The street beneath my apartment houses a karate school,
strangely, and a woman who lives and works out of a small ventacita. I pass by regularly to see her stretched out
horizontally in her pink, flimsy nightgown, her doughy legs facing me. She is
Mexican, to be sure, but looks as if she hasn’t seen a day in the sun. Daily, I
find myself walking the street, and each time, I am alarmed when I see her. You
would think by now that I would grow accustomed to seeing someone napping in
their house for the public to see, but I haven’t…yet.
I live in an area called Colonia
___________ with the local yucatecans, mothers nursing their babies on the
porch, children running from corner to corner counting in Spanish, and kids
coming to and from the karate school across the street. My apartment
conveniently sits on top of a chain smoker, who I haven’t yet identified, and I
am assuming is male (sorry, men). The smell wafts into the chamber of my
laundry room where my gas tank and water heater are located. I unlock the heavy
door, looking around and down through the spaces in my cement floor on a
day-to-day basis checking to see if things have caught on fire yet. If I ever
meet him (or perhaps, her), I will let her know the disservice she did to me in
my first few weeks that ensued in manic paranoia.
Regarding smokers, I have learned one must use delicate tact
with a dose of I’m-sorry-I-am-allergic so as not to light any flames. I have
already thought about the conversation I will have when I will thank my
neighbor for cutting a year off of my life while living here. The point is:
smoking is bad for you. And I don’t like to do bad things. Because in the
South, people don’t do bad things.
I was raised in Texas where the earth is flat and dry, and
the skies are round, open, beautifully polluted and stained with dark oranges and pinks. People go out of their way to let you in on one secret: everything
is better in Texas. To be truthful, I can’t exclude myself from that population
of people because I leave the house in Texas t-shirts and introduce myself as
such: “Hola, me llamo Margarita. Soy de Texas.” Usually, I get blank stares
from Mexicans who either love Texas and have family there (always in Houston)
or who hate immigration laws, Texans, and the President at large. Either of
these reactions merit some beginning of a conversation where a new friendship
can grow or be lost forever. As far as those little things go, I am banking on
growing some during my nine month stay in Mexico, as if I could plant them outside
my apartment to greet me each morning and tell me that I was going to have a
good day. Unfortunately, I have cement sidewalks that heat up to 1000 degrees
Celsius, and the closest thing to dirt is the abandoned house down the road
with rusty pipes lining the roofs and overgrown colonies of ants.
So. For now—I have decided to write. Everyday, I will walk down my pink, tile
stairs facing a vacant apartment, and I will listen to the water bombs that
reverberate off the cement building, rejoicing, bubbling, bursting. I most
likely won’t be greeted by pretty flowers or friends telling me the day is
courting my favor, but I will be blessed by my blue mini van. It is parked
valiantly, half on the curb and half on the street, and it must feel similarly
to what I feel, straddling two places, awkwardly. I won’t feel sorry for it’s
Y2K appearance that yells soccer-mom-with-7-catholic-kids, and I won’t allow
self-pity a parking space in my own heart.
I will live the life that has dropped me here, unknowingly,
miraculously. I want to cooperate with this new thing being birthed inside of me
and around me, open my heart to God and others, and practice gratitude for all that is instead of
focusing on all that isn’t.
I am sharing it with you all because afterall—happiness is
only real when shared….I think, at least.
