six big pigs, 12/16/06

12-16, Saturday

I have forgotten most, if not all, of my Nahuatl, but it doesn’t matter.  My friends and family are as happy to see me as I am them. 

Oapan is as I remember it: the same bumpy dirt roads, the pigs sauntering through the streets, the komal smoke lingering in the air.  It smells the same.  The tortillas are as thick as they were before, warm and inviting.   They taste good. 

Pepe hasn’t grown so much up as he has out. He has filled in.  I almost didn’t recognize Daniela.  She had grown so much that I thought she was her older sister.  It was a memory of her a foot shorter and entirely quiet that put her out of my frame of reference.  She existed once again.

Eulalia looks older.  You can see it in her face.  Sixto looks the same.  He greeted me with a bare chest, in his athletic shorts and huaraches. He knows me as “Power” here, as does everybody.  Of the few things that I understand in our conversations at times, I understand my name.

When I arrived at the house of my former host family, I tried to give Eulalia a hug.  That didn’t really work.  They don’t really give hugs here.  She pointed to Sonia and said, I was told later, that “when she marries, the family is going to slaughter six pigs at the wedding.”  I understood things a bit differently, however:

“Sonia’s a pig?”

“Sonia’s a pig.”

“Why is Sonia a pig?”

“She’s not a pig.”  Eulalia flashed her digits in indication. She’s six pigs.”  And her eyes grew wide.  “Six big pigs.”

Later I went to see Moises and his family, but he wasn’t there at first, so his sons and I mumbled through a quiet conversation.  When Moises arrived later from work, he spoke of Pablo, my former classmate and friend.  He had returned earlier that summer and had learned to speak Nahuatl extremely well.  Moises told me that Pablo wasn’t like me: he was smarter than me.

“Well,” I said in Spanish.  “Pablo has been studying Nahuatl since we left.”  I had spoken only words and phrases in random encounters since.  “That must have helped.”

“No,” he responded.  “He’s just smarter than you.”  Moises is a good man.  He invited me across the river tomorrow to watch him work.  I will also go fishing with Pepe.

The women have gone to bed here at Emiliana’s home.  I need to sleep as well.  Lights out.