A few years ago, I was struck by the feeling that something was missing in my life. The resulting surge of restlessness overpowered my senses until I was consumed by the persistent and recurring thought that I had to leave here. This place.
Now.
I’m sure that whatever job I was doing at the time wasn’t horrible. I wasn’t, like, shoveling rocks or picking up shit. I think I was teaching, or working in a café, and on the weekends I began volunteering with Habitat for Humanity. I found the work of building homes for poor people to be rewarding. Plus, I had started without even knowing how to hang a picture on the wall properly, but since then, I had learned to frame walls, read plans, operate a slew of power tools and even strut around in a tool belt. Habitat for Humanity had numerous international affiliates all over the world and designing a trip that combined volunteer work with adventurous wanderings seemed like a mission of sorts.
In my whirlwind of sleepless nights and endless web searching, Bolivia appeared, as strange and distant destinations often do: suddenly, and without warning. Bolivia, Bolivia. There was an active Habitat for Humanity presence in the country with nine different affiliates spread throughout the vast country. I was compelled and intrigued as if to a new lover. I was convinced that some new and unforeseen story was going to unravel for me, which would be so much more enthralling (and distracting) than the mundane disaster of my current life. So, I bought a yearlong airline ticket, without even having heard of the CIA’s red zones and cocaine busts.
A few weeks later, after giving most of my belongings back to Goodwill (I bought most of them there anyway, so I was really just returning them to their proper home), I had disentangled myself from my all my commitments, said farewell to friends who never answered my phone calls, gave copies of my important documents to my mother, and finally, touched down in La Paz, sometime in November.
Those first moments of a trip are always just magic.
There is absolutely no substitute for the panic and exhilaration of getting yourself, and all your belongings, from the airport to safety on that first night. It’s like real world Frogger.
First, I was hopping across lanes of traffic and dodging swarms of people, up staircases and down, getting on the wrong buses and asking for directions in a language I didn’t do my homework for back in high school. With no map and no clue, first it’s swelteringly hot, then it’s frigidly cold, and I’m scared, and everyone is looking at me, (why is everyone looking at me!) And, oh, I have to pee so bad! But this is weird, there is a woman in the bathroom demanding I pay her for a chance to squat over a festering open hole (don’t look! don’t look!). However, I can’t wait, so bravely I wade into the toilet stall and afterwards hold out an open palm so she can choose from my sweaty assortment of coins and bills (what was the exchange rate?). Oh well, it doesn’t matter. I’m here.
I finally found a decent hostel, and breathing deeply, I smiled. I couldn’t help it. I did it! It was a marvelous feeling of relief and accomplishment, and that deep rooted primal instinct to live was pumping in my veins, by god, to survive. This was life as it was meant to be lived.
And on that note, the trip began.
Three weeks later, I was sitting on a bus going from La Paz to Santa Cruz, and while I was admiring the passing coconuts palms and roadside vendors, I was startled at how comfortable I was with the identity of otherness. I’ve always felt like home was a place that my friends had; my parents had divorced when I was seven years old and after that, Dad moved to a small apartment on the other side of town. What followed was two of everything. Two Christmases, two Thanksgivings, two birthday cakes. During my teenage years, I spent oodles of time at my friends’ homes where there were raucous family dinners and a dog. Both my parents had remarried and started over, and I often felt, without me. I have never been sure that if my extreme independence and adventurousness was a survival method or my true nature. I just always felt like I was searching for something, but I didn’t know what.
One thing I did find was that in Bolivia, I had become a gringa. Being a gringa didn’t seem like a good thing, but nonetheless, I was one. I was acutely aware at how my presence didn’t match the surroundings, not only was my skin pale and I was dressed strangely, but I was pursuing leisure activities. What was I doing here? I had to come up with a better response than Soy voluntaria, which is basically what I said, I am a volunteer. I thought it was ironic that I was here to fix their problems, when in fact, I was hoping to solve my own.
The view from the La Paz airport was outstanding. Below us was a glistening valley at the bottom of Andean peaks, thin air of 14,000 feet, and the crowded cobblestone streets filled with industrious cholas in bowler hats and braids, rosy cheeks and almond eyes. It had matched all my expectations of Bolivia: dusty, undeveloped, poor and with a sense of chaos and disorganization around every corner. I spent two weeks in Oruro, which was a semi-arid plateau region south of La Paz, where I joined a work group of fifteen fellow Americans doing one of Habitat’s Global Village trips, and that gave me opening to the work.
As volunteers, we were basically mixing cement in dug out holes in the ground, and wheel barrowing bricks and mortar around. The paid workers did the technical stuff, like laying bricks and using a plumb line to keep the walls straight. Still newbies, we struggled in the thin air of high altitude, the fierce mid-day sun, and to ease my headaches, I sampled the local remedy of chewing coca leaves. During our breaks, I wandered over to the roadside produce stands of papaya, pineapple and large bags of coca. In the end, we built four walls of one home and the rest of the Americans went home. I had to decide where to go next.
I am a hot weather person, I thought I would wander to the eastern part of the country, which was, in contrast to La Paz and the altiplano, a tropical lowland.
What I knew about the eastern region was what I had read in the guidebooks: the camba, or lowland people, inhabited the expansive fertile valley that bordered Brazil and was made up of the lingering pockets of the Guarani, Moxo, Chiquitano, and Arawak Indians. Unlike the kolla people of the altiplano, who spoke Quechua and Aymara, the camba did not battle the bitter cold and wind at altitude, but instead enjoyed the bounty that nature provides. Most of the land was still controlled by wealthy descendants of European landowners, who had turned the grasslands, forests, swamps and lagoons into prolific plantations of platano, cana, pina, and of course, coca.
During the years after the road from Cochabamba was paved, many tiny camba towns on the road to Santa Cruz enjoyed an economic explosion that quickly gave way to swelling populations of immigrants from the altiplano. Many once isolated towns transformed into sprawling markets of shoddy lean-tos filled with kolla who had either voluntarily, or forcibly, been moved from the highlands to the lowlands. Over the years, the government fulfilled its promises to los estadosunidos by destroying the remaining cocaine factories and espoused desarollo alternativo. This alternative development consisted of small loans to grow fruits and vegetables; yet ultimately, it was too much for the market to bear. So more and more mandarinas, papayas y naranjas were rotting in heaps under the sun, unsold and worthless in the beds of carts, and the cocaleros started blocking roads and demonstrating in the capital. They were demanding their right as Bolivianos to grow coca legally so they would be able to feed their families and gain economic freedom. It was coca that had sustained them since the beginning of time, and surely coca could lift the poorest country in South America out of depths of despair and into the twenty-first century.
Our guide in Oruro put me in contact with the Habitat office in Chimore, which in turn suggested I stay with a family in Portachuelo, about an hour from the city Santa Cruz. They told me a friendly woman and Habitat home-owner named Dona Emilce would welcome me warmly. The manager at the Chimore office seemed hesitant to let me travel alone and made a bit of a macho show about getting a man to accompany me, but it was a nearly a twenty-hour bus ride from La Paz, so I knew I would just have to find Dona Emilce by myself.
As soon the bus dropped out of El Alto after summiting the eastern cordillera, the arctic air transformed into heavy humidity, earthen huts with smoking fires gave way to small chozas of palm thatched roofs, and the mountains grew lower and more rounded. Cows rather than goats populated the hills, while the roadsides were covered by vines and thick ferns. The trucks were brimming with bananas, oranges and sugar cane and whenever the traffic stopped, women and children came out running from the yards, hawking tamales, bags of sweet soda, helados, and mandarinas. We crossed numerous rivers on this journey, and I saw men and boys fishing from the bridges with a single line, women washing clothing at the edges of streams and large pigs rooting in the gutters. The sky was at once heavy and thick, and then suddenly bright and crystal blue, all the while grey thunderclouds floated overhead promising frequent rainy relief.
The bus, or flota, was actually quite comfortable and made frequent toilet stops where there were plenty of food vendors and drinks. It had been a relatively uneventful journey until about a kilometer from Portachuelo there were some military men who had assembled into a ragged line. They motionlessly faced another group of masked peasants standing in front of the blocada, which was a pile of large boulders and branches strewn across the highway. The standoff was more tired than tense; the sweltering sun challenged anyone to make a move.
The bus had come to rest at the end of the line about a quarter mile long. The driver leaned out the window and shouted to some people sitting under a tree, “Vamos! Que pasa aqui, compa?”
The women looked at the driver blankly and waved towards the line of cars and said, “Una blocada. Los cocaleros, pues.”
The driver rammed the bus into park, while whispering a string of obscenities under his breath. He boldly laid on the horn on last time, before he killed the engine, grabbed his bag of coca leaves, and announced, “We can’t pass.”
At that point, all the passengers started rustling and murmuring and one by one exited the bus to sit down in the shade. The wind picked up, violently, and in one brief moment the palm trees flattened and people covered their eyes from the sand.
Ay, que feo este viento!
It was a surazo, a seasonal wind that began somewhere in the ice fields of Patagonia and roared across the tundra to this lowland valley. Its arrival announced of the imminent of arrival of the tiempo de la lluvia.
I, too, emerged from the bus parked on the highway, and while I was contemplating what to do next, the surazo whisked me from the bus like a leaf, up and along the road.
In my mind, I imagined what they saw: a young gringa walking along the road with a heavy backpack, heavy boots, zip-off cargo pants, short hair, alone. Alone. I saw the contrast of myself against the foreign landscape. Who I was and what I was came sharply into focus.
Upon arrival in the plaza of Portachuelo, I was content to sit on the bench and cool off a bit. I figured I would let the sweat on my shirt dry before I tried to find Dona Emilce. I knew that people were looking at me. I could feel their eyes on me from the dark insides of the buildings around the plaza, from the church office, the pharmacy, the bakery. It was as if everyone had noticed me at the same time, each pair of eyes tracing the lines of my unusual appearance, each voice remarking upon the curiosity of my presence. There was music and people talking all around me, but I didn’t understand any of it. My Spanish had improved so I was able to carry on basic small talk, but I still enjoyed the benefit of being immune to annoying comments, lyrics to songs, commercials and all the sounds that had previously distracted me from listening to myself.
I sat down on the bench on the edge of the plaza and watched the motos whirring by, the mongrel dogs sniffing in the gutters, the unusual birds flapping overhead in the trees. It was all a melodious foreign landscape, and I was completely disengaged with no cognitive demands whatsoever.
At last, I flagged down a moto-taxista and asked the driver for Dona Emilce’s house.
He smiled and slapped the seat behind him with the rag, “Suba, senorita.”
The driver didn’t hesitate to give me a ride that would require me to hold on to him in fear. He careened over the bump by the billiard room with a little extra speed and swerved wildly to the right of the dip in front of the cemetery. When he stopped the black gate of the house of Dona Emilce, an enormous black pig came tearing out of the yard with two snarling dogs behind it.
“Senora, senora!” Don Ramon shouted.
The gate enclosed a large dirt courtyard with some chicks peeping and pecking among scattered papers and fallen fruit from the siete copas tree. Finally, an older woman emerged from the kitchen, the screen door flopping open behind her as she padded across the dirt in thin sandals and a yellow housedress (a dress that must be worn all over the world by women in tropical climates), and with one hand she shielded her eyes from the sun, and in the other she held a broom handmade of stiff branches.
As she neared the visitors, the dogs barked even louder and Dona Emilce feared they would bite her visitors before she had a chance to learn the motive of the visit. She yelled “Yah! Yah!” and swung the wooden handle at the dogs and forcefully smacked the black one across the spine. They dog yelped and cowered away, followed by the other. She blinked often as she struggled to focus her eyes, which were set within a kind face of loose cheeks and even features.
“Si?” she asked softly.
“Buenas tardes, Dona Emilce.”
“Buenas tardes, Don Ramon,” she replied, looking with curiosity between the moto-taxista and me.
“This senorita needs lodging for the night,” said Don Ramon.
The Dona raised her thin eyebrows and surveyed the gringa from head to foot. Dona Emilce looked at the gringa’s face and saw the youth of her eyes, and Dona Emilce realized the great luck that had befallen her.
“Of course,” the Dona said, “You are the American, no?”
“Yes, I am a volunteer for Habitat for Humanity.” I paid Don Ramon and followed her to two metal chairs on the patio.
She brought me a cool drink and began to recount her Habitat story, which was cross-threaded with her family story, her youth, and in essence, the development of rural eastern Bolivia. Emilce’s once meager home had been adrift in the middle of a field far out from the center of town in the barrio Vientecuatro de Septiembre. Back then the walls weren’t painted and the roof was still made of motacu palm fronds. From her first marriage she had two adult daughters, Lali and Tesoro. The oldest daughter, Lali, married Rosendo and they built a Habitat home adjacent on the same property. The second daughter, Tesoro, built another Habitat home across the street where she lived with her daughter Carla, whose real father was unknown. Emilce’s last and current husband, Roberto, the father of Ely and Jesus who both lived in Santa Cruz, worked for months at a time in the campo. Across the patio was the room they rented out to temporary laborers or the recently divorced, and it was in this room that I would be staying.
“The estadosunidos,” said Dona Emilce quietly, leaning in with seriousness “More beautiful than Bolivia, no?”
“I don’t know,” I replied.
“Yes, I think so. Everything is beautiful,” Emilce stared at me unblinking, scanning my green eyes, pale complexion and very fine, straight teeth. “Mucho mejor, pues.”
I didn’t know what to say.
“Ven,” she waved her hand and unlocked the bedroom padlock. The smell of dust, cement and paint poured forth.
Dona Emilce entered and patted the thin mattress, which creaked under her hand, “But tonight you will stay here, with me. You can stay as long as you like.”
“Thank you,” I said.
“Now, come, you can help in the kitchen.”
During my time with Dona Emilce, I resisted all things involved in the female sex role because I didn’t want to cook, clean and sew. I wanted to build Habitat houses. However, my foray to the worksite had been more of a disruption than assistance. The workers couldn’t understand why I would want to do this men’s work, and why, for god sakes, I was working for free. Plus, there were stories circulating of moto-taxista who had been robbed and left for dead in the woods. Dona Emilce’s warnings of danger were real, and it wasn’t long before I gave up, and settled in to the safety and security of Dona Emilce’s nest. There were many children around all the time, where they lived or where they came from I don’t know, but they constantly asked me to teach them ingles. I really didn’t want to be responsible for spreading the imperialism of English, but at last I arranged a collection of willing pupils for a class.
The classes were in the evening, and grew in popularity so much so that after a couple of weeks there was a beginner and an advanced class. I was shocked at how eager they were to learn. The boys I knew usually went around barefoot and shirtless, covered in dirt. However, they came to my class at Emilce’s kitchen table with combed hair, clean notebooks and two pens, a black one and a blue one. It took some time to get a flow of instruction, but as a former outdoor instructor, I reached into the recesses of my mind for games and activities I could adapt for learning English. I created stacks of vocabulary cards, which I laminated in packing tape, and we shuffled these around for games like memory, charades and a violent form of slap Jack. For winners, I gave an estrella, which allowed them to pick from a candy jar.
The classes went along well for a few weeks, until I got a morning position at the high school and in the afternoons began tutoring a couple of adult women on the other side of town. Soon, I was well-known in Portachuelo as a profesora de ingles, although I seriously doubted my teaching abilities. I often didn’t know enough English grammar rules, and not enough Spanish to explain translations. However, everyone afforded me the authority of being a native speaker, and since I was the only gringa in town, I became a little famous.
Attendance ebbed in my evening classes with the local boys at Emilce’s, until at last only two of the older boys were left, Pablo and Gero. Since they had already tired of all my games, we ended up just sitting at the kitchen table for hours, talking and playing cards, and they took turns teasing each other about different girls. They shared different gossip about the neighborhood, which they hotly debated by shouting “Liar!” “I bet you!” and “Don’t be a maricon!” It was hilarious to listen to their arguments, and it taught me a lot of local Spanish slang. In addition, now I knew that Don Paco had knocked out Dona Lidia’s front teeth. And Dona Lidia’s oldest son Mumi got out of rehab and he almost stabbed Don Paco before he got sent to jail. Also, Rosendo had slammed Lali’s head against the wall and she had been in the hospital for three days before being released back home. Afterwards, I started noticing the yells and cries from different homes, where surely some child or woman was getting the living crap beat out of them. Gero and Pablo’s stories slowly lifted the mask off of what I thought was a peaceful and quiet existence, and exposed the violence and terror underneath.
In the weeks that followed, many of the schools were closed because of labor strikes, so I spent those days with all the neighborhood boys playing soccer, going to fishing spots and swimming in the creek, and sometimes the much farther, and more treacherous, Guenda river. In the hot humid weather, I had grown thin and tanned, typically dressed in shorts and sandals, sprinting about the streets with a gang of ten year old boys. Sometimes I felt lonely, so I bought them a refresco so they would keep me company on a walk. I felt their presence also kept me safe should some unsavory men appear out of nowhere, as they often did. Laughing and telling jokes, I became a part of their group almost overnight, and was overjoyed when they sought me out to play soccer in the nearby canchita.
With the boys in Portachuelo, I didn’t have to be an adult and as I shared in their stories and adventures with exuberant enthusiasm, I relived my own childhood, except this time I wasn’t alone watching TV in my bedroom feeling constantly lonely. In my second Bolivian childhood, I was having a great time, running around all day, having family lunches and dinners with Emilce, and tried to earn my keep by taking turns sweeping the dusty floors and hanging laundry to dry on the line. For once in my life, I didn’t feel the pressing urge to go anywhere. And soon, I forgot all about volunteering and gallivanting all over the country.
In response to my tom-boyishness, Dona Emilce and her adult daughters, Tesoro and Lali, were persistent in feminizing me. I spent the days before New Years Eve with the muchachos, running around the soccer fields and playing hide-and-seek at night, when the sun finally went down they cornered me at the kitchen table.
Tesoro stood before me, menacingly, and asked, “What are you wearing tonight, Laura?”
“I don’t know. All I have are these pants,” I held up my zip-off cargo pants which she waved off with disgust and guided me to Lali’s room, where there was a convenient assortment of clothes on the bed.
“Here put these on,” said Lali, who had located some black slacks and handed them to me. “Those should fit you. They’re big.”
“These are too tight,” I whined, unable to button the top.
“No, they’re not. You have to force them on,” Lali came over and helped pull the zipper up.
“Why are you so fat?” She exclaimed, and I tried to turn away, but Lali yanked me back and slapped my hands away.
“Enough with your ugly pants! You have to wear tight ones.”
Tesoro stood up to assist, and whispered in my ear, “Plus, if you want the neighbor Crespo, you have to wear pants.”
I went red with embarrassment. Tesoro had referred to the good-looking neighbor Crespo, who was the middle brother of Wilmar and Diego, and lived next door. I found myself looking for him whenever possible, and I dreamed about traveling Bolivia with him getting caught up in the romantic illusions latino cultures are famous for.
Lali managed to button the pants, but they were so tight that the fat from my stomach spilled over and the front cut a huge camel toe. “This is not attractive,” I stated, and tried to take them off.
“No!” shouted Lali and slapped my hands away again.
“See, bonita,” cooed Tesoro and looked at me, touching my hips lightly. “She has a nice figure, eh Lali? This is how you have to dress.”
Lali nodded in agreement. “And the top?”
“Here,” Tesoro tossed a sparkly red halter-top at me.
“Oh, no way,” I said holding up the skimpy blouse. What happened to playing soccer? What happened to climbing trees? I wasn’t ready for this thrust into womanhood.
“No eres fea,” Lali said seriously, “Y no eres un chico tampoco.”
“Si,” said Tesoro. “Now, you need to be a woman.”
I was defeated. She opened up the mirror on the dresser and I saw a shocking image of myself.
“Now, I’m going to paint you up.” Tesoro began outlining my eyes with black eyeliner and put a frosty pink shade on my lips.
“Ahora si,” Tesoro and Lali smiled upon their creation and then we walked to Emilce’s patio where dinner was to be served.
"Pu-tcha, look at this!" Rosendo exclaimed when I arrived. “Now, you are mas Boliviana.”
I felt very unlike myself, and caught the boys watching me from the shadows as I was now on the other side. However, my pride swelled to be called mas Boliviana, and I tried to follow Tesoro’s cue when and what to eat, how much to drink and what to say. We all ate heartily of the piggy that had been slaughtered for the occasion, plus arroz tostado, yucca, chuno, salad and a large white cake for dessert. Later with much commotion, Tesoro’s boyfriend Luciano roared up on a huge motorcycle. He had just come from Santa Cruz, the city one hour away.
“Forty minutes!” he exclaimed, clearly used to being king of the castle. He slapped Rosendo on the back, “The beers helped!”
Luciano grabbed Tesoro and spun her around. I saw him slip Emilce money to pay for the party. Everyone laughed at his jokes and songs, which were something like, Quiero bajarte los calzones!
Suddenly, music blared over the speakers and Emilce came up to me and yelled, “Now are you ready to dance?”
“What? I can’t even move!”
“Crespo will be there, veni’!” Said Tesoro and grabbed Elizabeth’s arm.
“Now listen to me, Laura,” Tesoro began seriously as they walked to the taxi to go to the party, her hand resting tantalizingly below my hipbone. “You have to walk and stand different. Not so masculine. Practice and I’ll watch you.”
“What do you want me to do?” I asked.
“Walk sexy,” demanded Tesoro.
I stepped back to the wall and walked towards her.
“No, no, that’s too mannish. More feminine, more slowly, like this.”
She did a slow languid swaying walk that looked hilarious. Tesoro grabbed my arm, “Crespo is good. He’s educated, you’ll see.”
Suddenly, Luciano stepped in front of me, “Gringa! Dance with me!”
He yanked me up to the middle of the circle. Everyone was laughing and watching and I was terrified. He pulled me in way too close and I felt the zipper of his jeans. Embarassed, I looked down and tried to follow his rhythmless drunken steps, while people yelled loudly, “Muy bien, gringa!”
I caught Emilce’s sympathetic face as I went around and around and I tried to relax.
“Ahora estas bailando. Vas a ensenar a los hombres como hacerlo!” Luciano shouted again over the blaring music.
At last he let me go, and I sat back down at the table committed to never standing up again. Tesoro patted my leg and poured me another cup of beer. Before long, Lali pulled me up for a merengue, and said, “Just follow. Move your hips.”
Since more people were dancing now, and I was feeling buzzed, I relaxed enough to follow Lali. She had a femininity and ease in her movements. I longed to be as comfortable as she was, dancing in the middle of the party. The music continued, and Tesoro stood with Luciano, and even Emilce joined in. Before long the whole neighborhood was in a big circle.
“You’re a good dancer!” I shouted to Lali.
“Bah!” quipped Lali and spun me around. When the song changed, we all sat down and shared another drink. As the night wore on, I noticed the atmosphere was darkening and some of the courtesy melting away. I turned to look through the bright lights on the patio to see many young men standing in the shadows watching, like sharks. I strained to see who they were, when Tesoro handed me another beer, hanging on Luciano and kissed his cheek.
At last Crespo appeared and approached the table. Someone whistled and he looked back at the men.
“Hola,” he smiled. His hair was gelled and a freshly ironed shirt opened to reveal his thick brown neck, a silver chain hanging across his collarbone. He leaned in to kiss my cheeks, and everyone laughed and whistled making fun of the new cortejos.
“Vamos a bailar, eh?” He held out his hand, and took me to dance. We spun around in the yard, whose grass has been obliterated a few hours ago, and I felt my sandals sinking into mud and sort of tripped. “Cuidado,” he whispered in my ear and kept me close.
“Aprendiste bailar, eh? Que bien.” He twirled me in a circle and I struggled to follow his movements. “It’s all in the cadera,” he smiled, he accentuated his hips, “Ahora eres mas Boliviana. Estas guapa esta noche.”
“Gracias,” I said confidently.
We danced a few songs this way, and I felt relaxed in his strong arms. The words of the music starting seeping into my drunken head aii es amor, amor, amor . Crespo kept me close, and we kept dancing long after other people had fallen over in their chairs or gone home. Only when the music finally shut off, did I realize the sun was coming up and numerous people were passed out in the yard.
“Come on,” said Crespo, “I’ll walk you home.”
He pulled me away from the yard.
“Where are you going?” said Dona Emilce as she appeared from the shadows.
“Emilce, you’re still here?” asked I incredulously.
“Of course,” she said, “Now where are you taking her?”
“I’m walking her out to say goodnight,” he replied nervously.
“No, you wait for Tesoro.”
“Oh, I’ll be fine!” I said, waving her off. I was a little tired of Emilce’s over-protective ways.
“Tesoro!” shouted Emilce, Tesoro looked up from the table where Luciano was still drinking and she was leaning on his shoulder, her lipstick gone and her eyeliner was smeared below her eyes. Obediently, she stood up.
“Go with Laura and Crespo,” Emilce commanded.
Tesoro grabbed Luciano’s elbow and shouted. “C’mon were going.” He downed the last bit of beer in his glass and stood up. He sang loudly as we walked, Vamonos con la gringa y su amorrrr.
We started walking from the patio in to the dusty street. A car came by, bumping over the potholes and flashing its headlights over all the people hiding in the dark.
“Let’s go to the bar,” Crespo offered.
As we walked the long way around the corner to the bar, we leapt over the potholes while Luciano shouted “Gringa! Como te gusta Bolivia? Eh?” He turned to look at me, but tripped on Tesoro’s abandoned sandal. Crespo valiantly helped me over a mud puddle. Tesoro stumbled behind Luciano in one sandal and they went to get some beers from the bar. I sat of the swing and Crespo stepped over my legs. At last we were alone.
“So, what do you think of Bolivia?” he asked.
“It’s nice. It’s so different.”
“It’s better in the estadounidos, isn’t it?” Crespo asked, but I changed the subject.
“Why do they call you crespo if you don’t have curly hair?”
“I used to when I was a baby,” Then he was quiet, intent on keeping the subject on love. “Look, I think I’m falling in love with you.”
“Oh please!” I tried to look away, but he tipped my chin back to look at him.
“I’m serious. I never knew a gringa before, but it’s always been my dream, I need you.”
Crespo moved in to kiss me, but was interrupted.
“Oh, c’mon lovers!” Shouted Luciano as he walked up to us. “Vamos a tomar en el parque mas! Crespo!” He was holding Tesoro by her neck and leaning on her. Slowly, she was being pulled to the ground by his weight.
“Si, compa?” Crespo shouted back.
“Estas enamorado con la gringa?”
“Si, compa!” He laughed and put his arm around me.
Luciano kept leaning on Tesoro’s neck and she tried to pull him off, but he got angry and they started arguing. Tesoro walked away and Luciano screamed after her. I was afraid to be left alone, so I stood up and pushed past Crespo to go home with Tesoro.
“Wait!” Luciano and Crespo yelled after us. I turned to look at Crespo holding back Luciano, who struggled violently to go after Tesoro. We escaped around the corner, and Emilce watched us come in and immediately locked the gate behind us before she shut off the lights. The dogs barked occasionally at party goers passing by in the street whose drunken voices wafted over the walls. In my room, I lay down in the dark and ran my hands over my body, recalling the close dancing and smooth skin of Crespo.
As I fell asleep, my doorknob turned, but luckily it was locked, and someone ran away.
I woke up a few hours later to Tesoro’s voice. As I awakened, she was going on and on about el muerto. My head was spinning and my stomach heaved when I came out of my room into the sun. I tried to ask what happened, but my Spanish was failing me.
Finally Tesoro said, “Vamo’! Let’s go see the body at the pool hall.”
“Oh, I don’t want to see a body!” I groaned, this sounded like the worst idea in the world.
“I knew him, he used to work here and stay with us, too.”
I had no choice but to obey and I splashed some water on my face and stepped in to my sandals quickly. We walked quickly up the road to the bar Copa Copa and there were kids and people all about, flooding the sand embankment. There was a separate small crowd surrounding Crespo’s older brother Mumi who was rolling around on the ground, incredibly borracho. He was wailing and crying about Loco, who had drunk himself to death.
“Loco, Loco… where’s Loco? Why did my friend have to die?”
“Vamono’, let’s go home Mumi,” Dona Lidia, his mother, tried to get Mumi to stand up.
“No! I don’t want to!” he said, punching the air.
“He’s at the hospital. Later you can see the body,” Lidia desperately, eyeing the crowd who had encircled them.
“No! What happened? Where’s Loco?” he wailed.
Lidia kept trying to help him to stand and end this public humiliation, “Let’s go pues, Mumi, vamos.”
A little girl on a purple bicycle rolled up to the crowd. “There’s a fire at Don Ysidro’s house!” she yelled.
Everyone gasped and forgot about Mumi’s performance and ran off in the direction of the fire. Even Tesoro took off running, panting and heaving, and I followed slowly behind her. I turned my ankle at the corner and I when I looked up I saw men frantically pulling the palm leaves off the roof of a house. The neighbors had climbed up onto the roof, balancing on the peak, trying to yank them loose. The fronds were burning lightly and smoking. On the ground some more people had acquired a few buckets and were passing it up to the men and trying to throw it onto the smoking branches. Some women were running inside and bringing out pots and pans, some blankets and various clothes.
Then a fat red-faced man came out of the smoky door and fell onto to the ground. Two women near him immediately straddled him and began CPR.
“Unggg.” He groaned, trying to push the hands off his chest, but they kept on with the CPR.
“Hey!” I said and gestured them away, “He’s awake now. Don’t do compressions.”
The women backed off confused. I watched the smoldering house a while longer, and made small talk with an older woman who just smiled and shook her head.
“We’re cursed!” she said, exposing her toothless gums.
The spectacle didn’t seem real, and to me, it really wasn’t.
Once the fire was under control, I started walking back to Emilce’s and I caught up with some kids meandering back towards the plazuela. They followed me and excitedly asked me where I was from, if I spoke English, if I was married and about my brothers and sisters.
I just wanted to be alone, so I ignored them and said no se before lumbering over to the hammock at Emilce’s house. I stretched out so I could watch the fat white clouds pass quickly in the sky. The clouds moved in rolling waves, like the ocean, but in slow motion, changing shape and form almost imperceptibly.
I was so entranced that I hadn’t noticed that Dona Emilce was there. “What will you do now? Just stay with us?” she asked.
“No se, Dona.”
“Just stay with us. You can just stay here tranquilita.”
I didn’t know what to say.
“And one day you get married and have your children here,” Emilce said calmly. “Why go home? You are happy in Bolivia, no?”
“Si,” I said.
Emilce waved her hand. “You just distract yourself, that’s all.”
I kept watching the passing clouds. The wind whistled through the leaves of the grapefruit tree, and the parrot next door squawked. I imagined myself staying here, playing soccer, teaching English. I could build a home here, too, and marry Crespo.
And, the neighborhood boys would need someone to inspire them. I couldn’t leave Gero and Pablo. I had to save them from becoming drunks and violent like the others.
“Y no hay mas,” murmured Emilce as if she heard my thoughts. She looked at me occasionally as she swept the cement walkway and opened the bedroom doors to air them out.
I didn’t respond. With each pass of her brush on the fabric, I heard the phrase over and over echoing in my head, y no hay mas y no hay mas.
This was long before I found out Crespo already had a baby with a girl across town, and I felt so betrayed because everyone said they thought I knew. It was before I found out that all men had children with various women, and were expert liars. It was also before I tried to help Emilce’s daughter Lali get a visa to the United States, and the crushing failure to do so was more than I could handle. It was before I adopted a puppy which became sick, and I later drowned it in the sink basin because I thought it was an act of mercy, but was really just a horrible thing to do. It was before I became anorexic, before my passport got stolen by the Bolivian immigration office, and before I did dangerous things like ride in the luggage hold underneath the bus desperate to get to the La Paz airport. To go home.
It was before all of the disappointment and disillusionment that is involved with living in Bolivia, the poorest country in South America. It was still the beginning of my trip, and I had so much to learn.
At that moment, though, I trusted Dona Emilce. Swinging in the hammock, it occurred to me that life was simple. I had found what I had come here for. A place to belong. Family. Home. I was happy. It was a strange and new sensation, and one I hadn’t planned for, or expected, but it happened anyway.
Y no hay mas.
