Before that day, that fateful afternoon, I could say wrist, liver, distinguished, decade, hallucinogen, family planning and chemotherapy in Spanish, but not ankle.

So when I called my host sister and said “Yo necesito ayudo me caí después del mercado, aquí abajo” the words that I needed were the only words that mattered. Her musical response was “Dónde?!” and then I got frustrated because people always describe locations here with abajo or arriba and it drives me nuts. “A dónde vas?” or in K’iche’, “Jawi kat ewi?” and they point saying “arriba” or “abajo.” And I think: “Thank you for the information.”

And yet, the direction from my house to my location was literally, simply abajo. You walk out my house, go left, walk straight through the market, straight past the chuchos, straight past the muni and straight down the hill until you see the crying gringa leaning on the curb.

“Aqui abajo” I clarify.

Tobillo, ankle, I did not remember so this would have to do. Maybe I looked it up once before, but it didn’t stick.

Just 8 minutes before the phone call, I walked out the side door that leads to the street, said goodbye to the two mozos/builders doing construction work on the bathroom and checked my phone for the time. My belly was full of baked chicken, white rice with red pepper and baked tomatoes squished into a sauce all washed down by chilled Coca-Cola prepared by my beloved host family. I thanked all three members of my host family for the delicious meal and kissed each one on the cheek. “Tiox, ‘Buelita” “Tiox, Mama” “Tiox Mi Clara..” I wasn’t even running late, maybe I’d get to school early to demonstrate my animo.

Here’s a picture of my host family lookin’ at me leave for school one day. They’re actually too precious for words.

I even dug around for class cancellation news before lunch. Class can be cancelled for any reason in rural education: solar eclipse in another country? Let’s start classes an hour late. Mother’s day? Let’s play games and give away prizes all afternoon, Valentines’ Day? You got it, no class, on top of the regularly scheduled week of sports, week of rest, school anniversary, Semana Santa and Féria. But no, class was gonna happen. 

I rallied with my

• lesson plans
• Habilidades Para La Vida manual
• umbrella
• toilet paper roll
• hand sanitizer
• sunscreen on
• white board markers in varying levels of uselessness
• and packs of different colored post-it notes.

I would get there as “homeroom” was still in suit before first period with Seño Mary at 1:25pm. I would be early!

I was even feeling good about the lesson for today: toma de decisiones y pensamiento crítico/decision making and weighing the options. I just macgyvered a weighing scale out of two old water bottles, plastic string and a clothes hanger. On the way I remembered to buy more masking tape, debated over buying beans as weights, then decided against it and KEPT MOVING. GOAL: BE EARLY. BE INVESTED. BE A GOOD VOLUNTEER.

Then I remembered I wanted to post a li’l anecdote to Facebook and unearthed my phone from my purse. As I walked and typed on my phone, my right foot twisted to one side and I hit the ground. It happened that fast: one second walking with determination, the next minute sprawled out on the blessed street. Face forward and in quite a bit of pain, I watched my cell phone slowly skid down the hill.

I tried to be funny, winey, to address all the eyes on the fallen gringa: “Mi celular!” I yelped. Everyone normally looks at you when you trip or fall, right? Well add ‘foreign’ to ‘fallen.’ Everyone devotes long, fixed stares at me even when I’m right side up. And I mean everyone, all the time, everyday, and I’m not new here either.

A man in conversation turned to say “Cuidado!” and eventually rescued my phone for me. He repeated “Cuidado Seño” as he handed it to me, screen not even cracked, as I gathered my things and hopped to a curb to sit on.

Class was in session but I was cancelled.

My ankle was both numb and in lots of pain, I was sprouting tears but trying to hold it together. I managed my expression so people wouldn’t notice the crying. They noticed. I thought about how I was probably pale as a ghost. That’s saying something, I’m pale in the USA on a healthy day.

I looked up at where I fell, one guilty, innocent paver gap the size of one missing tile. Adoquín are essentially cement spacers, I don’t know why we don’t have asphalt, but this one square of adoquín was missing. The dip was only inches, maybe 3.5 or 4 deep. I must have stepped on the edge?

Then the parade of questions started.. I’m on a public road. I can’t hide.

I can’t feel anything except a general sense of this-is-not-rightness and numbness all over my right foot. It’s starting to feel taut and I can picture it swelling up, but I’m not going to look. I can’t know what it looks like ‘abajo’ until I am safely with my host family away from the foot traffic and staring faces of market day. So in my mind I remove my right foot from my body.

And here they come: three ladies carrying baskets full of food on their heads and babies on their backs. They stop and look at me. Groan. I have to talk but tears are streaming and things hurt. They asked me if I was okay, they must have seen me bite the dust. I told them I was fine and thanked them. I jokingly said: “Nohim Nan!” as they walked away. They laughed for more reasons than the usual, that the gringa was using their Mayan tongue. It was because I had not followed my own advice, nohim means “slowly, with caution.” Irony, you know? Lighten the mood? Heal myself?

And I dialed my host sister, thank God I had just bought more minutes on my phone just minutes before. “ON STAR. I’ve fallen and I can’t get up.” I was imagining her scrubbing her shoes in the pila before she ran out the door. Dirty shoes are a sign of.. something bad?.. in this culture. Unkemptness. She keeps an old toothbrush by the sink to clean her plastic flip flops. If unclean shoes are a bad sign, how about where you step? But I needed her to think about my foot more than her shoes, please.

When here he comes, my old co-worker who left me to work at another school. Awkward to talk to him when I’m not injured. He said: “Seño, cómo estás?” tears streaming down my face with no emotion. I tried to change the subject: “I heard that I can’t come work with the students tomorrow because of the evaluciones.” He said: “No, we finish the evaluaciones today. Tomorrow we are going to a manifestación in Guaté.” (Con qué razon, I think to myself, the director told me I couldn’t come tomorrow because there were exams. I asked if I could still come plan with the teachers, to which he said, “everything is really tightly planned so that won’t be possible.” Little did I know that meant: “Class is cancelled because we’ll all be gone at a strike.” That son of a gun!” But really I hurt too much to care. My old-corker left me as an act of grace because I was so awkward trying to act like it was another normal sprained-anklenoon.

Then here comes a friend who works at the muni/town hall in his undershirt and gym shorts. “Que pasó, Natalia?” Who’s next, Donald Trump? I don’t want anyone else to notice me. I just want ON STAR I mean Clara to get here. I could have gotten on a tuc-tuc myself but for some reason I needed the comfort of having my host sister come rescatar/rescue me. She is actually my ON STAR.

When here they come, 2 of my students in tercero grado/8th grade, tears still running. Why they always gotta leave the damn school to go buy stuff or make photocopies. “Seño, que pasó?” “I fell but I will be okay. Can you please tell the director and the others” (they know what that means) “that we won’t have youth group tomorrow and we will have to wait?” I notice how my Spanish still seems to be functioning even though my body isn’t. They continue walking uphill while my muni friend keeps me company.

I feel a sense of relief when I finally see my host sister’s face, concerned, with a sweater over her shoulders for God knows why because it’s not even cold and I wave my arm feebly at a passing tuc tuc. She arrives in time to grab my shoulder and support me though she’s gotta be 4’9″. We left my Muni friend and the approaching bolo/drunk behind. “Ixcalap” she said to the driver.

We puttered up the hill and she asked what happened with all the pena/concern in her voice. If it hadn’t been market day we would have been home in seconds, but this trip was doubled for the side route home. I told her it was “por descuido” that I fell and of course she said the same familiar phrase: “You have to be careful while you’re walking Natalie!” which I braced myself to hear 30 more times in the next hour.

My host mom is waiting hesitantly at the door of our house as our yellow tuc-tuc slows. Clara pays for the tuc-tuc and I limp to the kitchen with my mom and Clara at either side. I am pale and shaky as I am led to the seat where I always sit. “El trono” Clara always calls it: the throne. Clara wipes down a stool with a rag so I can put my ankle on sit, programmed to dust EVERYTHING before you offer it to someone.

Now to address the mystery: she rolls up my gray work pants (which used to be stretchy before all the washes in the pila) and my host mom leans over, all three of us peering at my foot. There is a simultaneous gasp on Calle Principal. There is a welt the size of a baseball on my ankle, hand to God. I felt like I watched myself watch us all peer down at my foot like we were determining the sex of a newborn baby, but with dread instead of excitement.

It’s a flurry of activity as the three ladies circle around me in the small space of our kitchen, offering me whatever they can think of that might help: a glass of water, a towel for the top of the stool between fixed stares at my ankle as if it can be healed through intense eye contact, a bathmat to put under my left foot God forbid it rests on the ‘dirty’ floor.Abuelita enters the scene at her microbial pace: “Ay Dios miiiiio” she coos with regret. I feel like I’m in a Mayan postcard. Imagine the feeling of being in a 1940s WWII hospital except I’m in a Guate-Mayan kitchen in 2017.

Clara keeps asking me who we should call recalling the instruction to call if something happens to the volunteer. “I think that’s only if I have hurt myself and can’t talk, like if I faint.” (I make a mental note that I can remember the word ‘faint’ in Spanish even under duress: desmayar). I ask for my purse. My host mom is a la orden and I fish the problem and the solution from my bag: my iPhone.

Johanna, our Medical Officer, answers the phone and starts with a list of questions, calm but quick: “Which Natalie?” she asks as I blurt my last name. “Okay, when did this happen Natalie?” About 10 minutes ago. Thank God the call went through, none of my calls have connected this week.

Meanwhile Abuelita has entered and started praying to God in K’iche’ over my injury.

My host family can’t understand anything I’m saying into the phone but Johanna’s words are all I can understand: gibberish to them and salvation to me. Her third question is “what happened?” followed by:

• “Did you hear a popping sound when you fell?” No.
• “Is it the inside or outside of the ankle?” Right ankle and on the outside.
• “Can you wiggle your toes?” Yes.
• “What’s your pain level between 1-10?” I try to be reasonable and choose 6 or 7, adding that I’m sure it would hurt a lot more if my ankle were broken.
• “Can you rotate your foot from left to right at all?” I can’t even think about doing that because it would hurt too much (so much for being reasonable).
• She must hear the Spanish and K’iche’ spiritual intervention going on in the background as we talk.
• “OK what you need to do is take ibuprofen, 400 mg, every four hours, that means at 5:30pm, 9:30pm, 1:30am and 5:30am.”
• “Do you have your medical kit with you?” Yes.
• “You need to elevate your foot and put ice on it for 15 minutes every 4 hours at the same schedule as the medicine.”
• “Can you ask your host family to cook meals for you?”
• “Is your bathroom close to your bedroom? Do you think you can make it there without putting pressure on your foot?” and we make our way through a logistical plan.

“You will need to stay in your house for 3 days on this schedule, every four hours without missing an application, icing and taking the medicine.” “OK Johanna thank you so much,” as I’m continuing to wipe my face with my hand and blowing my nose into a fluffy white towel someone has placed next to me.

• “Oh before you go, Natalie, can you send me a photo of your foot?” “Oh yes I will do that” and I hang up.

I’m still crying after the call as my host mom puts her arms around me and hugs my head into her chest. “No te llores” they tell me. Is it bad to cry in this culture? I can’t help but cry! I’m injured. She tells me it will be okay. Now that I think of it, she’s never hugged me before. We always kiss each other on the cheek for greetings/goodbyes but it’s not like a grip around a person, not like this. I think she’s trying to hug the fear out of my system.

Then she leans over my foot again and I’m surprised and touched as she starts to cry: ““Natalie why don’t you look where you’re going because you hurt yourself!” and Clara scolds her in K’iche’: “No, you can’t cry!” in the way only a daughter can scold a mother. And in that moment I tap my host mom on the shoulder and tell her it will be okay, the swelling will go down.

We’ve both taken turns comforting each other about my foot.

It occurs to me that I am sitting in the same chair where their sister sat. She died 4 years ago, this was her seat and now I was calling out my own need in her spot. In this moment, do they think of her?

My host mom props my foot up as I take a picture of it.

I explain what my marching orders are to Clara. She leaves to go get ‘moletas’ but I don’t know what that is. She returns with a pair of crutches she borrowed from her cousin. I look it up on my dictionary app and tell her: “they’re called muletas.” Occasionally I correct her Spanish but not often at all. After all it was with a dictionary, not my own knowledge.

I roll my pants up and look at my red knees, not bloody. Just skinned from where my weight hit the pavers. My host mom asks: “do you want me to put the ‘remedio’ on them?” And I decide yes and she returns to the kitchen with a bottle and a feather. The feather is from one of her chickens. She is dressing my wounds with a feather from her chicken. I can’t imagine explaining to my host mom why she shouldn’t put her chicken feather on my wound because she would say: “Nah! Este no tiene nada.” And I just decide it doesn’t have a disease and let it happen. It’s true what they say, light as a feather. The medicine is red and way more dramatic than my actual blood.

There are two conundrums: one is the lack of refrigerator to preserve the ice for my ankle. The second conundrum is the bathroom, seeing as the one downstairs is being renovated and doesn’t work. The working bathroom is upstairs, up 15 concrete steps. We leave that for the time being and Clara leaves for ice after she brings down my medical kit. I fish out 4 pills and swallow them. Then I just sit there. I start writing my blog post in my head.

And I know this sounds really weird, but, I pause for a moment to appreciate this moment. Three generations of a family of women are all flurrying around me to address my injury. One way to learn a culture is to get hurt.