“Carne y Uña”
Emma Lederer
“Kelsey and Emma, for example.”
Kelsey and I raised our heads in confusion from our worksheet on Spanish idioms. Each week, our professor taught us essential grammar lessons to help us communicate in everyday activities. They varied from how to ask for sizes of clothes, to pick-up lines, to restaurant manners — and today, idioms.
“Kelsey y Emma. Carne y uña,” our professor reiterated — hoping we would learn the actual translation indirectly as he forgot the exact English idiom. He examined his fingernail and described how carne, meat or flesh, and uña, fingernail, are always together. Carne y uña, flesh and fingernail. It sounded more melodious in Spanish.
“You mean two peas in a pod?” a student asked.
“That English idiom comes close. It doesn’t fully encapsulate the entire meaning, but yes,” our professor shrugged.
They knew we were peas in a pod too and so did we. We were and always will be an invincible, packaged duo.
~
Walking the grand hallowed halls of Escorial, we marveled at the artworks of El Greco, Luca Giordano, and Claudio Ceollo (all Master of Religious Art from 15th century Spain). Kelsey had proposed that we and some friends take a bus journey here to view the grandeur of the 15th Spanish monastery architecture. As for me, I was up for the adventure. Admittedly, I had not heard about Escorial before she asked me to go with her — but one could not go without the other.
The Royal Library saved me from the usual tour, a torrent of meticulous, copious and dull information. Something about the damp, musty smell of books made me feel at home. The library, lined with darkened bookshelves and lit up by a gold ceiling, exceeded what I’d seen in photos. Pacing back and forth across the vast marble floor, I peered at the ancient Greek, Latin, and Spanish texts in the vain hope that the foreign words and symbols would be intelligible to me. At some point, I felt something shift in the air. I was alone. I could not tell how long I had paced the interior or what tourists glided by, but I can still recall the undecipherable words.
Kelsey wandered off to explore her chosen space, but we remained in each other’s thoughts as we explored on our own.
~
I wandered through the rest of the sublime halls. The architecture of this monastery blended with the other Spanish monasteries I had previously seen.
My mind wandered back to earlier in the week, when I had turned back around to chat with Kelsey, and it had hit me: we were dressed identically from our shoes to our hairstyle. We’d roared in laughter as we walked to our regular restaurant/bakery, Celicioso.
But now where was she in the halls of the Escorial? I couldn’t look down at my clothes and know what she was wearing. What was it again? Green sweatshirt… dark jean pants… My other pea had to be here.
I discovered Kelsey in the crypt of the fallen Royals who’d once ruled these sacred halls, as she silently read each caption of the nobility at rest there. Escorial was founded by King Philip during the 15th as the resting place for Spanish Royalty. Nobles of all ages lay at rest in tombs from the Pantheon of Infantes to the room of Kings with some empty tombs awaiting current and future Spanish Royalty. A chill rushed down her spine, causing wrinkles in her dull sweatshirt. Creepily, the number of deceased far outnumbered the visitors.
~
Kelsey and I walked through a stone arched doorway into the garden behind Escorial, a monastery in the town of San Lorenzo de El Escorial, forty kilometers outside of Madrid. Our path narrowed as we entered the one of the mazes formed by the rows of shrubs that comprise the garden. A waist-high wall protected this garden and the monastery. My friends and I snapped a few pictures of the Escorial in the background, and a few others of the countryside over the wall. In the midst of the photoshoot, I lost interest in smiling for yet another touristy shot. I noticed the bushes and wondered how tall they were compared me. I measured the height of the foliage by crouching to a squat position so my height would match the shrub. I thought this would give me a sense of their height. My light, brown hair was even with the tops of the buzzed foliage. I peeked over the hedge like a prairie dog might emerge from a burrow, looking to see if my friends had finished with their photos. To my dismay, they had not.
I waddled like a duck through the hedge maze weaving around the fresh puddles. I was the same height as when I was young. What brought that to mind? Lost in my thoughts, the top of my head bumped in and out of view over the hedges — me on my own exploration.
Smiles cracked on each of my friends’ faces.
“Oh Emma.”
“Of course.”
“Did you expect her to simply walk around the maze?”
They questioned my ideas. Maybe for good reason — what other adult would do such things as waddle around a historic garden like a toddler?
Kelsey questioned whether or not she should be surprised that I chose to behave so. She knew I would not have seen the ridiculousness of the situation. She reacted in the usual manner, sighing, raising her hand to her temple, and expressing shock that I, an intelligent adult, acted in such a silly and weird manner. I giggled because I never thought of my behavior as out of the ordinary until she called me out. From college roommates to aboard mates, we cannot break old habits.
My throbbing knees overcame my desire for childlike exploration, and I stood up from my crouch. I exited the labyrinth to take yet another photo. Sad, that adventure wasn’t as attractive to her as the carousel.
A week earlier, Kelsey and I had traveled for a few days in Galicia, northern Spain. On one of the days there, I desperately wanted to ride the carousel. She instinctively shook her head, then reconsidered knowing she didn’t want to miss out on the fun. We had rode her steed and my elephant twice that night. It was activities like these that seemed to make me the odd one, though to be honest I do not see why when compared to the weird things other people in this world do. Deep down, I knew Kelsey was an odd one too, all it took was the right inspiration, maybe she needed this trip more than I knew. For here in the garden, she was at ease.
I looked out on the countryside, hoping to see the outskirts of Madrid in between the rolling green hills. I closed my eyes, inhaled, opened them once again to find my friends beside me, maybe feeling the ease I did. We were foreigners traveling on our own, relieved of our professor and our program.
My eyes met Kelsey’s, and somehow, she knew I would do something odd, and I could not do it without her.
~
With Kelsey in tow, I strolled back into the center of waist-high labyrinth about half the size of a basketball court. As I wandered, I ran my hand along the tops of the roughly cut hedges. Adding pressure ever so slightly created a buoyancy similar to pushing along the surface tension of water, allowing my hand to gently float forward and slip across the gaps in the foliage. The sizes of the gaps varied so much so that I wondered if any were big enough for me to fit into. After considering my options, I realized that if I returned to my squatted position and ducked my head between my knees, I could fit through. As Kelsey turned her back to me, and I crouched down to enter the bush. A few strands of my hair caught on the brown branches as I shuffled my feet into the opening. Once in, I realized the height in the shrubs allowed me to raise my head. The only part of me visible in the foliage were my feet and shins. The autumn sun directly above me seeped through to illuminate the gaps in the vegetation.
“Emma? Emma! Where did you go?!” Kelsey asked as she turned from side to side.
“Aquí!”
“What?”
“Down here!”
“Why did you crawl inside?”
“I do not know. It’s an excellent hiding place. Want to come in and see?”
I shuffled my feet, raising a thin layer of dust. She copied me and entered. Her eyes did not widen in amazement as mine did. A bit disappointed, I waited for her reaction.
She waddled out of the shrub. Her mouth inched open as her eyes widened, “we should play hide and seek!”
I leapt up from my seated position in the dirt and rushed to get the rest of the group who were resting with their backs against the wall. Smiles creeped up as they saw that I had another Emma idea — but little did they know, I had a Kelsey idea.
They looked at each other for reassurance that this was an invitation that they wanted to accept. Their heads turned back to us and as one they asked, “what are the boundaries?”
~
Whether we are mama pea and baby pea or two peas in a pod, we will always be flesh and fingernail — Carne y Uña.
~~~
