Growing a Person A Short Story by Taylor Hatfield “It’s no use to go back to yesterday, because I was a different person then” – Lewis Carrol The rain is picking up outside my window. I hear it splatter against the widely flayed leaves below the sill, where it will drip to the ground and soak into the earth and roots. The familiar urge to sit on the sill and let the water coat my knees and shins passes through me and is replaced by an equally fleeting despair. It has been many weeks since these old bones felt the rain. “Señora, estás bien?” calls a voice from the hallway. It is Marjorie, the sweet woman who has been attending to me since my stroke. After I fell from my bed and couldn’t move for several hours it became clear I couldn’t be left alone any longer. Even though that was my reason for coming here. To remember where I met myself for the first time. Where I accepted myself complete with scars and blemishes. Now my scars were from surgery and my blemishes were dark liver spots on my hands. Even my dimples, that everyone used to compliment, have been stolen from me with age. Those once prominent facial craters are now camoflauged by wrinkles on all sides. “Si mija, estoy bien, gracias amor,” I croone as loud as I can. I am the girl who used to turn heads every place she went with a hyena’s cackle. I’m no less her than she was, but time has added layers. Layers of experience. I have seen so much but I know I’ve really seen nothing. A butterfly limps onto the window sill. Her wings are clinging to each other, wet from the rain I assume because she is too big to be fresh from her cacoon. She lays still, twitching occassionally to test the drying process. One twitch reveals an incredible cerulean color on the underside of the wings. It throws me back to time I was surrounded by that color, along with many others. I press my fingertips to the dewy window and gape at the scene flashing by. Endless dipping dunes of sand. A steep overhang and thick vines curling up the side of the cliff toward me. A sprawling city filling the valley like a reservoir, splashing up against the mountain side. “Mira,” I begin to say, then I swallow the ensuing exclamation. I am alone. Well, as alone as one can be squeezed between a dozing quechuan woman and a chilly window. The bus rounds the bend and I swear we are skirting death; there is no guard rail along this one-lane mountain road. But it is the cheapest route to Montanita and so I close my eyes and feel my insides shift and shake. The human being is a social creature, arguably as much so as an ant. The ant serves his singular purpose for the nest, and for this service is provided a home and food. He communicates with his brethren and because of this lives in relative safety from attacking predators or food shortages. Although a human being is fully capable of living off the land in isolation, very few do. Instead we live in nests where we depend on others to bring us our milk and our news and everything else really. I’ve prided myself on being independent for a long time. I applied to and chose my college with little outside influences. I chose to study abroad in Ecuador and submited my application before I ever mentioned it to anyone. And here I was sitting on a 9 hour bus ride to the coast of a country in which I was a guest. Without reservations. Without a cell phone. With little more than some clothes, a sketch book, and a pasta salad I made that afternoon. When reservations and self-doubt flowed in, they excited me. I smiled at the girl in the window and she cried in return. She was so proud. Dum de dee dum, dum de dee dum, dum de dee dum, dum de dee dum The tune followed our band all through out the streets. It weaved a barrier of carefree energy that the negativity seeping from the dumpsters and sobbing children could not penetrate. I march while waving the stalk of a bird of paradise plucked from the side of the road like any old weed. The Colombian strums his three chords and the ukulele sings. His nose ring sparkles above a mischevious smile and my heart flutters like a young bird taking flight. “What did the crazy man say to you grandma?” “Oh he tried to shake us up a bit. Told us he’d find us if we didn’t get him the money. Then tears gathered in his eyes and he profusely apologized and pleaded that with out our money he’d be dead by morning. You better believe I was sweating! And Sam’s eyes were screaming out to me, no words just fear.” The gaping brown eyes of my granddaughter blink quickly, like a horse hoping to shoo a fly. How could this naïve six year old understand that a man could simultaneously seeth with rage and bawl his eyes out. That he could be a great asset to my friend and I as we traveled through Cusco then become the antagonist of our journey. “You were scared?” she asks me grabbing for my gnarled hand. I see the blood shot eyes, bulging in their sockets. I feel the fingernails digging into my arm. The blubbering Spanish fills my ears and not for the last time I wonder how we can help people who don’t believe they are worthy of help. I squeeze her soft fingers and whisper, “Yes I was scared. But we can be brave and scared at the same time sweet heart.” “And that is how we understand the ocelot of the Amazon to behave under high stress situations. It seems that like most mammals, including ourselves, ocelots have a shortened life span when they experience exceptional stress. Thank you for your attention. We have time for a few questions now.” I looks around the auditorium of faces. A few are clearly absorbed on their tech pads, swipping away at pixelated bubbles or candy, but the majority of the crowd is clapping and nodding. My husband smiles at me from the front row and mouths the words, “Te amo.” A young man in an argyle sweater raises his hand timidly in the back row.” I smile and nod in his direction. “Maybe this is a silly question professor, but how did your time in Brazil lead you to study the ocelot?” “Excellent question young man, but I must say it didn’t lead me to the ocelot at all. Sure I enjoyed researching in the Brazilian Amazon sector, I haven’t spent 3 weeks caked in mud since then, but I was bound for the ocelot far before I stepped foot in Rio de Janeiro. In a different mudhole paradise called Guajalito.” “VLASTI. Vlasti I can’t do it” Sirah sobbed as she clinged to the protruding roots. Her New York Yankees jersey was smeared black and speckled with burrs. The sun had fallen from the sky like a flaming meteor and left us all like children in the night. There was no ground under my feet, just indistinguishable masses of roots and limbs. Soil rained down. Leaning forward my face rested in the wet land and I wouldn’t dare lean back for fear that I’d reconnect with the ground several meters below. The gleam from the flashlight was visible one second and gone the next. Cigarrete smoke rose from the source of the light: Vlastimil Milzack. The leathery skin pulls back at the corners and a toothy grin emerges. Sly and smooth as a fox, he swings from one tree trunk to another till he is by her side. He lodges the machete in the soil, exhales a plume of smoke and says “I know you don’t want to hear this, but you can and you must. There is no going back.” I hardly recognized this woman. She strode in as if carried by the breeze and her smile showed nearly every tooth. Her linen dress was bursting with colors and wooden beads. But most of all her hair was completely alien. Shoulder length braids hung from her scalp like the tassels of a throw pillow with red beads at the ends. As she neared me with her arms outstretched I heard the beads clacking against each other. I held my breath as her arms wrapped around me. “I missed you so much baby, have you had a good time with grandmommy?” my mother asks as she squeezes out my last breath. When forced to inhale I smell the familiar must of cigarettes and body odor and must admit, this is in fact my mother. Instead of replying I grab a braid that hangs in my face. “What did you do to yourself? Where is your hair?” “Aren’t they great? I had my hair braided while I was in Costa Rica.” She sees my scrunched up eye brows and adds, “Costa Rica is a country in Central America sweet heart. Lots of people have their hair braided there. They do it for the tourists a lot.” “Are you a tourist?” “Well yes, anyone who is visiting another place for a short time is a tourist.” “What kind of job is a tourist?” “Well, you don’t get paid, so it isn’t really a job.