Chapter 14: The Start of Something

Adalid and Angeles had come from Las Rosas to make a little extra money, selling ceramics and stained glass to the people in a group who were there at the hacienda that week. They sat outside my room, right below my upstairs window; I had not gone back to Las Rosas the previous night so I could help out in the kitchen to help serve the group that was there. It was a frigid blustery day. The winds had finally shown up, and short showers had decided to choose that day to hang out above the hacienda.
I showered and looked outside my window to see Angeles leave, one leg stepping forward and then the other pulling up along side it. She had to stable her bad leg with one hand, just to pull it even with the other. She wore the same long black wool skirt that she had worn everyday, and would wear everyday, every single day for as long as I have known her. I knew she was walking to the kitchen, where Judith, Leti, Rosalba, Osvelia and Olivia were sure to be. Adalid sat down below me on a white plastic chair, reading a book, seated behind a folding table that held the ceramics and stained glass. There was also a cart, sort of a vendors cart with two wheels, maybe like a large wooden wheelbarrow with an arch over the top and a countertop with a hole for keeping the candy and chips and food they were selling. Since no one had any idea of when the vacationers/campers would be by, someone had to sit there and wait. It could be four hours before they came by, or four minutes. You just never knew. You had a captive audience there, but only captive for short periods during the day and you had to take advantage of those moments.
I walked downstairs and out the door. I smiled and said good morning. I asked if the stained glass was selling well. I had been practicing that sentence upstairs. Adalid smiled and said good morning. She looked at me and said they hadn’t sold anything. She looked into my eyes. She held her stare into my eyes. Which was something I had been told girls don’t do with boys. A memory came back to me, when I had been told that before I went to Mexico, that girls or women wouldn’t look me in the eyes. But I now couldn’t think of a time in the entire past six months that Adalid hadn’t looked at me. I couldn’t think of anything else to say. So I motioned towards the kitchen and left to go eat.
I sat at the table eating Mexican spaghetti and orange chicken, completely lost in my thoughts as to what I was going to say to Adalid when I got back. The five (six with Angeles) kitchen girls buzzed around the kitchen, laughing and splashing water around and doing normal kitchen stuff, as I sat there staring into the wood grain of the table.
I could think of anything to say to her, anything of importance. I suppose that didn’t matter. I thought about hurrying back out there to talk before Angeles came. It seems like when we are alone, we always can find something to say. But when we were with other people, it is all so silly that we both feel strange, like people will laugh at us trying so hard to communicate. When she and I and Kike would hang out, the two of them would chat about whatever because I had a hard time popping into the conversation. When one or the other would ask me to tell a story, I would get through it. But really if we weren’t off by ourselves, I had little to say that either everyone would like, or that could be directed to her but interesting to the other people too.
I came back. I sat down next to her and opened my mouth but she beat me to the punch:
You know, I don’t like your eyes.
Really? …Most people here like my blue eyes.
Nope. I like dark eyes. I like black eyes. No color.
Hmm. I like yours.
I like your legs.
Seriously?
Yes. They are big. They are muscular. No one here has legs like you do. Most men have skinny ugly legs.
I can’t stop smiling… she continues:
I like your eye lashes. They curl up like you make them do that.
But of course I don’t. They are just like that.
Yes, but it looks nice. And I like them even more because it is natural. And I like how your hair curls when you let it grow longer. You should stop shaving your head every four months. And I like your beard. It makes you look manly. I like all your hair. You are a man. You should act a little more like a man. Do you not like your body hair?
No. Not really.
Why not? That’s the way a man should be.
You like guys with lots of hair? (Ok, yes, I just want to hear here say it again.)
Yes. I don’t want a little boy for a novio.

I wish I hadn’t just sat there grinning like an idiot. I wanted to give her a compliment, but I couldn’t think of anything that would match what she just did. I guess it seemed a little forward, but I think it was just the confidence that we had gained speaking so much together, just trying to be ourselves.
Those were the most fantastic four compliments of my life put into one conversation (and the best constructive criticism I have been given). The only other conversation that I have had that got anywhere near this kind of compliment was when my buddy Ethan and I were in Taiwan with our friend Amanda. We went to a little secluded beach that you had to cross a hanging bridge to get to. We went swimming, but when I started to feel burned, I came out and sat on the sand. I went to put my shirt on and Amanda is sitting there and looks up and says “you don’t have to put your shirt on.”
I don’t get a lot of this. I have to go to other countries just to feel good about myself. Which I won’t deny that I like. Maybe you already caught that.
But from now forward, we really started to click. Not as a direct result of the compliments, nor did it change anything, I just remember that as being part of the time where things started to go really well.
This is what I know I like about her: she is very similar to other girlfriends I’ve had, “my type,” but put in a society where that is completely unnormal. For example, she likes to work. She later on will insist that if we ever get married she is going to keep working, because she likes it a lot. She later gets a job working for World Vision, working in a side project of theirs called Fundacion Realidad. It is like a loans office, but they are really low interest loans. Goodwill loans. And since people don’t really have a lot to put down for collateral, they have to form groups of at least 16 people to make sure everyone pays. She promotes the project, goes out into the county to form the groups, teaches them how to save, basic accounting principals (saving is not a valued skill here), and then keeps them how to be accountable. She loves it. Her office covers a range of four counties, so any given day she is off up into some small town and then another somewhere else and so on.
But the point is, is that here, most girls are expected to stay in the home and have kids after they get married. And that’s it. That’s another thing: kids. She doesn’t really want kids although she loves them, she would hate to have one. Which makes her completely normal, as far as girls that I know, but for here, it is quite unique. She not only will not accept that she is going to do all the housework, which of course is fine by me, she finds the men who feel that the women should cook and clean and completely take care of the kids and wash clothes to be completely ridiculous (a good 98% of men here). Which also is good. But again, rare. This is not like a femininity thing, nor a liberal girl, nor rejecting her culture, not anything like that. She is fairly conservative, as far as that goes (we are not talking about politics), it is more about a respect thing.
Which I start to find very attractive.