Something Fierce by Carmen Aguirre Read Free Book Online

well. The streets were packed, with everybody wolfing down chuño, charcoal-black potatoes, and meat patties called salteñas. Boys and men winked and puckered their lips, murmuring “Mamita” and “Delicious” and other, ruder comments. I noticed that there were mules in Bolivia, too, waiting in perfect stillness with their ropes. The ones with bleeding knees must have climbed the hill to ask for protection from the Virgin.
    We left Copacabana on a newly blessed bus with its own little shrine to the Virgin at the front. The highlands stretched for thousands of miles around us, interrupted by the sharpest mountains I’d ever seen. Our fellow passengers crossed themselves every two seconds. I kept my face still so my mother wouldn’t know what I was doing in my head: asking the Virgin to keep the roads clear and open for my family’s journey. Whatever the journey was. Wherever our destination might be.
    We drove for hours, until the land broke like a Greek plate and there was a drop in the road. I looked out to see nothing but sky. The universe. Then I looked down, and there below us was a city in a bowl. A bowl like the deepest crater on the moon, with a little house stuck to every last square inch of it. The bus drove over the edge of the bowl and down. Independence Day and the Virgin were being honoured here as well, because hundreds of people were dancing in hand-woven clothes with matching hats. Ladies with ten skirts in every possible colour twirled in unison, bright threads woven through their braids. We continued our spiral into the belly button of the South. Little kids chased after a homemade ball, wild dogs fought over a bone, armies of men carried big bundles on their backs, and finally our bus reached the bottom, honking its way along cobblestone streets with gold-encrusted cathedrals growing out of them. The air stank of shit and rotting garbage. The sounds of Aymara, Quechua and Spanish filled my ears.
    A couple of guys in moth-eaten sweaters threw our packs down from the roof of the bus. We stood on a sidewalk in Plaza Murillo, which looked to be the main square, amid the bustle of newspaper boys, shoeshiners, pinstriped businessmen, Indian women on errands, secretaries, beggars and office workers in baby-blue smocks. There were Indian women selling tiny dried-up llama fetuses and kiosks displaying beautiful cards made of carved bronze and wood and silver. If we’d been allowed to write to our father, I would have bought one to send him.
    â€œThis is La Paz. The highest capital city in the world,” my mother said.
    I looked up to see if that meant the sky was closer.
    â€œThis is where we’ll live.”
    A group of girls about my age were passing us on the sidewalk. They carried leather school bags and had their hair in immaculate braids. They laughed as they walked hip to hip, arms around each other’s shoulders and waists. I looked at Ale. She looked at me. It had always been the two of us, and here we were, still together. I moved closer to her, and she leaned into my side. Bob flagged down an empty taxi as the bells of the cathedral announced evening mass. I was surrounded by people who must know all about life, I thought. There was no way you could live in a crater, closer to the sky than anyone else, in the heart of South America, in the continent’s poorest country, and not know about life.

4
    T HE KETTLE BOILED its way to exhaustion as Jimmy Cliff sang “You Can Get It if You Really Want” for the tenth time in a row. It was one of Bob’s favourite songs, and he played it day and night. Even though we put iodine in the water, we still had to boil it for thirty minutes before we could drink it. There was diarrhea and vomiting to be wary of, but also typhoid and cholera.
    The four of us were seated around the table, which was set with bread and jam, waiting for our tea so we could celebrate the chairs. We’d carried them home from