The Hands of Machismo

My eyes remained down cast focusing on the only familiar thing I had, the look of his blue wind breaker winding in and out of crowds with people I towered over. I had only met him once with an awkward peck on the check and now he had complete control. I could barely keep up with his brisk stride stepping across puddles and avoiding glass. Every five seconds he would patiently look back at me as my wide eyes helplessly darted away from his gaze and reflected the chaos of people that had been our obstacles. When the crowd grew thicker he would grasp my hand as if he had felt the creases of my life line our whole lives. I could feel the pores of my privileged completion be clogged with grim as the rain brought down pollution from the sky.  Ecuador had begun to get under my skin into the respiration of my lungs as a cough crept up my chest threatening to reveal that I was an outsider, that I did not belong.

His grasp, on my child like hand, was steady and persistent allowing no room for protest telling me that I now held in my hand the essence of machismo. Machismo is an ugly word when its existence was used to confine and control the nature of your womanhood. Machismo is an ugly thing when all it’s ever done is “put you in your place”. I have prided myself on being beyond machismo but here in the street with the rain and glass I had lost all control and the only one I could trust was the man covered by this wind breaker. The moment he took my hand I realized that I had two options in Ecuador—I could walk these streets alone with the independence that would lead me to my ruin or I could humbly accept the hand of my brother and submit to the only thing I had to hold on to.

It wasn’t until I quickened my stride and focused on the sharpness of his eyes, the intensity of his gaze that I realized he wasn’t looking back at me. My dear brother was  looking back and making eye contact with the surrounding threats of men building a boundary of protection around me with his eyes. He held my hand and claimed me as his sister, as a woman with family, as a woman that was valued. It was not his machismo that confided me but his machismo that protected me. It was in the life lines of my brothers hand that I could feel the protection of machismo.