Playing Dress-Up in the Andes
An embarrassing fashion disaster heals old wounds and creates new bonds.
“Suck in your belly,” María commands.
I obey. Arms extended, I’m standing before her in my underwear, legs bare, torso covered in a loose white blouse, trimmed with ample lace and embroidered flowers. María wraps several yards of fabric around my lower half, followed by a long strip of woven fabric around my waist—a faja. She tugs tightly, securing the top of the skirt fabric, as though winching a tourniquet.
We’re in the bedroom of her yellow cement house nestled in the Andes mountains of Otavalo, Ecuador, preparing for a night on the town. Most tourists zip in and out of this cozy pueblo, spending only a whirlwind Saturday at the craft market—one of the biggest and oldest in South America—snapping photos of woven rugs and fuzzy ponchos and dazzling Otavaleña Indian women.
But I’m here for a whole week, staying with one of these women, and quickly learning that there’s more to the frills and glitter than meets the eye. I’ve spoken with tourists who assume these outfits are just part of a shiny exotic-Andean-market façade, unaware that all the lace and cotton and wool hold layer upon layer of meaning.
María tugs tighter, and I let out a squeak as my compromised lungs struggle for breath. The musty smell of alpaca sweaters envelops us—merchandise piled on the bed that she sells on trips to Colorado, where I first met her. We’re the same age—early thirties—but beyond that, our lives have been drastically different. She was a child slave, denied education, while I spent my coddled American girlhood devouring books. Before meeting María, I’d only read about slavery; back then, it seemed like something distant, centuries and continents away.
Now it feels much closer. Over the past three years, María has bravely revealed her deepest self to me, every scar and spark, inside and out, and entrusted me to shape this material into a book.
But standing here in my half-dressed, corseted state, I am the one exposed. She is clearly enjoying my discomfort, in an impish way.
With a ruthless giggle, she orders, “Suck in your belly some more, Laurita!”
“But Mari, I can’t breathe!”
“Ay, Laurita,” she sighs. “It has to be tight or else the skirt falls off.” She motions to her own anacos, a black layer on top, a cream one beneath, both firmly held up by a purple faja.
“But how can I fit any food in my stomach?”
“It’s just for a few hours,” she laughs, tossing waist-long hair over her shoulder. She pulls the faja tighter still, until my ribs are on the verge of cracking.
Secretly, I consider tearing off the fabric, releasing my gut, and changing into a pair of comfy sweatpants. It occurs to me, though, that dressing up in her clothes could be useful to our book-in-progress. Our project has already given me the unique experience of slipping out of my own life and into María’s—entering her mind, heart, and even body, from the beauty mark near her lip to the whip scars on her calves.
The only thing missing, I realize as I stand half-mummified in yards of fabric, has been wearing María’s clothes. Frankly, it hadn’t occurred to me before. I had a vague notion that indigenous people would frown at me, a gringa posing as an Otavaleña.
But this dress-up session was María’s idea—girls playing makeover, then going out for a night on the town. And she’s obviously taking pleasure in it. Her playfulness is infectious, transforming us into giddy teens. I have only one sibling, a brother, but I imagine this is how it would feel to have a giggly, slightly tormenting sister.
María has called me hermana—sister— a few times, mostly in greeting cards, tentatively, as if trying it out. Each time, it has felt like a gift, this word with its staggering connotations. But I’ve always felt too shy and unworthy to call her hermana back.
Throughout María’s teen years, she longed for the close bond of sisterhood. As a little girl in her remote Quichua village, she’d had a thorny relationship with her older sister, who was prettier, fairer, plumper, and more even-tempered. María used to pummel her sister in a jealous rage over who got the biggest potato in the soup or the ripest berries from the bush. But from ages seven to fifteen, after María was taken from her family to be an unpaid servant, she yearned for a sister—someone to whisper with about her dread of her master’s groping hands, her dreams of going to school, her major crush on MacGyver.
When María was on the verge of a dramatic escape from slavery, she contacted this older sister, whom she hadn’t seen for eight years. María had often fantasized about meeting her again, but imagined her frozen in time, forever twelve years old, the perfect age for hysterical laughter and makeovers and secrets. This time, she resolved to offer her sister the biggest potato in the soup and the juiciest berries on the bush.
At their reunion, María felt gutted to see that her sister had grown into a twenty-year-old woman, engaged to be married. The window of time for sisterly silliness had vanished, never to be reclaimed. This was when it truly dawned on María that her childhood had been stolen. And this knowledge was so devastating that she very nearly chose to return to her state of slavery, despite the physical and sexual abuse, despite being denied education and dignity.
In the next few years, though, she managed to create a new, free life for herself, working hard to pay for food, lodging, and high school. She formed friendships with classmates, but was burdened with so much responsibility that she could never live out the warm and carefree sisterly bond she’d dreamed of.
As María told me her story, there were moments we cried together—when she described being strung up to the rafters by her neck as a five-year-old and whipped by her father; being beaten with handfuls of hangers by the mistress of the household; being sexually accosted by the master as a young teen. Yet her sadness seemed to plunge deepest when she described the realization that she’d never live out her dreams of sisterhood—laughing and crying together, dressing each other up, sharing memories, confiding fears.
This bewildered me. After all she’d been through, why was this sorrow so painful? It’s hard to know why one particular loss can rip a soul’s fabric . . . and perhaps harder to guess at the surprising ways it might one day stitch itself together.
Now that my ribs have been mercilessly swaddled, my makeover is nearly complete. Grinning, María hooks a necklace of dozens of gold-painted crystal bead strands around my neck, then holds up a hand mirror. The bright gold—stunning against María’s warm skin and brown eyes—clashes with my fair complexion.
“You’re sure indigenous women won’t feel offended?” I ask, doubtful, staring at our reflection.
“It’s fine, Laurita!” she insists, winding coral beads around my wrists, encasing my blond ponytail in a long ribbon. “They’ll like it.”
And she’s right. Outside, beneath the palm trees and street lamps, Otavaleña women of all ages smile and titter, eyes bright. I’m an object of their amusement, but at least I’m not offending anyone. As for the men on the sidewalks, they don’t even notice me. They’re all staring at the TVs perched in markets and bakeries and farmacias, captivated by a championship soccer game. Sports announcers’ amped-up voices compete with the trills of pan flute melodies floating from open doors.
The walk to el centro is a mile uphill, but feels longer with restricted lungs and thin mountain air. We’re at 8,500 feet, cradled by Andean peaks, each a distinct silhouette poking at the moonlit clouds. The skirts of these mountains are laced with waterfalls and lakes, rich with folklore and ritual, and sacred to María and her people.
But at the moment, I’m less focused on the enchanting landscape, and dwelling more on my own squished torso. “Can’t we just loosen this thing?” I ask, fiddling with the faja.
María smacks my fingers away. “Laurita! It might fall off.”
Semi-suffocated, I gaze in awe at the Quichua women who bustle past, women who have worn these outfits all their lives. Many of them come from surrounding villages where they’ve pastured goats, cooked over wood fires, fed pigs, harvested potatoes, and navigated mountain trails much rougher than this gentle sidewalk slope . . . somehow managing to keep their blouses spotless.
“But Mari,” I gasp, “how can you do it?”
“It’s who I am.”
During the eight years she worked as an unpaid child servant, María stopped wearing her native clothing, seeing it through the racist eyes of her mestizo oppressors—a symbol of poverty, filth, backwardness. The day she reunited with her sister, she put on her favorite mestiza clothes—an unfortunate safari-themed outfit from the late eighties—and carefully smoothed extra gel in her permed hair.
When her sister appeared in the traditional anacos and embroidered blouse and gold beads and ribbon-wrapped ponytail, María felt shocked. This woman looked like the indigenous people María had learned to scorn during her years with her mestizo masters. Her sister could have been from a different planet. The divide felt unbreachable.
After an awkward embrace, María served her lemonade, then sobbed her heart out.
Over the next couple years, María wore only mestiza clothes, spoke only Spanish, avoided her family, and hid her native roots. And then one day, she was asked to participate in a competition for the indigenous Queens of Sky, Corn, and Water. This involved wearing traditional clothing again and giving a speech in Quichua.
After a decade, she once again put on an embroidered lace blouse and heavy wrap-around anacos. In some ways, it felt uncomfortable. She worried about the faja coming unraveled. She felt like an imposter. But in another way, a deeper way, it felt perfect. And in these clothes that were familiar and strange at once, she glimpsed the possibility that there was something beautiful about her indigenous roots.
Inside the fluorescent lit, yellow-walled pollería, María and I have to wait at the counter to be seated, mouths watering amidst the scent of chicken roasting on spits. Service is slow. All the cooks’ and waiters’ eyes are glued to the soccer game onscreen. As my stomach growls, I glare, annoyed, at the TV—ubiquitous in small-town Latin American eateries, preventing people from communing, chatting . . . and serving food promptly.
I’m ravenous by the time our dinner comes— juicy chicken, cilantro-laced rice, rich potato soup, nutty lentils, fried plantains, local Pilsener-brand beer. I dig in, struggling to keep my lace sleeves out of the soup. It becomes quickly apparent that to make a dent in this steaming pile of food, I’ll need more room in my abdominal area.
“Mari,” I plead, “can’t you loosen this faja? ¿Por favorcito?”
She frowns. “Bueno, Laurita, I’ll do it, but before you stand up we’ll have to tighten it again, O.K.?”
“O.K., O.K., gracias!”
She loosens the strip of fabric. Ahh. Sweet relief. My internal organs sigh, rearrange themselves back into normal positions. I devour the greasy, salty delight with abandon.
As the other customers and servers watch the game, transfixed, I munch chicken and gaze at María in wonder. I’ve long admired her spunk, her determination to overcome the obstacles in her life—poverty, abuse, racism, sexism, classism, enslavement—and not only survive, but thrive. And now the latest source of my admiration: how she manages to fit so many fried plantains beneath that tourniquet of a faja.
Now I can vividly imagine her sensations of wrapping herself in anacos after years of the baggy Western-style outfits of the late eighties. This native clothing isn’t just an abstract symbol of her transformation, but a gut-restricting, chest-squeezing, rib-cracking reality.
When our bellies are full of chicken and local beer, we stretch and gather our things. I announce I’m going to the bathroom to wash the grease from my hands, so I won’t sully the blouse. (How does she manage to keep her blouse snow-white, anyway?)
“Excuse me,” I say, scooting out of the booth, handbag slung over my shoulder. I stand up and head to the baños.
“Laurita!” María calls out, alarmed.
But it’s too late. The faja uncoils. The skirt falls to the floor, yards of fabric pooled at my feet. I am standing in my underwear, a not-nice pair, cool air grazing my naked thighs. I am smack in the middle of the crowded restaurant, exposed.
I flush hot magenta, frantically gather the fabric and faja to my waist. Sweating and prickling with embarrassment, I raise my eyes, prepared for a sea of faces, laughing and gaping.
But the only eyes on me belong to María—whose mouth has dropped open in a kind of amused horror—and a toddler girl in a high chair, cheeks smeared with potato. Every other face is gazing, oblivious, at the TV.
The blessed, beautiful TV.
After a stretched-out moment of shock, I stagger to the baños. And in the safety of the stall, I pull out the secret stash from my handbag: a loose T-shirt and sweat pants. My Plan B.
Carefully, I remove and fold up the long faja and anacos and the lacy blouse. I slip my comfy clothes over my not-nice underwear. I leave the golden beads around my neck and the coral strands around my wrists for a bit of dazzle. By the time I emerge from the bathroom, my blush has faded, my armpit sweat has dried, the soccer game has ended, and a relieved smile has sprouted on my face.
As we walk home, María teases me relentlessly. We replay my blooper and laugh and wipe our eyes. And despite lingering mortification, I realize that the wardrobe disaster of tonight will make our book a bit deeper, a bit richer. Not only has María let me into her mind and heart and skin, but her clothing, too.
Our relationship has deepened into something richer, too—silly and soulful, intimate and vulnerable, all woven together with tears and giggles.
Beneath the street lamp glow, María slings her arm around my shoulder. I lean into her, twirl my fingers around her ribbon-bound ponytail. “Gracias, hermana.”
She responds with a hip bump and a sparkling grin. “De nada, hermana.”
A few years later, our book is published, after a total of seven years of research and interviewing and storytelling and writing and revising. Nearly the same amount of time that María was enslaved. During those seven years, we have cried and laughed; we have confided to each other our deepest sorrows and fears; we have done makeovers and sleepovers and whispered secrets just before falling asleep; we have teased and joked; we have fought and made up; we have helped each other through painful times; we have driven each other crazy.
We have not yet pummeled each other over potatoes, but that could still happen some day.
Laura Resau is the award-winning author of eight novels for young people, all set in places where she’s lived or traveled, including Mexico, France, Guatemala, and Ecuador. Her most popular book with adults—The Queen of Water, co-written with María Virginia Farinango—gained a prized spot on Oprah’s reading list for teens. Resau’s acclaimed travel essays have appeared in anthologies by Travelers’ Tales, Lonely Planet, and others. She lives in Colorado with her husband and young son, and donates a portion of her royalties to indigenous rights organizations in Latin America. For more about her writing, please visit www.Lauraresau.com.