Tales of a Female Nomad (5 page)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I laugh.

“No problem,” says Diego, probably relieved.

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

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

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

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

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.