Going Back

My best read short story so far...

Going Back

“How do I look?” That’s my son Miguel in the living room. The girl answering is his best friend Aniela, she imitates his low voice, “you sound like a camionero.”

I am Lauren, in the kitchen, waiting for the kettle to boil and peaking through the gap. Miguel is wearing a skirt and a silky blouse. His bra subtly stuffed, hair braided and tasteful make up. Not much is needed to turn him into a girl. He hardly yet needs a shave despite seventeen birthdays checked. The two have spent hours finetuning his looks. The jumble of my intestines is tightening further. His voice can betray him.

The beginning of December. Tomorrow is the school excursion to Chili. Twelfth grade. Mig skipped a class. His English is much better than most natives. His friends call him Miguel Di Lorena. Because my last name is impossible to pronounce for the Spanish tongue and my first name is Lauren. He is born here, I am not. His Spanish is much better than mine. I was never fully at home in Paraguay.

I can’t take the teapot, I think when pouring steaming water in the glazed beauty I have drank tea from for thirty years. We can hardly take anything.

Miguel enters the kitchen with Aniela. I smile at them. They could be sisters.

'Did you pack, like I told you to?’ My son says to me. Now his voice is lighter. I raise my eyebrows to flag his bossy tone. Still your mother, child, my gaze tells him. Unimpressed he gives Aniela a massive hug. She plays bored.

“I feel so guilty you can’t come with because of me,” Mig says to her, nailing the girl vibe.

“Missing out on some dead ruins? Not spending forty hours in a sweaty stale cookie jar on wheels?” Aniela plays along, don’t be ridiculous, written all over her face as she pulls out of the slender arms of her friend-since-kindergarten.

“Gonna miss you,” she says accusingly, suddenly dead serious. The look in Miguels eyes is indescribable. He doesn’t say a word, but it feels like he is imprinting his love on the girl forcefully.

He then turns to me. “You do know we won’t come back here, mom?”

I can only nod. He is just seventeen. Why is he more grown up than me? Better at being decisive?

---

The International Christian School has hired a big E-bus for the trip abroad. It’s in reasonable shape. Twenty-three girls and their parents make the air buzz. The boys have left half an hour ago for a different —last minute—destination.

A week ago, the all-new government announced young men are no longer allowed to leave the country. Last Friday the rumours changed into reports. News travels fast among teens. The eighteen-year-olds are drafted. Military Service. They’ve started for real in the south. Things are getting grim. Mig’s birthday is in two weeks.

Yesterday, he came home with a complete plan in place.

“Sit down, mom,” he said nervously, “we must have a long talk.”

I was instantly hurdled back twenty years to another kitchen table and another crucial moment. The one with my dad.

---

I am counting heads as the girls enter the bus. Some high five me. No uniforms today. Mig and I must act as strangers but everyone seems in on the secret. I am made a supervisor. An improvised role. But a lot had to be changed anyway to split up the mixed trip. It made sense, to at least let the girls go as planned. Rooms were booked, tickets bought. The bus is only half filled. Judging by the sound, it won’t make a difference. We could drive the distance on the excited energy alone. Twenty hours to go.

The maths teacher sitting next to me is in on the scheme. I think she’s even more nervous than me.

I look at my bag on the rack above me. Eighteen thousand Reals hide behind that zipper. The other third of the money is in Miguels backpack. Both the American passports are in my custody. He travels on Aniela’s Paraguayan ID-card.

We encounter three checkpoints before we even reach the border. They mostly look at the paperwork. There is no reason for suspicion. It is getting dark, and the muddy track is full of potholes. I can’t sleep. Fleeing the country without saying goodbye to my friends at the church. I have written and sent postcards. They will arrive when we are long gone. I try to trust.

The faith community was the biggest surprise of my involuntary move to South America. A warmth long gone in the country I grew up in. A country that no longer exists. I feel torn. My heart is heavy and my gut in turmoil. I don’t want to leave, and we definitely cannot stay. Miguel becoming a soldier in this neverending conflict is simply not happening.

Just after midnight, the lights in the bus come on. I did fall asleep after all. This is it. The kids behind me sound unworried. Calm and cosy. My heart is pounding. I poke Daniella next to me, who hasn’t woken up yet. The bus-driver comes to my rescue. In semi-official Spanish he blows up half of the loudspeakers. I get a devilish sideways glance. He knows how to get their attention. Customs.

Did I expect trouble? Well, nothing happened. It was a breeze. Eight soldiers with machine guns were mostly aroused by a bus full of seventeen-year-olds. Everyone had to go through a ridiculous parkour that ended at a bulletproof box with two policemen in it. One checking the papers, the other, a woman, just watching. I think we interrupted her nap. She wasn’t quite present.

The dogs sniffed the luggage, and then the giggling girls were almost helped back to their seats. I saw Miguel smiling his deadly smile at one of the fully geared up soldiers. I had a cardiac arrest.

We have made it out.

Arrival is expected at 4 pm the next day. The group will check in at the city hostel for a first day of light activities. Not us two. We have a boat to catch. With four hours to spare. I am looking at my watch. Heavy rain batters the windshield, making the driver drop to half speed.

The road in Bolivia was bad, but the constant thudding and shaking rocked me to sleep. Maybe the relief of having crossed the border helped too.

Halfway the morning we have a break. I observe Miguel. Can’t help but. He’s having fun. No doubt. Soaking up the company of girls. I wonder how much the kids know. Did he make up some story? Turned it into a teenage prank? I feel proud to be the mother of this creature. Smart, sensitive, soft, such a beautiful soul.

---

We are in the taxi. Driving through the city to the harbour. I’m wrecked. Hollow-eyed in the front seat. The back seat is packed with Mig and five of his friends. Young women. Laughing, joking, excited and fresh. I cry a bit.

“The ships are always running late,” the taxi driver says in Chilean Spanish. Or at least that’s what I think he utters. Still he drives way too fast, to the further excitement of the payload squishing each other on the backseat.

There is another little thing to worry about. I have always been great at finding those, one after the other. Our American passports will get us on board. The one I got for him when he was just a boy. The photograph is old enough to not be a problem. Boys don’t wear dresses and makeup though.

Most worries are in vain. The giggling bunch rolls onto the parking lot. The whirling cloud of eager helping hands shape-shift Miguel from girl to boy in two minutes flat. The taxi driver and me gaze at the spectacle with jaws dropped.

I had imagined us sad leaving the bus to get to the ship’s terminal. But Mig is alive and radiant up to the very last minute. Then he straps on his heavy backpack, gives each of them the look and leaves them in tears.

By the time we look down on them from one of the gangways, they are cheerful again, screaming like groupies.

We get a luxurious cabin with a balcony for the standard price. Not many people on board.

Mig looks most like me. American with only a hint of his Guarani father. Very like my dad when me and my sisters where kids. On his good days. Which were the best.

I have always imagined myself a mother of several children. It didn’t come to be.

Eleven ports of call to San Francisco, our official destination, but we will get off at Monterey. That is the planned bit. After that, we haven’t prepared. How could we have? There was no time. And now I have more time than I can handle. Nine days on a cruise ship that has seen better days. Decades ago.

I’d packed practical. I couldn’t do sentimental. While the harbour of Iquique retreats in a rapid sunset, Mig surprises me with a wrapped present. It’s weighty, the size of a bound trilogy. It gets dark too quickly and we walk back to our cabin. Wondering feverishly what the hay he’s gotten me.

“I hope you won’t be angry with me,” he says, joining me on the bed. Just mattresses with our sleeping bags on top. No cushions. The gift reveals a tightly wrapped bundle that still can be all kinds of things. I look at him puzzled and suspicious.

He smiles, a bit worried.

“It’s not drugs or anything…”, he says grinning, “go on, unpack!”

He has taken all of my old photos, the real ones, out of their albums. Reducing the volume massively. And at the bottom of the pile is a notebook. An empty one.

“Where did you find this?”

A blank book of that quality hasn’t been for sale since what? Fifteen years? I can’t remember.

“I reckoned you’d be a nervous wreck with this ocean of time and nothing to do. Now you’ve got a job. I would like to know more than the bits and pieces you told me about where you come from.”

When, if ever, do you get this many days to remember, be with each other, take daily strolls with no other goal than…with no goal at all in fact? On this otherworldly ship, I will. I will travel back in time. Revisit long ago.

---

The cruise-ship is unlike anything you may still associate it with. A separate kingdom. An island with aborigines and strange cultural habits. Travellers, like us, are the minority. We make it possible for the onboard community to exist like they do. A strange mix of Christian habits and an artists' neighbourhood. A complete little town.

I kept all that at a distance. Miguel makes friends fast. Helps with the gardening and food preparation. Setting up the weekly celebration. Giving me space to get lost in a past long gone.

I know the pictures well, but somehow the circumstances and the shuffled order and the fact that there was nothing besides their presence in that room, made them fresh new doorways into myself.

Home. Mom, dad, my sisters. The house and the garden. It is as if I can see them from a distance. A very real distance. Lots of time. Too much space.

Why have I been this far away for so long? To be able to get home? I’ve had many chances before it was too late. To get more clarity with distance? I was twenty-five when he told me. He came out about not coming out. Almost forty years of not showing who you are. No wonder the anger surfaced like it did. Warped and interlaced with this helpless sadness, this inability to be honest. I wasn’t surprised he was gay. Not because he had those typical mannerisms, but in being too tidy, too demanding. Of himself first. Of his clothing, hair, shaving. Of schedules, the volume of music and his aversion to dead leaves. And God yes, precision parking. Measuredness, that was a thing. The amount of coffee, of sugar, of cup. The amount of words that had to come along.

Keeping his true nature hidden must have taken so much energy. From mom too. First in wondering and not getting him, never feeling what she longed to feel, then conspiring against the world and us kids.

So much of what was hidden started surfacing with that Covid pandemic. I came home from a year abroad to be locked down in my parents' house. An early sign of the decade of rapid change that would follow. The hopeful start took a bitter nosedive. Deeper than anyone anticipated. The heritage of pain and suppression wasn’t just my dads. But for me, they are connected. The kitchen-table talk, he and I had, was the starting point. The removal of the lid.

On the ship, I have lost track of the days a bit. When I wake up and discover Mig gone, I have no idea where we are. I had fallen asleep before he was back. And he hadn’t been in the room since. Not in the bed.

I’m instantly stressed. This is not like him. I look for a note, some message. I know we crossed the equator two, three days ago. Then I notice the silence. No motor hum. It feels very still. I step through the thin curtain onto the balcony. Green hills in the distance. I get dressed, start hiding the luggage and discover the money is no longer in my bag. And, much worse, Miguel’s backpack is gone.

I lock the room and leave for the rear deck. Still early. Not many people on the food square. A city to the left.

I join a man at the railing who I know to speak English. He’s a traveller too. I think he came on board the same day as us.

“Lauren,” he says to my surprise, “I guess we won’t make it to LA this year.”

He dips a cookie in his Atole. I frown. The smell of fried chillies, pastry, and cinnamon is intense.

“Have you seen my son?” I ask. He shakes his head with his mouth full and says,

“Out of oil and Christmas in ten days. Oh, this is good. I might as well dig up my bikini. It's their home here, you know. I think they just dock here this time every year. Miraculously in time for Posada, or what’s it called.”

I don’t get what he’s on about. I want to search the ship. I walk away from him, then turn around.

“Where are we?” I ask.

“Puerto Vallarta. Not the worst place to get stuck.”

Mexico. God, I’m hungry. Home for the onboard community? Something stirs in me. I walk past the counter, I will go check the greenhouse gardens.

The boy behind the food stall won’t have it and grabs my sleeve to pull me back.

“Los mejores tacos del mundo, you must take some.”

He looks as if his heart will break if I refuse.

“Salsa de chicharron?” He adds to his bid.

I don’t know what he offers, but the way he says it is irresistible.

“I must find Miguel, my son, first. Can I take some?”

“Si, si, desaparecido.”

My heart freezes. The boy fills a box at top-speed with way too much goodness.

“Gone?” I ask.

“Si, a la ciudad. Cual salsa?”

I work my way up to the top decks and learn that many of the ship's inhabitants have disembarked to visit family. We’ll be here for at least until new years. Or longer if they really did run out of biodiesel. God, I hope not. Christmas at the beach?

I stick to my first plan. But the gardens are deserted. Can’t find any of the crew. I hoped one of them would be able to tell me why Mig has disappeared.

Stepping out of the hot, humid greenhouse, I do appreciate the morning cool. It’s no more than twenty degrees. Celsius that is, and it won’t go above ninety Fahrenheit, I think. Not half bad for December.

I take in the city view. It’s not big. But trying to find him down there without any lead is useless. I can think of terrible things happening to him. And I do. Yet, I also trust the boy. The young man. He must have a reason. The voices try to take my trust apart. To dismantle my belief. But I won’t have it. Wherever you are, I pray, I am with you.

It helps. A bit. I eat one of my tacos. And then the other two. The cooks onboard are crazy good. And today they even outshine themselves. It is because they are back home?

And then I cry. I want to be home. I haven’t felt this strong longing for ages. Are we? Going home?

I spend all day worrying and eating. Talking to people more than I have so far. I learn a lot. So many of the semi-Catholic community that runs the ship know Miguel. And they love him. He’s volunteered broadly and it had a big impact. I learned he and one of the important elder women have left the ship very early.

Halfway in the evening, after dark, he returns. I can’t help being angry with him. Through my tears, I beat him up, and he just laughs and apologises a thousand times, fending off my attacks.

“I’ve spent half the money,” he says, biting the cold breakfast taco de Chicharron I saved for him. He closes his eyes in ecstasy. And I forgive him.

He has bought a car. We go see it, in some obscure backstreet workshop. Mig is laughing his face off when he observes my seriously disappointed look. It’s the ugliest little clunker I have ever seen. Held together by bits of tape and plastic parts that don’t belong on a car. The rust has eaten large holes in the doors and hood. No saying what the original paint colour has been. He has spent half our money on this?

Then he opens the motor compartment. It’s empty. Just crap in there. Now I’m confused.

He invites me with a come hither finger.

The actual motor-block is in the back. Well hidden.

“It’s a converted high-power diesel and the tank is filled with enough corn-oil to get you all the way home, mom. Is this clever or what? Nobody will bother us. And we don’t need space for cargo, just food, our bags, and the two of us.”

He opens the creaking door and grabs two roadmaps from the front seat.

“Almost as expensive as the carro. Half a century old, so I hope they’re still accurate.”

One says United States of America. It’s a historic map. I can feel a tingling in my stomach. We are really doing it.

Mig has brought our bags. My photographs. A big box with food and water and stuff. We agree not to say goodbye and simply disappear. Again.

As decrepit as the vehicle appears, so good is the actual undercarriage, the steering, suspension and motor. I drive. Mig has never had the chance to learn. And it handles like a dream. It’s late at night, December the sixteenth, as we leave the city behind. An almost clean highway, hardly any traffic. It has been a long time since I was behind a wheel. But it feels good. The speedometer is climbing further and further. Kilometres per hour. At a hundred and fifty, I look at Mig. The boy is sound asleep. I don’t dare push it further.

After a good few hours, I get sleepy and stop. But we have covered at least ten percent of the total distance.

I leave the motor running, but turn off the lights before I get out. It is pitch-black outside, and we are completely alone. I pee directly next to the car and feel weird. Agitated, tired and sleepy, scared and curious. If I could, I would drive home in one go. And it scares the hell out of me. It’s been five years since I last heard from dad through a letter telling me mom had died. What will we find? Is he still alive? I get up, don’t want to think.

I wake up Miguel, we drink some of the pineapple juice gifted by the woman elder, then I tell him to get in the driver’s seat. It’s a clutch car. He stops me explaining anything. Figures it out with two questions, then pulls away very, very cautious.

I let him drive for half an hour, then I’m so stressed about him approaching ninety, I have to take over again.

We simply try to keep moving, and the crap car is perfect. We have marked the map with a pencil line. And we manage to make no major mistakes. The first half of the journey is very smooth. The interstate travelled enough to keep it free from obstacles. But slowly the damage gets more pronounced. Bigger potholes. Broken trucks on the side of the road. Often reduced to carcasses by fire and scavenging.

I hardly sleep. Miguel picks up the driving skills so fast, that’s not it. Not just, it is mostly my apprehension. I keep myself busy with preparing food on my lap. Calculating when we will arrive. But it doesn’t help. Maybe it is the map reading in the car situation that triggers it. I am overwhelmed with a memory, with several at once. Dad snapping. That sudden turnaround he was capable of. That deep anger rupturing my idea of who he was. It was never directed straight at us kids. Or at mom. It didn’t make it much less hurtful and confusing.

I suddenly see how everyone adjusted the way they did things, not going to the sensitive areas, to avoid running in to that sudden shapeshifting. Through the years, we got better at that. And the result was distance. It was a mutual effort. The day he came out, told me why, showed me the root of, let me in to the pain… he also revealed the distance built up over the years. Perhaps that is the distance I placed between us. And maybe finally I am ready to make it smaller, bridge it. But it may be too late.

“Mom, why are you crying?”

Miguel puts the car on the side of the road and turns to me. I tell him I’m scared. We have a sort of picnic and I talk about my childhood. I shed tears, I laugh through them as I stumble upon stuff I cherish. I had a good home. And I tell him my doubts on not providing him anything even close to something similar. It is just me and him. It has always been.

He is such a good listener. He doesn’t say anything.

When I’m done, he says, “You’re my home, mom.” His mouth full of pastry.

We exit New Mexico and the feel changes. Unsettling scenes of towns. Empty, decayed. There’s no traffic. Almost no people. And the roads are much worse. We slow down.

I do not have a gift for his eighteenth birthday. We do have a five minute silent celebration under the night-sky. I make a wish. A billion stars attend.

The next day, we do less than half the distance. And I am relieved when the straight road starts to wind. Forests and hills. Pine. Not yet the luscious trees of my region. Some hillsides are littered with charred stumps and young growth.

We avoid people. Seldom stop during the day. And I see the fuel gauge dropping to a quarter. We do sanitary stops, stretch our legs for half an hour. Once we swim in a lake. Mostly to not feel so dirty. Nerve wracking to be away from the car.

The temperature has started to drop. We even have some rain.

---

There’s a kid on the side of the road. Eight, nine. A boy. I think. His hair is long, messy, and dirty. We pass him by. Miguel is driving. The kid’s eyes follow me. An unemotional registering that cuts right through me.

“That was weird,” Miguel says. He looks at me, over his shoulder, then back at the road. I can see him thinking.

A minute later, he takes his foot off the gas.

“We’re going back,” he says.

The child’s apathy is shocking. He may be dehydrated, malnourished, traumatised or one of many other unthinkable conditions. But he needs care. I ask questions, but we do not hear his voice. There’s hardly any response. Even when offered food. Miguel feeds him a drink. I think he soiled himself. Not recently, but he stinks.

There seem to be no houses nearby. We don’t know what to do. We can’t just take him. We cannot leave him like this. It’s Miguel who decides. Again.

We only have front seats. So the child sits between us, staring. Until falling asleep against my shoulder.

The next morning we wash the boy and his ragged clothes. Now his eyes are a bit brighter and they follow us. Even looking at me for a few seconds. Is he older than I first thought? Only tiny amounts of food go in. Like two bites and a sip. And then nothing for hours.

With the smell gone, everyone relaxes. Mig and I start talking again. About normal stuff. I notice a bit more movement. Scratching his scalp, for instance. He’s got head-lice, I think.

I start recognising the landscape. And I get more upset by what we encounter. This is no longer the country I knew.

At night, it is so dark. We rarely see lights. Oncoming vehicles are totally unsettling. But that is probably mutual. The looks of our car helps. I would have chosen a more sturdy, mean looking set of wheels without a second thought.

---

Entering the town I grew up in, I can’t help but cry. I drive. I know the way. But I stop. And we sit in silence for ten minutes. The church is in ruins. Nothing but a pile of rubble. My church. Main street is a mess. We see some old people pushing a cart. It’s like a war scene from some ancient movie. I shiver. It is no more than a few degrees above freezing. This is the December I know best. It is Christmas morning. The birth of the light.

Driving up to the house.

My heart has trouble pumping the thick fluid in my veins. There’s grass on the tarmac. Lots of tall grass. No cars have been on this street for years.

The house is gone. Most of the houses are. We get out. I think the wood is reused. The foundations are still in place. In between overgrown shrubs and weeds. Some things I recognise, but it’s all changed so much.

Miguel and the boy walk hand in hand exploring the back garden.

“Mom!” he shouts, “look at this.”

I walk over. And I immediately know what I am looking at. This is dads vegetable garden. Neat as hell. Ready for winter, as he would say. Beds with a good layer of horse manure. No dead leaves lying around.

“Laurentius?”

His voice is hoarse. No one else calls me Laurentius. There he is at the forest’s edge behind a wheelbarrow. Twenty steps in between. And despite the beard, he looks good. Healthy. His lines softened. His hand on my head before we hug.

---

He lives with two guys a bit younger. A few tens of locals are still here trying to make things work. Most are old. I’m the youngest, besides Guido and my son. Mig named him.

He is so good with the kid. My dad told us there are probably more children like Guido. And Miguel can’t stop thinking about that. He and dad talk a lot. Make wild plans. I have never before seen him so alive.

---

“So, you will found a new school?” my dad says to Miguel who rises to go check for the third time if Guido is still asleep. I’ve been having the same thought. He would excel at teaching. Mig slows down and freezes after a few steps away from us. Now he turns around slowly, his hands held up. Palms upward. Looking up at the dark sky. The glow of our New Year's Eve bonfire on his face. And now I see it too. Thick white flakes drift down and land on his open hands. Miguel slowly exhales and shakes his head.

“No Michael,” he says after a minute or so, “Not a school. Just a place to learn who they are….”

---

This was my story in the Same Walk Different Shoes project. Please like if you appreciated it, leave a comment, or hit subscribe. Would love to hear what you think.

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