by Kirsten Koza
Slava was not what I’d call an Adonis. His greasy, stringy black hair was pulled back into a low ponytail, his teeth were in total disarray, and he was wearing blue tinted sunglasses indoors. But who cared? Another round of vodka shots was ordered, a Russian slow jam came on, and Slava asked me to dance. We went onto the floor with a handful of other couples, leaving Jane at the table with Slava’s silent friend, and it wasn’t long before Slava and I were making out, arms wrapped around each other. I’m sure it wasn’t pretty, but the positive attention was intoxicating. He was even gently stroking my hair.
It was already 3:00 A.M., so I said goodnight to Slava and walked home with Jane. I’d had too much to drink, so in a somewhat orderly fashion, I went into our bathroom and threw up. But I was happy, kneeling there on the bathroom floor. Someone thought I was pretty and it made me appreciate my hair the way it was.
Down the hall I could hear Jane on the phone with her sister back in the States.
“Oh my God, it was the most repulsive thing I’ve ever seen. She managed to find the ugliest guy on the planet and made out with him, in front of everyone!”
I was O.K. with that. And in that weird moment, in which I loved my hair, I felt closer to my mother and felt great about being a real piece of Americana.
Sarah Enelow grew up on mesquite barbecue and barrel racing in rural Texas. Then she lived in Indiana for two years before moving to New York City all by her lonesome. Sarah has contributed to three NYC guidebooks for Not For Tourists and wrote the first NYC guidebook for Go! Girl Guides. Sarah is only one year away from becoming a “real New Yorker.” This story was previously published by Ducts.org.
KASHA RIGBY
The Bone Breaker
Today’s Mayan special; a fracture of the price.
FACE DOWN IN THE DIRT, I GASPED AND TWISTED AWAY FROM THE SHARP gouging in my back and ribs. Tears left muddy trails down my face and blended with the hard dirt floor of the shack. This tiny withered crone—the village bone healer—had come highly recommended. She couldn’t have weighed as much as 90 pounds, but she was doing the damage of a tackling linebacker.
I was alone and far from anything familiar. Blind faith had landed me here, face down in the dirt, stifling the desire to beg for mercy. I had drifted south to Guatemala after wandering Mexico’s Mayan kingdom. There’d never been a plan to stay anywhere long but stops stretched and my drift south slowed until motion all but halted on the banks of this lake. I woke each morning and feigned purpose. I studied Spanish and Mayan astrology, explored coffee plantations, and dabbled with psychedelic mushrooms. I walked and swam for hours each day. I lived out of a satchel. My dirty jeans hung baggy, and the heartache that propelled me to this place faded to a dull ache.
But a physical pain had remained deep in my back. It crept down my legs, a constant discomfort. Constant motion had been the best remedy over the years. I rarely sat long, walked everywhere, and visited healers of all kinds. I distrusted Western medicine to the point of it being a phobia. And I had restless bones, not to be confused with Restless Legs, which is a syndrome. My solution to pain was motion, just as my solution to harsh words was getting on airplanes.
Many cultures have a tradition of the bone healer or bone setter, hueseros, in Central America. The Mayans were scientists and spiritualists. They were astronomers and architects. They performed cranial surgeries, built magnificent temples, and set teeth with jade and obsidian.
When I went to the bone setter I’d expected maybe some rough massage. I hadn’t even known that I was in a town known for a specific lineage of bone healers. Most are known to be from a more empirical background, but in this village the roots were divination. The skill was said often to come forth in a dream and a tool would appear, a bone, or stone which the healer used like a divining rod, to find the root of the problem.
It was my Spanish teacher who suggested the old woman and took me to her village of dusty streets and plastic flowers, wily dogs and scrappy roosters. A two-story wall in town donned a mural of Jesus in his great glory entitled “Jesus es el Hombre.” That’s right. Jesus is the Man.
I’d entered her home in the blinding transition of going from bright light to dark. Eyes need time to adjust, the pupils to grow. If only the entire human organism could adjust to circumstances with such a blink of the eye. A single hanging bulb revealed the house was one room with a wooden bed. There was a chest with one drawer, upon which rested two photos with faded faces staring, unlit candles, and a bottle. I tried to explain my reasons for coming, and with few words she sent me to lie on the bed stomach down. She lifted my shirt and started running her hands on my back. I could feel her palms, fingers, and knuckles so sharp. It wasn’t until later that I realized she had this tool that she was also guiding along my gaunt back.
I could have misunderstood her. Our Spanish was about equal, her language was Q’eqchi’. It was with hand gestures she led me to understand that my ribs had been broken (this I knew) and had never healed straight (this I didn’t know). Years earlier I had taken a hard hit from a surfboard—first wave, first day, an accident that broke my ribs and left me with a long-lasting fear of short surfboards. But I’d come to her for help with the chronic pain in my back and legs. She decided it was all from my ribs. I knew they were unrelated, but who could argue with powers from the dream world?
I was forewarned that this would be strong work, that it would hurt, but give me a shaman over a Western doctor. I wanted generations of healers passed on to me through her bony knuckles. The long strokes turned to a deeper rough gouging, first on top of my ribs and then channeling between my ribs. I called upon years of yoga practice breath work. I tried to keep steady and calm. If I could control my breath, I could get through this. Then I was fighting and gulping. And it was over. This was my first session.
I dusted off my market-purchased skirt that I wrapped over my jeans—the uniform of the practical and tough fem. I pulled in a deep ragged breath, wiped dirty tears from my face, and handed over my worn bills that smelled of the passing of unwashed hands—the physical representation of “dirty money.” I scheduled my return in two days.
Back at the hostel, I cracked a cold beer early to down a renegade Valium. This was not the day to curse the charlatan pharmaceutical companies. My breath labored. I had rented a simple room. All the rooms had a small porch and opened up to a big courtyard with a shared outdoor kitchen. We were a haphazard little tribe that had landed here. We formed casual friendships that arose quickly and often disappeared just as fast. We set a long table at night and took turns going to the market and making big wholesome meals. There were always crates of tall beer bottles. Some folks were here on break from service projects, others just on breaks from life.
My scheduled return to the old woman approached, and with apprehension I gave myself plenty of time for the walk over. I arrived in the village that afternoon dreading the work to come but hopeful that the short pain would offer long-term relief.
She was ready for me when I entered. She shooshed out several children and got right to business. Today the power must have been out as candles were lit to add to the filtered light entering through two windows. The bed didn’t have a mattress but instead stacks of worn blankets. I lifted up my shirt and lay face down. At first she used long strokes with oil along my ribs. I hoped today would be easier. There was a peaceful minute. Then the digging began. I was unsure if she was using her fingers or something else. It was only later that I confirmed she used a bone or stone. She always kept it hidden in her hand. I tried not to cry out, but it felt like my ribs were splintering like a fiberglass boat. No, I was sure they were. She was breaking my ribs! How could she be delivering such brutality? I twisted away gasping. I found it difficult to move and could hardly get up after she’d finished. Again, tears streaked my cheeks, as I handed her more dirty money. I was scared to say “no” when she said I must come back one more time “manana.”
My only stop on the way back to my
touristy village was the farmacia, to beg the skeptical woman behind the counter to sell me more diazepam without a prescription. Money talks in Guatemala and I exited with a fresh supply. Speaking to no one, I bee-lined to the safety of my little hole in the wall, grabbed one of those tall cold beers from our group supply, cracked it and washed down a blue pill. During the hot afternoon, I cradled the sweaty cold bottles against my side for relief, and as the sun set, I wrapped up in my one sweater and a blanket, awaiting the return of my friends, out on adventures on the lake and in other villages. So much for my dislike of Western medicine; I was happily downing modern prescriptions and beer and passed out before anyone returned to our compound.
I woke in the dark, chilled, dehydrated, hardly able to move, the moments of bravado I felt the night before, gone. I was small and tired, alone and in pain. My tongue was thick and dry. I wanted to heave but knew the pain would be unbearable. Something had not gone well in this plan. The constant aching went from prickling to spiking and no position brought relief. Wrapped in my wool blanket, I tried an upright position, waiting out the long hours for sun to rise, allowing myself one more Valium, washed down this time with gulps of water.
Finally the morning came, and I needed to put myself together. The showers and bathroom were a walk across the common courtyard, and I slipped out before hearing the rustling of others. I stood in my flip-flops in the shower for a long time, not wanting to face others or even the day, or brave going back for my afternoon appointment. I couldn’t imagine even walking over, let alone the crone, the healer, laying one finger on me. I shut off the hot water while wrapped up in my sarong and headed to the kitchen.
The next to rise was another American, a musician and friend. “James, could you help me out for a sec? Do you mind looking at my back?” I turned and lowered my wrap, modesty gone.
“What the...what? What did you do?” Hearing the shock in his voice, I dragged a chair to the one mirror in the hostel (which was in the kitchen), climbed up on the chair, and executed the agonizing look back over my shoulder. A rainbow of bruises covered my back and wrapped around my sides. There were long welts, deep purple and red, running the length of my swollen ribs. I was stunned but finally got it. I’d needed the visual proof of the beating. Until this moment I thought I was not being tough enough, that if I could only just lie still and endure it, that the old woman was going to help me. But this was far worse than the original injuries.
“How many times did you go to her? And wait, how much have you been paying?” James was concerned, but I could also see he was trying to withhold laughter.
“Holy shit, I’ve been paying for this. I’m not going back!” He was right. There was definitely some comedy at my expense. I wouldn’t see a doctor originally, and now here I was drinking beer to wash down prescription drugs because I’d been beaten by a 90-year-old, 90-pound woman.
“You’re not going anywhere today kid.” He kissed my forehead and started to strum his guitar, and with laughter in his eyes and on his lips, began to sing one of my favorites, “Medicine Man.”
Kasha Rigby is a mountaineer and skier with multiple first descents. She’s dubbed “the pioneer of extreme telemarking.” Yet she finds navigating the planet externally seems much easier than navigating the internal mind. Kasha tries to add at least a new county, try a new job, and an unknown experience every year. This year the theme is “discipline”—physical and mental. So far this has led her to Peru, a service project in Ghana, and also to fourteen weeks sleeping in the dirt on Ultimate Survival Alaska (National Geographic), plus skiing and looking for northern lights in Alaska. Kasha is a writer, a Kundalini yoga teacher, and is continuing to try and “do good work in this lifetime and not mess it up too bad.” This takes grand effort and even more luck.
LEANNE SHIRTLIFFE
A Tale of Two Toilets
Awkward in Ambalangoda.
WE CHOOSE AMBALANGODA WITH CARE. IT IS, AFTER ALL, THE FINAL destination of our three-week backpacking trip in Sri Lanka. Besides having a name that rolls off the tongue in a way that would please Dr. Seuss, Ambalangoda has one of the whitest beaches on the island and can serve as our one-stop-shopping destination before we depart back to the Middle East, where we’ve lived for nearly three years.
After we spend the afternoon debating the merits of various hand-carved masks—should we purchase the one that induces vomit, the one that creates mass amounts of bile, or the one that causes paralysis?—we walk until we find a restaurant populated with Ambalangodans. Outside the open-air structure, which leans haphazardly toward the sea, we study a pond filled with the catches of the day, trying to pick the unfortunate fish that will become our dinner. My fiancé and I soon realize that two kids from the Canadian Prairies choosing fresh seafood is the equivalent of a vegan selecting a side of beef. We settle on something that moves and has gills.
En route to our table, I ask, “Where is the toilet?”
“This way,” the waiter gestures. I open the bathroom door, step over the threshold and see the slippery squat toilet—two porcelain footprints that rise out of the floor, surrounded by murky liquid. My bladder begs me to go forth, but my sandal-clad feet stop midstride. I can’t do this tonight. I’m embarrassed that my sense of adventure has vanished. It’s our last night. Is not getting my feet wet too much to ask? I opt to hold my pee, bladder infection be damned.
The waiter observes my about-face. “Come,” he says, “I’ll show you a Western toilet. Much better for you.”
Sheepishly, I follow—through the kitchen, out the back door, across the alley, up the street, and into a tailor shop. We climb a flight of stairs into a second-story family home.
Before exiting stage left, the waiter explains my situation to the homeowner, a woman clad in an “I love Pepsi” t-shirt and a colorful batik sarong. I watch their banter and am dumbstruck. My hostess smiles at me, nods encouragingly, and proceeds to bang on a closed door, shouting in Sinhalese. A male voice, also yelling, answers. A shower provides the soundtrack to this cacophony.
“No. No. Really. It’s O.K.,” I stutter. “I’ll go.”
Smiling again, the woman guides me to an empty room, carries in a plastic patio chair, and motions for me to sit. I couldn’t feel more awkward if I tried.
While my hostess pleads through the bathroom door, I gaze out the window, over rooftops and toward the sea and the setting sun. I recall other Sri Lankan bathrooms, such as a dark hut outside a tourism shop in Kandy. Armed with hiking boots, a day’s supply of single-ply toilet paper, antibacterial wipes, coins for a possible surcharge and the prerequisite courage, I hover precariously over the toilet-hole—only to notice a hairy spider the size of a softball creeping my way. It’s a freaking tarantula. My body freezes, my heart accelerates, and a stare-down ensues. I flashback to a nightmare my grandmother shared with me when I was a girl: a tarantula had sat on her cheek while she slept, hatched eggs in her skin, and baby tarantulas crawled out from her mouth. In the forever of this real-life moment of me squatting next to a tarantula, my bowels empty. Then empty some more. Nature’s enema works quickly.
The next week, I narrowly avert peeing on a python. I step off the hiking trail, crouch into a practiced squat, and urinate. As I yank up my shorts, I hear a rustling mere feet in front of me. A full-size python slithers out from the underbrush toward the path. My flight-or-fight response activates, I do neither: I freeze.
Later that same night, after imbibing two extra large bottles of Lion Stout while sitting on our bed, I realize that our mosquito net has a hole in it. So I do what any fertile woman would do: I grab a maxi pad (with wings), peel off the wrapper, and stick it to the mesh. The lone light bulb dangling from the ceiling projects a six-foot shadow onto the wall—with wings. It’s a Kotex moment that still gives me night sweats.
My vacation reverie is interrupted. I shift in my plastic chair and hear more shouting, followed by the opening of the bathroom door. A twenty-something Sri Lankan man emerge
s, dripping wet, with a towel clinging to his waist. He snaps at his mother, then turns to me with a grin. “I’m so sorry,” he says, apologizing for showering in his own bathroom.
“No. I’m so sorry,” I say. We continue our mutual apologies as he scurries past my chair. We are both self-conscious—him for being semidressed and for showering when a spoiled tourist needs a special toilet, and me for invading his house, his bathroom, and his privacy. We acknowledge the awkwardness with smiles.
I clamber into the washroom and see the Western toilet partly submerged in shower suds. The water swirls over my feet, snaking into a drain. I squat over the soaked toilet and shake my head at the irony.
I struggle to exit gracefully, leaving sopping footprints in my wake. I thank my hostess profusely and apologize for having no money.
She shakes her head saying, “No money.”
The dusky Ambalangodan breeze greets me as I wander downhill, in what I hope is the direction of the restaurant. The sun doesn’t waste time setting in the tropics, and the shadowy backdoors of several businesses look similar. Eventually I open the correct door, smile at the restaurant’s kitchen staff, and spy my fiancé. A barbecued open-eyed fish and our carved vomit mask flank him. He looks worse than both.
“Are you O.K.?” he asks. “Where the heck have you been?”
“In the bathroom.” I sit down on the patio chair and smile at the beer my fiancé has ordered for me.