Sisterchicks in Sombreros (26 page)

“Sí, Ensenada,” Joanne repeated. “We have to get on a ship and head back home today. Back to our casas.”

“Sus casas, ah, sí,” she said and then picked up her side of the conversation. We listened attentively for several minutes as she visited with us enthusiastically. Only one word stood out in Rosa Lupe’s long paragraph that both Joanne and I understood.
Mateo
.

We had both heard that name used several times when we were here before.
Mateo
was Spanish for “Matthew.”

“What about Mateo?” I asked, since I doubted Joanne would pipe up.

The señora had plenty to tell us about Mateo. It was terrible not to be able to understand any of it.

“And how is Miguel and his leg?” Joanne asked, pointing to her leg.

The señora led us out to where Joanne and Matthew had first treated Miguel, talking all the way. We found the patient seated on a bench outside his humble home with his leg elevated. He looked much better than he had when we first found him.

Rosa Lupe made the introductions, and Miguel shook our hands, saying
gracias
a lot.

“You’re looking much better,” Joanne said compassionately. “I have more painkillers for you that I’ll leave with Rosa Lupe. They’re in my purse. I’m sure she’ll give them to you when you need them. One or two every four hours for pain.”

“Joanne.” I stopped her from confusing the guy further as she held up first one finger, then two, and then four. “He has no idea what you’re saying. Just leave the aspirin with Rosa Lupe.”

“Ibuprofen,” Joanne corrected me.

I kept my mouth shut after that and followed Joanne and Rosa Lupe back to our Jeep. I figured that sometimes big sisters just need to know they’re right about something. Joanne always was right about medications.

“We need to go.” Joanne gave Rosa Lupe a tight hug. I wondered if the hug had been offensive to Rosa Lupe since we were so dirty and smelly. Rosa Lupe, on the other hand, smelled like fresh soap and a smoky blend of melted lard and warm flour tortillas.

I hugged her, too, drawing in the friendly fragrance of this sweet woman who had shared all she had with us, including her bed.

“I wish I spoke Spanish.” I felt my eyes filling with tears. “I wish I could tell you what you’ve meant to me, Rosa Lupe.”

She patted my cheek, catching the first tear and placing it on her cheek as if she was holding it there for me for safekeeping.

Joanne and I couldn’t leave. We couldn’t make ourselves let go of this dear woman’s hand and get in the Jeep and drive off. The fellowship, without words, was so sweet. We lingered, smiling, speaking a bit, hugging again.

At last we climbed into the Jeep and left. Both of us kept looking over our shoulders and waving until we were so far down the rutted trail that the dust we were kicking up blocked our view of her.

“What a woman,” I said.

“Yes,” Joanne agreed. “What a woman.”

D
o you want anything?
”
Joanne asked as we approached Ensenada, having made the journey without incident. “Souvenirs? Water? Another dancing lady?”

“All I want is a bath. A long, hot bath. What about you?”

“I might grab a souvenir if I see one, but I’m with you. A warm shower would be heavenly.”

It’s funny how relative things are based on your life experience. When we first docked in Ensenada and I looked down on the city from the balcony of our cabin, I thought the dirt soccer field and floating scent of burning rubbish was the most uncivilized sight I’d ever seen. Driving through town and watching cars run the yellow lights and make up their own private lanes to drive in, I thought we were in the midst of barbarians.

Reentering Ensenada now after the experiences we’d been
through, I felt happy to see the sight of such a big town and so many urban developments, such as the Pemex stations and the huge Mexican flag that waved from a tremendously high pole at the harbor’s entrance. I felt a friendly familiarity with Ensenada and the sound of honking horns.

We had gone through several stoplights in town when I realized that people were looking at us. Yes, the mud-splattered, canary yellow Jeep was a sight to behold along with the driver (Joanne, this time) and the front-seat passenger (me, this time) both decked out in frayed straw sombreros.

But I think the evil eye of our serape-draped hitchhiker was what caught people’s attention. Either that or the dirty gym sock that Joanne had peeled off her sweaty foot halfway here and tied around Mr. Marlin’s extended beak so that we could look like a souped-up desert vehicle.

“I think we’ve aired our dirty laundry long enough,” I told Joanne.

“We’re almost to the car rental place. Let people stare. They won’t see us again for a while. If they don’t like it, let them eat cake!”

“We gave the pastries to Rosa Lupe, remember? We don’t have any cake to offer.”

“Yes, but I’ve been thinking about the dessert cart that will be coming past our table tonight at dinner. If they have coconut cake, I’m having two pieces.”

I thought of our charming dinner guests from the first part of our cruise and regretted that they wouldn’t be on the return
portion with us. We would have a tale or two to tell at the dinner table tonight.

When we pulled into the car rental shop, the gold-toothed fellow was nowhere to be seen. A different man was working, and he seemed delighted to try out his English on us as well as arrange a ride for us back to the ship. Fish included for no extra charge.

Joanne kept apologizing for how dirty we got the Jeep, but he wisely said, with his palms open to the front of the vehicle, “Here is a picture of your beautiful trip.”

We knew what he meant, and he was right. Nothing had been dainty or sanitary about our journey, and yet the results had been beautiful and life changing. No “car wash” would take that away from us.

Pulling up to the front of the dock where the cruise ship was calmly moored, our friendly car rental employee was grateful for the large tip we handed him. He carried our luggage and boxes as far as the ship’s crew would let him, which was about ten feet from the gangway. He went back to the car and carried Mr. Marlin for us under one arm. Without his blanket covering, Mr. Marlin wasn’t nearly as intriguing.

The ship’s personnel considered Mr. Marlin to be an unregistered guest and suggested we leave him in his country of birth.

“We can’t do that.” Joanne stood as firm as I would have if I had been the first to speak up. Clearly, we’d had an effect on each other’s personalities during the past week.

“Would you be so kind as to call Sven for us?” Joanne said. “He knows us.”

When Sven appeared, I wished I’d had the camera ready. I could have used one of the last photos to capture his flabbergasted look. All the suave, smooth-sailing lingo seemed to have abandoned him when he saw the three of us. He began to speak to us as if we were a pack of hooligans trying to stow away.

That is, until Joanne and I removed our battered sombreros, and Sven realized it was us, his favorite Platinum Crown cruisers.

With the assistance of Sven and two other stewards, we were quickly taken to our suite along with our dusty luggage. Mr. Marlin was delivered at the same time, wrapped in our now-filthy Mexican blankets.

“I’m sure you must be eager for a shower,” Sven suggested. “I’ll see to it that more towels are brought for you.” He gave a low bow and exited, I suspect, holding his breath.

The instant the door closed, Joanne and I laughed.

“Look at us!” I turned my sister around so she could see her reflection in the mirror above the built-in dresser. We were in the same stateroom, peering into the same mirror we had looked in only five days earlier and complained that our noses were too funny and our mouths too imbalanced.

All those imperfections didn’t matter in the face of what greeted us in the reflection now. No attention was drawn to our noses or mouths. Those two features were about the only things on us that hadn’t radically been altered. Our hair had
suffered the most. It stuck out in frightening, wind-blown dreadlocks.

“Who was that mythical woman whose hair turned into snakes?” Joanne asked. “Wasn’t it Methuselah?”

“No, Medusa.”

“Well, we could give Medusa a little competition.”

“Look how dirty we are!” I turned my head and ran a finger down the side of my neck the same way I would run a finger across the top of the refrigerator and make a fuss over how long it had been since I’d cleaned up there.

“My teeth feel so gritty.” Joanne smiled big. “I think I caught half the bugs in Baja in my teeth.”

“That’s what you get for smiling so much,” I teased. Turning halfway around, I noticed a long dark streak down the back of my T-shirt. “How long has that been there?”

“Since the ATV yesterday.”

“We went out in the ATV two days ago.”

“Okay, so since the ATV ride two days ago.”

“I didn’t wear this shirt, did I?”

“Yes.”

“And you didn’t tell me I had a big splotch on it?”

“It seemed pointless. Who cared? I didn’t care. I usually was looking at the front of you, anyhow. You didn’t know it was there.”

“I’m going to throw away these clothes,” I said. “I’m serious. I don’t think I’ll ever get them clean. Do you want the shower first?”

“You don’t mind?”

“No, I want to take a long bath. You said you wanted a shower. I’m guessing a shower will take less time than a bath.”

“Don’t count on it.” Joanne stepped into the bathroom. “Would you be a honey and hand me that luxurious bathrobe hanging in the closet?”

“Here you go.” I couldn’t wait to soak in the tub and wrap up in the other plush robe. These items were a much greater luxury on the return trip than they had been on the way to Mexico. I kept thinking how much of the world lived like Rosa Lupe did. Only a minuscule percentage of the earth’s population has ever gone on a luxury cruise or been afforded the use of plush bathrobes or even soaked in a hot tub, for that matter.

My understanding of life and of the world in general had expanded so far that I knew it would be difficult to return to my complacent world of suburbia without doing something to organize assistance to those in need.

As I arranged our luggage and found a place for Mr. Marlin behind the drawn-open curtain that covered our sliding glass window, I thought of Joanne’s comments earlier about the need in India and how she didn’t know how to organize support. With a nod and a smile at my frightening reflection as I passed the mirror, I knew I could pitch a couple of ideas at her that we could work on once she relocated to Vancouver.

A knock sounded at the door. Sven stood there with extra towels and an envelope with Joanne’s name on it. “Would you see to it that your sister receives these?”

“I will. Thank you.” I closed the door, wondering if I should be tipping all these helpful staff personnel.

“You know, we might have enough time,” Joanne said about ten minutes later as she stepped out of the bathroom in her robe, rosy cheeked and smelling divine.

“Enough time for what?”

“We might have enough time for a massage before dinner.”

“We’re still at the six-thirty seating, aren’t we?” I asked.

“I think so. I guess that doesn’t give us enough time.”

“Why don’t you call and order up some pampering specialties for us for tomorrow?”

As soon as I got into the bathroom, I realized a shower was a better idea than a bath. With a shower all the dirt at least had a place to go instead of floating around me in the tub and potentially soaking further into my skin. I stood under the showerhead long enough to soothe my shoulder muscles and to thoroughly rinse off all the lather I’d worked up with the lovely cleansing products provided in our stateroom.

“That was short,” Joanne said when I came out.

“I know. I thought I’d be in there for an hour, but once I was clean, I was done.”

“Same with me. Did you think about Rosa Lupe?”

“I did. I thought about what a luxury all this is.”

“Does it make you feel guilty to be going home in such style?”

“Actually, it makes me feel grateful. I don’t think I appreciated any of this as much on the cruise down here.”

Joanne nodded. “You’re going to appreciate it even more tomorrow. We have deep-conditioning hair treatments scheduled at eleven. I tried to get facials or massages, but they were all booked up.”

“Good thinking on the hair treatments.”

“That’s what I thought.”

“Did you see that envelope Sven brought for you?”

“No, where is it?”

“It’s with the extra towels.”

“Oh, I saw it.”

“What was it?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t open it. It’s on ship stationery, so it’s probably our bill for the extra assistance we had with our rental car. I’m too content to look at any bills. What are you wearing to dinner?”

“Black pants, white blouse; same as I wore the other night. What about you?”

“I overdressed last time. I’ll go for casual this time, too.”

We fluffed up our hair, slipped into our cleanest casual clothes, and didn’t bother with makeup. It felt so good to be clean; we were happy to have freshly scrubbed faces to show off.