Watermelon Memories

            We used to listen to the same music track on repeat — a somnolent hip-hop beat with dreamlike lyrics. She liked it that way. We’d indulge in every note again and again, the same way we’d indulge in each other.

            Those summer nights I’d stay late and we’d lie together on the sofa in the small lounge at the back of her house. We’d start by watching a movie on her TV, sitting side-by-side, holding hands and leaning against one another. Eventually the movie would end, or the disc would skip and pause, and the screen would paint the dark room in its ambient twilight. Then we would hold each other and we would kiss and caress under blankets.

Her perfume would work its way into my t-shirt and would linger there long after I left, usually at two or three in the morning. I would tiptoe across her creaky floorboards so as not to wake her parents. And I would make the drive home bleary-eyed, forcing myself to move against that force that always seemed to want to draw me back to her arms and to the warmth and comfort of that room.

Those memories are distant now. But I can still feel the dryness of my contact lenses as I drove home. I have a faint memory of that perfume; the other day I smelled it again and in this world, a continent and almost two decades away, I found myself back in that lounge. I would like to also feel that love again, its pins and needles and sweet exhaustion. But its time has passed, and that is okay.

It’s the taste of watermelon that has stayed with me. On one of those summer nights, before we made our way to the sofa in the lounge, we sat and talked together in a kitchen lit rebelliously against the night — one of those scenes you glimpse while walking through a neighborhood after sunset, looking in on the lives of other people, their house dark except for that one room illuminating a moment of their lives. Perhaps this memory has endured so long because it is one of the few times I remember belonging on the inside. I was meant to be there with her in the light of that kitchen. Since then, more often than not I find myself belonging to the outside, looking in. I did not know then how good I had it.

Truth be told, I was always intimidated by those rooms. Her father was a doctor and they lived just a few houses down from the Denver Country Club. I grew up simpler — our family never poor, but still living under the stresses of making ends meet. The rooms of her house held a grandeur that I had never known before. The amplitude threatened me and I felt I always had to be bigger in order to fill the space.

The way I remember it, it had been one of those particularly hot summer days before that evening fell. At night I could feel the residual heat pulsing from her driveway as I walked up to the side door and she let me in. She was wearing one of the spaghetti-strap tops she would always wear.

I don’t know what we talked about then in the kitchen. We usually talked about our dreams in life, who we wanted to become, what we wanted to do. It is funny to write this now and to know that I exist in the future that those two teenagers could only imagine.

Her golden retriever sat happily at my feet. I sat on a barstool against the kitchen island. She brought out a Tupperware of seedless watermelon that had been cubed and sat chilling in the refrigerator all day. As we talked, we picked up cubes with our fingers and let their coolness dissolve in our mouths.

At one point she leaned over to kiss me and her mouth still held the cold and flavor of the watermelon. We were both surprised by the pleasure of it. Then we ate the watermelon piece by piece and kissed each other after every one, relishing each sensation of warm lips and cold breath and the taste of watermelon.

Those are some of the sweetest kisses I’ve ever had. They are the most vivid in my memory. I’ve never tried to replicate them because they belong to those two dreamers, then. Those two young lovers kissing in a lit kitchen, on a summer’s night, as the heat dissipates on the sidewalk. “The busy street is empty, whistling winds are blowing gently, listening intently to all of the things they have to say.”

Con El Taxista

The ride is not smooth. When there is relief from the trancónes, traffic jams, the asphalt is still littered with potholes. In the back of the taxi, I am jarred both when a tire drops into a hole and when the driver makes erratic attempts to swerve around them. Outside my window, the plurality of big-city life goes on, just as frenetic as the drive.

Luxury cars vy for their spot in something like a lane. The drivers curse and honk. Dilapidated trucks lumber in front of them and belt out black exhaust. This is a wealthier part of Bogota, however the main thoroughfares still allow some equanimity to exist between the classes — if only while sitting in traffic. No one goes anywhere with ease.

In the median of a road erroneously (yet optimistically) dubbed “the highway”, a homeless man has strung up a hammock between a metal fence post and a concrete pylon. He lounges in it and sings what I imagine is a coastal tune, envisioning himself on a Carribean beach up north, the sounds of traffic replaced by imaginary waves lapping at an imaginary shore, the fence post and pylon becoming palm trees.

The taxista snickers a little as we move past. He eyes me against the rearview mirror.

 “Where are you coming from?” he asks in Spanish.

I thought my Spanish would be up to par by now, but my difficulty with getting back to fluency belies my age. A mental rigidity has crept up on me like an arthritis. It is true what they say: learning a language becomes harder as you get older. But I am only relearning, so I hang onto a stubbornness that I have given the false name of ‘hope.’ 

“I was just in Suesca,” I respond.

“No, no. What country are you from?”

“Oh. Sorry. I am United-Statesian.”

“American.”

“Yes, American.”

There is a silence that speaks volumes. He is weighing what follow-up questions to ask that I might understand. I am going through all the ways I could have responded better. The Spanish that lives in my head is both potentially alive and dead, a Schrodinger’s cat curled up in my brain’s left hemisphere.

“And you speak English?” he asks.

“More or less,” I joke. He doesn’t seem to get it.

We continue down through the traffic. There are many Venezuelans out, many with babies in their arms, walking through the bumber-to-bumber traffic and asking for colaboración. Not a “handout” not a “donation” but “collaboration” — as if in giving we are now also vested in the effort to end their nightmare. 

I notice that the taxista keeps eyeing me from the rearview mirror. I recall stories I have heard of people getting robbed by drivers. I have already announced that I am foreign — a weakness that could be taken advantage of. “Be wary,” I remind myself. 

There is a Colombian expression that applies now, one that I didn’t understand upon arrival: No des papaya. It literally means “Don’t give out papaya.” Figuratively, it means you shouldn’t put yourself in situations where you could be at risk. Perhaps my arthritic brain stumbled into a danger unawares.  

“Hey. Will you do me a favor?” he asks.

“That depends on the favor.” I imagine this is the setup. What could be next? Perhaps, “Give me all your money or I’ll drive you out to the fields.” Or, “I’m going to drive you somewhere else and then we’ll talk about the favor.” Have I already given the papaya for the taking?

He hands me his phone. 

“Could you write to my wife, in English?” he asks.

“Does she speak English?”

“She is studying it. She really likes it. I think she is pretty good. I don’t know though. I can’t speak it.”

The screen is ready for a new text message. It says “Mi Amor” on top.

“What do you want me to write?”

“A ver...Could you tell her this: Amor. Eres la mejor persona que conozco en mi vida. Me has apoyado en todas mis dificultades y quiero estar contigo para apoyarte. Me has dado toda la felicidad que tengo en mi vida y intentaré hacerte feliz también. Te amo, mi amor.”

I do my best with the translation, plugging in the sentences as the taxi continues to bump and rattle and swerve.

“How did it come out?” he asks.

“Well,” I say. “Would you like to hear how it sounds in English?”

“Yes, sir. Yes, I would.”

“My love. You are the best person that I know in this life. You have supported me in all of my difficulties and I want to be with you to support you in yours. You’ve given me all the happiness in my life and I will try to make you happy as well. I love you, my love.”

I hand him back his phone, the English text still waiting to be sent.

“I love her very much,” he says. “Thank you.” 

He looks over the message, trusting that those foreign words convey everything that’s in his heart. He hits send just before we pull up to my stop.