Friday May 2, 2008
I practiced my lie on the way home tonight. Walking the three blocks up the winding Lorezo Piedra, around the piles of crumbled stone from construction projects I never see being worked on, and past the green graffiti of a tearful face (buttressed by small windows which peer into an equally green overgrown courtyard) that I keep telling myself I’ll take a picture of, I recited the clumsy Spanish I would use to tell my family I was feeling nauseated. It wasn’t true; I in fact had more energy than I usually do returning home after my night class. I had not even been forced to fight heavy eyes during my long and jerky bus ride home – something which I have become accustomed to despite the fact that the buses here seem to run more on the cacophony from their obligatory treble-heavy and thunderous music (reggaeton or love ballads or English music I previously thought only appropriate for Bar-Mitzvahs), than the diesel gasoline that spews clouds of black and runs through engines I can feel vibrating in my ears and newly forming fat deposits.
Tonight I attributed my alertness to the fact that I was alone. Peter, whom I teach with, had taken a taxi to the Centro to meet his visiting parents, and without my commuting partner – whose maleness provides a tangible amount of security – I naturally adopted my persona of heightened awareness. It is a persona that will take time to perfect, for while it entails that I be conscious of the happenings around me, it also requires that I not be a happening myself, that I be as invisible as possible. Imperceptibility is a strange goal to have every time I am in public, one that generally runs counter to my personality and therefore does not sit too well with me. Nonetheless, it is a necessity, and something I actively and willingly seek. But no amount of practice at avoiding eye contact with men or not letting the rough bounces of the bus throw me off my balance will neutralize the reality that I am a gringa, and therefore permanently perceptible. And every time I board the 12, which has a route that continues to outlying towns and pueblos, my gringa-ness is that much more distinguishable. So tonight on the bus I only glanced up from the ground or away from the window to occasionally meet the eyes of the staring women and children in order to discourage them from doing so. I even tried to not nervously check the position of the gigantic flying beetle that had also boarded the bus, fearing my glances would betray my fear and somehow invite the thing to fly near my face, which could only result in a frantic and spastic (and hardly discreet) bodily reaction.
The bus ride tonight, like most of my experiences in Cuenca thus far, was a solitary one. It is a solitude that is solid and substantial and it seems to increase my separation anxiety and I succumb to its power more than I should. Its real force is that it is strongest when I am surrounded by other people, even those I have come to know and feel relatively comfortable with. Only too aware of my lacking Spanish skills, I find that even if I can understand what is being talked about around me, I have nothing coherent to say in response. This is especially true given that the majority of conversations which take place among females my age are about their children, namely how long they breast fed, and where they will go to school, and their weight, and their sleeping patterns and what the occasional egg rub rituals have said about their health. Were these even in English, I would have nothing to contribute. At times, I can sense the superiority these women feel they have over me, and it is at these times I wonder most why I chose to leave family I do have, albeit still childless. And it is at these times, and the times when I just don’t understand what is being discussed, that the solitude is its strongest, and that it tempts me into real, physical solitude.
So jumping from the bus (quite literally – the inability of the buses to ever stop completely belies the cultural acceptance of tardiness), I decided I did not have the willpower to withstand a night of my difference and silence and confusion being expressed in every conversation I was not having, every joke I was not getting, every time I was the only one not laughing. So I took three blocks to prepare my sentences about not feeling well enough to accompany the young couple I live with to the birthday party of a perfectly nice and courteous young man who lives below us with his beautiful and kind wife. Entering the house, my face betrayed my preoccupation, so when Lupe, the dueña of the house, asked me right away what was wrong, I let my lie of nausea fly.
I should have taken the time to realize that house was empty except for us and to remember that making plans in Ecuador rarely leads to the actual doing of them. That was my first thought when I was told, as Lupe prepared me tea for my stomach, that Angelica had gone to a baby shower and David was out with his friends. I sipped my tea and realized I had just wasted a perfectly usable lie. But realizing that this was not a solitude I had chosen, not one I had lied my way into for my own comfort, I suddenly felt alone.
The truth is that I do not have any friends, and that fun is not a word I would regularly use to describe my life in Cuenca thus far. And the truth is that I know most, if not all, of that is my fault. I know I should try to speak Spanish even if I know it is inarticulate, that I should study more in my spare time, that I should suppress my feelings of loneliness and be active in order to dispel them. And I know that there may be more useful things than fun now, that I came here to become educated and challenged, that my life before Ecuador had been too much about fun. And I know that loneliness is not all bad, that if I came here to learn things about myself I need to be with myself. These things I know. And I am confident that there will be a times when life makes me happy, when my Spanish will be noticeably better, when I will be able to understand a joke. But tonight, I could do nothing but be alone.
