Surviving Santiago Read Free

a few wrinkles around her eyes.
    She asks me about my flight. I don’t answer, chewing on my disappointment instead. Now I have to wait for la comida , the main meal of the day. That’s not for another four hours.
    Tía Ileana keeps looking at me, so I finally say, “They showed two movies. And I saw the sun rise over Lima.” Though I worried that my Spanish would be rusty, I have no problem finding the right words—or understanding everything my aunt says to me.
    â€œThat must have been beautiful.” She doesn’t ask me which movies I watched, so I assume she’s not a movie person.
    Outside, it’s a clear day, though the sky has a purple tint and my eyes sting after a few minutes.
    Tía Ileana puts her free arm around my shoulders. “Smog bothering you?” she asks.
    â€œA little.”
    â€œIt’s bad in winter. A lot worse than when you lived here.”
    The aromas of my childhood come back to me. Wood smoke. Exhaust fumes. Dirt and vegetation. Palm trees border the parking lot, blue-green fronds spreading out from their smooth trunks like sparklers. Pollution aside, it feels more like a damp early fall at home, with leaves still on trees, sun heating the pavement, and just a bite of cold in each wind gust. By the time we reach her little gray car at the back end of the lot, I’m overheated in my sweatshirt.
    We get in the car. I slam the door. “I didn’t want to say anything in the airport, but the customs people treated me like a narcotraficante .”
    â€œThey give everyone a hard time.” Tía Ileana pats my knee, like I’m still the little kid who left years ago. Where the palm trees end, two khaki-and-olive-uniformed soldiers with machine guns guard a rusted white metal gate.
    â€œA bunch of people went through on the other lines while they searched my bag. I thought they were going to take the medicine away.”
    â€œThey didn’t, did they?” There’s a trace of panic in my aunt’s voice. I shake my head.
    The road from the airport takes us through a neighborhood of shanties with tin roofs and walls of scrap wood and metal, each shanty connected to the other in a crooked three-dimensional patchwork. Graffiti covers many of thewalls, mostly initials in red and black. Tía Ileana says the graffiti stands for the various political parties that have come together in opposition to Pinochet’s candidates in the upcoming October election.
    When we stop at a traffic light, I point to a wall with at least three different party tags, a hammer and sickle, and stenciled portraits of Che Guevara in red, black, blue, and green. They look like the picture of Che that we wear on T-shirts at home. My T-shirt has him in black on an olive green background, but Mamá wouldn’t let me pack it.
    â€œAren’t these people afraid of getting arrested?” I ask.
    â€œNot anymore.” My aunt turns to face me. “All the parties are legal now, and people can’t be arrested for taking part in the campaign.”
    â€œReally?”
    â€œYes. I know it’s hard to believe, amorcita . But your father and a lot of other people worked hard to make it happen.”
    She smiles. I sure hope she’s right, especially since she’s the one Mamá is counting on to watch out for me.
    The light changes, and Tía Ileana drives past more shanties. Some blocks have identical one-story brick houses with sturdier corrugated metal roofs. Most of these look new and don’t have graffiti on the walls, or if they do, it’s a different set of letters. According to my aunt, they’re for the Alliance whose presidential candidatelikes the dictator. I guess that’s how the people got the better houses. Ragged children play in ditches beside the road, and packs of scrawny dogs wander through the scrub. The kids and the dogs ignore each other. A military jeep passing in the other direction ignores the kids