Drunks, Words & Doctors

Deconstructing Death

2010-08-31T22:05:00.001-07:00

IMAGE CREDIT: SARAHMCD

"WHY ARE WE SO BAD AT CARING FOR THE DYING?"

PUBLISHED ON SEED MAGAZINE / BY IRIS MONICA VARGAS / AUGUST 30, 2010

We stand under the bright, warm lights of the surgery room with young surgeon Pauline W. Chen. As the lights illuminate the hairs on the back of her neck, we watch her as she pokes a hole through the patient’s belly, into his diaphragm. Our fingers fuse with hers, as she clears away the cobweb-like tissues between the heart and the spine. Soon our entire arm has penetrated the body of another person. Between the transgression of the act and the reassurance of that warm space, we feel, as she does, the hardness of the vertebral bones on the back of the forearm. Against the tender skin on the underside of our wrist, we, too, are surprised by the strong, twisting contractions of the heart.

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The Day Pain Stopped

2010-08-12T00:08:00.001-07:00

Remember to get the weather in your god damned book—weather is important. That’s what Ernest Hemingway wrote John Dos Passos in 1932. A century earlier, John Collins Warren already knew this lesson well.

His diaries—fragile, yellow pages that look as if they had crystallized underneath a thick cover—always begin in the same way. In each day’s entry, written from 1844 to 1846, he specifies three crucial items: the temperature, the pressure, and the direction of the wind.

On the morning of October 15, 1846, it was sixty degrees, with winds blowing from the West. Warren, a senior surgeon at the Massachusetts General Hospital, which he had helped found, spent an hour at the medical school at Harvard where he dismounted a Mastodon bone. After attending two important uterine cases, Warren went to Brookline to attend to his greenhouse, possibly to pick a variety of delicious pears and berries. That night he went to sleep very late. This day would be of no relevance were it not for the fact that it precedes the next.

October 16, 1846, hailed a happy hour: on that day pain was conquered at the top of the Bulfinch building, at MGH, in the city of Boston. This round room was later christened the Ether Dome, a room that earlier filtered the horrific cries of the unfortunate, subjected to surgical procedures without anesthesia.

Some surgeons at the time still regarded surgery as an inferior part of their profession, and themselves as little more than armed savages—a remnant of the previous century when country practitioners, if lacking their usual instruments, did not hesitate to sharpen a cheese knife and borrow a carpenter’s saw to get through an amputation of an arm or a leg.

The novelist Fanny Burney left the most poignant description of what it was like to undergo a mastectomy in 1810. “…when the dreadful steel was plunged into the breast …the air that suddenly rushed into those delicate parts felt like a mass of minute but sharp and forked [daggers]….”

Some patients, worn out by desperation and fear of surgery, committed their own deaths. Others, such as veterans of the Napoleonic campaigns, refused to subject themselves to any comforts—what they called the refuge of cowards—choosing pain over comfort proudly. In 1789, a physician named Ebenezer Hunt subjected himself to the operation of a cancerous tumor near his ear by Dr. John Warren, father of John Collins Warren, without any painkillers, bearing every stroke of the knife while sweating profusely down his cheeks but never uttering a shriek nor even flinching.

Such was the reason that would have made October 16, 1846, a memorable entry in Warren’s diary. On that day, he probably underwent the services of his barber for half an hour, as was customary. Dressed in his “colored” coat with metal buttons, a waistcoat, boots, and long breeches—daily cleaned—he probably would have arrived at the hospital early to prepare for his operation, the first surgical operation to be performed under the influence of sulphuric ether.

Warren had been approached by a dentist named Morton with the request that he try an operation using a new anesthetic preparation he had supposedly discovered. Morton said this mysterious substance, when inhaled, allowed a surgeon to “regulate at pleasure” the time at which a person remained asleep. Warren, having been assured that the vaporized liquid would be harmless, agreed to employ it in the operation of Gilbert Abbot.

To the surprise of Warren and the other gentlemen present, the patient didn’t shriek, although at times he did move his limbs and is recorded to have uttered “extraordinary expressions” indicating pain. Upon waking up, however, the patient assured everyone he had not felt any pain at all.

On October 16, 1846, it was sixty degrees and the wind was coming from the south. That morning Warren went to the Medical College to make experiments on the renovation of decayed bones with glue. In his diary entry he describes in two sentences the most agreeable properties of such glue. He records the operation he later performed in two more. He calls it “interesting,” and doesn’t say more.

Sources: Details for this essay were obtained from the journals of John Collins Warren, available at the Massachusetts Historical Society, and the MGH Archives.

Painting: Ether Day, by Robert C. Hinckley, Boston Medical Library

[This essay was originally published in MIT's Scope.]

Warts & That Thing

2010-07-07T09:10:00.001-07:00

Note: Names, Country or origin and certain details represented here have been changed to protect people's identities.

A mother and her daughter are in room number three of the small emergency department, waiting. The doctor, a tall, kind man in his fifties, had already talked to the mother, a very small Ecuatorian woman, with his broken Spanish. "I have already asked them why they are here but I'd like to ask them again if they already tried going to the girl's pediatrician," the physician tells me when I arrive. I am a Spanish medical interpreter working at a hospital frequently flooded with faces and languages from other lands. A nurse enters the room right after I do. She stands beside the doctor, arms crossed, her head inclined forward, her eyes looking straight at the mother above her specs, waiting for something, almost predicting what that something will be.

"Does your daughter have a pediatrician? Has she seen the pediatrician for this?" the conversation between the physician and the patient's mother begins.

"Yes, we tried," the woman answers. "But the next appointment is very far away, not until the end of the month, so I decided to come here."

"That's it! I'm outta here! I'm not gonna stand this," the nurse says, disgusted at a mother that, for some reason, she has deemed terrible. It's a strange reaction, I think to myself, and I cannot yet understand what has triggered it.

"So tell me what's going on," the physician continues casually, ignoring the episode. "You speak English, right?" he says, this time directing his attention not to the woman, but to her daughter, an eleven-year-old.

"Yes."

"Why did your mother bring you here today?"

The girl purses her lips and moves them right and left on her face, seemingly uncomfortable at something. "It's my thing," she begins, pauses, purses her lips some more, turns her head to the side and down, and then resumes, "My thing.... My thing that's private, the private part? It itches and itches."

"How long has this been going on?"

"For a few days."

"Two days? A week? A month?"

"A month, yes," the girl concedes.

"Are you sexually active right now?" the physician asks next.

"No-oooo," the girl whines, looking at the doctor, cringing, saying "Are you crazy?" with her eyes.

Her mother, a stern look on her face, her teeth clenched, has been looking as if something has been bothering her all along. When she finally dares speak, she turns to me and says: "I think this should be said in Spanish, so I can understand too." I immediately communicate her wish to the doctor, who seems okay with it and begins including the mother in his glances. "Are you feeling pain in the area?" he asks the girl, this time allowing time for me to interpret the interaction to the mother. "No," the girl replies. "She has red warts in the area," her mother volunteers. An eleven-year-old with vaginal warts? I think, my own naiveness and ignorance surfacing. Can an eleven-year-old develop vaginal warts? Under what circumstances? I wonder. Is the mother hiding some terrible secret? Is the girl?

"Do you have warts there?" the doctor asks.

"No-oooo!" the girl says.

"Well, I'm gonna have to look, unfortunately," he informs her.

I explain this to the mother. "Is he going to look at my thing?" the girl asks her. "Will you be here with us too? Can you be here?" her mother asks me. Maybe the nurse can be there if you want to, I tell the mom. "You'd have to ask her." And yes. The eleven-year-old, like an average pre-teenager is, at this point, looking mortified. "I have to take off my panties too?" she asks her mom.

"Of course."

"No-ooo! Mom!"

Meanwhile between the halls of the ER department, not far from the girl's room, the same nurse who had previously fled the room, can be heard protesting to the physician. "How inappropriate!" she is saying. "Only 'cause she didn't want to wait for the appointment she brings her daughter to the emergency room for something that's not urgent, she's had that for a month, that's how urgent it is, now she wants some doctor to check her daughter's crotch. What kind of a message is she sending her daughter? That anyone can come and touch her and look at her crotch anytime they want to? How irresponsible that woman! The kid's gonna be terrified. Imagine."

"I'm going to have to look at her," the physician shares with the nurse glancing at me as if excusing himself for having to do something he, too, feels uncomfortable doing under the circumstances. "I know it's kind of mortifying for the girl. Maybe you want to do it instead?" he asks the nurse.

"Nope! I'm not doing anything," the nurse replies.

In a couple of minutes the doctor returns to the room. The girl waits behind closed curtains. Outside, holding the curtain in place stands the girl's mother. "Are you ready?" calls the doctor. "I'm just going to look, OK? I'm not gonna touch you."

"Do I have to take my panties off too?" the girl asks the doctor.

"I'm afraid so," he replies.

"Oh, Mom!"

"She wants to get some kind of blanket to cover herself," the mother says.

"If you have warts I have to look," the doctor tells the girl.

"No-ooo," she whines.

"Alright, let's do something else. I won't look. How about you telling me if you see red warts there? Do you?" the doctor says, talking to the girl through the curtain.

"Do you have warts there?"

"No-o!"

The doctor stands behind the curtain, deciding what to do next, "Alright, you know what? I'm just gonna call your pediatrician and let her know you were here and that you're gonna call her tomorrow to see if she can give you an appointment for sooner. I'm also going to give you one pill, for the itching, that you're gonna take tonight only, okay?"

"He's not going to look," I tell her mother, and I interpret the rest for her. The physician leaves the room. When someone returns it is the nurse, holding the prescription for the pill and the discharge papers.

"You dodged that ball, kiddo!" she tells the girl. "You don't have to do anything you don't want to do, you know? You don't have to be showing that to anyone you don't want to. Got it?"

As the nurse gives the mother the instructions about the pill she has to buy, and informs her that she is supposed to call her daughter's pediatrician first thing in the morning the next day, not once does she look at the mother's eyes. She answers questions perfunctorily, staring up to the ceiling or far away as she does so, twisting and turning her eyes to avoid contact with this mother whom she judges so harshly. "Oky-doky… That's all," the nurse says. "You're great kiddo! Have a nice summer!"

The girl thanks her and smiles triumphantly walking out of the room. The mother is stoic. She stands still, at first, staring down at the floor without blinking even, then up at the eyes of a nurse who continues to refuse acknowledging hers. My eyes, the eyes of a third person, witness of a drama seldom seen by another, aside from the usual protagonists of this real-life play, bounce between mother and nurse, floating on the tension in the air and what feels like a silent battle where Nurse, standing for the system the mother trusted so much as to take her daughter in on a holiday---expecting, at least, respect, ideally, solidarity---remains disgusted by The Mother--the Other, the strange foreigner with strange customs she cannot even fathom trying to understand.

The mother stares at the nurse. "Bye-bye!" the nurse fans her off, like a farmer a crazy hen, a pest, not lifting for a moment her sight from the document she's writing on. The language barrier hasn't been an obstacle for the mother to understand the nurse's judgement. Still hesitating the mother stands there, a few steps from the nurse, almost begging for her care-giver's approval, oblivious or persistent in spite of the fact that neither approval nor sympathy, or any kind of yielding, she will find today.

Watching the scene unfold I am troubled and fascinated all the same. It's the human condition, I think, in all its glory---simple and complex, rendered not in black and white but in those annoying grays. Yet what kind of condition? I wonder. A mother so worried about her daughter that she decides not to wait for a far away appointment? Perhaps a mother who is hiding a step dad abusing her daughter? Or one hiding the shame of a precocious daughter? I want to save the mother from the nurse but I know neither whom I would be saving nor what that would entail, really. Is this a teenager who is already exploring her sexuality with a boyfriend? Is this just an ultra-conservative nurse or one, otherwise well-intentioned caregiver, nonetheless with a deep prejudice against a whole generation of Latina immigrant mothers and their cultural ways? It's funny that, from my cultural vantage point, a Puertorican interpreter who grew up in a rural barrio, the mother had even seemed like a progressive Latina who could talk about things like warts and sex in front of a male doctor. Growing up, I didn't know many women in my family who could do that even reasonably comfortably.

Finally, the Ecuatorian mother utters a hesitant thank you that is never welcomed. Chin down, she finally turns away and tells me, "These things are very important to me, you see? She's had this for a long time now."

"I know you're very worried," I tell her, trying to do something to make her feel a bit better, suspecting that she has meant well, and that she has been misunderstood. "I think that's understandable," I say.

In this tale, that's the injustice. Maybe. But what about the warts? What's the role of the warts in this story? Why would a mother bringing her daughter to the ER instead of the girl's pediatrician, on a holiday, to take care of a non-emergency situation, weighs more than the possibility that an eleven-year-old has vaginal warts and all that such a diagnosis might mean?

"That's what happens everyday in the ER," my husband, a physician, and his friend, an ER doctor, tell me during dinner after I recount the story. "Everybody's worried more about hurrying up and getting the person who's not having an emergency out the door as soon as they can. She couldn't even get an appointment with a pediatrician when she should. The system is broken," they agree.

After the judgment call is made, the injustices can be identified. That's the easy part, I think. As I walk out of the hospital I'm worried more about the puzzle piece---that piece that lies beneath, on another level, a deeper one---that we might have missed.

Note: Details have been changed to protect the identity of the people depicted.
Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons, "Eisenbahn" (1873) by Edouard Mane

Santa Claus at the Hospital Ward

2010-06-22T22:23:00.000-07:00

Medical Interpreters are like Santa Claus for doctors and nurses. They see who is naughty, and they see who is nice. And sometimes with their subtle presence, just like a radio knob, they are even capable of tuning “not-so-nice” behavior until it’s “just right.”

To be fair, I have not seen much pure “naughty” behavior; but I’ve seen plenty of the stuff that falls nicely into the category of indifference.

This story took place on a cold, normal Sunday morning. My pager emitted its characteristic miniature ambulance sound for the first time that day, at exactly four o’clock. "Finally!" I thought. I had been waiting inside the interpreters’ office for a long time, and I was stir crazy.

The office smelled of old, dusty nylon carpet, apparently no longer mildew-resistant. Its walls were lined with hanging bookshelves filled with medical dictionaries, and cardboard bulletins with pinned foreign money from Colombia and Venezuela, old photos and postcards. Pinned to the same bulletin, there was a squared-shaped piece of paper across which a single word had been written in bold black magic marker: “Impertérrito” --- a word in Spanish describing a person who reacts to any situation without being surprised at anything, no matter the circumstances.

I was then really new at my job---still excited and impressionable. So when the pager sounded its electronic squeal, impertérrito wasn’t a word anyone would have used to describe me. Waiting inside that place since eleven o'clock the night before, I had wanted to make sure that should the pager go off, I would be able to make it wherever I was needed in less than three minutes. It was a personal goal – devoid of any deeper meaning but an idiosyncratic one to help me pass the time.

The patient's name was Rosa, and she was nine months pregnant. Her husband was standing by, stroking her arm and holding her hand when needed. They were both short in stature, young and baby-faced, and their accent assured me they were Mexican. They were the kind of people whose round, and cute faces, and sweet, soft Spanish-speaking voices that many non-Spanish speaking providers seldom seem to mind helping --- because "they're just really cute.” They were really cute---I, too, found myself thinking. (Funny, catching oneself on a stereotype one would steadfastly criticize in someone else.)

As soon as I pushed into the labor department corridor a succession of nurses directed me to the physician -- a blond woman in her late thirties. The urgency with which I was received made me break yet another record. How many words can one fit into a two seconds glance from the physician? Of all the details I was taught to include during my introduction to a doctor (name, language to be interpreted, privacy guarantee issues, first-person interpreting details, the "talk-to-the-hand" slowing-down signal, among other things), all I have ever been able to fit, so far, is a "Hi!"

So after spitting my name at lighting speed to the doctor, I directed my attention to the couple, a bit more leisurely.

“Hello, how are you? I’m your Spanish interpreter. They’ve sent me here to help with the language so you can have a better experience during your care,” I said. The young man extended his hand to me. The woman tried to smile but was visibly in pain from her contractions, even though her contractions, and thus her pain, were not yet as frequent as they needed to be. The medical team would likely administer Rosa some medication (hormones) intravenously to trigger contractions.

"Will those hormones affect my baby?" Rosa asked in a worried tone. "These are things your body would normally produce by itself. We're just trying to speed up the process." Else, the physician said, a cesarean section would have to be performed.

"What are the probabilities of a cesarean section?" Rosa asked. "We like to say that every time there's someone giving birth there's a possibility of cesarean section, but so far everything here looks okay," the physician replied.

Somewhere after the okay, the medication caused Rosa’s contractions to gather frequency, her blood pressure dropped, and her arms and legs started to feel numb. The medical team didn't want Rosa to get tired soon, or sleepy. As the anesthesiologist lowered the flow of the epidural anesthesia, Rosa’s husband reached to stroke the arm and hold the hand of a nervous first-time mother-to-be. The pace inside the room had changed, however slightly to the medical team, and Rosa was starting to feel it.

Whenever she didn’t have contractions to occupy her attention, her eyes, as if following an intense tennis match, shifted attentively from the obstetrician to the anesthesiologist then again to the nurse. Her entire body language seemed to suggest that she wondered what the medical team was saying when they spoke amongst each other. I didn’t know, though, whether to attempt to translate the jargon. Would it even help, or would it only serve to make Rosa feel more nervous? While I was supposed to do this, I had thought it better to leave that kind of detail out so as not to stress her more than she seemed to be.

“Do you want me to translate those conversations as well?” I finally asked her, against discussions of degree of dilation, types of contractions, and the possible effects of this or that on the baby, as background. Rosa glanced at me, her eyes wide open, her face nodding.

I turned to the obstetrician, “Excuse me, I don’t mean to interrupt you… I just need to say that, from now on, I’m going to have to interpret everything that you say amongst yourselves too. It’s just that Rosa is a bit nervous and she wants to know what you’re talking about.”

It wasn’t my intention to place the medical team members on any spot, but I knew that at that moment, Rosa was the one needing my service. In principle, I was supposed to interpret everything; in reality, as opposed to theory, that, too, was tricky. Within a real medical setting, in contrast to the context of a scripted training exercise inside a classroom, interpreting becomes a juggling act between judgment, common sense, intuition, and negotiation --- a delicate equilibrium between 'what to do' versus 'what not to do'.

At that moment, Rosa needed to understand; at that moment, I needed to do my part of the job to help her understand. And anyway, I kept asking myself, what if Rosa had been a native English speaker? Would that have made any difference? Would the nurse and doctor be talking, as they were, amongst each other; or would they have felt compelled to pause and explain to her what they were doing or planning to do, what all that mysterious-seeming chatter was about?

The nurse gave me a look that I felt was telling me something like, “I thought you were on our side?” After having previously scored some smiles from her part, a couple hellos, and a few jokes here and there, I couldn’t help feeling a bit like a traitor of sorts. But I couldn’t be on anyone’s side. I had to remain alert and neutral. Occasionally, I had to lean towards the side of whoever needed my help communicating.

The next few minutes were strange. I found myself as if watching a film that is being fast-forwarded. The nurse and doctors picked up the pace of their speech. The nurse, the obstetrician and the anesthesiologist spoke amongst each other in rapid-fire medical lingo, a specialized language they knew I couldn’t understand, let alone interpret at such hurried cadence. I felt as if I had been left out, on the side of a long and deserted road, along with Rosa.

Then, suddenly, as if they had only been warming up to the idea, an idea they were now ready to embrace, as if all along they had silently planned to give in and concede something but only in their own terms, at their own time, the pattern changed. The "Play" button was clicked, and the movie returned to its normal pace.

The physicians and nurse began summarizing their talk to Rosa after each small semi-private chat they held. Rosa’s face quickly softened. Her demands shifted as well. No longer did she seem to need to be given information about each step the medical team took. She now looked satisfied---as if, all along, all that she had really wanted was to merely have the option of receiving the information in her own language, or even of receiving it at all.

I remembered last year, during Christmas eve when my oldest niece Gabriella* was misbehaving --- like any six-year-old does from time to time. The mere mention of Santa Claus and the Reyes Magos (Three Magic Kings) caused her demeanor to adapt almost instantaneously.

Perhaps this is what my job can do, I thought. On an average day, I can help physicians and patients understand each other. On the best of days, I can possibly help straighten a line by merely bearing witness to its drawing. I cannot tell a physician how to do their job: That is neither my job nor my purview. I cannot soften a voice I deem too harsh; or modify an angry or an indifferent tone.

What I can do is tweak my own into the right warmth – one that is as honest and compassionate as possible to offer to a patient and a physician, both of whom I must help to communicate.

That night Rosa gave birth to her daughter Amanda, a baby girl who had her meconium (first bowel movement) inside her mother’s womb, and as a consequence of that, had to be placed under supervision until her respiration normalized and she finally got used to breathing air instead of water.

“Do you have any questions for me?” the physician asked to the tired but happy parents. “When will the baby be able to be here with us?” was the new daddy’s question. “She’ll let us know. Whenever she’s ready. We’ll monitor her for a while, and she’ll get used to the transition. She’ll let us know when she’s ready,” the doctor replied. “You both did a wonderful job,” she added.

After congratulating them myself, I left the room feeling proud of the work we all do when we work as a team. And as I stepped out of the elevator into the long, white corridor leading outside the hospital, I wondered how many other interactions in life would benefit from the simple eye of Santa (Wink).

Photo: Wikipedia Commons

[Note: details about people have been changed to protect people's identities.]

Interpreting a Three-person Affair

2010-04-22T09:00:00.001-07:00

CATEGORY: MEDICAL INTERPRETING, DOCTORS, INTERPRETING

It’s three o'clock in the morning. A message appears on my beeper, "Labor & Delivery," accompanied with a high pitched "eeee!" It is the second labor and delivery service call I receive in my brief, new story as a Spanish medical interpreter, and I'm hoping this time I actually get to see a delivery.

The first call I received from that department had taken me to the bedside of a young Mexican woman in her late twenties. She was suffering through the pains of contractions when I first saw her. And I would see her again, but only after she had successfully delivered a beautiful and healthy baby girl. I would not be there for all that happened during the two hours in between -- the push, the sweat, the baby's cries. Had I been there, I would have witnessed one of the approximately 2.4 births of fellow human beings that occur every second, according to the “2010 World Vital Events” table published by the U.S. Census Bureau. As a curious fact, the table also shows that, on average, about 1.8 people die within the same range of time. It's funny how as common an occurrence as both events are, human beings seem to undergo both transitions rather privately.

I am inside of the Spanish interpreter’s office. I drop the book I have been reading for the past three hours, waiting to be called, I reach for the door, and run out, all the way to the main building up to the fifth floor where a family from Guatemala needs my assistance. The nurse is there already -- a nice, fifty-something lady with a very sweet, maternal demeanor. The doctor enters the room after me. A young woman in her thirties, the obstetrician is visibly miserable, dragging herself, and slurring her tongue as she speaks. Behind her stands a young, wide awake medical student noticeably eager to get her practice for the night.

"I'm doctor So-and-So," the doctor says. And even though I have already introduced myself to the family as the medical interpreter, informing them as I do that I will be translating in first person, when I repeat, "I'm doctor So-and-So," to the patient, in Spanish, the patient, a young girl I'll call *Felicia,* smiles at me and utters, "Doctor," clearly referring to me. The physician says, "No! I'm the doctor!" almost too loud to hide her frustration.

I repeat my information to the patient. "I'm the Spanish interpreter,” I say, “And I'm here to help you communicate with your doctor in English. When I speak to the doctor,” I say, pointing with my hand at the obstetrician, “I'll be repeating in English what you say in Spanish, just as if I were you. Then, when the doctor speaks to you, I'll translate what she is telling you, speaking to you as if I were her." The young woman nods as expected, like she understands the information I have relayed now for the second time.

Though her gestures are what is expected, something about them seems a bit odd to me. I cannot quite tell what makes them be so, and at least for a few seconds I remain almost fooled. I would have continued in such state for a while longer had the woman’s husband not interrupted me to declare: "She doesn't know a lot of Spanish.” Ah! I think, and suddenly remember a conversation I had had with a fellow interpreter just a few days before. The majority of the population that has emigrated from Guatemala during the last few years doesn't speak Spanish. "Where are you from?" I ask. "Guatemala," the husband answers. The young woman speaks Mam.

My colleague had told me about what she called, the "trend." For Mam, a Mayan dialect spoken in different regions of Guatemala, there are hardly any interpreters currently available. At the hospital where I work, one of the best equipped hospitals in the state when it comes to interpreter resources, there is but a single Mam interpreter.

According to the Columbia Encyclopedia, about 60% of the population in Guatemala, (gwätəmä'lə), officially Republic of Guatemala, is of mixed Mayan and Spanish descent, or Ladinos (individuals from mixed heritage).

The remaining 40% of the population is of purely Mayan origin. Just like in many places in Latin America, these indigenous people in Guatemala have suffered from discrimination, poverty, and relative geographical isolation throughout history. Although Spanish is the language spoken by approximately 60% of the people, the rest speak several indigenous languages, Mam being one of them. Some sources, such as the Ethnologue, say that about 56 dialects are spoken in Guatemala, 53 of which are “living” languages and three of which are no longer spoken.

As soon as I learn that the young woman speaks Mam, I know I am about to get a bit of my own medicine. If I often interpret for a physician who cannot tell the difference between Spanish and Portuguese, isn’t knowledgeable of my culture, and probably feels lost or seems somewhat removed from the interaction (or worse, impatient), this time there will be at least two members of the team feeling that way -- the physician and myself. This time I am afraid. I know I am not going to be in complete control of the interpretation, and for the first time, I begin to understand what a physician might be feeling under the same circumstances.

What ensues is a humbling lesson in teamwork and communication. When the doctor finds out that instead of two languages required during the interaction, there would be three, I swear I could see a narrow vein on her forehead begin swelling up. “I’m sorry,” I say to the physician, attempting, with a smile, to let her know that I sympathize with her. “I’m afraid this will be a three-language affair. The patient does not speak Spanish either.”

The only communicator between the young woman and the physician, besides me, the interpreter, is an idle husband taking care of a relentless three-year old child who persists in crying. It all goes a bit like this:

"When did her contractions start?" the physician asks. "When did the contractions start?" I repeat in Spanish, both to the young woman and to her husband. "This afternoon," the husband says, answering for the young woman.

Physician: "How was the fluid that came out before? Did it have blood? Was it white? Yellow?”

Interpreter: “How was the fluid that came out? Did it have blood? What color was it? White? Yellow?”

Husband: “No.”

Interpreter: “Well, can you ask her, just in case she has information you don't know.

The husband hesitates. He translates something. He brings back, “No blood.”

Interpreter: “…but was it white? Or yellow?

Husband hesitates. He doesn’t want to translate any further. “She just wants her pain medicine,” he says. I translate back to the obstetrician who is increasingly looking as if she were on the verge of losing it. I say, "But was it white? Was it yellow? Was there blood? “ I ask again, having the sense that the husband hasn’t really been relaying the questions to his wife. “This is team work, you know, Mr. Feliciano?” I feel the need to add. “We have to do this together,” I tell him. “The doctor needs all this information to be able to help your wife better and faster. Let’s just do this so they can help her. We have to work together Don Feliciano. Let's do it, you and I, come on. Can you ask her please señor Feliciano? Was there blood in her fluid? Was it yellow? White?”

The husband translates. The answer comes white. The doctor is tired. The husband is exhausted. The girl is in terrible pain. She now trembles --- visibly suffering the frequency of her contractions. She mumbles constantly in Mam.

"Can you give something for the pain?" the husband says. I translate. The nurse explains the options: a shot in the buttocks, an intravenous line, or an epidural. "What's an epidural?" asks the husband. "It basically numbs the body from the waist down. You won't feel the contractions." He translates immediately. The woman nods with desperation. She mumbles something else in Mam ending with “epidural.” She needs to hear no more. "Epidural," says the husband.

The nurse tells them that she will first need to get the results from the blood test, and only then will the team be able to give her the medication to stop the pain. It’s an arrangement the couple does not enjoy, but there’s nothing else they can do. The nurse leaves the room. The clock starts ticking.

The husband waits for the baby to be born. The little girl waits for the attention of her mother who cannot possibly pay any attention to her amongst the increasing pain she’s experiencing. The mother-to-be waits for the pain medication. The medical team? Nobody has spoken to the family for the last twenty minutes. I begin feeling as impatient as the family. Also, I feel helpless: I don't really know how to interpret these gaps filled with time. I can only look at the mother and the father and smile shyly as if telling them, "I'm sorry," feeling guilty despite knowing it isn't my fault.

Eventually, we will all find out that the medical team has only been waiting for the mother to dilate more – the last two centimeters. Birth could happen soon. Any medication now and everybody would have to wait for another two hours. The medical staff cannot afford this -- but nobody tells the parents. The family is only told to wait for an anesthesiologist that they will see walk by their room, but that will never cross the threshold.

For the mother, it's been thirty-five minutes of pain. She is ready to give birth. Her body shakes like a volcano about to erupt. The husband has caught the exasperation. The medical team – nurses, obstetrician and medical students – are ready.

It's time to push.

"You can go behind that curtain," the doctor tells the man. Carrying their three year old in his arms, he hides with his daughter behind the curtains as told. "We just don't want the little girl to be too impressed," explains the nurse.

The mother receives instructions to push hard during each forthcoming contraction. Each time, the man emerges behind the curtain to help translate. I have positioned myself to the right of the patient’s stretcher around which the doctors work to the right of the drape that hides the husband. I translate and interpret back to the doctor, and for the first time I look. I've never seen images like these except through the filter of a television screen. And right now, even standing before them, there is still a surreal quality about them. I can't really believe the little round thing I see slowly emerging through the labia of the vagina is really a human being.

The mother pushes. The medical student begins assisting but her inexperienced hands are rapidly replaced by those of the physician. "Push harder!” the nurse says. “You have to really push now,” the obstetrician yells. “Open your legs!” Abra sus piernas mucho más, por favor. “Wide.” Más. ”Open.” Abra. “More!" yells the doctor in English. “Más,” I interpret in Spanish, and the husband yells in Mam from behind the curtain. The baby’s head is now out, and so is my almost inaudible gasp. “That’s a head!” I catch myself thinking. “A human head!” Of course it’s a human head, but it’s the first human baby head I have ever seen emerge from such a private place.

A few more pushes and the baby is finally, wholly, part of the outside world! I squeak a little. The father emerges from behind the curtains with his daughter. The newborn is a boy. He is been cleaned up by the nurse and wrapped up into a small bundle placed on top of the mother's belly. With the three-year old in one arm and a disposable camera in another, the father snaps pictures all over the place. "Do you want me to take the pictures?" I offer. I take many pictures with his camera. I begin applauding softly. A feeling of elation transits my entire body. Although it goes away fast, and I am aware as it passes, it leaves something behind.

No. I’m not crying. I’m not feeling emotional. I’m not even wondering how it will feel when it’s my turn. I’m just happy. And it’s a different kind of happiness. I had never seen a human life emerge into the world until today, and I’m shocked. The last picture I take, before there's no more film on the device, is a great image. Taking it makes me feel as I felt when I was a kid and my entire group of friends and I had just achieved something we could not have achieved each by themselves, something that we intuited was important, that perhaps nobody else could do as well as we could; something that always made me wish for somebody – an Other – to be watching, in complete awe of us.

Of all the sensations I'm experiencing, this is what I don't feel: that I am Puerto Rican, that I am in the United States or Malaysia; that anybody is Guatemalan or American.

[Note: details about people have been changed to protect people's identities.]

My First Drunk

2010-03-01T09:00:00.000-08:00

CATEGORY: MEDICAL INTERPRETING, DOCTORS, INTERPRETERS

“Hi, good evening. Did you call a medical interpreter?” I ask a nurse on the other side of the line. “I’ll be right there with you," I say. “Don’t worry,” the nurse answers. “There’s no rush. The guy’s drunk. He’s not going anywhere.”

It was my first call as a new Spanish medical interpreter on-call on the third shift from midnight to eight in the morning. It was also “my first drunk,” though, of course, he wasn't.

There was the friend in college, whom everybody loved, and everybody laughed with every time he would get intoxicated (which, by the way, doesn’t mean the same in Spanish – take note: in Spanish, “intoxicado” does not necessarily refer to a person who has been ingesting alcohol or is drug overdosed. In many cultures, intoxicado means nauseous. In a very sad case of a medical interpretation gone wrong in 1980, a Spanish-speaking teenager from the state of Florida became quadraplegic because of a confusion that began with the erroneous interpretation of the word.)

But back to my narration: Every time my college friend got drunk, everybody around him became a “loved one.” “I love you my man!” where the words he would dedicate anyone next to him, as he hugged them and burst into tears -- a memory which would surely follow him every single day -- and certainly years -- after the facts, beckoning to be recounted.

There was also the guy in my barrio -- everybody’s favorite borrachito. Usually, he was the guy who’d sell us the verduras – batata, mamey, and other root vegetables – or sometimes the aguacates (avocado). We knew when he was off-duty when he would emerge down the hill with a bottle of rum in place of the bag of aguacates, zigzagging and singing some happy tune.

Then, there was the kind (a failed relationship) that upon getting drunk would wait for my young grandmother at the balcony, after she'd come back from work, yelling away his frustrations, furiously layering on her offensive lines and recriminations, “until I felt sleepy and went to bed,” she recounted.

That night at the hospital, during my first service as a medical interpreter I would learn of a few other kinds of "drunk," some of which would give my heart a bit more grief than the previous ones.

At the hospital I learned how some drunks are big and despite their size, get drunk with just a few beers; meanwhile, others are tiny men capable of withstanding the weight of an entire night drinking with hardly any trouble, except almost total desiccation. (Categories and classifications always begin on the surface, of course.)

The big guys drink away the wives who stab them as their four children watch, while others sleep on the street, living to drink until they pass out. They mumble until their sobs take a hold of their uttering, confessing their lives in tears while the monitor transcribes its own version of the breaking of an already broken heart in waves that oscillate at random.

Still, others, the pros, no matter how dehydrated their bodies, look almost sober. They sound fine, they articulate almost too well, and remain alert and aware. Only the brutal shaking of their bodies -- their shaking chills -- and the odor emanating from their abused bodies give away their state.

Such was the first patient I would ever interpret for: a Mexican man in his late thirties whom the police had escorted to the emergency department.

His breath was the most obnoxious substance I have ever smelled in my entire life until I met him. Positioned at about five feet of distance, the odor coming from his mouth would startle the nose.

"How many beers did you have today?" the doctor asked. "About 35 cans," the man said. "When did you start drinking?" the physician continued. "From Friday to Saturday at dawn. I always get these shakes when I am done drinking," the man said. "What about the vomiting? What did you do differently this time? Do you always vomit and shake?" asked the doctor. "I was vomiting, and shaking," he added. "When I drink, when I'm done, I start shaking. My whole body starts shaking."

"Do you have anyone we can call so they can pick you up once you are done here?"

"No. I don't have anyone."

"Where do you live?"

"I sleep on the street where I can."

"Where do you usually stay?"

"I hang around the square."

"Have you been to the shelters?"

"What's that?" the man asks me. I explain, "Where people without homes go to sleep and to eat."

"No," says the man. "They told me of one near here, but I don't know how to get there so I haven't gone."

"Well," says the physician, "we're going wait a couple of hours to see how you are feeling, so you can stay here for a couple of hours. Where are you going after here?

"I'll go to the square."

"Well, you can stay here for a couple hours, see how you're feeling, and when you're ready to go, we can let you go."

"Can I go now?"

"Do you feel ready now?"

"Yes, I am ready."

"Do you feel well?"

"I am OK," he says, his body still shaking violently.

The doctor offers an ironic smile. “Sure,” he says.

"Do you have questions for me?" he asks the man, gently. "Can you help me to take a taxi?" the man asks.

"I can call one but I can't pay for it. "

"Ah… well, then I can't take it because I don't have any money."

"You could take the bus."

"But the bus is two bucks, one buck or two bucks, and I don't have nothing on me here."

"Do you have any other question for me?" The physician asks. The man looks around, searching for his answer. "Do you have any soda?" he says finally.

"Well, we have Gingerelle? Is that good?" the physician asks. The man nods. The physician turns to me, the interpreter, and adds jokingly, “since I’m serving tonight, would you like a soda too?”

A soon as the doctor makes it back to the room, the man asks again if he can leave. "Can I take these things off?" he says, as he attempts to take off the intravenous lines that were placed in him in an effort to hydrate his body.

"Give us a few seconds,” the doctor answers. “Just wait here calmly, and someone will be back soon to remove those."

I step outside to wait, and a few minutes later, when the nurse enters the room, I follow. The nurse starts removing the IV lines. As he does this, he begins a very fast chatter with me about how this man is still shaking, “Look at him!” he says in English. He is very drunk and he won't stop shaking because that's what you get when you stop drinking. You shake like crazy. And you know what will help him right now? You know the only thing that will help him right now? The thing that'll help him is to drink! That's right, the only thing that will actually stop his shaking is that he takes another drink. Actually, that's what they used to do in some places around here in the past. They used to give them a drink at the emergency room when they arrived, because they knew that’s the only thing that will help them. You know what he'll do when he gets out of the hospital, right? Yup! He's gonna go drink again. He won't stop. He should, stop, but he won't. He can't. Once he starts shaking again, he knows what he has to do.

The nurse is talking very fast, and of course the man knows that he is the subject of such animated monologue. This isn't the first time he's heard it -- in either language, English or Spanish. I should not stop interpreting. I shouldn't, but I have stopped, and the reason is twofold.

It isn't that I cannot keep up with the nurse's speech rhythm; it's that the nurse isn't speaking to he man, but about him, in his presence, trusting that I, the interpreter, am on his side -- the side of the medical team. The nurse is treating me like a comrade, and it's flattering to a new intepreter; but I cannot be either person's comrade: I can't pick a team. I can't pick sides. I must serve both parties, even though my fear is that the man, my drunk, sees me as another stranger, another judge of him -- "one of them," not exactly an unbiased preoccupation, I am aware.

And I don't want to interpret and repeat what the nurse probably means, "yeah, man, he thinks you will be a drunk all of your life, and you'll never stop hurting yourself. He really believes you'll get out of here but to get another drink until you're back here again. And yes, he truly is convinced that you will remain in this hellish cycle until the day you die!" I cannot possibly tell the man what the nurse is saying. So instead, this is the interpretation I offer : "He is saying that the reason you are trembling is because you drank too much, and he really thinks you should stop drinking. He says that if you keep on drinking you are going to feel terrible again. He says that drinking is not good for you. You should really stop, you know?" My drunk looks at me, a deep look in his eyes, and smiles softly.

The nurse has finished his job and leaves, and though I should leave too, I stay. "You are so young, and able,” I tell the man. He smiles and looks at me in disbelief. “You are!” I continue, “You can do better. Why don’t you seek help so you don’t have to drink anymore," says Snow Brown to the ill, while little birdies sing melodious songs around them. The man replies: "Yeah. (pause) yeah," but only out of courtesy, I suspect. Then he looks at me, like he knows, like I know, like we all know…

"Take care, alright?" I say. "Do you have two bucks you can give me for the bus?" he asks. I go search for my wallet, and I come back with exactly one dollar and fifty cents.

[Note: details about people have been changed to protect people's identities.]

The Arrival: Take Three

2010-02-25T09:00:00.000-08:00

[Should you wish to read "Take Two" or "Take One," please scroll down the page.]

Far from my Cibuco river I felt home-less. The aroma of sugar cane, a memory of childhood, was now an icon of identity; and so was the old but reconstructed chimney, in the middle of the Central Carmen, with its footprints of floods, storms, and lighting, reminding me of a history that was mine too.

The plantain trees, the neighbor who had a monkey as a pet, the palm trees swaying in the warm breeze of the Cerro, the sea I visited every Friday, the neighbor who set his wife's car on fire, the one who always said hello, the one who sold us the verduras, the ice cream car with the cyclic melody, the vendor in the car bringing fresh bread and meat, milk and eggs, the neighbor who drowned, the neighbor who died, the drunk ones, the chatty ones, the one who took me to school every day when I was a child, the ones I took the school bus with, the one who bothers my father with the impossibly loud radio, the one who won the lottery and moved away, the ones who got pregnant when they were fourteen, the ones with the roosters, the one who killed pigs in his backyard, the dealer of drugs, the one that was raped, the one always singing, the one with the street parties on new year's eve, the one who played barbies with me, the one who took me to my first concert, the one with whom I fell in love, the one with loud laughter, the one who loves salsa, the ones who love rap, and even the one who litters with pride -- everything was an iconic figure now, standing for a history I was a part of, and one I was desperately trying to claim. I had not yet realized the strange texture of the limbo I was in.

By the Charles, I spent my energy paying obsessive attention to the subtle movements on people’s faces just to try to and anticipate their laughter, so nobody would notice that I didn’t really understand what they were saying, because they spoke too fast, or because I didn’t really share their sense of humor. Missing my home, still I wanted so bad to fit in.

And I felt guilty. My mother tongue kept lobbying furiously for the status quo against the language that was trying to adopt me. "Do not let it!" she yelled. "She'll take you away from me!" she cried. And I kept listening. How could I make room for this newcomer without completely giving up the voices that had shown me the world, and writing, for the first time, the voices that had made me who I (thought I) was? It was hard to think that the "new" did not have to completely displace the "old." It was inconceivable to believe the two could coexist. It was inconceivable to imagine that I belonged anywhere.

My writing was a sign of what was happening. My pen was incapable of touching the paper. When I forced it to make contact, attempting a sequence in either tongue, it was almost as if an impenetrable distance separated me from the characters that my fingers drew. As if my words were the eyes of those people who smile only with their mouth, their eyes like statues.

A little more than three years after I left, after I landed, the concatenations I attempt continue to feel awkward. They ring odd and strange. The exercise remains laborious, like wanting to understand Íslendinga Sögur without knowing much Islandic. I contemplate my hand as it mimicks the curves, the turns, the weight of the pen over the paper, but sometimes nothing happens: a linguistic insomnia of sorts.

Sometimes, when I do succeed in generating words, I can't understand what I’ve written: the meaning blurs, and a word becomes a senseless squiggle -- an object made out of parts by rules of morphologic nature I don't understand, a syntactic atom I never memorized, a crazygarabato, just like me, a walking disparate. That's when I feel as if I was wearing a heavy dress that doesn’t quite fit, or a mask over my face to cover a morphing one underneath. Those days, I almost cannot breathe.

But it isn't often than hard, and it isn't that bad anymore.

I've been returning to Puerto Rico over the holidays to hear my father mumbling to himself the events of his day and give me a thousand words of advice, and to hear my mother mumbling hers, singing off-key and feeding me until I’m about to explode; to pet my dog and yell to him to stop barking already; and to feel the burning sun outside. At night, I cannot wait to hear the roosters and the coquíes outside singing their lullabies, even if it takes me a little more time to fall asleep.

Recently, when I went home to visit, on the first night after my arrival, I dreamt that my hand had found itself reaching for my tongue relieved that it had found it where it should be. In my dream, I knew I was stuck at the house again, and it was okay.

Upon my return to Cambridge, to the cruel cold of winter, I found myself staring outside the window at the fluffy buttons of white falling tenderly over the ground, illuminating everything and dissolving all visible boundaries. Arrays of snow flakes had woven themselves onto the light rays the day had left bouncing around the city quickly turning the sky into a soft, pink dream.

Nothing will take away from my Cibuco, I know. I am part of my River, and of everything around it, no matter the tongue with which I choose to remember it. Yet, should one day I find myself migrating again where no snow falls anymore, though I'm not entirely certain I will miss it, I surely will remember it dearly.

[This is the last "take" of "the Arrival." Thank you so much for reading.]

[Note: details about people have been changed to protect people's identities.]

The Arrival: Take Two

2010-02-24T09:00:00.000-08:00

[If you wish to read, or listen to, "The Arrival - Take One," please scroll down the page.]

One day, not long after my arrival in Cambridge, Massachusetts, while at the supermarket’s queue, I found myself wondering about an angry look I was receiving from a person next to me. It was one of those looks that could kill you should you subject to it long enough. I didn’t understand why, but the person moved away from me so adamantly that, for a moment, I feared I had unconsciously committed a terrible crime, only I wasn't aware which one. I decided to glance around discreetly to see if sight could help me recognize my indiscretion.

When you are new in a place, your senses become acutely tuned to the world around you. It's almost as if you had been seeing in black and white and, suddenly, the cones in your eyes that detect color begin working properly. You notice everyone’s eyes: a strange aloof-blue or green. And you hear how some of the others describe your own: "evil dark." You notice the color of their hair: light brown or blond, and straight. And the color of their skin: predominantly Caucasian white. Their features: narrow lips, and long, pointy noses. And you can’t understand exactly what they are saying, but you try. And you make many mistakes. Many people stare at you because you walk too slowly; others ask you to repeat what you just said because they can’t understand your accent, especially the way you pronounce your "i's". "Say cheek," they ask. "Now, say chick... now chic." Some people get impatient if they have to repeat their sentences more than once. So you practice your pronunciation at "home," ad nauseam. Rarely does anybody make eye contact when you pass them by on the sidewalk. Your smile is out of place, and so is your bright orange blouse, and your cleavage.

When you introduce yourself, your tongue rolls your name in a new way, triggering the memory of those times when your mother used to joke about the way your name would be pronounced out there, "Moooooenacaaaaaaaah," she'd say. And you finally get it: At the supermarket, the person in front of you stares severely and moves away because you are getting too close to her! Being used to the queues at your Caribbean supermercado, at your barrio’s colmado, you stand too close to other people.

You cannot do that here. Take note.

You move away, because as you look around the supermarket’s queues, you notice that everybody maintains a healthy distance from each other. You estimate it: a good two feet. And everywhere you go, you notice the same pattern. You repeat to yourself: don’t get too close to people.

Now you start pondering dying your hair purple – an idea you had always played with in your mind. It isn’t that they will not notice it here; it’s just that nobody will care. Just in case they do, you don't really want to be the purple-haired-Latina, do you? So you change your mind. It wouldn't be fun anymore. Fitting in is your priority, anyway.

You arms become numb from carrying those heavy bags all the way from the supermarket to the tiny studio you are renting. They are squeezing the money out of you here with the rent, and the winter clothes, the mixture of electricity and heating, the food -- the little they pay you as a student with the scholarship you received to gain experience as an astrophysicist. You were convinced that’s what you wanted to become – an astrophysicist who worked with black holes and galaxies. That's what you thought you wanted to do, that’s what your mentor wrote on the description of your job: blah blah blah black holes. And you eyes widened. And your smile didn’t fit on your face, you remember. You will do that for a while -- study galaxies and black hole candidates. But black holes will suck everything that comes close to their event horizon.

Now, inside of your dark studio, which sucks in the cold air, you strategically place towels to block out an annoying current, covering the bottom of all windows as well as the door; and you wear four sweaters at a time, even inside the studio, and wrap your sleeping blanket around your body as you move back and forth across your bedroom, the only other room beside the bathroom where, by the way, you go to pee with increased frequency because the cold has always made you want to pee.

In a couple of years, you will not want to become an astrophysicist anymore. You will still want to become a writer though, sitting in front of your computer monitor to write, but not a code to sort out certain elliptical galaxies a certain amount of megaparsecs from ours, even though you will always find the latter interesting; even though science and literature will keep on fighting for you, tearing your cardiac muscle into shreds, only because you keep on teasing them.

In the meantime, you will become a professional whiner. After a while you begin talking to yourself, just like your father does. And you sing when you’re mad and when you’re sad, just like your mother likes to do. And since you cannot call your parents all the time, and they can’t afford calling you either even though they’d love to, and you know they do, and you understand, you begin to write letters to no one, and to the world, like Emily Dickinson. And you will want to get drunk with vodka, but you know you despise the flavor of alcohol and the only time you have drank it in your life was with your ex boyfriend -- three spoonfuls from a dusty bottle of dark Bacardi rum that had been sitting on a forgotten shelf in his ancient rented apartment. Three spoonfuls of dark rum on a cup and a half of fruit juice had been enough to shoot a current of heat up your arms and down your legs until you were unable to walk and he had to pick you up and carry you to bed.

That's it then. You will get drunk with cheap orange juice instead, and read Julia de Burgos and cry. On your darkest day, you write a letter like this:

Dear world,

I have no idea who I am writing to or how do I manage. I don't have legs. I don't have addendum of any kind that is useful anymore. My fingers are cold and are submerged within my body; they retracted from their intention to reach anything a long time ago. My arms and legs have multiplied, fusing with one another around the volume of my body, equal in length, symmetrical, and useless in the randomness of their fingerless efforts.

The empire of my tongue has collapsed; in its place, the slowly creeping fungus of another language crawls as a menace to each palabra that had confidently woven the fabric of my thought. Without fingers, with no addendum, with a crippled tongue, I stare naked before all.

Sometime, not long ago, before the fall that came upon me, I was a rock. I would watch the sea go by and towards me. The water would always slide down my rocky countenance after the hit, but never filtered through my pores. I was El Morro – my Spanish fort- standing the constant hits of the sea waves on its surface for five hundred years. But I am not even a sand castle now, reduced to a mere two dimensional drawing on the sand.

Every nostalgic bolero has become a strange tango that infuriates my veins. A tango that never belonged to me, talks to me as if mocking me, daring to reclaim what never has been his. Every tango claims me as all lost is called upon by all who never owned it.

You fold the paper where you've written your letter to the world. Then you put it away before you pick it up once more and read it out loud, smiling at your silliness. Crying. Pocking fun at yourself. What drama! you think. Then you dial his number -- the number of your ex -- and pretend you're drunk... but he knows better.

You fall asleep with orange juice breath, a hundred blankets on top, and a lineup of books leaning against the door to block the winter from coming in one more night.

[To be continued... one last time]

Photo: Ice on the Charles. Credit: Iris Mónica Vargas 2010

[Note: details about people have been changed to protect people's identities.]

The Arrival: Take One

2010-02-23T09:00:00.000-08:00

CATEGORY: WORDS (THE EXPERIENCE OF MIGRATION & WRITING)

Note: With the exception of "The Arrival," an essay in three-takes, my entries will arrive monthly.

Long gone are my days at the barrio, where houses are barely two feet apart, privacy is but a silent audience on the other side of the walls, and intimacy filters through and overlaps with all other intimacies -traveling from balcony to balcony in a communal dance.

I am La Trigueñita, the brown island girl who has given up the cadence of her hips, the red lipstick, her sun tan, the big earrings, and her grand Cibuco river, to live near the Charles, where nobody yells improprieties to her as she walks down the street.

There was a time when they did yell improprieties to me. I still remember the day when another "anonymous man" yelled, “Mami, your delicious!” and I snapped and said, “OK. That’s a disrespect, cabrón. I’m tired of all of you machistas cabrones on the street treating women as pieces of meat!” And the man, taken aback by the unusual event of having his piropos verbally refused, yelled back, “Well, your ugly now! Your ugly!” And even though I could see the humor in the encounter, I was too busy being angry, so I got madder and kept walking anyway. Then I gave him The Finger. And then, of course, I laughed at myself.

As incredible as it may seem, I kind of miss those moments of island idiosyncrasies. I know very well what got me here, near the Charles River, into the fall that does change the color of the leaves and turns the breeze into a mass of tiny but sharp and forked daggers onto a shivery body, and it wasn’t the cabrones on the street, the hellish heat of the Caribbean, or all the litter in front of my neighbors’ houses.

I arrived at New England’s Cambridge three years ago, on a cloudy day in September. It had never been that cold in my life. I placed a pair of jeans over my shorts, and covered my blouse with four sweaters and a coat that someone gave me, about two sizes smaller, in bright, decadent fuchsia. I wore heels to walk on the snow because those were the only shoes I had that covered my toes, and a pair of gloves that filtered the freezing air. But I felt free. I had finally managed to escape from my barrio. Now I could become someone, I thought. Now I could grow, be smarter; I could progress -- I believed. I was no longer a college student, I was now an adventurous graduate. I had gone where I was convinced everyone who wanted a future had to go: Out there: allá afuera. La Trigueñita was finally out there!

No longer would I be subjected to the parents' schedule, to their dishes, their mood to lend me, or not, their car. Here I didn’t even need one! There was public transportation to rely on. No sugar cane field to traverse on a borrowed car in the dark. The roads were illuminated. The river was clean -- no old refrigerators and TV sets inside its waters -- and it didn’t flood. There was a supermarket I could reach by foot, and when I went there by my myself, to buy what I wanted to eat, my favorite brand of milk, of water, my fruits, I was at last, a grown up. I had finally "made it."

Or so I thought.

[To be continued... two more times]

Photo: The Charles river during winter. Credit: Iris Mónica Vargas 2010

[Note: details about people have been changed to protect people's identities.]