When I was in seventh grade, I traveled to Costa Rica with my best friend, a handful of classmates, and my unusually young Biology teacher. Her excessive youth must have warped her logic, enough to fly eight sweaty, hormonal pre-teens to a lonely village about the size of a Walmart, with an unfortunate lack of air conditioning, Wi-Fi, or parental control. This endeavor did not reflect well on her sanity. Still, nothing sounded better than an overpriced trip away from the hodge-podge and ho-hum of suburban adolescence.
Somehow, through a medley of “PLEASE” and “I LOVE YOU” and other forms of mild coercion, including a boycott on all food, I’d managed to thaw out my parents. They let me go, on three conditions: stay with the group, beware of tourist traps, and don’t forget to wear my hat, as I am apparently starting to resemble my great-aunt Fei, who turned the color of an eggplant after a lifetime of tragic hatless-ness.
And so I found myself, the girl who hadn’t dared venture out of her backyard for a solid eight months, parentless and sweaty in the remote jungles of Gandoca, Costa Rica.
Now, despite Costa Rica’s lack of pizza, there is one thing that can be found in startling abundance. Mosquitos. They hang in the air like ash, miniature vampires that insist on driving you to your wit’s end. They also managed to photo-bomb the one picture I managed to take during the entirety of the trip. The rest of the film was lost to a crocodile-infested pond I’d rather not mention.
The photograph is dense with mosquitos, which huddle in dark clouds that vibrate above my head. My face is blurred, partly because I’d reeled around to slap away a mass of blood-suckers, and partly because an irritating strand of sweat-slickened hair insisted on hanging across my face like a streak of grease. The photo is convoluted and rippling with warped greens and blues, and nothing else is decipherable. Apparently, a good pond-water soak does nothing to improve the quality of a film strip. But I don’t mind the lack of pictures.
You see, there are a lot of things I can still see, a snapshot memory that’s been fully developed in my mind. The green of the stagnant palm fronds, like wings sprouting from a wrinkled, dung-scented truck, gouged with insect nests and bird-plucked hollows. And I can see my best friend, her hair frizzing in the soggy air, as she sat cross-legged beside me on the bench. My teacher was stern-faced, pouting beneath a canopy of woven bark and grasses, a tapestry of reddish-browns and greens so vivid that I can’t stare at it long before my eyes begin to ache. The throng of classmates had departed on some adventure to follow the leaf-cutter ants back to the nest we’d pointed out to them. And while I can’t quite remember if it was cool or warm or some other variant of tropical weather, I do remember the taste.
The air stuck like glue to the cotton of my t-shirt. It tasted like bitter leaves, vaguely medicinal, and like the half-rotting mangoes that piled along the side of the single dirt road. The faint odor of gasoline, stomped in with dung, lingered beneath the cabana’s awning.
Melissa and I are sitting on the patio’s benches, an array of arched, sap-studded tree trunks that manage to poke your butt with its resin-coated knots, like a row of warts on the tree’s humped backbone. We’re all starting to glaze over, my friend and I, beneath the woven palm leaves and the sun’s mild gaze. The day’s light is muted, waxy. The sun may be searing overhead, but it hasn’t quite reached us. The light at ground level is greyish, sickly. Everything else is in full, pixelated color, like the blue-black beetles and the bright white of hand-woven hammocks, tethered to a pair of palm trees just beyond the fringed green yard.
But it’s the humidity that keeps us stationary, my friend and I on that butt-poking bench and my seventh grade Biology teacher fanning herself with a frond that’s probably infested with palm-sized ants. I swear that the bugs here are inflated like animal balloons.
The humidity settles in heavy breaths and moaning clumps of dewiness, squatting sullenly against our damp, hunched backs and dripping from the soggy fibers of swollen banana leaves. It beads on the upper lips of those not quite acclimated to Costa Rica’s customary climate. We are all cocooned in this cloying, nostril-like dampness, as if the air itself wishes to drown us in its wetness.
Dark-haired figures move to and from the multileveled cabana, but it’s too much of an effort to follow them with my eyes. They plow through the woolen, charcoal-blue rug that hangs in the doorway, a sort of makeshift gate. Though everything about the cabana is undeniably makeshift. It is constructed of crisscrossing beams and rusting nails and a white mosquito net that pretends it’s a roof. When we’d rumbled here by bus, I’d thought that the net was a layer of snow, not a lacy froth of pin-holed fabric that was supposed to keep us all from perishing of some native disease that the locals are immune to. The entire structure looks as if it may wilt away with the weight of the air, the refrigerator-sized spiders, and our frivolous suitcases packed with nostalgic doodads and plastic kits that probably cost more than the house that holds them.
I felt guilty for flaunting my abundance of denim and cellular technology, before I realized how stupid that was. I shouldn’t feel guilty. We may own fifteen dollar sunscreen, but these people were tragically more happy. And more forgiving.
It began with that afternoon, that grey, listless afternoon. The birds should have been chirping, the palm trees rocking, but everything was still. And grey.
“Hey, is it time for lunch?” The rest of my traveling companions, all six of them, had reemerged from the jungle’s border, tripping through the tangle of fallen branches and swaying foliage. They’d crossed the yard, which had been shaved clear of any bothersome roots, and we all piled onto the deck’s central table. For the past three days, we would wait silently for the cook to push through the blanketed door, and then we’d all fall upon the rice and beans with the gusto of settling vultures. One of the nearby farmers, his face shelved with deep, rain-weathered scars, proclaimed that we were all “very American.” Not a compliment, I assumed, but we were always brimming with customary “thank-you’s” and standard “excuse me’s.” (Not that they could understand a word of it. They spoke Spanish, which sounded so hopelessly exotic.)
And, of course, I was the one to disrupt this careful lunch ritual. The locals and us, we were always on a sort of swaying balance, a wary see-saw game of “who’s gonna be the one to make a fool of themselves first?” And, of course, it had to be me.
The cook was a boisterous woman, her sunburnt skin glaring with sweat from the kitchen fire, hips swinging and lips stretched into a toothy grin that could be mistaken as hostile.
She could carry a dozen platters of rice and beans, all in one trip, a phenomena that never failed to entertain. Wiry and gaunt-faced, she was as supple and lean as a tree root, but she always managed to plump us up. Her apron was dusted and splattered with rusty pockmark stains, and we’d all joke that it was human blood. One of my classmates, a red-faced boy named Colin, liked to say that she was really a murderous ghoul who would sneak into our mosquito nets some night, armed with a cheese grater. Of course she never did such a thing, and she would always scrub at our empty, greased-up dishes with a full-tooth, nose-wrinkled smile, the kind that always made me feel like I was wading in cider.
But that afternoon, I left my backpack out in the middle of the deck, too paralyzed by the bone-soaking humidity to move it myself. I trudged to the table and sat with my legs hanging out, my cheeks rolling with sweat. And I watched, in fast-forward horror, as the cook swung out as usual, hips swaying, apron stained, hair slicked back into a cap made of mosquito netting. Her foot caught the edge of my cotton-blue backpack, and before anyone could blink or scream or point a finger, the plates were shattered on the ground. Shards of baked black beans and flecks of brown rice sat in apologetic mounds on the deck. Our lunch had detonated into a sizzling heap of wasted effort.
“See what you’ve done, you selfish, stupid girl! Eat off of the floor,” she cried, sticking out a fork, waving it accusingly.
But no, she didn’t say any of that. For those awful, suspended moments where we could all hear the echo of porcelain crumpling, she stared ahead with glassy eyes, not even bothering to glance down at the culprit. She spun about in her bare feet, and moments later, she was back out from underneath that shadowed doorway, arms cradling another set of carefully-arranged platters. She stepped over the gruesome remains of steaming rice, over the dung-like scattering of beans, and set down our meals with a resounding clatter. My mouth was still idiotically unhinged, eyes sappy with tears.
She hadn’t even stopped smiling.
Somehow, through a medley of “PLEASE” and “I LOVE YOU” and other forms of mild coercion, including a boycott on all food, I’d managed to thaw out my parents. They let me go, on three conditions: stay with the group, beware of tourist traps, and don’t forget to wear my hat, as I am apparently starting to resemble my great-aunt Fei, who turned the color of an eggplant after a lifetime of tragic hatless-ness.
And so I found myself, the girl who hadn’t dared venture out of her backyard for a solid eight months, parentless and sweaty in the remote jungles of Gandoca, Costa Rica.
Now, despite Costa Rica’s lack of pizza, there is one thing that can be found in startling abundance. Mosquitos. They hang in the air like ash, miniature vampires that insist on driving you to your wit’s end. They also managed to photo-bomb the one picture I managed to take during the entirety of the trip. The rest of the film was lost to a crocodile-infested pond I’d rather not mention.
The photograph is dense with mosquitos, which huddle in dark clouds that vibrate above my head. My face is blurred, partly because I’d reeled around to slap away a mass of blood-suckers, and partly because an irritating strand of sweat-slickened hair insisted on hanging across my face like a streak of grease. The photo is convoluted and rippling with warped greens and blues, and nothing else is decipherable. Apparently, a good pond-water soak does nothing to improve the quality of a film strip. But I don’t mind the lack of pictures.
You see, there are a lot of things I can still see, a snapshot memory that’s been fully developed in my mind. The green of the stagnant palm fronds, like wings sprouting from a wrinkled, dung-scented truck, gouged with insect nests and bird-plucked hollows. And I can see my best friend, her hair frizzing in the soggy air, as she sat cross-legged beside me on the bench. My teacher was stern-faced, pouting beneath a canopy of woven bark and grasses, a tapestry of reddish-browns and greens so vivid that I can’t stare at it long before my eyes begin to ache. The throng of classmates had departed on some adventure to follow the leaf-cutter ants back to the nest we’d pointed out to them. And while I can’t quite remember if it was cool or warm or some other variant of tropical weather, I do remember the taste.
The air stuck like glue to the cotton of my t-shirt. It tasted like bitter leaves, vaguely medicinal, and like the half-rotting mangoes that piled along the side of the single dirt road. The faint odor of gasoline, stomped in with dung, lingered beneath the cabana’s awning.
Melissa and I are sitting on the patio’s benches, an array of arched, sap-studded tree trunks that manage to poke your butt with its resin-coated knots, like a row of warts on the tree’s humped backbone. We’re all starting to glaze over, my friend and I, beneath the woven palm leaves and the sun’s mild gaze. The day’s light is muted, waxy. The sun may be searing overhead, but it hasn’t quite reached us. The light at ground level is greyish, sickly. Everything else is in full, pixelated color, like the blue-black beetles and the bright white of hand-woven hammocks, tethered to a pair of palm trees just beyond the fringed green yard.
But it’s the humidity that keeps us stationary, my friend and I on that butt-poking bench and my seventh grade Biology teacher fanning herself with a frond that’s probably infested with palm-sized ants. I swear that the bugs here are inflated like animal balloons.
The humidity settles in heavy breaths and moaning clumps of dewiness, squatting sullenly against our damp, hunched backs and dripping from the soggy fibers of swollen banana leaves. It beads on the upper lips of those not quite acclimated to Costa Rica’s customary climate. We are all cocooned in this cloying, nostril-like dampness, as if the air itself wishes to drown us in its wetness.
Dark-haired figures move to and from the multileveled cabana, but it’s too much of an effort to follow them with my eyes. They plow through the woolen, charcoal-blue rug that hangs in the doorway, a sort of makeshift gate. Though everything about the cabana is undeniably makeshift. It is constructed of crisscrossing beams and rusting nails and a white mosquito net that pretends it’s a roof. When we’d rumbled here by bus, I’d thought that the net was a layer of snow, not a lacy froth of pin-holed fabric that was supposed to keep us all from perishing of some native disease that the locals are immune to. The entire structure looks as if it may wilt away with the weight of the air, the refrigerator-sized spiders, and our frivolous suitcases packed with nostalgic doodads and plastic kits that probably cost more than the house that holds them.
I felt guilty for flaunting my abundance of denim and cellular technology, before I realized how stupid that was. I shouldn’t feel guilty. We may own fifteen dollar sunscreen, but these people were tragically more happy. And more forgiving.
It began with that afternoon, that grey, listless afternoon. The birds should have been chirping, the palm trees rocking, but everything was still. And grey.
“Hey, is it time for lunch?” The rest of my traveling companions, all six of them, had reemerged from the jungle’s border, tripping through the tangle of fallen branches and swaying foliage. They’d crossed the yard, which had been shaved clear of any bothersome roots, and we all piled onto the deck’s central table. For the past three days, we would wait silently for the cook to push through the blanketed door, and then we’d all fall upon the rice and beans with the gusto of settling vultures. One of the nearby farmers, his face shelved with deep, rain-weathered scars, proclaimed that we were all “very American.” Not a compliment, I assumed, but we were always brimming with customary “thank-you’s” and standard “excuse me’s.” (Not that they could understand a word of it. They spoke Spanish, which sounded so hopelessly exotic.)
And, of course, I was the one to disrupt this careful lunch ritual. The locals and us, we were always on a sort of swaying balance, a wary see-saw game of “who’s gonna be the one to make a fool of themselves first?” And, of course, it had to be me.
The cook was a boisterous woman, her sunburnt skin glaring with sweat from the kitchen fire, hips swinging and lips stretched into a toothy grin that could be mistaken as hostile.
She could carry a dozen platters of rice and beans, all in one trip, a phenomena that never failed to entertain. Wiry and gaunt-faced, she was as supple and lean as a tree root, but she always managed to plump us up. Her apron was dusted and splattered with rusty pockmark stains, and we’d all joke that it was human blood. One of my classmates, a red-faced boy named Colin, liked to say that she was really a murderous ghoul who would sneak into our mosquito nets some night, armed with a cheese grater. Of course she never did such a thing, and she would always scrub at our empty, greased-up dishes with a full-tooth, nose-wrinkled smile, the kind that always made me feel like I was wading in cider.
But that afternoon, I left my backpack out in the middle of the deck, too paralyzed by the bone-soaking humidity to move it myself. I trudged to the table and sat with my legs hanging out, my cheeks rolling with sweat. And I watched, in fast-forward horror, as the cook swung out as usual, hips swaying, apron stained, hair slicked back into a cap made of mosquito netting. Her foot caught the edge of my cotton-blue backpack, and before anyone could blink or scream or point a finger, the plates were shattered on the ground. Shards of baked black beans and flecks of brown rice sat in apologetic mounds on the deck. Our lunch had detonated into a sizzling heap of wasted effort.
“See what you’ve done, you selfish, stupid girl! Eat off of the floor,” she cried, sticking out a fork, waving it accusingly.
But no, she didn’t say any of that. For those awful, suspended moments where we could all hear the echo of porcelain crumpling, she stared ahead with glassy eyes, not even bothering to glance down at the culprit. She spun about in her bare feet, and moments later, she was back out from underneath that shadowed doorway, arms cradling another set of carefully-arranged platters. She stepped over the gruesome remains of steaming rice, over the dung-like scattering of beans, and set down our meals with a resounding clatter. My mouth was still idiotically unhinged, eyes sappy with tears.
She hadn’t even stopped smiling.
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