Corinne O’Shaughnessy

Word Count 2,520

It is pitch dark and pouring rain when I step out of the Oaxaca airport to look for Laura, the woman my landlord suggested I hire to pick me up and bring me to my new home in a country I’ve never been to.  

“Laura will meet you by the sculpture of the guitar,” she said, but I don’t see a guitar. I see a giant bug. I speak very beginner Spanish and Laura speaks no English, but we WhatsApp each other and somehow her son finds me and brings me to a car so small, I expect 20 clowns to jump out. I don’t think my suitcase will fit. I’m sure I won’t fit. Laura’s son drops my suitcase easily into the vertical trunk and I squeeze into the back and search stealthily for a seatbelt, but find none. 

We drive onto the highways lined with car dealerships and I see an Office Depot and I think a Kentucky Fried Chicken, but mostly I see car tires being swallowed in the flooding streets. The car windshield is also fogging up so Laura’s son wipes the condensation off with her scarf repeatedly while she struggles to navigate and we all struggle to communicate and sheets and sheets of rain continue to fall. 

“Bienvenidos a Oaxaca!” she yells over her shoulder, laughing.

 Amazingly, we make it to my new home. 

I fall asleep in my strange new bedroom in an apartment where nothing is plugged in and the sheets and blankets are unfamiliar and it’s still pouring rain outside. Sometime in the middle of the night, I hear a crash, thud, and I don’t know, because I don’t know what normal sounds are here yet, but I think cats have fallen through the sky light and landed in my living room. Even without ringside seats, my street dog neighbors, mis perros callejeros, begin barking their favorites to win the cat fight that ensues, using the quality of the screeching to determine which cat to place their bets on. I lay flat on my back and stare at the ceiling, afraid to move, afraid not to. If I try to break it up, will the cats turn on me? When it’s finally quiet, I’m still afraid. In the morning, I’m sure I’ll find pieces of dead cat in my living room. When I don’t, I scan the patio. Thankfully, I find nothing. 

*

I’m in Oaxaca to learn Spanish, because it was something I’ve always wanted to do, and when I turned 60 I was confronted with the reality that someday was very finite.  The food here is famous and it is delicious, but I feel like I haven’t had a vegetable in days, so I go to a recommended restaurant near my language school and the vibe is all Williamsburg Brooklyn hipster, catching me off-guard. A very thin man at the table next to me is sporting black toenail polish, and had paused to do a few push-ups on the steps on his way in. There are salad choices, so I order kale. I remember biology class and know this is risky, but the man next to me is sporting black toenail  polish! Certainly, this is a place where you can trust the lettuce. I engage in this type of magical scientific reasoning way too often.

I go to bed in the middle of the nightly torrential thunderstorm and awaken a few hours later with a tremendous desire to vomit and stomach pains rivaling those I experienced in labor. I’m on the toilet in seconds and I have been in Oaxaca less than 48 hours and I’ve already gotten Montezuma’s revenge. Am I allowed to say that? My primary care physician of the past 20 years used those exact words when I told her of my plans to go to Mexico. It was a when, not if, she’d said, but she’s Mexican, so I think she’s allowed to use that phrase. Am I? This is what I ponder while sitting on the toilet wondering what the hell I’m doing in Oaxaca, with a newfound fear of fresh vegetables, ice cubes, and the tempers of stray cats. 

 I could try to learn Spanish at home.

*

Mornings, I scan for slugs seeking refuge from the nightly storms in my bedroom or living room. I use the pronouns he/him, though I know this isn’t fair. “Is that him? Did he get in here again?” I think while surveying the floor. Sometimes, it’s a leaf, but when it’s him, I use a paper-thin napkin to throw him out the door, yelling softly, “Back where you belong!” 

Insects are a common topic in the conversation hour that follows two hours of grammar. The sculpture of what was supposed to be a guitar, probably victim of autocorrect, was actually a giant chapulino.  Oaxaca is the home of the grasshopper. Grasshoppers are ground into salsa, served whole as a guacamole topping, or snacked on like popcorn. There are grasshopper farms. I smile trying to imagine one. 

I’ve taken a mental inventory of all the possible creepy crawly life I could find each morning and decide slugs are the best. They move slowly. As far as I know, they don’t bite. And, I kind of feel sorry for them. But I also know slugs belong outside. I don’t know where I belong.

*

I am sitting at the dining room table when my chair starts trembling, the vertical blinds in the large picture window start swinging, as does only one of the two overhead hanging lamps. Then I feel a strong wind even though the windows are mostly closed. I am hyper aware of being completely alone, tucked behind two locked gates in this Colonial city. I look up how to say Ghost on Google translate – fantasma! Ah, I nod my head up and down, my eyes surveying the open room once more. Just in case, I text my son Liam and ask him to find out if Oaxaca is in the path of a hurricane.

Then my landlord texts me to see if I am ok, do I need anything? A 7.1 terramoto or earthquake has just occurred near Acapulco.  We are about 200 miles from the epicenter, but Oaxaca felt the seismos. Liam responds around the same time to tell me it was an earthquake and asks what my apartment is made of? Concrete, I text back. Go outside, he texts. There could be aftershocks. In New York City, you go into the hallways of your apartment building and confer with neighbors and figure things out together. I don’t know how to do things here. 

 It’s raining and I’m sleepy, I respond.

 You should still go outside, Mom, just to be safe.  

 I don’t go outside, but I do pack an escape bag, then go to bed, feeling terrible for those who’ve been so badly affected.

 “Mom,” my other son, Seamus, says. “You don’t have to stay. Just because you told everyone you were going to live in Mexico doesn’t mean you can’t change your mind when you get there. Don’t be embarrassed. You can come home.”

 For years I had a partner to discuss things with. Then I didn’t. I’ve never wanted to use my boys for advice, but I’ve run out of options. I tell Seamus I’ll give it a little while, and sure enough, my stomach improves and I meet a few people at school. Most are less than half my age, intriguing and fluid. They are here until the weekend. Or for a week or two, a month or so. A few are here for an undetermined amount of time like I am. They’re curious and active and give me faith in the future. One, who also looks like she could be a Williamsburg hipster, is actually a missionary from Florida. The word missionary makes my eyes pop open.

*

Name what matters, a dear friend tells me after she’s read a book that includes this as advice for positive life changing strategies. My internal chatter finds me repeating it often until I realize that even though I am in school three hours a day, I am never going to learn Spanish without more interactions.

 I sign up for dance classes at El Salón de la Salsa de Carlos Vargas. I get ready at 6:30 each evening for my 7:00 o’clock class by trying to talk myself out of it. Are you crazy? You look like a fool. Just meet someone for coffee… I allow this brain chatter for a few minutes, then tie my sneakers and head out.  

 When I arrive, Carlos greets me and pulls me on the floor full of locals and one German man with tremendous will and zero rhythm, and asks the lady next to me to help and I begin following her bachata moves. I stay down at one end, while the actual class goes on at the other, and Carlos pulls that lady away to dance with a partner-less man and a teenage boy, Tony, takes over. I’m following his steps ok, but when he adds the arms with turns, I tie myself into knots. Tony is patient and kind and laughs when I laugh at myself and before I know it, I’m kind of dancing, and kind of speaking Spanish and definitely laughing. I float to the ceiling and see myself alive. I have spent way more time than I like to remember not feeling alive.

 At the end of the evening, I struggle with my Spanish to tell Tony, now sitting on a chair wrapped in his girl’s arms, that he is a wonderful teacher. His smile is punctuated with perfect Chiclet teeth and his girl repeats laughing, “Sí, el es un gran maestro.” I think I might have just shared a double-entendre joke, and I walk home on the poorly lit streets with the disappearing, reappearing sidewalks, smiling, comfortable in the shadows.

*

 I wake in the middle of the night to another thunderstorm. Un tormenta. I fall back asleep, but when I swing my feet over the side of the bed in the morning, they land in two inches of water. I turn the light on and the bedroom and most of the living room is flooded. The bathroom and kitchen are dry. I text my landlord and she tells me she will send someone to mop in a few hours. 

 I hope they’re strong, I think.

I roll up pajama bottoms, move my shoes floating on the closet floor to higher ground, and begin my morning ritual of coffee, homework, and checking email. I get dressed in the kitchen, the only room that has a fairly dry path to the front door. After school, the cleaning woman is still mopping and she announces she will help me move my bags to the apartment next door. I decline her kind offer to help and move my things next door while she continues mopping. I add inundación and seismos and tormenta to my notebook.  These three words resonate too well with me.

*

Spanish school consists of grammar lessons, conversation practice and weekly outings. Today, my book bag is packed with an umbrella, water bottle, and notebook. All that’s missing is a permission slip. My classmates and I are visiting Teotitlán to learn from indigenous artisans about their crafts.

 As we’re getting ready to leave, it’s announced, We’re going in two cars, girls in one, boys in the other. 

I’m horrified. 

What? But I want to go with my friends? 

My classmates Nikko and Maia and I have bonded. 23- year-old Nikko and I have been classmates for a few weeks. Maia joined us 4 days ago. There are only 2 to 3 people per class. We form a crew quickly. De repente, we’re allowed to get in the cars according to our classes. Crisis averted. 

Our driver, Laura, is the same woman who picked me up from the airport. Oaxaca is a city with a small-town vibe and she feels like an old friend. She tells Nikko and Maia about the harrowing drive she and I had from the airport, laughing throughout. We look at the sky, happy it’s clear. We arrive in Teotitlán and it feels empty, but Nikko tells me he’d gone hiking nearby the weekend before and the town was full of tourists..

 As we look for Casa Viviana, the candle making artists, I think a parade is heading toward our car which is a little confusing without spectators. Twenty or 30 people are marching, all playing brass instruments. 

“It’s part of a funeral,” Laura tells us. “This is the procession on the 40th day after the person dies.” 

I think a marching brass band procession is an absolutely perfect way to go out. I will add that to my will.

 We find the beautiful rustic complex and wander, absorbing the scenery of skeleton, skull, and cactus candles, as well as beautiful large and small colorful hand-dipped candles. An elder gives us a candle making demonstration in Spanish and Zapotec and I am struck at how similar Zapotec sounds to Navajo. She lets us have a try and it is of course much harder than it looks. 

 At the textile shop where they make and dye the yarn, then weave rugs and pillow cases and table runners, we learn the entire process from wool to finished product is natural and fascinating, but we grow a little uncomfortable when the ending is clearly meant for us to buy one of their products. 

“I’d buy something,” Nikko says, “but I don’t have a home.”

“Mi tampoco,” I say. My life’s possessions are sitting in a 6x6x6 storage space. 

“I won’t have one for I don’t know how long,” Maia says. She is 32, speaks eight languages, and her next assignment for the International Red Cross is in Yemen. 

 We slink out. On the drive back to the city, the sky in the direction we’re heading is muy obscura.

As we near the city, the skies open up, the streets begin flooding, and Laura’s windshield fogs again. She turns into a side street to avoid the larger, moreflood prone one, but we quickly become lost. Laura blasts the heat trying to keep the condensation at bay, and turns yet again. This street seems more like a wide sidewalk and it turns out to be a dead end. She has to back up avoiding the drainage ditch on one side and parked cars on the other and Maia directs her using “A Maia” and “A Nikko” because using left and right when going backwards is confusing.  We’re using our fists to clear the foggy rear window, when Laura yells to me, “Tu traes las tormentas, Corinne, tu traes!”

We all laugh nervously, then harder when we finally make it home. 

Yes, I think I do bring the thunderstorms, but I’m learning to live within them. Because they do go away, eventually, and I’m starting to feel like I can belong... wherever. 

For now, at least.  

Corinne is a retired New York City public school literacy teacher. Her essays have appeared here and in HerStry.com, The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, and reideasjournal.com. She also recently participated in Read650.org's presentation of Haunted, true tales of the macabre.

Her short fiction has been published in SurvivorLit.org and BookofMatchesLit.org.

She currently lives in Mexico where she finds people so much more gracious.