by Luis Urrea
We started across, looking down as we walked. The stream was still running with water from the rains, and we all paused on the stone bridge above it. The whole thing was clotted with tadpoles. The shallows were black with them, and they squirmed furiously in the water. I picked up a dirt clod. I wanted to drop it in one pool and separate the tadpoles to get an idea of how many there were. When the clod hit, the splash threw fistfuls of them onto the shore, where they thrashed.
“Oh shit!” Rico yelled. “You’re killin’ ’em!”
We barreled down the slope to the water’s edge, on a tadpole rescue mission. Diana and Laura stood above us, laughing.
“Well,” I said, “I can’t let ’em die just because I did something stupid!”
“Right!” cried Rico. “Stupid!”
It took us about ten minutes to collect them all and get them back in the water.
We washed the heads of eighty kids that day.
When Diana, Rico, and I walked back to Laura’s, it was misty. The air was a pale gray; the hills were invisible behind the gauze of water. Laura’s mother had set a small table on the patio in front of the house. Everyone was waiting for Laura’s uncle to arrive with Jell-O.
We were seated—I got the chair beside Laura’s (she held my hand under the table), and Diana got a chair, too. Rico sat on a broken kerosene heater. I suddenly realized that was it. No one else was sitting with us.
Everybody fretted about that Jell-O.
Her mother brought out little bowls of chicken and potato salad, and she put a small plop of each on our plates. The neighbor kids pressed in around us and watched us eat, fascinated by the party. We ate the family’s only food, and Laura’s mother couldn’t join us, nor could her friends. Laura was radiant. This was her big day.
In the background, I heard her mother mentioning “tío” (uncle) and “el Jell-O.”
We tried to make the chicken last, but it was gone very fast.
Laura’s mother cleared the table. She stalled as long as she could, and had apparently given up on the uncle. She hurried inside to get the cake when—suddenly!—the uncle appeared in a cloud of dust. The gathered kids rippled around us, excited. He leapt out of his car and threw a bowl of red Jell-O on the table.
Laura’s mother brought out the cake. She had baked it there, in a paper-and-wood-burning oven. It was partially collapsed, and the yellow frosting was speckled with tiny black flakes of soot. The kids whispered as we cut the cake that they couldn’t eat. Laura was smiling. I was about to take a bite when I glanced at Rico and Diana. They were silent, staring out at the drizzle. It was billowing, curtainlike, furling. We all sat there looking out. The small vines of the distant orchards clung to their white stakes; the red clay tiles of the tilemaker across the road lay on newspaper, soft in the wet. Dogs hunched together under trees like small herds of cows, trying to stay dry. Children all around us coughed.
Laura’s fingers were cold and silky.
Diana’s eyes slowly brimmed with tears; I watched them roll over the edge of her lower lids and fall. The whole world stilled around us. Rico looked at me. I looked at Laura’s face. The cold had made pink spread across her cheeks. She was wearing perfume. On her face, there was the slightest of smiles. Nobody said a word. It began to rain.
CHAPTER FIVE
Good Friday
A boy named Sergio fell down and broke his wrist. He had been playing jump rope with a small group of kids, and they pulled the rope tight beneath him, catching his ankle and throwing him to the ground. His wrist twisted softly near his hand; he was pale gray with shock, and his skin was cold. His mother was not home, and we had to take him to town in one of our vans, looking for a clinic. Since this was Good Friday, most of Tijuana was locked up for the day—and many of the stores and offices would be closed all weekend. The one clinic we knew to be open was right around the corner, but it had a fearsome reputation in the neighborhood. Here, we call it allegations of malpractice. There, the people only had rumors: a boy with a broken arm had been taken in there by his mother. He was taken down the hall and put to sleep. When she was allowed to go back to him, an hour later, she was horrified to find his arm gone. They had amputated it.
We had Sergio lying on blankets in the back of the van; Sharleen, one of the faithful old-timers, held him in her arms. She had an ice pack pressed to his wrist, and she tried to steady him as we banged over the rough streets. Still, whenever we hit a pothole, I could hear Sergio groan. I kept directing the driver around corners, to all the barrio clinics and pharmacies I could remember, but they were all closed.
A massive Great Dane with a strangely mottled coat blocked the road. He was guarding the door of a pharmacy. Next door, we were thrilled to see a small clinic. It was open. The lichen-covered dog looked at us balefully as we dragged Sergio in.
The doctor’s name, interestingly enough, was Dr. Virgen.
He looked at Sergio’s wrist and said, “Bad break.” He looked at it, felt it, looked in Sergio’s eyes. All the while, Sergio whimpered incoherently. “I can do nothing without an X-ray,” Dr. Virgen said. We couldn’t budge him; a break like this could not be played with, and he was right. It was just that the town was shut down, and Sergio was getting worse. The doctor got on the phone and called around town. He found us a hospital in downtown Tijuana—it was open only for another hour. He repacked Sergio’s wrist in ice and rubberized wrappings, and we sped off again.
When we carried Sergio into the hospital, the nurse took one look at him and said, “His wrist is broken!”
Sergio sagged sideways and vomited.
We were the last people out the door of the hospital. We got back to the Virgen Clinic, and the doctor looked at the X-ray, nodding. No matter what language they speak, it seems all doctors favor the same cryptic, stoic hemming and hawing and lip-pursing. They remind me of priests.
“I will set it,” he said.
However, of course, there was a complication. Nobody had found Sergio’s mother. There was no one to give consent to the medical work. “It’s a problem,” said the doctor. “You see, I have to put him under with an injection. If anything happens, you are acting as his guardian. It is conceivable that he could die. You are liable.”
There wasn’t really a choice. I told him to set it.
We took Sergio down the hall to the small operating room. I got him up on the table. “You okay?” I said.
He nodded, smiling weakly. “Look,” he said, glancing past me.
I turned around. On the next table, slowly leaking blood, was a mass of tissue. We stared at it. It was dense as a small sun, and we held to it with our eyes, afraid to ask what it was, or why it was there.
I sat in the echoing waiting room, waiting. It wasn’t like an American doctor’s office. No music played, for example. No framed prints of trout fishermen or mountain vistas. No magazines, and no cozy table lamps: the lighting was from tubes in the ceiling. There weren’t even any carpets. You find very few carpets in Tijuana offices; most streets outside the center of town are either dirt or around the corner from dirt. There is no way for a carpet to survive. All the floors are linoleum. They have little more personality beyond that of a car wash.
The doctor came out and looked at me for a minute, cryptic to the end. “He’s asleep,” he said. “He’ll be out for a few hours.”
His nurse came out, then, putting on a jacket.
He said, “We’re going out to dinner.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m taking my nurse to supper. I’d like you to watch my clinic for me while I’m gone.”
I thought he was kidding.
“Don’t worry,” he said, “nothing could go wrong. We’re closed for the day, and both patients are sleeping peacefully.”
“Both patients?”
“Yes. We have a young woman in bed in the other recovery room. She’s fine. If there is any trouble at all, the clerk in the pharmacy next door will assist you.” He slipped on a jacket, saw his nurse ou
t, and patted me on the arm as he left.
“Gracias,” he said.
———
Time dripped by. There was nothing to do. I went next door; a pretty girl was watching Tom y Jerry cartoons on Channel 12. She smiled at me and said, “Qué curiosas las caricaturas.” (How curious—cute—these cartoons are.) I went back into the clinic.
Down the hall, Sergio slept. I walked to the other room and glanced in. All I could see was black hair. She was in bed, on her back, the sheet pulled up over her face. Her hair spread across the pillow. For a moment, I couldn’t tell if she was alive or dead. Then I heard her take a breath, and another, almost silent in the darkness. I backed away from her door. I waited some more.
A gurney was parked in the hall. I lay on it, trying to take a nap. But Sergio and the woman made me too nervous to sleep. I walked into the small operating room, looking in the various drawers and trays, fingering the cold equipment. The tissue from the table top was now sitting in a Gerber baby food jar.
Magnetic curiosity drew me to it, though I was afraid to look. I tried to walk away, but found I couldn’t leave the thing be; I had to look at it and figure it out. I picked up the jar—yellowish fluid, mixed with pale blood, swirled within. The flesh was red and gray, with tiny white blobs in it. Not horrible. Worse in the telling than in the seeing. I turned it over; plumes of blood curled against the glass.
I heard a sob.
The woman in the back room drew a hitching breath. I rushed to her door and stood, looking in at her. She had pulled the sheet down from her eyes, but she kept the rest of her face covered. Huge brown eyes with a thick fringe of black lashes. As I got closer, I could see the beads of her tears all across her bottom lashes.
Stupidly, I said, “Are you all right?”
She nodded.
“Can I help you?”
She shook her head.
“Would you like a drink of water?”
She shook her head.
“Do you need some Kleenex?”
She shook her head. Another sob. I was panicked, unable to help.
“Can I get you a blanket?” I offered.
She shook her head.
I stood there for another moment, then hurried from her room and ran over to the pharmacy. The girl looked up at me and smiled at me again. The television was blaring disco music. “She’s crying!” I said. “The woman in the back room woke up, and she’s crying. What do I do?”
The girl nodded. “Yes,” she said. “She’s sad.”
I thought, That’s it?
Finally, she said, “She’s been sick. Her husband is at work, and we couldn’t find him. Her mother’s not at home. She’s alone. She had a baby inside. It died in her, and el doctor had to take it out today. It’s still back in the operating room, I think. They put it in a jar.” She smiled reassuringly. “I think she’s all right. She’s just alone and sad.”
I stepped to the window. Outside, a ’68 Chevy Impala was running over a long-flattened cat. The cat was stiff, and its legs kicked as the car drove across its flanks—almost running, even in death. And the world seemed overwhelmingly dark to me that day. The young mother’s sobs took root in my heart. They continue to grow there because on Good Friday I held her broken little savior in my hand with no reverence, only mild curiosity.
And come Easter, there would be no resurrection from the jar.
CHAPTER SIX
Pamplonada:
A Fire in Tecate
… not only underground are the minds of men
eaten by maggots.
—Antler
It was a noble experiment. For ten years, beginning in 1979, the town of Tecate, Baja California, sponsored a running of the bulls inspired by Hemingway’s much-loved event in Pamplona, Spain. Pamplonada can be roughly translated as “Pamplonarama.” Tecate is Tijuana’s sweeter sister, a small border city that is mostly known as the home of Tecate beer. Most border towns have a twin on the other side, and Tecate is no exception. However, across the border, the hamlet of Tecate, California, U.S.A., consists of an evangelical center, a convenience store, and a parking lot. Down the road a bit, at Barret Junction, you can get some pretty good fried fish caught up in the reservoir.
Tecate is clearly not the sleazy and steàmy border we hear about. When you consider that the border is two thousand miles long, it stands to reason that there can’t be a Sodom in every port. Juárez and Tijuana have eternally stained the entire frontier. For example, if you head due east on I-8, you’ll reach Calexico, California. Across the border is its twin, Mexicali. Mexicali is ugly, mean, dry, and hot—a town of rough norteño farmers and truck haulers trying to make a go of it in a desert. Aside from some dope hauls and the occasional gunplay, Mexicali has absolutely nothing to offer in the way of highprofile “border” excitement. Farther east is the Arizona city of Douglas, and its little sister, Agua Prieta (Dark Water). Low-key.
Believing that an adventurous event would attract gringos and enliven Tecate’s somnambulistic reputation, the town fathers chose the running of the bulls as a sure thing. It was doomed from the start. Not only is the Mexican border not Spain, but a hundred thousand drunk sailors, bikers, cowboys, and college kids is no army of Hemingways. The story of one of the last Pamplonadas reveals what went wrong.
The pace is slow in Tecate, and the people are more friendly than in the big city. The small park in the middle of town is furnished with a tiled gazebo. The city fathers have rigged it with speakers that play music all day for the folks who loiter on the benches. Tecate is a rural town, built in a hilly region long thought by local Indians to hold mystical powers. One conical hill nearby is greatly loved by UFO aficionados. Just south of town, past the Tecate beer plant, a small river floods in winter and blocks access to the main street, frustrating ranchers in souped-up pickup trucks.
During the Pamplonada, this bucolic scene is fractured by an army of gringos from San Diego and Los Angeles and swarms of louts from Tijuana and Mexicali. The prospect of seeing hundreds of drunks being pursued by angry bulls really appealed to me. The year before, an American had actually died (anti-climactically, from a heart attack), and street legend was full of unimaginably ferocious gorings and tramplings.
Evidence suggests that the bulls were in as much danger as the runners. On the same day that hapless gringo died, runners were seen ganging up on the bulls, kicking their legs out from under them and dog-piling on them. (As it turned out, the bulls were mostly rangy little yearlings.) A couple of the bulls were kicked silly, and the drunks branded them with cigarettes.
In an interesting twist, the organizers of the Pamplonada had decided in favor of the animals: for their protection, only older, larger bulls would run. That did it—I was going, and I was rooting for the bulls.
Friday, August 14
I was with my wild-eyed American friend, Mike, who had been living at an orphanage south of Tecate. We drove from Tijuana along the Mexican route—a two-lane highway that skirts the border and meanders through attractive backlands full of farms spread over low green hills. When we pulled into Tecate, a thin pale rainbow stood straight up from the brewery.
An orphanage in the interior had invited us to stay with them. It was one of my favorite spots in the world—a wide valley nestled between mountains and high desert hills, with a sprawling orphanage compound on a small farm tucked between a usually dry river and a cattle ranch. The property was once the site of an ancient Indian village, and prehistoric grinding stones could still be seen, bowls worn into the sides of boulders.
The kids knew where to dig for artifacts. One boy showed me some pieces of clay pottery. “Can you find some pieces for me?” I asked.
“Sure,” he said. “Will you pay me for it?”
“How much?”
“A dollar.”
I gave him the money, and he ran up the hill. In about a half hour, he returned with a coffee can full of fragments.
Less remarkable, but still of interest: a blue Ford Falcon statio
n wagon half buried in the riverbed. The left front fender, half of the grille, and the driver’s side of the windshield stuck out of the sand at an angle. One of the winter floods had dragged it out of the back country and buried it with powerful disdain. There used to be a small house near this site, but the river had washed it away.
As we drove through the orphanage gates, the children stormed out of their building. Their eternal struggle with American names was evident as they shouted, “Mai! Mai!” Night was falling. Mike settled down and cooked chili in his van. The children went back inside to eat their supper. I could hear them saying grace. A group of Americans was camping above the orphanage.
When Mike and I were ready to eat our chili, two of the older orphan girls stood outside the van with a tape recorder, playing tapes of Mexican ballads for us and singing along with them.
Later.
I sat in one of Mike’s lawn chairs under a light pole, bare feet in the gravel, digging with my toes. Immense black ants sauntered across my feet, pushing the hairs around. Some of the gringo kids wandered around the farm in groups, afraid to brave the night alone.
A bunch of them collected at the leaky pipe near the chicken coops (where the boys kept ducks, too, and a pair of baby hawks, and an exhausted little rattlesnake). They went crazy every time one of the insatiable desert bugs got them:
“Ow! I just got bit!”
“Prob’ly a scorpion.”
“Ow!”
“Not again!”
“Yeah! Like six times! It’s all over me!”
“Is it, like, flying, or … crawling?”
Ironically, within the hour, one of their chaperones—the wife of their pastor—stepped on a scorpion and received a very painful surprise.
A fantastic tilework of dark clouds, backlit by a full moon, spread across the high desert like a disk, a hinged lid closing. The light atop the pole was attracting a swirling ball of desperate moths, crane flies, mosquitoes, and other frantic night fliers. From far off, I could hear—or, more than hear, feel—the ping and tsch-tsch of bats homing in on the insects. They dove into the globes of light and pulled straight out in stunning vertical power climbs.
