Read Online Jumper: Griffin's Story by Steven Gould - Free Book Online
Authors: Steven Gould
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smiled again. "I have an appointment this afternoon. We should return."
And so it went.
Alejandra, who was afraid of spiders (las aranas), had me do the initial clearing of my new room. Once all the webbing was down and the screens were covering all the windows, she pitched in with hot water and lemon–scented cleanser. By the end of the week I had a cot, a dresser, and a small table (with bookshelves above) for a desk. A metal folding chair completed the suite. It wasn't air conditioned but the sea breezes made it quite comfortable.
I had very little to put in the dresser but that changed over time and, really, in the warm climate of Las Bahias de Hua–tulco, I didn't need much.
Alejandra not only began as she meant to go on, calling me Guillermo and never referring to me by my real name, but she also stopped talking to me in anything but Spanish, miming verbs, pointing to objects and naming them. Very rarely she would illustrate a complicated verb conjugation by comparing it with French usage. She towed me along for the immersion classes she ran at the resorts, too.
It took me three months to learn enough espanol that she began talking to me in French and English again. Three months later, she considered me fluent and it was another three months before I stopped sounding like a foreigner. By the end of my second year, most locals thought I'd been born in
Oaxaca
. I still looked European but so do many Mexicans without
indio
ancestors.
I worked for her agency half days, for which she paid me off the books. Three hours a day I worked on schoolwork, in English and French and Spanish. Spanish word problems for math. European history in French. Sciences in all of them. And I sketched, everywhere.
I was "that boy who draws" to everyone–in5 the park before the church, at the marinas, on the beach. Most of it stayed in my sketchbooks but the wall of my room slowly accumulated the drawings that worked.
The nightmares were bad at first, but they slowly lessened in frequency. Twice, in that first month, I woke up, my heart pounding, staring around in the sandy wash of the Empty Quarter, that spot in the
Sonoran
Desert
where Sam had found me, bloody and unconscious.
The Spanish study helped. At least there was something to do when I woke up. I'd finished Don Quixote and was working my way through Arturo Perez–Reverte's books about Capitan Diego Alatriste. Or, I'd do a unit of math. Math was always good.
But it was probably a year before I slept all the way through the night.
In my second year there, I bought a boat, a little fiberglass dinghy with oars, a daggerboard well, and a small, removable mast with a lateen sail. When I got it, there was a hole in the bow as big as my head and the sail was in tatters and there were no oars, no rudder, no daggerboard, and no life jackets. I spent a week running errands at the Santa Cruz Marina, translating, running to the store, and acting as a local guide. At the end of that I had the oars, two life jackets, a stained but intact Sunfish sail, and enough fiberglass and resin to fix the stove–in bow. I made a daggerboard and rudder out of cheap lumber, scavenged from construction sites, and fiberglassed it.
Alejandra had doubts. "You could drown!"
I raised my eyebrows. "I suppose, if I were knocked completely unconscious, I could. But not from a cramp or being tired, no matter how far out from shore I was. Think about it." After a bit I added, "My dad and I used to sail, in the
Bay
of
Siam
. It was a bigger boat."
She registered it in her name but it was really mine.
There are nine bays and thirty–six beaches in the Bahias de Huatulco, many of them unreachable by road. I explored all of them–swimming, fishing, snorkeling–as well as the edges of the jungle.
More than once I got caught in the surf, which can be very rough, and I was rolled, though luckily, I'd unstepped the mast and lashed it, and I was able to recover the oars and the life jackets and the daggerboard.
And so it went.
Alejandra, who was afraid of spiders (las aranas), had me do the initial clearing of my new room. Once all the webbing was down and the screens were covering all the windows, she pitched in with hot water and lemon–scented cleanser. By the end of the week I had a cot, a dresser, and a small table (with bookshelves above) for a desk. A metal folding chair completed the suite. It wasn't air conditioned but the sea breezes made it quite comfortable.
I had very little to put in the dresser but that changed over time and, really, in the warm climate of Las Bahias de Hua–tulco, I didn't need much.
Alejandra not only began as she meant to go on, calling me Guillermo and never referring to me by my real name, but she also stopped talking to me in anything but Spanish, miming verbs, pointing to objects and naming them. Very rarely she would illustrate a complicated verb conjugation by comparing it with French usage. She towed me along for the immersion classes she ran at the resorts, too.
It took me three months to learn enough espanol that she began talking to me in French and English again. Three months later, she considered me fluent and it was another three months before I stopped sounding like a foreigner. By the end of my second year, most locals thought I'd been born in
Oaxaca
. I still looked European but so do many Mexicans without
indio
ancestors.
I worked for her agency half days, for which she paid me off the books. Three hours a day I worked on schoolwork, in English and French and Spanish. Spanish word problems for math. European history in French. Sciences in all of them. And I sketched, everywhere.
I was "that boy who draws" to everyone–in5 the park before the church, at the marinas, on the beach. Most of it stayed in my sketchbooks but the wall of my room slowly accumulated the drawings that worked.
The nightmares were bad at first, but they slowly lessened in frequency. Twice, in that first month, I woke up, my heart pounding, staring around in the sandy wash of the Empty Quarter, that spot in the
Sonoran
Desert
where Sam had found me, bloody and unconscious.
The Spanish study helped. At least there was something to do when I woke up. I'd finished Don Quixote and was working my way through Arturo Perez–Reverte's books about Capitan Diego Alatriste. Or, I'd do a unit of math. Math was always good.
But it was probably a year before I slept all the way through the night.
In my second year there, I bought a boat, a little fiberglass dinghy with oars, a daggerboard well, and a small, removable mast with a lateen sail. When I got it, there was a hole in the bow as big as my head and the sail was in tatters and there were no oars, no rudder, no daggerboard, and no life jackets. I spent a week running errands at the Santa Cruz Marina, translating, running to the store, and acting as a local guide. At the end of that I had the oars, two life jackets, a stained but intact Sunfish sail, and enough fiberglass and resin to fix the stove–in bow. I made a daggerboard and rudder out of cheap lumber, scavenged from construction sites, and fiberglassed it.
Alejandra had doubts. "You could drown!"
I raised my eyebrows. "I suppose, if I were knocked completely unconscious, I could. But not from a cramp or being tired, no matter how far out from shore I was. Think about it." After a bit I added, "My dad and I used to sail, in the
Bay
of
Siam
. It was a bigger boat."
She registered it in her name but it was really mine.
There are nine bays and thirty–six beaches in the Bahias de Huatulco, many of them unreachable by road. I explored all of them–swimming, fishing, snorkeling–as well as the edges of the jungle.
More than once I got caught in the surf, which can be very rough, and I was rolled, though luckily, I'd unstepped the mast and lashed it, and I was able to recover the oars and the life jackets and the daggerboard.
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