An Indian among Los Indígenas

by Ursula Pike

  Even as I replayed the confrontation with his wife over in my head, it was impossible for me to regret my relationship with Fernando. I had needed human connection, and that was exactly what he gave me. Had any of this to do with my being an American Indian representing a white institution in an Indigenous country? Maybe, maybe not. I had been incredibly lonely partly because of my identity. Most volunteers felt lonely and isolated, but there was a special kind of isolation I felt being surrounded by Bolivians. They were familiar in many ways, but we were not the same.

  As for the affair, that was one of the whitest things I had ever done in my life. I was living a romance novel about a hot brown dude having a passionate and illicit romance with a good white lady. Here, I was the good white lady. Back in the States, I was the brown person in the scenario. During college when my Apache/Mexican boyfriend left me for a white girl, there was no question in my mind about why he chose her over me. Or why the white guy who only dated Asian girls asked me out.

  I loved Fernando, and there were moments when I wished he were single. I fantasized about taking him home to the United States, about the gorgeous multilingual, tricultural babies we’d have. But things were rocky enough outside the bedroom that I knew his commitments in Bolivia were saving me from a relationship that wouldn’t last. And as all mistresses know, once a cheater, always a cheater. I could never trust him to be faithful. When I took him home that first night, trust was the last thing I cared about.

  I slunk up to my room and crawled into the cold and messy bed. After trying unsuccessfully to sleep, I threw back the covers, turned on the light, and sat back down at the table to finish my Description of Service. Maybe this newfound clarity would help me write an honest account.

  19

  Casa — Home

  Ximenita’s birthday was in mid-August, the day before mine. In the US, August birthdays came in the hottest part of summer, days before school was to start. But here in the Southern Hemisphere, an August birthday fell during the coolest part of the year. Maybe that’s why I forgot it was her birthday until that morning. I was standing in front of the bathroom mirror brushing my teeth when I remembered. I needed to think of something for her.

  I had forgotten about both our birthdays. There were a few other things on my mind. Two weeks had passed since I had last seen Fernando. At night I heard someone knocking on my door, only to open it and see no one. Ximenita had seen me kiss Fernando in front of the whole town. She wanted to know more. It was probably killing her not to ask me a million questions. And I wanted to tell her everything, to sit in a quiet corner and share every secret I’d kept for months. How I’d fallen in love with him even though I knew it was wrong. She still believed in romance and might understand.

  Teresa, by contrast, did not. When I told her about what had happened at the dance and on the street afterward, I knew she wanted to scold me. She was always rational and smart, tucking the corner of her mouth up into her cheek in a look that I knew meant, “I told you so.”

  After his wife’s surprise confrontation in the street, I didn’t know whether I’d see Fernando before I left in a few weeks. I wanted to see him, but knew I shouldn’t. I tried not to think about him, but flashes of his smirking face, or the way he said my name, kept coming into my brain. Seeing him might be too risky. I heard a murmur in the patio and realized my neighbor’s housekeeper had turned the radio on while she washed clothes in the patio sink. My stomach tensed. It was Fernando, reading announcements in Quechua. His voice was flat and normal. Because it was in Quechua, I understood only a few words. Someone was selling livestock. The housekeeper never turned on the radio in the mornings. Was she doing this because she knew? I was not going to show that it affected me. I wanted to stand and listen to his voice, but walked out the door.

  Tomas and Umberto were waiting for me when I arrived at the Children’s Center that day. I had promised to take them to the store to buy each of them gifts. The pretext was a missed birthday or holiday, but really I wanted to give them something to remember me by. These brothers had almost no belongings beyond their faded jeans and sandals. At lunch, I had seen Tomas stare at a little boy playing with a small black toy car. None of these kids had much of anything, and a toy car was a big deal for any of them. It broke my heart to see him look with such longing at the toy. With the blessing of the Children’s Center director, the boys and I walked to the nearest store during our lunch break. I told the boys they could have any one thing they wanted. Their choice.

  Umberto, who was almost nine, quickly walked to the corner where boxes of shoes were stacked against the wall. He was practical, rational. He found a pair of new shoes. Tomas picked up a shirt, then put it down. Then he picked up a toy and put it down. Each time I asked if that was what he wanted. He was silent. Finally, he walked up with a baseball cap that was too big for his little head. For the third time, the store owner asked if we were ready. Normally, this man would have followed them around, assuming they might steal something. But because I was escorting them and paying for the purchases, he knew he had to treat them differently. Tomas looked at me with wide eyes. A baseball cap? Of everything in the store, he wanted a two-dollar baseball cap? This little boy who owned nothing in the world but old sandals made from tires that barely held together and a collection of stained shirts wanted an oversized baseball cap?! It didn’t make sense to me. Why did he want that? But I had promised to let them choose. The total price came to less than ten dollars, about fifty bolivianos. I felt benevolent and generous. Like Oprah. The brothers and I walked out of the store, and Umberto thanked me. They asked if they could run ahead because they didn’t want to miss lunch.

  It was very satisfying…for about a minute. I wondered whether I was being unfair to the other children. I couldn’t afford to buy something for everyone. Charity was complicated. When people like me had so much, could give so much without even noticing it, what did it mean? Umberto and Tomas were sweet boys, and I felt sorry for them. But I hated for people to feel sorry for me. Because I had no father and was raised by a single mother, my life seemed pitiable to many. I heard it in the voices of my teachers or the nurses at the Indian health clinic. Charity can dehumanize the recipient even as it bolsters the ego of the giver. It is difficult to do charity right, in a way that isn’t insulting. I wasn’t sure I was doing it right.

  Ximenita told me I could buy her dinner. She was a cook, but never went out to dinner. I was grateful to have someone to eat with. Since Daniel left, my dinners were usually a tomato sandwich eaten alone in my room. Fernando and I could not go out to eat, and my female Bolivian friends never went to restaurants. Ximenita seemed excited as we walked toward the center of town to choose a restaurant. Dinner and a thank you for being my friend for the last two years.

  “Have you heard from Fernando since the night of the dance?” she leaned across the table and asked after we ordered our food. The restaurant was nearly empty, and the TV was off. From where we were sitting, I could see out the open front door onto the street where more people than cars passed by. I hadn’t told her about his wife confronting me.

  “No,” I answered. I was trying not to admit anything or incriminate myself. I sipped the room-temperature soda that arrived at our table. I knew she had questions about my relationship with Fernando, that she had heard rumors for months. But I didn’t want to talk to her about it. She was young, and romance was more important than anything to her. A few months ago, when the relationship was singing, all I’d wanted to do was confide in her because I knew she’d let me gush. I had somehow managed to control myself then. Now I wasn’t even tempted because there was nothing to gush about.

  The server put two plates of fried chicken, french fries, and rice in front of us. The meat was still sizzling, and the dark fried skin was shiny with grease. I was going to miss these carbs when I returned to the US. Ximenita looked at me as she ripped chunks of the flesh off the bone with her fingers and put them into her mouth. She took a big bite of rice and grimac
ed.

  “My rice tastes better than this,” she whispered, cupping her hand next to her mouth. She covered her mouth and laughed. I rolled my eyes and laughed. Her rice was better. My rice was always a disaster, either watery or burned. Mostly I was grateful that she had changed the subject.

  Right then a man with a cut and bloody hand stumbled into the front of the restaurant. The sleeve of his white shirt was ripped, and his pants had a dark stain near the bottom of the cuff, which I hoped was mud. His eyes were glassy. The restaurant owner walked up and asked what was the matter.

  “Un accidente,” the man said loudly, as though he couldn’t hear his own voice. The evening bus from Cochabamba had gone off the side of the road a few miles outside town. That was the bus I usually took. The bus that everyone rode. These accidents happened a couple of times a year. Narrow dirt roads cut into steep hills sometimes gave way, especially during the rainy season. Sometimes the drivers were drinking or fell asleep at the wheel. You had to accept the risks if you were traveling in Bolivia. The man stumbled out the door and walked off in the direction of the clinic.

  Ximenita thanked me for buying her dinner. The reminder of death had ruined any light conversation we might have had. We kissed each other’s cheeks, and she hugged my shoulders. I gave her an extra squeeze. She turned and strutted up toward the Children’s Center.

  I wished I could have gone back to that first day in Bolivia, when I felt overlooked by the man at the airport, and tell myself that the connection I wanted would come with time. No one, not even an olive-skinned American Indian, would be granted an instant connection. The similarities in our heritage put the pressure on me, not them. When I arrived in Bolivia, I thought that being Native meant that they would see me differently. But like everyone else, I had to build their trust one meeting, one project, one bucket of chicha at a time. Two years of service had once seemed like forever. Now it seemed barely enough time to get everyone to believe you were who you said you were.

  I stepped out of the restaurant and could hardly bear to look across the street at the half-dark road leading to my house. The door to my little room—the tiny space on the first floor that I had chosen because it gave Fernando easy access to me—was in shadow, but I knew the room was there. Empty and messy, it was not where I wanted to go. I heard a telephone ring as I crossed in front of the telephone store. I decided to call my mom. Maybe the news from home would rev me up for my impending departure.

  Dark wood chairs lined the walls of the large empty room. An older cholita, her sandaled feet barely touching the floor, sat alone on a bench inside. Behind a large desk in the corner sat a teenage boy, dialing numbers and pointing customers to small rooms where the telephones sat. There were two telephone lines, and customers had to wait until a line opened up. Calling the United States cost fifty cents per minute, due immediately in cash. Even if no one was home, this was at least a dollar, usually two. I handed the boy my mother’s telephone number and sat down on the bench. The cholita met my eyes, and a quick smile crossed her face. I nodded back and kicked my legs out in front of me to relax. The boy dialed all the numbers and then motioned with his chin to the closet that functioned as a phone booth. In the big cities, these telephone stores had clear Plexiglas booths that were amazingly soundproof. Here it was just a room with a glass door.

  I picked up the phone and immediately relaxed as my mother said, “Hello, dear. Happy early birthday.” She told me about all of my family in Oregon and California. I listened, wondering what it would be like to be back there in a few weeks, looking for work and a place to live. She paused after a few minutes.

  “And how are you doing?” she asked. I prepared to launch into an explanation about wrapping up my service and saying good-bye to my friends, about my plans to travel in South America before returning home. All the shiny, smart plans that made me sound like the bright girl I wanted everyone to think I was. Especially my mom, who was so proud that I hadn’t followed her path to single motherhood and no college degree until she was in her forties.

  “Not so great, Mom.” I was too tired and heartbroken to pretend I wasn’t. I decided to tell her the truth. But I knew I had to start at the beginning. “I’ve been having an affair with a married man, a Bolivian.” She didn’t say anything, and I couldn’t tell whether the crackling I heard was her breath or the poor connection stretching from the heart of Bolivia to Oregon. I gave her enough details so that she knew it had been going on for almost the whole year. From where I stood, I could see the boy at his desk. If he wanted to, he could pick up the receiver and listen to what I was saying. If he understood English, I wouldn’t be telling this story.

  “His wife confronted me in the street, asking me about the affair.”

  “What did you do?”

  “What could I do? I am a terrible liar, so I admitted the truth.” I told her. My mother was silent. The cholita in the office said something in Quechua to the teenager behind the desk.

  “Please be careful, honey. You only have a couple more weeks.” She said something else, but I couldn’t hear it. The connection was deteriorating. We made plans to talk again when I was in La Paz and we could have a long conversation.

  “Don’t worry about me, Mom. I’m going to be OK,” I told her. My voice cracked a little, but I knew she wouldn’t be able to hear the change in my tone. I hung up and walked out of the phone booth. The cholita was still sitting at the same place on the bench, waiting patiently for her phone call. The boy asked me for forty Bolivianos, about eight dollars.

  I hadn’t told my mom about my relationship with Fernando before this moment. I liked to tell her about things that would make her proud. Much of the time, I thought she would not understand anything about my life here. Yet, as I stood in that phone booth, I remembered a guy my mom dated when I was in high school. She thought this guy looked like a Native Eric Estrada. I was fifteen and hated him because I hated that town and missed my friends in Oregon. She was one of the only Native women in the offices of the Bureau of Indian Affairs serving the Quinault reservation in far western Washington State. Her coworkers were mostly white men. On the rez, she inspected the work of loggers. Most of them were white guys who were notoriously rough and disrespectful to Native women. She’d left Oregon for a job with the Bureau of Indian Affairs because it offered good pay, good benefits, and an opportunity to finish college. She was a Native woman representing a white organization serving Native people, who connected with a Native man. Just like me. I took comfort in the same places my mother took comfort.

  Was this a Native thing? How could the relationship have been both a Native thing and the whitest, most privileged thing I had ever done? Because I was both white and Native—especially here. Privileged and unprivileged. The Bolivians saw me as a white Westerner despite the tribal ID card in my wallet. My relative wealth, my lack of connection to the community, my connection to the US government—all these things gave me privilege. But I never stopped feeling like a Native. I never stopped being a Karuk. I never forgot that compared to most of the other volunteers, I was poor, had no connections to power, and would return to those conditions the day I landed back in Miami.

  I tripped across the street, narrowly avoiding someone on a bike. He rang his bell at me, but I ignored him, lost in my thoughts. In a few hours, it would be my birthday. Happy Birthday, girl.

  Back in my room, I sat down at the cluttered table that served as my writing desk and dining room. A half-empty bottle of water, a stack of unread Newsweek magazines, Maya Angelou’s book All God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes, and a small photo album with recently developed pictures covered the brown tabletop. Too much to carry with me out of Kantuta. I needed to give some of this stuff away. I started a pile of things I could live without and things that I needed to survive the next step in my life. Jodi and I had finally decided to meet up in Salvador de Bahía, Brazil, a few weeks after our service ended. I imagined us sucking down sweet drinks on the beach and acting like tourists while a s
hirtless buff man performed capoeira in the sand next to me. I had no idea what Brazil would be like, but I retreated to these fantasizes when the reality of my messy life felt overwhelming. Sorting gave me something to do.

  Sometime after midnight, there was a knock on my door. I had fallen asleep with the light on. I lifted my head, but wasn’t sure if I’d heard it or dreamed it. There it was again, unmistakable.

  “Feliz cumpleaños, mi amor,” Fernando said as he entered the room and kissed me. He ignored the shocked look on my face. He had promised to visit me on my birthday, but with everything that had happened, I didn’t expect him.

  “Your wife, she…,” I stepped back and started to say.

  “I know,” he interrupted, picking up the photo book from my pile of things to keep. “Tell me—why did you tell her about us?” he asked.

  “I couldn’t lie,” I said. He narrowed his eyes and pressed his lips together as though there was something he wanted to say but couldn’t.

  “Your words caused me a mountain of problems,” he said as he thumbed through the photos. There was a picture of him in there. A memento I let myself keep. I explained what she said and what I said, pacing back and forth in front of the door. I knew he shouldn’t be there. I finished talking and stood there staring at him. He put the photo album down and sighed as he looked at me. Seven months ago when we slipped through my front door, neither of us had any idea that we’d be standing here, two weeks before my departure, talking about my conversation with his wife. What a mess.

  He stepped closer. It was cold, and he was wearing a thick knitted sweater. Not the alpaca kind that tourists buy in the street markets of La Paz, the kind I bought two years ago. He had on a regular old warm knitted sweater that Bolivians wore. This might be the last time I would ever see him. I reached out and touched his chest. The fabric was soft and thick. He pulled out a small box from his pocket, something wrapped in a bow. A birthday gift? A going-away gift? A consolation prize?