Free Tales of a Female Nomad by Rita Golden Gelman Page B

Antigua for?” he asks.
    “I’ve just rented an apartment for six months, maybe a year.” Then, with a little laugh, I ask, “Does that qualify me to join your table? I’d love to meet some of the locals.”
    “Sure,” he says. And I’m in.
    Most of the ex-pats in this group are Americans. One woman owns a successful art gallery on the main square, with fine paintings, assorted crafts, and books. Her taste is exquisite and the shop is thriving. The fellow with the beard collects, preserves, and sells butterflies to museums and anyone else who wants a framed, glassed-in butterfly collection.
    I am invited to visit the greenhouse of a retired doctor and his wife. The glass house is hot, the smell is earthy, and dozens of exquisite orchids fill the tables and hang from beams. Their daughter, an adult, is also living in town; she is coming off of a broken marriage and has been living in Antigua for nearly a year with her son. She and I become friends.
    They are all living well. Some of them have cooks, cleaners, drivers, and women who do laundry. The staff-people are “servants,” which is one of those words one doesn’t use in the U.S. any more. Here in Guatemala, I am told, the servants are happy to have the jobs, even though the salaries are small. The ex-pats are living in luxury on next to nothing.
    Over the next months, I have an occasional dinner in an ex-pat home; and at least twice a week, I join the flexible group in Doña Luisa’s for breakfast.
    The ex-pat lives are very much in order. They pay someone to go to immigration in the city to renew their visas, they take a monthly deworming pill, not even bothering to check to see if they need it, and they entertain elegantly, their servants cooking and cleaning up after the party.
    Many ex-pats have their own cars, their own clubs, their own pools. And most of them are aggressively anticommunist. I avoid conversations about Nicaragua and the Sandinistas.
    One Saturday I meet an ex-pat from Guatemala City when he buys a handwoven fabric from María, a young indigenous woman who sells weavings on the street. María is gorgeous and one of the best sellers in town. The long shiny braid, the flirty dark eyes, the hint of a great body under her boxy
huipil
blouse, and her fearlessness in the face of foreigners are the keys to her success. Every day I stop by her spot near Doña Luisa’s and we talk.
    That Saturday morning when I come to say hello, she is holding out a beautiful red, yellow, and black weaving to an American man. He is looking for a tablecloth. I help her by taking one end.
    “It’s good quality,” I tell him. “María comes from a family of weavers. Five sisters and their mother. Their work is the best.”
    I hold María’s baby, Diana, while she negotiates a price. When they are finished, buyer and seller are both smiling.
    María invites me to Diana’s first birthday party. Her family lives in San Antonio Aguas Calientes, a village in the hills about fifteen kilometers out of town. I have been there three times to share celebrations. I am honored by their invitations.
    “Can I come early and help?”
    “Sure,” says María. And she quickly disappears into a hard sell with a couple who are walking toward her.
    “A cup of coffee?” the man says to me as he slips the tablecloth into his backpack. Why not?
    Eric is in his early forties, a Warren Beatty look-alike with a southern drawl. He lives in Guatemala City, but he’s spending the weekend at one of the better hotels in Antigua. We have coffee in his hotel. After coffee, he invites me to join him on a trip to Chichicastenango the next day.
    At eight the next morning Eric arrives in a light blue Mercedes. I don’t like riding in expensive cars, especially when I am going to be driving through places where people can’t afford bicycles. But I have no choice.
    We drive along a twisty, dusty, mostly dirt road. The day is windy and dust is flying around us like a plague of locusts. I keep