Jhon Freddy (short story)

"Pero, porqqqqqquuuuuuueeeee, Daniela Maya?"
But why, Danielle Maya?

P"orque mi avion va a salir a las cinco este manaña, Jhon."

Because my plane is going to leave at five this morning.

Walking the 100 cobble-stoned steps from Jhon Fredy’s house to Guadalupe’s, I was grateful for this 90 degree hill for the first time in the 5 weeks I had spent in Lumbisi. The few steps ahead I was of Jhon Fredy provided me the cover that I needed. While he dragged his feet in a way that inspired true awe at the sight of a grown ass man acting like a child, I was doing all that I could not to get-me-the-hell-out-of-Ecuador cartwheel-sprint up this hill. Jhon Fredy, whose grief at my leaving had encouraged him to deepen his belligerence with whatever alcohol he had been able to scrounge up in this town, had a face full of the liquids of an overwhelmed man. While the mucus from his nose trickled down from its home and onto the upper part of his lip, running easily enough over the too-smooth piece of skin where less metro-sexual men have mustaches, the outer most parts of my nostrils were inching closer and closer to my ears, stretched by the full on grin I wore right beneath them. I owed as many thanks to Lumbisi, Ecuador’s starless sky for the black of this night, as I did to The Andes mountains for this hill – both allowed me the cover I needed to dilute the uncomplicated sweetness I felt with a feigned bitterness that I did not.
"Daniela Maya, esperame!"

            Danielle Maya, wait for me!

          "Jhon Fredy yo no puedo permitar mi avión salir sin yo!"

          Jhon Fredy I cannot let my plane leave without me!

         "Y tu avión es mas te importa de yo?"
        And your plane is more important to you than I am?

This, I had to turn around for. I had to look into the face of this 27-year-old-skinny-jean-wearing-I-really-do-love-my-daughter-pero-its-complicated (is it, Jhon Fredy?) speaker-of-no-English-but-lover-of-outdated-hip-hop-music, and see the look that was on his face when he asked me this incredible question. Maybe I would find a grief there so great, that I would, at least in this moment at 2:00 am in the middle of this hilly part of the street separating a field of the most beautiful cows that I had ever seen, from the dirt pathway bordered on both sides by minty eucalyptus and trees that reach all the way to heaven, and that had been for us, a place of release for all that is allowed to build when people that want so desperately to be alone, occupy a space shared with roomates and rommates’ cousins -- maybe in this moment, if I looked him in the face, I would find something that excused the absurdity of what he had just asked me.

All I found was a snotty nosed, and belligerently drunk, Colombian."

"Jhon Fredy, si mi avión es mas importante de tu, claro! Yo no tengo dinero para un otra avión. Y tu? Tu tienes mas dinero para yo comprar un billete de avión Nuevo?"

Jhon Fredy, yes my plane is more important than you, of course! I don’t have money for another flight. And you? Do you have more money for me to buy another plane ticket?

I almost felt bad asking this question, even rhetorically. Of course he didn’t have any money to buy me another plane ticket. Each time I lay in Jhon Fredy’s bed, I wondered if he noticed that nails from my three fingers from pinky to middle were shredding a hole where they pinned my sleeve to my palm, or how I fidgeted until the bottom of my leggings were all but tucked into my socks. I even adjusted my braids to cover my cheeks so that my pores were never exposed to all of the dead and germy things that the pee-brown stains told me this mattress with no sheet to redeem it, had absorbed. Laying in this bed with Jhon Fredy, listening to him talk about the perfect nose that our child together would have, I mostly just tried to keep the motherfucker-are-you-crazy? out of my voice when I said “I don’t want that” --in English because, in reality, anything I said in response to him bringing up us having a child together could not be made less hurtful for him with any attempt to keep my voice neutral. But there were times when I did wonder “What If.” What If I wasn’t only half telling the truth, half trying to calm him down, when I promised to come back to Lumbisi after I graduated? What If Jhon Fredy was someone that I could fall in love with? What If I got my own place in the apartment above Guadalupe’s? I tried to imagine the two of us spending nights and lazy mid-afternoons that felt like mornings long after the sun had occupied its highest point in the sky there. I wondered if Jhon Fredy could be more to me than the beautiful Colombian man with skin that was somehow as brown as it was red, and the jet-blackest, softest hair I’ve ever felt, and a gap between his two front teeth so endearing that it created a deep love within people without their consent. I wondered if Jhon Fredy could be more than the beautiful Afro-Colombian man that I was sleeping with while I studied abroad, a decision based partially on the fact that he was the only person in all of Lumbisi from which I didn’t have to hide the love of beer and wine that I possessed, but that threatened to possess me, as bottles of wine and extra-large beer hidden in my drawer warned that one day alcohol would represent more for me than some recreational assistance in getting through the dog days of study abroad in a place where you have to wear a bra every goddamn day, and do so with a group of girls that are politically correct to the point of near torment. I knew that alcohol made my life easier in Lumbisi, but I also knew that I would always be able to point to the thing in my life that made it okay for me to hide empty bottles of dyed glass and wooden cork in the bottom drawer of my night stand, and I didn’t have to hide that from Jhon Fredy. I wondered if he could be to me what I had been to him.

Jhon Fredy, es 2:15 en la manaña! Yo tengo que preparar mis cosas!
John Fredy, its 2:15 in the morning, I have to get my stuff!

I wondered, but the Earth in Lumbisi was threatening to split beneath my feet and swallow me. I could see the crack starting at the top of the hill, and creeping down to where me and Jhon Freddy stood in the street, pulling up and spitting out cobble stone while it came at us, like panty hose that go bad in one spot and then run their assault down your leg. I yanked Jhon Fredy by his hand and bent knees sent us into the air, above the crack in the cobble stone and onto the dirt path where the trees that we leaned up against and cried out to while we found release, lived. Moving faster, my power walk is doing all that it can not to become a jog, and the trees are different now. They lean in towards us where the straight edge of their spine was non-threatening before. Their slouch creates a dome over our dirt path; before, our place of skin slapping skin and limbs tangled up was roofed by the sprinkle of stars that God allowed to hover over this town in the mountains. Now, it’s the trees that enclose us here. Lumbisi is caving in on me.  Through the dirt path, and up the other side of the hill, I make it back to Guadalupe’s. I give Jhon Freddy the rushed kiss goodbye not of lovelessness, but of a heart weighted by the iron-clad fear of being trapped in a place that I have not decided to love. I wondered, what if he knew the truth? Would he have choreographed our last moments together differently, had he known that I had lied to him? That this was the last moment that we would have?