Tales of a Female Nomad Read online

  For four days I continue to disperse crowds of children. When I stand at a distance and try to watch them playing soccer, they stop the game. Except for Margarita and a raving old woman, not a single woman talks to me. I continue to smile at them all, but my smile is getting weaker and phonier. I have read that there are many cultures that consider blue eyes witchy. Not only are my eyes blue, but my hair is blond (they all have dark hair) and my skin is pale (theirs is a rich light brown). One day I put on sunglasses to hide my blue eyes, but no one else is wearing them and I feel as though I am putting even more of a wall between us.

  The men, on the other hand, gather round me whenever I come near them, usually trapping me in the middle. They ask questions, they tell me stories, and they touch me. After the second day, I avoid the plaza hangout of the drunk male population.

  Usually I spend my days wandering around with a notebook, pretending I have something to do. Every once in a while I take notes or draw a diagram. Sometimes I sit and read. With no one to talk to and nothing to do, I am bored and lonely.

  My meals are always the same. A hard-boiled egg, a slice of white bread, and coffee for breakfast. Two hard-boiled eggs and two slices of white bread with coffee for lunch. And a cup of stew with beans and a few bits of chicken and more white bread for dinner.

  My concrete house is cool, and I like it, even though I have to share it with hundreds, no thousands, of daddy-long-leg spiders—the breathing blob in the corner of the ceiling. They are very discreet. When they are a black blob, they are sleeping. When they wake up, they seem to have places to go. I know they live there, but they don’t bother me and I don’t bother them.

  Going to “the toilet” is just as I expected. I walk to the dry riverbed and take down my pants. Then I get into position facing uphill and leaning forward, feet wide apart, behind sticking up so that the squirt will go downhill and not onto my shoes or pants. I carry a little piece of toilet paper and bury it when I’m finished. I try not to think about the audience that I’m sure is out there. Fortunately, they are discreet enough not to laugh out loud.

  When I wander through the village, none of the women talks to me. After four days, the only woman I have had a conversation with is Margarita, and she treats me as though she’s my maid. I’m not sure what I expected, but this wasn’t it. I keep reminding myself that I have vowed to spend a month here. But there’s another little voice that tells me I’m free to leave whenever I choose.

  Then, on day five, a young woman and her three-year-old child stop me on the top of a hill. She is wearing the traditional dress of the village: a full skirt of heavy woven fabric, a sash around her waist, and a handwoven blouse.

  “Hello, my name is Juanita. Where are you from?”

  I introduce myself and tell her I’m from Los Angeles.

  She doesn’t say anything for several seconds. During the silence, her eyes fill with tears. Then she can’t stop talking. Her Spanish is excellent, unlike Margarita’s.

  Juanita is a twenty-year-old widow, an elementary school teacher. Her husband, Roberto, went to the United States two years ago and got work washing dishes and busing in a Greek restaurant in Santa Monica, California. I have actually eaten in the restaurant. For one year he sent her money every month. Then, a few months ago, she got a telegram. There had been a fire in the kitchen and he was dead from smoke inhalation. They sent him home in a box. Shortly after that, the restaurant owner sent Juanita one hundred dollars. In the accompanying note, he promised to send more, but she never heard from him again.

  Now my eyes fill with tears and I tentatively put my arm around her and tell her how sorry I am. She snuggles into my shoulder and I hug her. (Two weeks later another young man from the village returns from Los Angeles in a pine box. He’d been shot on the street. I go to the funeral.)

  “Would you like a cup of coffee?” Juanita asks that first day as we stand on the hill. I can’t believe it. I’m actually being invited into someone’s home!

  She takes me into her two-room house. It is simple and clean and nicely furnished. She’d bought the furniture to surprise Roberto. He never saw it. As we are drinking our coffee, Juanita studies me, one of those head-to-toe perusals.

  “Would you do me a favor?” she asks.

  Uh oh, I think. She’s going to ask for money.

  But she surprises me. “Will you try on my clothes?”

  She opens a trunk and takes out a skirt that matches the ones all the women are wearing. It is woven with thick cotton threads into a heavy striped fabric. I step into it.

  “Hold this end,” she says as she starts to wind a five-inch-thick sash around my waist. I grow fatter and fatter as she winds.

  She goes around four or five times, then secures the end with a safety pin. I am already feeling like a hippopotamus when she takes a huge woven blouse out of the trunk and puts it over my head. My width has doubled. I am dressed in a bottom layer of khaki pants and a T-shirt, then the thick blanket-layer of skirt, a mile of sash, and a tentlike blouse. Juanita is finished. She steps back, turns me around, and exclaims, “You look beautiful! I will lend you these clothes while you are in my village.”

  I walk toward the door, wondering whether my expanse will fit through. Two women are passing by as I emerge. They look at me and smile and nod their heads. Then they giggle. And so do the other women I meet. Suddenly, I am not so strange. My eyes, my hair, my skin are the same; but now I am wearing the traditional clothes of the village. They are willing to accept me.

  From that point on, I am one of them. Each morning I go to Juanita’s house, greeting women by name when we pass on the path. Juanita always checks me out when I walk in. Sometimes she removes my waist scarf and does it up again. Wrapping a mile-long scarf around your waist alone is not that easy and I don’t do it very well.

  During my second visit I write a letter to the restaurant owner who sent Juanita the money. I introduce myself as a journalist from L.A. and ask about the additional money he promised. I describe José’s child and wife and say that I hope he will send her more money. I tell him that I will stop by when I return to Los Angeles. (When I visit the restaurant several months later, I am told that it has changed ownership. I don’t know if Juanita received any response to my letter.)

  On the third day Juanita gives me my first lesson in the Zapotec language. Soon I can say good morning, how are you, and how many children do you have. And I can answer the same questions and a few more. Now the mothers begin to talk to me. The children show me their favorite marbles and let me scrunch down and watch them shoot. Some of the kids point to things like trees and houses and tell me the words in Zapotec. And they take my hand and bring me to their soccer games.

  And, not least of all, with my skirt on, I can pee without mooning the world. (I do not wear underpants.)

  One morning, about three weeks into my visit, Margarita tells me that there is going to be a festival in our yard. The whole neighborhood is coming. She and José have been in charge of the neighborhood church organization (Catholic) for the past year and there is about to be a change of leadership, which means a big party.

  I go with her to buy the turkey, to a part of the village where I’ve never been. She climbs over a fence into a pen. The turkeys are running loose. One after another, Margarita picks up a turkey’s leg and pokes and pinches while the turkey squawks. Finally she finds a nice fat bird. We carry it home alive.

  That night our yard fills with people and preparations. Men are fixing the fireplace, carrying in chairs and tables, setting up speakers on the roof, and drinking. Women are bringing utensils and food and getting ready for tomorrow’s cooking.

  Once the speakers are in place, they blast with the joys of romance and the whines of unrequited love. The same songs play over and over again.

  I try to be useful, but no one wants my help. All evening and long into the night, the preparations go on. Finally I say good night and go to bed. I study Zapotec for a few minutes and turn out the light. The peop
le noise diminishes, though the speakers are still going at full volume; and finally, there is nothing but music.

  I fall asleep for maybe half an hour. Then I’m jolted awake by a woman’s scream. I sit up and listen. I hear a slap, then more, and screams, and a man swearing. It is happening just outside my room. I move the chair to the opening above the door and climb up. It is dark inside so I am able to look without being seen. José is beating Margarita, slapping her, punching her. She is crying. He doesn’t stop. I am watching and shaking.

  I continue to watch from my blind, knowing that I will interfere if I think she is in danger. After four years of anthropological training, which teaches that we must not project our own values onto another culture, that professionally we must remain in the nonjudgmental role of “participant-observer,” I realize that, in this situation at least, I am more an individual than I am a professional. If I have to, I will step in.

  Fortunately, he stops before she is in serious trouble. I’m sure this isn’t the first time he has beaten her and I’m just as sure it isn’t the last. I also suspect that in this small village, wife beating is common. And no one else’s business but the husband’s.

  I am unable to sleep. All night my mind replays the beating, and I cry.

  The next morning Margarita brings my breakfast. Her eyes, both of them, are black. Margarita knows I have seen her shame. She tells me she is afraid of her husband, but she cannot leave. “Where would I go? How would I feed the children?” she asks.

  I give her a hug, but I say nothing. This village, this marriage, this life are her destiny.

  In the early afternoon, the women begin arriving and the cooking begins. The turkey is killed, dipped in boiling water to loosen the feathers, and plucked. Then the bird is chopped up. Body parts, head, feet, and innards are boiled in a giant terracotta pot with garlic and onions and salt. When the turkey is cooked, it is taken out of the broth.

  I position myself in the middle of the action, helping to remove parts from the pot, washing utensils as they are used, stirring, and copying what everyone else is doing. I am thrilled to be working with the women. I love the bonding that takes place in the kitchen, even when the kitchen is in the yard. It is no different here than it is in a Thanksgiving kitchen in New England. Women working together, talking, laughing, telling secrets. Some of the most meaningful and touching moments of my years as a nomad will happen over cookfires.

  Huge pots are sending out the smells of turkey and cloves and cinnamon and herbs. Everyone is busy. When I can find a space to stand, I chop or slice or peel something. The women smile at my participation, surprised that I am able to peel an onion or cut up a garlic. If I ask what I can do, I get no answer; it’s OK to step in on my own, but they are not going to give me an assignment.

  Finally, one of the women takes the stems of oregano from a little girl who is stripping off the leaves. Understanding my need to be needed, the woman dismisses the girl and hands me a stem. The child sulks off; I have stolen her job. But I am happy as I pull off tiny leaf after tiny leaf and put them into a bowl. Meanwhile, the mole ingredients are getting toasted and blended and sautéed. Three different kinds of chiles, charred and chopped, are tossed into a blender with mounds of grilled tomatoes. There are peanuts and almonds and sesame seeds, chocolate and raisins and onions and garlic, oregano, cloves, mole paste, and, I suspect, a whole lot more that I miss.

  This is the first time since I arrived that I have seen a group of women together. Unlike the men, they do not congregate in the village square.

  As the women cook, they talk in Zapotec and laugh. I can tell from their laughter and their eyes and their hands that they are talking about their men, making fun of them. I make faces as though I understand too; and then they talk about me, mimicking my tentative walk on the hills and my pronunciation of their words. From time to time someone reaches over to pat me, a gesture that says, we’re only kidding. And I know they are. We are laughing together. Another barrier has fallen over turkey mole.

  In the early evening the guests arrive. There are speeches and reports and loud, loud music from the speakers. Then the live band arrives. The trumpets and bugles and trombones are so far off-key that they sound like a parody of a bad brass band. But the accordion carries the tune and everyone starts to dance.

  At first I’m flattered at my popularity. The men are standing in line to dance with me. But when it becomes clear that they are all drunk and that they can’t stop touching me, I am nervous. The women see what is happening, and they move in. Soon I am surrounded by four women, then five, holding hands, dancing around me in a circle. I dance in the middle. From time to time one of the women joins me in the middle, taking my hands and swinging to the music. All night I dance protected by women. The men can’t get through.

  Finally, the party is over. The band goes home and the tapes blare again from the roof speakers. The guests leave and I go to bed.

  About an hour later I’m jolted awake by a knock on my door. I don’t answer. The knock turns into pounding.

  “Rita, open the door!” I recognize José’s voice. More pounding. “I know you are there! Let me in!”

  I am huddled in bed, shaking. More pounding. “Rita! Open the door!”

  I lie there praying that my cement fortress, with its heavy metal door, holds up. After about ten minutes, he leaves.

  I lie awake all night, curled up with my pillow, waiting in terror for the next knock and the call. For the first time I realize that traveling alone is more than occasionally feeling lonely; it can also be dangerous. Especially for a woman.

  Naïve as it sounds, when I decided to travel alone, I didn’t even think about the dangers. I have never been a worrier, I enjoy the adrenaline surge that comes with taking risks, and I have a tendency to trust people. On some level I must be instinctively sensitive to danger. And lucky. I have never been mugged or cheated or hurt in any way. Interestingly, the lock on my door was not there at my insistence; it was something José, or perhaps the community, knew I might need. People tend to look after their guests.

  In the morning, José apologizes. “I had too much to drink. I wouldn’t have hurt you. I just wanted to talk.”

  In the safety and sobriety of daylight, I look at my host and wonder if I would have been raped if he’d had a key. But strangely, I feel neither fear nor anger; I feel pity. José is a small man with a tired, hung-over look in his eyes. Like the other men in the village, the drought and the dry season have stolen his living. There is no off-season work. These men have been stripped of their pride, robbed of their manhood. There is nothing left to do but drink . . . and lash out at the world around them.

  Oaxaca, a little more than an hour away, is a city filled with tourists who have cash in their pockets. My entrepreneurial soul can think of all sorts of items the village people could make and sell: carved wooden things, corn husk dolls, weavings, beaded jewelry. But neither the men nor the women have developed any skills. How easy it would be to create a village industry. What a waste.

  Four days before I am to leave, Diego, Roberto’s nineteen-year-old brother, comes to talk to me. A week earlier, he walked with me to the cracked fields that will soon be plowed, and he told me about the beans and chiles and corn that will fill the fields in a few months. I like Diego. He’s one of the few men in the village I can talk to, and I’ve never seen him drunk.

  Now he laughs and informs me that I can’t leave the village until I have climbed the mountain. He points to something looming in the sky about a mile away.

  “Every person in the village climbs the mountain at least once. You have to do it before you leave,” he says and offers to guide me up.

  I have never climbed a mountain, not even when I was younger and stronger. But I have taken off a lot of weight on Margarita’s three hard-boiled eggs and a cup of stew a day, and I’ve been walking up and down hills for nearly a month. I accept the challenge.

  “Take lunch and water,” he says. “I’ll pick you up at
eight tomorrow morning.”

  We go up and down two little mountains before we get to the big one. By the time we arrive at the “real” mountain, my legs are hurting.

  We walk through trees, over rocks, up gravelly slopes. Most of the route is steep; I move slowly. Like the rabbit in his race with the tortoise, Diego plays, climbs trees, leans against rocks, and feigns boredom. I’m in agony, but I refuse to quit. Everyone in the village knows we are doing this climb. Unlike the tortoise, I keep stopping to rest.

  After five hours, I reach the point where I am going from tree to tree, struggling to breathe. My legs feel like logs. My muscles are aching. I only have to get to that tree, I tell myself. And when I’m there, I hold onto the tree and pick the next one. And so it is from tree to tree that I finally get to the top and collapse. Diego cannot believe that a three-hour climb has taken seven hours.

  When we reach the peak, I stretch out on my back, thinking that it would not be a bad place to spend the rest of my life. Diego comes close, sits at my side, and informs me of the ritual of the mountain: once a couple has reached the top, they must have sex.

  I laugh.

  “No problem,” says Diego, probably relieved.

  We start off for home an hour later. It is dark long before we get to the bottom. Diego never even considered carrying a flashlight. The hike had never taken him until dark. Before we are down we hear voices and see lights. José has organized a search party.

  For two days I cannot walk. I joke with Margarita that I will probably never walk again. There is a strange look on her face. I think she believes me.

  When it is time for me to leave the village, women, children, and men walk with me to the road. Two little boys give me marbles. There are tears as I hug Margarita and Juanita and the children. Everyone waves as the bus disappears.

  When I get to Oaxaca, I go to a real hotel where I get a private room with a tub, hot water, and a toilet. I soak for hours, sleep all afternoon, and stare at a ceiling without any pulsating black masses. This is the definition of luxury.