Exile Music by Jennifer Steil

Author:Jennifer Steil [Steil, Jennifer]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2020-05-05T00:00:00+00:00

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THINGS HAD BEGUN to change between Miguel and me after Rachel came and I started classes. I now had a world without him. Rachel came over after school to do homework with me, leaving little time for thunka. Most of my classmates weren’t comfortable with Spanish and I was reluctant to share Miguel with them. Few of my schoolmates had Bolivian friends, and no one even considered trying to make friends with the Indians. “They’re too different,” they said. Or, “I hear they don’t wash their hands.” When they saw me talking with Nayra in the market, they stared. Maybe they had already been forced into more contact with difference than they could handle. They hadn’t asked to come here. They hadn’t asked to be removed from the comfortable vernacular of their home. Refusing to adapt was one way to exert control over their lives.

I bristled at their prejudices, though perhaps I might have shared them had I not had the good fortune to live in Miguel’s house. Had I not known him and his sisters. I wondered if we had come all this way, escaping a whole continent of people who saw no place for us in their vision of a single race, only to close ranks and turn on those who looked different from us. I did not want to remain an outsider, as we all so clearly were, forever. I wanted to belong here.

Most of my classmates assumed this was not a permanent move. Someday, when the Nazis were gone, the more forgiving planned to move back to Austria or Germany. The rest would find somewhere more hospitable, the United States, Canada, or the more developed countries of South America. Countries where it was easier to breathe. Sarah told me her mother couldn’t wait to get back to Austria, “where there was culture.” Here in Bolivia, Sarah said with a disdainful lift of her chin, there were no literary salons, symphony orchestras, operas, or theater. “It’s just fiestas. All they have are fiestas. All these people do is dance in the street, chew coca, or drink.” Although I knew she was parroting her mother’s words—not so different from the words of my own mother—I couldn’t help hating her for them.

Rachel was an exception. Rachel’s only verb tense was present. She could never return to the life she had had in Austria. I never heard her say anything unkind. She didn’t talk much at all.

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