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.