Gone

In Peru, the houses wear their colors on the outside. Behind tall, iron fences, concrete walls painted mint green, summer peach, and Easter egg blue slowly flash by as I peer out the car window. I say slowly because the traffic is terrible! My aunt says, “This is my life,” when we comment on the endless stream of cars. Streets split and curl at intersections instead of crossing. They are all one way so that you have to make a U-turn in order to turn down the street you wanted but couldn’t take ten minutes ago. I force myself not to look at the clock again. It doesn’t matter anyway. Something about the air here, which smells slightly sweet and heavy, says, “Slow down. Sit and stay awhile.”

Somehow, though, that is the last thing I want to do. I am restless for my bookshelf full of English titles I love and my coffee pot that gurgles and my little, silver car. I thought I was coming home, somehow, but I’m not. Something about this place doesn’t feel comfortable to me. I don’t belong here after all.

Later, when we stroll (yes, I must learn to just stroll) through the mall at Larcomar, the salty wind drifting off the Atlantic Ocean tosses my hair. I’ve been to the beach before, but this one is different. This one is surrounded by cliffs (los barrancos) and stones. This one has outdoor malls and restaurants and clubs built into its capricious shores and stone walls. I lean over the glass railing and watch the grey waves wash over a rocky beach far below. I’m not relaxed by it as I expected. Instead, I have a feeling this ocean is dangerous. If I get too close, I will be swept away into the fog, never to be seen again. I step back from the balcony and suddenly long for home, for my little town and indoor mall.

In Peru, I am inside out. I can’t walk in the park because I’m a girl alone. I can’t talk to the people because, although I might look Peruvian, I speak mostly English. My Spanish stumbles. I can’t leave my purse on the table or my money will disappear. I can’t eat without asking what I’ve ordered; I can’t recognize what I’m drinking. I can’t.  

I tell my mom these things, my mother who is native to Peru, who has truly come home instead of leaving it the way I have. She nods, and I am surprised to hear her say, “I feel displaced here too. How can I split myself in two?”  How can she speak English to me on her right and Spanish to her family on her left? It’s not just the language, though.  “I’ve been in America for too long,” she continues. “There, I feel as if I am foreign. Yet, here, now, I feel the same way.”  I imagine her digging up angel hair roots 28 years ago when she came to American with my dad. I picture the way she opened her heart to new soil, patting the dirt here and there and watering new shoots. Then, I imagine that those roots don’t quite grow in Peruvian land anymore.

As our plane lifts off to return to America, though, I see her close her eyes against tears. The plane rushes on and on and on until a loud whoosh tells me we have become air born. “Gone,” I think, as I watch the wings meet the sky. I can’t tell if some part of me has been erased or some part of her. In the air, we are in between, not here or there. In the air, we disappear. 

Homesick

I'm homesick for Peru, a country that's in my blood. How can it be home too? Maybe home is more than a place. It's more than honeysuckle dripping like amber along my road. It's more than the hill in my backyard that was big enough to sled down when I was a little girl.

I thought a place became home because I allowed myself to love it. That's the way it was with Lock Haven University. Little by little, the confetti trees, the ones flowering shy pink and white, made me smile. Slowly, I let myself lift my eyes to the steep hills and the winding staircases. Eventually, I waited for the bells to chime lullabies and hymns and show tunes. I told my time by it. And then, when I left it all for home, I found myself sick for it and its moody skies.

Peru has never been that way, though. I have not been there long enough to allow anything. It's instinctive. I step off the airplane frazzled and longing for rest. The doors say, "empujar" instead of "push." The air is thick as a blanket and dripping slowly. The people have coffee-and-milk complexions.

And yet, I am home.

Yes, clocks don't matter there, and strangers kiss in greeting. Yes, lunch is at 4 pm, and we drink tea for dinner. The traffic wraps around itself. Bread is fresh every morning. The fruit is lumpy or bright or sweet, but not quite. It is all unfamiliar. Yet, I will look at my uncle (who looks just like my brother) and my aunt (who is possibly more of a perfectionist than I am, if you can believe it) and my little cousins (who are so proud of having American relatives), and I will find a place for myself, a place where I begin and end.

And when I return home to this small town home, every once in a while I will breathe deeply and catch the scent of something thick and almost sweet and I will long for home once again.