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onto one wooden seat, our knees knocking into the pile of people facing us. By the time night rolled around, our bones were sore. Mami massaged my neck and shoulders, and Bob put his arm around Ale, pressing her close. The train rocked from side to side, lulling everybody to sleep. Except me, and the couple across from me. The man’s knees pressed into mine as the woman rode him like a bike. Her blouse had come undone. I stayed as still as I could, because I knew if people were humping in the dark across from you, you shouldn’t cramp their style. That was my cousin Gonzalo’s favourite expression. He would be doing his Elvis impersonation in our East Vancouver living room, and I’d go up and try to poke him. He’d push me away, put his hands on his hips and say, “Carmencita, you’re cramping my style.” Then he’d go back to being Elvis, singing “All Shook Up,” and I was allowed to watch only as long as I stayed on the couch. Thinking of him now brought tears to my eyes. I wondered if I’d ever see him again, with his Fonzie gestures and car collections.
    We spent the day in Cusco, then boarded a night bus that said COPACABANA, BOLIVIA, on the front. Another detour to confuse the secret police, I figured. We made the usual pit stops at the villages along the way, and after one of them, Bob got into an argument with another passenger, a loud big-city guy. The dispute revolved around who was to blame for Bob getting hit in the chin when the seat in front of his flew back. Bob had been holding ten kilos of onions in his lap at the time and clutching a baby to his chest, as a favour for one of the standing women. Her feet were swollen to the size of cantaloupes. The argument got so fierce that when the big-city guy accused Bob of being a pretentious hippie come to help lazy Indians with their shit-stinking babies, Bob flew into one of his rages and yelled that he and the big-city guy should go outside and duke it out at the next stop. To my amazement, my mother jumped in and shouted that we’d take their whole family on. She was going to punch out the big-city guy’s wife, who had dyed red hair and blotches on her face from skin bleach, and she wanted me to deal with their fifteen-year-old daughter.
    â€œRoll up your sleeves and get ready to fight these racist, social-climbing sons of bitches, Carmencita,” she commanded.
    I was seized by terror. Ale sat stunned at my side. We’d never seen Mami or Bob fight anybody. Fist fighting was as foreign as a game of cricket. The daughter was bigger than me, and I’d probably get creamed. One look at the wife’s pointy nails and you knew that a scratch from that hand could tear your face apart. Bob was tough, but the husband was big, and I could see it getting really bloody before one of them went down. Plus, if we were arrested, our cover would be blown and the dictator of Peru would send us marching right into Pinochet’s grip. I didn’t know what had come over my mother, who usually talked Bob down from his rages, but now we were doomed. My heart pounded ferociously in my chest.
    It was hours until the next stop, and I spent the time practising to see if I could make a tight fist. But once we got there, Ale, Bob and Mami were fast asleep, and the fight had been forgotten. I peered out the window as the big-city guy loaded his family’s suitcases onto the back of a very old Indian man. This was referred to as muling it, I’d learned. Mules were Indian men who waited outside the markets and stations to offer their services. They had pieces of rope dangling from their bodies, and their bare feet looked like old shoes. If you accepted his offer, the mule bent over, and his back became the counter on which you piled your belongings. He would grunt as the load grew, his eyes focussed on the ground. After a while, all you could see was two brown legs with the feet shifting around, trying to find the