Language Limbo

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I feel like a zombie as I stand in the security line at the Miami airport. My ears remain full of whatever it is ears get full of on airplanes, air? Mucus? Anxiety? Zombie death?

Everyone around me looks like they have also been reanimated. People groan. Pick up their bags. Set their bags down. We all move forward on carpet that looks like clown vomit.

My ears refuse to pop. Why? I’m not sure. I take phenomenal care of my ears. Q-Tipping them never more than just enough but also never less. At the FIAP, Eric and I even sought out Q-Tips. Harassing our better-prepared travelmates until Laura buckled to our whining.

My ears have no reason to protest. Yet they persist. Holding up their little picket signs shaped like incredible pain.

This picket renders my left ear virtually useless. It became so obstinate on the flight over the Atlantic, I can no longer hear out of it. Or, I can hear a little, but people’s words sound like they have been covered in bubble wrap. Not the fun kind of bubble wrap that pops, the bubble with the bubbles that are too hard to pop. These ready-to-be-shipped words bounce around in my head before landing in comprehension.

My right ear tunes in on some lady in front of me who keeps saying, to no one in particular, “Oh, I hope I haven’t missed my flight” with a Spanish accent thicker than the Nutella I coated my croissant in before we left Paris. She enunciates each word, especially emphasizing the Ts. She’s someone’s abuelita, with a big puff of dark brown hair.

“Dios mio, dios mio,” she mumbles while shuffling through the metal detector in her practical ankle high socks. Smiling up at the security guards who tower over her. I want to pat her on the head and carry her to her gate.

I place my belongings on the X-Ray conveyor belt thing. Attempt to follow Abuelita through the metal detector. However, I’m interrupted by the security dude.

“Ma’am, could you please put your shoes in a separate bin.”  I stare blankly up at him. He closes his eyes for a second, the way  my mom used to do when she would come home and see the cat dressed in my doll’s clothes. 

He raises his voice. He slows his speech. “Ma’am, your shoes,” he points to my feet, “in the bin,” he points to the stack of containers next to me. I nod. I comply. I walk through the metal detector.

I hear the security guard heave a heavy sigh as he once more yells in slowed speech at someone behind me. He repeats, “Your shoes in the bin.” Again, “Shoes, bin.” I glance over my shoulder to see him physically bending over to point at this man’s shoes.

Before I left for Paris, my friend Alex said, “It’s weird. You don’t speak their language at all. And they don’t really speak yours. Eventually all you hear is theirs so you can barely speak yours. You get lost in some sort of language limbo.” My unpopable ears preserve me in this limbo. My ears are amber, my English a beetle.

Though I see the words through their coating, accessing them becomes impossible.

Everyone speaks languages that may or may not be ones I understand as I amble through the Miami airport towards an Orlando bound plane. Words float around me like a mobile above a baby. They circle around me and around me and around me and around me. I would reach up, I would grasp for them, I would hold whatever bits of them I could in my fists. But I don’t.

I don’t because I love language limbo. Language limbo sounds like it would resemble the area between a washing machine and the wall. That tiny space where dust, socks and gross things live. Really, language limbo is more like the area under beds where everything good and necessary ends up when it gets lost.

Like sharpie markers, left shoes and favorite DVDs.

 *

Upon first arriving in Paris, I felt like an asshole. A huge American asshole dropped into the linty washer crevice. I wanted to make a shirt that said, in French, “I’m sorry, I’m an American. I’m probably as stupid as you think I am.”

Seriously, I can say a grand total of five things in French. “Hello”, “Goodbye”, “How do you say”, “Coffee with milk” and “Thank you”. Oh, and “I’m sorry, I don’t speak French”. So six things. Six very unimpressive things.

Contrary to what everyone told me before I left, speaking these few phrases to a French person does not act as a magical skeleton key that will unlock their knowledge of English. I learned this lesson rather quickly as I attempted to buy cigarettes up the street from the FIAP.

Leila and I decided coffee and cigarettes would be the best—nay, classiest—way to celebrate our first day in France. We wandered away from the Jean Claude Monet FIAP. Walking up the sidewalks. Soaking in France. Letting our eyes adjust to the strange greenness of the city. Breathing in the French air, which smelt of fire and history.

We passed café after café after café. Each one was a person. One was a well-dressed businesswoman with its navy blue awning, with its newness. Another was a roguish teen boy who has probably almost been arrested, but charmed his way out of it with the mysterious charm of his wicker tables. More were men. Burly with their epic beer selections.

Leila spotted a Tabac. We walked in. Four people stood in front of the counter without any specific order to them. I wondered what kind of cigarettes I should get. The selection behind the clerk looks like the cereal aisle at Publix. Too many colors. Too many names. Too many.

“Get the Galouises.” Leila pointed to a row of black and red boxes. I nodded. Preparing to step forward.

An older woman laughed with the clerk as she paid for her red box of cigarettes. I thought maybe it was my turn.

“Bonjour.” I said. Already feeling stupid.

“Bonjour FrenchWordsFrenchWordsFrenchWords.” The clerk leaned forward, clearly anticipating an answer.

I pointed, mouth open, toward the red and black box. The clerk pointed to a row of blue boxes while saying FrenchWords. I said “No” while continuing to point. My voice ran down my esophagus into my stomach. It hid. Too embarrassed to come out again.

The clerk pointed to the red and black boxes. I nodded. She said something about how much I owed her for the cigarettes. I stared at her the way people stare at movie screens, enthralled but distant. She held up a hand, all five fingers extended. I gave her five euros. Which was like a billion American dollars.

“Merci.” My voice peeked up out of its hiding space.

We left. For a second I want to vomit. However the urge to run back to the FIAP, go online and spend the next four months learning French, quickly usurped the urge to vomit.

 *

The feeling persisted when Jessie, Eric, Frank and I got lost a couple miles away from the FIAP.

Down at one of those roguish teen boy cafes we drank some café au laits, watched people walk down the sidewalk, saw a tree branch fall on top of someone. After we paid, we started back toward the FIAP. Eric informed us we needed to be back to the FIAP in thirty minutes. Doable. Or so we thought.

We chattered back and forth about things I can’t remember now, but know I enjoyed talking about. We passed the giant lion statue, a familiar marker. It sat in the middle of traffic not caring about the noise or the danger of being surrounded by so many cars. Typical cat.

Walking, walking, walking. We passed flower shops with displays so high they looked like flower walls. We passed shops with displays of fruit so high they looked like fruit walls. The fruit walls were less sturdy than the flower walls, but that’s to be expected. Since so many fruits are round and can roll, that is.

There was a sea of concrete at our feet, but above that concrete skyline there was so much color, like some sky god was holding a prism shining rainbows all over the face of France.

“Guys, I think we’re going to wrong way.” Eric stopped first. We all looked around. Nothing looked familiar. Except it did. But it didn’t.

Frank didn’t stop. He kept walking.

Jessie found a map. I went over to it. We stared at it. There were blues and greens and pinks and yellows. Maps in English don’t make sense to me. Maps in French made me feel like I was suffocating. Their streets and rivers and metro lines wrapped around my throat until I wanted to scream.

“I’m going to go ask someone where we are.” I announced through the French map chokehold, mostly to myself since Jessie was bent over the map, fingers extended, face contorted in concentration.

I took an inventory of my options. There were shops everywhere. A movie theater was to my right. Clothing stores to my left. A shoe store directly in front of me.

I chose the shoe store solely because it was directly in front of me. Frustration bubbled in my veins, warm like a Jacuzzi but not at all soothing. It distracted me from logical thinking. I forgot that teenagers work at movie theaters, that French teenagers most likely learn English at school.

I walked into the shoe store. The walls looked like a shoeflower garden. Neat rows of glass shelves sprouted shoes. Red shoes, blue shoes, pink shoes, white shoes, shiny shoes, dull shoes. Worry tugged on my wrist, pulling me towards Shoplady before I could pluck a pair out of their glass soil.

 Shoplady sat, perched atop a backless stool. Every part of her body fully engaged in the phone conversation she was having. Her arms gestured around like that man with the orange glow sticks who guides in the plane. Her eyes darted around the room, playing bumper cars with the walls. Her lips moved over her teeth like a zipper. Zipping, unzipping, zipping, unzipping.

She hung up the phone. Smiled. Asked me something in French.

“Parlez-vous Ingles?” I replied using the Spanish word for English.

She looked at me confused, leaning closer toward me, placing her elbows on the counter. “Anglais?”

I nodded. She nodded. The feeling of suffocation began to subside.

“Do you know how I can get back to the Jean Claude Monet FIAP?” My heart beat hard, the way it used to in high school when we got report cards.

She made a face, the way I used to in high school when I had to do math. “FIAP? What is this FIAP?”

“It’s a hotel. It’s somewhere around here. We got turned around.” I started moving my hands around like I was playing charades, except I didn’t know what I was acting out.

“Hotel? The FIAP? I do not know.” She shook her head on the universally recognized tilt of pity.

“Oh. Okay. Merci.” We waved to each other. I left. As soon as I stepped outside I no longer felt welcome by France. I felt like I was falling into the linty abyss of the washing-machine-wall-limbo.

Somehow Jessie managed to deduct steer us back toward the FIAP. I marinated in my loathing of language limbo all the way back. It was a marinade of things that would make me want to brush my teeth immediately after consumption, like garlic and onions and mud.

 *

However, I was unable to rid myself of such aftertastes until we journeyed to the flea market. That was the first moment language limbo began to taste delicious, like those cupcakes bursts of confetti-ish color inside of them.

When I saw the flea market from across the street, it looked out of place. To my left buildings rose up from concrete sidewalks, tall trees of walls and windows, for as far as the eye could see. To my right sat a squat tent town. Tents that looked like dirty dish rags, in all the colors dirty dish rags normally are—red, white, brown, blue, green. It looked like there were ten, maybe twenty tents, until I crossed the streets.

More and more and more and more tents sprang into view, like weeds— if weeds were full of scarves and cheesy Parisian souvenirs. All of them sat precarious, relying on a floor of dirtsand to support them. The dirtsand looked like it may swallow the tents whole because it had never wanted anything to do with flea markets, rather its childhood wish was to become a baseball field.

The block of flea market in front of me resembled American flea markets so closely that they were probably twins, separated at birth, one sent to Mother America and the other to Father France.

Inside each tent, everything no one really ever wanted lay strewn across card tables someone’s nana probably played Bridge on. Clone necklaces in a phalanx. Eiffel Towers printed on plates, trapped in snow globes, silhouetted on shirts. Rasta flags bearing Bob Marely’s head. 

My eyes darted across each table, looking for something, but not really. I have never had the patience to sift through piles and piles of nonsense, hoping to find one little fleck of gold .  Nothing interested me enough to warrant pausing. As similar as this was to an American flea market, something was still different. 

My eyes stopped darting as a man behind the card table in front of me leaned over, holding a necklace out toward me. He shook it around in my face.

He smiled, “Un joli collier pour la jolie dame ? Il n’a pas coûté beaucoup. Pour la plupart des personnes, dix. Pour vous, huit.”

Suddenly, I realized how quiet this market seemed. I guess that may be the wrong way to say it. The market certainly was not quiet. It jingled and jangled with Euro exchange. It whirred and whizzed with the spinning of cotton candy machines. It tittered and twerped with bargain banter.

“Un joli collier mademoiselle.” The man pushed the necklace further into my face.

I smiled.

It was all in French. It was all beautiful noise like the sound of wine being poured, and meant about as much. He couldn’t hassle me to buy anything. He wouldn’t have even caught my attention if he weren’t waving a necklace in my face.

I felt like an escaped Thanksgiving float. Little Ouis and Mercis held my strings, anchoring me to the awful reality of my ignorance. Suddenly, while the fleamarketman poured his wine words into my ears, the Ouis and Mercis let go. I floated away into a sky of possibility where my ignorance was less ignorance and more deafness. English was my sign language, but everyone spoke French.

I nodded politely at the man and continued on my way. I walked past people pedaling keychains, earrings, cowboy boots, trucker hats, statuettes. All gestured wildly. All shouted. All sounded like wine hitting a glass.

While I felt freed, I was still not won over by Language Limbo. Language Limbo was like a friend of a friend that I had only heard bad things about. Now we were finally getting to know each other, but I couldn’t disregard everything everyone else had ever said about him. Not just yet.

That moment, the moment Language Limbo finally won me over, was in Londres.

 *

I woke up from another bus nap, cranky and in dire need of back realignment. In my life I have discovered two things I cannot resist.  One being raw cookie dough of any sort. I could be for some bizarre vegetable based cookie, but if I see that dough, I will put it in my mouth. I guess it’s a reflex. Just like falling asleep in a moving vehicle. As soon as I sit in a car or a plane or a train or a bus or a helicopter I immediately nod off. I cannot resist sleep in a moving vehicle. Impossible.

So after uncontorting my body from a position I saw in a drawing at the Picasso Museum, I get off the bus.

Water coats the concrete creating a slicker surface than most of my classmates anticipated. Jessie Lane skidded across the sidewalk narrowly avoiding ass/ground collision. Gary pulled a similar move.

Droplets of rain trickled out of the sky, light enough to not need an umbrella, but annoying enough to justify opening one. Unfortunately, I left mine at the FIAP. So in addition to being cranky from naptime, I was soggy. And starving since I misplaced my bag lunch, perhaps on purpose subconsciously.

Then a serendipitous accident occurred. Fountainbleu, the chateau we came to see, was closed. In lieu of Fontainbleu, Jessie Lane, Eric, Frank and I seated ourselves at a café not too far from the bus. Café France.

We bustled under the green awning, running from the rain which became more steady than a drizzle. I plopped down in a moist wicker chair. The other three did the same, but I hoped their chairs were less wet than mine. The water soaked through my pants.

I made a face as if bird crap had just landed directly between my eyes. Two girls at a table catty-corner to us giggled. I assumed it was at my face. Or that perhaps I actually did have bird crap somewhere on my person.

I glanced over at them. They couldn’t have been older than fifteen. Both had that glow of innocent mischief floating around them. The kind of glow girls have before they get old enough to care about responsibility and goals. But, I mean, that was American glow. These girls were French. I most likely read them entirely wrong.

Both were dressed in business attire; button up collared shirts, blazers, slacks. Both looked like they raided mother’s makeup drawer then applied the first lipstick they found which ended up being two shades too dark for their skin tone. Both wore their hair down, straight, no style, no product, no worries.

One of them, the blonde one, lit a cigarette. The other, the redhead, grabbed Blonde’s pack and took one. They were smoking Lucky Strikes. Lucky Strikes, cigarettes sixty-year-old football-leather-skinned deer-shooting-rednecks who smoke four packs a day don’t smoke. I once inhaled one tiny puff of a Lucky Strike and could immediately feel my lungs pounding inside my chest, trying to break free of my body so they would never have to endure that type of pain again.

They ordered emerald green drinks. Smoked and smoked until four more girls showed up. They pulled out a pack of cards, dealt, played.

I couldn’t understand a word those girls were saying. They spoke with the speed of an auctioneer. Talking behind hands of cards, between drags of cigarettes, after sips of green emerald drink. They talked and laughed. And smiled and talked. And laughed.

They looked happier than any other group of people I have ever seen. They could have been the mean girls in school who do nothing but put down the sadder fatter girls. They could have been discussing the murder of a political figure. They could have been telling Helen Keller jokes. They could have been making fun of Jessie Lane and Eric and Frank and me.

But I couldn’t understand them.

I saw their excitement to do nothing more than be together. It showed me something I see everyday entirely differently. The feeling of rediscovering people’s joy to be together is something I will never forget.

I owe that memory to Language Limbo. My new favorite friend.

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Filed under Air Travel, FIAP Jean Monnet (Hostel), Fountainbleu, Languages, Miami Airport, Paris