by Ursula Pike
One of the girls turned her head toward me and yelled something. All I heard was the gears shifting on the truck. I tucked my hair behind my ear and turned toward her.
“ABONO! Abono del cabra,” she yelled and pointed down. I didn’t know what she meant. Cabra meant goat. I furrowed my brow in confusion, and she pointed to her butt. Goat. Butt.
I was standing in goat shit. Goat fertilizer mixed with dirt. I had thought it was strange for a truck to transport dirt. As this sunk in, the rain came down harder. My hand slid around on the metal bar no matter how tightly I held on. My feet sunk down half an inch. I imagined myself continuing to sink until by the time the truck arrived, I would be a wet, shit-covered hand sticking out of the pile of fertilizer. The effort it took to hold on and not fall over made me sweat. I sniffed the air, but the only smell was the dirt and the diesel exhaust. The fertilizer must have been only a percentage of the mixture. I needed to believe that if I was going to survive.
The girls and I laughed about it together once the truck stopped and dropped us off. The little town where the anthropologist lived was not much bigger than Kantuta, and when I found my friends, I told everyone my story. The shit became stinkier and the rain colder with each retelling. My friends loved it. The anthropologist was happy I made the trek. She lent me a pair of her three-sizes-too-big jeans, which I was grateful to have because they were dry. We sat on the patio, sipping a cold beer and eating fajitas she had paid a cook to prepare. With a beer in my hand, a plate of warm food in front of me, and my friends around me, I relaxed my shoulders and appreciated the feeling of being there. The feeling of being in a room where I got the jokes and references, and where no one wondered what I was doing there. A room where I could disappear.
A few of us quietly left the larger party and headed to the hotel everyone was sharing. I was handed a mirror with several little white lines neatly arranged across it. Bolivian Marching Powder. Cocaine was cheap, high quality, and plentiful here in the central part of the country. We were only a day’s drive from where the plants were grown and processed. The cavalier way volunteers bought and used cocaine made me nervous, and I had always avoided it. I never forgot that it was illegal. But sitting there, slightly buzzed from the beer and surviving another adventure, I decided not to pass up this opportunity. I did one long line and another when it came back around to me later.
Wow.
I felt like Wonder Woman after she spins around and stands there radiating power and beauty in her tiny star-spangled bustier. For someone who always felt as though she was doing everything wrong, this was a revelation. I was suddenly the smartest, sexiest, most confident version of me that ever existed. I was convinced that every single guy in the room wanted to get into my giant baggy pants, but none of them were good enough. I wanted to feel this way every day.
Then I remembered who I was. Anything that made me feel this good could not be trusted. This could become a problem, especially here and now, where I usually drank to get through the horror of small talk. Coke presented a faster way to get to the social, talkative version of Ursula. But I had to walk away. I could never be a casual user. I spent the rest of the evening eating cold fajitas and drinking warm beer, listening to the anthropologist talk about goats. I made sure never to be in the room again when my friends were doing coke.
The next morning, my body felt like a bus that had run off the road and sat rusting at the bottom of a ravine. I was hungry but nauseated, and relieved when someone suggested we go to the market for fresh fruit licuados (smoothies). This town was smaller than Kantuta, but had the same white-painted mud houses and decades-old political graffiti on the walls. Shuffling along a few steps behind my four tall friends walking side by side, taking up the whole road, I followed them through the narrow cobblestone streets. As they passed a bag of coca leaves between them, it was clear that they never changed their behavior to fit into Bolivian society. A lifetime of adapting to the rules of the dominant society in the United States had taught me to watch and mimic how people dressed or spoke, and I had used that skill in Bolivia to conform. My friends a few steps ahead of me didn’t. They did whatever they wanted, making no attempt to comport themselves to reflect Bolivian norms. Maybe I was the stupid one for attempting to dress or act like the Bolivians. But it was the only way I knew how to survive. I made it through training by watching the other volunteers for cues about how to act. When I was around other volunteers like this, I often had the feeling of not wanting to be associated with them, but not knowing exactly why. Yet I shared more with these powerful, embarrassing, wealthy people than with any of the Bolivians. I stepped to the other side of the street and quietly sipped my licuado, watching the Bolivians watch my friends.
I was too debilitated to say good-bye to the anthropologist before catching the bus back to Kantuta. She was the first of what was to become an onslaught of departures. Friends I cared about, people who annoyed me, guys I had crushes on, and everyone else was about to leave.
16
La Flota — The Bus
Fernando kept visiting me. Sometimes he was there three times a week, and other times I wouldn’t see him for two weeks. I had no idea when he was going to show up. He knocked on the heavy red door quietly, and I would let him in. The guilt I felt about the affair meant that I didn’t want to ask him for anything. The inconsistency made it easier to convince myself that whatever we had wasn’t serious; but our relationship, whatever it was, kept me from feeling lonely.
“I have to leave soon,” he said to me one night. He didn’t usually explain why he was leaving , and I never asked. For the first time, I wanted him to stay. I reached my arm across his chest and tucked my thumb into his armpit, grasping his round shoulder tighter.
“What did you think of me the night we left the party together?” I asked him.
“I was scared,” he said. I laughed.
“Of me?” That was funny, because I had been scared of him.
“You hear things about girls from the States. I didn’t know what to expect.” He ran his hand along the outside of my arm.
“Am I different than Bolivian women?” I asked.
“No. Some are…like you.” His hesitant response told me he didn’t want to talk about this. Maybe this line of questioning made him uncomfortable; maybe he thought I was prying into his life. I was curious, but decided to drop the subject.
He cleared his throat. “We should go to Cochabamba.” He explained a somewhat convoluted plan to secretly buy tickets and ride the bus together. I didn’t understand why we couldn’t walk up to the counter and buy tickets. Then I remembered how small Kantuta was. And I remembered his wife. I had forgotten about her. I assumed he was miserable. Why else did he keep coming back? But this conversation reminded me that there was someone else involved with this situation. That was between him and her. I was not cheating on anyone. I was an innocent bystander. That’s what I told myself.
The thought of being together out in the open, walking around the city, holding hands, was tempting. We could go to a nice restaurant on the Prado, and maybe I could introduce him to my friends who lived in town. Before he left, we decided on a weekend to leave town together. I couldn’t tell anyone, not Daniel and certainly not Teresa, because I knew they would try to talk me out of it. The secrecy of it was thrilling.
The day before I was supposed to sneak off to Cochabamba with Fernando, I went to Teresa’s house after work to get my hair cut and colored. It was an excuse to hang out with the woman who was my best friend in town. She sat me down in the metal chair in the center of her packed-dirt patio. On weekends, Teresa and her brothers were building the house around them. Each time I visited, there were fewer exposed beams and more walls. Weekends were also when Teresa and her mother baked pastries to sell at the market. I was grateful that Teresa had time to cut my hair, even if I had to come over on a weekday after work.
“Who gave you that?” she asked, pointing to an ugly purple bruise on my neck. Fernando left a hickey
on my neck a few nights before. I didn’t realize until the next day that it was there. Had he given it to me on purpose like some junior high boy marking his territory? No one had mentioned it all day, and I thought no one had seen it.
“I don’t remember,” I said. This was a stupid answer, but all I could come up with in the moment. She had not asked me about Fernando before, and I hadn’t told her anything. I knew I would eventually tell her. But I was trying to see whether she had heard anything around town. Sometimes I heard his name whispered, a little too loudly, on the street as I walked by a crowd of boys.
“So, you don’t remember?” she asked as she moved around my head, snipping off the split ends. Maybe she really didn’t know, or maybe she was playing with me. I couldn’t tell. I set out the box of Señorita Clairol I bought during my last trip to Cochabamba. A shade darker than normal. She applied the dark, drippy mixture. The ammonia smell reminded me of home, of helping my mother color her hair. To be honest, I was bursting to tell Teresa about Fernando. My Peace Corps friends in other parts of the country knew, but to them it was a funny story. They didn’t know him or his family. The situation fit into a stereotypical idea about the looser definition of monogamy we thought Latinos had. We assumed adultery was accepted here. I assumed it was not important.
“Fernando,” I said as Teresa finished applying all the color. Maybe it wouldn’t be a big deal to Teresa. She might scold me, but eventually we would be giggling about it the way we did when talking about the other guys in town.
“Fernando. Which Fernando? The fat guy who sells chickens near the mayor’s office?” she asked. She put down the bowl of color and brush in her hand.
“No, I don’t think he sells chickens, and he isn’t fat.” Was she teasing me? I couldn’t tell whether she was pretending. I did not know enough details about him to give her much information. It wasn’t until I told her that we’d met at a party that recognition flickered in her eyes. Maybe she actually hadn’t known.
“Isn’t he married to…,” she started to ask and then covered her mouth. I nodded yes. This wasn’t turning out as I had imagined it would. I started to sweat.
“Ursula, what are you doing with a married man?” She sat down in front of me and looked me straight in the eye. I shrugged my shoulders and squirmed under her gaze. What had I thought she would do? Give me a high five? Not exactly, but I hadn’t expected this response.
“He has two children.” I nodded my head yes. “Isn’t his wife pregnant?” she asked. Pregnant? I hadn’t known. His life beyond my bedroom was a mystery to me, and I preferred to stay in the dark. I tried to remember whether she’d been obviously pregnant.
“No…no tenia ningun idea.” I tried to put as many negatives as I could in the sentence to make it clear that I didn’t know. I closed my eyes and wanted to lie down, but knew that the dye in my hair was going to stain anything it touched. My scalp was warming up. I wanted her to rinse out the dye. Rinse it away down the sink. This was starting to sound like a telenovela. This was not supposed to happen to me. Teresa pulled the plastic gloves on and led me back to her patio where the sink was. She tipped my head down and ran the cold water. The warm sensation on my scalp ceased. Her brother walked in, and I was grateful because we had to stop talking about the subject. She styled my hair with a comb. Then she held up a small hand mirror for me to admire my new cut and color. The last thing I wanted was to look at my face in the mirror. But I did. My newly darkened hair looked great, but I felt terrible. I thanked her. We hugged good-bye, and she whispered in my ear that we should talk more later. Much later, in my opinion.
Halfway home I recovered from her response and realized I was angry. Angry at him for not telling me. Although I wasn’t sure how he could have delivered that news. Hey baby, thanks for the screw. FYI, my wife is pregnant. Again. I was angry because this added a whole new layer to his betrayal. A man who cheats on his pregnant wife was pretty low. What did that make me?
And I was jealous. The bubbling darkness of jealousy surprised me. Of course, that was ridiculous, and I had no right to be jealous. But there it was. I was jealous of his wife. As I stomped through town with my dark, wet hair, all this churned in my brain.
Then I remembered the bus trip. Most likely I would not see him again until we were on the bus. The tickets were bought. I decided it was going to be our farewell trip, because this thing had suddenly become way more than I wanted.
It was Friday night, and half the town of Kantuta was standing outside the nightly bus bound for Cochabamba. Every evening around seven, a bus left from the corner down the street from my apartment, loaded with people and supplies. Women from the market pushed up against skinny kids saying good-bye to their fathers. Mothers hugged their adult children traveling to the city to look for work. This local bus was the main transportation for people traveling between Kantuta and the larger world.
The bus was a beat-up version of a Greyhound. The outside was yellowish brown like the hills outside Kantuta in the dry season. The employees of Flota Kantuta lifted heavy bags onto the roof. With thick rope and rubber straps, they tied everything to the top. The passengers climbed the steep steps, and, side-stepping down the narrow aisle with their blankets and bags, they found their assigned seat. Before the bus departed, passengers often slid open the windows and talked to people standing on the street. Arms and torsos reached out from inside, squeezing hands, grabbing small plastic bags of food, and passing money. The noise of the driver yelling at the employees on the roof, the good-byes, and the last-minute instructions made for a loud jumble. I was still hiding in my room, but I could imagine all this because it happened every time I rode the bus. Two or three times a month, I was right there with them, settling in for a long night.
I waited until the last possible moment to leave my apartment. I did not want any drama. The door shut behind me with a click, and I exhaled before stepping into the street. My hands were cold but sweating. Maybe his wife wouldn’t be there, I hoped. Maybe he’d be on the bus alone. I slowly and deliberately crossed the uneven cobblestone street. The roar of the engine turning over let me know that the driver would be pulling out soon. No matter what happened, this was going to be over.
As I approached the bus, I sighed with relief because I did not see her. Or him. I wondered for half a second whether maybe he had decided not to make the trip. It would not be the first time he had made a promise that he didn’t keep. There had already been nights when he had promised to visit and never showed up. I accepted it as the nature of the relationship. I was beginning to realize that married men made shitty boyfriends. The few days that had passed since I found out his wife was pregnant had somewhat cooled my anger toward him, but I still felt a slow burn of betrayal.
Keeping my head down, I stepped onto the bus and walked down the narrow aisle. There he was. Sitting by the window and looking out at the crowd. The light inside the bus was on, causing my reflection to appear in the glass. Just for a moment, I saw myself clearly as the rumpled hippy girl. The person reflected back was clearly not Bolivian. I was an outsider. Fernando turned his head toward me, and I stepped to the side. He looked back out the window. Then I noticed her. His wife.
Oh shit.
She was standing on the sidewalk under the streetlight with her face turned toward him. Her dark hair hung neatly around her shoulders. Her eyes were shadowed by the harsh streetlight, but I remembered their almond shape and striking darkness. Her form-fitting sweater and skirt revealed a curvy figure. With my oversized plaid shirt and rumpled khaki pants, I looked like a logger coming home from work. As was my habit, I preferred bulky, comfortable clothes. My mother taught me to see clothes as a utility, something to keep us warm that should have a lot of pockets. She worked in the forests of the Pacific Northwest, and although she was beautiful, with long black hair and smooth skin like some male fantasy of Pocahontas, she only wore Forest Service green or jeans with boots. There were few other Native Americans working in timber management, and for h
er to be taken seriously, to be given opportunities to advance, required her to wear regalia of a different type.
His wife was prettier than I remembered. Standing there demurely, with her hands at her sides, she could be any woman from any country. She was not a cholita wearing traditional dress and long braids. If she had been a cholita, I might have felt guiltier about this affair. The betrayal of an Indian woman by an Indian woman. I knew she was no less Indian because of her polyester skirt and bobbed haircut, but I didn’t feel as guilty about the affair. Was that the swell of her pregnant belly under her shirt? Except for the one time she brought my laundry in from the rain, I had never spoken with her. I never would have thought that she and I would share something so intimate. Share someone. Was there was still time to run away?
My cheeks flushed. I waited for her expression to harden. It didn’t. I waited for her to run onto the bus, wave her arms in the air, and call me a puta. She didn’t. A large man pushed by me, and I saw the driver sit down behind the wheel. This was almost over. While holding my ticket in my hand, I looked down and then up at the number. I was pretending to look for my seat.
“Excuse me, sir, I think this is my seat.” Fernando nodded. I hoped my act was fooling somebody. I reached up and placed my backpack on the rack above, but did not look at him. My armpits were wet with sweat. I plopped down in the hard seat and immediately smelled his cologne. His cheap sweet cologne that reminded me of the pressure of his body on top of me in my room. Of the tender but firm way he held my arms above my head last week when we were making love. His thigh was an inch from mine, but I couldn’t touch him. My heart was ready to burst out of my chest, sprout legs, and run down the street. I pressed my lips together to keep from grinning. This was nerve-wracking. And fun.