Should I Blame The Horses?

I can confirm that Spanish was the language I spoke first. No one in my family knew English “properly” until my sisters and I started going to school and shared what we learned with our mother. There, I soon mastered the English tongue, growing intimate with its illogical rules even if I still stumbled with pronouncing “decision,” that tricky bastard. I was kept in cramped ESL classes long after perfecting my fluency and well into my journey of reading every single fiction book in my starkly underfunded Catholic school library. This was, of course, to ensure that any obstacles with my English were ironed out and any trace of whatever it was I spoke at home was eliminated.

Swiftly, my relationship with Spanish began to exist in a cloudy realm of discomfort and insecurity. I grew to despise it, wholeheartedly. It was no longer compatible with my tongue. Talking with my relatives in Argentina over the phone was a dreadful chore. My clammy fingers would unwillingly grip onto my mother’s pink Motorola. My eyes would dart accusatorily in her direction, silently damning her. I would mentally count the minutes that had passed. These conversations never lasted long and I made sure of it. My typical contributions could be reduced to: Hola. ¡Todo bien! Mhmm. Sí. No. Bueno. Besos, Chau!

I still spoke it begrudgingly with my dad who had never found it necessary to exceed mediocre proficiency in English, having always been a manual laborer in this country. But with him, I could get away with my questionable bilinguality because he was my dad and we would joke about it and move on. I made fun of him thinking “Cream Cheese” was actually “Green Cheese” and he’d have a good laugh at me trying to tell him “I’m embarrassed” in Spanish and instead saying “I’m pregnant” (estoy embarazada). But with relatives 4,655 miles away, there was a sticky film of warranted embarrassment and shame that I couldn't get past, having lost the most valuable thing I could have inherited––the ability to communicate with them without having to think about how I must say what I wished to say. I tried to emulate the inflection of their voices, their odd verbal conjugations that differed from the ones I was taught at school, how they placed emphasis on the ends of words rather than their beginnings. But my imposter ways could only go so far. I would never possess their certainty and flair.

I didn’t fully realize how foreign the language had become to me, how deceitful it was for me to call it my native tongue, until I visited Argentina for the first time at age twelve. I would no longer be able to stall or feign skill with Google Translate or hide in the bathroom from my mom like I could when talking over the phone. God help me.

The wind hit my face rather violently once exiting the only international airport in San Miguel de Tucumán. A crowd was waiting to welcome us, I realized once adjusting my eyes to this hazy new territory, darkened by our arrival at the earliest hours of the morning. I stubbornly refrained from wearing my unflattering oval shaped glasses and was forced to squint my eyes to try and make out the contours of the faces in the crowd, searching for familiar ones and curiously investigating those that required introductions. I ran to my godfather first, burying my face into his soft belly without saying a word. All feelings of insufficiency were squashed by his tight embrace, one I hadn’t experienced since age seven.

Such feelings soon returned once remembering my duty to socialize. A barbecue hosted by my father’s high school clique, consisting of self-declared rock fanatics who threw chairs at each other. Movie outings with my cousins who reminded me to leave my purse at home. If I wanted to survive, I needed to be strategic. So I tried to conceal my incompetence with shyness. The general plan was to talk very little, smile very much. Smile until my cheeks start to ache and my lip awkwardly trembles. After all, I might look stupid but it’ll prevent me from sounding stupid.

Apart from the occasional slip up, I was surprisingly faring well in my covert operation of speaking enough Spanish to appease my mother, but not too much or too confidently so as to avoid personal embarrassment, odd stares, pitying laughs, and unwanted corrections. That is until my sisters and I had the brilliant idea of riding horses for the first time.

Riding horses promised to be a thrilling venture for girls who had lived in the city all their lives. We were given a ten minute crash course on how to handle the reigns and then left to our own fate. There were several horses for our choosing, all of different sizes, maturities and shades of brown and black. My older sisters, who opted to ride together, chose the largest one of the bunch. Their horse's coat was sleek and dark with a taupe sheen to it. I, being the delicate daisy of the family, got to ride with the son of the horses’ owner. He was my age though already impressively skilled with horses since he had been riding all his life. Thank God. We started off slowly. Me and the boy taking the lead and my sisters trailing behind us. The boy asked if I wanted to intensify our speed. I said yes.

I’ll never be certain if twenty minutes passed or twenty seconds. But when they did, I heard a petrifying cry from my oldest sister, screaming our middle sister’s name. It rang like death. It echoed in my ears for days. She was dead, I told myself. My sister was dead. And I’m on a fucking horse with my heart in my ass. They had never shown us how to get off, I realized. I inspected the grassy terrain below us. It felt like I was twenty feet above ground. “Get me off. GET ME OFF. GET ME OFF. NOW. PLEASE. PLEASE.”

I started to beg the boy to help me. I thought I’d break all my limbs otherwise. But he held oddly still, staring at me blankly. Why wasn’t he doing anything? Could I speak any more clearly? Could I shout any louder? Must he be so insulting? After concluding that my pleading was in vain, I leaped off the horse, silently praying I’d end up in one piece. The jump was less than 3 feet.

I spotted my oldest sister holding my fallen sister’s head upright. She laid there, the epitome of lifelessness as far as I could know. The horse she’d been riding rested obediently beside her. Her body began to convulse. Her chest forced itself into the air. White foam erupted from the corners of her mouth. Her eyes became clouded, their pupils having disappeared as if she was halfway into another realm already. I watched stupidly in horror.

A crowd had formed around us. They were asking questions. Questions I deduced only from the interrogative tone of their voices. I couldn’t actually process anything they were saying. It was all muffled and foreign and insulting. My ears rejected every word. My brain refused to translate. The only voice that filtered through was that of my oldest sister shouting, “DO SOMETHING.” I couldn’t.

A teenage girl approached me. She wore a striped gray and black tank top that directed my eyes enviously to her cleavage. She asked, “Dónde están tus padres? Tu mamá? ¿Sabés su número de teléfono?” Shaking my head viciously was all I could manage. So I began to sob. She hugged me and I rested my head into her chest, letting my mucous ruin her beauty.

“No son de acá?” I nodded my head in confirmation. I had become mute. Stupidly mute. Why was this girl asking me these questions and why couldn’t I form the words to respond? The words were all there, resting lazily and teasing me from the innermost depths of my throat where I tucked them away the day I decided they would no longer be of use to me. I had deserted them, betrayed their loyalty, and now they were simply returning the favor. My tongue flopped like a fish out of water, immobilized by its unfamiliar surroundings, wrestling to remember how its scales were supposed to contract, how its tail was meant to sway, longing for the comfort of refreshing waters. Helpless is too kind of an adjective. Despicably useless is more like it.

So I ran. I ran with no destination in mind. I ran with all the power capable of an 80 pound body. I ran in cheap Old Navy boots and skinny jeans that made my thighs chafe. But I didn’t scream or call for help. I just ran, cowardly fleeing the scene of my shameful failure. 

*

We now laugh at this story over dinner every few months. My sister’s quite alright now, traumatic concussion and seizure aside. I am too, I think. It’s been nearly eight years.

“And the boy! I spoke to him in English! He couldn’t understand any of the shit I was saying! I feel like such a bitch now, my God,” I shout while we all clutch our stomachs in pain.

At the ripe age of nearly 20, I wished my godfather a happy birthday last month. We had a 30 minute long conversation over the phone. I was elated to hear his voice. And I didn’t want to hang up. I didn’t want him to get bored with me and the topics of conversation I kept foisting on him. It was a natural duet even if stubborn jitters still knocked at my belly. I felt relief at how good I had gotten at this. But it also filled me with guilt. It dawned on me that I hadn’t said more than a couple of dry sentences to him in months. Years? 

We ended the call like every other call, wishing that we could all see each other soon, knowing we won’t. I cried later that night. And I decided then––and only then––that I would no longer care. I would no longer care if I messed up. If my accent was imperfect and wonky. If I had to substitute an unknown translation with nervous laughter. Because it’s been nearly six years since I’ve seen my godfather. Because it’s been an eternity since I’ve asked my grandmother to comb out the knots in my hair or listened to her utter her prayers at night. Because I’ve now been apart from my family and my faraway home for far too long that they’ve become foreign yet again. That an emptiness consumes me, knowing that I took for granted the comfort of their presence, of their voices, now wishing I had said every word that I possibly could’ve when given the chance. Because I didn’t need to speak their language perfectly, then or now. All I had to do was try. And I could’ve tried harder. I could’ve stayed on the phone longer. I could’ve listened to my mother who was well acquainted with the pain of not being able to embrace the ones you loved most. But I don’t want to blame myself. I don’t know who I blame. Maybe the horses for making me forget the language that birthed me. Maybe America for the same reason. America always seems a fitting recipient of blame. But I’d rather not look for an answer now. I have a call to make.

Martina Amate Perez is a first-generation Argentinian-American, originally from New York City but she now resides in Englewood, New Jersey. She is currently a senior at Yale University studying Ethnic Studies.