Sunday

It’s unseasonably brisk, mostly because ‘season’ loses meaning in Limón. By 9 a.m. the sun was already relentless, but a miraculous cloud cover has blotted it out for this brief moment. Not the low, gray stuff that hangs and threatens. Just a thin sheet, enough to break the intense monotony of the Limón sun. It’s pegado, sticky. I’m in my usual location on the front porch, an old emerald sofa that sits in profile to the house’s façade. Actual comfort spots are limited, but I can usually wiggle my way between a bulging spring and the wood crossbar, settling in where the fabric already sags from hundreds of butts having danced the same dance. It’s the only place in the house where air finds a way to shrug off the afternoon languor. Everyone else is tucked into the idea that Sunday and movement are not to be mixed. Especially today, when much of the country woke up at sunrise to watch Slovenia and Algeria face off for the day’s first World Cup action.  I’m wrong about the clouds. The rain begins tiptoeing on the roof just after lunch. Doña Ivonne leans forward in her seat. “Oooh, que riiiiiiiiiico,” she smiles. “You know what that sound means?” Slapping her hands together, she pauses a moment, then cocks her head to one side and nestles them underneath, feigning sleep. Pushing herself up from the lame office chair in the corner of the porch, she shuffles inside. The seat’s color is no longer recognizable. Its back boasts a radial pattern of stitched yarn, alternating mostly between black, red, and pink. The faded pattern is stretched beyond repair at the top, with most of the material drooping below. Doña Ivonne uses this hobby to add a homey touch to otherwise colorless corners of the house; yet most of her finished stitchings sit in a box tucked away somewhere, waiting for Christmas.

The porch looks out onto the first cross street of Limón 2000, followed by a bright pink health clinic that Don Carlos had a hand in constructing. From just beyond come the moans of air braking semis on Route 32. Unlike the barrio, this road never seems to get a break. Even on Sunday hundreds of payloads bounce between the port of Moin and San José. Outbound are undoubtedly trucks full of some sort of agricultural product. Bananas don’t have to travel far. Just fifteen minutes down the highway the view in all directions is nothing but a low, broad-leafed canopy, broken only by the mountains in the distance. Blue plastic bags hang underneath like cocoons of concentrated pesticides and fertilizer.

I’m slouched over an old newspaper. La Nación doesn’t come to my neighborhood, so when I do get my hands on one I read it cover-to-cover. Unlike La Teja, which is delivered to the house, its World News section of La Nación actually contains more info than “Chinese Baby Addicted to Cigarettes!” and topless girls painted with country flags to celebrate the World Cup Team of the Day. There are six or so daily newspapers in Costa Rica, and over half are painfully tabloid. Non-flying-saucerish articles are likely devoted to yesterday’s murders, car accidents, and soccer action. La Teja is the worst. Nonetheless, any of them at this point make for good Spanish education. Lying next to the paper are usually a dictionary and Spanish notebook to take down any words I’ve yet to learn. All of this is spread out on a mesita that Don Carlos threw together one of the first mornings after my arrival. He and Doña Ivonne noticed the paper, the dictionary and pen, strewn all across the couch and my lap. Before I realized the purpose behind the pounding, Don Carlos was walking up to me, small table in hand. Out of enjoyment for seeing me grab it en route to a study session, Doña Ivonne will comment, “Wearing your new belt buckle again, eh?”

The only space remaining on the mesita fits a wide green mug perfectly. Coffee normally comes at breakfast and dinner, so my normal mid-afternoon craving means that I’ll be heading inside to chorrear a mug of my own. And to chorrear, one requires a chorreador, which loosely translates into “strainer”. Really, the whole setup is composed of a tightly wound fabric bag, a thin formed wire holding one end forever open like a fish’s mouth. The bag is suspended over a container by fitting into the top of a wood stand. In go the grounds and then the boiling water from a steady, pouring hand. The whole of the actions require little more attention than flipping the switch of a coffeemaker. Still, the pace of the process brings a new appreciation for what fills that last empty space on the mesita, and eventually, my waning stores of concentration.


An hour later Doña Ivonne comes appears again on the porch, rubbing the back of her neck. “That sofa’s no good.”

“You should have slept in the bedroom.”

“I didn’t want to wake Don Carlos,” she answers. “He’s out cold in there, didn’t even make it to the end of the last game.” She pops back inside to wet a rag and then sets off dusting off her plants, pausing occasionally to pop her head through the one wide spot in the rebar and peer outside at nothing in particular. The sun has fought its way back through, kicking up the fetid odors of the aguas negras trickling out from the neighbor´s disconnected drainage line. In a moment the smell’s gone, dragged out by a gush of humid air. “What’s wrong with you? Stuck to the sofa?”

“No, still just reading through the papers.”

“You read that article in the Teja I showed you yesterday?” (Dog Adopts Puma Cubs for her Own) “It’s cute.”

“I’m still working on La Nación from earlier last week. You know it takes me a while because…”

“Shouldn’t take too long. That thing is puro advertisements. Ain’t worth crap. ¡Hola mis periquiiiiiiiiiitos! How are you doing, my loves? My little chicitiiiicos.” She walks over to the parakeet cage that hangs near the end of the couch, opening her arms wide to place a tender hand on each side. “Still getting used to your new house?” The three new pets trip over one another as they rebound through the cage, eventually settling down while Doña Ivonne looks on with a motherly smile. Her nose is practically through the bars.

“Doña Ivonne, I know that all these houses were constructed exactly the same. How come ours has such a nice corredor?”

“Don Carlos built it, nearly on his own.” He purchased and laid the cement blocks, installed the ceramic flooring and the verjas to cover the windows, the big portón…not anymore will you find me doing it, but I was up on the roof hammering the zinc plates into place.”

“All this even while you guys were working on the banana plantations and raising kids?”

“Yup, even then.” Don Carlos seems to be making up for it now, his snores outperforming the TV in the front bedroom. Doña Ivonne pauses to think about it for a second, scratching the short hair at the back of her head. “The kitchen too. That was just dirt, the start of the patio. Outside we had a pila to wash plates and such, but the rest of the kitchen was in the living room. The table you eat at is where it used to be.” Our kitchen is enormous by Limón 2000 standards, adding a good 25% to the size of a house originally 465ft squared.

She’s distracted, walks outside, skipping over the aguas negras. A dead branch is hanging from one of the coconut palms that balance on the thin strip between the sidewalk and the fence surrounding the clinic. These palms are her doing, now with almost 2 feet for each of their 15 years, and she tends to care for them as well as the potted matas that fill our patio. A neighbor shouts from the corner before he steps on the 5 p.m. bus. She hollers back with a playful rudeness. My eyes drop back to La Nación, flitting back and forth from the wrinkled paper to the dictionary as a distant world of oil spills seeps into focus.