Twenty
Mérida, Mexico
Mérida is a bigger version of Valladolid, a colonial pastel-painted city. Kate drops me off in front of a historic peach-colored building that she has heard is a decent hostel. I book myself a room with a balcony overlooking the square and I sit out and watch people taking shelter from the afternoon sun. Shops are closing up for siesta and though I’d planned to scout out the area and find some lunch, I’m not actually hungry. I’m a little wrung out from the morning’s drive and my stomach still feels as if it’s on the bumpy highway. I decide to take a siesta, too.
I wake up covered in sweat. It’s dark outside, the air in my room still and stale. I sit up to open my window or the balcony door, but when I do, my stomach heaves. I flop back down on the bed and close my eyes, willing myself back to sleep. Sometimes I can trick my body into righting itself before it realizes something’s wrong. Sometimes that works.
But not tonight. I think of the pork in the brown sauce I ate for dinner last night and the memory of it makes my stomach wave and flutter, like there’s a small feral animal trapped inside.
Food poisoning. It must be. I sigh. Okay. A few hours discomfort, and then sleep. Then it will be over. It’s all about getting to the sleep.
I’m not sure of the time so I don’t know how long it takes for the sun to come up, but when it does, I haven’t even touched sleep. I’ve puked so many times the plastic wastebin is almost full. I tried, a few times, to crawl to the shared bathroom down the hall, but I couldn’t make it past my door. Now that the sun is up, the room is heating up. I can almost see the toxic fumes from the wastebin spreading out, poisoning me all over again.
I keep throwing up. There’s no respite or relief in between bouts. I puke until there’s nothing left: no food, no bile, none of me left, it seems.
That’s when the thirst hits. I’ve long since drunk the rest of the water in my bottle, and thrown that up too. I start to fantasize about mountain streams, waterfalls, rain showers, even the Dutch canal; I’d drink from those if I could. They sell bottled water downstairs. And there’s a tap in the bathroom. But I can’t sit up, let alone stand up, let alone make it to water.
Is anyone there? I call. In Dutch. In English. I try to remember the Spanish but the words get jumbled. I think I’m talking but I can’t tell and it’s noisy in the square and my weak voice stands no chance.
I listen for a knock at the door, praying for an offering of water, clean sheets, a cool compress, a soft hand on my forehead. But none comes. This is a hostel, bare bones, no housekeeping, and I prepaid two nights.
I retch again. Nothing comes out except my tears. I am twenty-one years old and I still cry when I puke.
Finally, sleep comes to rescue me. And then I wake up, and I see her, so close. And all I can think is: It was worth it if it brought you.
Who takes care of you now? she whispers. Her breath feels like a cooling breeze.
You, I whisper back. You take care of me.
I’ll be your mountain girl.
I try to reach for her, but now she’s gone and the room is full of the others: Céline and Ana Lucia and Kayla and Sara and the girl with the worm, and there’s more yet—a Franke in Riga, a Gianna in Prague, a Jossra in Tunis. They all start talking at me.
We’ll take care of you.
Go away, I want Lulu back. Tell her to come back.
Green turtles, red blood, blue sky, double happiness, lalala, they singsong.
No! That’s not how it goes. That’s not how double happiness goes.
But I can’t remember how it goes either.
She left you like this.
I’ll take care of you.
French whore.
Call me if you need anything.
Wanna share with me?
Stop it! I yell.
Take the wheel! Now it’s Kate yelling. Only I can’t see any wheel and I have the awful feeling, like in the dreams, that I’m going to crash.
No! Stop. Go away! All of you! You’re not real. None of you! Not even Lulu. I screw my eyes shut and cover my ears with the sweat-soaked pillow and curl up into a fetal ball. And finally, finally, like this, I fall asleep.
I wake up. My skin is cool. The sky is purple. I’m not sure if it’s twilight or dawn, how long I’ve been out. I’m coherent enough to know that I’m supposed to be back in Cancún soon to meet Broodje and fly back to Holland, and I need to get word to him somehow, that he might have to leave without me. I swing my legs over the side of the bed. The room teeters before my eyes, but it doesn’t totter over. I plant my feet. I pull to a stand. Like a toddler or a very old man, I take the steps, one at a time, to the lobby.
In the corner is an Internet café where you can make long-distance phone calls. I feel like I’ve been in the dark for months, the lights from all those monitors hurt my eyes so. I hand over some money and ask for a phone and am guided to a bank of computers with a telephone handset. I open my address book. Kate’s card, ruckus theater company splashed across the top in red lettering, falls out.
I start to dial. The digits swim on the page and I’m not sure if I have the country code right or if I dialed correctly.
But there’s a tinny ring. And then a voice: faraway, tunnel-like, but unmistakably hers. As soon as I hear it, my throat closes.
“Hello. Hello? Who is this?”
“Ma?” I manage to croak out.
Silence. And when she says my name I want to cry.
“Ma,” I say again.
“Willem, where are you?” Her voice is crisp, officious, businesslike as always.
“I’m lost.”
“You’re lost?”
I’ve been lost before, in new cities with no familiar landmarks to set me straight, waking up in strange beds, unsure of where I was or who was next to me. But I realize now, that wasn’t lost. It was something else. This . . . I may know exactly where I am—in a hostel, in the central square, in Mérida, Mexico—but I have never been so utterly unmoored.
There’s a long silence on the line and I’m afraid the call has dropped. But then Yael says: “Come to me. I’ll send you a ticket. Come to me.”
It’s not what I really want to hear. What I want—what I ache—to hear is come home.
But she can’t tell me to come to a place that no longer exists, any more than I can go to that place. For now, this is the best either of us can do.