Perspective

Another afternoon of linguistics coding. Another dark and damp Cortland winter day. Freezing rain patters outside. The basement is nearly as cold. I listen to the recording, fingers ready to mark lexical substitutions and inflectional errors.

“La farmacia abierta ofrece medicina muy cara.”

I am in Mexico.

“What should we do?” I ask Ashley. We’re standing uncertainly by a newspaper kiosk on the sidewalk. Huge buses rumble by – green, purple, green-and-white. The signs in the windows announce Centro, Xochicalco, La Selva (the jungle?).

Our host padre had directed us to the Estrella Blanca bus station, but the woman behind the counter had shaken her head when I asked if there were any routes to Tepoztlan. “If you go by the corner past the newspaper stand, the bus stops there,” she said in Spanish (at least, I thought so).

We asked the young guy with the sunglasses who sold newspapers and magazines. He nodded in concordance with what the woman had said.

And so we are standing and staring at the bus station across the street, although the bus we need will clearly not emerge. Taxis screech by. They slow down and we wave them off. Someone whistles. I am wearing shorts and the warm breeze wraps against my legs. I’ve already taken a few sips from my exceedingly large plastic water bottle.

“We’re going to Tepoztlan,” Ashley says again. The wind tosses her perfectly straight brown hair as she glances down the street. She tightens the drawstring straps of her backpack.

“But what if the bus never comes?”

“It will. We’re getting there.”

I admire my roommate’s determination. When I met her in Norma’s class, I’d thought she was the “pretty girl” with perfect dark eyelashes and a wide smile. Little did I know that she’d spent six months in Africa and would frequently talk about her desire to return there. That she was the strong, focused sort of woman that I wanted to be. Finding a bus to Tepoztlan, to her, was only a tiny nuisance in what she assumed would be a worthwhile adventure.

Mercedes was the first to mention Tepoztlan to us, and Mama had nodded enthusiastically. Un lugar mistico. In our second house, Pilly’s mother had agreed with this assessment. La energia, she kept saying. Mucha energia diferente.

I want to go to Tepoztlan. But it’s already been half an hour. I’d be able to live with frolicking through the centro under the sun and perhaps swinging by an Internet café. But I hadn’t touched the Internet in a couple of days, and I had to admit that the break felt like relief.

I do not want to be reminded of that hard winter-streaked place, of what it would mean to be back there.

“Let’s move down,” I suggest.

We walk to the corner. The pharmacy next to us offers all sorts of cheap pills and potions. Mothers with small children stride past us, knowing exactly where to go.

I’m not sure which of us leads the way – but our feet bring us around the corner and stop next to the pharmacy window – we keep our eyes on the main road, watch another series of Centro, Xochicalco, La Selva buses pass –

And then we turn our heads to the street in front of us, the cross street, as the bus with the green-and pink letters “Tepoztlan” pulls up before us.

Before we turn back to the bus, we turn to each other, eyes wide.