Mm. That smell. Latin America. It smelled the same in Costa Rica. Maybe it’s just the scent of foreign travel. It seeps into my nostrils and fills me with a curiosity and ambition unique to the moment, the place. I never feel this at home. I long for it. Crave it. It is the only reason I would want to be a millionaire.

How did I get here again? Oh yeah. My ambition. I picked the wrong time to catch the bus. Our bodies press all together into a human conglomeration of sweat, fatigue, and the acceptance that makes us just deal with it. It’s five. Five in the afternoon. The humidity fills my hair, makes my clothes feel like Glad saran wrap, and turns my pores into great waterfalls. I let each drop run down my spine, face without interruption. The drips are infinite and never cease. In the shower they only combine their forces with the running tap water—they never actually wash away. Like the pains of some of these people. I love them. I know I could help them find more. Something more. But my own weaknesses and pain keep me from them.

“Jesus é quem salva, Jesus é quem salva.” The skinny dark complexion had asked me if I wanted to hear a song. I tried not to laugh at his Michael Jackson like version of a song he must have made up. He says he wants to be a gospel singer. Maybe it is a fantasy that keeps him happy as he polishes shoes like mine. His greasy hair and ratty black clothes won’t score him an audition. But then again, the brush, brush across the top makes a nice accompaniment for all his vocal inventions.
 
Quem é Flora? Flora is the lady with whom I live. I can’t say that I know her. I’m temporary around here. She says little. They say she is my “avozinho.” She looks like one. She is small and fragile, but I’m pretty sure she could whip any man into shape. But to me that title entails a little more intimacy. All I know about her is that she is immaculately clean and gets angry when we’re late for dinner. I feel bad sometimes about the way I see her, but they do say that communication is everything. Every morning she takes my shower towel and hangs it on the line to dry. Nothing dries inside. It hardly dries outside.


 

I find the old woman gets bored of the silence. She turns on the TV and a novela screams from the kitchen so loudly that I can no longer study. Her love for soap operas gives me a hunch that she has some spark for the romantic and overly dramatic. A spark for something beyond cooking and cleaning for me—a stranger she lets into her home on good faith that she’s strong enough.

Flora talks to her dog the way I imagine her talking to her children; sometimes she quietly whispers as she lovingly takes Spanky his food and at other times she sharply commands, “Não, Spanky! Venha!” This is all I know of Flora besides the fact that she loves cucumbers. This she told me.

It’s raining again. It thunders down and crashes upon the streets, roofs, sidewalks. I swear heaven’s dams have burst again. The streets flood in minutes and we walk in random unpredictable maze-like paths to avoid the contaminated water. It’s because of the rats they say. It’s not the rain that is bad, but the water underneath that shows its face as it mingles with the water of the sky. Despite the mess, I love the rain. Everyone carries uma sombrinha and they bump into each other. I like to call it “Clash of the Umbrellas.” Thankfully, I’m just a little bit taller than the gauchos and my umbrella battles best.

Bam! I flinched on the couch as the child started to cry. You could say he was a terror, but he wasn’t old enough to talk. He wore just a diaper and his bare feet crumpled from underneath him. A belt. She had used a belt. For no reason other than her own frustrations. I felt catapulted back to an era that I’d seen only on TV. Did people still do that? I sat horrified, uncomfortable. The girl next to me had been here longer. “You’ll get used to it,” she said. I’ll never get used to it.

  We visited Salizete today. She seems an innocent child until you visit her home and learn that she cannot be so. Her husband is an alcoholic. He beats her. Her one tooth smile falls at times. You’d never know if you just passed her in the grocery store aisle. She is simple and always wears her hair straight back in a dark ponytail. Her child is fair and freckle-faced. (cont'd from the print edition) She is beautiful.  I really like Salizete.  I know she must have an inner strength that keeps her heart pulsating despite its disappointments.  I don’t know if I like to visit her though.  She talks a lot which is OK, but she always insists on serving us.  Once she gave us cevada.  It is horrible when it is good, rotten when it is cheap.  Hers was cheap.  I drank it anyway because I hate it when her smile falls. 

She sat in front of me with her face in her hands.  Crying again.  She is like an aunt to me.  She is one I want to put in my pocket and take home with me.  I’d give her a cute little house and a porch where she could drink chimarrão and visit with good ladies who loved their husbands and had faith in the better part.  Then she’d be happy.  Josete.  I love to hug her.  Her head presses into my ribs and her bare shoulders stick to my forearms.  I think she thinks me an angel.  I think her a friend with whom I would visit just to visit.  I never do that.  She has a secret.  She wants to tell.  I won’t let her.  I don’t want to know, to be an accomplice, to view her husband the way she does.  I just want to be here when she cries.

I said I was temporary around here.  I knew I’d have to leave.  I just didn’t realize I’d be leaving my heart.  They all stole it from me.  I’ll let them have it.  The scent slowly fades from my nostrils.  I still have hours before it fills again with the scent of home.  I want to turn back.  Close my eyes to my own world.  I’ll keep her inside.  The traveling me.  She won’t let me forget.

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