And I left the cab driver who couldn’t get his payment machine to work for me to leave a tip. I felt a little bad but couldn’t do anything. I went through LaGuardia security heaving my two overflowing bags onto belts and into bins, shoes off, shoes on, arms up, step here Miss, shoes back on and go. I remember when I was a teenager and I didn’t think airport security was a hassle. I guess it’s another sign I’m not 18 anymore. I can’t believe I came through the US without thinking of checking a bag, and yet I can believe it because $50 USD is another story in quetzales. “And I get paid in quetzales” I remind myself as the maroon strap digs into my shoulder, cheapwoman scars of battle.

LaGuardia is small, less space for me to think about how I feel.

I was tired of re-propping up my fat bags so I let them fall. I found an outlet and scrolled through pictures on my phone when a man in glasses struck up conversation: “Where ya headed?” He is from Guatemala but hasn’t lived there in 30 years. His accent, his kids and his life are all Bostonian. His speech and his manner were so nuanced to the Northeast, I was intrigued. English was so easy for him. He told me he liked my personality, my manner, and offered to buy me a breakfast. But I didn’t want to talk to him anymore. I also don’t trust any man who offers me a meal lately. I’ll take the company of self even if I am going back to being very alone in a different way.

I sunk back into podcast picture phone world until I boarded the first flight home, window seat. I don’t remember much about the flight and that’s a good thing, but I woke up with a sore neck albeit grateful for the sleep. Then it hit me, the utter, near unbearable heat of Houston, Texas.

When people tell me it’s hot in Guatemala, I tell them: “No, this is not hot.” I wonder how Guatemalans aguantar in Texas, what they think when they experience true humid awfulness. I stand in the shade with all my things as I strike up a conversation with a man, on break, on a bench. He recounts his tales as an immigrant, I can’t remember from where, and his experience working and living in different countries. I think of all my Guatemalan friends who say: “When you go to the States, take me with you.” This man is on the other side. He goes back to work. 

And I wait, going inside then outside, eventually calling to gripe about a $200 charge on my credit card from the company that hosts this very website. I tell them I am in Peace Corps and that they must have imagined that $200. Between the ratchet internet reception I finally completed the reimbursement and headed outside to wait more for Anthony and Shane. Anthony used to be a volunteer in my site but he left about two months before this visit. We’d been planning this rendezvous because of the eternal layover in Houston.

The heat is so spellbinding that I’m becoming winy, chillona, just standing in direct sunlight. Anthony eventually rolls up and I sit in the backseat of his leathery BMW. We lead different lives, Anthony and me. We find a sushi restaurant, one of the few that’s open, and I eat my last meal on US soil. This trip was so short it felt like a bunch of ways I could apply the word ‘last.’ In my normal Estadounidense life, I would not have a casual lunch at a restaurant with black linen, nor would I order a glass of Pinot Grigio.

They are gracious enough to take me to an H-E-B Texas Grocery Store because “No Store Does More” and I am once again spellbound by the size of this grocery store. The US is a big country and Texas is it’s own country within a big country, it would seem. The H-E-B is a tall and wide warehouse with bright lights, A/C blasting, and aisle after aisle of pristine, just mopped white linoleum with perfectly placed price tags in front of every item available. Do you know how many items are for sale in this place? Must be 40,000. There’s not a layer of dust on anything, expired goods are removed from shelves and marked at discounts, and there are even holiday displays: 4th of July Barbeque tiki torch lawn chair coozie-arranged entrances lined with boxes of Coca-cola cans by the box which serve as perfect divisions. This brought to you by Texas and Capitalism, I look beyond bedazzled fringe to bow to the State who brought us Beyoncé, Dr. Pepper, chili con carne and corn dogs. 

I picked out only a few things, two bags of dark-chocolate covered pomegranate candies, 2 packets of Extra gum and a special purchase for my sitemate: Dove Dark Chocolate with Almonds. It’s surprising all the things you don’t really need when there’s no room in your bags. I had to make a line in the chocolate bag with the sharp end of a paper clip for transport space.

I say goodbye to Anthony and Shane after hugs, Anthony soon will be leaving for DC to start his masters. And I’m still mastering on the minors in my pueblo: don’t step in donkey poop, use K’iche’ greeting and get to work on time.

And it was back to just me, in the wide airport of Houston, waiting at another gate. I found a coffee, or a coffee found me, and I approached another chair waiting to go to another place. My last coffee, my last layover, my last breaths of filtered airport air. I started couple talking with a Guatemalan couple who have lived in Texas for 20 years. I saw the white John’s and Susie’s looking at me, not expecting Spanish to careen from my thin lips. BUT IT DID. They told me that no one spoke English in Texas when they came. She cried, she cried. It was so hard she told me.

And I remembered that I could speak Spanish and that happy faces, like the kind expressions of this married couple from Guatemala who moved to Texas 20 years ago, would be on the other side of this long day’s journey. They were flying home to visit their families. The sweet lady told me her sister in Guatemala could never get a Tourist Visa to visit the US because they denied her application twice. They denied her because they said she would certainly stay if she came to the States, find illegal work.. Not only is this racist and sexist (they said, because she didn’t have children in Guatemala, she wouldn’t return).. it’s awful. There goes the possibility of my single, childless host sister visiting. I’m glad we didn’t get on the subject of Trump.. We waved goodbye as we stood in eternal line to board the plane.

I got off of the flight and was, instantly, in a third world country. The lights were dim and women were cleaning, yep I’m back. I made it all the way to the customs lines when I realized with a jolt that I’d lost my sweater somewhere. This was a very important sweater that I got three years ago, a gift from my Dad, ironically enough titled “Airport Greeting Cardigan in Charcoal.” It was as good as gone. I’d recently lost a new dress that was a gift from a friend, my curling iron that I bought for $3 at Salvation Army in Ketchikan and my scarf my host sister bought me in San Juan La Laguna. I was not gonna lose this Airport Greeting Cardigan in Charcoal from my dad.

It felt like a rat race: “Seño, yo dejé mi suéter en al avion de Houston. Puedo entrar a preguntar?” trying Spanish on again. No, you need to ask the security desks. “Fat chance” I mutter weighed by my double bags, cursing everything that I thought I needed that matter less to me than my Airport Greeting Cardigan in Charcoal. But I tried it anyway: “Fijese que, can you help me get my sweater please…” “No you need to ask at check-in” they tell me (of course, I’m only 75% sure I’m understanding their capital city Spanish). Why would I ask about my sweater at check-in, that’s so far from the plane and I am checking-out? And these two are in no hurry to direct me to where that might be. So I get back in line at customs, moving as fast as Crunchy Jif from the bottom of the jar. I slide my passport under the glass partition, stamp, and retrieve. I walk with fuerza to wherever the ticket counter is by the luggage carousel.

“Disculpe, yo sé que este es solo una cosa pero para mi es muy importante, pero yo dejé mi suéter en el avión de American Airlines y es muy importante para mi.” And the man said: “Ok ma’am, which flight was it?” And I say “Vino de Houston” and he gets on the radio “Spanish Spanish Spanish…un suéter griz. Spanish Spanish Spanish over” and we wait. He says: “If it’s important to you, it’s important to us.” Guatemala wins.

And I set all my bags by a giant wall column and start to cry.

Suddenly my sweater is my family, my Dad, my grandmother, New York City, half-and-half, lattes, but mostly my dad. I had to kiss my dad goodbye and I just kissed my “Airport Greeting Cardigan in Charcoal” from him goodbye, too. It’s just me and these two fat bags. I hear the young guy on the radio “Spanish Spanish Spanish” and he tells me, all chipper “They’re bringing it” and I ask in disbelief: “They have it?!” and he says “yes they’re bringing it now.” And I take my position back at the column and can’t stop wiping tears from my eyes. I don’t know why I put on Airport Greeting Mascara because it’s worthless now.

Every time I leave my parents, I worry about them getting older. I feel like I’m gonna turn around and they’ll be 80 and I will have missed it, whatever it is that I am missing. And my old, sentimental sweater held all that meaning in the threads, pockets and zipper, the hems on the sleeves I patiently removed so the sleeves would reach just slightly longer down my arms. So when the young man finally approached me with the sweater folded like it had just been pulled out of a tidy drawer, I thanked him immensely and tried to give him 5 quetzales. He reassured me: “No te preocupes, Seño” and I left in tears with my Airport Greeting Cardigan in Charcoal.

One more line to go. I try in haste to skip it, to exit another way, I’m not sure I need to go through this line. A man approaches and asks in English: “Why are you crying?” And I hate that he is speaking to me in English and I hate that he thinks he is helping and I hate that he is talking to me.” I respond in Spanish, he responds in English, what’s wrong with this picture? And I get in the obligatory line and they scan my bags and I am free. Do I feel free? I’m in Guatemala, it’s 7pm, and Carlos tells me to come find him on another deck.

I scrunch myself into the backseat of Carlos’ compact car like I’ve never left. He tells me he is going to Jersey tomorrow to visit his family. Excellent. I need another ride to my dentist then. He tells me that he told the medical assistant already. He drops me at the hotel, I pay him and trudge inside the same Mirador Hotel, the place is set-up like a maze.

Meli is in the room watching Top Chef in Spanish. Of course I can’t have a room to myself to blubber. She tells me she didn’t cry when she came home from her first vacation. That makes one of us. I wash my socks and underwear in the sink so I will have clean linens in the morning. The internet doesn’t work. How do I tell my US family that I made it? I half-sleep in a mad, sad state. I sleep-in past my alarm and wonder if I can still go to my dentist appointment late. I call the stand-in assistant for Monica, who hasn’t helped me or understood the situation or who speaks English (Monica’s is perfect) and I eventually call someone with the last name “Chiquito.” I’ve just lugged my bags to the office from the hotel, another traslado. Daniel Chiquito drives me to the dentist and I fill out the medical form in Spanish in half-haze. The lady dentist and her assistant tell me the incoming wisdom tooth is fine, flosses my teeth (doesn’t brush or clean them, which puzzles me) and I ride back to the office with 20 minutes before the shuttle takes me the 3 hour ride to Km 148.

I put my things in the shuttle and lay down. The Peace Corps shuttle driver subirs, telling me that I need to buckle my seatbelt. I snap it on and lay back down. This is what I call denial sleep. They drop me off at KM 148 and it’s me and Guatemala again.

– – – – – – – –

They’ve dropped me at a stop and I stand by the fast food shop with my two fat bags and wait for the final leg of my travel to take me home.

Eventually the bus arrives, late and full, and I look inside. There is no space for me. The ayudante says: “She is returning from surgery, don’t worry. She’ll make space” referring to a passenger. I see there’s a pink towel tied loosely around her neck like a handkerchief and I’m not sure what the brown substance is smudged on it. The micro stinks but I eventually board. And New York socks me right in the gut. I think of Ben Platt in Dear Evan Hansen, his face completely earnest in each performance, a Tony winner, and I see myself on this brown-substance pink towel stinky stuffed micro and I start to cry. I bawl because I am a far cry from Broadway and a further cry from my dream of Broadway and farthest from Caramel Macchiatos and a further even still from December 2018 when I ring that Close-of-Service bell. No one notices as I ugly sob because I keep it all in the face, no shoulder heaving, no sniffling, just me and soaked cheeks.

When we arrive to Santa Clara, I lift my heavy bags for what might be the last time and begin the incline to my home on Calle Principal. My face looked like a train rolled over it. I felt like a train rolled over me.

I walked into my house, greeted my family and proceeded to sleep for two days, not able to deal. I can’t propel myself to work or greet people or do anything. My host family understands, they think I am resting. Eventually I come down and deliver their presents. My host grandmother kisses the long shawl/scarf wrapped around her and lifts it up to God, thanking him in K’iche’, and I remember why I live here. Moments like that reshape my organs of feeling and, while it takes me a few days of adjustment to accept it, this kind of beauty suits me. And I should be so privileged and so honored to experience it.

And then, I go to work.