Something Fierce (5 page)

We boarded a train back to Cusco the next afternoon. I figured all these different stops had been to throw the secret police off the scent. There had been no meetings or hushed conversations in the middle of the night since Ayacucho, so the road we were following must have been mapped out then. The smell of rotting onions, chickens and sweat was so familiar by now that I liked it. It was the smell of Peru. Poor Peru.

The four of us were crammed onto one wooden seat, our knees knocking into the pile of people facing us. By the time night rolled around, our bones were sore. Mami massaged my neck and shoulders, and Bob put his arm around Ale, pressing her close. The train rocked from side to side, lulling everybody to sleep. Except me, and the couple across from me. The man's knees pressed into mine as the woman rode him like a bike. Her blouse had come undone. I stayed as still as I could, because I knew if people were humping in the dark across from you, you shouldn't cramp their style. That was my cousin Gonzalo's favourite expression. He would be doing his Elvis impersonation in our East Vancouver living room, and I'd go up and try to poke him. He'd push me away, put his hands on his hips and say, “Carmencita, you're cramping my style.” Then he'd go back to being Elvis, singing “All Shook Up,” and I was allowed to watch only as long as I stayed on the couch. Thinking of him now brought tears to my eyes. I wondered if I'd ever see him again, with his Fonzie gestures and car collections.

We spent the day in Cusco, then boarded a night bus that said COPACABANA, BOLIVIA, on the front. Another detour to confuse the secret police, I figured. We made the usual pit stops at the villages along the way, and after one of them, Bob got into an argument with another passenger, a loud big-city guy. The dispute revolved around who was to blame for Bob getting hit in the chin when the seat in front of his flew back. Bob had been holding ten kilos of onions in his lap at the time and clutching a baby to his chest, as a favour for one of the standing women. Her feet were swollen to the size of cantaloupes. The argument got so fierce that when the big-city guy accused Bob of being a pretentious hippie come to help lazy Indians with their shit-stinking babies, Bob flew into one of his rages and yelled that he and the big-city guy should go outside and duke it out at the next stop. To my amazement, my mother jumped in and shouted that we'd take their whole family on. She was going to punch out the big-city guy's wife, who had dyed red hair and blotches on her face from skin bleach, and she wanted me to deal with their fifteen-year-old daughter.

“Roll up your sleeves and get ready to fight these racist, social-climbing sons of bitches, Carmencita,” she commanded.

I was seized by terror. Ale sat stunned at my side. We'd never seen Mami or Bob fight anybody. Fist fighting was as foreign as a game of cricket. The daughter was bigger than me, and I'd probably get creamed. One look at the wife's pointy nails and you knew that a scratch from that hand could tear your face apart. Bob was tough, but the husband was big, and I could see it getting really bloody before one of them went down. Plus, if we were arrested, our cover would be blown and the dictator of Peru would send us marching right into Pinochet's grip. I didn't know what had come over my mother, who usually talked Bob down from his rages, but now we were doomed. My heart pounded ferociously in my chest.

It was hours until the next stop, and I spent the time practising to see if I could make a tight fist. But once we got there, Ale, Bob and Mami were fast asleep, and the fight had been forgotten. I peered out the window as the big-city guy loaded his family's suitcases onto the back of a very old Indian man. This was referred to as muling it, I'd learned. Mules were Indian men who waited outside the markets and stations to offer their services. They had pieces of rope dangling from their bodies, and their bare feet looked like old shoes. If you accepted his offer, the mule bent over, and his back became the counter on which you piled your belongings. He would grunt as the load grew, his eyes focussed on the ground. After a while, all you could see was two brown legs with the feet shifting around, trying to find the right balance. When you were done loading, you kicked the mule in the shins. Two hands would appear from beneath the boxes, bundles, suitcases and pieces of furniture. They'd throw rope around the pile, making a web, and then the mule's fingers tied the ropes tight around his chest. You kicked the mule in the calves, so that he knew it was time to go, and he carried your belongings home.

Mules didn't live long. They looked ninety, but the oldest they lived to be was about thirty-five. Usually they died from being mules, but sometimes they died at the hands of the military or the secret police, who liked to use mules for torture practice and then throw their bodies into unmarked common graves. I'd learned about the lives of mules when we were in Ayacucho, because a mule had been telling his story to a school kid with a typewriter in the main square. Bob and I were sitting on the next bench. The mule spoke in Quechua, but the kid translated out loud into Spanish as he typed. At the end of the story, the mule said in Spanish, “My name is Señor Condori Mamani, and this is my story.” He'd wanted his story to be written down, and the kid had promised to take it to the library for him. The kid tucked the mule's story into the pocket of his starched white smock and then turned to the next person in line.

That night, from the bus window, I watched as the big-city guy kicked and spat on the old mule who stood in perfect stillness, his dignity intact. I was sorry that Peru wouldn't be our last stop. I wanted us to join the resistance here so we could help the angry teenagers in the streets and the little boy outside the hotel and the chambermaid whose children were dying of diarrhea and the Indian family who had carried the tables and chairs for the Austrians and this old mule take the streets and squares and mountains and make Peru their own. I'd be ready to participate in whatever way they wanted me to.

A TIGHT CIRCLE of men pushed in on us, hands shifting in their pockets. Night had fallen at the Copacabana bus station. We'd made it safely across the border, and Mami and Ale and I were holding down the fort while Bob searched for accommodations. Surrounding us now was a group of Bolivia's best pickpockets. My mother stabbed the air in front of her face with a rusty butcher knife she'd pulled out of her bag.

“One step closer and you're dead, sons of bitches,” she snarled.

Ale and I clung to her like the koala bears from Australia we'd seen pictures of. We must have looked ridiculous, because we were both taller than she was.

“Don't worry, my precious little girls. I've got everything under control. Watch and learn, kids, how to deal with motherfuckers.”

Mami took a step forward, dragging us with her. The tip of her knife touched the chin of one of the pickpockets. The circle broke, and the men scattered. I wondered if they had gone to get reinforcements to really do us in.

As we waited for Bob, I replayed the border scene for the millionth time.

We'd changed buses in Puno, a small city on Lake Titicaca. “Documents. We're at the border with Bolivia,” the driver had announced soon afterward. When I caught Mami and Bob glancing at each other, a shard of terror pierced my gut. Now I got it: They were carrying something. They were carrying something dangerous in their packs. Bob's Adam's apple moved up and down, and my mother's nostrils flared. I remembered Uncle Jaime, my father's best friend in Chile. They said before he was shot by the firing squad, his tongue and testicles were burned black. As we moved toward the front of the bus, I saw men in dark glasses with guns and German shepherds waiting at the door. An invisible axe struck me in the chest. But when the men with guns had asked my mother what she had in her pack, she'd looked them in the eye, shrugged her shoulders and said, “Clothes. Dirty underwear.” Some U.S. dollars had changed hands, and then we'd been ordered back on the bus. The four of us hadn't been taken to the shack where the people refused entry were sent. They were all Indian, all poor, all Peruvian. There were two young guys with fear clamped in their jaws, a woman with a baby on her back, a girl who'd kept her chin up. The German shepherds had bounded around them barking, stirring up dust that landed in their shining black hair. I was afraid for them, and I swallowed and swallowed what felt like broken glass cutting its way down my esophagus. Bob rubbed my back.

That afternoon, a boat with our bus on board had crossed Lake Titicaca, the highest lake of its size in the world, delivering us into Bolivia. The boat was more like a raft, really, and the driver put bricks all around the tires to keep the bus from rolling off. Everybody cheered when we were firmly back on land.

I'd been confused when Copacabana first came into view. From watching Barry Manilow sing his hit song on TV, I'd thought Copacabana was a place where you fell head over heels in love while doing the kick ball change in platform shoes. But I'd gotten it wrong. Copacabana was the home of a brown Virgin with pink neon lights flashing off and on all around her. She commanded the top of a steep hill, and people crawled up to her on their knees like little ants, murmuring prayers in Spanish, Aymara and Quechua. We'd arrived on August 6, Independence Day. Bolivia had freed itself from Spanish control in 1810, and every year thousands of people came to this sacred place to celebrate. Everywhere we looked there were temples and shrines and candles burning. Our Lady of Copacabana was the country's patron saint. She kept the roads safe, and seemingly every car, cart, bus, truck, taxi and bicycle in the land was here to be blessed. Everybody prayed for protection from accidents that would kill them or turn them into vegetables or leave them deformed.

As we walked through town, it became evident that every thief in Bolivia was here as well, using razor blades to rip people's pockets and purses open. The thieves robbed everybody: gringos, skinned-kneed believers, nuns, students, whole families. They didn't care. People chased them through the streets and markets, but they were fast, and they helped each other out. Also, if you made too big a scene, they might slide a palm across your face, razor still in place, and leave you with a scar you'd have forever.

Under the circumstances, my mother decided it would be best to keep her butcher knife visible. She held it up against her chest as we manoeuvred around the processions and offerings that littered the sidewalks. Since she was a kill-two-birds-with-one-stone kind of person, she took the opportunity to remind Ale and me that organized religion had been invented by the rich and powerful to keep the poor down. “See?” she said, gesturing to the prostrate pilgrims. “Who's on their knees right now? The Indians, the most exploited of all.” She gripped her knife with ferocity. “Once upon a time, Bolivia was the richest country in the world. The city of Potosí was crowned by a shining silver mountain. But the Spaniards arrived and enslaved these people—though they resisted, they put up a damn good fight—and made them mine that mountain until every last ounce of silver was gone, across the Atlantic to Europe, along with all the gold taken from the Incas and every last resource in the South. Genocide was committed in the name of the Church and progress. That's why we are atheists.”

We passed a red-haired priest who was sprinkling a procession of taxis with holy water as he recited prayers in gringo Spanish. The priest was Irish, probably, Bob said. Buses had their own separate procession, as did trucks. Shiny Mercedes-Benzes driven by men in Ray-Bans lined up as well. The streets were packed, with everybody wolfing down chuño, charcoal-black potatoes, and meat patties called salteñas. Boys and men winked and puckered their lips, murmuring “Mamita” and “Delicious” and other, ruder comments. I noticed that there were mules in Bolivia, too, waiting in perfect stillness with their ropes. The ones with bleeding knees must have climbed the hill to ask for protection from the Virgin.

We left Copacabana on a newly blessed bus with its own little shrine to the Virgin at the front. The highlands stretched for thousands of miles around us, interrupted by the sharpest mountains I'd ever seen. Our fellow passengers crossed themselves every two seconds. I kept my face still so my mother wouldn't know what I was doing in my head: asking the Virgin to keep the roads clear and open for my family's journey. Whatever the journey was. Wherever our destination might be.

We drove for hours, until the land broke like a Greek plate and there was a drop in the road. I looked out to see nothing but sky. The universe. Then I looked down, and there below us was a city in a bowl. A bowl like the deepest crater on the moon, with a little house stuck to every last square inch of it. The bus drove over the edge of the bowl and down. Independence Day and the Virgin were being honoured here as well, because hundreds of people were dancing in hand-woven clothes with matching hats. Ladies with ten skirts in every possible colour twirled in unison, bright threads woven through their braids. We continued our spiral into the belly button of the South. Little kids chased after a homemade ball, wild dogs fought over a bone, armies of men carried big bundles on their backs, and finally our bus reached the bottom, honking its way along cobblestone streets with gold-encrusted cathedrals growing out of them. The air stank of shit and rotting garbage. The sounds of Aymara, Quechua and Spanish filled my ears.

A couple of guys in moth-eaten sweaters threw our packs down from the roof of the bus. We stood on a sidewalk in Plaza Murillo, which looked to be the main square, amid the bustle of newspaper boys, shoeshiners, pinstriped businessmen, Indian women on errands, secretaries, beggars and office workers in baby-blue smocks. There were Indian women selling tiny dried-up llama fetuses and kiosks displaying beautiful cards made of carved bronze and wood and silver. If we'd been allowed to write to our father, I would have bought one to send him.