Limbo, and Other Places I Have Lived by Lily Tuck

Author:Lily Tuck [Lily Tuck]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780061748479
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2007-07-13T16:00:00+00:00

Limbo

What I remember about Peru is: flying in a plane over the Andes and fainting; stealing a statue of the baby Jesus; and threatening to eat a dog turd.

What everyone else remembers about Peru is why we went there in the first place.

My mother and I went to Lima, Peru, to wait until the end of the war. From Europe, it was a long way to go to just wait. A journey of several weeks—first by car, then by boat, then by plane. By the end of it, I was tired, I was sick, I pushed away my mother’s hand and did not listen to her when, in between gasps into her oxygen mask, she said: “If you don’t breathe into your mask, you’ll faint.” She held up mine to my mouth, but a few minutes earlier I had thrown up. I was afraid I would do it again. I held my breath for as long as I could and until I had to exhale. When I went to breathe again, nothing happened.

One of the stewards had to revive me. He gave me mouth-to-mouth on the aisle floor while the other passengers stared and my mother cried.

Afterward, when the plane was flying at a lower altitude, the pilot walked up to my mother.

“Is the little girl okay?”

“Yes, she’s fine now. She frightened me,” my mother answered him.

“Where are you folks from?”

My mother told him.

“You’re getting off in Lima?”

My mother nodded. In her relief, she told him where.

“How long will you be staying?” Before my mother could answer, he must have remembered the war. “It’ll be over soon,” he said. “Is this your first trip to Peru?”

I was wondering who was flying the plane. The pilot belonged back in the cockpit. He had perched himself on my mother’s armrest, he was talking to her as if he had all day. He took out a pad, he wrote addresses down. I squirmed in my seat. When at last he got up to leave, he patted my mother on the arm, he winked at me.

“I’ll be seeing you,” he told both of us, “and don’t frighten your mother again.”

“See,” my mother said, her face was flushed, she looked pretty. “Next time we fly, you’ll wear your oxygen mask.”

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