More Editors’ Choice and Flying Carpet Archive

by Annette Jarvie Wilma is tall and blond, with a square jaw and a big, strong body even now that she’s in her seventies. She talks with a thick Florentine accent, peppered with local colloquialisms.

by Erik R. Trinidad When I wrote an email to Jennifer Leo, editor of the Women's Travel humor book Sand In My Bra, I volunteered myself to be her intern during her book's promo tour in Montreal, Canada. I was so enthusiastic about the idea that I even suggested that I'd pass out flyers on the street with the only relevant eye-catching gag I could think of: while wearing a bra.

White sand beach, blue sky, palm trees, thick novel, suntan lotion, me. That about covers it, the real-life version of the glossy travel brochure. The only thing missing was the big, happy-go-lucky Hollywood grin on the lounging sun bather. It wasn't there, it was more of a scowl.

Rubbing my hand twice across the wooden slats of the bench to sweep off the water, I sat, immediately realizing the impotence of the gesture as my pants and back ribbed with damp. The rain had been short and uncommitted, simply glistening the dark grass and gilding the walkway pavers and the cobbled streets surrounding the Plaza de Armas with reflected gold from streetlights, shop windows and the fairytale twin spires of the cathedral. Carmen sat next to me with a smile and no concern for the wet. She had been one of my first customers and my partner most every evening for two weeks. She was seven and spent her days selling chewy candy, two for one sole or three for one sole or "A special price just for my friend," four for one sole, to the tourists that haggled. Tucking her cardboard box inside her coat knowing she would sell no candy to me, Carmen looked at the clock on the cathedral and said, "It’s almost time."

In Costa Rica, I lived on lard and coffee. There was lard in the bread, in the rice and in the beans. There was lard in the cookies, in the imitation Doritos I ate at the school where I taught; it was coating the potatoes and being used to fry bananas in the cafeteria. Damaris, the woman I lived with, normally bought only three food items when she went to the supermarket in the city: a sack of rice, a sack of beans, and several sticks of manteca vegetal —vegetable shortening. Everything else we ate came off the farm.