Woman Alone

Ten hours hitchhiking across Tierra del Fuego —northbound from the end of the continent— and I am the perfect caricature of a vagabond: windburnt, weary-eyed, flannel full of patches, boots full of holes, sipping something steaming from a cracked mug at a dingy border motel where I am tonight’s only guest. But vagabonds aren’t supposed to get asked if they have boyfriends or how often they feel afraid. They don’t get asked—with such eager and unmasked surprise— ¿Andas sola? The question is as constant as the westerlies that roar across these latitudes, a force unrelenting enough to erode you, to strip your skin to its bedrock. It follows me everywhere: ¿Andas sola? As I stagger up the ragged mountainside, or sit to watch the cormorants swarm above the Straits of Magellan, or idle hopefully on the side of the carretera with thumb extended. ¿Andas sola? The word made feminine by the letter a, so many kilometers removed from solo— its neat, innocuous twin. I bare my gender like a thing stitched scarlet. Sola. The word blooms rich with implication, but this is something I cannot taste on my native tongue. So I pause to savor it. I wake before the wind. Drag my pack to the desolate roadside. Breathe deep and let myself feel everything in its feminine form. Sola. Segura. Poderosa.