Mother Tongue

by Christine Gilbert

  “Yes!” I breathed a sigh of relief.

  She started writing. “So how many pregnancies have you had?”

  “One.”

  “Em, what about him?” she asked, pointing to Cole, who was sitting on Drew’s lap.

  “Oh right, right, yes, two. Sorry, I’m still adjusting to the idea that I’m pregnant again.” Drew and I laughed.

  “And how was his birth?”

  “It was fine. Well, I went over my dates; I went to forty weeks, five days, and then my blood pressure went up. I had preeclampsia, so we did a C-section. They did a biophysical profile and he wasn’t moving, so they rushed us to surgery.” I paused on the phrase biophysical profile . . . would she know what I meant? Was there a difference between American and Mexican medical terms? I hadn’t even thought of that.

  But Dr. Laura was unfazed. “Okay, we will have to keep an eye on that,” she said, taking notes.

  “I would like to try for a VBAC,” I told her, shifting Cole onto my lap. I stopped to see if she’d understood the term, which stood for vaginal birth after C-section, but she didn’t even flinch.

  “I am okay with that. We will keep an eye on it, but if there are too many red lights, then we will stop and do a C-section. I won’t let it go too far.” I noticed her use the phrase “red lights” instead of “red flags”—even though her English seemed terrific, she hadn’t quite nailed that idiom.

  She took down more of my medical history, asked about my diet, vitamins, all the usual things, and then said, “Okay, let’s go see your baby!” and we clicked our way deeper into the warren of offices and anterooms.

  The ultrasound machine was impressive. It filled most of the room, and on the wall was a large flat-screen TV where the images were shown. It was all much bigger, more advanced, and more impressive than what I’d experienced when I’d been pregnant with Cole in Seattle. I lay down and she covered my belly in goop, then moved the wand around until she found the baby. After she did the measurements, she switched to 4-D mode, which gave me a 3-D view of what my baby looked like inside me, like a little sepia snapshot taken inside my womb.

  “Do you want to know the gender?”

  “Yes, it’s a girl, right?”

  “Yes, you’re going to have a little girl,” she told me, and even though I already knew, I teared up.

  “Look, Cole, you’re going to have a sister,” Drew said.

  “That’s the baby, look,” I said, turning my head so I could make eye contact while lying on the ultrasound table. But Cole was playing with a model uterus and didn’t look up.

  At the end of the appointment, Dr. Laura instructed us to schedule a follow-up with her receptionist, then gave me a kiss on each cheek as we said good-bye. She squeezed my hand. I liked her. She was so professional, thorough, and warm. It was the most comfortable I had ever felt with a health provider.

  My friends back home were a little surprised that I was having the baby in Mexico. “Wow” was the polite version, “Ooh, I could never do that” was a little more direct, and they said “What?!” if they were feeling particularly bold. If I didn’t know, I would feel the same way. They were probably imagining some dusty Mexican town with a free clinic that was dirty and ill equipped. But so far my experience was far from that. It wasn’t the same massive practice I was used to, with dozens of chairs in the waiting room and wall-to-wall carpet. And certainly there were free clinics in Mexico that are not the same as my experience with Dr. Laura. But when it came down to what mattered—the care I received, the doctor’s manner, the quality of the equipment—I felt more like one of those Park Slope moms in New York City who could afford to hire a doctor out of pocket, getting the high-end attention and treatment that simply wasn’t available to those using health insurance and providers rushing from patient to patient.

  As we paid and scheduled our next visit, Dr. Laura came out to the lobby to meet us.

  “I almost forgot. Here is my cell phone number. Call me anytime.”

  As we walked back to the car, Drew said to me, “Whoa.”

  “I know, right? She’s awesome.”

  “Unbelievable.”

  We were going to have our baby in Mexico.

  • • •

  EVERYTHING WAS FALLING into place with such ease it felt unreal. We had rented the three-bedroom bean pot house. The hibiscus plants and flowering bougainvillea attracted hummingbirds, which darted past me as I sat out on the veranda to write and watched Cole pedal around on his new tricycle. The sweet smell of fruit and flowers suffused the air, and little geckos climbed the walls.

  All my old knowledge of Spanish was flooding back. It felt exactly like running into an old friend and reminiscing about the old days, and they remind you of something and you say, “Oh right, we went to that three-day festival that year, I had totally forgotten that.” Things I hadn’t thought about in years became fresh in my mind. The more words I remembered, the more they unlocked other vocabulary.

  Plus, in many ways, being in Mexico was just easier than being in China or Lebanon had been. In part, that was because I had relaxed my ideas about the idea of “authentic travel.” In Beijing, I had avoided the websites and expat groups that would have made my transition easier. I hadn’t wanted to be one of those Americans who moved overseas and sequestered themselves in the American bubble wherever they lived. I had heard stories of Americans living in China for a decade and still not speaking Mandarin.

  But I decided I had been wrong about it being a binary choice. My options weren’t either “eat McDonald’s and only speak English” or “pretend I am thirteenth-century explorer Marco Polo with no access to familiar things or people from my own culture.” There was a middle way. In Mexico, I could focus on speaking Spanish and still shop at Walmart. I could get to know the owner of the little vegetable stand near my house and inquire in Spanish about whether the avocados were ripe yet, but also get a reference from the expat group on where to find a good dentist.

  I went from being a travel purist, trying to find meaning in the aesthetic of unassisted travel, to being a travel realist, using the tools at my disposal to get the logistics out of the way so I could get to the important stuff—speaking the language, adapting to local life—faster. The less time I spent bumbling around looking in all the wrong places for allergy medicine, instead of just asking friends about which pharmacies sold my brand, the more time I could focus on what really mattered.

  In essence, I gave up on getting style points. Sure, it was romantic to think about going to Mexico and furnishing my new house with things bought at the Saturday market from an old woman with a weathered face and a selection of handcrafted brooms—or I could just go to the local big-box megastore, pick up a broom (made in China), mop (also made in China), and some cleaning products (imported from the United States), and be done with it. After all, that’s what the locals did, too.

  Still, it was surreal to drive down the highway, leaving our dusty Mexican neighborhood behind, and choose between several giant grocery stores—a Costco, three Walmarts, or three Sam’s Clubs—all within a thirty-minute radius of one another. And while the street-food culture was strong, so was the fast-food one. There were American brands like McDonald’s, Burger King, Subway, KFC, and Church’s Chicken, but there were also Mexican brands like Pollo Feliz, El Pechugón, El Pollo Pepe, and OXXO (a convenience store that also sold fast food). We didn’t eat in those places. We didn’t even feel the temptation to do so, not when we could walk out of our house and find a small army of taco stands, small restaurants, and street-food vendors serving freshly made tacos, soups, and more sit-down-style meals featuring chiles rellenos (stuffed peppers) or pollo asado (chicken cooked over charcoal).

  Living where we lived, we could spend our time in either a Mexican bubble or an American bubble. If we kept to our neighborhood, the portion of town we lived in, it was exactly the life we were looking for:
local, authentic, and tourist-free. When we ventured back toward Puerto Vallarta, we had to travel through the hinterlands of strip malls, casinos, American fast food, and endless hotels and resorts. You could have any kind of life you wanted here, and we knew which kind we wanted.

  • • •

  IT BEGAN JUST BEFORE DAWN. The roosters in our neighbor’s yard would wake up, stretch their legs, and sing out their morning song at a volume that cut straight through our windows, as if the birds were in the room with us. I know that in English, the sound-word is “cock-a-doodle-do,” but in reality it sounded more like “CAAH CAHHH CAHHH CAAAAAAAAAH!”

  Then Rosa’s dogs would bark. She kept them on her roof at night, a half-dozen chihuahuas that kept perfectly quiet unless there was a car, a person, a horse, a sound, or a whisper of wind. Then they leapt to the end of the roof and barked down in the direction of the offense. All six tiny dogs would bark in unison for a few minutes, then quiet down and stand guard, alert, for a few moments longer until satisfied, and then they would collapse on the cool tile until their next call to action.

  “Good morning,” Drew said to me sleepily.

  Our room was dim, with just the faintest light filtering through the flower-patterned curtains. The sun came up on the other side of the house. It was cool, chilly almost, and we were wrapped in a thick comforter we’d bought at Costco.

  “What time is it?” I asked, not really wanting to know the answer.

  “Uh,” Drew said, searching under his pillow for the phone. “It’s almost seven.”

  “Oh God, okay,” I said, rolling over to my other side. My belly was round and warm. I could feel the baby’s little feet in my ribs. I wanted to sleep more, but suddenly my bladder was calling.

  “Help me get out of bed,” I said, and Drew jumped out of bed and came over to my side. I grabbed his hand and pulled myself up with some effort. My ab muscles were stretched beyond recognition; I felt like a turtle on its back, unable to do half the things that came so effortlessly in my prepregnancy days.

  “I have to pee,” I said.

  “I know,” Drew said, turning on the light in the hallway for me. He was always like this when I was pregnant, so attentive and helpful. It was easy to get used to, to have a glass of water delivered without asking, to be offered a seat before you realized you wanted one.

  Cole came out of the bedroom, hair mussed, and rubbing his eyes.

  “Water?” he inquired.

  “Daddy will get you some water, sweetie; go in the living room.”

  I walked into the bathroom and just as I finished peeing I heard it, the telltale sound of a vendedor coming up the street. He would drive slowly down the street and either shout out his wares or more likely play a jingle from a small speaker attached to the roof of his car. This one sounded like this: “Vita. ¡Vita! Vita gas.” But it was so muffled and tinny I could only guess at the words. Was that the propane guy? We were almost out.

  I hopped up, as much as a nine-months-pregnant woman can hop, and called out:

  “Drew! Go see!”

  “What? What?” he yelled back.

  I hurried over to the kitchen where he was cutting pomegranates (granadas) and picking out the ruby red seeds one by one.

  “Is that the propane guy?” I pointed out the window.

  “Oh crap! Okay, hold on,” Drew said, then ran out of the house barefoot, unlocked the gate, closed it behind him, and hobbled painfully over rocks and dirt to chase the maybe-propane guy.

  Five minutes later Drew came back.

  “Was it him?” I asked as he crossed the courtyard.

  “I don’t know, I couldn’t catch him. I was yelling and waving at him, but he just kept driving.” Drew walked over to me and touched my belly.

  “How’s the baby?” he asked.

  I moved his hand to where she was kicking. “There. Feel that?”

  “Ooh, yes. Wow. How does that feel?”

  “Like I have a very small ninja in my belly who is trying to get out by stomping on my spleen.”

  Drew laughed and kissed me.

  “It’s okay about the propane guy, he’ll be back. You just have to be quicker!”

  “I know, I should just wear my shoes all the time.”

  Fifteen minutes later another vendedor came. Drew and I ran out into the courtyard to listen. Cole came bounding behind us.

  “What is that? Tortillas? I can’t even hear what he’s saying.” Drew said.

  “Go look!” I said, pushing him toward the gate.

  Five minutes later Drew came back with a handful of empanadas.

  “Holy crap, I could get used to this,” Drew said, stuffing one in his mouth. “Mm-hmmm,” I said, rubbing my belly absentmindedly. I wanted to take a shower, but without a new propane tank it was unlikely we had enough gas to heat the water.

  Mooooooooooooooo! came a new noise from the street.

  “What was that?” Drew asked, looking around.

  Mooooooooooooooo!

  “Go look!”

  Drew ran out the gate again and had a hasty conversation with the driver in front of our house. He was driving a small pickup truck and in the back was a large silver container that looked somewhat like a giant propane tank.

  When Drew returned, he was empty-handed. “Raw milk, I think.” He sat down.

  The weather was so agreeable that we had moved our couch to the outside of the house, along with our kitchen table. There was a large outdoor room with tile floors and a roof that opened up into the garden and courtyard. We could work and watch Cole as he played at the same time. Plus we could keep an eye out for more vendedores.

  There were so many. The vendedores would come down the street, playing their song. The roosters would crow, the dogs would bark hysterically, and we’d listen intently to try to make out what was being sold. Corn. Tortillas. Water. Tacos. Newspapers.

  Then someone on a horse would ride by. At least twice a day. He was most likely taking his horse down to the beach to sell rides to the tourists, then returning to his house for lunch or a siesta. It wasn’t always the same guy, but the outfit was the same: the straw cowboy hat, denim jeans no matter how hot it was, and a thick belt buckle. The dogs would lose their minds, barking and climbing over one another trying to get as close to the horse as possible.

  Every day around noon, Rosa turned on her music. It drifted out of her courtyard into ours. The vocal stylings of Celine Dion were on heavy rotation. I couldn’t be sure, but sometimes I thought I heard her singing along, “My heart will go on. . . .”

  Finally, the gas guy. I heard it better this time. It wasn’t Vita Gas, it was Zeta. “Zeta. ¡Zeta! Zeta Gas.”

  “Drew! Quick!”

  Drew ran outside the gate and waved the guy down. He had already passed our house, but no bother, the driver just put the truck in reverse and drove backward down our street. Drew talked to the guy and soon the vendedor came into our yard with a giant yellow cylinder, walked expertly to the back of the house, pulled out the special wrench that fits the propane tank bolt, and swapped out the tank, taking the old one with him. $25. Done.

  “That wasn’t too bad,” Drew said, and joined me on the couch, where I was curled up with my laptop.

  I gave him a kiss and returned to my writing.

  Rosa turned off Celine. Our other neighbors, the ones to the left of us, was having a party and turned up their ranchero music. A rooster crowed. The dogs barked. Cole ran around the yard with his Star Wars light saber yelling, “Arrrrrgggggghhhh!”

  Whatever you could say about this place, we definitely weren’t in China anymore.

  Twenty-three

  Jorge, wearing a button-down shirt and khakis, wrote on the whiteboard, in his tiny office space. He was giving me a group Spanish lesson, but I was the only one who arrived on time. The group changed constantly but was mostly women
in their forties or early fifties who had moved to Mexico from the United States or Canada to retire young, live cheaply, and enjoy the beautiful Pacific coast. When the group was all there, we focused on basic things like prepositions: on top of, behind, in front of, next to, and across (encima, detrás, delante, al lado, and a través). But when it was just the two of us, he focused on my pronunciation.

  Today he was writing out all the vowel sounds. Vowels were my sticking point in Spanish. I was always saying them wrong. In English, we have long and short vowel sounds. For example, the a in cake is long and the a in hat is short. It’s the silent e at the end of cake that tells us to not pronounce it like cak but instead to draw it out as caaaake. In Spanish, however, each vowel is pronounced exactly one way—and it doesn’t matter what follows later in the word.

  Unwittingly, and often despite my best intentions, my internalized English rules were interfering with my Spanish pronunciation. I kept amending my pronunciation based on the letters later in the word. I was having a hard time suppressing whatever underlying system made those on-the-fly decisions, and it kept bubbling up, even though on a conscious, logical level, I knew how to pronounce things in Spanish.

  On top of that, I also have a regional accent in English, perhaps not totally detectable to everyone, but there’s something of a Boston accent hidden in there, which makes it even more difficult (I grew up dropping my r’s and saying things like “Pahk the cah in Hahvad Yahd”—and if it wasn’t clear, that’s “Park the car in Harvard Yard”). The accent is mostly gone, I think, but I still mumble and swallow syllables.

  What a mess.

  In Spanish, this meant when I said para (which is pronounced pah-rah, I was actually saying something closer to pair-a. The Spanish pa and ra sounds are short and the same length. Pa. Ra. Big wide open mouth for each. My brain was sloppily insisting that I utter instead a long pair sound with a short a. Pair-a. The sounds were wrong, the cadence was wrong, it was all just wrong, wrong, wrong. I knew it, and I would catch it sometimes, but on new words? I would slip into old habits.