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Authors: Ali Wentworth
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resembled the vintage transports that run through San Francisco’s Chinatown. The majority of passengers were local farmers with—this is the truth—chickens and goats occupying seats next to them. The ride was cacophonous, turbulent, and stank like an unattended hamster cage. One woman, somewhere in her late nineties, wearing a scarf that had survived eight wars, stared at my Prince tennis racquet the entire trip. I figured she was thinking she could strain her rice with it. Or finish off that no-good husband.
Zamora looked like the back lot at Universal Studios where they shot the westerns starring Lee Marvin that run on unheard-of cable channels at odd hours of the night. While I gathered my personalized duffels, Jennifer flipped the Pink Floyd tape in her Walkman and added a new piece of Big Red gum to the wad in her mouth, and we both, with intense trepidation, began our perilous summer teen tour. There were two families standing across the road, anxiously trying to get a glimpse of the kid they were getting paid $200 a week to house. A fair exchange of “take my hormonal teen for the summer and you’ll get a new cart for your donkey.”
Jennifer’s family seemed pleased when they met her, stroking her hair for an unhealthy length of time. We found out later that the last summer guest they had lodged was a boy from Paramus who wanted a homosexual experiment in international living. He chased their teenage son, Jesus, incessantly around the house and through the fields until Boy George was shipped back to New Jersey. Jesus now spends a lot of time in church.
My family was a jolly (read: obese) bunch who looked like a photo stretched to panaromic view. There was Papa, who looked like Javier Bardem if Javier Bardem had swallowed Penelope Cruz; Mama, a Hispanic Delta Burke (post– Designing Women ); Jose (Spain’s version of Charlie Brown); and three older sisters, who reminded me of increasingly chubby babushka nesting dolls.
I looked around for the Buick Regal or Chrysler LeBaron, but before I knew it we were hoofing it up a hill, my suitcase and racquet dragged behind us by an extremely sweaty Jose. The house was a small three-bedroom they had built by hand with the help of the entire town—about fifty people, give or take a goat. It had a mud-and-straw-patched roof and looked like an Elle Décor photo of how I picture Michael Douglas’s guesthouse in Mallorca, rustic and authentic. My room was quaint and cozy: a single bed with lumpy, lopsided hay-filled pillows and torn coverlet. A cross with an unhappy Christ nailed to it hung on the wall.
Dinner was like an all-you-can-eat Vegas buffet. There were potatoes baked in fat. Meat baked in fat. Fat baked in fat. After every third bite my Spanish father would hold up a goatskin sack and pour sangria down my throat. Then another course would come out, and another . . . I stumbled from the table, barely making my way to my bed; going up the stairs was like walking up a slide lined with Crisco. I collapsed, only to be awakened a few hours later for dinner. The earlier feast had been supper, not dinner. Like having breakfast, then immediately brunch. The Spaniards eat four meals a day. You know how geese are force-fed until their liver explodes to make foie gras terrine? I could barely keep my eyes open as the father poured another liter of sangria down my throat.
The next morning I woke up with what I thought was double vision from a throbbing hangover. I hallucinated a Spanish rave of people in my bed. And when I rolled over to stop the pain and got my right eye to focus, I realized this was, in fact, the case. I was in a bed full of Spanish people. Contrary to my assumption that I’d have an ounce of privacy, I did not have my own room; I shared it with Jose and the three gaseous sisters. To this day, when my husband accidentally touches me during the night, I sit up and scream, “Dios me ayuda!” (God help me!)
T he highlight of each week in Zamora took
Zamora looked like the back lot at Universal Studios where they shot the westerns starring Lee Marvin that run on unheard-of cable channels at odd hours of the night. While I gathered my personalized duffels, Jennifer flipped the Pink Floyd tape in her Walkman and added a new piece of Big Red gum to the wad in her mouth, and we both, with intense trepidation, began our perilous summer teen tour. There were two families standing across the road, anxiously trying to get a glimpse of the kid they were getting paid $200 a week to house. A fair exchange of “take my hormonal teen for the summer and you’ll get a new cart for your donkey.”
Jennifer’s family seemed pleased when they met her, stroking her hair for an unhealthy length of time. We found out later that the last summer guest they had lodged was a boy from Paramus who wanted a homosexual experiment in international living. He chased their teenage son, Jesus, incessantly around the house and through the fields until Boy George was shipped back to New Jersey. Jesus now spends a lot of time in church.
My family was a jolly (read: obese) bunch who looked like a photo stretched to panaromic view. There was Papa, who looked like Javier Bardem if Javier Bardem had swallowed Penelope Cruz; Mama, a Hispanic Delta Burke (post– Designing Women ); Jose (Spain’s version of Charlie Brown); and three older sisters, who reminded me of increasingly chubby babushka nesting dolls.
I looked around for the Buick Regal or Chrysler LeBaron, but before I knew it we were hoofing it up a hill, my suitcase and racquet dragged behind us by an extremely sweaty Jose. The house was a small three-bedroom they had built by hand with the help of the entire town—about fifty people, give or take a goat. It had a mud-and-straw-patched roof and looked like an Elle Décor photo of how I picture Michael Douglas’s guesthouse in Mallorca, rustic and authentic. My room was quaint and cozy: a single bed with lumpy, lopsided hay-filled pillows and torn coverlet. A cross with an unhappy Christ nailed to it hung on the wall.
Dinner was like an all-you-can-eat Vegas buffet. There were potatoes baked in fat. Meat baked in fat. Fat baked in fat. After every third bite my Spanish father would hold up a goatskin sack and pour sangria down my throat. Then another course would come out, and another . . . I stumbled from the table, barely making my way to my bed; going up the stairs was like walking up a slide lined with Crisco. I collapsed, only to be awakened a few hours later for dinner. The earlier feast had been supper, not dinner. Like having breakfast, then immediately brunch. The Spaniards eat four meals a day. You know how geese are force-fed until their liver explodes to make foie gras terrine? I could barely keep my eyes open as the father poured another liter of sangria down my throat.
The next morning I woke up with what I thought was double vision from a throbbing hangover. I hallucinated a Spanish rave of people in my bed. And when I rolled over to stop the pain and got my right eye to focus, I realized this was, in fact, the case. I was in a bed full of Spanish people. Contrary to my assumption that I’d have an ounce of privacy, I did not have my own room; I shared it with Jose and the three gaseous sisters. To this day, when my husband accidentally touches me during the night, I sit up and scream, “Dios me ayuda!” (God help me!)
T he highlight of each week in Zamora took
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