Neither nor.
The GPS is still set to British English and butchering the street names. Even at 5kph, we’re outrunning her and turning faster than she can finish: Turn right onto Cal-lay Max Enrique Henriquez Urine-a. Then turn right onto Avenue Gustavo May-jee-ah Righ-cart.
It comes as a surprise then when she tells us to take a left onto Winston Churchill without stumbling.
We’re two minutes into a drive that should take ten but will take us twenty-eight by current estimates and I feel the familiar tightening settle into my jaw. I’m starting to learn the traffic patterns but still find myself startling too often. Having been told sternly a few days ago that sudden movements inside the car are more distracting than the chaos outside, I tuck my hands under my legs and grip the seat beneath me.
The proximity detector alerts as we follow all the other cars going forward where the turn signals indicates that we should go left. Tentatively at first and then more urgently it beeps as a dilapidated taxi cuts us off. It’s as if the driver remembered only at the last moment that he needed to be on the overpass to John F. Kennedy.
There seems to be a lot of last-minute remembering here.
***
Gira a la derecha en Calle Max Henriquez Ureña. Y luego, gira a la derecha en Avenida Gustavo Mejía Ricart…
The street names slide more smoothly out of the navigation now that she’s been speaking Spanish for a few days. Chuckling, Joe notes her identity crisis as she pronounces words in Spain-Spanish while using the tú form to tell us to turn.
Truth be told, I’m not fluent enough to have caught the joke. I had noticed the /ʝ/ in calle but missed the informal imperative more typical of Mexico. Still, it feels good to be laughing for once.
A few kilometers later, he asks me what I’m thinking. What I want to do is recount all the ways I have seen us getting hurt or, at the very least, banged up. But what I really want is for him to focus more on the road and the upcoming roundabout which we have already nicknamed “the circle of death.”And so I lie and say “nothing,” rather than try to explain the probability calculations running through my head.
Hands tucked safely under my legs, I turn around to Nicolas and ask him what he sees.
They say that sometimes a miracle simply takes a shift in perspective.
***
¡Vámonos pues!
Somewhere between last week’s trip off the compound and this Sunday morning run to Carrefour, Joe switched out the navigation systems and is now relying on one fed by crowdsourced traffic data. The friendly new voice, speaking in a colloquial collective, startles me. How can I be included in the “we” when I still feel so acutely like the extranjera that I am?
As we leave the parking lot, Joe makes an over/under wager on just how accurate our new navigation friend’s quote of 11 minutes til “home” may be.
I make a pathetic attempt at figuring all the factors: how many guaguas will pull over to make a stop without signaling? how many pickups overloaded with bananas or with bottled water precariously balanced in the bed will pull out in front of us? how many potholes filled with last night’s rain will have become rim-bending landmines to avoid?
I laugh at the futility of trying to make a half-way informed guess. Joe laughs that I’ve even tried. And then, as toddlers do, Nicolas joins in from the backseat.
After all, how can one really estimate just how long it might take to arrive?
