corner. It was the middle of the night, but as his steps grew fainter, I heard the sound of a band playing a few blocks away.
The next morning, I made my instant coffee as strong as instant coffee gets. Two scoops. Standing on my patio, listening to the nearby shopkeeper pull open the gate to his store, I suddenly remembered how I knew Fernando. I had met his wife, the woman who had been sitting next to him earlier in the night. She had worked at the store located in the same building as my old apartment. One day I came home from work after a rainstorm to discover all of my laundry missing from the clothesline where I had left it. She emerged from the back of the store holding one of my shirts. She had brought in the laundry I had hung on the line that morning. She had saved my clothes from the rain. I thanked her, but felt a little embarrassed at the thought of her folding my panties and bras. We never spoke. I vaguely remembered a dark-haired man passing through the patio some mornings as I drank down the first of my three daily cups of coffee. I was probably dressed in shorts that barely covered my ass and braless under a half-buttoned shirt. An outfit no Bolivian woman would have worn if any man could see her. And now I had screwed that nice woman’s husband. I closed my eyes and shook my head. What had I done?
Last night it had all seemed random. A hot guy at a party on a night when I was feeling lonely. But maybe he knew who I was. Then I remembered what his first word had been to me. “Ursula.” He had said my name. He knew exactly who I was. And I had only seen him as another Bolivian guy.
A few days later, the final running of the bulls was held at the large pen on the north edge of town. Daniel had entered the ring and managed to pull the necklace full of cash that was attached to the bull’s neck. He’d always wanted to do it, and although the money was less than the cost of one bottle of booze, his chest puffed up with pride.
Of course, I told him everything about my night with Fernando. I had to tell someone, and he was the only one in town who could safely keep my secret. He laughed, but before long was making lewd jokes. I dropped the subject. Had I done something wrong? This surprised me. Among the male volunteers, getting together with Bolivian women was a competition. How many parties had I attended where a gorgeous Bolivian woman arrived on the arm of some short, pale volunteer with stringy hair? Daniel often appeared with Bolivian women so stunning that they looked as though they’d walked off the stage of the Ms. Universe pageant. For the female volunteers, it was different. A female volunteer involved with a Bolivian man was assumed to be weak and insecure or else just passing time. But our dating options were limited. In small towns like Kantuta, most Bolivian men over eighteen were married. Gossip from other volunteers told me I was not the first woman to spend the night with a married Bolivian.
Still, I struggled with what I had done. I thought of myself as a principled person. A nice person. At least I had been. I occupied a unique position of power in this little Bolivian town that I never had back in the United States. In the US I was always the poorest, least-connected person of anyone I knew. I filed the paperwork for the important people or cared for their children while they did meaningful work. Here, by contrast, I had more education, resources, and money than most people, especially most women. This power was like an ill-fitting suit I wore for a job I was not sure how to do. I hoped that I wasn’t using my privileged place in this community to break a rule I found inconvenient.
After several days, the Candelaria celebrations ended, and I went back to work. On my way home that first day, I heard someone say my name. A man. I turned and did not see anyone. I backtracked and looked around the corner. Standing inside the little store where I often bought cookies was a young man whom I recognized from the Center. He greeted me again and asked if I needed anything
from the shelves. I shook my head and walked away. I thought it had been Fernando. I realized I was looking for him around every corner. In the mornings, I spent a little more time brushing my hair and was careful to wear clothing that was clean. I wanted to see him again.
In the days that followed, I had plenty of time to contemplate what my interest in Fernando might mean. Time to weigh the pros and cons of beginning a relationship with a married man less than a year before the end of my service. But I didn’t spend my time contemplating. I spent it thinking about how much I wanted to get him back to my dusty little room, take off his clothes, and press into him. I found myself flirting with inanimate objects. Tomatoes and trees. I wanted to be prepared when I saw him. My, how firm and red you are, I thought as I looked at a ripe tomato. The eucalyptus trees lining the airport runway where I jogged received my best pouty side glance. Teresa asked me why I was smiling. I shrugged my shoulders and mumbled something about the weather. Ximenita assumed it had something to do with Daniel. I let her believe that, because I’d rather have her think that than know the truth. I had never acted this goofy. Something had bubbled up in me, and I wanted to enjoy the feeling, not think about its significance.
On a Friday morning, I walked through the front gate of the Children’s Center at my customary 9:30 a.m. arrival time. A planned trip to Cochabamba that evening to see friends was distracting me. I wasn’t thinking about Fernando. I nearly tripped on a rock when I saw him walking toward me. He was leaving the director’s office. Thank goodness I had practiced my flirting, because I was able to flash him a smoldering look almost immediately. He returned my look with a deep stare that gave me goose bumps. Obviously, he had been practicing on something besides tomatoes and trees.
