Story Slam ~ Momentos of Home

I got slammed, friends.

I was selected as one of eight contestants to stand before the Busboys and Poets audience and a panel of judges and tell my story of home.

It was a packed house, and many supportive friends had come to cheer me on. My hair was looking pretty good despite the humidity. I wore my colorful Mexican camisa. I had the sound guy play a song by my favorite huapangero, Guillermo Velazquez y los Leones de la Sierra de Xichu, as they announced my name and I danced up to the stage.

But it was not easy to compete with homeboy stories about the ‘Mayor for Life’ and rants about endless, senseless murder in the hood. How about the fellow who opined about Metro? The problem is not lack of funding, he told us, but lack of love.

These stories, so close to home, DC, USA, were told extemporaneously, limbs and lips loose, while I, the gringa, stood still, shielding my eyes from the spotlight, and carefully read my well-edited words from the typed page. Mine was a story of a different home, not found here, in a place, but in fleeting moments, on my journey through Mexico.

Momentos of Home

It’s another day fighting Mexico. On the Vencedor bus with the backed-up bathroom, we all hold our breath anytime someone ventures in. Seven hours traveling in the driving rain from my pueblito in the high plains desert has me squirming in my seat. But I welcome the deluge, like a baptism, after endless months of dust and burning sun. I plug-in my headphones and close my eyes to block out the noise: the crying baby behind me, videos overhead blaring violence in Spanish, the restless niños across the aisle. The guru whispers her wisdom in my ear: ' You’re going to die and I’m going to die and we have these moments together.'

I sink into the seat, lazily crack open my eyes, and notice the little boys are playing with their tongues. I blink and pull-out my ear buds, curious what they are doing.

‘Su len-gua se si-en-ta co-mo un car-a-col,’ the little one says with perfect diction. Your tongue feels like a snail? I grin at their discovery and my comprehension of it.

It’s the older brother’s turn. ‘Ahh-bra,’ he says, ordering his little hermano to open wider, grabbing the tongue and pulling on it. ‘Ewwwe,’ the older boy cries, an exclamatory that requires no translation.
The mother beside them sleeps right through: It’s the only way she gets a break. But my seatmate and I are riveted. Strangers, we bond through our mutual eavesdropping.

For all the alone time I’ve had, the lone gringa in my rural village, divided by language and culture and a subtlety of small-town suspicion, I feel an instant kinship to this señora. The expectation to do or fix, develop or improve that has defined my Peace Corps service is non-existent on this bus. It’s a relief to just be.

The bus pulls-off at a muddy truck stop. There’s a long line at the toilet. I pull papery rectangles from a napkin dispenser and wait my turn. Inside it’s dark. My eyes adjust. I suspend myself over the hole in the ground then flush with a bucket of water I fish from an oil drum.

Outside, the smell of coffee and cinnamon, exhaust and pork fat, hangs on the wet night air. Men in splattered aprons chop barbacoa on a greasy woodblock, piling stringy meat into double layers of tortilla. We stand around the plywood table, spoon guac sauce and chile verde, runny, green and super spicy, onto our tacos. I slosh back into the bus with raindrops on my head and chile on my tongue.
When we land at Terminal Central, my seat mate and I turn to each other and smile. I wonder if we’ll part ways with Mexican cheek kisses, but instead we bid a polite buen vieje and shake, the American way. I watch as the niños, like barrel of monkeys, are pulled through the station by their mama, around the corner, then out of site.

You’re going to die and I’m going to die y tenemos estos momentos conjuntos.

 ~~~

O’Hare Airport is decked out for Independence Day. American flags hang regally from the rafters of the shiny concourses. Embarrassed by the touch of patriotism, I snap a few photos when no one’s looking. It’s Saturday night in Chicago and I’ve got some time to kill, a three-hour delay to DCA. But Mexico’s taught me something about patience.

I find a bar playing the baseball game, and Julio from Jalisco serves me a tall Blue Moon with a bright wedge of lemon. We speak Spanish because now I can, and I feel a little bit proud. He’s proud too: he’s lived in the US for 24 years, he tells me. And I’m living in his country, for the last year, I say, and one more to go. We laugh about this cambio de casas, trading places.

My beer costs 10 US dollars including tip, a lucky Mexican’s daily wage. I take a final precious gulp and head for the baños. I’m awed by the granite countertops and polished marble floor, toilet seats with protectors that rotate to a clean place when you press the button. Whiiir. Endless rolls of toilet-paper and automatic flush. Full-length mirrors for primping, soft peach light that makes you look like a movie star (though I’m playing a raggedy traveler), soap in the dispensers and your choice of hand-blowers or towels for drying.

At the gate the children sit quietly reading books and tapping Ipad screens. Airport TV hums overhead reporting go-local organic markets, heirloom tomatoes and artisan cheeses. The AC purrs, the laptops click, the air hostess smiles, English is spoken.

America makes it all look so easy, smooth, in-control. It’s not fair.

The flight is announced and we line-up by zone. As I file down the jet way I feel both drawn and repelled, straddling two worlds, two homes, the orderly and spontaneous, the haves and have-nots, divided by a thin line that is thickly fortified. And I get to enter.