Something Fierce (18 page)

We didn't live at Sunnyland anymore, though. We'd moved right after I'd got back from Coroico to a high-rise on Arce Avenue, overlooking Plaza Santa Isabel, a few blocks down from Plaza Avaroa, but a million miles away from that life. Our secret political meetings were over, and we no longer saw Soledad and Rulo, with no explanation for that. The move had been sudden, and until we got there Ale and I had no idea where we were going. Afraid we were leaving Bolivia, I'd sobbed uncontrollably into my pillow. I loved the country now as if it were mine.

Adriana stayed with us for the whole week, as planned. Every morning we awoke bracing ourselves for the military marches we might hear on the radio or the tanks we might see rolling down Arce Avenue from our twelfth-floor window. Torrelio was so unpopular that Bolivia was on the brink of another coup or civil war. Repression was fierce, and the country faced an economic crisis because of corruption in the military.

One night as we lay in bed, Ale informed me that Torrelio was preparing to hand over power to General Guido Vildoso, his second-in-command, who had recently returned from training at the School of the Americas. “Vildoso will be in charge of returning the country to democracy,” she whispered in the dark. “Before things get too out of hand. The Yanks have given an ultimatum, and no one wants a revolution on their hands. Not with what's happening in Argentina, what with the idiotic military there losing the Malvinas War to the British and letting the population get out of control. Soldiers are standing up against their superiors and calling the masses to the streets. Not to mention the terrorists gaining strength in Chile. Any chance of an uprising in Bolivia will be quelled when people get the chance to vote and feel as if they are involved in the future of their land.” She swore me to secrecy before putting on her headphones and tuning in to “Tainted Love” on the Walkman we shared.

Ale spoke like this only since she'd started to date Luis García Meza Jr. Every morning she and I emerged from our high-rise to find Luis waiting to take her to school in the back seat of a bulletproof black car. I walked with Fátima, who lived in a high-rise just off Plaza Santa Isabel, and my new boyfriend Fermín, who waited religiously on the corner and always offered to carry my books. When Luis and Ale drove past us on the street, Luis always lowered his tinted window and shouted: “Hey, sister-in-law! Get in! I'll give you a ride! I'll even give your Commie boyfriend a ride!”

At which I'd shake my head, and the three of us would keep walking. At first recess Luis would tell me again how lucky Fermín was to be dating me, since that had saved him from getting on Luis's special list.

Fermín was one of the Altiplano Kings, the one in charge of running the record player and dropping the pamphlets. He and his friends loved to go on about Simón Bolívar and José Martí and Tupac Amaru and Tupac Katari, but all they did was intellectualize. They never referred to the blood and guts of the situation. I nodded and smiled, nodded and smiled. Fermín had been my boyfriend for the past month, and I was tired of being told how great the revolution was. I knew if he really was a revolutionary, he wouldn't walk around in his black beret with the red star quoting Ché Guevara for all to hear. He'd be underground, like Bob and Mami. Soledad and Rulo had explained that people like the Altiplano Kings were necessary for the revolution; unwittingly, they were spokespeople for the likes of us. But it still bothered me that the people who were risking their lives had given up the right to speak while mestizo, middle-class, artsy-fartsy people claimed the title of revolutionary for themselves.

Of course it wasn't so simple. The Altiplano Kings were taking a risk by speaking out and playing their music. And Fermín came from a lower-middle-class home. It showed in his only pair of school slacks, washed and ironed so many times they shone. He wore a silver airplane pin on his sweater and dreamed of being a pilot someday. He'd declared himself to me at the Montículo, the lovers' lane of La Paz. I'd said yes because he was nice and he loved me. But the truth was I was still in love with Ernesto.

Ale had started dating Luis for the fame it brought, but I knew it wouldn't last. She was still in love with Claudio, Ernesto's brother. They'd broken up and then made up a dozen times already. In the meantime, her dating situation was top secret, never to be shared with Mami, Bob, the helpers or the revolutionary cast of people we lodged. Like Kiko, the British twentysomething anarchist punk rocker who had stayed at the high-rise a few times, with his shaved head and steeltoed workboots. “I come from the north of England, from a line of coal miners,” he explained to Ale and me. “Times are tough now there, very, very tough. England is next in line for neo-liberalism. But we're putting up a fight, and we've always admired the miners in Bolivia. The miners here have balls of steel, and they fight for their rights to the bitter end.” Kiko carried his precious collection of punk tapes in a little black case, each tape carefully labelled. He'd learned how committed he was to being an internationalist revolutionary when Chilean resistance leaders in London ordered him to shave off his neon purple two-foot-high mohawk and take the studs out of his ears. In La Paz, he mixed in like a regular European tourist in his brown alpaca sweater,
The South American Handbook
peeking out of his dusty backpack. The last time he'd stayed with us he'd popped a tape out of his Walkman and given it to me. It was his favourite, Sandinista! by the Clash. I'd tucked it into my special hiding place for treasures, because I knew this could only mean goodbye. We wouldn't see him again.

On July 21, as Ale had forewarned, General Vildoso was handed power by Torrelio. It was a quiet changing of the guard, with no jets, no shooting, no curfews. Now it remained to be seen what Vildoso would actually do with the task at hand. It seemed obvious that the presidency would go to Hernán Siles Zuazo, who'd been elected twice already, the last time in 1980, without having the chance to govern. There was a tangible feeling of hope in the air.

One morning a few days later, Bob handed Ale and me an envelope, with the instructions that we were to take it to Plaza Murillo and pass it on to a woman who would ask us for directions to a charango stand on Linares Street. I was supposed to wear my rainbow suspenders, and Ale would be in her baby-blue Adidas sweat top. She was a preppy sort of girl, which was one reason she was so in love with Claudio. He dressed in matching alligator shirts and socks with a pastel frat sweater thrown over his shoulders. I preferred Ernesto's scuffed black motorcycle boots, faded baggy jeans and just-got-laid hair. I saw him sometimes at the bowling alley on Arce Avenue. Our eyes locked, but he never approached. The woman in Plaza Murillo would have dark glasses and a red scarf around her neck, Bob told us. Our evacuation plan, once the envelope was handed over, was to go for a leisurely stroll down El Prado, stop to watch the matinee showing of The Cannonball Run at the Monje Campero movie theatre, then go to a friend's house for tea before heading home. This was called losing the tail, in case you were being followed.

Ale and I arrived at Plaza Murillo on the M bus. Just as on every other Saturday at midday, the plaza was crazy with activity. Standing on the corner by the cathedral, we tried to look like a couple of normal teenagers hanging around talking. I remembered my acting teacher's constant exhortations for us to stop playing the emotion and start playing the action. Just as I'd come up with an action—I'd play the verb convince, as if I was trying to persuade Ale to do something—an older, elegant lady wearing large sunglasses and a red silk scarf stopped right in front of us. “Señoritas, would you mind telling me where Linares Street is? I've been told it's around here somewhere, but I can't seem to find it. Apparently the best charangos in the world are sold there.”

Ale and I looked at each other, deer caught in the headlights. The woman waited, a little smile playing on her lips. “Over there,” Ale pointed.

“Thank you,” the woman said.

I gave her the envelope in an underhanded way, and before I knew it, Ale had disappeared into the crowd, walking toward the statue of Pedro Domingo Murillo, a martyr of Bolivian independence from Spain, at the centre of the plaza. The presidential palace stood directly in front of us. I dashed after her, eager to spend the coins Bob had given us. We were surrounded by ice cream vendors, laughing children and cholitas selling shelled and baked broad beans, but I purposefully avoided the shoeshine boys, for fear of seeing one of my old classmates.

“Carmen!”

I jumped out of my skin. What if it was my first Bolivian boyfriend, Eugenio Aguirre, shining shoes while he whistled, hair combed perfectly to the side? I couldn't have my two Bolivian lives collide, not now, not ever. Not here, when the woman with the envelope was just a block away. General Vildoso was probably sitting in the presidential palace at this very moment. I wouldn't have the nerve to look into the eyes of a boy who worked from dawn to dusk, biting into life with a hunger never quenched, and have him see what I'd turned into: a bourgeois, Northern Institute brat.

“Carmen!”

It was Fermín, only today he was wearing an orange tunic and a carnation necklace. Clapping his hands, he danced with his comrades.

“Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare.”

One of the other Altiplano Kings was with him, beating on a drum that hung around his neck. They were with a dozen other people, chanting as they moved through the plaza.

“Fermín! I had no idea you were a Hare Krishna!” I said, trying to make it sound as if I'd just discovered he had an appealing hidden talent.

“Oh, yes. I believe there are many ways to counteract the age of Kali, and I've been meaning to talk to you about—”

“Oh, shit, where's Ale? Sorry, I have to go. I'll talk to you later.”

“Wait! Let me introduce you to Swami—”

And with that I took off. Ale was waiting for me, laughing her guts out as she leaned against a post. As the opening credits for The Cannonball Run lit up the screen, I realized I was going to have to break up with Fermín. Dating a Ché wannabe who played banned music was foolhardy from a security perspective, I told myself. But I knew the real reason was that I would never be able to erase the profoundly unsexy image of Fermín practising his religion.

14

“H
ELP!!!”

I choked out my plea a split second before I was dragged under the water again, my body forced into impossible contortions. Eyes open, I twirled like a whirling dervish in the deafening hum of the Atlantic. Yemaya, goddess of this ocean, had put me on spin cycle.

Sugar Loaf Mountain, the hill that was a trademark of this city, came into view. I reached for it, but a wave the size of a house slammed into my skull, and the undercurrent grabbed me by the feet. As my mouth opened to let out a scream, my lungs flooded with water. And then I let go. I'd have thought a life-or-death decision would take deliberation, but this was a split-second choice, made with conviction: I was dying, so I might as well go along for the ride. No longer mine to punish or please, my body was a sand-filled sack rolling around at the bottom of the world. My corpse would be washed up on shore, bloated and dull-eyed. As for my soul, it was already rocketing down a fibreglass tunnel toward a very bright light.

Two minutes earlier, when I was still alive, it had been August in Rio de Janeiro. Copacabana Beach was peopled with only a few locals and the odd tourist on this off-season morning. The sun had burned quickly through the clouds as pineapple vendors wound their way around the towels. Ale and I had contemplated the towering waves for a while before deciding to dive under them to reach the calm waters on the other side. The red flag flapping furiously in the wind had been our invitation to rebel, not an order to obey. We'd grown up swimming in Chile and at Long Beach on Vancouver Island, so we were experienced. A few Brazilian waves? Please.

As I shot along the tunnel like a cannonball, I was surrounded by voices: Mami, Papi, Bob, Ale, my grandparents, my cousins, my friends and Lalito's little-boy words. I travelled right through the faces that materialized in front of me, as if they were made of smoke.

We'd been in Brazil for a week, but as usual this was not a mere vacation. Mami and Bob had disappeared for hours at a time while Ale and I entertained Lalito in our hotel room and ignored the constant knocking of a middle-aged room service waiter who'd grabbed my crotch the one and only time I'd answered the door. That morning Ale and I had woken up early and come down to the beach on our own. The last time I'd seen her, she was being pulled farther and farther away from me, her face seized by fright, her arms grasping at the air.

I had almost reached the bright light when white noise exploded in my eardrums.

Someone was rubbing sandpaper on my left cheek. A hand had grabbed my right ankle. The white noise—static—was replaced by animated voices. When my eyes cracked open, I saw wet sand covered with tiny pebbles and shells. Somebody flipped me onto my back, and a dozen faces peered down at me, yelling in Portuguese. Two muscular men stood among them, panting and dripping with water: my saviours. I realized suddenly that I was naked. Gasping and coughing, I covered my privates with one hand as I yanked at my bathing suit, which had rolled down around my ankles. It took me a good five minutes to pull it back on. To think it took more time to cover your exposed vagina than it did to reach the gates of Heaven, assuming that's what lay waiting at the end of the tunnel.