“Thanks for bringing us home, señorita,” the boys said. They followed their silent mother into the shack while my romantic notions about life at the beach evaporated.
Linder and I walked back the way we had come, got on a bus, and went back to the center of the city.
“Linder, Señora Mercedes has arranged a place for us to stay tonight. Should we go there now and then go to your house tomorrow?” The sun was high in the sky, but I had no idea how far we were from Linder's house, and I didn't want to get stuck in some unknown part of Esmeraldas after dark.
“No, no, señorita, my house is close. We can walk from here.” Linder took my hand and led me through a maze of streets strewn with garbage and beggars reclining on the broken pavement, into a neighborhood teeming with barefoot children and through an alley that reeked of urine and feces. How had John and I missed this on our vacation? At the end of the alley was a three-story building that sagged more than it stood. I wondered if they condemned buildings—or even had building codes—in Ecuador. I thought of the fine white dust that powdered my apartment after each heavy rain that Carl said could be asbestos, which Ecuadorians used for roofing material. Linder bounded through the buildings front door, but I stood rigid in the doorway. Breathing something that might or might not be asbestos was one thing, having a building collapse on top of me was quite another.
“Venga, señorita.” Linder took my hand and pulled me up a dark staircase. “Mi casa,” he said as he knocked on a door at the top of the stairs. When the door opened, a huge figure obscured any light that might have come from the other side of the doorway. Linder immediately began crying, and just before I could grab him and run back down the stairs, he fell against the enormous creature. “Mi mama,” he gasped between sobs.
The woman bent down and swept Linder up into her huge arms and shuffled back through the door. I took a deep breath and followed them in.
“I am Eva,” I said by way of introduction. “Linder has been staying with us at El Hogar de los Niños Trabajador, which is run by the Catholic Church in Santo Domingo,” I said as we stood awkwardly in a tiny room strewn with food debris. This was the kitchen, I assumed, because it had a sink and a counter, but none of the other telltale signs of a kitchen. With Linder still sobbing in her arms, the woman led me into an adjoining room, cramped with a bed, a table, and a sagging couch. There was only one other door in the apartment, which I assumed led to the toilet, but perhaps it didn't and that would explain the smell in the alley.
“Please, señorita, sit down,” she said, motioning toward the couch. I perched myself on the very edge of the couch, thinking it didn't look much sturdier than the building. I hoped this wasn't going to take very long.
“Here is some information for you about our shelter.” I handed her the one-page information sheet that I had written in very basic Spanish.
“Linder is a good boy,” I said. “He is welcome to stay with us.” He hugged his mother tighter.
“He goes to school every day,” I added. “And after school, he works in our workshop and the boys make things that we sell to tourists. See.” I held up the slatted bamboo bag that the boys had made me. I wished now that I had encouraged each of the boys to bring one for their mothers. But I had never even thought about their mothers before.
The big woman smiled and whispered something into Linder's ear. Linder nodded but continued to sob.
“Señorita Eva?” Linder crawled down from his mother's arms and stood beside me. “Can I stay here with mi mama tonight, instead of going with you?” As long as the building didn't fall down around him, I didn't think any harm would come from letting Linder stay. Besides, I didn't think there was any way I could have pried him from his mother if I'd wanted to. So we agreed on a meeting time and place for the next day.
I took a deep, grateful breath as soon as I was outside. I didn't even mind the smell. As Linder walked me back to where I could get a taxi, I wondered if I would ever see him again. Having seen where he came from, I was certain that he was better off at the shelter, materially at least. The filthy neighborhood, the dilapidated building, the cramped, dirty apartment—how could that be good for a child? But what did we have that could compare to a mother's arms around a small boy?
I was relieved the next morning to see Linder waiting for me at our agreed upon meeting place.
“Gracias, señorita, for bringing our boy home. I am Linder's uncle,” said a man standing next to Linder. “We are happy to know that Linder is well and we know that he is good with you.” He handed Linder a small brown paper bag as they said good-bye. “It's not much, but the family collected a few things for Linder to have with him. He's a good boy, our Linder,” he said, tousling the boy's short brown ringlets.
“Si, señor,” I agreed. “Our Linder is a very good boy.” I hugged Linder as we walked to the bus station. Linder seemed far more relaxed on the bus ride back to Santo Domingo than he and the other boys had been going down. He proudly showed me the contents of his paper bag, which included some photos, a white shirt, and the toothbrush I had given him. After a few hours, he used the bag as a pillow and slept against the window. I watched him and felt once again as if I had found the thing I was meant to do.
By the time thirteen-year-old Antonio came to El Hogar two months later, I had begun to do an intake questionnaire with each boy who arrived.
“Well, I would like to tell my mother that I am okay,” Antonio answered when I asked if he wanted to go home. “But I don't want to stay there. And you will come with me, won't you, señorita? I live not far from here.”
Antonio's nervousness was contagious as we took the short bus ride to where he lived the next afternoon. I took some comfort in the fact that we got off the bus right where I'd get off to visit Jane and Carl. But we walked down a dirt road going in the opposite direction of their house. We climbed the stairs and knocked on a door to a house that was raised up on bamboo stilts.
Antonio's mother opened the door and ushered us inside. “Antonio! You are all right!” She smiled at her son, but there was a twitchy expression on her face that made me think of a frightened bird. Just as his mother embraced Antonio, a tall, broad man came in from outside. I could smell beer escaping from his pores when he stood close to me and grunted.
“Well, your Antonio is a good boy,” I said cheerily, trying to convince myself that all was well. “We are very happy to have him stay with us. We are just down the road and you are welcome to come visit anytime.”
“Well, that sounds good,” Mama said with a tense smile. “Doesn't that sound good, Papa?”
“Antonio needs to come outside with me!” the man bellowed. “He needs to come outside with me right now!”
“Now, Papa, this good señorita has come with Antonio to visit us. You don't have to go outside with him now.”
“Antonio needs to go outside with me now to have his hair washed!” Papa insisted. Antonio shrugged and calmly followed his father outside. “You stay!” the father yelled at me as he left.
“Well, señorita, are you from America? Where did you learn such good Spanish?” As we sat there and made forced small talk, I realized that I had no idea what I had gotten myself into.
After a painful few minutes Antonio came back into the house with his black hair soaking wet and plastered to his head. “Papa says I can go back with you now.”
“That's good. Isn't that good, señorita?” Mama asked nervously.
“Yes, that is good.” I was convinced of that. “Antonio, maybe we should go now.”
As Antonio and I were saying good-bye to his mother, Papa came stomping into the house, a dull butcher's knife in his hand.
“What would you do, señorita, if I tried to keep my son from leaving with you?” He wiped both sides of the knife blade across his pants.
“Well, señor, it is my job to protect all the boys in our care.” I tried to look brave and harmless all at the same time. “And I would certainly do whatever I could to protect Antonio as
well.” Even to my own ears, it sounded ludicrous. I knew I had absolutely no way to protect Antonio or any of the boys. Or myself for that matter. “So, I guess we should be going now?”
“Yes, yes, they should be leaving, right Papa?” Papa grunted, but the hand holding the knife relaxed just a bit. Antonio and I backed out the door and ran back to the main road. I looked across the road to the dirt path that led to Carl and Jane's. I wanted to keep running to the safety of their house.
But Antonio and I got on the bus and rode back to the shelter in silence. Antonio said good night and hurried to the long bunk room that he shared with ten other boys. I quickly greeted the women who were bustling around the kitchen, but I needed to process what had just happened—preferably in English and over a beer. I declined their invitation for supper, and walked toward the center of town, hoping I'd find one of the other volunteers.
The post office was smack in the middle of town, right near the ice-cream parlor and hamburger joint—all the usual gringo hangouts. But I didn't see anyone, so I went into the post office to pick up my mail. A note was stuck to the outside of my mailbox. “Eve, come over as soon as you can. Lisa.” I remember thinking that her day couldn't have been as bad as mine. I wondered if she had any beer in her house. I grabbed my Newsweek and my small pile of mail and hurried the few blocks to Lisa's house. Lisa was outside when I walked up the road. There was an odd, serious expression on her face.
“Hola, chica,” I said, looking closely at her. I could see she had been crying. “I just got your note. What's up?”
“Eve …” Lisa hesitated, looking down at the ground. Then she looked me in the eye and blurted, “I was raped.”
Dear Jean,
Okay, I get it: Life in the Third World sucks.
People are poor and desperate and awful things happen all the time. I can now walk past an entire family living in a cardboard and plastic shack beside an open sewer pit and not flinch. I can now survive on nothing but rice and rice and rice with an occasional chicken foot thrown in. I get it. Do we get to go home now? I'm sure you heard about Lisa already. All the volunteers down here are pretty freaked out. What are you hearing up in Quito?
I just found out that the Peace Corps is sending me to a Women in Development conference in Guatemala next week. (I'm not sure what they're hoping I'll get out of it, but I'm hoping for a hot shower!) I'll be coming to Quito on Monday and flying to Guatemala on Tuesday. We'll talk then.
I'll keep you posted,
Eve
Falling Apart Where No One
Knows Your Name
When I first walked into the plush hotel lobby with the Ecuadorian dirt still under my fingernails, I was sure someone had made a huge mistake. This is way more luxury than the Peace Corps allows. But I checked in anyway hoping I wouldn't get busted for the crime of actually being comfortable while being in the Peace Corps.
After the initial shock of Lisa's rape a few weeks before, I fell into the support role for several of the volunteers left behind. Lisa was quickly medically evacuated, “medevaced” as we called it, back to Peace Corps headquarters in Washington, D.C., where she could get the care and support she needed. But there was no one around to help the rest of us process the fears and anxieties that often surface after a rape. Because of my experience as a rape counselor, I became the designated “hand-holder” for everyone else.
Propped up in the wickedly luxurious bed my first night in Antigua, I heard a rumbling and watched the window blinds shimmy. I thought it was an earthquake and ran to the doorway and stood there, like I'd always seen in the movies. A confused bellhop came by and convinced me that it was nothing more than a burp from Antigua's semi-active volcano, and I should go back inside. But all night long, I was full of anxiety and waited for the earth to shake, for the volcano to blow, for the other shoe to drop.
The next three days, alone in that hotel, were hell. I tried to go to the conference on the first day, but I couldn't make sense of anything. All I could feel was panic. All I could hear were my own racing thoughts. I am totally alone. I am totally vulnerable. I spent the rest of the time lying beside the pool, telling myself to calm down and trying desperately to stop my mind from racing. Each night, I would lie in the bathtub with the water up over my ears, hoping that would muffle the cacophony of my own panicked thoughts. I felt like I was on a plane that was about to crash and could do nothing to stop it. I was falling apart in a country where no one even knew my name.
I had heard the stories of volunteers going crazy, volunteers committing suicide. The nurses had warned us to watch out for—and to come to them with—any symptoms of emotional stress. So in a rare moment of clarity, I packed my bags, checked out of the hotel, and headed for Guatemala's Peace Corps office to get help. I wedged myself, along with half the population of Antigua, onto a bus headed for the capital. Like a baby being rocked, I was lulled by the rhythmic movements of the bus as it jerked and contracted its way down through the lush green mountainside—so that being pushed back out onto the hard, gritty streets was as painful as being born. I briefly considered not moving at all and simply melting into the sidewalk as the city swirled around me. But a gringita turning into a puddle on a busy street in Guatemala City was not likely to go unnoticed. Not wanting to add embarrassment to my already fraying mental state, I kept moving.
At the Peace Corps office, I tried to explain, without seeming crazy, that I thought I was going crazy. I was certainly not the first volunteer in the world to walk into a Peace Corps medical office and unravel, and talking to the nurse calmed me down somewhat. That, and the tranquilizers she gave me. She booked me on a flight back to Ecuador the next day and got two Guatemalan volunteers to look after me until I got on the plane. We did what most Peace Corps volunteers do when they get together—we went drinking. The next morning, tranquilized and hungover, I was poured onto the plane by the Guatemalans. Back in Ecuador, our own nurse was certain that I wasn't going crazy. “After all,” she told me confidently, “you've always been so together before.”
She arranged for me to see a counselor, who told me to draw pictures of each of my family members as animals. Her request seemed odd to me, but no odder than losing my mind in Guatemala for no apparent reason, so I went along. I desperately needed to believe that this had been an isolated incident, and if drawing my dad as a dog was going to keep it from happening again, then I'd play along. I went back to Santo Domingo, praying that I'd calm down and life could go back to the way it had been.
But life didn't get back to normal. By keeping busy during the day I was able to hold the panic at bay, but just barely. The neighborhood kids had fallen out of the habit of constant acompañarment while John was visiting over the summer. Now, alone in my apartment at night, the panic attacks returned. And each one seemed worse than the one that came before.
There was a definite “tough it out” mentality among Peace Corps volunteers. We liked to think of ourselves as kind of like the Marines—without the guns, the uniforms, or the strict code of conduct, of course. I decided to tough it out by moving in with Jane and Carl. But a Peace Corps volunteer who requires babysitting by other Peace Corps volunteers is not such a useful thing. And after a few more consults with the Peace Corps nurse, it was decided that I should be medevaced.
My last few weeks in Ecuador are mostly blurry for me. But I have a crystal clear recollection of Jane helping me pack for the trip to Washington, D.C. She folded up my underpants, gingerly as if they might break. They were red and pink and blue, and Jane folded them in half and then in half again, so that they were tiny little red and pink and blue squares, no longer recognizable as underwear. And I remember thinking that I could smuggle thousands of them into America that way.
I arrived in D.C. on a frosty night in early December, stunned and cold. Living on the equator for the past ten months, I seemed to have forgotten about winter and about the need for a coat. A Peace Corps van picked me up at the airport and took me not to the padded cell I had antic
ipated, but to a very nice hotel. I nervously checked out the suite I was assigned to. The carpeting, plush furniture, and hot water in the bathroom were almost enough to make me panic. I had clear and painful memories of what had happened the last time I stayed in a place like this.
“Hi,” came a voice from the bedroom. And out padded a slight woman with dark hair. “I'm your roommate. Leah—Sierra Leone—Fungus.” The medevaced volunteers' version of name, rank, and serial number, I guess.
“Eve—Ecuador,” was all I said, not quite sure I wanted to be known as “Eve—Ecuador—Just going crazy.” But I felt better knowing I had a roommate. I had two, in fact. Lori—Nevis—Dislocated knee slept on the pullout couch.
The next morning, Lori took me to the volunteers' lounge of Peace Corps headquarters. “Here's your first stop.” She pointed to a large box of coats, hats, gloves, and scarves. “And there's your second.” She pointed to a long counter partitioned into at least a half-dozen sections each with its own chair beneath it and telephone on top. “WATS lines,” she said. “You can call anywhere in the states for free.” I hunted through the box until I found a coat and gloves that fit. I passed the phone bank and went to find the Peace Corps nurse who was assigned to my case. It was a bit weird being back in America without John—or anyone in my family—even knowing about it. But I just didn't have my head together enough to know what to say to them. I wasn't exactly anxious to report to anyone that I was losing my mind. Especially not John. Even if I could call for free.
I kept wondering what the medical staff knew about me. I suspected that the nurse back in Ecuador had sent an official, high-security telex to Washington to let them know I was bonkers. But no one seemed to be pointing at me and snickering. The nurse, a man with kind eyes, listened attentively as I recounted the last few weeks.
“First let's get you a physical and a full lab workup. There could be a physical cause for what you've been feeling.”
First Comes Love, Then Comes Malaria Page 7