Excerpt of “Be Like Water”

Crouched between brown sierra and the Aconquija mountains, Tucumán unfurls bone-gray in a cloak of smog that cancels most color. On the other end of the earth, in a city whose name means “the end of things,” my new life begins.

I’m from Alaska, where mountains cleave the sea and sky, hoping that Argentina will have me. Maybe in Argentina, away from the kids who call me a freak and snicker behind my back, I’ll find my place. Or another way to be.

At San Miguel de Tucumán Airport, our Argentine hosts approach our group. We are a smattering of exchange students from Sweden, Finland, Australia, New Zealand, Texas, and Alaska. 

The Argentines gesture and wave. They are slender and brown-skinned from late summer, teenagers themselves. One breaks away from the group to throw her arms in the air, laughs, and rejoins the huddle. They seem exuberant, even joyous. Nothing like the stone-faced teens I left trolling the corridors of Juneau Douglas High School, passing people they’ve known all their lives without acknowledgment.

“¡Hola!” they sing.

“¡Hola!” we call back.

Argentine names curl our tongues, shushing like the tide over rocks. After each introduction, an Argentine student claims a host brother or sister with a kiss on the cheek. I scan the faces, trying to recognize the girl from the pictures my host family sent me back home.

“Me llamo Summer,” I say in my best Spanish accent when it’s my turn.

“Oh, Summer…” says the exchange coordinator, who looks no older than twenty. “I am sorry, your host family cannot take you.”

My breath catches in my throat. Where is the family from the pictures and letters? Why didn’t they come? I want to ask. I can’t speak. 

Earthquakes rumble through my legs. I grab the handle of my worn suitcase that stands as tall as my navel and pull it closer.

The coordinator speaks Castellano to the others. It’s a strange Argentine Spanish that pronounces the ll like a hard sh, or like the French j. I can’t understand it despite two years of high school Spanish. The Argentines listen intently, their olive-colored faces now serious. The exchange students, girls from Australia and New Zealand with faces like gold coins, all with families and homes to go to, stand by. I, plucked from the midwinter of Juneau, Alaska, with long copper hair and a face like the moon, am fit only for the shade of night.

My face feels hot. I force my lips into a smile. I can’t show them that tectonic plates are shifting under my feet, that my body is swelling with heat and smoggy air. That I can hardly breathe. 

An Argentine girl who hasn’t come to fetch anyone, and seems to have tagged along just for fun, chats with the coordinator. They gesture toward me, and I strain to understand what they’re saying. 

The coordinator turns to me and switches to English. “You can go with Valentina for a few days while we look for another host family for you.”

The Argentine girl pushes away a long strand of hair, revealing almond-shaped eyes the color of the sea.

“So-mer,” she says my name. Her voice is gentle and low, like a mother hushing a child. “You come with me.”

On a dusty colectivo, Valentina, I, and my ridiculous suitcase jerk toward el centro. She has given me the only empty seat on the bus and hovers over my suitcase.

“Gracias,” I say.

“Está bien,” she says with a smile. Her teeth are white and straight with a gap in the front. “Where are you from?” she asks in English.

“Alaska,” I say.

“Ahhh, Alaska. So far. So cold.”

“Sí.” 

Silence.

I want to say Do you know the Romeros? Do you know why they didn’t come, why they can’t take me? But I don’t know how to say it in Spanish.

Instead, I gaze out the window. Through the grimy glass, I make out a steel-colored city and rows and rows of ornate old buildings. A deciduous tree here and there in full foliage. The bus reeks of cologne. It lurches, and I clutch a metal bar to keep from toppling over my suitcase.

After a half-hour of stops and starts, Valentina signals we’ve arrived. I stand, push my suitcase through the crowded bus, and down the steps onto the street carpeted with paper. Thousands of fliers litter the streets.

“Elección,” Valentina says. Our feet shush over the papers, my suitcase wheels wrapping up in pamphlets.

We pass old townhouses that may have once been white, now grayed from exhaust and pollution. The city blocks stretch long in a pale dull gray, each named after a date that soon escapes my memory: El Veinticuatro de Septiembre, El Veinticinco de Mayo. Pointy streetlamps mark sidewalks bare of trees or flowers. Tall, narrow wooden doors appear every few feet. The city does not resemble what I have read of Argentina, a country known as the “Europe of South America.”

Leather-faced men sitting on sidewalks call and hiss at us. I’ve never received attention for my looks before. Maybe Argentine men like pale girls with soft arms and thick legs? I watch how Valentina ignores them, and I try to do the same, even as my skin prickles. We arrive at another tall, narrow, heavy door. Valentina produces a large skeleton key. She turns it in the lock, and the door groans open.

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