Tales of a Female Nomad

by Rita Golden Gelman

  In meats, fifty little butcher shops compete for the shoppers’ business. There are brains and stomachs and kidneys and tongues, feet and tails and intestines. Butchers are slapping and smashing meat on huge wooden blocks, beating red blobs into tenderness. They are scissoring and chopping up yellow chickens that have been fed marigolds so their skin and flesh are gold. Heads here, feet there. Innards sorted.

  The butchers are mincing beef and hacking pork, sharpening knives and chopping slabs. Cleaving, slapping, scissoring, beating. It’s a spectacular percussion band, with its own peculiar instruments.

  The shoppers, thick in the aisles, are carrying string and plastic and cloth bags full of newspaper-wrapped packages of their purchases. I walk among them, enjoying the touch of our bodies.

  I wriggle through the crowd to peer into waist-high vats of thick white cream and barrels of white ground-corn dough called masa. I cannot stop smiling at the explosion of joy I have felt since I passed under the canopy of piñatas. It’s exciting to be exploring a world I know nothing about, discovering new smells, and moving through a scene where I am a barely noticed minority of one, swallowed up by the crowd.

  I follow my nose to the eating area of the market. Sausages are frying, soups are bubbling, chiles are toasting. I sit at a picnic table and eat and smile, surrounded by Spanish-speaking women. I bite into my quesadilla stuffed with stretchy Oaxaca cheese and strips of sweet, green chiles.

  “Muy sabrosa.” Delicious, I say to the woman sitting on my right. She asks me where I am from. I answer some simple questions and ask her name. When our conversation runs out of words, I move to another table and try a sopa de flor de calabaza, squash blossom soup with garlic and onion, zucchini, corn kernels, green leaves, and bright yellow squash blossoms . . . with strips of sweet chiles on top. The blend of flavors, the texture of the different vegetables, the thickness of the broth are like the Mexican people, filled with spice and spirit.

  Then, at about twelve o’clock, after nearly five hours in the market, I head off to the anthropology museum. I have never been big on museums or churches or most tourist attractions. As I wander through, I am thinking that I want to move into the enclosed tableaux, to live with these people, to celebrate with them, to cook and eat with the families. I want to experience their lives, not look at them through glass.

  Many of the exhibits represent cultures that no longer exist; but there are plenty of living, breathing indigenous people in Mexico today. How I wish I could live amongst them.

  Then it hits me for the first time . . . during these two months, I do not need anyone’s permission to do what I want to do. I am free to make my own decisions, follow my whims, and take whatever risks I choose. For me, these two months are not about dating or being with other men; they are about doing the things that I can’t do with my husband. I decide, while looking at a Zapotec family behind glass, that for some part of this Mexican journey, I will live in a Zapotec village.

  By five o’clock I am thinking about dinner, and yesterday’s fear is back. It is not a fear of people; I loved being in the market, surrounded by people. Nor am I afraid that someone will hurt me or rob me; I’m not a worrier. What I am feeling is a deep psychological fear with its roots in adolescence: a fear of being seen alone. Alone means unpopular. Alone means that you have no friends. Alone means that you are an outsider. In the context of Mexico City, it makes no sense. But it is there, this vestigial fear, left over from my teenage years. Sitting alone at a table, where everyone can see me, is like shouting my inadequacy to the world.

  I understand what I’m feeling and how foolish it is. But I still don’t want to eat alone. I need to find a dinner companion, anyone, male, female, old, young, a family, a loner, a three-year-old. I’ve never been shy about talking to strangers. It doesn’t matter whom I find; what I need is a human across the table.

  I decide that it would be easiest, and safest, to look for a dinner mate in one of the better hotels. I study the guidebook and find my way to the most expensive hotel in the city, where I sit in a lounge chair by the pool and try to look as though I belong.

  A family is sitting at the umbrella table next to my chair. “Where are you from?” I open. We talk: about Mexico City, about kids, about New York (where they are from and I used to be). An hour later, they gather up the kids and leave. They are a unit unto themselves; they don’t need me.

  A few lounges over, there is a man sitting alone. I am thinking that he will probably be joined by a wife full of shopping bags. What the hell. I can try. I smile at him, nod an opening, and we begin to talk. He’s an engineer from Indianapolis, on business. Alone.

  “I’m traveling by myself for two months,” I say in answer to his question.

  “Are you finding it difficult? I mean, what do you do about dinner?”

  Yes. Yes. “Is that an invitation?” I ask. It wasn’t, of course. “If it is I accept.” I try not to sound as though I’m propositioning him.

  He laughs and tells me that he is waiting to hear from a friend who usually calls in the morning. He suspects that their signals may have gotten mixed up. He’d be happy to have dinner with me, unless he hears from the friend. We make plans to meet.

  I go back to my hotel, pleased with my ingenuity. I shower and get dressed. Then the phone rings. The friend has called; our dinner appointment is off. Back to zero. OK. I’ll start again at a different hotel. It is 8:15 P.M.

  I choose a hotel with three stars and take a taxi there. The lobby is small. No one is sitting in the stuffed chairs, so I stand near the wall opposite the reception counter and observe the activity. Nobody is hanging around this lobby. I stand with a silly smile on my face and watch people on their way out for dinner. The pace is brisk. There’s no chance to make eye contact, which is a necessary part of picking people up. And no one lingers, so there’s no opportunity to hook someone with a spontaneous comment. It is nearly nine o’clock.

  I find myself watching the young woman who is checking in guests. She has a warm smile and expressive eyes. And her English is excellent. I wait until there is no one in line.

  “I’m sorry to bother you. I know you’re busy, but I’m here alone and I wonder if you could recommend a restaurant where I wouldn’t feel uncomfortable eating by myself.”

  “Hmmmm. Let me think about that for a few minutes. I’ll get back to you.”

  Good, I feel less alone already.

  She continues checking in the guests and I retreat to my post near the wall. A line grows in front of her. It keeps getting longer. A half hour goes by. I am feeling more and more uncomfortable standing there. Just as I decide that she has forgotten about me, she calls me over.

  “Excuse me,” she says to the man at the front of the line. “I’ll be just a minute. This woman asked me to recommend a restaurant where she could eat alone, and I promised I’d get back to her.”

  He smiles and looks at me. “An Englishman never lets a lady eat alone. I’m John and this is Lionel. We’d be delighted if you would join us for dinner.”

  I look at the woman and then at the men. “Thank you,” I smile to all of them.

  John directs the taxi driver to a small restaurant in Zona Rosa, the elegant part of the city. The tequila comes in a shot glass along with a small spicy tomato juice, and we begin our meal, all of us, with ceviche cocktails, raw fish “cooked” in a marinade of lime juice with diced peppers, tomatoes, chiles, green onions, and cilantro. Even before the main courses arrive, they buy me a wilting rose from the old lady who is selling them from table to table.

  My chicken mole is fabulous. The three of us drink two bottles of wine and laugh and talk a lot. Lionel is John’s boss, recently arrived from London. He’s about seventy years old, fit and funny. John, who is a few years younger than I, is tall and slim. He has a little twist in his nose and brown hair that flops over his forehead. They are both wearing suits and ties. John has been in Mexico for six months, traveling in back country, negotiating and doing deals and being prop
ositioned by all the eligible young women in the villages he visits. He mentions only the propositions, not what he did about them.

  The men are vague about their mission in Mexico. As the mariachi band plays my requests, I have visions of drugs and Mafia and spies. Then Lionel lets slip something about guns. I ask and the answer is evasive. I leave it alone.

  I tell them my story, including my apprehension and fear that my marriage may be over. I can feel the tears in my eyes as I talk. They say nothing except, “Have another glass of wine.”

  We walk back to their hotel, singing songs from the fifties, holding hands like old friends, me in the middle. The streets are empty and our voices are loud. It is half past two; most of Mexico City is sleeping. John and I deliver Lionel to his room. Then we walk down the corridor and around the corner. Suddenly he stops and puts his hands on my shoulders.

  “Rita,” he says, “I think you want to cry.”

  He opens the door to his room and locks it behind us. Then he puts his arms around me and I cry.

  The next morning, I am confused as I walk back to my hotel. Who was that woman who just spent the night with a stranger? Two days ago I could never have done it. In twenty-four years, it has never happened. Is it possible that leaving the country has turned me into someone else?

  I try to look at myself from another dimension, detached and nonjudgmental. This person is not wife, mother, daughter, writer, anthropology student, L.A. sophisticate. She is, of course, all of these things; but alone, without the attachments, she is a woman in limbo, whose identity has been buried in her roles. Away from those roles and alone, she is someone she doesn’t know.

  Clearly, my job over the next two months is not only to think about the state of my marriage and to discover new worlds, but also to uncover the person inside my skin.

  I collect my things and check out of the hotel. They are expecting me today at the Spanish school in Cuernavaca.

  The city bus is crowded. People are pushing. I have switched my backpack onto my stomach so that I can see it, and I am clutching my shoulder bag around the bottom. I’ve been warned about the dangers of city buses, but I like getting the feel of a city by riding the buses.

  Five minutes into the bus ride, approximately thirty-six hours into my adventure, the bus lurches and a couple of teenagers standing next to me are thrown against my side. I fall to the floor. One of the teenagers helps me up. I don’t even know that my wallet has been taken until I’m at the terminal looking for money to pay for the bus ticket to Cuernavaca.

  Luckily, I’m wearing a thigh belt where I put most of my money, my traveler’s checks, and my passport. I’ve lost about $25 in cash, $150 in traveler’s checks, and a Visa card. I rush to a phone and try to call the American Express office in Mexico City to report the stolen traveler’s checks. The line is busy. I try about ten times over the next week, and the line is always busy. (Months later, when I return to the States, I call them and they honor my loss.)

  The money is negligible. The worst part is having to call my husband to cancel the credit card, which is in his name. The call is awkward and I feel like the stereotype of a helpless wife.

  The school has made arrangements for me to stay with a young couple and their baby; I’m their first foreign guest. Pili is twenty-one, slim with long black hair, sparkling eyes, and a bouncy personality. Raul, her husband, is strikingly handsome. His eyes are deep and dark, his shoulders are broad, and his smile is real. But there is something weighing him down. I can see it when I look into his eyes. Perhaps it’s the responsibility of a wife and a one-year-old baby at the age of twenty-two.

  Neither Pili nor Raul speaks English, so I’m forced to communicate in Spanish, which is the reason the school houses its students in homes. I am amazed at how much I remember.

  The classes are one on one and I’m flying through the lessons. It feels great. I’ve never studied a language in context; it makes so much more sense than sitting in the U.S. with a book. Here, everything and everyone around you is a classroom.

  Then, one week into my visit, I wake up with a rash on my chest. I decide it’s nothing. I’m in a new environment, new foods, new water, new everything. I ignore it. The next day the rash is all over my body. And two days later, it turns into something that feels and looks like a stage-three sunburn. Every inch of my body is bright red. Wherever I touch, it hurts. I also hurt when I wash, sit, and put on clothes.

  I leave the house that morning clutching the little pamphlet that the school has given me; instead of going to school, I go to the recommended doctor a few blocks from my house. I say nothing to Pili and Raul. I’m hoping it’s nothing, so it doesn’t make sense to worry them.

  “It’s varicela,” the doctor says. “The whole family must come in immediately to get gamma globulin injections.”

  I have no idea what varicela is, but I am humiliated. I have just arrived and I have brought disease. When I tell Pili, in my halting Spanish, that they all have to get gamma globulin shots, she is skeptical. She looks at my red arms and chest. “That is not varicela,” she tells me and then brings over her dictionary.

  Varicela, it turns out, is chicken pox. She’s right. I know what chicken pox looks like and this isn’t it. She calls another doctor, who agrees to come to the house the next day. I go to bed early and wake up in pain—my back hurts and so does my scalp. My ears and my eyelids and the bottoms of my feet are the color of tomatoes. My entire body feels as though it has been dipped in boiling water. And, I have a fever.

  It is frightening to be so sick in a place where I don’t know anyone. And my Spanish is not good enough to ask all the questions I have. I keep asking myself if it is safe to be treated by doctors trained in Mexico; I have no idea about the quality of the medical schools here.

  Before the doctor arrives, I sit with a dictionary and prepare a list of possible causes. I am terrified that those village women who propositioned John, have given him, and me, a disease. I’m embarrassed to mention it to the doctor, so I bury it in the middle of my list.

  varicela

  food reaction

  water reaction

  cat allergy

  venereal disease

  reaction to Aralen, the malaria pills I’ve taken twice

  hives

  some tropical virus

  a skin disease

  The doctor examines me in my room. I hand him the piece of paper. “It is not chicken pox,” he tells me. He looks at the rest of the list without commenting. “I don’t know what it is. I will have to consult my colleagues.”

  When he leaves, Pili says, “My father is a doctor. He gets back from vacation tomorrow. I’ll call him.”

  Pili’s father doesn’t venture a diagnosis either. He sends me off the next day to the top dermatologist in Cuernavaca. By the time I get to his office, my skin has changed again. It is not hurting anymore. Now it is peeling, and when I take off my shirt in the office, thousands of tiny flakes of dead skin fall off onto his floor. I am snowing.

  “It is a reaction to something,” he says. “But I have no way of knowing what. It is not chicken pox or a virus or venereal disease. It is probably a response to the malaria medicine. Stop taking it.” He prescribes prednizone, a steroid. I ask if my illness is contagious. He says no.

  As I ride home in a taxi, I am trying to decide what to do. “Probably” is not very reassuring. I cannot, will not, go back to Los Angeles to my family doctor. I’m not even going to call my husband. This is my trip, my freedom, my problem.

  I feel very alone. Not only have I never had such a strange illness, I’ve never gone through anything on my own. I decide that if I don’t get a confirmation of the diagnosis, I will go to Miami, where I have a friend who is a doctor.

  I walk in the door and Pili greets me. Doctor number two has called. He and his colleagues are calling my condition Stevens Johnson syndrome, a reaction to medication, probably the malaria prophylaxis, Aralen, although none of the literature discusses this side effect. H
e too prescribes prednizone. OK. There’s consensus. I decide to stay.

  My condition gets worse. The fever brings on hallucinations and my vision becomes blurred. My legs blister so badly that when I stand still, the pressure and pain are intolerable. I have to sit on the shower floor while I bathe and brush my teeth because when I stand still for more than a few seconds the blisters feel as if they are going to explode.

  Midway through this ordeal, I begin to see the illness as some kind of Herculean challenge that I must endure in order to become a new woman. I have also convinced myself that I am not in serious danger. (Months later, when I see my doctor in L.A., he tells me that Stevens Johnson syndrome is, in fact, extremely rare and dangerous. He has seen it twice, and both times he hospitalized his patient. The danger is infection; people die from it. He also tells me that the illness can do permanent damage to the patient’s eyesight.)

  After two weeks, I still cannot stand still. I have to sit with my legs up to reduce the pain. Occasionally I go for walks, pushing the baby in the stroller. One day I go to the bank and discover that there is a line. I jog in place like a runner at a traffic light.

  Every inch of my body is peeling. The more delicate parts of me flake onto the floor. Even my nipples and my ear lobes are peeling. The skin on my fingers peels off, like the skin of a snake, intact. And my legs are still blistered. I have turned into one of those hideous pictures in a medical book.

  Then, as I lie in bed one night, burning up and in pain, I get the first spiritual message of my life: in shedding my skin, I am being reborn. I am symbolically peeling away the person I have become and releasing the woman who has been trapped inside all these years. Soon this new me will be going out into the world on a journey of self-discovery.

  The next night Pili and the baby go to bed at nine o’clock and I sit with Raul, my feet up on the coffee table, until two in the morning. Until now we have never had a conversation in depth. We have talked about food, about school, about his baby, and my illness; but language has always prevented our conversation from going beyond the superficial.