La Guía de Gringa a Guatemala

Tikal

 Towering above the rain forest, Tikal is possibly the most magnificent of all Maya sites. The ruins, 68km from Flores down a smooth paved road, are dominated by five enormous temples: steep-sided limestone pyramids that rise to more than 60m above the forest floor. Around them are literally thousands of other structures, many semi-strangled by giant roots and still hidden beneath mounds of earth.

                                                                        -from The Rough Guide to Guatemala

 

Getting There

Yes, on your two-week jaunt around the country of course you are to visit Tikal, that guide-book-lauded, tourist-run mammoth of a stop on the Grand Tour of Guatemala – you will slowly make our way up there, having gone from San Marcos to Antigua to Lanquín to Flores, enduring Tourism, Backpackers, Giardia, Stupidity, A Failing Sex Life, Sand Fleas and Drunkenness.

            Sitting in the ‘breakfast’ area of the hotel you should stay at, where you can get a complementary breakfast, as advertised on the bill, you should know that ‘complementary’ breakfast at the Hotel Doña Goya Two means that breakfast is not actually served there, where you will awake, but rather around the corner at the (worse) Hotel Doña Goya One (the original). Having arrived at Hotel Doña Goya One, you will sit and await the ‘complementary’ breakfast which will cost you the equivalent of two U.S. dollars, and is actually quite wonderful: two eggs, beans, coffee and a couple of fruit pieces if you want them. Across from you, seated quietly against the wall, will be a robust woman with her curly brown hair pulled back, reading something, dressed very cleanly. You will be discussing Tikal and how to get there, when, in all likelihood, she will strike up a conversation with you. You will learn that her name is Mareike, Mareike from Germany, and not only is she Mareike from Germany but she will be going to Tikal in the morning as well, and not only that but she is an archaeologist, and not only that but she has done her master’s thesis on Tikal and will be going to see it for the first time, after years of study and toil and looking at the stelae in books halfway across the world, analyzing and theorizing and never actually seeing it. “Excited” cannot describe the joy she will radiate when she speaks of visiting Tikal in the morning. Captain, your travel companion (ever-watchful of opportunities for self-advancement) will ask Mareike if you both might be able to accompany her and … learn from her? She will agree. Not only will she agree, she will be ecstatic.

 Site Practicalities

In the morning, when you arrive at the entrance to the mythical city with Mareike, Captain, and Mareike’s army-fatigue clad, male partner of undisclosed relation (P.O.U.R.), be sure to stand outside the white van in the blazing seven o’clock sunlight, so that everyone can wait for you to tie your hiking shoe. Since Mareike won’t be able to wait for you to tie your shoe, she and P.O.U.R. will hurry off to the gate, while you and Captain decide to check in with EL CAMPING, with a resolve to meet again inside the park, in the acropolis, at eleven o’clock noon.

 Accommodation, eating and drinking

Be sure to investigate, thoroughly, the EL CAMPING situation. Most likely, the situation will be that there are several slabs of rectangular concrete, arranged in a semi-circle, each shaded by a thatched roof. Each hut is equipped with hooks for you to sling your hammock; otherwise, the concrete will do for a tent floor. Most travelers find that it is important to spend some time lying in the hammock with your travel companion, gazing at the inexplicable wildlife emerging from the nearby forest.

 Do not be alarmed.

 Also emerging from the woods are what appear to be giant squirrel-rabbits at play. Don’t pay much attention to them, and they won’t pay much attention to you.

It is important that you find a place to stow your giant travel backpack while you explore the ruins of Tikal. This is most easily accomplished by spending an hour or so hunting down the custodian, who will then open the janitorial closet for you and offer to keep your luggage in there for fifty quetzals (six bucks). Then get moving into the park, where Mareike and P.O.U.R. will be waiting for you.

 The Great Plaza

Climb Templo Dos. Take some photos with your disposable camera of you looking adorable, with Templo Uno in the background (your grandmother will later enlarge and frame it). Climb back down. Meet Mareike and P.O.U.R. Mareike will have prepared a handout. Follow her blindly.

 Stelae

Stelae is the plural form of the word stela, meaning an upright stone or slab with engravings on it. Make sure to ask Mareike lots of questions about the art on these stelae, as she will be more than happy to share her knowledge. Again, document her wonderfully German unshakeable enthusiasm as she showcases the art. Watch out for monkeys throwing fruit on you from above.

 Water



Obviously, you are not to drink Guatemalan tap water. Captain drank cave water earlier and got giardia, so you know how that goes. You must therefore carry a water bottle of some sort with you at all times. It is advisable to carry around the largest bottle of water possible. Make sure you are constantly carrying it and constantly drinking from it. Drink as much of it as possible, as often as possible. Don’t sip it, chug it. Mareike will tell a short story about water: as an archaeologist, she is constantly having to go to hot, exotic places such as the one you are in now. She, being a large, white European, is always guzzling water. But she noticed that the Guatemalans who work with her at the field sites almost never drink water. They don’t need it. They don’t sweat. Or at least, they don’t sweat as much. It’s truly amazing.

Keep drinking water.

Bathroom facilities are few and far between, so when you spot one among the trees make sure you spend some quality time there.



 Temples and similar structures



There are lots. Don’t even try to pinpoint your location on the map. Just wander around and climb the interesting ones. Watch out for black mold. Also, bats. Think about how great it would be if you could somehow sleep atop one of these temples instead of in the crappy hut in EL CAMPING.

 Templo IV



This is the biggest temple. It rises above the trees like something out of Star Wars. The only one higher than this exists at El Mirador, a ruin accessible only by a seven-day trek through the jungle, which you have neither the money nor the stamina to undertake. Climb it when the sun is setting. Wander around to the back of it. The rainforest canopy will spread below you in all directions. Watch the pink sun setting in between the clouds. Captain will probably be smoking. You are all alone, gazing at the green below you and the scaffolding above you (they will be renovating it). A glimmer of an image will come to you, and you will suddenly suggest the following as though it were the most obvious thing in the world: Why don’t we just tie the hammock to the scaffolding and sleep up here?

 Bribing the Night Guard and Lying to Officials: Dos and Don’ts

You are about to engage in one of the most well-known secret tourist activities of Tikal: Bribing the night guards to let you in to the complex after visiting hours to sleep atop the ancient ruin of your choosing. This lies somewhere in between adventurous and commonplace. Here is a quick list of handy tips for safely navigating your way through the process:

 Do:

Þ   Discuss with Captain your idea and how you will execute it. Be on the lookout for guard bribery opportunities.

Þ   Strike up a conversation in very broken Spanish with the small uniformed man walking next to you with a huge rifle. Allow him to casually suggest letting you in to the park after hours. Explain in hushed tones that “we would like sleep here in the night please.” Pay him the equivalent of 50 dollars.

Þ   Allow him to suggest places you could camp in the complex. Observe with silent acceptance the damp and foul-smelling spots he recommends.

Þ   Slowly introduce your desire to sleep atop Templo IV. He will be shocked and will try to talk you out of it, citing such factors as losing his job. Be firm. Meet his hesitancy with steely resolve.

Þ   Make sure you come up with a believable story for the night watch at EL CAMPING about why you paid for a hammock hut and never slept there. You may or may not have to actually explain yourself; chances are they won’t notice or care and you will have gone through these sneaky preparations for nothing.

Þ   Slyly ask the custodian to open the closet for you so you can get needed night-things out of your giant traveling backpack (extra set of underwear, sleeping pants, extra shirt, contact lens case and solution), etc.

Þ   Arrange a meeting time with the night guard for him to let you in to the city after visiting hours.

 Don’t:

Þ   Ever wear contacts in the rainforest.  

 Do:

Þ   Eat a hearty dinner at the Jaguar Inn before your jungle trek. 

 Don’t:

Þ   Get heatstroke during your hearty dinner. 

Þ   Argue when Captain tells you it’s because you’re dehydrated. Apparently, chugging water does not hydrate you. You are supposed to sip at intervals. Everyone who has ever been a Boy Scout knows that.  

 

Do:

Þ   Enjoy the first nice thing Captain has done for you in a while: place cool paper towels on your chest, back and forehead to take your body temperature down. 

Þ   Recover from impending heatstroke and proceed with the evening.  

 Illegally Navigating Ancient Ruins

When stepping into the jungle at eleven p.m. with Captain and the night guard, you may find it useful to keep your thoughts on a positive track. Hopefully by this point in your trip you’ve spent some time in the highlands, preferably in lovely San Marcos La Laguna next to Lake Atitlan, where there are plenty of meditation centers, spas, and massage therapists to help you relax and learn to control your breathing. It is precisely for moments like this that you have done your preparation. Do not allow your mind to wander into dark territory. The following thought topics are not recommended:

 

-   the black darkness of the jungle

-   jaguars, and how they can climb things

-   scorpions, how they are everywhere, and how they can also climb things

-   everything you’ve ever heard about Guatemala being a dangerous, crime-ridden country

-   the rifle the night guard is holding

-   how no one knows where you are

-   how your cell phone is dead

-   how Americans are usually stereotyped as being made of money when they travel abroad

-   how when you opened your wallet to give the guard bribe money earlier, there were a lot more bills showing

-   the dinosaur sounds emanating from somewhere not too far away

 

Instead, this guidebook recommends calmer fare such as

-   the beauty of your unique travel experience

-   the stories you can tell when you get home

-   the sheer wonder and excitement of everything!

 

How to sleep atop a Mayan temple

Because of the power of positive thinking, you will most likely arrive safely at Templo IV. The guard will give you some simple instructions that will allow him to keep his job and keep you out of trouble with the Guatemalan authorities. Guatemalan prisons are no picnic. These instructions are, briefly: no light on top of the temple. None. If there is any light, anybody below you for miles around will see it and all is lost, for clearly there has not been anyone regularly existing at the top of the temple for hundreds and hundreds of years and any indication otherwise would cause quite a stir. The second instruction is that you must rise no later than 4:30 a.m., in order for the daily Sunrise Tour not to catch you asleep in a hammock when they arrive, having ridden in cars from Flores and Santa Elena and El Remate for hours in order to catch the spectacular sunrise from atop the second tallest temple in the ancient Mayan world. Your sleeping in the hammock would certainly not be what they expect to see. So your hammock and other equipment must be safely packed and stowed away, and you must be sitting quietly and nonchalantly on the stairs when the tour arrives in the morning. Chances are, the bleary-eyed travelers will be so confused from their long trek they will hardly notice you.

            Back to the night before – be extra certain your hammock is tied tightly to the scaffolding. The wind is warm but heavy. A death earned by falling off Templo IV, while spectacular, is probably not what you’re looking for right now.

            If your travel partner agrees, you should do everything you’ve ever wanted to do on top of a temple overlooking the rainforest. Everything. This is an all-ages guidebook so we won’t go into further detail, but we encourage you to consider the bragging rights later.

Howler Monkeys   They sound like dinosaurs. Do not be alarmed. The sound you hear is that of male howler monkeys fighting for territory. Even though we here at the guidebook think you will probably never again hear such a harrowing, soul-murdering sound in your life, this is another opportunity to practice your unwaveringly sunny outlook – the kind of outlook that brought you to Guatemala in the first place. Taking Care of Business On the Temple If you have to urinate, do so – as you should do everything on Templo IV – with great caution. The wind is sharp, it is dark and you will not be able to see what you are doing. Apologize to whatever ancient and merciless gods are watching over your disrespectful activities.

 

 

 

Morning

Gently awake to dark clouds floating in front of you. The forest below does not exist. Silently pack up your hammock and change into day clothes. Await the dawn. All is quiet. Slowly, slowly, light begins to invade the space around you, not quite, but almost. You are wanting so badly to fall asleep. Captain gives you his raincoat to wear because the early morning is chilling your bones. You rest your head on his shoulder and let your mind drift, barely noticing how quickly it gets lighter, barely noticing the dazed looking woman in pink suddenly emerge at the top of the stairs and wander over to you, barely noticing when she plops herself down next to you, barely noticing the enormous volume of people who follow her, barely noticing when they find spots on the stone to sit and stare at the clouds. At one point the sun looks like it may have risen. The tour guide finally gets up there and starts lecturing about Templo IV. No one notices you – you have successfully camouflaged yourself among the rest of the tour. Fifteen minutes in, you and Captain decide to take your leave. On your way down, a grumpy tour guide asks why. You should reply that you are tired. He will try to impress upon you the unfortunate circumstance of your leaving, as you are missing out on many interesting facts about this extraordinary temple. At this point, for sincerity’s sake, you should tell him that you already know a lot about the temple and are quite ready to leave.

            Descend into the rainforest. Find some breakfast.

 

La Vie Bohème (Doing Things As Though You Know What You’re Doing When You’re Doing Them)

La Vie Bohème

 

(Doing Things As Though You Know What You’re Doing

When You’re Doing Them)

 

I used to be Catholic.

I was Catholic for three years.

 Father Williams took us to see The Exorcist when it was showing at Cinema 21. He laughed hysterically through the entire thing.

I was baptized at St. Mark’s. As I approached the font, the bishop, in his most important outfit, gestured at me. He dipped his old fingers in the holy water and made the sign of the cross on my forehead, then again at the base of my throat.  

 In Paris, I am stepping down the spiral stone staircase deep into the earth, circles after circles after circles. No signs to tell you how far of a descent. We enter the equivalent of the green room, before the crypt, with stories on the walls and historical pamphlets to fill your fingers with, it gets colder, I’ve planned ahead and am wearing my rosary around my neck (because anything involving death means you’ve got to prepare yourself for the inevitable onslaught of spiritual mess). I step into the corridor and the damp ceiling of the caves is familiar, ever since the caves in Germany when I was five caves have felt like familiar territory, comforting, silent. Silence like the kind of muffled silence I imagine exists in a padded, carpeted room in the basement of a cathedral or hospital or psych ward or funeral home or womb. The wall to my right, I realize, is not composed of stone but of bone. Skulls and crossbones. Those skulls are browned, as though they basted them before arranging them. I run my fingers along them and wonder what time they will break into Disneyesque song and dance. All is quiet. I am

 Alone in the chapel with Father Williams.

“Are you sure there’s nothing you want to confess before you leave us?”

“Yes.”

“Are you sure there is nothing you want to get off your chest? You don’t know when you may next have a chance to confess. It could be two years. Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“Well.”

 I am acutely aware of my own skeleton. The inscriptions in the crypt are in French and Latin. Some Body is telling me the Catacombs exist because of the plague, and they ran out of manpower, willpower and space to bury the bodies. Some Body else is telling me that the Catacombs exist because of the French Revolution. I’m clutching my blue-beaded rosary. The ceiling is dripping but it doesn’t drip on me. So many skulls. I stare right back at them and try to decide who they were.

I felt suffocated. There was a sign asking me to please not touch the bones. Why would I want to touch the stained bones? I couldn’t breathe down there. Upon my re-birth into the light of day, all I wanted was water. And a church.

 

The Glitter of Tourism

(1985 – 2003)

          The glitz, glamour and glitter of Tourism was much beloved in America. She was famous for spicing up the Hollywood industry and enjoyed a long and illustrious Disney career. A memorial service will be held at 2 p.m. Monday at the Moulin Rouge, with burial following at Sacre Coeur. She was preceded in death by her parents, Colonialism and The Thrill of Large Crowds. She is survived by her husband, Romanticism, her children Quirky Guide Book, Travel Writing and College Kids Backpacking Around Europe, and her sisters Money and Marketing.

     Visitation will be on Monday from 10 a.m. until time of service. Please, no flash photography. Food and beverage prohibited. Informational brochures available for only ten Euros. Sketch artist will draw a picture of you next to the corpse of Tourism for free (it’s for his portfolio. Donations demanded.) Keychains, posters, and t-shirts for sale

during reception. Please do not touch the body of Tourism. Restrooms down the hall and to your left. Please use the escalator. Please keep the line moving. Free notebooks and pencils available on your right so you can immediately chronicle the magic of your experience. Please hold still for photo. Photo will be available on the Tourism website until 5/6/04. Please use this confirmation code to access your photo. Photos available in matte or glossy formats. For an additional forty Euros, photo available in black and white. Thank you. We look forward to seeing you again.

 

          In the Louvre, it wasn’t the painting of the Mona Lisa that really got to me. The Mona Lisa was too small for the giant room they gave her, and too difficult to see in front of the hoards of Japanese tourists with digital cameras and video cameras and cell phone cameras and disposable cameras. I only got a glimpse of her. I remember hoping to feel something when I saw her. I remember hoping that maybe the paint would sparkle. She looked like every Mona Lisa I had ever seen in any textbook. I don’t even remember her all that well. But I do remember the Japanese tourists; their camera flashes were so bright. In the photo album, later, I wrote “An old painting nobody cares about” for her caption.

I saw Monet’s Water Lilies. I don’t remember.

Another painting I saw was … I don’t remember.

I saw a Rodin sculpture and that was good.

At Versailles, I saw the sculpture garden. I liked the sculptures more than any painting I saw. I also liked the gold.

I don’t really remember about art.

 

Homework: Fill in the blank.

 

1.              The Mona Lisa made me feel ____________ (overwhelmed, underwhelmed, confused, unaccomplished, pretty)

2.              The Eiffel Tower was ________________ (impressive, phallic, hard to climb, a must, cold)

3.              The Chateau at Versailles is a perfect example of _________ (having way too much money, romanticism, the good life, how to use as much gold as possible in your home decorating, impressive garden hydraulics)

4.              The Moulin Rouge is not ______________ (a safe place to hang around after dark, cheap, in a good part of town, easily accessible, romantic)

5.              The Seine is an excellent place to _________________ (have a bottle of rosé, learn how to stand on someone’s shoulders, cry, fall in)

6.              Notre Dame ________ (is beautiful).

          Sometime after my nineteenth birthday, I bought a Beta fish, a Beta fish and I named her Medusa. She was beautiful. I don’t remember why I bought her, I do remember that a lot of French was spoken that I did not necessarily understand. Something about how often to feed her. I bought a glass bowl for her, set her on top of the VCR, and that was her spot. I would greet her every time I came home, talking or singing to her as I did the dishes.

After a month of solitude, I decided that Medusa was lonely and needed a friend. I knew almost nothing about the Beta fish; I was too preoccupied with my various Parisian commitments, being a nanny, not going to French class, neglecting my homework and concentrating on the men in my acting class.

             

 Daily Schedule – Paris, 2003 – 2004

0900. Awake

0930. Metro

1000. La Classe de Français

1300. Fin de La Classe de Français

1330. Dejeuner (Lunch)

1430. Fin de la Dejeuner

1545. Metro to the Tisserand’s

1550. Get the Dog

1555. Run with Dog to Pick Up Romain from School

1556. Dog Slows Down

1557. Encourage Dog to Hurry

1558. Get Angry, Sweat, Receive Disapproving Looks for Running on the Sidewalk

1559. Romain’s School is Three Blocks Away

1600. Romain’s School is One and a Half Blocks Away

1602. Arrive at L’Ecole de Romain.

1603. Romain emerges. Commence long, silent walk home

1630. Arrive Home. Prepare Le Snack

1635. Pretend not to Notice Romain is Regarding Le Télévision

1640. Announce Le Snack.

1700. Regard Le Télévision with Romain, Pretend Not To

1715. Suggest Le Télévision Be Silenced

1720. Demand Le Télévision Be Silenced

1725. Silence Le Télévision

1730. Encourage Romain to begin his Poésie Homework

1735. Demand Romain begin his Poésie Homework

1745. Sneak Chocolate Cracker from Cupboard

1800. Fin de Poésie Homework. Commence Preparation of Le Dinner

1810. Sneak 2^nd Chocolate Cracker from Cupboard

1820. Cook the Zucchini the Wrong Way

1822. Receive Wrath of Adrien for Cooking the Zucchini the Wrong Way

1825. Commence Correct Zucchini Preparation

1830. Run Romain’s Bain (Bath)

1845. Announce Le Dinner Time

1850. Le Dinner.

1900. Romain – Bain – Water is Too Hot / Cold / Water-y

1903. Alter Bain to Meet 10-Year-Old’s Specifications

1915. Dominique Arrives Home

1920. Get out of Apartment as Quickly as Possible

1927. Smoke Cigarette

1933. Read Candide on Metro

1948. Purchase Beer from Local Superette

2000. Arrive Home. Open Wide French Windows. Light Incense. Smoke Cigarette. Put

            On Music. Drink Beer. Gaze out Window.  Turn On Le Télévision.

            Write.                                                                                      FIN

 

           

Medusa’s selected friend was blood red and named Zeus. He was the perfect color complement to Medusa’s cerulean blue. Zeus came home not at all like babies, on the Metro in two bags, a plastic one enshrouded by a paper one. I was nervous to handle the bag so delicately on the Metro – I was nervous to do just about anything on the Metro besides sit and stare quietly into the abyss. The Parisians are very particular about what you can and cannot not do publicly (yes to walking smoking talking smiling giving directions no to eating spitting swearing or looking bad, mon dieu), and the palpable air-tension was a manifestation of the general attitude (pas d’arabesque). Albion, my liaison from England, on the subway, drunk at two in the morning, once alerted the rest of the car that I was an American and that they should watch out.

 

            I brought Zeus home and took him out of his paper bag. I held the plastic bag up to Medusa’s bowl so they could look at each other. Betas have raptor-like flaps on the sides of their faces that fan out whenever they feel feisty. Medusa’s face flaps flared when she saw Zeus. Zeus wasn’t paying attention because I he couldn’t see anything from within the distorted confines of his plastic bag. I speechified to Medusa about how Zeus was going to be her friend and wasn’t it going to be lovely. I dumped Zeus into Medusa’s bowl.

 

            Once Zeus reoriented in the water, he and Medusa flap-flared and started circling each other like two wrestlers. Oh, how wonderful. They’re mating.

            Then, like when Dominique slapped Romain without remorse -

            Medusa darted forward at Zeus, striking him right in the face. Zeus retaliated by head butting Medusa between the eyes. They both moved with lightning speed, darting around the bowl, striking with their heads, lashing with their fins and inflicting general savagery on each other. Clearly, this was not sexual. This was the killing field. I saw a lonely piece of red tail drift through the water. Holy God, I thought, they’re actually going to murder each other.

            “Stop! No! What are you guys doing? Stop it! Stop it now!”

            I take the two steps into my kitchen and grab a mug. Frantically I am dipping the mug into the bowl where the two fighting fish are using their cute little faces as bludgeons, tearing off scales and fins, churning up the water, creating a whirlpool of death and destruction. Somehow, after a few horrifying failed attempts, I scoop the battered Zeus into the mug. Medusa continues to rage furiously around in the water after Zeus is gone, face-flares erect, battle charged like the descendants of the late Napoleon and Louis XVI wanting to restore the monarchy, on fire, zooming around the bowl. Zeus trembles pitifully in his mug. I transfer him to a casserole dish and place it next to Medusa, but soon discover this does not work, like my shower drain and television do not work, because they can see each other through the glass and their massacre will not be disrupted, they are banging their little heads against the glass and nearly knocking themselves unconscious with rage. I had to slip a piece of black paper in between the bowl and the dish so they couldn’t even see each other.

            It is at this point I decide to read up on the Beta fish.

            The Beta fish – also known as the “Siamese Fighting Fish” – originates from Thailand. The colorful ones – all the ones you see for sale in pet stores – are male. The females are a drab grey. So Medusa is not a lady after all; she has been a gentleman fish the whole time. Males absolutely cannot be kept together, or they will fight to the death.

On the day Medusa died, all I wrote in my journal was:

“Medusa died”.

After discovering the fact of her maleness, I never stopped referring to her as a female. I just started to think of her as more of a drag queen.

 

San Marcos, April

I just bought a flute from Diego. I talked him down from 120 quetzales to 55. It’s a flute made in the traditional Mayan way, using solar energy to burn the holes and make the marks. He takes a very small glass with a tiny bit of agua in the bottom, and uses the sun shining through the glass to smoke the wood, to carve words and designs. Each flute takes four days to make. He makes them at nine or ten in the morning when the sun is strongest.

 

Notes from Guatemala

Antigua, April 30th, 2008

‘You know, Shelby, flossing is the cheapest form of dental insurance.’

I just did a card trick for a dude named Alfredo. He loved it. Everybody’s name is Alfredo and that’s funny b/c of the menu. I’m super drunk.

 

Paris I (old)

I am in Paris. I get off the plane and get my bags, wandering through the maze that is the Charles De Gaulle airport, eyes wide, mind hazy from the eight hour plane ride. I wander onto the right bus, somehow, fumbling through awkward conversations with irritated French airport workers. On the bus, I meet a woman and we have a wonderful conversation. I am filled with adrenaline. The last time she was in Paris, years and years ago, she was a nanny too. She is coming back to meet with a lover, someone she left behind all those years ago. I am open and friendly, and tell her that I believe our conversation together is a good omen for the beginning of my year there.

The first time I am really aware of Paris is when the bus is roaring up the Champs Elysees. The city appears dirty – the streets are lined with trash, the sidewalks crammed with people, and there seem to be no agreed-upon rules of the road. Cars cut corners, eschew turn signals, ignore speed limits and pedestrians. I am amazed that the bus driver can navigate the chaotic traffic circle around the Arc de Triomphe – I am more amazed at this than I am at the monument itself. I am blown away by the sheer size of Paris, and unable to wrap my mind around the fact that I am going to be living here for the next year of my life. This is Paris. Besides the trash, the city is truly breathtakingly beautiful – I spot the Eiffel tower and the Pantheon, and everywhere the buildings are made of white stone. Some of the cafes and shops looks straight out of Les Miserables. I am thrilled and terrified.

The first task, after getting off the bus, is finding a cab driver. The friendly bus driver (a cruel joke, having the first Parisian I meet be friendly; this does not prepare me well) points me in the right direction, right across the street. I drag my luggage across the crosswalk, tickled by the little green man in the crossing signal. I find a cab and the driver silently and unceremoniously throws my suitcases in the trunk as I climb in the backseat and wait for him. He gets in the driver’s seat. Staring in the rear view mirror at me, he says something in French that, by sheer guesswork, I take to mean “Where are you going?”

I say, naively, “Parlez-vous Anglais?”

The driver rolls his eyes and says “Non, non. Leetle bit, eh? Leetle,” and indicates with his thumb and index finger the amount of extent of his English vocabulary.

Oh, shit.

How on God’s green earth could I have assumed that I could get around in this behemoth of a city without being able to speak fluent French?  I try as best I can to pronounce the address I was given, which means I have to say the number eighty-eight in French, which any beginning French student can tell you is no easy task. The actual word is quatre-vingt- huit, meaning literally “four-twenty-eight”. Four twenties makes eighty, get it? Plus eight, equals eighty-eight. The French are horrible.

At first, the driver doesn’t understand my words. I shove the paper in his face, he reads it, says “Ah,” and drives the car into the melee. I hang on for dear life as the taxi nearly careens into a Smartcar entering the traffic circle. On the way there I lose track of the amount of times I almost die. We manage a few tidbits of very awkward conversation conducted in Frenglish. I learn that the driver is not a native Parisian – he’s not even from France. He and his family moved here many years ago from a country I do not remember, but it was one in which the people were rough and living in poverty.

We finally reach the apartment. He tells me it is across the street. I am not prepared for the glamour of the lobby when I enter it. The floors appear to be made of dyed marble. The heavy glass doors have golden handles. I stumble across the floor, catching a glimpse of myself in the floor-to-ceiling mirrors, looking very American indeed with my tousled hair, bright red St. Mary’s Academy Class of 2003 sweatshirt, worn jeans, flip-flops, and giant suitcases dragging behind me. There are no signs anywhere, just a small booth office-type place where a friendly-looking man sits staring at me inquisitively. I slowly make my way over to him.

“Tisserand?” I say haltingly. “La famille Tisserand?”
“Ah oui!,” he says, “La sixieme. Ils sont la.”

I have no idea what this means. He understands that I have no idea what this means. I feel angry and frustrated that I do not understand what this means.

“Sixieme,” he repeats slowly, holding up six fingers. “L’ascenseur est a la droite. L’ascenseur,” he says, walking out of his office and pointing around the corner to the right.
“Okay,” I say, smiling. “Merci!”

I find the elevator. Sixth floor, I’m sure that’s what he meant. I take the elevator, impossibly small though it is, to the sixth floor. I get off and there in front of me is a large wooden door with the right number on it and a small button, above which is embossed the name Tisserand on a brass plaque. I am scared. I am about to meet the children that I will be with for the next year. The hallway is very small – there are only two doors, two elevators and a staircase. I press my ear up to the cold wood and hear nothing inside. The building is impeccably clean. I just stand outside the doorway for a good two minutes, not really wanting to ring the doorbell. I listen to the sounds echoing up from the lobby. A small dog yipping, and a low male voice murmuring something in French.

I have resolve. I must ring this doorbell. I have no choice. I have nowhere else to go, no other options. I press my finger to the button and hear a chime just inside the door. A soft bark erupts from inside the apartment, and I hear little dog feet clattering across a floor, followed by the louder thuds of human footsteps. The footsteps arrive at the door, and then stop. There is a slight pause. I realize I am being observed through the spyglass in the door. And then the door opens. My eyes meet those of a young, striking boy of about thirteen. His eyes are a bright, sparkling green lined with long, dark lashes. His hair is black and spiked up fashionably. He is more fashionably dressed than I ever will be, in clothes that can only be either Ralph Lauren or something of the sort.

“Hello!” he barks, his voice cracking with prepubescent force.

“Hi there!” I say, overly friendly. “I’m Blythe. It’s very nice to meet you.”

“Yes, yes, come in, come in. I am Adrien. Let me take your things.” His heavy French accent is charming. To God, I think: You must be kidding. This is going to be my life? I can’t believe it. I was delighted.

He leads me into what seems to be a hotel penthouse, or is at least decorated as such. The entrance hall floors are checkered marble. On a small hall table is an miniature model of a wooden sailing ship that looks to be worth thousands of dollars. I turn around and am again confronted with a floor-to-ceiling mirror. Adrien indicates that I must take off my shoes. I do so, and put them by the hall table, on the floor. I follow him down the hall and to the left, where we set my bags down inside a large bedroom that I can tell belongs to his parents. The room is immaculate and very tastefully decorated. The carpet matches the curtains which match the bedspread which match the lampshade, and so on. On the walls are hung original works of art, which of course match the color scheme of the room. There is a small television on the dresser. It looks as though the room was cleaned thirty seconds before I walked into it.

Adrien then leads me across the hall and to a different room, where a small boy is stretched out on the floor in front of an episode of some Japanese cartoon that has been dubbed over into French.

“Romain!” bellows Adrien. The little boy turns around, takes me in, and scrambles to his feet. He comes over and shakes my hand. Romain is ten years old and has piercing, hawk-like blue eyes. He stares at me and I can feel him sizing me up. His cheeks are flushed with health, and he, too, is clothed in the latest fashions. He is one of the most beautiful children I’ve ever met. After shaking my hand, he loses interest in me and again stretches out on the floor.

“Are you ‘ungry?” asks Adrien tentatively.

“Yes, actually I am,” I say, still in happy introductions mode. Adrien leads me to the kitchen and commands his brother to follow. As I am asked to sit, I begin to feel a bit like a new pet. I do not feel in control of the situation at all, regardless of the age difference between myself and these boys. I feel like an intruder, like an awkward guest. Romain and Adrien appeared old enough to take care of themselves; that was certainly what they had been doing when I arrived at the door.

 

My grandmother was a large woman

My grandmother was a large woman. I remember her with white curly hair, her large frame draped over an armchair, settled, regal, commanding. Her ankles were swollen and red from years of carying around all that weight, and her feet and toes swelled, plump with water, sometimes purple. Her toenails were yellow and curled, and she wore sandals, probably because other types of shoes didn’t give her appendages enough room. My grandmother’s body was a source of great fascination for me as a child. I wanted an explanation for her size – her bulk seemed to me a sign of a different or special kind of spirit inside – one that took up great space, and that quality was reflected in her girth. She smelled like a combination of her perfume (a pungent floral musk) and urine, incontinence just one of the results of her obesity. Cats, too, I associated with my grandmother. She took in Mittens, my uncle’s cat, also incontinent, and this is perhaps what bound them together. Mittens also left his mark on my grandmother’s smell.

Her body was an assortment of colors and smells not found anywhere else in the sphere of my childhood. She wore bright blue eyeshadow coupled with bright red lipstick. She wore black, stretchy dresses and real pearl necklackes. She wore fancy clip-on earrings with Birkenstocks. She recorded her monthly weight in a little red journal that I was forbidden to look in. I looked.

Early childhood, her house in Seattle – one storey and probably very small, but to me was just enough, large, even – a brown carpet, a white couch, a seventies-era kitchen with linoleum tiling. Grandma’s bedroom at the end of the hallway, a larger-than-life bed occupying most of the floor, blue coverlet which was blue even if it wasn’t blue, because blue was eternally her color.

In that bedroom were Raggedy Ann and Andy dolls, dolls whose value Grandma would lecture me about. She told me where they came from, who loved them, how old they were. I always played with them weighted with false nostalgia. I could never love those dolls because the time when they were alive and loved was past. They were corpses. So I didn’t take very much to Raggedy Ann and Andy.

I think that dolls have life spans. Maybe they only have the life we give them, but there is a palpable difference between an active doll and an inactive one. I think everybody can tell.

 

Shitty, Shitty Beef Chalupa (or: The Jungle Princess Experiences a Decline)

Guatemala City. We had dropped off the face of the planet, emerging out of the rich, rain-soaked jungles of El Peten into the grimy, ominous capital city. Our ‘vacation within a vacation’ nearly at an end, our hearts were heavy as we left the humid, musical labyrinth of Livingston behind and headed south, towards “home”, towards La Cambalacha, towards work and routine.

Chrissy once said to me, “Guatemala City is a slum. All of it.” After a grueling six-hour chicken bus ride from Rio Dulce, we landed right in the heart of it. At first glance, the City appeared to me not exactly like a slum, but a remarkably colorless, staggeringly enormous sprawl of beige and concrete buildings, most of which seemed to house dark histories and even darker futures. Anything resembling character or culture had evaded this part of the country, as giant billboards littered the major streets, women stood by the side of the road wearing bright green vests bearing the names of mobile phone companies in glittering letters and omnipresent American food chains occupied vast parking-lot sized tracts of land. Mayans, marked by their traditional clothing and small stature, were few and far between. Business owned the city. It was the lack of color that was most halting; after having visited the most beautiful, sensuous parts of the country, it was a loss to no longer be surrounded by extraordinary diversity in sight and smell. Loaded with backpacks, drenched in sweat, we staggered away from the bus, evading the gesturing taxi drivers. Preparing to cross the street, a darkly dressed man, spotting our white skin and excessive luggage, turned around and cautioned us. “What are you doing here? This is a very dangerous city. You should not be here,” he warned, brows furrowed, before hurrying across the avenue.

I had already settled on Hotel Fenix as the best option for our nights in Guatemala City – the only problem being that we were completely disoriented and unable to find even our own location on the tiny guidebook map. The guidebook (Lonely Planet, which I came to despise not only for its mediocre information but because every other backpacker we met also had it) warned us about several things: the first of them being that we should definitely not stand on a corner in the City, all our luggage in tow, consulting a map and looking lost. As we stood on a corner, all our luggage in tow, consulting a map and looking lost, panic set in. We decided that we needed to find the closest budget hotel possible so we could stop standing on a corner, all our luggage in tow, consulting a map and looking lost. Kirk decided on Hotel Capri, which seemed to the closest possibility. We hurried past murky-looking diners, pharmacies with heavy steel bars on the windows, large cerrado signs and crowds of people walking quickly past us, looking at the ground. Upon arriving at the hotel, we checked in at the desk where the concierge, surprised to see us, seemed to have emerged from a seventies-era used car dealership magazine advertisement. He gave us the key to our room, complete with oversized red plastic tag. The hotel was prison-chic. There was too much space – the ceilings too high, the brick walls too thickly slathered with beige paint, the hallways too vast and echoing. It felt like my elementary school, if the school had been run by ominous-looking nuns and a murder had taken place and all the kids had been evacuated and the ghosts of the dead still haunted the hallways.

We sat down on the bed and surveyed our new surroundings. The last hotel we had stayed in was Casa Rosa in Livingston, where we shared a bungalow with delicate, hand-painted furniture and hand-sewn quilts, a wooden chest of drawers and a screen door that opened to a view of the Caribbean sea, complete with a dock at the end of which was a hammock, where we could watch the pelicans and the fisherman, smoke endless cigarettes and drink endless gifiti; where we could ponder the nature of the universe and of ourselves, delving lightly but sweetly into any thought that drifted through our heads.

Our room in Guatemala City, however, had a window with a view of the opposite brick wall and the underground parking lot below. A single fluorescent light bulb flickered above the bed. A giant black television stared blankly at us from atop the dresser, while a large plastic sign tacked to the wall humorlessly informed us that neither the hotel nor its employees were responsible for lost or stolen articles. A single glass ashtray lounged on the bedside table. The sounds of the city drifted to us from outside; buses roaring, cars honking, brakes screeching. While Kirk had a rendezvous with the toilet (the giardia still on active duty), I opened up the guidebook to read more about where on earth we were. After the budget hotels listing was a brief paragraph on dangerous parts of the city:

“Calles 5a and 6a, while close to the bus stations, are generally to be avoided. This is the city’s red-light district, with the highest concentration of drug dealers and underground crime operatives. Watch your back, and your wallet.”

I flipped again to the address of our hotel, and then to the map. Hotel Capri was smack in the middle of Calle 5a. Beautiful.

When Kirk emerged from the bathroom, it was decided that, as frightened and disenchanted as we were, we did have to venture out of the hotel room to feed ourselves. We rung up Charlie and Gabi back in San Marcos La Laguna, and Gabi – a former denizen of the City – recommended that we head for Cuatro Grados Norte, a trendy student area with bars and nightlife. Kirk found a promising-looking restaurant in that area in the guidebook, so we hesitantly left the room (bringing all valuables with us), and hailed a taxi. After a long, expensive ride, the very friendly driver let us out on a deserted avenue where we encountered a lovely wrought-iron archway emblazoned with the words Cuatros Grados Norte, behind which was a lovely little pedestrian avenue lined with tiny little barros and cafés, and a couple of jazz clubs. All of them – inexplicably – closed. Barred, locked, chairs stacked, lights off, shut down. It was a Monday. We learned later that apparently in Guatemala City nothing happens anywhere on Monday nights. The entire city shuts down like Labor Day. Defeated, we wandered up and down the deserted street. Not a single car or person could be seen. Except – ah! A man and woman emerged from one of the dark restaurants, locking the doors and talking quietly with each other. We approached them. In very basic Spanish, I asked them if there was any food near here. He asked me some things I didn’t understand, and when he saw my confused look he said in perfect English, “What kind of place are you looking for?”
“Oh, we’re just looking for someplace to get some dinner, somewhere nice.”
“Ah,” the man said thoughtfully. “Emm, well, there is not really any place around here. Up on that street there is a Pollo Campero, and there is a McDonalds, and there is a Taco Bell.”
“Oh, erm… okay. There aren’t any other places?”
“Not at this hour, no.”
We thanked him. He and the young woman walked away up the street. I turned to Kirk, grimacing.
“Oh my god. McDonald’s?”
“I know, man,” Kirk assented, “Pretty lame.”
We continued towards the busy street up ahead, thinking that if nothing else, at least we could find a taxi back to the hotel and we could eat at the tiny little cantina next to it. Why didn’t we just eat there in the first place? Why did we feel the need to go adventuring around Gotham City?

We meandered up another large, deserted avenue. One of the concrete walls was smothered in beautiful graffiti art – large animals converged with elegantly crafted lettering in English, Spanish and in-between, colorful illustrations bled into each other. This was the most pleasing sight we had yet seen in Guatemala City – a richly executed wall of graffiti. I mentioned that we should take a picture of it, for Collin.

We wandered past what was evidently a church service – perhaps services on Monday nights are what shut the city down? – attended by hundreds of people. Families lined the block with tables piled with brunch-like food, apparently waiting for something, waiting for more family members to emerge, or waiting for the service to begin. Everyone was sharply and brightly dressed, even in the night-time, and more and more families kept coming – in cars, around corners. We felt a part of the procession. The church building, square and concrete, loomed up on our left, with large windows lending a glimpse of vaulted ceilings, thousands of fold-up chairs, a large stage with a microphone – an evangelical service the likes of what we see at home on television.

Reaching the main street, I was reminded of the Lloyd District back home in Portland. Large, looming skyscrapers looked down upon a traffic-congested, impossibly wide avenue, lined with big box stores and fast food joints. To our right, Taco Bell. To our left, the ever-present global parasite – McDonalds.

Kirk paused, his face illuminated by the beckoning neon of the Bell.
“Oh my god. I think we gotta do it,” he said softly, eyes glistening.
“No. I don’t think we gotta do it. I think I can’t eat at Taco Bell in Guatemala.”
“Why not? Come on. We gotta do it.”
“No. I would feel so, so bad. I would feel so bad, Kirk. I don’t know about this. I don’t want to eat at Taco Bell.”
“Come on. We’ve been so good. We gotta do it.”

The decision to override my screaming conscience and walk through the doors of one of the biggest names in the American fast food industry can only be explained by a combination of the following factors:  gnawing hunger, the knowledge that Kirk really needed something resembling the comforts of home, and a masochistic wish to explore my own reaction to American corporatism in the context of another country.

Waiting in line. Here I am. A big, fat American coming into big, fat Taco Bell to eat my big, fat chalupa. I imagined the other customers thinking that I expected to be treated royally, or that I had been wandering around Guatemala, hating it, and now, here at last, was finally food that I knew and loved. Ah. And I’m just that ignorant, to think it’s funny, hey, isn’t it a hysterical notion, to go into Taco Bell, won’t that be funny and ironic? Oh, the wonder of the universe.

The implications of my presence in that restaurant were too vast for me to be able to stomach all at once. It wasn’t just a playful jaunt for food. I took a glance at the menu and was thoroughly disgusted at the sheer caprice of the United States. We give ourselves permission to take food from someone else’s culture, repackage it, sell it back to them, and then reap the benefits (though Taco Bell technically mimics Mexican cuisine, not Guatemalan, it was similar enough to hit home). And the worst part was that here, Taco Bell was as good as any family restaurant. Held in high regard, even. The cantinas were the cheapest places to go here, not Taco Bell. Rich families ate at Taco Bell. Rich people, comparatively, worked here. And here I was, waltzing on to my country’s giant victory dirt mound to proudly order from the menu I was so sickeningly familiar with. I felt every bit the conquistadora. I felt ashamed of my country, of the cultural homogenization we were helping to spread at a terrifying rate across the globe. I felt ashamed of our bad, hazardous food. I felt ashamed that because of this Taco Bell, local cantinas and tiendas were losing money. We were sucking the culture out of this country through a gilded straw. I felt disturbed that everybody here had decided that this was a great place to go. No one in sight recognized the giant ghostly American dollar sign floating through the restaurant. I felt like a pirate caught mid-plunder, surrounded by treasure chests, draped in red velvet and gold medallions, swilling the brandy I stole from the king. I felt that by coming into this Taco Bell, I was sending several loud and clear messages to Guatemala – I support your country’s economic dependence on my country. I support unhealthy food. I support the empire of America. I support helping your leaders rob you so my people can remodel their four-bedroom homes, vacation in the Florida Keys, and buy the new iPhone 3G. I support the neo-colonization of your country and your culture. I support the virtual enslavement of your government to large, American corporations. I support all of this, and by god, I am going to eat a taco because I fucking can.

And who’s to blame? How does the world not revolve around money? It dawned on me like a sucker-punch to the face that the very nature of capitalism is to rob, pillage, plunder and rape others. Our entire society has been built on a system meant to push others down. Individualism. Robbing as many people as possible in the most efficient way possible. Making money. Harming other humans and not giving a shit (or not being allowed to). Business. And it really dawned on me, in a way it never did in the classroom, how horrible that is: how this system encourages selfishness, isolation, greed. It completely overrides our human urges to love, to care for one another equally, to be kind, to give selflessly. And the whole world, the whole world is run like this. The whole world is run by the desire to kill each other and run away with the money. What monsters have we made of ourselves? No wonder so much of the United States suffers from depression, no wonder there are so many murders, suicides, divorces, drug addicts. Our economic system is built like a giant pyramid. There is only room for one at the top. Any concept of true and equal community is shattered at the conception. We are doomed never to trust each other, to compete for dwindling resources, to practice conditional friendship and conditional love. The world is madness.

These overwhelming thoughts struck me at the precise moment that two other terrible things happened. The first thing was that I bit into the worst chalupa I’ve ever tasted in my life. I had asked for chicken: Kirk, of course, had ordered beef. And the second terrible thing was Kirk issuing the following statement:

“I don’t believe in hurting other people, but I do believe in capitalism.”

The combination of these words, the terrible taste in my mouth and the sinking feeling in my heart produced a physical reaction common to many humans when under extreme stress: I cried. I ate my shitty, shitty beef chalupa, my face turned red, my nose ran, and I cried. About capitalism. Into the processed cheese and micro-waved tomatoes. In the middle of Taco Bell.

Kirk helped me through this by saying “Well, I don’t think you have to cry about it.”

I was devastated. Devastated by this horrible, robotic system running the world and oppressing everybody, horrified at being stuck in a foreign country with a man who was completely incapable of ever reaching me, and defeated by the shitty, shitty beef chalupa I was eating in shitty, shitty Taco Bell on a shitty, shitty Monday night.

 

On Why We Don’t Eat Spicy Food Before Bedtime

I had caught a praying mantis / grasshopper in a jar. It was grotesquely opaque and had a disproportionately large head with fanglike teeth as the prominent feature. I kept it in a jar filled with water (apparently an amphibious praying mantis) and it was sort of my pet, only it was extremely hostile and evil and halfway dead already. A family member remarked on my prehistoric insect-in-a-glass-jar pet, saying that it needs food, it needs sustenance, and when was the last time I fed it? I didn’t know, I said. But I had this frog or tadpole-like creature, equally as disgusting as the praying mantis, somewhere else in the kitchen. I fed the tadpole to the insect in the jar and they swam through the ancient, dirty, clouded water before finally detecting each other’s presence. In the way rival fish do, they twitched upon touching each other, then were frozen for a second before the mantis pounced on the tadpole and caught its head in his mouth, biting viciously through the neck and swallowing it whole. Then the jar faded out through the atmosphere, the water became murkier and harder to see the insect carnage through.

The scene shifted to my grandmother’s living room, also wildly out of proportion. Everything was too big, too far apart – the carpet was the wrong color, dark blue and orange instead of cream. There was something digital about it. We were in the future, or a holographic vision of the future, or doing an experiment where we could see ourselves in the future – in any event, something having to do with time and space. My family was there in their physical selves, but they were not who they are. They were shells, or characters. We were on a mission, trying to reach something. We traveled along the lines of the rug and the curves of the chair and the lining of plastic bags. But the important point is that cockroaches (though I called them termites) were hatching in pods which I pulled out of my ears. They were born in green husks, and I could tell when they were there because fibrous strands hung out of my ears, which I pulled out. Sometimes they were already alive and moving. Sometimes they were still in husks and green until emerging, sometimes two or three at a time, crawling all over me and falling onto the carpet, disappearing into it and frightening me even more because I couldn’t see them, but knew they were probably scheming and procreating down there.

The cockroaches / termites would crawl out of my ears throughout the story. I was polluted with them.

I was in bed with someone and didn’t dream about the actual act but about afterwards. I got up from the too-large bed with a sparklingly white, fluffy comforter and terribly white sheets, to look in the mirror. I wore dentures over my real teeth, and the dentures were whiter, with differently shaped front teeth. There was something wrong with my own teeth. I went to the mirror feeling something gritty in my mouth. I took off the top set of dentures and looked down. The inside was filled with black, gritty material. Plasticky and gravelly. It was slowly decomposing. Not decomposing, but coming off. I looked again at my own teeth. They were fragile and yellowed. And there was a brown line across the top ones, marking where the dentures were. I tried desperately to pick it off and clean it, only succeeding halfway. My teeth were loose. Especially on the left side. Decaying. And graying.

 

Unfinished Children’s Story – Pearl Girl

Once upon a time, there was a little girl. She was perfectly normal, perfectly healthy, and perfectly smart, just like you!

Except for just one thing.

On the end of her left hand was a giant, pink, shiny PEARL.

She carried the pearl everywhere.

She had found it when she was young. It was lying on the sidewalk in ALL its pearly glory. The little girl liked it so much, she picked it up and carried it with her all that day.

She liked it so much, she carried it with her all the next day too.

She liked it SO much, the little girl carried it with her, in her left hand, that whole week!

She slept with the pearl (under her pillow),
When she took a bath, the pearl took a bath WITH her.
When she went to school, the pearl sat on her desk with her. The little girl’s teacher said “Why do you have that pearl on your desk?”
“Because it’s so BEAUTIFUL!” shouted the little girl so the whole class could hear.

So she and the pearl became the BEST of FRIENDS.

The little girl so loved that pink pearl, she asked her mom to buy her pink pillows and pink blankets.
She painted her walls pink.
She bought all new dresses, and can you guess what color they were?
…
PINK!

She painted her walls pink.
She wrote all her schoolwork in pink pen.
For Christmas, her family adopted a puppy, and can you guess what they named her?
……
PEARLY!

The little girl never did anything without holding onto her pearl.
After a while, something new began to happen.
One day, when she tried to set the pearl down to was her hands, she found that she couldn’t let go of that pretty pink pearl. It was STUCK to her HAND!

But the little girl wasn’t scared.
In fact, she thought it was pretty cool, because now it meant she would never be apart from the pearl.

The pearl clung to her hand during the little girl’s entire day.

The little girl didn’t mind that she couldn’t really USE her left hand, because now her pearl was with her ALWAYS.

She didn’t mind that she could only pick things up with one hand.
She didn’t mind that she could only wash one of her hands.
She didn’t mind that she couldn’t play BASKETBALL, BASEBALL, or DODGEBALL.
She didn’t mind that she couldn’t clap her hands, or ride a bike, or do a cartwheel.
Because she and the pearl were together!

 

Second grade

I am sitting at a table with Josh Thomas and Tyler Woods. The room is very big and bright, and I am very small. Ms. Lowry’s hair is a shade of reddish orange that particularly matches the carpet in the playcourt. We are at our desk. There are four desks total in our little corner of the room, all pushed together two by two to make a kind of big fake plastic table. We are either reading silently or doing math problems, I can’t really remember, and are all very absorbed in our work. I decide, completely on a whim, or maybe because I needed excitement that day, to shove my knee up into the bottom of the desk, so the desk does a little jump and makes a clunking sound. “Stop it, Tyler!” I say to the small dark-haired boy reading across from me. Josh, who sits next to me, casts a glare in Tyler’s general direction.
“What? I’m not doing anything?” says Tyler in indignation.

“Yeah you are! You just moved the desk!” I say emphatically.
“Nuh uh,” Tyler replies, settling back into his work. I decide to let it go for the moment. I bide my time.
Two minutes go by. The desk, propelled by my knee, jumps up again, making an even louder clunk.
“Tyler, seriously, stop it, it’s not funny,” I growl.
“What?! I didn’t do it! It’s not me!” Tyler yelps, eyes wide, leaning back in the yellow chair and throwing his hands in the air.
“Tyler, that’s really annoying, stop!” adds Josh.
“You did too do it. Stop lying.” I say seriously.
When I kneed the desk, I took advantage of my unusually long eight-year-old legs to make the actual area of the disturbance quite far away from where I was sitting. No one could possibly blame me for it, since the problem was clearly on Tyler’s side of the table.
Tyler’s protests gradually taper down to dejected silence. He angrily scribbles on his page and shoots Josh and I suspicious glances, knowing he’s being framed by one of us. Neither of them are aware of who’s really causing the trouble, and I delight in the confusion. I decide to give it one last go. Kneeing the desk as hard as I can this time, it jumps into the air, upsetting several of Josh’s papers and knocking Tyler’s pencil out of his hand. The desk lands back on the floor with the loudest clunk yet, drawing the attention of Ms. Lowry, who is helping a student across the room. Instantly, Josh shouts “Tyler!” and Tyler, eyebrows raised and bordering on tears, repeatedly squeals “I didn’t do it! I didn’t do it!”
“What going on over here, you guys?” says Ms Lowry, arriving at the table, her kindly red face temporarily contorted with irritation.
“Tyler keeps bumping the desk and he won’t stop and he says he didn’t do—“
“I DIDN’T DO IT! I DIDN’T DO ANYTHING! MS. LOWRY –“
“All right, Tyler, that’s enough,” says Ms. Lowry, who is God Herself as far as we are concerned. “I think you need a time-out. It’s not okay to bother Josh and Blythe. They’re sitting here trying to do their work, and you’re disturbing them. Go out into the hall and I’ll tell you when you can come in again. I want you to think about what you did.”
Tyler, who looks as though his whole face is about to explode, gets up from the desk and storms out of the room, having lost his faith in the entire human race. I feel a wave of a something I’ve never felt before sweep through me for a few seconds, and then I return peacefully to reading my book.