My Writing Journey

A Swim, a Scorpion, and the Sting of Transformation

(Continued)

I seemed invisible to the other family and friends there, all of their focus tethered to my mother’s blank, pale face. My wet bathing suit dripping onto the slick green Mexican tiles that she was so fond of.

I’m not sure if anyone told me then that my stepfather had drowned off the coast of Baja. My boyfriend must have left the house without me knowing, or even that was something I had forgotten about that afternoon. I do recall staring numbly down at the tiny white octagon tiles of my shower, watching the lines of black grout dissolve from gray into nothing, as the sedatives my father had given me took effect. The saltwater washed from my body was of the same ocean that claimed my stepfather.

It could have been my endless summer. After my mother learned I’d dropped out of college, she handed me a perfectly clipped newsprint rectangle. The LA Times travel section smelled faintly of the cinnamon Dentine gum that substituted her cigarette habit.

Sending me on a trip was her raw attempt to correct the tragedy that had me blown off course. As a nineteen year old, I had rose-colored dreams about Louis Vuitton luggage and jetting off to the South of France, but instead I was boarding a train with an old suitcase at Union Station near Olvera Street. The ride took me to Morelia Michoacan, where my mother had me enrolled in a new school. It’s strange, I don’t recall packing, or even if I wanted to go.

I don’t even recall saying goodbye to my boyfriend.

For 1,700 miles I shared a sleeper with a fellow student; he was handsome.

I still can’t believe my mother was lax enough to arrange for me to share a berth with a complete stranger. In the name of education, my mother’s Lutheran boundaries thinned to a consistency of strained broth. She believed education was the key to great civilizations, and that travel was key to being well-educated.

When my biological father moved on, she was saddled with sole responsibility to support and raise us four kids, which left her little time for anything beyond work. To experience different cultures, my mother took to watching foreign films. Being the youngest of my siblings at nine years old, my life mostly consisted of the Barbie world within my room—so naturally she dragged me along for the sake of a cultured education.

When we went to see Women in Love, my mom whispered, “It’s shot in Europe, should be beautiful.”

I recalled little more than naked men fighting in an elaborate living room, and someone getting clocked in the head with a paperweight. The scenes were strange to me at the time and upsetting to my stomach. When my pack of Milk Duds dropped to the sticky theater floor, I just left them there.

I don’t believe she noticed.

I wanted my mom to be happy, so I often kept my mouth shut. From grade school to high school, I mostly stayed out of trouble. But I wonder if seeing those bohemian films flawed me as a kid, making me the center of unwanted attention from male teachers in junior high. I was sporty, bookish, and creative. A gangly girl, but their older eyes seemed to recognize something about me that I couldn’t. I dreaded going to their classes, but there was also curiosity. I wondered what unspoken boundary they would cross.

My days in class were spent avoiding them, mostly.

But the times I couldn’t avoid left a mark. A visceral keloid scar thick with shame, embarrassment, confusion, anger…

I never told my mother.

On the train to Mexico my baser instincts led to a few artless stabs at seducing my bunkmate. The clumsy attempts must have been enough for him to disregard my warnings of tourista; he scarfed down questionable tacos at every station vendor and was in the washroom for most of the trip. I rationed the last-minute sticks of gum and peanuts my mother had stashed in my purse.

He and I were both a bit slimmer when we were collected in Guadalajara by our respective host families.

My host mother was a Rubenesque widow. She insisted that I call her Anita Chula—which would be as unreasonable as me insisting to be called charming, delightful Dana.

I wasn’t about to challenge her, though.

She seemed kind—spoke only Spanish, which was mostly okay because my mother was a Spanish teacher, and I’d spent a few summers living and going to grade school in Guadalajara. I was far from fluent, but I could get by with the help of a fat worn conversation dictionary, and a shorthand of pantomime with simple words. If I forgot myself and spoke English, Anita Chula would mutter something under her breath, and I’d see more plate than food as a reminder of my mistake. It was effectively Pavlovian.

At school, all classes were taught in Spanish—even cooking class, which I looked forward to; I was simply hungry. In la clase de cocinar, la maestra encouraged us to drink tequila as we chopped, patted, and fried. One evening I had a few shots too many on an empty stomach, after listening to my handsome train companion gush hearts and flowers about his new girlfriend, Rosario.

I managed my way out onto the street in search of a phone café. This was back when even landlines were rare, and cells were as real as Maxwell Smart’s shoe phone. By the time I found the café it was closed and the night was dark, save an occasional aura of light from an ancient lamppost above the raised wooden plank sidewalk.

Alone, drunk, and despondent, I started back to downtown.

I saw what looked like a giant lobster meandering along the dusty planks. The lone street I walked could’ve been a mockup for a taco salad western, or so my tequila fueled hallucination might have suggested at the time. The pesos I’d brought for the payphone jingled in my pocket as I stepped closer. I realized the lobster was actually the granddaddy of all scorpions, with a gargantuan upwardly curved tail. As it walked, I could hear its pointy legs clicking against the wood.

Pesos don’t go far these days (my sister uses them to make cool jewelry), but on that night my ten thumbs fumbled one into the slot of a payphone I had never noticed in front of the Cathedral of Morelia.

I called my mom.

I don’t remember what I said, but in my drunken sputterings I forgot to keep negative thoughts inside, and I must have worried her enough, because she promised to send more money and visit me at Thanksgiving.

I stayed away from Tequila after that, and any spare pesos were spent for bus fare on the notoriously rickety Tres Estrella’s camiońes. Every chance I got, I bought a ticket to another town, seeking respite from the heavy-lidded attention of Anita Chula, in search of experiences that might cobble me back together.

The buses stopped at every dusty migra checkpoint, formalized by a roughhewed wooden table. They were often painted in deceptively cheery shades of pink, teal, or yellow. A stack of tissue-thin papers was weighted with a rock, and the table was manned by gun slinging Botero-esque men in tan. They would board the bus searching for contraband. For a few pesos, they might turn a blind eye to indiscretions and the passengers’ assortment of barnyard animals.

I remember one trip to Ixtapa Zihuatanejo, where I sat behind a leathery, skeletal gentleman who had grey cataract heavy eyes, and a brick-red chicken roosting on his shoulder. That chicken with its bullseye stare would raise its third eyelid each time it pooped on the old man’s sleeve. I don’t recall how many times he winked at me on that journey, but it was both sad and funny.

In my life I’ve been forced into maturity. Situations requiring a great deal of fortitude, reflection, and ultimate acceptance.

I can’t say whether it’s fair or not, or even if it matters, because lingering in the ether is another player, one that isn’t concerned with my childish or adult dreams and plans. Call it chance, or fate, or bad luck, these experiences have made me the perfect and flawed person I am today—which is why I write.

With wry fondness and gratitude, those experiences became rich veins to mine.