Day Three of Strike.
I am presently sitting in my bed trying to get my feet warm under my white down comforter, which still maintains it’s “Best Purchase Made in Peru” title. My hair is in a sloppy French braid that I slept in. A really dumb moth is flying around the one prison light I’ve got in my room and repeatedly smacking himself into the ceiling with unpleasant thudding sounds. I think we’re in moth season because I get attacked by them on a nightly basis now, and they have been no where to be found since I got here in December. I have some music playing, currently Northern Lights by Cider Sky (it’s a good one, look into it). I’ve got an opened envelope with AIR MAIL stamped on it, covering part of a cover photo for the Sports section of the Valley News from May 20th of the Hanover Crew Team racing during the Hanover Invitational. I keep repeatedly lifting my left index finger to my nose and taking a deep whiff of it. My upper lip, my nostrils, and my left index finger are covered in a Dove body mist called “Burst”, which smells like “nectarine and white ginger scent”. Unfortunately, spraying my finger with it and then shoving that finger literally up my nose, does not fully cut the smell of the DEAD COW in the next room. To hide the smell of blood and skin and death and cow, which has officially taken over my room and is routinely turning my stomach, I am repeatedly applying body spray to the inside of my nostrils. It’s not as effective has I would have hoped.
Let’s start from the beginning of today.
I woke up a bit late, used the latrine, read some of my book, checked my email and sent some emails on my Kindle, thought about how badly I wanted this stupid strike to end, and then gathered up a bunch of food and went to the kitchen to cook. I had a few pieces of bread left (I wish I meant pieces of a loaf of bread…but they don’t have that where I live) and decided I’d make a couple more pieces of garlic bread, along with some scrabbled eggs with tomatoes, onions, and cheese. I went to the kitchen and got to work. Mishel and my host mom rather unabashedly stare at me whenever I’m cooking. I get curiosity, but the unblinking manner in which they gawk at me makes me feel like I came to the kitchen in a thong and nothing else.
My host Mom told me she had gone to the town party, which made me kind of upset because she had made it so clear the night before that she didn’t want to go and part of the reason I didn’t go is I didn’t want her to feel like I had dragged her.
Mishel had been studying her multiplication tables, but it turned out she couldn’t remember them unless they were in order. She then tried stumping me with the multiplication table for 12. I tried to teach her the trick of just doing multiplication by 11 and adding the number one more time. She stared at me like I was naked again. She also knew 3 x 4 (if you did it in order) but couldn’t tell me what 4 x 3 was. Sometimes I wonder with that kid. I’ve also never been a big sister before, and I think I would have been a terrible one. In the relationships I have with my Kappa sisters and with other friends, I always thought I’d be a good big sister because I like playing that supportive role, but with Mishel, I’m just SO frustrated most of the time. It makes me worry that I’ll be a horrible parent. Being an older sister to Mishel is definitely making me more forgiving of my parents’ mistakes and also sort of squelching my desire to be a parent.
Anyway, I told Celina that when Mishel actually tries, she does a good job. She just had to try more often. I told her that yesterday I had told Mishel I would help her, and she hadn’t stopped crying long enough to respond. Celina said something along the lines of, “She never wants to bother you when you’re in your room because she thinks you’re sleeping.” That actually freaked me out a little. I really hope they don’t think every time I’m in my room I’m sleeping. I would literally be the laziest person on the planet…I just don’t have anywhere to sit in my tiny room other than on my bed. Celina also mentioned the lock I have on the inside of my door in a sort of passive way. I decided to be honest. I told her that I don’t sleep during the day ever unless I’m ill, which is true, and that I have a lock on the inside of my door because Americans like privacy. I didn’t really know how else to say it, but I put a lock on the inside of my door because I was sick of them just opening it whenever they felt like. My host mom will still come to my door and try to push it open, making me thankful for my lock every time. I still get kind of pissed that she does that, but at least I have a moment before I’m being stared at. It may sound bad, but I needed something to protect my space, so that it couldn’t be entered without my permission. I sound like such a moody adolescent…but it is what it is. This was followed by Celina saying something like, “Well, Mishel calls her sister because she’s getting a degree.” That kind of pissed me off, too.
“Well, I’m her sister and I’m here, and I have a degree, too.”
The thing I don’t get, is that Mishel is yelled at by everyone in her family about academic stuff, except for me, and yet she still goes to them. Celina can’t do multiplication tables, she can only add single digit numbers. I think it bugs me sometimes because I feel like I make such a big effort with Mishel and get no thanks or recognition for it. I want to yell at her sometimes, but I never do, and yet she still doesn’t want to come to me. Oi, whatever.
I cooked up my breakfast and then sat down at the table. I asked my mom, for the third time in 24 hours, if she wanted to try some and this time I think she felt like she had to. She found the smallest little bowl thing she could (about tea saucer sized) and said, “just a little bit.” So I gave her about three bites worth of scrambled egg, which is about a mouthful for her, and a piece of garlic bread. She called Mishel in and handed her the garlic bread. Mishel tried to take a piece but her mom whispered, rather loudly, that she should take it all. Apparently she was still completely unwilling to try it...which is silly given the fact that they have garlic bread in this country. I then saw her use her super dirty hands to take a tiny bit of scrambled eggs and put them in her mouth. What I think is so ridiculous about this, is she makes fried eggs, soft boiled eggs, and scrambled eggs with spinach (pretty much deep fried) all the time, but she’s terrified of scrambled eggs. She took a tiny bite and chewed it with her mouth wide open like she might throw it up. I thought I’d give her a minute without putting the pressure on her like she does on me, to not enjoy it in peace. I saw her, out of the corner of my eye, pretend to eat two more bites. I looked away for a second to smile without her seeing, and when I turned back around, the whole plate had disappeared. Was literally nowhere to be found. To steal the title of the first chapter of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, What the?. Where did she put it!? Haha She refused to make eye contact with me after that and I had to fight not to ask where the plate had gone to. I didn’t see any sign of it the rest of the time I was eating, and when I got up to go do my dishes, I looked around by her feet. The pot, where we usually put eggshells or onionskins, was at her feet with the lid on it, and I knew my scrambled eggs were in there, little plate and all. It killed me not to go pull the lid off the pot and just laugh my ass off. I also desperately wanted to make a point. I hate her food, but I have to eat it twice a day. Any time I don’t finish everything on my plate she’ll say something guilt trippy like, “Haydee doesn’t like my __________.” And I’m forced to say something like, “I’m full” or “No! I like it! You just gave me a lot of food!” Instead, I didn’t say anything and I hoped she would make the connection herself without me embarrassing her or making her uncomfortable like she has a habit of doing at every meal to me. I couldn’t believe she hid it in the pot though…outrageous! It was like 3 mouthfuls of scrambled eggs!
I washed my dishes, went back to my room and read a bit more. I sent some emails and talked to a few friends on the phone and cleaned my room. As I was getting ready to work out, there was a lot of noise in the room right next to mine, the one I have to walk through to get outside or anywhere else in the house. I got a knock on my door.
“Si?” I called.
Another knock. I got up to open my door. My host mom was standing right there with a look on her face like she was about to cry.
“The cow died.”
“What?”
“The cow died.”
“How?”
“It fell.”
She walked out the door. I looked to my left at the floor of the room and there was a big blue tarp on the ground. OHHHH NOOOOOOO.
I walked outside to find a red truck trying to back up to our house with what was clearly a skinned, bent, cow leg poking up out of the truck bed. I stood there, off to the side, for lack of a better idea about what to do. My regret came when the truck stopped, the driver got out, and they opened the back of the truck to reveal a bloody headless cow. I wasn’t sure where the head was, but I didn’t hang out to find out. As they started trying to maneuver the cow out of the truck bed, I ran into my room, having to dodge a giant splatter of blood on the cement, spotting a blue plastic bag on the tarp (I’m assuming those were the innards) and shut the door. I called my friend Kate to tell her what was going on. She, being Kate, told me to eat the cow for protein. I will not be eating cow…or maybe any meat ever again.
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| Dead cow. |
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| bucket of legs |
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| bucket of skin |
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| leg in a tree. |
When I got off the phone with Kate, I opened my door to find out how bad it all was going to be, and to make sure that my duffle bag was not being touched by dead cow, and saw something I hoped never to see. Lying out on the tarp was a cow, with no legs from the knees down (they were sitting in a black bucket right by my door), it’s body completely skinned, and all it’s skin sitting in a white bucket, next to the black bucket containing the legs. Lying about a foot away from the bloody neck was the skinned head, big lifeless black eyes looking right at me. I took a step back into my room and covered my mouth with my hand, seriously hoping that I could forget that image. I walked outside, covering any view of the cow or it’s body parts with my left hand, to find out how long I was going to have a dead cow as a roommate. My host mom was absolutely sobbing, and I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why. They have no respect for animals here, with the exception of some dogs, sometimes. The only thing I came up with was that she was upset for financial reasons, but they have like four more cows, and tons of other animals. Peruvians don’t cry, unless something horrible happened and they are on TV, or sometimes if someone dies. I didn’t know what to say, so I just sat there. I asked Edwin again how it died…I’m pretty sure he said it just fell over. I I waited a bit, and then asked Edwin what they were going to do with the cow. He didn’t answer me.
“Are we going to sell it?” I asked him.
“We’ll probably send a little bit to Chiclayo.” He said. Well, that was about as little information as you could possibly give me. I know we have family in Chiclayo, but I have no idea how they are planning on sending anything anywhere given that there is a strike and no transportation anywhere out of or into Chota. After that, I just stayed sitting in my chair, unwilling to go back into my room because it meant walking past that cow again…and my room smelled like death. I mostly just sat there, completely perplexed by my host mom’s sobbing. She was still crying.
The moment I decided to leave came when I looked over to my right and saw my host brother and host grandfather holding up baby cow legs and hacking at them with a giant machete. BABY COW? I hadn’t realized baby cow was involved. I guess the cow that died was the one who had a baby like a month or two ago. What I didn’t know, was if the mama cow had fallen over on her baby, or if they had just killed her baby because she had died. Still don’t know. Also…don’t really want to know.
So, blocking my view of the cow, I went back into my room and shut the door. I then sprayed that body spray on my finger and stuck it up my nose, hoping that if it didn’t cover the smell, it would at least kill my sense of smell and I wouldn’t have to worry about it. What I realized in hindsight, was that I would have been better off tying a heavily sprayed down bandana around my face to cover my nose…instead of sticking it up my nose. Desperation reigned over logic. While I was hiding in my room writing this blog post, a parade of people arrived and they all came into the room with the cow and sat there. It was like a strange kind of cow vigil. They just sat around that giant dead cow while my host mom cried like her child had just died and people talked to her. I wasn’t about to walk into that mess so I stayed in my room, but if I had to guess, I would say that there were probably 5 or 6 people out there, including a couple kids whose voices I didn’t recognize. They hung out in there for like an hour or so. It got to a point where I really had to pee, but didn’t want to use my pee bucket with 7 people separated from me by plywood, and I didn’t want to walk out there to go to the latrine because I figured they would make me sit with the dead cow. Lucky for me, everyone left right as I was about to pee myself and I used my happy blue bucket in peace.
I hung out in my room until Mishel came to call me for dinner. I wasn’t sure I had an appetite for anything, and I was terrified there would be cow in whatever Celina served me. But I got up anyway and made a complete ass of myself, luckily in private. As I was walking out of my room to the door outside, the room with the dead cow was pitch dark, and the second I had shut my bedroom door and was alone in the dark in that room I freaked out and went running to the door outside. I felt like such an idiot but it had totally freaked me out.
At dinner, I was a complete baby but I wanted to get the cow out of that room. If I tried to explain to you why I was suddenly totally weirded out by this giant dead cow, I couldn’t tell you. If you’re having a hard time empathizing, ask yourself, “When was the last time I slept right next to a giant, skinned, beheaded cow with its legs in a bucket nearby?” I’m guessing the answer is never, sooo I don’t expect you to empathize but I’m hoping you won’t judge me. At dinner I asked again what we were going to do with the cow, and they were like, “We’re going to send some to Chiclayo.”
“There’s no passage to Chiclayo.”
“There’s no passage to Chiclayo.” They repeated after me. It was weird. That was all I got. My host mom mentioned that we might be eating some for lunch tomorrow and I decided to say what I needed to say then on that subject.
“I’m going to cook for myself…I can’t eat meat when I know exactly where it came from.” More like, I don’t usually eat people after a sleepover…
No one said anything. I realize it wasn’t the most sensitive thing in the world to say…but I was pretty sure after the massacre I had seen that afternoon, I might vomit if I tried to eat that cow. I could definitely use the protein and the nutrients, but I can’t eat that cow after staring at it.
Later during dinner, my host mom joked that I was going to sleep with the cow that night. I thought I’d mention that it smells awful.
“But it doesn’t smell like that in your room does it?”
“Um..yeah.”
They decided then that they would move it the next day, which was the biggest relief in the world to me. They started talking about where they would put it and were teasing Edwin, my host brother, that they would put it in his room. I told Celina she should have it in her’s so she could snuggle it while she slept. Joking about it, and seeing that no one else wanted it near them took some of the edge off and I felt a little bit better about being a total baby about the whole thing. I also was a little worried about the animals a giant dead cow would attract. I’m already living below the corn and to the right of the potatoes and I have major rat and tarantula problems, I didn’t need anything bigger…or carnivorous, coming to live in my room.
After dinner, I went to go back into my room, and had an internal freakout about walking into the dark room with the dead cow. I think if that cow had been more in pieces, and less assembled like a cow, I wouldn’t have been so freaked out. So, like a pathetic gringa, I stood outside the door trying to garner up the courage to dash through that room without squealing like a pig. In the minute or so that I stood there, my host mom came up behind me and asked, “You want me to come with you?” I was as mortified as I was touched by that gesture and just told her yes. She walked in before me and stood there until I was in my room with the door shut. She was so nonjudgmental about it, she didn’t smirk at me, she just stood there and then walked out. I was really grateful for that…and super embarrassed.
My family literally must think I’m like the most pathetic person in the entire world. I can’t be nearby when they kill animals (i.e. slitting guinea pig’s throats, chopping off chicken’s or duck’s heads etc.) or when they skin them or chop them into pieces. I am absolutely terrified of giant tarantulas (though I did try to handle one on my own once…but it escaped somewhere), and I’ve actually been pretty chill about mice and rats, but I have them in my room ALL the time. I won’t eat guinea pig because I had it as a pet, and I can’t walk by a dead cow in the dark because it freaks me out. Even I think I’m pathetic. But maybe I should cut myself some slack and think about how strange this whole situation is to me and I’m not really sure how to handle it because I literally have no experience to draw from. Still, isn’t that what makes a coward?
Made myself a cup of hot cocoa in my room and watched “I Love You, Man”, before I went to bed. Weird day.
