But I like the way Ben surfs. His style is unadorned and functional. Even though his ass sometimes sticks out, he always keeps his center of gravity low, his turns close to the pocket. Perhaps it’s the result of learning in those East Coast beach breaks, where he had to snatch rides from the closed-out waves before they collapsed.
I watch his backlit figure rise above the crest as he makes one last turn. He kicks out, then paddles toward me.
Where would you go right now if you could travel anywhere? What would you do with all the money in the world? I often wonder what Alex or Courtney—or any of those other volunteers, really—might say if asked that question. They’d laugh, mutter something about a vacation. They might speak of expensive foods or sex fantasies, a party they could imagine throwing.
But if you ask those same questions of a surfer—especially a surfer who’s traveled even a little—you’ll get specifics: beaches, breaks, countries, proper nouns. You might hear some half-baked idea like Pelo’s, about a hotel or other business, but what they’re truly talking about is waves, a commodity that is both priceless and free, that can only be bartered for days and years of your life.
If you knew you’d die tomorrow, how would you spend today? Ben and I could’ve answered that question with one verb. Could you? Could Alex? Could my father? It sometimes feels like a horrible burden to me: living each hour with the knowledge of what you’d rather be doing, the wave you might be riding.
“Good set,” Ben says once he’s within earshot.
“It’s beautiful out here.” Sitting up on my board, I hold my arms out to either side.
“Right?” As if reading my thoughts, he says, “Think about how many spots like this we’ll see. I mean, this country is tiny and crowded, and still there’re new waves around every corner. Imagine Chile, or Peru. They’ve got point breaks down there that have never been surfed before.”
I smile at the very idea. I spent most of my life on a small island, where every beach is known and named, has some cabal of locals claiming ownership. The thought of so much uncluttered coast is beyond my imagination. Add to that the inland places we’ll go—Machu Picchu, the Amazon, Patagonia. It’s more of the world than I ever expected to see.
I turn toward land to check on Pelochucho, and finally catch a glimpse of him between crests. He’s far away from us, close to shore. I still have no memory of ever having met him before this week. For a moment, I wonder if he can even surf.
The next set is the biggest yet. I take the first wave and manage to string together several sections, riding it all the way to the inside and landing a little floater on the final bit. I surface with a giddy smile, hoping Pelochucho might have seen the maneuver.
I look around but can’t find him anywhere.
At last, I turn to the beach. There on the sand, Pelo stands beside his board. He puts his hands up over his forehead and then out in front of his face. His feet stumble in a clumsy circle. Something is wrong. I ride whitewater on my belly, then paddle hard for the shore. Once on my feet, I get a good look at him and nearly faint.
Blood gushes everywhere. It’s all over Pelo and his new surfboard and the sand. He holds his hands up in the air and looks around, trying to see out of one blood-covered eye.
“Here I am, Pelochucho,” I say.
He turns toward my voice. A flap of his eyebrow and forehead hang down over his face. The socket is a swollen, bloody mess. I’m not sure if the eyeball is still in there. I look around for it on the sand, lift his board and check underneath. Nothing.
“I don’t feel so good,” he says. “I want to get in the shade.”
I leave the boards on the black sand and lead him by the arm. Two teenage boys point and wince as they pass us. How did this happen in such small waves? With two fingers in my mouth, I whistle hard for Ben, who’s still out in the lineup. Soon enough, he sees us and paddles in. Pelo and I continue toward the car.
“What happened?” I finally think to ask Pelo.
“I rode the shore break in too far, caught the nose of my own board.”
“Okay. Ben will be here soon. Promise me one thing. Promise me you won’t look at yourself in the mirror.” I’m convinced he’ll pass out if he does.
“I promise.”
As we reach the Jeep, Ben catches up and winces at the sight of Pelo’s eye. “You look like shit,” he says. “Let’s get you to a doctor.”
He takes a towel from the car and makes Pelochucho press it against his head.
“I feel sick,” Pelo says.
“Ben, what about our boards?” I point up the beach, where Pelo and I left them.
Ben does an awkward dance of indecision on the driver’s side of the Jeep. Finally, he asks the restaurant owner if she can send a child to retrieve our boards, and if she’ll look after them, maybe until tomorrow. She nods. I climb onto the plywood shelf. Ben shuts the back gate at my feet.
On the drive, Pelochucho sits in the passenger seat and pukes out the window. All along the roadside sit camps of families recently rendered homeless by the earthquake, living under tents and shelters of black plastic. I lie flat upon the rack, feeling the moisture from my swimsuit soak into the plywood, trying to stay still enough to avoid splinters. Traces of Pelo’s vomit rush back in through the window and splatter me. Bile stings my eyes. Ben drives fast.
* * *
In San Salvador, we see a sign that says TWENTY-FOUR HOUR EMERGENCY CARE. The three of us walk inside and find a receptionist seated at a desk. She fills in blanks on a document and doesn’t look up. Ben and I each take one of Pelo’s armpits.
“Excuse me!” Ben says at last. “There’s an emergency here.”
“Have a seat.” She gestures toward some chairs along the far wall of the office.
“I’m not having a seat. This guy needs medical attention.” Ben’s Spanish is extra fluent.
“All right.” She sighs. “Go down this street until you get to a woman selling fried chicken. Then take a left and go two more blocks, until you see a fireworks stand. Right after that, there’s a clinic where they take emergencies like yours.”
We must look like a ridiculous three-headed monster: soaking wet, no shoes, covered in blood and puke, wearing only our still-wet bathing suits. Pelo’s head wobbles atop his body like a child’s toy. The locals must think we’re three drunks coming from a fight as we amble through the labyrinthine hospital-market district in the midday heat.
At the next clinic, they give us an important-looking piece of paper and directions to yet another location. At this third place, a doctor has Pelo lie across a table and places a special cloth over his face. It has a hole that exposes his injured eye. The doctor cleans the wound. Pelochucho groans and squirms with the pain. It’s hard to watch.
“Do you mind if I step outside?” I whisper to Ben.
He hands me the car key. “There’s tobacco in the console. Roll a smoke if you like.”
On the street, everyone stares at me in my bikini. Old women mutter their judgment. Young boys giggle.
I look through the car for a sarong but find only the bloody towel. In the passenger seat, I sit and smoke one of Ben’s rollies.
A kid in rags approaches the window. He holds his palm out flat and says, “One coin?” My hand goes instinctively to the side of my thigh, but find no pants, no pocket, much less any money there. I have no cash at all. Not for this kid. Not for lunch. Not for Pelochucho’s stitches or anything else.
Once the cigarette is done, I fast-walk to the hospital doors, eyes forward, ignoring the stares of onlookers. The piece of wire in the sole of my sandal scrapes against the pavement.
Back inside, they’ve set up a couple of chairs for Ben and me. On the walls are eye charts and mirrors. Racks of eyeglass frames line the shelves. From the ceiling hang instruments used to measure vision. Pelo’s surgeon seems to be an optometrist.
A beautiful Salvadoran nurse assists. Judging by her dress, she must also be the receptionist. Bracelets dangle from her wr
ists as she passes the doctor sutures and clamps. Her nails are long and polished. Neither of them wears rubber gloves.
I stand up, walk to the table, and look over the doctor’s shoulder. He complains about how much sand is in the wound, as if there’s something I can do about it. With a crescent-shaped needle, he stitches up the internal tissue. Each time the doctor goes to insert it, I whisper “Breathe out” to Pelochucho.
The doctor seems to enjoy the fact that I’m watching. I look up from the surgery at one point to see a framed painting on the back wall, done in dark velvet. It’s a picture of a surgeon in the OR. Jesus Christ—who bears an uncanny resemblance to the actual Chuck Norris—stands behind him, looking over his shoulder, guiding his hand. With a gasp, I realize that I’m standing right behind this surgeon the way that Jesus is in the painting. I sit back down beside Ben.
Soon, the doctor announces that he’s finished and writes out prescriptions. The nurse takes the cloth off Pelo’s face and tapes a thick bandage over his eye.
* * *
Somebody must’ve seen gringos and figured we could afford first-class treatment. They lead us to a private room, with a bed, an easy chair, an air-conditioning unit, and a bathroom.
“Pelo,” Ben whispers, “we should clean you up before you sleep.”
Pelochucho nods and stumbles into the bathroom. He takes a second to undo his drawstring, then lets his board shorts fall to the ground.
The bathroom has a small concrete cistern with a faucet, a drain in the floor, and a wide-bottomed bowl for bucket bathing. Pelo looks confused. Ben opens the water tap and picks up the bowl. Finally understanding, Pelochucho sits on the tiles and hugs his knees. Ben dumps bucketfuls of water over him, careful to keep the eye bandage dry.
I can say with my right hand across my heart that I’ll never forget the image of Pelochucho naked on that bathroom floor. His body folds itself up and trembles from the cold water. He brings his forearms together under his chin and opens his hands like a flower. It’s a gesture akin to both prayer and pleading—not unlike the fruit vendor’s expression in the minutes after the quake. I’m not sure if he’s enjoying the bath or hating it. He might be crying; I can’t tell. But it’s clear to me, in that moment, just what a thin and porous layer it is that separates every single one of us from such a state—a frantic and filthy mess of blood, tears, and torn flesh.
Pelo opens up his posture some, once adjusted to the water’s chill. His dick sticks against his inner thigh. I try not to stare, but his is the first uncircumcised adult penis I’ve ever seen. It looks unfinished. Some odd rush of blood forms a lump near the end, as though it’s a snake that has just swallowed a rodent. With his one good eye, Pelo catches me staring. I turn and step outside of the bathroom.
A nurse brings in soap, toilet paper, a towel, and a pair of blue hospital pants that might’ve fit Pelochucho when he was ten. Now they come just past his knees. I have half a mind to ask if she has any clothes for me to change into. Pelo falls asleep immediately, his feet twitching against the rail of the bed. The nurse returns with paperwork. Ben and I make up all of Pelochucho’s information while he sleeps. We guess his birthday, estimate his age, invent his real name.
Figuring he’ll sleep for a while, Ben and I leave the room in search of lunch.
* * *
In the market, a vendor sells soup from a blackened pot. She has a table and three chairs set up under a blue tarp. Long bones stick out of our bowls. Oil forms egg-shaped bubbles at the surface. We slurp down a broth of leaves and potatoes.
“This is not cool,” I say, stirring my soup.
“What’s not cool?”
“None of this is cool. Pelo’s eye. The fucking earthquake. Quitting the Peace Corps. This isn’t how it was supposed to be.” My eyes tingle with the beginnings of tears. It feels as if today’s events are the exclamation point on a boldface message from the universe.
“What are you talking about? This doesn’t have anything to do with the quake. Pelo got speared in the eye. That’s all. It’s just bad timing.”
I try my best to compose myself. “The Hawaiian language has this word: kuleana. There’s no exact translation. It implies rights or property, but also responsibility. It means your calling or your duty. The idea is that you can’t have ownership without stewardship, that they’re not separate; they’re one and the same.”
The truth is, I’d never before used the word kuleana in relation to my own life. But in the past few days, the notion keeps bobbing up in my mind—with Pelochucho and his land, with Cara Sucia and the aqueduct, with the refugee camps and the mass graves. I’m not sure what my duty is anymore, but I’m convinced I’ve been a bad steward of it.
“Ben, I know that we have the right to leave El Salvador.” I look him in the eye. “But that doesn’t make it the responsible thing to do.”
“No offense,” Ben says, “but I’m starting to think my kuleana is in South America already.”
We both turn and stare at our soup.
“Do we need money to pay for this?” I mean the hospital bill, but the question could just as easily apply to lunch.
“Those bills he gave us yesterday are still here.” Ben pats the cargo pocket of his trunks. “I forgot about them until we were out in the water.”
I stir my soup and slurp cautiously at the too-hot broth. The vendor adds tortillas to the stack on the table. She glares at me—in my bathing suit—as if I’m naked.
“Sweetheart, listen.” Ben puts his hand out on the table, palm up.
I lay my own hand inside his.
“We’re gonna be okay,” he says.
* * *
Back in the hospital room, Pelo snores hard. He looks horrible. One side of the bandage hangs off by the tape. His eye is swollen shut. It’ll probably stay that way for days. A ragged scar will now run from the bridge of his nose up through his forehead.
I lean into Ben’s shoulder. He wraps one arm all the way around me.
A nurse comes in and checks on Pelo. She tells us that only one visitor can stay overnight, and empties the garbage bin on her way out.
“Why don’t you take the car back to La Posada, mind the fort and get changed? I’ll stay.” Ben pulls the thin cushions off the single chair and lays them on the floor. “You should probably hit the road before it gets too late.”
“Right.” Driving at night in El Salvador is considered a matter of taking your life into your own hands.
“Take one of these, in case you need gas or something.” He reaches inside the pocket of his shorts and hands me a moist hundred-dollar bill.
Ben and I kiss good-bye. He’s become oddly calm, whereas I still shake with nerves and adrenaline.
“Good-bye, Pelochucho.” He moves slightly as I touch his forehead. I tuck the bill into the top of my bathing suit and turn back to Ben. “I’ll be here first thing tomorrow morning.”
“Drive safe.”
“I will.”
“Malia.” Ben stops me with a stare. “I know you’re having second thoughts. I feel awful about it. Maybe I should’ve given you more time … to decide to quit and everything. I’m sorry if I rushed you.”
“It was my decision,” I admit. “Don’t feel bad.”
“The thing is, it’s kind of a done deal now. We can’t go back to being volunteers, even if we wanted to.”
“I know.” He’s right, of course. “I’m just venting. I’ll be okay.”
“See you tomorrow.”
We exchange another kiss good-bye.
14
I’ve never learned the layout of San Salvador, beyond the Peace Corps office, the hostels and bars popular with volunteers, and the bus terminal for La Lib. Ben, born with a superhuman sense of direction, has done most of the driving since we’ve owned the car.
I have a hell of a time making it out of the hospital district, then straight away get stuck in a traffic jam on one of the city’s bigger arteries. In a cloud of carbon monoxide, I watch boys run between car
s with tiny boxes of chewing gum, chanting “Chicle, chicle, chicle,” as if trying for a cadence that will put the motorists into a buying mood.
At the next light, a man in a clown costume and greasy makeup scrapes a Popsicle stick along a ribbed metal flashlight and mutters lyrics. After each verse, he holds out his palm and collects donations.
A boy in a bright orange vest walks past with a stack of daily newspapers. The headline is, once again, about the Monkey-Faced Baby. This is a local legend that surfaced in the wake of the earthquake. It has several variations, but most of them involve a baby born at a hospital somewhere near Zacatecoluca. The newborn had a mature primate face: full head of hair, a big set of yellow teeth. The delivering doctor took one look at it and said, “This is the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen in my life!” The baby then opened its eyes and, in perfect Spanish, said, “If you think I’m ugly, wait until you see what happens on the thirteenth of February.” The second those words were spoken, the baby died.
Local news media ran with the story. They interviewed a series of frazzled subjects and so-called experts—doctors, witches, geologists, and clergy—about the potential implications of the Monkey-Faced Baby’s prophecy.
Many people buy the paper. The vendor does a better business than the flashlight clown.
I have no idea where I am. The eye-level afternoon sun gives way to dusk. It occurs to me that I might be inching along in the wrong direction. Traffic speeds up at last. I recognize the tall pink monolith of the Hotel Intercontinental looming above the rest of the block.
I’m at Metrocentro, a shopping district near La Estancia—the cheap hotel where Peace Corps volunteers stay. An appealing plan B materializes inside my mind: Why not go by the hotel and see if I know anybody? Maybe I can borrow some clothes. It might be nice to stay one last night in the city, have a few drinks perhaps. If nothing else, it’ll save me hours of driving.
Once the seed of this idea is planted, it grows into a wishful tree within minutes. I take a right onto Boulevard de Los Heroes, a street that I finally know my way around on, then turn left at the Esso station and enter the neighborhood.
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