In San Cristóbal de las Casas, on a street whose name I’ve forgotten, a dog bit my ankle. I kicked the mongrel in the teeth. He yelped, and a sharp voice called him away. I peeled down my sock. Not much blood, but the skin was broken in three places.
I raced back to the garden guesthouse where I lived, high up on the hill. I showed Gabriel the wound and told him the dog’s owner had no vaccination papers. Promises, but no proof. A scientist and my host, Gabriel stretched the skin with his right hand while little Isabella tugged the fingers of his left. It was almost time for comida and the kids were clutching their bellies in mock starvation.
“It’s not very deep,” he said. “Wash it with soap and water.”
In the bathroom, I picked off jagged crumbles of soap with my thumbnail and jammed them into the small holes.
The table was laden with tamales, salad, and agua de Jamaica, but I couldn’t eat. Before leaving the States, I’d received three rabies boosters and a warning I’d need more if I was bitten. I said, “Shouldn’t I see a doctor?”
Gabriel served himself. “If you want.”
The children got boisterous and shared a joke with their father. I thirsted down several glasses of the magenta agua as if it were medicine. Bright sun shone off the clay tiles and steeped the table the color of dark tea. The wood was probably mahogany, harvested from deep in the jungle. Since I started my job as a tour guide at the Lacandon culture museum several months ago, I’d wanted to go to the jungle. People said it was a place that swallowed you and burst green over your head. The lakes were pure and sun warmed. The Lacandons, supposedly the closest living descendents of the ancient Mayans, rarely engaged with the modern world.
I couldn’t stay quiet. I didn’t understand why Gabriel wasn’t worried, too. “Do you think they have the shots at the hospital?”
He kissed his daughter on the head. He said if I was concerned I could go to the hospital in Tuxtla, the state capital, two hours over the mountains. “The bus is very cheap.”
That night I went to the bar, El Cocodrilo, where they played “Black Magic Woman” three times in an hour. I ached for Fernando. In the months when we were together, we ordered another tequila every time the song came on, even if the last round was still full. Fernando hated Santana. I’d never heard of him, though I recognized the song.
There were a lot of things I’d never heard of. I was 17 and had graduated high school early to come here, to grow up a little, as I’d told my parents, who’d paid for my flight and helped me find a host family. Fernando was a Mexican-American with a heart-shaped face who’d just finished a master’s in teaching. He was spending the summer joyriding around his father’s country in a brown sweater. Tonight I was desperate to tell him about the dog. I wasn’t in pain, but I was scared.
But five days ago, Fernando’s fiancée had arrived.
I sipped tequila and tried to forget, and soon people I knew arrived: Stuart, the pale, skinny Englishman; Manuel, the Spanish museum director; and Zelda from Amsterdam who wore blue mascara. Stuart ordered drinks all around until two tequila shots and a Negro Modelo stared up at me.
“Like a fish, my young friend,” Stuart said, leaning into me.
Stuart was a friend of Gloria and Gabriel. They’d introduced him as “someone your own age,” though Stuart was 35, a teacher in the local schools. He’d taken me on a motorcycle tour of the San Cristóbal countryside. In the afternoons, he played piano in the museum courtyard. I told Stuart about the dog. “What should I do?”
“You told Gabriel, yeah? He’ll take care of you.” He looked at me with moony eyes, head too large for his frame. “Let’s dance,” he said.
Fernando didn’t like to dance; Stuart was smooth and easy on the floor. He mentored me on how I should move my body. “Not so stiff in the hips. You’re all shoulders. Open up more. Here.” Tonight, as on other nights, he linked an orangutan arm around my waist and guided me. “Easy, easy,” he said. “Let me do it.”
The faster numbers I danced with Zelda. We threw our arms around, whiplashing our necks, and laughed, baring teeth.
“I have to get rabies shots!” I said over the music.
“I never want to leave this place!” she shouted back.
Zelda and Manuel had just come back from the jungle. On their trips, the museum staff paid the Lacandon artists for the their handicrafts sold at the gift shop and oversaw the construction of casas de cultura, Manuel’s pet project. The casas were, as far as I could tell from the pictures passed around over lunch, simple wooden structures with a roof and dirt floor, open on all sides. Fat splintery posts supported the ceiling and displayed black-and-white photographs taken more than fifty years ago by the museum’s dead founder. The idea was to provide images of the community’s history in a public space. Lacandon youth could see their ancestors performing now-forgotten ceremonies. In the old pictures, the long-haired Lacandons wore cloth T-shirts down to their knees, walked barefoot, and carried curved machetes. As I said in my twice-daily tours, they called themselves the Hach Winik, the Real People.
Yet most of the people in the color photos documenting the jungle trips were museum staff. When I asked Zelda if the Lacandons themselves visited the casas, she said, “Of course. Why wouldn’t they?” I guess I thought they’d have better things to do, their own dramas to live. Kids wouldn’t be impressed by some backward-looking gringos hanging up pictures of their grandparents. Still, I was desperate to get to the jungle. When Manuel had invited Zelda on this last trip, I asked if I could go along, but he’d said there was no room. I could go on the next one. But I’d heard that before. When the lists of invitees were drawn up, nobody ever thought of me. On the dance floor maybe, but not for the jungle.
I raced back to the garden guesthouse where I lived, high up on the hill. I showed Gabriel the wound and told him the dog’s owner had no vaccination papers. Promises, but no proof. A scientist and my host, Gabriel stretched the skin with his right hand while little Isabella tugged the fingers of his left. It was almost time for comida and the kids were clutching their bellies in mock starvation. “It’s not very deep,” he said. “Wash it with soap and water.”
In the bathroom, I picked off jagged crumbles of soap with my thumbnail and jammed them into the small holes.
The table was laden with tamales, salad, and agua de Jamaica, but I couldn’t eat. Before leaving the States, I’d received three rabies boosters and a warning I’d need more if I was bitten. I said, “Shouldn’t I see a doctor?”
Gabriel served himself. “If you want.”
The children got boisterous and shared a joke with their father. I thirsted down several glasses of the magenta agua as if it were medicine. Bright sun shone off the clay tiles and steeped the table the color of dark tea. The wood was probably mahogany, harvested from deep in the jungle. Since I started my job as a tour guide at the Lacandon culture museum several months ago, I’d wanted to go to the jungle. People said it was a place that swallowed you and burst green over your head. The lakes were pure and sun warmed. The Lacandons, supposedly the closest living descendents of the ancient Mayans, rarely engaged with the modern world.
I couldn’t stay quiet. I didn’t understand why Gabriel wasn’t worried, too. “Do you think they have the shots at the hospital?”
He kissed his daughter on the head. He said if I was concerned I could go to the hospital in Tuxtla, the state capital, two hours over the mountains. “The bus is very cheap.”
That night I went to the bar, El Cocodrilo, where they played “Black Magic Woman” three times in an hour. I ached for Fernando. In the months when we were together, we ordered another tequila every time the song came on, even if the last round was still full. Fernando hated Santana. I’d never heard of him, though I recognized the song.
There were a lot of things I’d never heard of. I was 17 and had graduated high school early to come here, to grow up a little, as I’d told my parents, who’d paid for my flight and helped me find a host family. Fernando was a Mexican-American with a heart-shaped face who’d just finished a master’s in teaching. He was spending the summer joyriding around his father’s country in a brown sweater. Tonight I was desperate to tell him about the dog. I wasn’t in pain, but I was scared.
But five days ago, Fernando’s fiancée had arrived.
I sipped tequila and tried to forget, and soon people I knew arrived: Stuart, the pale, skinny Englishman; Manuel, the Spanish museum director; and Zelda from Amsterdam who wore blue mascara. Stuart ordered drinks all around until two tequila shots and a Negro Modelo stared up at me.
“Like a fish, my young friend,” Stuart said, leaning into me.
Stuart was a friend of Gloria and Gabriel. They’d introduced him as “someone your own age,” though Stuart was 35, a teacher in the local schools. He’d taken me on a motorcycle tour of the San Cristóbal countryside. In the afternoons, he played piano in the museum courtyard. I told Stuart about the dog. “What should I do?”
“You told Gabriel, yeah? He’ll take care of you.” He looked at me with moony eyes, head too large for his frame. “Let’s dance,” he said.
Fernando didn’t like to dance; Stuart was smooth and easy on the floor. He mentored me on how I should move my body. “Not so stiff in the hips. You’re all shoulders. Open up more. Here.” Tonight, as on other nights, he linked an orangutan arm around my waist and guided me. “Easy, easy,” he said. “Let me do it.”
The faster numbers I danced with Zelda. We threw our arms around, whiplashing our necks, and laughed, baring teeth.
“I have to get rabies shots!” I said over the music.
“I never want to leave this place!” she shouted back.
Zelda and Manuel had just come back from the jungle. On their trips, the museum staff paid the Lacandon artists for the their handicrafts sold at the gift shop and oversaw the construction of casas de cultura, Manuel’s pet project. The casas were, as far as I could tell from the pictures passed around over lunch, simple wooden structures with a roof and dirt floor, open on all sides. Fat splintery posts supported the ceiling and displayed black-and-white photographs taken more than fifty years ago by the museum’s dead founder. The idea was to provide images of the community’s history in a public space. Lacandon youth could see their ancestors performing now-forgotten ceremonies. In the old pictures, the long-haired Lacandons wore cloth T-shirts down to their knees, walked barefoot, and carried curved machetes. As I said in my twice-daily tours, they called themselves the Hach Winik, the Real People.
Yet most of the people in the color photos documenting the jungle trips were museum staff. When I asked Zelda if the Lacandons themselves visited the casas, she said, “Of course. Why wouldn’t they?” I guess I thought they’d have better things to do, their own dramas to live. Kids wouldn’t be impressed by some backward-looking gringos hanging up pictures of their grandparents. Still, I was desperate to get to the jungle. When Manuel had invited Zelda on this last trip, I asked if I could go along, but he’d said there was no room. I could go on the next one. But I’d heard that before. When the lists of invitees were drawn up, nobody ever thought of me. On the dance floor maybe, but not for the jungle.
by Jennifer Acker, N+1 | Read more:
Image: Photo by caliopedreams via Flickr.
