Twisted Tales: My Life as a Mongolian Contortionist

by Otgo Waller

Overview

At age seven, Otgo first fell in love with the beautiful art form that is contortion; and since then, she has never changed her mind. Throughout her life, her goal of being one of the top contortionists has not been a smooth journey. From the grasp of a socialist country, she escaped a morose childhood and transformed herself into a world famous performer. This is the story of Otgo reaching for the rare treat of success that seemed almost impossible as any challenge could have overtaken her. Since she was armed with intense devotion to her success, contortion saved her life and gifted Otgo with many opportunities.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781504378611
Publisher:	Balboa Press
Publication date:	04/21/2017
Pages:	196
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.42(d)

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

My oldest sister, Noyo, was pregnant with her first child. Labor pains came to her on the same day and time that one of the great Communist leaders of Eastern Europe was due to visit our homeland of Mongolia. My family found everyone at the hospital to be unusually busy and excited. The doctors and nurses darted in all directions, some of them helping Noyo.

"Your daughter is going to be a very lucky girl," one of them told my sister. "Her timing is impeccable."

While the nurse would prove prophetic on the sex of Noyo's unborn child, her soothsaying on the condition of her luck would prove shoddy. Even before my little niece reached her first birthday, she took ill and passed away.

My family was devastated. My sister, mother, and father even visited a monk. In the Buddhist tradition, when someone dies, the family of the deceased visits a monk, who performs a special service called Altan Xairtsag Neekh (Open the Golden Box). The monk is spiritually connected to the departed soul and can tell at the time of death what she was thinking and what, if anything, she would like for the family to do in regard to a funeral.

I am told that when the monk opened my niece's golden box, he said that she was a very special and lucky little girl, and that, if she had lived, she would have had anything in the world she desired.

My mother and father turned to one another, tears lining their eyes as they embraced. My sister held her steady gaze on the monk, wanting to know more.

"Zuurdaar!" the monk said, startling my family. I was told that his expression became grim and wary, the candlelight rendering his wrinkled face into an ominous dance. "Please don't bury her."

"What would you have us do?" Noyo asked.

"If you leave her on the highest mountain, and if you pray and offer religious merit, she may return to your family."

"Return?" my father asked skeptically.

"Yes," the monk said, bowing low. "She will return to you in a new form, as a child yet to be born."

So my father took my niece and wrapped her in a blanket. He carried her alone onto our highest and most sacred mountain, the Bogd Uul. There he left her on the windswept peak, returning down the mountain as a man weary from journey and ravaged in spirit.

A month passed. My family prayed.

One night, my mother dreamed that her granddaughter, alone on the mountain, had risen and taken to wandering the countryside. Between her delicate hands, she held a candle. She wandered as though lost. Then, in the dream, she came upon our ger at the base of the mountain. She found my mother and ran to her. The moment my mother stooped to embrace her grandchild, she woke from the dream.

Two months passed. My family prayed.

There came a time when my mother didn't feel so well. She had been gaining weight for several weeks. She felt constantly tired. The first morning that she was sick in the yard, she knew that she was pregnant. This came as quite a shock to her, as my mother was forty-two years old at the time.

When she told my father and my sister of the news, she did so as a woman utterly beside herself with confusion. Dad and Noyo were happy, of course, and encouraged my mother to keep the baby.

"But I'm forty-two," she said. "Women my age can't have a baby! What will the neighbors say?"

"Don't worry about what the others will think," Father said.

"Yeah, who cares?" Noyo said.

Together they convinced my mother that this unexpected miracle was worth maintaining.

Three more months passed. Then a fourth. Mother didn't leave the house much, owing partly to embarrassment and partly to her fear that any sudden movement might lead to complications at her age. Dad and Noyo took care of most of the chores and errands, such as going to market for groceries.

Two months passed. I was brought into this world.

There I was, the youngest of six children, the first born in a hospital. My mother, Butedsuren Natsag, could not have been a more wary or loving mother. My father, Adiya Tsagaan, was the proudest father on our whole nomadic street. Norjinsuren ("Noyo" for short) was the oldest of my siblings and the most doting, due to the monk's prophesy. Tsogtmagnai ("Tsogoo" for short) came next. Then Bayraa, Enkhtsetseg ("Enkhee"), Enkhnaran ("Naraa"), and finally, Otgontsetseg ("Otgo"), your humble narrator.

When I was born, my family lived in the shadow of the holy Bogd Uul, near the Mongolian capital city of Ulaanbaatar, a name that means "Red Hero." This wasn't always the city's name. It was once called Ikh Khuree (also known as "Great Camp"), but the newly formed Mongolian People's Republic Party made the switch to Ulaanbaatar.

Our neighborhood, Zaican Tolgoi, Ulaanbaatar, was once a nomadic tent city, with houses that looked like wigwams. The townspeople would move their makeshift homes from pasture to pasture, allowing their animals to feed. Their homes were sturdy and wooden, warm in the winter and cool in the summer, and roomy but utterly absent of privacy.

By 1924, the town had come under Russian influence, and the Mongolian government became a puppet state of Lenin and Stalin. As the twentieth century progressed, Chinese and Russian workers constructed a number of permanent buildings. By the time I was born, the downtown of our capital city was lined with many small concrete or steel buildings, all them square and bland, save for one: the Mongolian State Circus, which was a beautiful domed structure constructed of blue glass.

The Bogd Uul was a holy mountain. Hundreds of years prior to my birth, the land upon the mountain had been set aside as a nature preserve. Any man caught hunting or poaching from the land was punished. We are a people much connected to the earth. Every natural element and every life is sacred.

And so, when I was born, my family lived at the foot of a holy place and at the mouth of a drab and typically Socialist city. Our ger, the traditional Mongolian tent home, was large and sturdy, and our yard was surrounded on all sides by tall wooden fences designed to promote privacy. We didn't have much: three small beds, one large trunk to keep our clothes and other things, a table, and a fireplace. Every home on our street was nearly identical. The roads were shabby, constructed of dirt and lined with many potholes.

My siblings were much older than me, so I confess that I had a fairly lonely childhood. The two youngest of my sisters, Enkhee and Naraa, still lived in the house with my parents when I was born. The other three had already moved on to their own homes, however. I was close with Enkhee and Naraa — close enough even to fight with Naraa about clothes and shoes.

My father was a war hero. He fought for our country in the war in 1939 as well as in 1945, garnering a number of medals along the way. My mother was a part-time hospital maintenance staff member. She was also a highly religious woman. She would pray every morning, and every night she would take me to Gandan Kheed, the biggest and only Buddhist temple that the Communists didn't destroy. I have the purest memories of my mother kneeling in the Temple of Gandan Kheed, feeding and praying to the many pigeons of the temple. She was a woman of deep passion and love.

My parents worked hard to provide for us, but, with six children to feed, money was always tight. Yes, we were poor children living in a poor house. Many nights, we ate whatever we had — which was often things as odd as cow head or sheep intestines.

Whenever I recall our hand-to-mouth upbringing, I often think of one kparticular story of my father. It was autumn, and Dad had taken ill. But sick as he was, he knew that if he didn't do something drastic — and soon — we would have to begin choosing which nights of the week we would eat. So, with a great and chill wind howling down the Bogd Uul, Father stalked into the woods to gather samar — nuts. He left at dawn, promising to return home by dusk.

The day came and went, and Father never returned. He didn't come back that night. By the following afternoon, we were all a little worried.

"Maybe the nuts were picked over, and your father had to climb," Mom reasoned.

For a time, this stilled our concern. But when two more days passed and Father was still missing, we grew altogether wracked with worry. We kept our spirits high, encouraging each other that our father would soon return, but we all suspected that something awful had happened.

Dismayed though we were about Father's absence, we tried to pass the time in the way that we always passed time. Each morning, Enkhee and Naraa would walk to school, and I would run after them, crying because I wanted to go with them.

"Go home!" they would yell.

"You're still too young!"

"Maybe next year."

I would trudge home alone to find that Mother had left for work at the hospital. These were different times, and this was a different place. Daycare for children wasn't something that most people even considered. And when you were poor, your mother had to work just like your father. So at six years old, I would stay home by myself. I would pass the lonely hours of the day by sitting on the wooden fence that surrounded our yard. I would sing to myself and watch the people of the neighborhood in all their constant toiling.

It was never frightening, being alone and so young, but it was always frustrating. Whenever the children would play in the streets or in their yards, I would want to play with them, but I knew I couldn't. I would be left only to watch — watch and hum from my wooden perch surrounding my tent garrison of a house.

The reason I took to watching other people at such a young age was because it was really the only thing I could do. We didn't have any toys for me to play with. Not until I was ten years old did I receive my first toy: a little ball. My lack of toys and our always patched and hand-mended clothes served as a constant embarrassment to me and my sisters in our youth. Whenever someone came to our house, I would hide under the bed, ashamed about the many different colors of patches my mother had sewed into my only pair of pants.

In the evening, the girls would return from school, a magical place in my mind. They would greet me dully, and we would go inside to begin our nightly chores. From the time I could walk, Mom taught me many things about how to care for a home. I learned how and had to help with cleaning the house, cooking, washing my clothes, and taking care of my own needs in almost every respect. If I did a poor job of washing, she would make me do it again. Idle time was rare.

"If you have nothing to do," Mom would say, "then you're wasting precious time."

Sometime later every evening, Mom would return home, and on good days, we would eat meat. On bad days — like the days when Father went missing in the mountain — we would eat doughy bread, if anything at all.

The fifth day of Dad's absence passed in harrowing silence. One of the most I vivid memories of my childhood is that of my mother sitting in the corner of our broad and open house, saying nothing, staring off into space. It was entirely unlike Mother to sit still for long, but I seem to remember her wallowing through the evening hours in this way until it was time for her to turn down our beds.

By the sixth day, Mom could do little but cry.

"He only wanted to make some extra money for his family," Mom pled, her sight turned to the heavens. "He only wanted to provide for us, to feed us, please God. And now we don't know what happened to him."

We were all seated around the table near the stove, our arms crossed in front of us, lumped in the place where our dinner bowls would rest whenever there was money. Mom sobbed now into her hands, her shoulders heaving.

"Maybe he got lost," Enkhee said, shrugging.

Naraa picked at her teeth with her tiniest finger. "Or maybe some wild animal ate him."

Mom erupted into a wild bawl. She pulled me — her nearest child — to her chest, squeezing me to the point of breathlessness. For a time, she rocked in her seat as she held me to her. She sobbed. Her breathing stuttered. She quivered. And then, all at once, her crying ceased. I looked up at Mom, expecting to see her looking a mess. But instead, what I saw was a woman totally at peace, a woman who had pulled herself together for the sake of her children.

"He will come," she said, as certain as I had ever heard her sound. Her left eye boggled in her head, green and mismatched to her right, which was brown.

Mom had a fake left eye. At night, she would take it out and keep it in a glass jar filled with water. The story goes that, sometime before I was born, Mom and Dad were leaving the countryside, Mom being seven and a half months pregnant with my older brother, Tsogoo, and in need of medical attention. For several weeks, the village had been passing around a terrible pinkeye infection. Mom contracted one of the worst cases. Pregnancy is not the ideal time for infection when you live in Mongolia, so Father decided to take his wife to the city to get help. It took them many days of traveling from our village to Ulaanbaatar.

En route, Mom's infection got worse. There was a point when she couldn't even open her eyes, they were so swollen.

By the time they reached the city, Mom was in wretched condition. They would have a bit of luck, however, because a pair of doctors from Russia happened to be visiting the hospital in Ulaanbaatar at the time. They advised that, given Mom's condition, it would be best for the mother and baby if they removed the eye. Right after the surgery, Mom gave birth to a baby boy.

So Mom was left with a baby and no left eye. Dad bartered with the Russian doctors for a glass eye, but unfortunately, they didn't have any on hand, so it wasn't until they arrived back home in Russia that they could actually complete the order. After the order finally went through, Mom received a bright, shiny, green eye. She plugged it into her skull, and there it had swirled in contrast to her natural brown eye ever since.

"He will come," she repeated.

For as long as I can remember, I have loved the story of Buddha. Organized religion was generally frowned upon in Mongolia in those days, but the stories nevertheless passed from ear to ear, the relics remaining hidden among the populace. I remember many vivid pictures of Buddha, their colors mesmerizing. I was drawn to them from quite a young age.

I guess my mother saw something of the zealot in me because she agreed to allow me to go to my Aunt Amaa's house to learn of the Buddha and his ways. Aunt Amaa was Dad's youngest sister, and she was a skinny woman of middle age. I remember her short, dark hair.

Amaa was remarkably outspoken in her religiousness, given the political climate. And she practiced what she preached, caring for her two daughters and four grandchildren all in the same poor home. Her only possessions of value were her Buddha statues, which she would keep in a locked chest above her fireplace.

It was Amaa who would first teach me the ritualistic way to pray. We would kneel before her biggest Buddha statue and offer candy and money. She would always end the prayer by settling into a throw pillow to tell me stories of the Buddha. One afternoon, while my sisters were away at school, Aunt Amaa even let me clean her shrine and polish her lovely statues. I took great care and time with the task, dusting and shining every inch of her shrine with a delicate woolen cloth.

"Oh my, Otgo," she said as she stood over my handiwork. "You did a wonderful job."

I beamed.

"You didn't change one thing," Aunt Amaa said, placing her hands on her hips. "Everything's in its right place."

I blushed and pawed at the edge of her shrine, examining my own glorious work.

"You can clean my Buddhas any time you like!"

On exactly the seventh day after Father had first left into the mountain, I heard, from far away, someone calling our names. It was night, the air crisp, the dust of the roads deadened by the late afternoon's rain.

"Enkhee!" came the voice. "Naraa!"

Naraa brightened up, her brown eyes shimmering in the candlelight. Without a word, she ran in the direction of the voice. I followed as quickly as my little legs could carry me. I was six and a half years old, and I remember this day as if it were yesterday.

"Did you hear?" I hollered as we passed Enkhee. "Did you hear?"

I didn't wait for my sister's response. Instead, I tore through the front gate, chasing Naraa toward the dark horizon.

"Dad!" Naraa howled. She reached him first, barreling into his arms.

(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "Twisted Tales"
by .
Copyright © 2017 Otgo Waller.
Excerpted by permission of Balboa Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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