Late afternoon by the LA River

There seem to be more homeless people in this park each week: more sleeping bags stretched out next to plastic bags spilling out belongings, convening in this particular triangular section where the sliver of grassy city park ends and the concrete banks of the LA river pass underneath the street bridge.

The dog seems spooked by this corner of the park today. Usually, she lingers on the grass here: savoring ever last scent in this tiny bastion of green before we start our journey home across the asphalt and concrete. But today she walks slowly, gingerly, just along the edge of the sidewalk. As if she’s seen a ghost lurking on the grass.

The young couple with the Chihuahua beats us to the bridge. The man picks up the teensy dog and the woman stands and stares at the river and points down. And I wonder what they’re looking at: the concrete banks? The algae buildup in the tiny pools of stagnant water?

And then I see it.

“A bunny,” I say to the couple as I, too, spot the a fluffy brown rabbit with a cotton-ball white tail. It’s hopping on a stretch of dirt just next to the metal fence that lines the river’s banks.

“Three,” they smile and point.

I spot a second rabbit. Then the dog ducks under the metal guard rail and starts walking on the dirt: through the dried eucalyptus leaves, nose hovering just an inch off the ground, absorbing everything.

She lurches forward.

She points me to it: dishes of greens, a water bottle attached to a bowl. Someone is taking care of these bunnies. They belong to someone. Or someone belongs to them. Perhaps it's one of those new sleeping-bagged figures on the grass in the park.

If only the coyotes stay away long enough.

Jewish wine for Christmas

Last night as we were getting ready for Rosh Hashanah dinner, we realized that our sole bottle of kosher wine had gone bad. Which was a problem. We needed kosher wine for the blessings before the meal. Fortunately, though, there’s a liquor store about a block away. I went to the store, which is run by some people whose native language is Arabic, desperately hoping that they had some wine that would solve the problem.

“Do you have any kosher wine?” I ask the young guy behind the cash register.

“Kosher? I’m not sure about that.”

I frown.

“We do have some Jewish wine,” he says.

“Okay. Can you show me where that is, please?”

“The thing is, I don’t know if it’s kosher.”

I tell him it probably is. Anyone that bothered to label a wine as Jewish would probably also make it kosher. Otherwise, why bother, really?…

The guy does his best to help, but he can’t find the “Jewish” wine quickly, and the line at the register is growing. He tells me that he has to go back to the front of the store since he’s the only one on duty tonight, but that if I wait a few minutes he’ll come back and help me find the wine I need; he’s sure that there’s something, somewhere on these shelves that’s Jewish.

While he’s ringing up the other customers, I scour the wine selection and find a lone bottle of Baron Herzog Chardonnay behind a large tag which says “Kosher” and $11.99 (I know, I know – it’s cheaper at Trader Joes, but I was willing to pay for convenience). I turn to take it to the register and meet him half way: he’s come back to help me look.

“You found something?”

“This one.” I show him the bottle..

“I sold whole cases of that yesterday,” he says. “It was crazy.”

“It’s Rosh Hashanah,” I tell him. “Jewish New Year's.”

“Oh,” he nods slowly, processing this key piece information, "that explains it."

He steps behind the counter. There’s a man ahead of me in line now, buying some wine and assorted groceries, asking for cash off his debit card. The line behind me lengthens still longer; this liquor store does brisk Saturday evening business it seems. Finally, the man’s multiple transactions are over and I’m next.

“So really, that’s kosher?” the clerk asks. “You’re sure?”

“Yeah.”

“Show me. Where does it say that?”

I point to the text on the label, that’s not only plain old kosher, but it's even kosher for Passover.

“Cool,” he says as he swipes my credit card. “That’s good to know.”

I don’t mention that there’s a big tag advertising the kosher part on the shelves of his own store.

“So, have a happy Christmas,” he says as I sign the credit card receipt.

I look up at him. “Huh?”

“Your holiday, right?” he says. “That Jewish holiday you told me about.”

“You mean New Year's,” I say.

“Oh, yeah. New Year's,” he shakes his head and shrugs. “You know I was thinking New Year's and that’s why I mixed it up with Christmas.”

I stare at him; it takes me a moment to realize he had thought the New Year's holiday I was talking about was actually in January.

“But now I realize that’s stupid,” he hands me the bottle. “And anyway Christmas is the Christian holiday," he smiles. "It even says it in the name.”

“Yeah.”

“So happy New Year,” he tells me.

And as I walk out of the store, I wonder if I should have wished him a good Ramadan in return. Or would happy Kwanza have been more appropriate?

sea monster

In the moment after I got bitten by the “animal marino desconocido” (translation: unknown marine animal), I knew that my life was going to change. I wasn’t sure how, but I knew that this wasn’t just some small scrape or cut, that it would require some time to heal, and in that time it would change me.

Three years later, I’m still figuring out what to make of the whole event. It strengthened my interest in alternative medicine (since ultimately that helped heal the infections/subsequent allergic reaction(s) after the initial doses of penicillin so large that they made me allergic to the drug). It also has renewed my trust in the universe: this could have been truly awful, deadly even, and instead it was simply annoying. I was there by myself, and not only did people all along the way help me, but they told me stories that I'll cherish (and creatively reshape and retell) forever…

Cahuita, Costa Rica - 2003

The Danish couple from yesterday’s bicycle escapade down to the Panama border promised to meet me at the bus stop this morning which I though was fortuitous: I didn’t want to explore the national park by myself, but even more than not wanting to be alone, I didn’t want to miss seeing it. So, it all worked out, I thought and hoped last night. But they’re not here yet. And the bus is. And none of us have international cell phones, that doesn’t come for another year or two in my travels.

So the bus arrives and I get on it, without my friends. Perhaps it isn’t that bad after all. There are lots of tourists in Costa Rica. I’m not really alone. Perhaps I’ll meet someone to hike with. And if I don’t, or even if I do at this stage, I’ll stick to the beaten path.

The park is shaped like a tiny peninsula, with a horse-shoe shaped trail that traces the outline of the rainforest along the beach. It seems simple enough to navigate: one trail, lots of foot traffic. I buy my ticket and start walking.

Along the way, groups of tourists drop off. By the time I cross a tiny stream about 1 km into the park, most of the people have planted themselves somewhere along the sand on a beach towel.

I cross the stream and keep going: I want to see what’s ahead.

A man in a well worn polo shirt and shorts comes up to me. He carries a weathered Barnes and Noble canvas bag over his shoulder and I notice he walks quickly down the path, assuredly, even though he’s barefoot. He seems to know exactly where he’s going.

He greets me as he passes. It turns out he’s American, from Washington DC; his name is Jasper.

We walk along together for a while and Jasper tells me that he’s spent quite a bit of time here in Cahuita. He loves Costa Rica, and tries to get away from Washington as much as he can. We start talking about rainforest animals leading up to my favorites: the sloths or perezosos. They move slowly, only when necessary, and prefer to sleep most of the day (15-18 hours). They come to the ground once a week to urinate and deficate, and when they have sex it lasts nearly 24 hours (or at least that’s I heard from a guide in Manuel Antonio last week).

Jasper smiles. “Perezosos are extraterrestrials,” he says.

“Huh?”

He nods. “I saw one crawl out of that stream back there. It got onto the land, came up to me and shook my hand.”

I laugh.

“I swear it happened,” he said. “It was a real extraterrestrial experience.”

We walk along the path a little further and then the path turns inland and Jasper walks out onto a thin strip of sandy beach.

“This is my stop for the day,” he says as he jumps onto a tree branch dangling above the sand. “I like it here. Hardly anyone makes it this far, so it’s great. I’ve got my fruit, a book, a joint. I’m set for the day.”

Jasper pulls a banana and a paperback out of the bag and sets them on the tree branch next to him. “You know,” he turns back to me, “if you go up a bit further that way, you can see turtles.”

“Really?” Sea turtles area another of my favorite tropical creatures; so old (some species are direct descendents of dinosaurs) and gentle (seeming, at least) and graceful in the water. “Just up there at the point?”

Jasper nods. “You’re better off walking along the beach here, though. From here on, the path cuts inland and gets kind of muddy.”

I look down the beach: an extremely thin strip of sand with very low-hanging branches.

“Just walk through the water when you can’t follow the sand,” Jasper tells me. “That’s what I always do.”

“Great. Thanks,” I say. “Maybe I’ll see you on my way back.”

“Maybe,” he says. He lies back on the branch and starts peeling his banana.

I start wading through the water toward the turtles.

“Oh shit!” Jasper yells when I’m about 15 feet away.

I turn around “What happened?”

“That monkey stole my banana.” He points at another tree and I notice the branches rustling. “Nature,” he grunts as he settles back into his spot.

I strap my Teva sandals to my backpack and walk for a while: on the skinny strips of sand when the trees don’t overhang so low as to permit this, ankle-deep in the water the rest of the time. I notice a few small boats out beyond the reef, and I wonder whether perhaps one of those is the snorkel trip I opted not to take because the recent rains have made the water so cloudy. It’s murky even here, inside the reef. When I’m wading through the water, I can’t really see my feet between the storm’s detritus of broken branches and strayed leaves and the sand stirred up by the waves.

The sun is shining, the point where the sea turtles hang out grows bigger: it seems more and more attainable.

And then something grabs my ankle and clamps it, tight.

It’s a sharp, deep pain. It sends me flying into air.

“Ouch!” I yell. The pain burns as it shoots up my leg from my ankle. Something bit me. “Ouch!” I scream and jump onto a nearby tree stump to examine my foot. It’s a deep puncture wound, a half-crescent, shaped like a giant tooth. “Something bit me!” I yell.

No one answers. I look around: Jasper has blended into the trees of the rainforest and the snorkel boats are dots across the reef. “Help!” I wave my arms at the boat. “Ayudame!” I wave my arms toward Jasper, toward the thick rainforest canopy. I must be 2-3 kms inside the park by now.

No one answers.

My leg starts to throb; I can feel my pulse: a new shot of pain with each beat of my heart. Blood slowly seeps to the surface of my skin, then it starts pouring out.

Oh fuck. This is really bad.

In that moment, I am very clear and certain that I need medical attention. Somehow, I have to find a doctor to look at my leg. And no one is going to rescue me. I somehow will have to walk on that bad leg the 2-3 kms out of the park to get to a doctor.

I look down at my leg, now trailing blood. I take off my t-shirt and tie it around my ankle and hope it will stop the bleeding, or at least protect the wound from some of the muck in the water I have to wade through on my way back.

Things will never be the exactly the same after this.

When I get back to Jasper, I find him lying in his tree completely naked, smoking his joint.

He looks up at me. “Back so soon?”

“Something bit me.” I show him my leg.

He jumps out of his tree. “This is terrible.”

“It really hurts.”

“I wonder what could have bitten you.”: He stares at me. “I’ve never heard of anything like that happening out here.”

“It really really hurts.”

“Is there anything I can do to help?”

Put on some clothes, I think. “I need to get to a doctor,” I say.

“There’s a clinic in town,” he says.

“Okay. I have to get there, though. We're pretty far in.”

I start walking.

“Wait,” he says. I turn around. He’s still not wearing any clothes. “Let me come with you. Just in case anything happens along the way. I feel so bad. I told you to go out there and then this happened and…”

Jasper finally puts his pants on and grabs his book and canvas bag. We start walking. The trip seems much longer this direction, but that doesn’t surprise me, really.

On the way back, Jasper tells me bits of his life story, interspersed with his musings on philosophy, ecology and Costa Rica. On the last topic he says. “Italian restaurants are the ruin of a place.” First the Italian restaurants opened in this small coastal town with its tiny grid of dirt and gravel streets that cut through the sleepy bamboo houses. “Once the Italian restaurants came in,” he says, “that’s when I started seeing the teenage prostitutes hanging around.”

Because of the increasing tourism and economic development (even in my injured and pained state, I gather this is the real reason for the prostitutes’ arrival, not the pizzas), Jasper is looking for another tropical undeveloped place to spend the half of the year that he’s not working in Washington DC. “I try to keep life simple, basic,” he explains. And he wants to find somewhere as simple and basic as he can. Perhaps it’s the Amazon next. He’s very critical of the developed world and our consumer culture that’s increasingly, rabidly, over consuming the world’s natural resources. He’s well read, very philosophical and principled; impressive. I wonder what he does in Washington DC, assuming it’s some kind of consulting: on the environment, for the World Bank, etc.

“Hourly work,” he replies. His last job was packing boxes somewhere.

And where does he live?

“I usually don’t talk about it,” he says. “Most people don’t understand.”

But he tells me: in Washington, he lives in a park. So, yes, technically, he’s “homeless.”

“Last winter was really cold there, wasn’t it?” I ask.

“I have a military sleeping bag,” he says. “Sub-zero. And I belong to a health club. The sauna there saved me.” He has a P.O. box, a health club membership, eats only organic foods from the local health food store and he sleeps…in a military sleeping bag in the park. He hides under the bushes; if the cops catch him they’ll send him to a shelter. “Those people are sick in there. Really sick. And crazy, too.”

He’s careful not to let on that he’s homeless; the revelation got him fired from his last job. But that doesn’t deter him: it’s not about money, for Jasper it’s about leading a minimally consuming lifestyle.

He’s been homeless other places, too. Hawaii for a while. “Beautiful, but hard,” he aid of his sojourn on the big island a few years ago. “There you have to get up before dawn and throw your stuff in the bushes because the cops patrol the beaches at dawn, and they’re really nasty.”

He has family, in New York, around the world. He even went to fancy private schools. He has friends here in Cahuita, where he actually rents a simple bungalow rather than sleeping outside, for a change. He has a patent that he keeps renewing. He wrote a children’s book: about a dog, from the perspective of a dog.

By the time I’ve found all of this out, we’re close to the front of the park.

“I’ll let you go the rest of the way yourself,” he says to me once we hit a particularly crowded section of trail near the entrance. “I don’t think you were bit by anything poisonous. You’d have collapsed by now if there were poison in your system.” I suppose that's a comforting thought, potentially at least.

At the entrance to the park the rangers are particularly unhelpful.

“Did you see the animal that bit you?”

“No. I jumped out of the water. It hurt.”

“We can’t give you an antidote if we don’t know what animal it was.”

“But it hurts!”

“We can’t give you the wrong antidote.”

“I need to see a doctor. Where’s a doctor?”

They shrug.

I walk out into the town and start asking for a doctor. At the general store, they point me down a few blocks. “There’s a clinic there.”

It’s noon now, and very hot. I hobble along the dusty shade-less road to the clinic. Twenty minutes later I find out it’s closed. In fact, it’s always closed on Saturdays. Just my luck…

I hobble back into town, back to the store again. There’s a taxi there and I ask the driver to take me to the nearest emergency clinic which is open.

“It’s in the next town,” he tells me.

“I don’t care,” I say. “I need to see a doctor today.”

It turns out that only the emergency room is open on Saturdays. A line of mothers and sniffly infants are waiting outside when I arrive in the taxi. A clinic official at the front looks at me – clearly out of place – and asks what happened.

“I got bitten by something,” I tell him. “In the national park.”

“Did you see it? The animal that bit you?”

“No.”

The official escorts me to the front of the line and then inside the building. There’s a sole plastic chair in an otherwise bare hallway.

“There’s a problem,” the clinic official says.

“What?”

“It’s Saturday.”

“But the clinic is open, right?”

He nods. “But you have to pay Monday. You have to promise to come back and pay us on Monday.”

I promise this man I’ll come back on Monday, if only someone will look at my leg today. He nods and tells me, “Wait here.”

A doctor steps out from a closed metal door across the hallway. He escorts me into his office and I explain, yet again, what happened, and that I didn’t see the animal. He examines my ankle, the deep puncture wound on one side and the scratches on the heel and the opposite side of the ankle bone. “It looks like a jaw grabbed you,” he says. “And this was the tooth.”

Nothing I hadn’t figured out for myself already.

“It’s probably a turtle,” he says, “based on the shape of the bite.”

“A turtle?” I’ve never heard of sea turtles biting anyone.

He shrugs. “Maybe you stepped on its head.”

He goes on to explain that the big issue with marine animal bites is to avoid infection. He’s going to prescribe some antibiotics for me and I must take them every 6 hours. “Every six hours,” he says pointing to his watch. “It’s very important. Even in the middle of the night.” Oh, and I need to take the antibiotics on an empty stomach each time. Okay, I tell him. But where do I get the prescription filled on a Saturday?

“No problem,” he says and hands me the piece of paper before leading me into an exam room. I get up on the table, figuring he’s going to clean and dress the wound. Wrong again.

“Drop your pants,” he tells me.

“Excuse me?”

“Drop your pants,” he repeats and points a big needle at me. I do as he says and he shoots me in the butt with something he claims will help the pain.

It does help. And quickly. My leg doesn’t throb anymore.

The clinic official comes into the room and puts a band aid on my ankle. “Follow me,” he says and leads me outside and into another building.

The lights are off in this building, everything is shut, closed. The clinic official points at a darkened window with a slot underneath. “Pharmacy,” he says. “Where’s your prescription?”

I give him the slip of paper from the doctor and he shoves it into the slot. “Now just wait here.” He points to some empty wooden benches in the middle of the unlit room. I go and sit on the bench.

A door pops open.

“Excuse me,” a little man appears from behind the darkened pharmacy window. “Excuse me,” he repeats. “Can you please spell your name.”

I give him the spelling then go back to the bench. A few minutes later, he walks out and hands me a bottle of pills which I need to take, “Every six hours.” He points emphatically to his watch. “Every six hours,” he repeats.

Okay, I’ve got it. Every six hours on the antibiotic for the mysterious turtle bite.

I ask the man from the pharmacy where I pay for the prescription and he shrugs. “It’s closed,” he says.

“So Monday?”

He nods and smiles. “Yes, Monday.”

The nearest bus stop is at the bottom of a hill. I walk down, my antibiotics in hand, half an hour after the taxi dropped me off at the clinic. Amazing. I’d never have gotten medical attention this quickly back at home…

I just missed the bus, the stressed out young guy sitting on the bench informs me. He’s late for work, and the phone lines are down in this little town so he can’t even call to warn them.

His girlfriend flags down a car passing by and gets in. The young guy tries the same thing, but no one stops for him. He jokes with me a bit as he waits for another car to drive by. He asks how I ended up there, and I tell him I was bitten by a turtle in the national park.

“I’ve lived here all my life, and I’ve never heard of a turtle biting anyone,” he says. “Wow. You’re really having a bad day. Worse than mine.”

A driver stops and picks us both up. He doesn’t even want taxi fare for the ride .

Bad days are in eyes of the beholder. Personally, I think I’m pretty lucky: I wasn’t bitten by anything poisonous, I found help (Jasper) when I really did need it, I ultimately got myself to the clinic, they took me quickly, gave me a painkiller and some antibiotics and a final diagnosis: “mordura de un animal marino desconocido” (bite of an unknown marine animal), all for the mere promise that I’d return Monday to pay the bill (I did return; the grand total for all my treatment and medicine: roughly $20 US). I walked away from a sea monster – that seems like a pretty lucky day to me.

Mimi gets into the car...

San Diego, California - 1932/3

Mimi is ready to get into the car even before June honks the horn, even before June appears in her driveway, even before she’s made the turn onto her street. Mimi’s ready to get into the car from early in the morning, anticipating. She’s always been ready for this car.

She gets into the car and dreams it will make her into someone else.

She thinks about getting into the car the night before, and the night before that. For weeks: from the time she last got out of that car, she started thinking about getting back in, about going back. Every time the phone rings, she hopes it’s word: that she’ll be needed again, to get into the car, to help her family, as service to them. The only gesture she makes for them so eagerly, so willingly, although they all see it as a sacrifice. As always, she thinks, she’s one step ahead in the game.

She dreams about the car, or any car like it: driving it herself one day, owning it herself one day.

Mimi gets into the car with a different dramatic gesture each time. Today it’s the stocking pull. Last time it was the single gloved hand gliding over the leather seat then ever so lightly caressing the steering wheel, the one she’d been forbidden from touching after the incident with their last car, even though that was completely the other driver’s fault and even the policeman would have said so if he had been able to see it from the same angle as she had.

She gets into the car because it’s the one thing that she ought to do that she’s actually good at.

She gets into the car and tilts the rearview mirror to check her makeup quickly, before June pulls it back into place. The conversation is always the same. “I need that to drive.” “Party-pooper.” “I just want to get home in one piece.” “What’s the point of getting home in one piece if that piece looks like shit?” “You look fine.” “But I need to look devastating.”

She gets into the car and notices that June has wrapped her purse strap around her leg. Mimi sighs loudly, overly accenting her disappointment. Ever since that incident no one trusts her anymore, not even June.

She gets into the car with “dear sweet June” “darling angel” “my favoritest niece” and smiles sincerely. “No reason to be glum,” she tells June. “It doesn’t get you anywhere. Smiles are what take you places. Just watch. You’ll see.”

She gets into the car and starts whistling the tune from the Jack Benny show. June likes Jack Benny, too; Mimi is counting on this. After what happened last time it’s vital to break the ice properly before they even start again.

She gets into the car even though she knows she’s only a proxy. It doesn’t matter, not really. And anyway, she does a better job than any of them could. She’s got more courage than all of them combined, more gumption, more smarts. And she’s sure June would agree.

She gets into the car and immediately starts talking, or continues talking; she never really stops. More than anything, it’s the silences that make her anxious.

Mimi gets into the car because there’s no reason to be bland. She sees Edgar’s point, or at least pretends to understand him, or what he is going through, or why he might so desperately needs it in the first place. “You’d never catch me touching that stuff,” she tells June, “but it helps him. Drift off into dreamland, somewhere else, where no one’s screaming at you and no rent is due and no little kids or husband or wives or mothers-in-law need, need, need from you. Sort of a cloudy-like peace.”

June gets into the car...

1932/3

June gets into the car because she’s terribly brave.

She gets into the car because she’s even more terribly afraid.

She gets into the car because she’s a nice Jewish girl, even though she knows that nice Jewish girls don’t go these places, don’t do these things, not even when asked nicely.

She gets into the car in New York to drive uptown to Harlem. To listen while the engine idles and Sidney slides into the large back seat with Edgar so that they can perform their monthly exchange. And then, a few moments after the money has changed hands, Sidney gets out of the car and Edgar unwraps the stuff and after a while becomes quiet again, relaxed, not angry the way he was on their trip uptown.

She gets into the car in Memphis after collecting Edgar from the alleyway. Her mother and Ruth are passed out in the back seat, from fright and worry and alcohol. She collects all of them, cleans them up and keeps on driving forward, even though she’s the only one awake and conscious enough to know where they’re going in the first place. And she’s only just turned 16, only just learned how to drive.

She gets into the car in Los Angeles and drives longingly past the city college on her way to Tijuana, but she slows, lingering to admire the women and men on their way to class. June liked school, she did well, graduated early. She could be there, too, would be there, if only they didn’t need her to drive.

She gets into the car in Oklahoma after the police car has left the gas station and Edgar is safely in the back seat, again, not anxious or angry or yelling any more.

She gets into the car in Texas, outside the ranch where she wishes she could stay a while longer, linger with the cowboys who don’t speak much, and when they do their accents and words and patterns and meanings are so different from those she’s known anywhere else.

She gets into the car outside Albert’s store in Tijuana, straightens her skirt and pretends what she just saw didn’t happen, that she wasn’t here, didn’t participate, that this whole country is just a dusty dream that she can wake up from one day.

She gets into the car and feels fifty pounds heavier even though her dress size hasn’t changed at all. She feels like she has lead inside her, weighting her, getting heavier each time until one day she won’t even be able to lift herself out of the car.

She gets into the car and thinks about that woman, Miranda, with her dark makeup and pale, pale skin that reflected in the light. Miranda, with the scars up and down the insides of her arms, scars that matched Edgar’s.

She gets into the car and thinks about Ruth, sitting alone at the kitchen table in the middle of the night, head in her hands, softly sobbing when she thinks no one can see.

She gets into the car and wonders how you let yourself start down that path, the one that you can so clearly see leads to nowhere.

June gets into the car because they tell her to, and she hasn’t yet figured out how to say “no.”

rest stop, Oklahoma, 1932(ish)

Oklahoma, 1932(ish)

June peeks out through the bathroom window and sees that nothing has changed: Rosie, wedding band carefully tucked into her purse, flirts with the gas station attendant while Ruth paces circles around the car. One day this nervousness will give them all away, June is sure of it. One day they’ll all get arrested, blamed, thrown into jail because Ruth can’t “just suck it in”; do as I say, not as I do, June thinks, and that pretty much surmises her grandmother.

Edgar is still nowhere to be seen.

Barely any paint still clings to the wood of the windowsill, and that’s on the inside. June follows the lines of the wood: so many jagged splinters jutting out. Not much to hold it together, except for the dust.

Although this gas station seems like a solid building – or more substantial than anything else they’ve passed since Memphis – she can hear the wind howling, screaming, a lunatic banshee on the loose. June tugs at her stockings: plastered against her legs with the dust and wind and sweat. It has to be over 100 degrees outside this afternoon. And yet she’s still wearing them.

“Nice Jewish girls don’t show their naked legs to all of Oklahoma,” June hears Ruth’s vaguely accented critique inside her head before she even takes one step away from the window. Then the Rosie voice inside her head, higher pitched than Ruth’s, adds, “Your bare legs are ugly. It’s that simple.”

June steps away from the window and catches a glance of herself in the mirror. Dusty olive skin, arching eyebrows that accentuate how flat and serious her brown pooling eyes have become: no wonder she doesn’t have any friends. She splashes some water on her face and feels the coldness smart against her skin; as she only now scans for a towel, she notices the tiny red spots on the floor. Nothing more this time: at least he’s taking some precautions for once.

Dust tickles her nostrils and the whole room smells like stale stink contained in iron then covered with a thick layer of dirt. June doesn’t mind, though; it’s better than the alternative. She walks back to the window to watch and wait.

And dream. Of being somewhere else, someone else instead; only once again she can’t conjure up the image of who or where or what she would be doing. The only thing she can concretely imagine is not getting back into the car now, not with them, not any more. She’s had this fantasy before; at every stop on this trip, and the one before. Only each time, her body betrays her and she finds herself behind the driver’s seat, again, map spread out on the seat next to her while Rosie snores, while Ruth stares blankly at the dusty road ahead, her index finger tapping rhythmically on the passenger seat just next to the map, while Edgar slips back into that spectacular void: his bliss.

a whole city in a subway car

I like the Metro Red Line hope it does actually expand all the way to Santa Monica, as proposed. Los Angeles needs all the positive public transit experiences it can get...

December 29, 2005

My father and I are going to take my cranky and handicapped 91 year-old grandmother June to Tijuana so she can show us where, when she was a teenager, she used to go buy heroin for her uncle Edgar from the Jewish dealer (who also owned one of the biggest stores in town). The plan is we're all going to take the train down to San Diego together, spend the afternoon and evening there, then go to Tijuana the next morning. It should be interesting...

I decided to take the Metro Red Line from North Hollywood to meet my father and grandmother at Union Station.

At the first stop, an African-American man in his mid-late 20s with a CD player sits down on the bench next to me. In his case (a small black and silver hard CD case), he has: CDs, toothpaste, a mini-toothbrush, a large stack of condoms (“my personal hygiene items,” he explains). But what he doesn’t have in the case, it turns out, are extra AA batteries. Which is a problem today.

He turns off the now-dead CD player and tells me that he lent the player to one of his housemates and, in a considerate but convoluted scheme, she put in her own cheap AAs so as not to run down his. She even left him 2 additional batteries (“The cheap kind. Not Duracells like I always put in.”) He changed out the first set of batteries on the Orange Line earlier that morning. But the second set just died, right now. And unfortunately, the space in his CD case/wallet where he usually keeps those “extra extra batteries” had been replaced with the personal hygiene items. Which, he said, his voice dipping slightly, meant no more music until he got to work, another subway train then bus away, albeit lots of prospects for safe sex.

But the commute was worth it, he said, even without the batteries. Where he was living now was much nicer than the place he had left. “No gunshots.”

In Hollywood, a young Latino kid with a sweatshirt, trendy low-slung baggy cargo pants, a long beard and shaved head, gets on the train. He’s carrying a hard CD wallet, a CD player and a large, worn bible. He sits down next to me, in the seat adjacent to the now music-less man. Across from him a young white woman is buried in her book.

My neighbor turns to the teenager with the bible and CD player and asks, “What are you listening to?”

“Christian rap.”

“Is that like regular rap?”

“Sort of.”

“Then why not just listen to regular rap? Is it the cuss words?”

The teenager shakes his head. “Even without those words, it’s what the music’s about. It hurts your soul to listen to that stuff. This is more uplifting.”

“Have you ever listened to Israeli rap?” asks the woman, setting aside her book.

“No,” the teenager says.

“Now that’s uplifting,” she says. “The lyrics are great and the beat – it’s mixed with some Arab stuff. It’s amazing.”

The teenager and my neighbor nod.

“Where can I get it?” the teenager asks.

“Maybe at one of those Armenian stores on Santa Monica,” my neighbor suggests.

“I don’t know.” The woman shrugs. “Some friends brought me some from Israel.”

All three start to talk to each other. The woman tells them that she just finished college and is working two jobs: one at Metro (which runs all the subways and buses in the city – my neighbor nods and says, “I thought I recognized you from that. I’ve seen you riding the subway before.”) and the other at the Jewish Journal. She’s hoping to get her first by-line in a couple of weeks.

My neighbor gets off at the same stop as the woman. As they walk across the platform together to catch their next train, they continue their conversation.

The teenager slumps back into his seat, opens up his Bible and resumes reading. I glance over his shoulder and realize he’s scouring the explanatory notes in the margins, running his index finger over the tiny lines of text. So intent, as if trying to absorb the whole page in a glance. Or the whole word in the span of a simple subway car during a typical morning commute.

the lady, the baby, or the diaper?

Salt Lake City to LAX; late March, 2004

The benches near my Southwest Airlines departure gate are empty: I miscalculated the length of the drive and arrived nearly an hour earlier than I needed to. I buy myself a bottle of water, then find a nice empty spot on the bench were I can spread out a bit. I take out my laptop and start working on my novel, finally; I haven’t had nearly as much time for this as I would have liked. My fingers glide across the keyboard and I successfully tune out the outside world. Until…

“Excuse me.”

I look up to see two young women standing in front of me. Woman 1 is holding a baby, a baby blanket and a diaper bag. Woman 2 is only holding a purse. “Yes?”

“Do you speak Spanish?”

I nod.

“Good.” Woman 1 smiles. “She’s never flown before,” she gestures to Woman 2. “And she doesn’t understand any English. Do you mind just telling her when they’re about to board?”

“Sure.” I shrug. “But aren’t you…”

“Great,” Woman 1 interrupts me before I can ask her where she’s going or why she won’t be around with her friend. She turns to Woman 2 and quickly trades the baby for the purse. Then she’s gone.

For a moment, the click of her high heels echoes on the linoleum floor as her figure recedes until she’s disappeared and we’re left only with the crowd and the din of people waiting for our flight. And Woman 2, who tells me her name is Rosa, and the baby.

Rosa and the baby sit next to me while I finish my work and close up my laptop. The baby has big brown eyes and huge cheeks just begging to be pinched. She’s 9 months old, or so Rosa tells me. And so good: calm, quiet, alert and smiley. Much more smiley than her stoic mother.

People start to line up for the flight in boarding groups. As I had promised the disappearing stranger, I tell Rosa to follow me to Group A’s line. Rosa smiles, picks up the baby, the diaper bag and baby blanket and joins me in line.

“Where are you from?” I ask as we’re waiting.

“Guadalajara.”

“How long have you been here?”

“Five years.” Five years and she’s somehow managed to develop absolutely no English skills. In Utah.

Her glance dances around the terminal and her posture seems tense.

“Are you afraid of flying?”

“A little,” she says.

I explain what it’s like: takeoff, the pressure buildup in your ears, how to get rid of it, not to worry if the baby cries.

“Will you sit next to me?” she asks.

“What’s in Los Angeles?” I ask, desperate to change the subject.

“I have an aunt there,” she says. “We’re going to meet her.”

The line starts moving and I let her go ahead of me with the baby. I suggest that she might want an aisle seat and watch her settle in with the baby. I pass them and move to an emergency exit row. They’re on the flight, I think; my work is done.

The flight fills quickly. I’m surrounded by businessmen coming home early from a retreat somewhere near Salt Lake City (and who plans corporate retreats in Salt Lake City in late March?). They joke with each other, and sometimes with me, for most of the flight. I’ve almost forgotten about Rosa and her baby until we start deplaning.

Of course, they’re waiting for me. Rosa’s standing next to her seat, and they’re both looking at me with enormous eyes.

“We’re here,” I tell her. “Los Angeles. You can get off.”

She nods and picks up the smiling baby and the diaper bag.

“Did she cry?” I ask.

“No,” Rosa says.

We walk out into the terminal.

“Well, have a good trip,” I say as I start walking toward the exit.

“Wait.” Rosa grabs my arm. “Please.” Her voice is higher, tighter, panicked. “I need to find my aunt.”

“You have to go to baggage claim,” I point toward the exit. “Visitors aren’t allowed in here. Not at the gate.”

Rosa nods. “Where is that?”

I sigh. Why can’t I seem to just get rid of these people? “Follow me.”

Through the terminal, down the escalators, out into the baggage claim area. She looks around and I start walking to the exit. She runs up to me and tugs at my sleeve again.

“She’s not here.” Now she’s really panicked.

“Maybe she’s late. There’s traffic.”

“I think I was supposed to meet her by the gate.”

“I’m telling you, you can’t get in there without at ticket. Just go and get your bags and she’ll come.”

“Bags?”

“That’s all you have?” I point to the diaper bag, the fuzzy baby blanket, her small purse.

She nods.

“Just wait. She knows you’re coming. I’m sure she’ll find you.”

She still hasn’t let go of my arm. And I realize that I haven’t heard the baby make a single noise yet.

“Please. Help me find her.”

“I’ve got to go…”

“Please. I have a phone number here. Please help me call her.”

Sometimes, I am definitely too much of a good Samaritan for my own good. I walk her over to a bank of pay phones. We attempt to call.

“No, no. I didn’t mean to do anything wrong.” Rosa’s body stiffens and her hand shakes as she holds the receiver. “…okay, okay.” She hangs up.

“She says she’s looking for me inside,” Rosa tells me.

“That’s impossible,” I say.

“We need to go back up there.”

“You can’t,” I shrug. “Not now.”

“She says she was there looking for us.” Rosa sounds angry now, agitated, afraid. It turns out she has no money in purse at all, not even enough for another phone call.

Whoever this aunt was, whether she was at the gate or not, she didn’t recognize Rosa or the baby. “How long has it been since you’ve seen your aunt?”

Rosa shakes her head and starts to cry. “I need to find her.”

I start walking to the exit, dragging my suitcase. She follows me, crying as she clutches the baby.

“Do you need some help?” a woman in an LAX uniform asks.

“Do you speak Spanish?”

“Si”

"This woman,” I say, switching back to Spanish now. “She needs your help.”

As the sliding glass doors close behind me, three other people in LAX uniforms are surrounding Rosa and her baby.

Later I wondered what exactly had gone on back there. Who – or what – was being trafficked?

• Rosa? (I had just come back from a trip to southeast Asia and had been reading rather obsessively about sex trafficking and slavery. There were houses of captive women in various suburbs and cities around the US, and the women didn’t even realize they could escape).
• Drugs? (which might have been easily concealed in the baby’s diaper)
• The baby? (a few weeks later on an entirely different trip, I met a man from Salt Lake City who somehow mentioned that Utah had become a hub for smuggling babies in from third world countries and then selling them to couples here desperate to adopt)

Later still, I learned that those people in LAX uniforms were actually under cover Border Patrol agents.

To this day I wonder where Rosa ended up. Was she better off not finding her aunt, or finding her? I still wonder where that baby ended up, and if it was really even Rosa's at all...

stranded: Moscow airport, 1993

When I flew from Tashkent to Moscow in 1993, the nascent airline packed passengers into old Soviet cargo jets and fed us only once: exactly half way through the flight, no matter what time of day or night that might be. On one of my flights, a dog paced through the cabin. On another, they pressurized the cabin completely before takeover, so we had the unpleasant sensation o f ears popping even while standing still (with the noise of screeching engines in the background, just to add atmosphere, I suppose).

A friend of mine was on an Uzbek Air flight from London during that same period and said he watched an entire Uzbek family – from grandparents to little kids – attentively watching the provided inflight entertainment: pornography from India. But despite the seeming problems of flying with Uzbek Air, it felt much safer than actually arriving.

The following is an excerpt from an e-mail I sent home that summer.

Moscow, Russia - August, 1993

...My Moscow adventure really began in Tashkent. After a week of hassles trying to purchase an airplane ticket, my friend Eric and I left for the airport like two country bumpkins--our tickets in hand we were finally going off to see the sights of the big city. Of course there were many hurdles to be overcome before that could happen.

After a confusion about from which terminal foreigners had to leave, Eric and I began the long process of clearing customs. Uzbekistan definitely suffers from an acute"hurry up and wait" affliction: they hustle you into hot, stuffy rooms only to leave you waiting there for hours. I guess that we were lucky that our plane actually left, albeit an hour late, considering fuel shortages that can leave people stranded for days. In Moscow (once I eventually did arrive) some friends told me that each passenger in Georgia is currently required to bring 40 liters of gas each to the airport and must present the fuel at check in so that the plane can actually fly.

I flew Uzbek Air to Moscow; basically, old Aeroflot and Soviet military planes had recently been repainted and "nationalized." In a feat of incredibly bad engineering and planning, Uzbek Air passengers enter the large jet through a single door in the center which leads into the cargo hold and then up into the cabin.

There were no assigned seats. People mobbed the stairs, pushing and shoving while two stewardesses with eblows of steel did their best imitation of American football blockers. In that moment, I swore to myself that I'd never complain about US boarding regulations again.

Once we were on the plane, most standard rules did not apply. The plane made an incredible amount of noise and shook violently as the engines revved for five minutes before we even moved towards the runway. The overhead bins all swung open open as we took off and items inside flew around the cabin. But then, finally, we were airborne.

People got up immediately (no waiting until any safe cruising altitutde was achieved) and milled around. This continued until we landed, when the plane came to a screeching halt on the Moscow runway, thrusting everyone in the plane forward, half of them crashing into each other. All the passengers were lined up by the exit clutching their bags before we even taxied to the gate.

But this was all fine. It was in customs that our troubles began....

The procedure was to turn in all the "foreign" passengers' passports at once, in a batch, and then wait for your name to be called to collect your "approved" and stamped passport and move on to the arrival terminal. We turned in our passports and looked around.

Eric noticed the clock: just past midnight

"Well, we made it through Friday the 13th alright," he said.

I nodded.

"Have you ever slept in an airport?" he asked. Just like that -- out of nowhere.

"No," I said, not realizing that all that was about to change...

When the customs agents came back they explained the situation: my visa was fine. Eric, on the other hand, had a "very big problem."

It turns out that the Russian embassy in Tashkent didn't give him a visa for the dates of his trip, but rather a visa valid beginning on the first of September. Neither the Peace Corps secretary handling the visas, nor Eric, nor the customs official who examined the passport in Tashkent upon departure noticed the error. However, the Russian border guards did. And they were upset, very very upset.

He was here at the wrong time.

A few days, a week, they said, maybe they could let something like that slip by. But this was a month early. That simply wouldn't do...

They attempted to call the Russian embassy in Tashkent. Meanwhile, we tried desperately to explained that Eric was a Peace Corps volunteer on vacation in Moscow. Could he be granted a 72 hour grace period during which time he could straighten everything out with the American embassy in Moscow? Could he stay in Moscow for the night and deal with the Russian authorities in the morning? Could he buy a tourist visa at the airport? (i.e. would they take a bribe?)

"Absolutley not."

Not only no, but five minutes later and Eric was being deported. Do not pass go, the Russian border gaurds were telling him, do not collect your $200. But, as a consolation prize, they were going to let him fly back to Tashkent for free. Three customs agents materialized seemingly from thin air whisked him away: he was gone.

I turned to the remaining customs officials that we had traveled together and that I was afraid to go into Moscow by myself. I explained that I had never been here before, that my friend who they had just packed onto a return flight to Uzbekistan was supposed to be my guide: he had the contacts and he had made all the arrangements (semi-true). And besides, I'd heard awful things about westerners traveling alone into Moscow, much less western women in the depths of the night.

To all of this the guards replied simply, "You entered Russia. He didn't." End of story.

Oh and by the way, they added, the last bus of foreigners had just left for the main terminal. They pointed to a building in the distance and cautioned me to be careful walking across the tarmac (wouldn't want to get hit by any errant airplanes, after all, like the one that was deporting my friend...).

So, like any sensible traveler in that situation, I froze. None of my options seemed good. None at all. Or...well...I guess I could just stay right here until the sun rose...

...so I refused to leave the customs area that night. The guards weren't really sure what to make of it.

First they tried to deposit me in a waiting room for transit passengers who were sleeping on dirty, dingy couches, watching television at a high volume, and smoking heavily. I refused to be left there. I walked upstairs and plunked myself down on a steel bench outside the customs offices and told them I was staying for the night.

They thought I was insane, but I didn't care.

Several of the guards were women. One of them even turned out to be nice. She told me she understood my concerns. She even brought me a blanket and promised to wake me up at dawn, before the next international flight arrived; she explained how and where I could catch a train into the city the next day.

Lying on the bench under the customs area florescents, I thought of all the things I had worried about in planing this trip to Moscow. Having to sleep in the airport because my friend had been deported was not even on the list. But here I was. The things we fear most rarely happen, and the things that do happen are often even worse.

Early in the morning the woman guard woke me as promised, and pointed me to the arrival lounge. There were no shuttle buses running yet, so I walked across the tarmac, alone, as the sun was starting to rise.

“Taxi,” a man yelled, interrupting the blissful moment. A second chimed in. I looked over and saw them: a line of taxis on the tarmac.

"Moscow?" a second driver asked.

“Nyet,” I shook my head, empowered as I slackened my pace toward the terminal and the train.

I was exhausted and nervous, but also feeling ever so slightly intoxicated and invincible, and amazingly alive.

A bright band of red covered the horizon and a flock of black birds circled overhead, not ominous any more. Instead they said simply: Welcome to Moscow.

dilapitated bus, Uzbekistan

Some background: I spent the summer of 1993 in Uzbekistan, teaching economics at a newly established private Uzbek university (which went out of business shortly thereafter) and consulting the Uzbek State Property Committee on their plans for privatizing (very, very slowly, if really at all). During that time, I met some incredible people – including a wonderful host family in Tashkent – and had some amazing adventures.

The following is excerpted from an e-mail I sent home that summer.

Bukhara, Uzbekistan - August, 1993

We decided to go to Bukhara for the weekend. I still have no idea why we thought the best way to get there would be an overnight bus: 12 1/2 hours on a rickety bus through the desolate Central Asian desert in the middle of the summer. I hoped it would be tolerable. Or that it even could be, somehow.

There seem to be three kinds of buses in Uzbekistan: new Mercedes buses which, although poorly designed are rather comfortable (for Central Asia); older red buses which are actually slightly more comfortable than the pink and green Mercedes buses as they have bigger windows which open wider and slightly more leg room; and extremely old, rickety, horribly uncomfortable (no leg room, practically no cushions on the seats, windows which opened only into tiny slits if they had not been glued entirely shut) yellow buses which all seem to reek of gasoline. Of course, it was a yellow bus that was destined for Bukhara.

The bus was beyond full. People sat on the stairs, on the floor, and in every available space; some even had to stand in the aisle all the way to Samarkand (half way). Squashed in the corner, doubled over the wheelbase, I tried to be grateful: at least there weren't any animals. Chickens could definitely have made the whole experience worse.

After a couple of hours of driving in the pitch black desert night it became clear that something more than normal rickety-ness was wrong with our bus. The floor and the walls were radiating. My feet sizzled on the floor above the wheel. And still no one would open the windows (if they happened to be by a window that actually opened) because, they claimed, the ventilation was bad for the health of a baby traveling somewhere in the back of the bus.

Then we stopped. On the highway, in the middle of nowhere.

Everyone got out and stared: the exhaust pipe was glowing orange. The driver waited for the glow to lose some of its brightness then he herded us back onto the bus.

The bright orange bothered me. It was a color I associated with special effects in movies, explosions and fires and such, not with actual vehicles I was trusting to deliver me safely to my destination. I tried my best to think about other things, but as the floor heated again, thoughts of doom arose: How, exactly, would they identify my body? If the bus exploded and my body were blown apart, would my passport still be near me? On me? And even when they figured out who I was, how long would it take them to figure out who to contact?...

But on the other hand...

...it does seem rather senseless and, well, really random for me to die this way. Maybe that's not my fate. In fact, I'm pretty sure it isn't....

We kept spinning: the bus and my thoughts. Periodically there would be another stop to consider the pipe, then we'd resume. As if this were normal. As if this happened to everyone at some point or another in their Central Asian travels...

At 2:30 a.m. the bus stopped – altough this time it wasn't because the bus was overheating. The driver yelled "uzhen" ("dinner"), woke everyone up and kicked us all outside.

In the dead of night in the middle of the Uzbek desert where there were hardly any gas stations, much less truck stops or convenience stores, there it stood: an enormous shashleek stand and impromptu bazaar. The Uzbek passengers immediately started shopping.

We three Americans turned to each other and shrugged.

"So what about that fruit?" I asked one of my traveling companions, feeling somewhat inspired by the bazaar, and the long wait.

He stared at me blankly.

"You know, the peaches and plums your host family packed. In the station in Tashkent you were telling us about that..."

"Uh...you don't want that fruit."

"Why not? It sounded good. And we're stopped here anyway."

"Uh...well...my backpack was on the floor and well, uh...it sort of cooked itself into my underwear."

"Oh," we sighed, and shrugged. Stewed peaches: another casualty of the exhaust pipe.

"just a human being"

economy class across the Pacific, circa 2004

The man is seated a bit further up in the coach section. He's wearing a bright red silk button-down shirt, his head is shaved like a monk’s, and dark sunglasses cover his eyes, even inside the airplane. Beads jangle: they're draped over his neck, around his wrists and they jiggle as his hands shake and twitch. He trembles as he places his bag into the overhead bin.

A little while later, after the flight has begun, he gets up and paces around economy class with a purple airplane blanket draped over his shoulders. Like some perverse anti-superhero in his makeshift cape. As he passes my row, I notice he's holding a strand of beads in his hands behind him, counting. Murmuring to himself, he does laps around the cabin. And the thought shamefully crosses my mind that he could be a terrorist just waiting for the right moment…

Several hours later in Tokyo we all get off for the security cabin scrub. Wandering through the perpetually sterile terminal, I notice him in the smoking lounge. He's puffing away, one cigarette directly following the next. I spot his transit card: so he’s on the next leg of the flight with me as well. Just my luck.

He manages to board without his sunglasses this time, although he's held onto the purple blanket and his beads. He changes seats once, then again, until he’s only a couple of rows ahead of me. He gets up to go to the bathroom and notices that we are speaking English, my fellow travelers and I.

“So is this the American section?” he asks me and the new friends I've just made in the row behind. His tone is awkward.

"I just came from Tibet," he says, unpromted. "It's so nice to hear English. There, it's only Tibetan and Hindi. It’s been a long time."

We nod, and he stares at us for a while. Then he moves to the bathroom.

When he returns from the bathroom, he stops and leans over my seat. "I've been there 33 years. Tibet, I mean."

I nod but don't say anything.

"Ever since I was a kid."

"Really, why'd you go?"

“I found myself there." He shakes his head and shrugs. “They thought I was someone. But I’m not. I’m not."

He tells me his a US citizen, born and raised until he was "taken" out of the country so long ago.
Now he teaches English in a monastery to monks who are planning to travel to the US and England. He’s planning on spending the next year in India, he tells me, then before I can respond he sticks out his hand for me to shake. “Hi,” he says, “my name’s Kevin. I’m just a human being. Nothing more.”

He walks off down the aisle and the petite young Chinese woman next to me turns to me and starts speaking very good English.

"The monk," she says, "he seem nice. You know this is my first trip to America." The woman smiles. She smiles broadly as she starts to tell me about the friends she's planning to visit.

Kevin's still wearing his purple blanket cape when he returns and interrupts my neighbor's story. He talks to me, urgently, in a monologue of swirling thoughts: about happiness, about how so many Americans don’t have it, can’t find it, can’t buy it. "And don't get me started on our foriegn policy," he says: Vietnam, bombing Laos and Cambodia in the 70s. "More bombs were dropped there than in all of World War II."

"I think you're blocking," I say and point to the beverage carts stacking up in the aisle behind him.

Kevin keeps talking, and the stewardesses struggle to squeeze the carts by. He bashes George Bush for a while while more people try to climb over and by him. He's not particularly wrong, in my opinion, just an obstacle. Finally, when the chaos seems slightly more settled, he turns and walks away.

“That’s what I love about Americans,” my Chinese neighbor says after he's gone, “you’re all so friendly to each other all the time."

She offers me some spicy beef jerky and I thank her, not bothering to correct her impression. She'll be jaded soon enough. Or maybe not.