Elizabeth Rose

 

On the first night you brushed your teeth huddled around the blue pila, a large square concrete sink with three chambers. You were a gringo family honoring your oral hygiene despite the absence of running water. The water stored in the central chamber of the pila passed your visual cleanliness test, with the moonlight glancing off its ripples, but you knew that bacterial microbes lurked. No splashing of toothbrushes or cupping your hands to take a swig.

Instead, you shared a few drops of bottled Evian bought at the Atlanta airport by your teenage daughter. When the Evian ran out, your husband used Coca Cola. You were 4,000 miles from home and about to teach English in Guatemala.

As your family brushed you contemplated the pila. The four of you could have climbed into the central storage chamber, becoming immersed to your armpits.

                                                       ***

Running water was unpredictable in the central highlands where the indigenous Maya live. When the water ran, it was wisely stored in advance of tomorrow’s trickle. The pila was imported by the Spanish who placed the first fountains in a central spot in every town square. As the population grew the people placed private pila in the courtyards of their homes. At that time they had agua pura. Except for centuries of greed, wars, genocide and land grabbing, the water that night in your pila would have had a fighting chance of purity. Nothing in the natural world could have out-competed man at creating such a colossal catastrophe.

 

                ***

As you gazed at the southern constellations you missed your usual line-up of Big Dipper, Little Dipper and Orion’s Belt. But you reassured yourself that you could do this homestay with an indigenous family for just two weeks.

You were already an expert at crapping in the outdoors, if need be, and had brought a supply of toilet paper in a giant red suitcase. You had backpacked in Colorado, lived in a Spanish cave, hitchhiked through North Africa, bicycled in China and slept on a haystack in Ireland. You had the resume to qualify and this wouldn’t be insurmountable.

But it would take you days before you noticed the five-gallon blue bottle of agua pura the family stored in full sight in the kitchen. When you noticed you had to laugh, a small rueful laugh at your own blindness. It was a replica of the Belmont Springs bottle from home and yet you had missed it in your summation of objects in the kitchen.

Like a coloring book that asks the child to find everything mismatching in the picture, the sheer number of surprises was mind-spinning. No gas, propane or electric stove, an unplugged empty refrigerator, no spigot of running water and the buzzing cluster of flies congregated around the bowl of breads meant for your breakfast. A glance to the ceiling revealed open electrical wires. This was a kitchen called upon to feed four families, and now yours, three meals a day.

 

                                                           ***

You were sad when you first saw your room, smelling of old tortillas and beans. Like a jail cell, no window or closet. No fitted sheets on the bed, no pillows, no bedspread. You wanted to reach your white hand back through time just six hours, before your luggage was packed in the trunk of the Lexus, and open your well-organized linen closet smelling of Tide and grab a fitted set.

In the WC you faced a truth of your visit: Your hosts had never been to a Bed, Bath and Beyond, and why should they need to visit? A single industrial sized nail made a reasonable, though minimalist, toilet roll holder.

 

                                                           ***

 

You quickly got yourself in hand and began to adapt. You learned to bunch up a blanket and spread a towel to simulate a pillow. In the mornings, you drank lukewarm apple tea and ate small round sweet breads selected from the bowl on the table. Kellogg’s Corn Flakes, from giant boxes with the signature red rooster, were consumed with warm powdered milk. Over time, the small green squash, called quiskill, and a chicken bone in your soup became a treat.

You delighted in the bustling streets brimming with smiling people. You liked the dusty switchbacks crisscrossing the green hills between pińon pine, avocado and cedar. You laughed at misshapen trees on every hilltop that reminded you of Dr. Seuss. The hills were spotted with smoke clouds rising from open fires and stoves that reminded you of Little House on the Prairie, but soon you admitted this was another romantic fantasy. The cardboard shacks with aluminum roofs were nothing like log cabins, and the open fires in the living rooms created respiratory illnesses, a leading cause of infections in children and death in the elderly.

You looked into the eyes of the passing women, carrying lumpy mystery bundles on their heads
, and said buenos dias every morning and buenas tardes every afternoon, starting at one minute past noon.

At your lodging you heard 13 people all live underneath one roof without shouting. You saw uncles and aunts hug nieces and nephews, giving kisses just as loving as those given by the mamas and papas. You witnessed joyful reunions between adult siblings every Friday night, following five days of separation because work was in the capital, hours away. You saw the children play in the courtyard, digging with a spoon or flipping a plastic object. Once the littlest girl, just two, pulled down her panties to wee in the dirt. Her five year-old cousin stopped mid-game and, with a gentleman’s flourish, helped her yank her panties up before resuming their play. You witnessed a Saturday morning fiesta-day when 18 women, babies and children crowded into the kitchen and women patted out tortillas while others nursed babies on the floor telling jokes and gossiping.

***

On your return, while laying over in Atlanta, you used the bathroom just to celebrate the toilet paper flushing away. No longer would you have to store it in the little basket with the swinging lid. You ordered a green salad to extol the return of vegetables to your diet. You sat near a white family with three kids, all wearing baseball caps and trendy t-shirts. “Sit there and don’t move,” said the man, as he pulled too hard on the boy’s chair. The boy cried through his meal while no one offered consolation. Like leaving a trance you never knew you had entered, you missed the quiet murmurs redirecting restless children at the dinner table.

At home, you were both relieved and distressed. You had to reconcile a legacy of emotions. You were embarrassed by how tough you found the physical challenges and inconveniences. You were sad that your new friends might never have a vacuum cleaner, hair dryer, hot showers, clothes washer and dryer, coffee pot and a stockpile of food in a  working refrigerator, common conveniences in your country. You were guilty of impatience with delayed service in foreign restaurants. You shamed yourself for judgments of the poor. You assigned goodness to the poor everywhere—the ‘halo effect”–creating a kind of noble savage scenario. You knew your lifestyle was thievery, stealing more than your share of worldwide resources, despite your own efforts at recycling and driving a low emissions vehicle.

                                                           ***

You were happy to reunite with your kitchen with its potable, fluoridated and chlorinated water that flowed any time of day or night, and not just on certain lucky mornings. You filled a glass and drank the cool clean water that tasted like privilege.

Elizabeth Rose is a non-fiction writer based in Massachusetts.  She has published in the Boston Globe Magazine, the Newburyport Daily News, Newburyport Magazine, and the Northshore Jewish Journal. She is an MFA candidate in Lesley University’s Creative Non-fiction program. This article is the preface of her book detailing her experiences as a woman of privilege working in Guatemala.

Photo credit: ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA.. Photography. Britannica ImageQuest, Encyclopædia Britannica, 25 May 2016. quest.eb.com/search/137_3166756/1/137_3166756/cite. Accessed 20 Jan 2017.

 

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Kanani Foster

 

There is an airy humdrum whirring in the hospital room; wires hang and twist from bed to monitor and wall in a ceremonious blink of intermittent lights. Unlike the preconceived image of an omniscient heart monitor counting the moments between life and death, all is quiet.

My grandmother is curling in on herself slowly with each passing hour. Her heavy folded lids twitch while her soft dark hands paw at her face, and I am reminded of a fetus moments before entering the world, unaware of its surroundings and even its own self. She doesn’t hear my teary hiccups.

When I entered the room I called her name, apprehensive of even touching her. Last night, before the ambulances came, she did not recognize my mother, her own child. She screamed and pushed my mom away, frantic in the moment of not knowing, and then somewhere between her old couch to this hospital gurney she no longer responded to us. I am terrified of putting my hand on her shoulder, but I finally do. There is nothing here.

Sitting on the chair in the corner, I am acutely aware that this will be my final moment with my grandmother.

The only other death that had touched my sheltered life was a childhood friend. I could not remember the last time we spoke, but I did remember the news breaking over the school that day. That moment was only a point in my life, a marker to pinpoint how our paths were not explicitly joined, and neither her life nor death affected me directly.  It was simply a moment that made me sad, because I was acutely aware that I would not ever see her again.

This is different; I am watching a gentle death. It is astounding in the artistry and skill that is slowly taking place before me as organs find rest, the blood begins to slow, and breaths are pulled farther apart. I am sad that I am watching my flesh and blood wither. I am sad that I will never speak to her again. I am sad that I will not miss her as much as I should.

This death fills me with remorse to the opportunities I missed.

                        The knowledge and history that is gone.

                                    The relationship I could have formed.

 

***

 It’s hard to look at the withered man beside me. He is stripped of any bit of pride, vanity, and perhaps even his sanity at this point. My grandmother’s mouth hangs open like an old Japanese ghoul and I try to distract myself with the thought that, if spirits exist, hers had floated from her mouth like a soft exhaling of smoke. I suddenly have the urge to open a window to let her free.

 â€œWake up, Ma, wake up.” He is gently shaking her. I coax him into the chair next to the bed that he has already occupied for the past week, waiting. The wait is up and I am almost glad to feel the stress bleach itself from the room with a new shade of grief.

Over the past months we have watched my grandfather falter in speech, physical ability, and memory, yet in this moment he is more aware than I have seen him a year. He may not understand the complex renal system failure that claimed her, out but he feels the loss. He felt it when the realization dawned on him that these were her last days.

 

***      

I guess it’s selfish, but I haven’t visited my grandfather in two weeks now. I can’t bring myself to unless my mom pushes me to the small cabin across the way, muggy, full of his resounding grief. He has a compulsive need to fix the blinds that are not broken, and when he does my mom will whisper that the dementia is a blessing. I still can’t look at it that way.

My grandfather flutters between a drugged oblivion of minute details and past lifetimes to stuttered confusion at the here and now. Some visits he ignores me, staring blankly at another old Western film on AMC that he has surely seen within the past week; other times he paws at his leathered hands, stuttering in his excitement for this meager 30 minutes of company.

Like most people, I don’t stay very long.

He doesn’t get many calls and obsesses over the two times a week my mom takes him out grocery shopping, counting the days till he gets to go out again and do something. Busy work, it’s what keeps him going these days.

The cabin is unbearably humid as he always liked it, pretending he was back home in Hawaii or Florida, and sweat rolls down my neck as I try to talk to him. It has only been a few hours since our listless drive home from the hospital, yet my grandpa is completely focused on the shades covering the sliding door. At least he has that damned dog, I’m grateful for it even as it yaps and nips at my heels. He’d be lost without it.

The sliding door shade glides on a track that his stick is repeatedly poking and prodding,

                  “It’s stuck.

                        It’s stuck.

                                    It’s stuck.”

It’s not. He is relentless though and I try to think of something that might bring him to me and away from desperate thoughts of fixing something that’s not broken.

I ask, “What’s that tattoo of?” the ink on his body is faded blue on a canvas that is soft and crinkles like tissue paper. This tattoo seems to be a knife with what might be a hand holding it.

 â€œI was stupid. This was my- my first tattoo.”

The tattoo was ugly. Badly drawn with ink that faded quickly; he might as well have gotten it in prison with a safety pin. I point out another, one that his shirtsleeve covers. This tattoo is a piece of history; a black skull with air force wings and a banner overhead reading “Billy”.

 â€œI designed this. We, we all have it.”

  “Who?”

 â€
œSixteen of us. We were in the same–” He stutters, trying to remember.

 â€œGroup? Platoon? Squad?”

 â€œYeah”

I point out another that his shaking fingers begin to sweep, this one being a red rose. It’s a cover-up job–lying underneath it, coiled in its petals is his ex-wife’s name that my mother has forgotten and he refuses to utter. I wonder how Grandma felt about it. Was it something they bickered over? Or something that was never spoken of? Another is the word Hawaii on his forearm, his social security number on his left shoulder, even his name is splayed across his arm. As we point and unveil new sketches of his own history I feel him begin to let go of his grief and reminisce on each moment in time he has saved on his body; each mistake, each victory and each love.

                                                           

***

Grieving is an art t unique to each person. My grandpa burned all of her clothes three days after she died, sprinkling the lawn with the ashes. My mom had her actual ashes sent directly to her brother in Hawaii–“It’s what she would’ve wanted”—but I know that holding my grandma in that state would’ve been too much for her. She sat by my grandmother’s side till her chest finally caved in, refusing to rise again, and that’s closure enough for most.

I cried like everyone else but somehow still managed to crack a joke sitting in front of my grandma’s body; her mouth unhinged and eyes shut, earning me a sharp look from my mom till she began to laugh and cry once again. It was sad but my life continued on after we left the hospital, leaving me to wonder at my grieving.

I miss her. I really do.

I miss the little things though the most; her genuine interest in my life, her sticky rice that seemed stickier than most sticky rice, her long-winded stories that never concluded.

One day, at the Asian Art Museum, seeing the walls hung with ornate silk kimonos decorated with golden threads spun into peonies and koi, another memory returned–my grandmother clambering down from the upstairs of her cabin holding a parcel. Inside were her own kimonos from Japan, an airy blue with white flowers and a heavier white with gold flowers coating the bottom trim. There was no time or reason I would wear them, but I held them close.

Standing in the museum I foraged my mind for the kimonos’ whereabouts; my parents’ house in the closet, under my own bed, in storage? I didn’t know. It rattled me and I felt like a foreigner to this heritage and culture. I felt as silly as the white girls dressed in kimonos and sloppy geisha makeup waiting for the museum’s Japanese fashion show. I had lost my grandmother and a piece of my heritage.

My great-grandfather came to America on a tiny boat from Japan, ready to pick pineapple on the islands of Hawaii to save money and become someone. I remembered all this but I forgot his name, he would always just be someone now.

Later I call my mom asking if she remembers esn’t. Mizaki? Maybe Matsu? She has to think on that. There is no use in asking my grandfather; his speech is falling away along with the ability to even recall his last meal.

It is all slipping through the cracks.

 

 

Photo creit:

E.Schiele / Mourning Woman / Ptg./ 1912. Fine Art. Britannica ImageQuest, Encyclopædia Britannica, 25 May 2016. quest.eb.com/search/109_143051/1/109_143051/cite. Accessed 20 Jan 2017.

Adam Maarij

 

I stand on the dirt of a soccer field and watch the world become more still with each gust of wind. It whisks away the heat of my body and seemingly my color–makes me ashen, much like everything else in this dead field. Neither grass nor trees are spared, their glorious bright green and warm brown simply gone.

I’m always early for practice. Few people are here, including my coach. Usually more come half way through, but I figure today is too cold for most of them.

The year began with a bright fervor, teammates coming in an hour early to get into gear. When practice began each one of them would skip ahead the line, doing exercises again and again, with little regard to the ones behind them; They only cared about becoming better.. The sun was bright—too bright, obnoxiously so, sticking its rays like needles into our eyes, adding a layer of tan to the rainbow of skin colors on our team. That was fine. Even when the cruel field threatened them with its perilous bumps and holes, changing the trajectory of the ball, and sometimes ankles, that was fine, too. They would still push themselves to the very limit—every coach’s dream team.

A few weeks later, though, after a couple of games, their ardor would dwindle, like the passing of fall into winter. Not a rush, but a gradual process, one our coach did not notice but everyone else did. By the time it was the last quarter of our season, only half of the team would regularly show up.

Which was nothing knew. They were good, and this is how winners end up–arrogant, apathetic, foolish,  It didn’t both me, even seeing my teammates laze away the precious talent I would give an arm and a leg for. OK, maybe there was a bit of hate.

I always came back, whether I wanted to or not. I tried to give up, I really did, but it wasn’t my choice anymore. My mind is fully awake only when the ball is under my feet.

I stare at the scans on my knees, the bruisers of my feet, at the scrapes on my thighs. I listen to  my ankle’s popping noise when I walk downstairs. Yet my body would not listen. It had to come, a to practice.

So here I am again, still standing in the cold, still incapable of leaving when all others do.

A soccer ball rolls up to my feet.

“Hey! You up for a two-versus-three?

“Always,’’ I answer.

 

Photo credit: Soccer. Photographer. Britannica ImageQuest, Encyclopædia Britannica, 25 May 2016. quest.eb.com/search/115_2660289/1/115_2660289/cite. Accessed 20 Jan 2017.