Maria and La Reina

9. 22.10

I’ve been slacking on my blog updates, keeping notes of things I want to share but never actually writing the posts. It’s happened for a couple of reasons one being that I hate to sit in my room typing away when I should be out meeting people. Another being that some things are just hard to write about.

While I have my computer out and no real plans for the morning, I wanted to mention a home visit I made here not long after I arrived- one of those things that I think will be hard to write about it. I think the visit itself scared me or just bothered me so much at the time that I wasn’t sure I even wanted to share it. Now that three or four weeks have passed however, I still find myself lying in bed thinking about it so I figured I’d give it a shot.

It was a cool afternoon a couple of weeks ago. It had just finished raining, as it does often here in the afternoon, and I was out trekking in the mud with the town’s nurse, Maritza, one of a handful of good friends I’ve made in Bolivar so far. We were off to inquire about baking bread up the hill with one of the two families in Bolivar with a bread oven.

The woman with the oven, Erlinda, I think her name is, was easy to find. We yelled up to her house from the street and she seemed happy to invite me to bake bread with her the following day. She actually ended up flaking on me but that’s not what this story is about. At the time, I was excited about my bread-baking prospects, content to have plans to put in my date book, happy to be walking around town with a local instead of doing it alone. We were on our way back down when a woman named Maria, who had helped us find Erlinda in the first place, invited us in.

Maria is a round lady. Not pleasantly plump. Heavy. And well, kinda dirty. The kind of dirty that makes you uncomfortable when you’re not “accostumbrada” (accustomed) to it. She invited us in in a forceful, ‘you actually don’t have a choice,” kind of way. I let Martiza lead the way, happy to let her do most of the talking.

We walked first into a dark room lit only by the sun coming in through the front door. There on the floor lay a large mattress where an old lady slept soundly wrapped in wool blankets. On deeper into the home, we were invited to sit at a wooden table where the afternoon’s dirty dishes were piled high, small piles of rice and bones surrounded by buzzing flies. Across the dirt floor walked not only a kitten but also chickens, chicks, and ducks.

Water dripped from a faucet into a large cement sink which held more plates and bowls. On the ground around it were small plastic bags filled with trash, a bucket filled with orange peels, cracked egg shells, uneaten hunks of bread. When a kitten climbed up onto the table Maria whacked it to the floor with a force that surprised me. There was something about this whole visit that I found immediately unsettling.

Maria brought out tin mugs full of some desert that I hoped wouldn’t upset my stomach. I ate it slowly, in small bites. When Maria brought out a bowl of meat, I didn’t refuse but decided not to eat it if possible. I tried to be animated, chatting along with Maritza as she inquired about family, work, the upcoming fiestas in town. I followed along the best I could until Maria’s daughter who they call “La Reina” (the Queen) caught my attention.

In quiet mumbles she was asking for something of her mother. “You’re hungry? Want more food?” her mother said loudly in her direction. Maria scooped a bowl of rice piled high with chunks of fried pig. Chicharon. The girl said barely a word. She sat crouched on the bench next to her mother and shoved a brown piece of fatty pig into her mouth. She chewed loudly, smacking her lips, starely aimlessly in front of her.

La Reina is five years old. I’m used to a little younger but I know little kids. Little kids are curious. To me they’re enchanting, they catch your eye and get you smiling about everything and nothing. They ask silly questions and notice every detail. This little girl was so different from the many little kids I’d known. She did none of those things I’m so used to seeing in a five year old.

Instead, she gnawed at her pig and began to moan, quietly at first and then more loudly. So loudly that I wondered why no one else was reacting. Her mother didn’t seem to notice. Maria talked on and on, offering us food and suggesting that I teach a summer preschool program. But I could barely follow the Spanish I find difficult to understand anyway. I was lost in the sound of that moaning. Lost in the almost dead stare la Reina held while she chewed. The cat jumped on the table before her and, without a word, the girl swatted it forcefully, nearly threw it, to the floor just as her mother had done minutes before.

Eventually Maritza and I persuasively said we couldn’t eat another bite. Maria wrapped up our pig, urging us to come visit again soon. We assured her we would, left quickly and hurried down the hill back to the health post. I was glad it was over. And I haven’t been back. But I’ve seen Maria in town, seen her daughter in the preschool. And I can’t see her, la Reina, without thinking of that day, that moaning sound, the cat being tossed to the floor. I don’t like seeing either of them maybe because I know they’ll invite me in again.

There was something about that afternoon, that woman and the way she tended to her daughter like you might tend to a pet. Something animal in the way her daughter herself acted. The way she ate quickly, crouched up on that bench. The way she never spoke. The way she moaned, groaned, licked her lips and fingers. It was unsettling. At the time, I took deep breaths so the tears I could feel behind my eyes didn’t give away my obvious discomfort.

Now looking back on it I wonder where exactly youth development should begin. They say with the young people, with the adolescents, which makes sense to an extent. But what if you begin with the mothers? What if you could change the way parents talk to their children, discipline them, think about them? That child could feel the effects of those changes right into adolescence and long after. Even pass those changes onto their children. Like I’ve said before, I’m still a ways away from starting my own projects here but I can already tell how my day to day experiences are changing my plans, making them better and more realistic. It helps put my two years into perspective. With so much work to do, maybe it isn’t such a long time after all.