Wrong Place, Wrong Time

Didi wanted to return to San Francisco; I wanted to stay in Mexico. Neither of us would give. I went to Guadalajara to see her off. Standing on the railway platform watching “El Mexicali” pull away with the love of my life aboard, my mind escaped to the last moments of a romantic movie I’d seen some time ago. After a passionate interlude the screen lovers parted at a train station, an agonizing separation leaving their future uncertain. As the last car wiped across the screen, it revealed the object of desire on the opposite platform. A last minute change of heart. A happy ending. The name of that film was no longer in my memory, but despite my most fervent wishes, it was not to be my movie. My movie was waiting for me back in Manzanillo.

It was late afternoon when the bus arrived, Antonio was there waiting for me, squatting on the sidewalk, tossing from one hand to the other, the pocket knife that Didi had given him. He slung my bag over his shoulder, walked me up to my little house on the hill, then ran out, on his own, and returned with tortillas and a pot of pozole. I was now in his charge, a position he was delighted to shoulder. In fact he soon moved in.

We’d met him in the Plaza not long after our

arrival in that port town. Didi was having a smoke while we waited for the cinema to open. This cute little barefoot urchin with a blocky Mayan head was scavenging for butts. He couldn’t have been more than eight or nine. The two of them chatted away in high-speed Spanish. The streets of Manzanillo met those of San Juan.

He went with us to the movie and then to a restaurant. When he was served, he grabbed his plate of chuletas, ran outside and disappeared, to come back later with the plate empty. “I shared it with my friends.” When he saw the question in our faces, he explained, “Vagabondos share everything.”

Over the next few weeks he told us he was from Culiacan. His father he never knew. His mother married a nasty man who beat him. He has a little sister. They were playing at the railroad tracks one day and she got her arm caught between cars. It was severed. Antonio ran.

In Guadalajara he had joined with some forty vagabondos and robbed a bank. The smallest of them had climbed in the night depository.

When he moved in with me in Los Cerros, a working class neiborhood of small adobe houses on a hill overlooking the harbor, the neighbors were nervous. They told me he was a well known thief and they didn’t want him around. I told them his sad story. Some of the women were moved and tried to get him to write his mother. “Mi Hijo, nobody loves you like your mother.” Others thought I was being suckered.

One afternoon there was a big commotion outside. I ran out and saw Antonio cornered and getting beat up. This guy said he had stolen his watch; Antonio was screaming and crying and denying everything. I jumped in the fray and dragged him into the house. Slamming the door and windows, I told him to cry and wail as I thrashed the pillow loudly with a broom.

The neighbors were appeased. Antonio said he never took the guy’s watch. I told him that as long as he was a professional thief, he was going to be blamed—for anything anyone ever lost.

What about school? I registered him and got him a uniform but that lasted only a couple days. It was an absurd idea. Even at eight, his lifestyle was already set; his future was grim.

I bought him a shoeshine kit. He snuck onto a ship and every Japanese sailor off that rig had shiny spit polished shoes. He took me to the movies. The next day, however, formidable looking old guys of the shoeshine syndicato ran him off. He ranted and railed and said he was going to organize the vagabondos to pro. I was relieved not to hear any more about fighting for democracy and freedom. Los syndicatos, even I knew, were drug dealers and very tough guys.

One of the women of the neighborhood came over and told me that Antonio was spreading nasty rumours about me. “He told my son that he is your man.” I laughed. “No joke. He is telling people that you are his woman, that you two have a carnal relationship.” I just could not take that one seriously. “My husband is going to hang that boy by his neck if he ever says another thing about you. He is an ingrate!”

“He’s just a kid.” I tried to calm her. “He can say what he wants.”

At the end of a long waterfront pier was a nightclub which featured a loudspeaker on its roof. Nightly the strains of “Your eyes are the eyes of a woman in love…” wafted up to Los Cerros. I’d heard that song before in a hotel in Darjeeling. Hearing it again in Manzanillo, made me think that I was in the right place at the right time.

Not long after the end of Antonio’s shoeshine career, the nightclub on the pier was robbed. The thieves had entered through a small vent.

“Let’s go celebrate, ” said Antonio. We took a bus to one of the beaches north of town. Antonio was terrified of the ocean; this part of the coast was famous for its undertow: las ondas verdes, green waves. But I promised not to go in.

It was a hot hot day. Not too many people at the beach. I wandered near the edge to chill my feet. The water was no higher than my knees when the waves suddenly sucked the sand out from under my soles. Suddenly I was out of my depth; there was nothing under my feet. It did not help to swim; I was getting towed out. Antonio was buying a popsicle. I managed to call out “Ayudame!” Help. He waved at me. The beach receded. I tried to body surf in on a wave, but I was not nearly that good a swimmer. The ocean smashed down on me and ground me into the sandy bottom and churned me around so that I no longer knew which way was up. For a moment I glimpsed Antonio upside down before the water sucked me back into itself. Then I saw Antonio up to his chest in the roiling sea with his arms held out to me. We gripped hands. He held me there, unable to pull me out. He shouted. Eventually, others came and dragged both of us out. The ocean had stripped me of my bathing suit. No one seemed to know CPR. Gasping and choking, I flopped around naked on the beach like a dying fish.

The cops came. When they were loading me on a stretcher into the ambulance, one said to me “Hold on to your purse here. Watch out for this kid. He’s a thief.” They wanted to take me to the hospital but I begged to go home.

Our little room was bright with votive candles. Antonio wept; on his knees he prayed and vowed that he would never rob or steal again. “Antonio, “ I sputtered. “This is not your fault. If this is about your sins, how come you didn’t drown?”

The next day I was breathing better but every part of my body was in pain. I was bent over like a hairpin. The neighbors called in a masseur, a huge bear of a guy who made me stand in front of him back to him. From behind he grabbed my long hair and yanked upward. I screamed but stood upright again.

As soon as I could move I began to make my way home, but Mexico was not quite finished with me.

In Guadalajara, I was having breakfast at a café, when I read that my friend Carmen had been in a car accident. Her husband was dead and she was paralyzed from the neck down. Their new puppy had run out from the wreck and had been killed on the road.

I had first met Carmen when I came to Mexico several months ago and had stayed with her. She and her husband were expatriots with a successful business exporting the products of local artisans to the States. She had been extremely generous to me and had taken extraordinary care of me when I came down with hepatitis.

She was now in a woeful state in a convalescence hospital, hanging face down in a complicated medical contraption, barely conscious. I promised to help with her two little boys who were staying with their cook in Tlaquepaque.

Each morning I would take a bus from my hotel to Tlaquepaque to fetch the boys and bring them to see Carmen. Each night I would get back to the hotel totally exhausted.

One night when I came back looking forward to nothing so much as the oblivion of sleep, I ran into Antonio. I was not happy to see him, and scolded him sternly for following me.

He was, I knew, dying to come back with me to the States. It wasn’t that I didn’t think about it, but I could not feature him growing up in San Francisco. In every one of my scenarios he comes to a bad end, joining some gang and be shot or be busted…be another juvenile deliquent on Mission Street…

“Don’t worry.” he was saying. “I won’t be any trouble. I already have a job. I help people with their bags. Look I made money.” He held out a fistful of bills.

I put my hand on his big blocky head and led him into my room. I wanted to cry; I wanted to disappear. I wanted all of Mexico to vanish. Antonio said again he was not going to be any trouble for me; he was going to stay with his uncle. This uncle was a photographer and he would be very happy to see him. He took the phone and dialed the uncle’s number and talked to him. The problem was I could hear the dial tone the whole time.

He went into the bathroom and I heard a long whistle of amazement. He had probably never seen such fancy fixtures. “You want to take a shower?” I could hear him messing around with the faucets, followed by a yelp. He probably didn’t know how to adjust the temperature. “Do you want any help?”

“No, I know how to use the shower!” Macho to the end. When he emerged from the bathroom, he was beet red.

The next morning, as usual, I left early for the hospital. When I came back he was gone. I looked for him, called hospitals, and police stations all over Guadalajara. I never saw him again. Now he would be over fifty years old.