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Malay Godiva

Ben Umayam

    I am, how you say, coming along for the ride. Auntie Maring, she wants me to escort Risa, Darisa for long. Although this child, she needs no chaperone. When the movie Silence of the Lambs was big, she insisted everyone call her Clarisse. Now she is older, and Risa suits her finer.
    We are not really close. Close in age, that is correct. But although distant female cousins, we did not play together. She went to international schools all her life. In KL, Kuala Lumpur, all the rich families, they send their kids to international school. A lot of British influence. And a lot of Australian too. They come to KL to teach in these schools for the rich. So, Risa speaks with a mixed Brit, Aussie, mostly American accent. International.
    I speak English, Malaysian style. Me my name is Malaika. My family could not afford international schools. I went to the local public schools, where we speak the English with a pronounced Malaysian accent.
    I tell Risa, “We picked dis one, seester, for our last tour in Mexico, in Oaxaca. The other tours, well, eet is more of de same. Pyramids, and candle shop. Billages with wooden carvings and spirit crafts. Da voodoo stuff, we don’t need to see dat again.”
    “And this tour?” Risa questions, a giant tree and a petrified forest with a waterfall. “Does that mean the forest was underwater and is now dried up and all the trees now are fossils. Weird, Malaika. But I like this waterfall, petrified. What does that mean? Is it scared to death?”
    “Eet is deese stalagmites. De slow, slow drip of water. Only dis time it is not like giant structures in a giant kayb. It is a waterfall that has dripped slowly so it is like a big stalagmite waterfall. Looks frozen but it is not cold. Bery Unique, they say, only two in the world, one here in Oaxaca. The other one is in Turkey.”
    “Uggh,” Risa says. “I hate Turkey. I was there on holiday. No one speaks English, or if they do, they pretend not to unless they are hitting on you. We went to the south, Antalya, some beach with German and Belgian tourists all picking up young boys, getting them to give them massages. The sunscreen bottles not the only thing squirting. Ughh. The Turks, and they are so anti-gay, which is so weird. You know the stereotype, Turks and Greek men, they LUV doing each other.”
    Eek, this Darissa, Malaika thinks, she can be so vulgar with her international school speak.

_________________________________________________________

    The first stop on this tour, is the tree, in the town of El Tule. They sometimes call it the Tule Tree, the biggest in the world, not like the sequoias. This tree is big in circumference. Supposedly the widest tree in the word, 177 feet in circumference. There is probably some bigger- in-circumference tree somewhere in the Australian outback, not yet discovered.
    The mini-bus, which holds maybe a dozen people, is full of Spanish-speaking people from South and Central America, even the Iberian peninsula, all here on vacation in Mexico. The only non-Spanish speaking folks are these two girls from Malaysia and us.
    We are a gay couple from NYC, doing the most popular tour in Oaxaca, taking pictures of our vacation, the tree, the town, and the market in front of town hall. And, of course, the town sign, big block letters. The Malaysian girls, they haven’t stopped taking pictures. Like they are on some sort of glossy magazine shoot. For now, they look like they just might be posing at every angle around the tree, a big tree, in circumference.
    Kevin: “That dark one, she is a real beauty. And she has big gazoombas. Her outfit emphasizes the size of them. She almost looks African but naaah, her roots are the dark sub-continent, Indian or from Goa. Is that the name of the Portuguese colony?”
    Albert: “Portuguese, Goan, she is some beauty. And that plunging neckline. I wonder if she is some model. They aren’t using professional cameras; maybe they are just Instagram fanatics.
    “C’mon honey, let’s offer to take some pictures. The Chinese-looking girl, the pale skin one. She is the photographer. Let’s ask them if they want pictures, the two of them. Such a contrast, one so dark, one so white.”
    “You know, the Chinese in Southeast Asia, they aspire to be very white. They even use bleach products to whiten their skin, sounds so Trumpian. Remember, drink bleach? During the lockdown.”
    “Ay, honey. Leave da Jessica out of this; that is so last political season. We are vacationing. Okay, you ask them if they want their pictures taken.”
    We introduce ourselves, Kevin and Albert, Risa and Malaika. The girls want five pictures with every pastel letter that spells out the town. I tire of this quickly and hand the camera to Albert, who tires even easier. “Okay girls, we’ll see you back on the bus.”
    The trek to the waterfalls, called Hieve de Aqua, is a dirt road uphill. The birds that fly so high up here fly with you instead of way up above. A little disconcerting to see the prey in their mouths, having just swooped down and up to our eye level.
    There is some commotion at the wire fence gate overlooking the enormous chasm, a 200-foot drop to the bottom of the valley. A Polish girl breathlessly tells us, “There is a Disney character on the fence, so beautiful.”
    “Disney character,” Kevin says to Albert. “Can’t be Dumbo, maybe Bambi, a doe on a fence. It must be small. Is Tinkerbell in a petrified forest?
    The dark beauty and the Chinese Malaysian have snuck up behind us. “Eet is beautiful, no. Like some Tiffany piece of jewelry. “
    We all are looking at what appears to be a giant, bejeweled grasshopper on the fence. “Just like what we saw on Antiques Roadshow,” Kevin says. The head is sapphire, the thorax is sapphire, and the wings and tail are rainbow-colored.
    “Ay, don’t touch Risa. Deadly dangerous. The thorax is poisonous. You won’t die immediately. But you weel get nasty skin irritation, burning, inflamed. It is a toxic type of grasshopper that survives by poisoning eets enemies.” Malaika knows these things. She studied insects at university. She knows about that Brit Henry Bates, who lost himself in the Amazon forests studying butterflies. He discovered that the ones that survived they did so by taking on the wing pattern of the poisonous species. The idea was not to be prey but rather disguise against predators. She knows a lot of stuff, about his friend Wallace who, together with Bates, influenced Darwin’s theory of evolution, how the fittest survive.
    Kevin whispers, “So pretty and so deadly. No wonder no one has snatched the grasshopper up. Ooooo, I get it. The Polish girl meant cricket, as in Jiminy cricket. She got her insects wrong.”

    The walk to the top of the mountain, another half mile. The birds of prey are flying below us now. At the summit, there are three pools, jade colored, and a path that leads to the edge of the mountain. This all overlooks the petrified waterfall. Stuck in time, minerals form a permanent image of falling, all from a slow, slow drip drip drip.
    You have to walk to the very edge to get the best view.
    “Uh uh, Albert, dizzy queen syndrome. I can’t go to the edge.” Kevin fears heights. “Will you look at that? What a wonder, and the only other one in Turkey. I am so glad we did this tour.”
    “Sweetie, let’s get into our swimwear and hop into these pools. “
    There is a short walk to the dressing rooms, funky. Hand-painted signs saying Hombres, Damas, and not much else, the door is plywood with no locks; you must pry them open and closed for privacy.
    The girls have beaten the boys and exited the Damas section, decked out in sheer kimonos. Underneath, they are wearing thong bikinis. Her tan bikini makes the dark Malay gal looks like she is not wearing anything under her lace cover-up.
    “We are going to the pools, are you swimming too.”
    “No thanks, boyz, there is a local with a horsey, a nice white one. We want to take photos of me on the pony with the backdrop of the mountains up here. I want to look like Lady Godiva. Do you know that Brit story?” She reviews for us. “Lady Godiva’s hubby had been taxing the villagers too much, so she tries to convince him to ease up on them. He agrees if she rides through the village naked, covered only by her long, beautiful hair.
    As the girls go to the bluff edge, the boys wonder. “That must be uncomfortable, that thong thing. To have the thing crawling up your crack.”a;
    “Uncomfortable, but all the beach gals all wear them. Sun, fun, and a thong up your butt crack. That dark beauty. Looks naked under her cover-up thingy.”
    They watch as the girls negotiate with the local, and Risa mounts the white horse. “Like some Malay Godiva.”
    “Yeah, like they are shooting for a glossy skin magazine. Maybe that’s how they pay for the trips, sell the pictures, her almost naked on a horsey up in the clouds in the mountains.”
    The emerald pools looked nice from afar but are gross close, and near. They are stagnant pools, green with algae, and no source of a hot spring. When they first get in, Albert and Kevin slip on the moss-covered rocks. Others are playfully swimming. “I don’t know how deep it is, and the bottom is so slippery. And it is cold, and I am not warming up. Let’s get out and soak up the sun.”
    They have difficulty getting out, things are too slippery, they are older, one has just fallen off a bike, and both are paranoid about falling again.
    They spread a towel and bask in the sun and watch black predatory birds fly around them at eye level. Everything so idyllic. And then it is all broken.
    “What! What the fuck are you trying to do. You can’t be touching me like that. What are you trying to do. Blimey bloke! What kind of a duffer are you, ya piece of shit! I am no scrubber, swine. Frigging tosser, keep your paws off of me. Motherfucker!”
    She is screaming at the top of her lungs. It echoes through the bluff. It has broken the pristine peacefulness of the place.
    Heads turn, shake.
    The commotion is coming from the girls, who have been taking pictures, Risa posing on the white horse in a bikini thong covered by a sheer kimono.
    Finished, the beauty has gotten off the horse, and the stream of curses cuts the air. “You mother fucker, I know what you are doing. You don’t have to grab my ass to help me off the horse. How would you like it if I grabbed your ass. How would you like it if I grabbed your crotch. You probably would like it you piece of shit. Motherfucker, where is the police? Where is security? I am going to report you to security. You piece of shit!”
    The onlookers murmur in Spanish. Everyone takes sides. What does she expect dressed like that, say the men. The women quote the signs on the subway. Untoward touching is not acceptable. The native guy stands in the shade, scratching his head, wondering what has happened. What has he done that was so wrong?
    We go to the dressing room, the girls nowhere in sight.
    We go to the bus to return. Some passengers have taken the bottom path to see the petrified falls up close. They say it is spectacular. Others talk about the refreshing swim in the green ponds. “If you like slippery moss under your feet,” I whisper to Albert. We are all waiting. It is now a 15-minute late departure, and the Malay girls are still not back. I mention the screaming; it seems she was molested getting off the horse. The teacher from Colombia says, in his pretty good English that the guy smashed her boobies too. The men on the bus say did you see what she was wearing? What do you expect? The women on the bus all say men need to understand, they can no longer molest; women will not stand for it anymore.

_________________________________________________________

    Ay, we are so late returning, 30 minutes. We go to the back of the bus. It is uncomfortable, the silence on this bus. Are they mad because we have caused them to be late? No, it is as if all the tourists on the bus, blame us for what has happened.
    One of the gay guys, Kevin, moves to the back where we are seated. “Can I tell you a story, gurls. My dad had taken me to this department store in Rome, Rinascimento. We needed to buy me a black suit for this semi-private audience with the Pope. In the fitting room, this nice-looking older man in his forties is getting too close to my crotch with the measuring tape. Back then, there were no zippers on Italian pants. He is fumbling with the buttons of my fly, fumbling the wrong way. I knew even though I was just 11 years old, this was wrong. Still, I immediately get a boner. My dad drew the curtain, saw what was happening, and dragged me out of the store. Like it was my fault. You did the right thing. Always scream bloody murder.” He pats Risa’s hand. “We had the audience with the Pope. He wasn’t a saint then; he is now. I had to wear my dark plaid purplish sports jacket. You can see it in the family picture of our audience. The Pope is holding my hand, me wearing a tacky plaid jacket, and his assistant is lewdly eyeing my older sister, her smiling under her long black veil.” This gay guy. He has gotten Risa to smile. We both smile.
    The bus proceeds to the Mezcal tasting, this part of Mexico is the home of Mezcal. The tourist ladies on the bus request some reggaeton music, and everyone knows and joins in on the chorus, something about getting guys too drunk with another caña, Spanish for a draft beer, and them drinking till they drop.
    This French guy he has suspiciously joined us. He was not on the bus earlier, perhaps from another bus, another tour. The guide breaks us up into a Spanish-speaking group and an English-speaking group for the tour of agave plants and mezcal production. The Frenchie joins our English-speaking group. He is older and handsome but with a curl of the lip that looks, how you say, lecherous.
    Us girls, we don’t know much about Mezcal. I tell the distillery bartender, “I neber drink, you know, the Muslim part of our culture.” Now Risa is, they say, a two-fisted club girl in KL, although she knows nothing of this Mezcal. She coaxes me into testing it out. “C’mon my lovie, we can taste as many as 50 mezcals; that’s what the tour brochure said.” We taste and drink and taste some more. All the others agree on the pineapple and the cinnamon-flavored spirit. We girls giggle. The Frenchmen nudges closer to us, it seems. Kevin tells Albert, “You got my back.”
    He says later he doesn’t speak perfect French. He warns the Frenchmen, supplemented with international sign language. He points to Risa, “That lady, she is Lady D in Malaysia. She flies like a butterfly, and stings like a bee. Back off, Jacques, if you know what is good for you!” He backs off.
    Us Malay-dees cover our mouths demurely, like those Japanese school girls in The Mikado. We run to the little girl’s room before returning to our tour bus. That Mezcal, it goes right through you! On the ride home, las chicañs request that beer-drinking song repeatedly. The girl from Barcelona gives us a loose translation. The chorus says, “... drink another caña and wake up on the floor, lipstick on your face and your butt all sore.” We are all laughing and laughing, on our way back from our tour of the Petrified Waterfall in Oaxaca.

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