by Kim Dinan
One evening after our volunteer duties were up I trapped Louisa in the communal kitchen and asked her to repeat some phrases I wanted to memorize, while I scribbled them down in my notebook.
The next afternoon I approached Agatha during reading hour. Brian had quizzed me on my phrases before bed and again when we woke up that morning.
“Hola, Agatha,” I said.
She glanced up at me with wide eyes. “¿Quiere leer conmigo?” Do you want to read with me?
She nodded her answer wordlessly. I patted a beanbag chair. “Aquí.”
We settled in beside one another. The weight of her small body warmed mine. I picked up a book of tongue twisters and began to read, thumping comically over the words. Beside me, Agatha giggled.
“No está bien,” she said.
I slapped my palm to my forehead. “¿Puedes enseñarme?” Can you teach me?
She grabbed a new book, cracked its spine, and read the first sentence, pausing so I could repeat it. “Bueno,” she gave a serious little nod. From that moment on, Agatha and I were reading buddies.
Each day after reading time we launched into arts and crafts hour. The kids would crowd around a long table and we’d set markers and paper down in front of them, then Stephanie would lead the group in her teacher Spanish.
I usually sat on a child-sized stool and made whatever the kids were making. They often asked me for things. Markers? Scissors? Finally, Louisa would lean over and whisper something like, “Kim, they’re asking for the tape.” It should have been obvious since the Spanish word they said translated to “masking.”
By the time the kids left and we put the crafts away and mopped up the floors, I was completely exhausted. I’d take a warm shower, making sure to carefully place the floor towel over the cockroach drain just in case, and collapse into bed before 9:00 p.m. The days were so full that I barely had time to think. I still missed home, and I still missed having meaningful conversations with Brian, but those feelings would have to wait. In the back of my mind the larger issues drummed their fingers, waiting for my attention.
Chapter 4
Baños was a beautiful little town with two main squares, one grocery store, a few restaurants run by expat hippies and a few more run by locals. It had two thermal hot springs, a sprinkling of Internet cafes, and plenty of adventure companies offering a chance to jump off a bridge, raft down a river, rappel over a waterfall, or rent a bike and speed down a winding Andean highway. I loved it there.
About a week into our volunteering gig, Brian and I went to dinner with the other volunteers. We scrunched around a big table at our favorite restaurant called The Meeting Place.
“What are everybody’s plans after Ecuador?” asked Stephanie.
Brian said, “We will probably go to Peru.” We’d been discussing where to go next and had decided to make our way south. Since Peru was Ecuador’s southern neighbor, it became our next destination.
“Law school starts for me next fall,” said Louisa. “But I’m going to travel around South America for a while first.” A bolt of envy shot through my chest. Lately, I’d been daydreaming of traveling alone.
“I don’t know where I’ll go next,” responded Carver. He paused and fiddled with his fork, lost for a moment deep in thought. “Maybe back to Australia. Maybe back to South Africa.” I noticed that he said “I” and not “we.” I knew he and Alice were having problems. They had the bedroom next to ours, and I’d heard them arguing, more than once, late into the night.
I understood their discontent. Traveling as a couple was proving to be difficult. Brian and I had been bickering on a daily basis over dozens of small annoyances. I found myself getting mad at him over things I’d never given a second thought to back in Portland, like how he’d ask me repeatedly how much to tip instead of just making the decision himself, or how his stubbornness prevented him from asking for directions even though we spent at least half of our time lost. When we deboarded the plane in Ecuador, everything we’d ever known had disappeared, including the roles we’d carefully carved out for ourselves over time. I’d been the grocery shopper, Brian the lawn mower. I managed the money; Brian maintained our cars and our house. Now the roles were up for grabs again. I didn’t want to be the direction asker and the tip calculator. It was hard to tell if we were just exhausted and adjusting to our new life or if traveling had exposed some kind of unavoidable flaw in our relationship.
“What I’ll miss, though,” continued Carver, “is how life just spills onto the streets here. Everything happens outside for everyone to see. Life back home will seem so bland and ordinary in comparison.”
It was true. A few days ago Brian and I had been walking to the fruit and vegetable market when we ran into a funeral procession headed down the main street toward the graveyard at the edge of town. A group of men carried a casket on their shoulders. At least a hundred people walked behind it, crying, bouquets of flowers clutched in their hands.
The next day I’d asked our Spanish teacher about the procession. A woman had died of cancer, he’d told me. She was beloved in the community. He had loved her too. I touched his arm and told him I was sorry. “I know. It’s okay,” he said. “When we lose someone we lose them together. It makes losing easier.” Agatha came to mind, and I nodded solemnly.
On our walk back to La Bib after dinner it started pouring big, dramatic raindrops like I remembered from Midwestern summers as a kid. We’d been walking slowly, chatting, and were totally caught off guard by the sudden downpour. We ducked under awnings and sidestepped puddles, trying to stay dry.
But it was useless. So Carver veered onto the rainy street, stretched his arms out like an airplane, and started cackling like the joker. Before I had a chance to think I’d swerved into the street too. The rain pounded and the gutters flooded, water sloshed everywhere. I started laughing, first quietly and then uncontrollably, dripping wet and doubled over, laughing in a way I hadn’t laughed in years.
Behind me, Alice, Louisa, Stephanie, and Brian were laughing too, running down the middle of the street like maniacs. I hoped it wasn’t the sort of scene that might get us kicked out of La Bib. But even if it was, I just couldn’t help myself, because I was overcome with an incredible sense of freedom. Standing there in the middle of a little Ecuadorian town, sopping wet and laughing, I wasn’t sure that I’d ever felt so alive.
By the time we got back to La Bib, we were all soaked to the bone. I rang my clothes out and hung them on a hook at the back of our bedroom door. After changing into dry clothes and warm socks I padded out into the common area and dropped into a beanbag chair.
I hadn’t felt that young since…when? As the oldest child I was perpetually responsible, constantly concerned about doing the right thing. I always felt old for my age. But since leaving to travel I felt myself growing younger. It was a Tuesday night, and in the life I left behind I would be slouched on the couch in my sweatpants, computer unfolded on my lap and American Idol blaring away on the television screen, unwinding from another exhausting and unfulfilling day. But I didn’t feel exhausted in that moment. Life had cracked me open.
“Where’s Brian?” Carver asked as he plopped down into the chair beside me.
Shrugging my shoulders, I said, “He’s reading, I guess.”
I had the urge to yell “Why are you asking me?!” though I knew why he asked, of course. Carver saw me as half of a whole: Kim and Brian. Everyone we met on the road knew us only as a package deal. Back home I’d had my own identity; out here I was defined only in relation to Brian. But I didn’t want to be Kim and anyone. The label made me feel like I was suffocating, or like my clothes were too tight. Carver raised his eyebrows and looked at me strangely, then popped a movie into the DVD player.
“What?” I said. “I don’t have him microchipped.”
“Okaaaay.”
Waving him off, I unfurled a blanket and wiggled until the
chair molded to my body. Above me, Louisa’s compact body was stretched out on the couch. Unexpectedly, I felt a sinking in my gut that I was Kim and Brian, and she was happily, enviably, alone.
• • •
It was someone’s bad idea—probably mine—to host mock Olympics in a park on the outskirts of Baños one afternoon.
The real Olympics had taken place over the summer, but fall was upon us, and the games had already faded into history. Besides, the Olympics weren’t exactly a big deal in Ecuador. The kids barely knew what they were, save from one former Olympian named Jefferson Pérez, the only Ecuadorian to ever bring home a medal. In 1996 he won the gold in racewalking, but that was years before these kids were even born.
Nonetheless, the Olympic planning committee dove into the details like the good volunteers that we were. We had the kids construct medals out of foil and cardboard and instructed them to use their imagination to design their own country flag and uniform bib.
Over the next few days we spent our meetings planning officially sanctioned Olympic events like tug-of-war and the egg toss. We hyped it up at La Bib all week. “Friday we’re holding the Olympics. It’s going to be epic. You don’t want to miss out!” Except, I couldn’t say any of those things in Spanish so I’d just say, repeatedly, “¡Viernes! ¡Muy bien!” and hope my enthusiasm drove my point home.
On Olympic Day the kids and volunteers gathered as a group at La Bib before marching through town to the park. We carried an Olympic torch made from construction paper and tromped past corner shops selling empanadas and Coke. The locals giggled at our unwieldy group and snapped photos with their cell phones.
As soon as we reached our destination it began to rain, and the kids huddled under a gazebo, sitting on a picnic table, while the volunteers stood in the drizzle attempting to explain the Olympic virtues of peace and brotherhood. The kids wiggled impatiently and waited for us to get on with it.
Our first event was racewalking, an homage to the great Jefferson Pérez. Louisa explained the event to the kids in Spanish while Alice walked in looping circles, arms pumping, to demonstrate.
“Do you understand?” Louisa asked the kids.
Of course they understood. Racewalking is what seven-year-olds also refer to as running. Brian counted down: “…tres, dos, uno… ¡Vamos!” and the kids took off in a heated sprint toward the finish line. The only kid who got the concept and maintained control all the way across the finish line came in last place.
The egg-and-spoon race was a bit more successful until Sam, a whiny, blond-haired gringo boy, dropped his egg. It smashed into a yolky mess, and Sam started wailing. We ended the event and handed out medals, and everyone wanted gold. When we ran out of gold and passed out silver, the kids began to argue. Sam was still crying about his broken egg. A few boys wandered to the edge of the park and peed.
“So much for peace and brotherhood,” Brian whispered to me.
We’d lost control of the situation, so we did what any desperate babysitters would do. We started a game of tug-of-war.
The fierce warrior hidden inside each of the La Bib kids emerged as they yelled and grunted and pulled with all of their might on the tug-of-war rope.
Suddenly, kids from all over Baños were running toward us like stray dogs to meat. A small child who looked about three years old with dreads down his back grabbed on to the rope, then a shoeless girl, then a young teenage boy.
The mania couldn’t last, and eventually we all tumbled down, one side falling backward and the other side falling forward from the momentum. We were piled into the mud, volunteers and children alike, and the rain poured down. We were laughing, laughing, laughing.
What was it with the rain and all this laughing?
• • •
On a Tuesday night after the Olympics, the mud finally removed from under my fingernails and inside of my ears, we went out on the town with the other volunteers to a family-run karaoke bar. We ordered rounds of beers and put in our song requests. I threw back my pilsner and tried to find the courage for my solo rendition of “Eternal Flame,” relieved each time the DJ called out a name other than my own.
The music blared much too loud for conversation, so I sat back in my chair and watched a young Ecuadorian guy belt out a Bob Marley song. My mind wandered. I’d been so caught up helping out at La Bib, in making friends with the other volunteers and thinking through the weird issues with Brian, that I’d all but forgotten about the yellow envelope money. An internal ping of guilt pulsed in my gut. I couldn’t believe we hadn’t given away any of the money yet, especially because the rules gave us the freedom to be as creative as possible with our giving. Brian and I could walk through the town square and throw dollar bills into the air if we wanted. I had hoped that our gifts would be more meaningful than that, but I began to feel that we just needed to give something, anything, to get the ball rolling.
An urgent drive to put a plan of action into place suddenly consumed me. I leaned across the table and yelled over the music to Brian, “We need to talk about the yellow envelope!”
Brian’s eyes were fixed on the stage where Carver was scream-singing at the crowd. I banged my hand down on the table in front of him and half a dozen beer bottles bounced from the force. He looked over at me and cupped his ear with his hand. “WHAT?”
“WE NEED A PLAN! FOR THE YELLOW ENVELOPE!”
Brian shrugged and mouthed the words I can’t hear you.
Frustrated, I wagged my wrist at him. Yellow envelope rule number three was Don’t feel pressured to give it all away, but right now I was afraid that we’d never give anything away.
The night wore on, and as it did, Alice, Carver, and a new volunteer Anna, began to spill drinks and climb on top of chairs to dance. One of them dropped the karaoke microphone and it broke into pieces. Their behavior embarrassed me, and I stood to leave, but as we filed out of the door we were stopped and told we owed an additional three dollars. This set off a round of drunken complaining from Carver, so I quickly paid the fee and headed back to La Bib, ashamed to be lumped in with a group that fit the mold of the argumentative and self-centered Westerner.
The next morning while the other volunteers were sleeping off their hangovers, Brian and I set off on a hike high in the hills above Baños. The path led us almost vertically up, past tiny shacks and farmland built onto severe slopes. Baños sat at six thousand feet elevation, and I sucked wind as we trudged upward into the ever-thinning air. I had hoped that a bit of time outside alone might calm the tension I sensed between Brian and me. But I could not talk through my panting.
Twenty minutes up the trail we passed a leathery old woman standing behind a barbed wire fence. She waved us down and yelled to us in quick-fire Spanish. Only a few words stood out: man, down, cow. I looked at Brian. “Do you have any idea what she’s saying?” He shook his head. I turned to her and spoke one of the only phrases I’d learned since landing in Ecuador. “Lo siento, no entiendo.” I’m sorry, I don’t understand.
I silently beat myself up for being such a lousy Spanish student during my years of mandatory study in college. Even now, during our self-inflicted Spanish classes, Brian had to convince me almost daily not to skip. “We’re paying good money for these classes, and you’re going,” he’d say as he stood over the bed in the morning. “Get up and grow up. You’re not sixteen.”
We continued our hike in silence, and I thought of the previous night. I was ashamed of the scene our group had made, yet I also felt envious of Alice, Anna, and Carver’s ability to just let go. I’d never danced on a table or broken a microphone, and I didn’t want to, but I knew that somewhere in between drunken asshole and responsible schoolmarm was a middle ground. I wanted to learn to let go too.
Once, not long before leaving Portland, I’d been out to lunch with my old coworkers, a group of women a bit older than me. They were talking about mistakes they’d made in their lives: re
lationships that ended in divorce, wrong career moves, regrets. During the conversation I’d sat in silence until one of them asked me about my biggest mistake. Caught off guard I’d gaped at them, scanning my brain for an answer. Finally, one of them said, with a bit of condescension, “Kim’s never made a mistake in her life.” At the time I’d shrugged off the comment, but I couldn’t let it go. It haunted me as I lay in bed at night dreaming of changing my life. My coworker had been wrong about me. I’d made the biggest mistake of all: I’d spent my entire life playing it safe.
Ahead of us in the distance an old man walked slowly toward us hobbling with a makeshift bamboo cane. As we passed him, Brian nodded solemnly and offered up an “hola.” The old man looked up and grimaced and then directed his attention back at the ground. Following his gaze, my eyes dropped to his feet. He was wearing beat-up navy Crocs, a few sizes too big, and his feet were sliding around inside of them. If he fell out here he’d be in trouble. I wanted to offer help but I didn’t know how.
I looked out over the lush green peaks and crevices of the Andes Mountains. From up here, Baños looked like a toy town, a colorful splattering of churches and houses and buildings plopped into a never-ending sea of green. As I took in the beautiful landscape, my heart pinged for the towering pines and ancient ferns of home. A deep piece of me felt sad, but I could barely admit it to myself and definitely not to Brian. I’d pressured him into giving up everything to come out into the world with me. I couldn’t admit that it wasn’t yet living up to my expectations.
In front of me, Brian stopped abruptly and jolted me from my thoughts. I glanced up to see a rustling in the bushes. A bear? Brian walked slowly up the trail toward the commotion and turned to me, looking relieved. “God, that scared me!”
“What is it?”
He laughed. “It’s a black-and-white dairy cow.”