Tales of a Female Nomad Page 5

  While I soak in the tub, I think about my village experience. I walked into a foreign world where people were afraid of me, and I walked out with hugs and waves and even a few tears. Initially, I thought I could connect with a smile; but it wasn’t enough. I needed a teacher. Juanita’s lesson would serve me well for the rest of my life: Connection requires participation. In this setting, clothes and language were the passwords to acceptance.

  But the most touching and meaningful lesson of all was the intensity of sisterhood. Even now, sixteen years later, I can feel the warmth and strength of those women as they danced around me and with me, the affinity I felt, the bonding that occurred, the strength they projected as they held hands to protect me from their men.

  The next day I call my husband to tell him I’m coming home. Our two-month separation is over. We have not had a conversation since day two, when I reported my Visa card missing.

  “Hi,” I say. “How are you?”

  “Not very good,” he says. “Except to go to work, I haven’t been out of the house since you left. I need another two months.” He explains why, but my head is spinning and I can barely hear him.

  When our conversation is over, I lean against the window of a curio shop. Cars are honking. Mariachis in red-and-gold costumes are playing guitar and singing. And I am frightened. My two weeks have turned into four months; my break has become a lengthy separation. I had no idea when I started this in motion that it would spin so far out of my control.

  It is clear that at the moment, my husband and I are in two different realities. He is home, answering questions about our separation and confronting his fears and loneliness on a daily basis, while I have barely thought about the world I left behind. I am suddenly afraid of the unintended consequences of my leaving. As I unfold the map to decide where I’ll go for the next two months, my hands are shaking.

  CHAPTER THREE

  LETTING GO IN PALENQUE AND L.A.

  The day after the phone call, I move onto the backpacker trail, mixing with the travelers who are on and off the buses and in and out of the hostels. At first I run from place to place, from group to group. I am afraid to stop moving, afraid to be alone, afraid that these next two months are the beginning of a lifetime of loneliness. I want very much to talk, but I cannot share my pain; it is too new and my companions too young.

  Finally, after a little more than a week, I cannot run anymore. I don’t even know what I’m running from. When I think about it, I feel good about myself. During the last two months I have discovered parts of me I didn’t know were there: the part that can embrace strangers and enrich my life through knowing them, the part that enjoys making independent decisions, and the part that adores living spontaneously. Until the phone call, I hoped to be bringing this new me into a marriage that could benefit from rejuvenation. But now I fear that my personal development is going to be guiding me instead through a different stage in life, that of a divorced woman.

  Once I slow down, I feel better. I tour Chiapas with an American woman for two weeks. I wander in the mountains with two Danish men, part of the time on horseback. I hang out in Playa del Carmen, with a mixed group of Europeans. After a while the anxiety diminishes.

  “Go to Palenque.”

  It’s a refrain I’ve been hearing for weeks. “Palenque’s amazing.” Everybody says it. And then they talk about the art and architecture of the ancient Mayan civilization that flourished there in the seventh and eighth centuries and the extraordinary spiritual presence that still lingers. A month after I leave Oaxaca, I’m on my way.

  But first I detour through Mérida to buy a hammock. Hammock buying in Mérida is not the same as hammock buying at Hammacher Schlemmer. There are many choices to be made: cotton or nylon, white or multicolored. How many strings per inch, how wide, how long, how strong? I am overwhelmed. It’s like choosing leather in Florence or silver jewelry in Taxco. When confronted with overkill, I always have trouble making decisions. I walk around for more than an hour, from one hammock seller to another. Finally, I choose white cotton, the biggest, the most tightly woven, the best. Then I board the bus to Palenque.

  The guy across the aisle with the huge beard and bushy brown hair is in his mid-thirties. He looks like the “Nature Boy” in Nat King Cole’s song that was popular when I was a teenager. That song still slips into my psyche now and then, especially when I’m walking in the woods or along a river. It tells about a “strange enchanted boy” who wanders the world. And here, in the middle of Mexico, that boy/man is sitting across the aisle from me. His name is Wolfgang and he’s from Germany. He is exotically attractive, and he’s on his way to Palenque.

  Wolfgang is an engineer. He’s been on the road for nearly a year. I love his wildly exploding head of hair, his very blue eyes peering out from under the hair, and the massive beard that hides his lower face. He’s been told that the place to stay in Palenque is the campgrounds near the ruins. I join him.

  The campgrounds border the jungle. When we check in, we’re told there is only one platform left. We go have a look. A platform, it turns out, is a wooden floor, a thatched roof, and posts for tying up hammocks and holding up the roof. Ropes swing from the beams for hanging food or backpacks. If we want to stay at the camp, Wolfgang and I will have to share a platform. It’s not a problem. I’ve been sleeping in dorms, sharing rooms, and making instant friends for more than a month now. At first I struggled with modesty, but I knew I had to get rid of it if I was going to travel this route. I’ve almost succeeded.

  I hang my hammock. It’s huge.

  Wolfgang explains that the best way to sleep in a hammock is diagonally, so your body is level.

  “Watch,” he says and wiggles his body into a diagonal position.

  I sit on my hammock, feet on the floor, and reach for the far end of the netting so that I can twist myself into position. I end up on the floor, laughing.

  Wolfgang swings himself out of his hammock and helps me up. Then he holds my hammock as I get in, talks me into the right position, and gives me a push. It’s delicious. When the hammock stops swinging, I pull on a rope that is not too far from my shoulders; and I rock myself like a baby, thinking that if my marriage is over, I will rent an apartment somewhere and sleep in a hammock forever.

  The next morning I wake up to the sound of a lion roaring in the jungle.

  “What was that?” I ask quietly, not wanting to alert some wild beast to my location. Wolfgang is sitting on the floor writing in his journal.

  “Don’t worry,” he says. “It’s just a howler monkey. They’re not really fierce. There’s something about their throats and the configuration of their jaws that makes them sound like lions.”

  They sound close, but they’re not. The roar travels for miles every morning as howlers call out a claim to their jungle territory.

  I slip out of my hammock and get dressed, modestly turning my back to Wolfgang as I slip out of my nightshirt and into my bra. It’s the only option in our open-air, unwalled platform. Oops. There are two guys walking down the hill in front of me. The backpackers’ trail is not for the modest.

  Heavy morning mist, the melodic songs of unseen birds, and a powerful sense of moving back through time accompany us as we walk through what was once a lush tropical jungle surrounding an ancient Mayan city. Neither of us speaks. I breathe deeply, trying to hyperventilate myself into a hypnotic state. I am about to reenter the seventh century, when Palenque was a thriving city nestled into the foothills of the mountains that surround us.

  Instinctively, we both know this is a solitary experience. Without speaking, we separate. I sit on a rock, staring across the plaza toward the Temple of the Inscriptions, imagining it as it once was, radiating red in the rays of the tropical sun. Squinting, I can see the Mayans moving gracefully through the plaza and climbing the steps of the temple, their bronze skin glowing, their exquisite blue-feather headdresses adding color and character to the scene. In the plaza women are carrying baskets of fresh fruit on their
heads, standing around in groups, talking, laughing. They are real people, I can feel them, sense their spirits in this place that still holds their secrets. I close my eyes.

  I wake up two hours later feeling as though I have visited another world. I join the stream of visitors climbing the sixty-nine nearly vertical steps of the temple. At the top, I sit, exhausted from the climb, and once again I imagine the city filled with ancient Mayan people whose brilliant achievements in sculpture and architecture, math and calendars and hieroglyphics have fascinated the modern world.

  Every once in a while I peer down the steps and my heart begins to pound. I am terrified at the prospect of going down. There is no railing and the angle is sharp. I wait until all the climbers have descended and I begin. I realize immediately that I cannot face out; my whole body shakes and I feel as though I am about to fall. I turn around and face into the steps, and, like a toddler, I go down the steps on my hands and knees and feet, from the first to the sixty-nineth step.

  When I am on solid ground again, I wander from structure to structure, fascinated by the stucco sculptures and the sophisticated architecture. What could have happened to these extraordinary people and their culture?

  Along the way I meet Wolfgang and we walk back to the campgrounds together. It’s startling to enter the compound. There is laughter and noise coming from the picnic benches. Nearly everyone staying in the camp is gathered there. It turns out that across the road and over the hill is a cattle farm; and when the rain is right (it was last night), psychedelic mushrooms grow in the cow dung and people make omelets and tea in the camp.

  I have never tried anything psychedelic, but I’ve always wanted to. Would I be wrapped up in colors, attacked by sounds, filled with insights about worlds I don’t even know exist?

  Wolfgang isn’t interested, but he promises to stay with me in case I have “a bad trip.” I have always promised myself that if I ever tried LSD or mushrooms, I would have someone I trusted at my side.

  True, I just met Wolfgang; but he is a gentle man. I know I can trust him. One of the most valuable tools I have honed in the last months is a sense of whom I can trust and whom I cannot.

  Fred, an American my age whom I instinctively do not trust, seems to be in charge of the mushroom events. He offers me a cup of tea. I accept. He’s put sugar in it, but the brew is bitter. I look around at the assembled crowd. There’s a glaze over their eyes, all of them. I’m the last one in. In minutes, my head begins to float. I am euphoric, smiling, swaying, silent.

  I remember very little about the next twelve hours. Every inch of my body from my bubbly head to my floating feet is leaping, flying, soaring. The world is filled with colors and music. There is nothing between my inner self and the outer world. We are one.

  Wolfgang doesn’t leave my side. When the sun goes down, we go back to our platform; he puts his arm around me as we walk. When we arrive at the platform, I fantasize climbing into his hammock and burying my head and hands in his beard; but it is a fantasy that stays inside my head as he helps me gently into my hammock. I close my eyes and float through the night.

  A couple of days later, ten of us pile into the back of a pickup for a trip to the spectacular Agua Azul Park, where turquoise water crashes down rocky cliffs, caresses massive boulders, and slides sinuously over silky stones.

  A group of us wander off the trail to a waterfall that is cascading down forty feet of cliff. The final vestiges of my modesty are tossed off with my clothes as we all run into the falls, the warm and powerful water pounding our heads and shoulders and pouring down our bodies. We laugh and squeal and dance in the sun and the sparkling falls. I am not sure who this woman is, but she is certainly not the me of four months ago.

  That night I lie in my hammock, swinging gently and thinking about the last five days. I have buried my fears, abandoned self-consciousness, and allowed myself to slide into sensation. I like the person I have become. I am even feeling positive and optimistic about the marriage. Surely these new experiences will enable me to bring something different and exciting into our relationship. In less than a week, I will be in Los Angeles.

  Before I board the plane in Mexico City, I call my husband.

  “I may have to go to a meeting,” he says. “If I’m not there, take the Super Shuttle.”

  A four-foot-long sign with bright red letters is stretched between two giggly little girls in braids: Bienvenidos Papi.

  Two uniformed men, holding placards high above the heads of the crowd in front of them, are looking for their passengers.

  A clutch of people speaking Mandarin are calling to an old man arriving in a wheelchair. His face is glowing and smiling with recognition.

  A shriek pierces the air and a twentyish woman swings her lithe body under the rope and gallops to greet the young shrieking woman who is walking behind me.

  A couple in front of me cannot stop kissing and touching.

  It’s a scene I usually love, families and friends hugging and calling and chattering in different languages, nearly everyone smiling. But this time my heart is pounding and my eyes are tearing. No one is there for me.

  I call the Super Shuttle.

  Forty-five minutes later, I fumble with the key, my fingers barely able to hold it. The house is the same as it was when I left four months earlier; nothing has changed. Except now it feels cold and empty. And it is screaming at me: I’m not yours anymore.

  Actually, it never was. I feel nothing for this place, this building. I never did make it “mine.” Nine years ago we moved to L.A. from Manhattan, a family of four (Mitch was fourteen and Jan was thirteen) and a dog. Most of our New York furniture was threadbare, so we brought only a few pieces.

  We bought the house and all its garish furniture from the previous owners, who needed money in a hurry. I was thrilled that with no effort or shopping on my part, the rooms were filled. There were, and still are, “smoky” gold-spattered mirrors; a white-and-gold fake French bedroom set; a hideous carpet in the family room with an orange, red, yellow, and green print; velvet curtains; a white furry love seat; and more. None of it my taste. I figured we’d decorate when we had the time and money, but we never got around to it. Decorating has never been my thing. As long as lamps light, couches sit, and beds sleep, I’m happy.

  So when I walk into the house that has been my family’s for nine years, it does not cuddle me. I feel only emptiness, abandonment, alienation.

  My husband arrives a few hours later and announces that he has decided to end the marriage. He has already talked to a lawyer.

  I have been preparing for this moment for four months, but I cannot stop the tears. The Pollyanna part of me that believes anything can be fixed if you really want to fix it is devastated; the tears are for the fact that I’m not even going to have a chance to try . . . and for the lost dreams of a young couple in love.

  But the realistic part of me knows that I cannot continue to live as we were. In the last months I have been a woman who has felt joy, shared laughter, explored other worlds, and rediscovered a hidden me. I will not, cannot, bury her again. I too hire a lawyer.

  I do not want alimony; I have always had an aversion to dependency in either direction. And I do not want things, not even the things that are mine, like books and paintings and records and clothes. I have always dreamed of owning nothing but the stuff I could carry on my back. Now that I am answering only to myself, I can make that happen. I shed my skin in Mexico; now I am shedding the material trappings of my life.

  My husband and I work out a dollar figure for our joint possessions. When we are finished, I do not own a book, a towel, a chair, or a spoon.

  Fortunately, I do have a source of income. As a writer of children’s books, I know I can sell most of what I write. But it’s not reliable income, and it isn’t that much; not enough to support myself in the U.S. If I stay here, I will have to get an apartment and a regular job in order to survive.

  I don’t want an apartment, and I have even less interest in
a job. What I want is to do more of what I was doing in Mexico: discover the world and interact with the people in it.

  I can write fiction for kids wherever I am and send the manuscripts to my agent in New York. If I live in developing countries, I don’t have to make very much money.

  I sit down with some loose figures. Let’s say my expenses are $10 a day for food and lodging; that’s $3,650 a year. Double it for plane fares and entertainment and miscellaneous expenses: $7,300. Then double it again for health insurance (around $3,000 a year through the writers’ union) and luxuries and amenities like a bookkeeper and gifts and taxes: $14,600. Not very scientific, but it’ll do. If I stay in developing countries, I can live nicely on $15,000 a year! Very nicely.

  Happily, three of my books—More Spaghetti, I Say!, Why Can’t I Fly? and The Biggest Sandwich Ever—are doing well. My annual royalties from them and other already written books will probably be around $12,000. One new book a year will bring in at least $3,000 more. I should be in great shape.

  For the five months it takes us to do the legal stuff, I feel like a lost child. I live in the tiny (eight-foot by eleven-foot) office that I’ve been renting in Venice, California, for a number of years. I join a gym so I can shower. And I eat every meal out, in restaurants and fast-food places, constantly aware that I am alone in the place where I live, which is even harder than being alone in a place where you don’t know anyone. There is no “travelers’ network” for me in Los Angeles.

  The kids are not around either. Mitch is in Singapore, studying for a year on a Rotary International Fellowship. And Jan is finishing up school at the University of Colorado in Boulder. We talk often and write at least once a week, but basically we are all going through this divorce separately.