Tijuana at Five

Words woke me and I looked up through the smell of car mustiness and petrol to a smiling moustache on a strange face. I was still curled in the darkness of the backseat and didn’t know if it had been on a long drive or if we had arrived in Mexico. I didn’t know if I was awake but I did know that we were sitting still now with the engine still vibrating. The moustache man wore dark glasses under a slouchy light brown military kind of hat with a shiny bill. I saw brown skin and a smile but he was just a blur with a background of glaring lights against a pale wall. The words were drunkenly slurred with head shakes and americano a lot of times. The moustache man started shaking his head with his hand outstretched to Heppy in the front passenger seat of the car. He had stopped smiling, then started saying go go, while gesturing with a waved hand for us to move along.

There was a bad smell but I closed my eyes as the car started driving again. I thought to myself that we must be in Mexico. The car bumped over the road, rocking me into comforting thoughts of Big Mama and I fell back into brown darkness with red blurs passing through my closed eyelids.

A scream jerked my eyes open and through the window I saw the strained muscles of a white horse’s curved neck. There were black reins pulled tight that lead back back to a high horned saddle. A man sat in the saddle in tight trousers, an open short jacket and a wide sombrero with a chin strap, and he screamed out again to the sky. The horse rose up pawing its hoofs in the air. The man fiddled with his side, pulled back his jacket and pulled out a silver gun from a cream coloured holster to shoot three loud pops into the sky, The shots echoed in my ears but I could hear Jesse and Heppy in the front seat saying, shit a couple of times. Next to me, my mother and Aunt Ruby grabbed each other for protection. I put my nose to the window. Behind the man on the horse and his open mouth was a stark white church steeple spotlighted against a black sky. My mother tried to pull me back from the window but I shook her off. This was something.

Then I took in the soft guitars and a marimba that smoothly allowed singers to croon and I still remember the blended smells of charcoal, corn tortillas and horse-shit tobacco while glaring bulbs of white and colours hung in a sad gayness from thick black cords. My head had twisted around the car to hear, see, smell all around us. I sat up better to see more. 

The gun went off again twice as I watched people slowly walking in all directions, going into places, the church, some buildings across the street, some waving at us. The man on the horse reared up in front of the church again and deeply tolling bells sounded lovely with the music that was played on the street. The street was cobbled and rutted with a dull gloss that reflected lights in what must have been mud. Saddled horses stood down-headed waiting for something. They were tied to posts that held up buildings.

Jesse drove slowly forward with people in the headlights laughing, talking, solemn, gesturing, eating from things in their hands, drinking from bottles in their hands. Noise was all about us as we moved slowly forward in Jesse’s old Chevy. Hands beat on the hood by smiling, sometimes laughing men. Women in self-made shadows of shawls moved more intentionally. Other women waved with calls and with breasts pushed up in low cut blouses. Their long dark hair framed dark lips and big elliptical eyes emblazoned by dark make up. A long stretch of women dressed like that with big smiles and nodding heads passed us as we moved forward in jerks as Jesse and Heppy mumbled in the front seat. My mother said something that I couldn’t hear and they all laughed.

Then all was dark again along this street, except where people were gathered inside places and naked lights played at happinesses. The smells of grilling meats and corn tortillas at outside stands made me so hungry I turned to ask my mother if we were going to eat. She said something to me but there was a sudden burst of horn with guitar music and singing letting out passion that caught my attention and I turned to see a group of men with guitars dressed like the guy on the horse approaching us. My mother slapped my head and asked if I was listening to her. I didn’t know what to say to her so I just sat there while the music strummed and the singing went on outside my window.

My mother told Heppy to do something about the musicians and he got out of the car and gave them a couple of dollars and waved them off but they played louder until he gave them a couple more dollars, then they left but kept playing and singing. This was something.

Heppy told Jesse something that I didn’t hear because I was paying attention to the music, but they all laughed as I smelled whiskey and peppermint gum and the mustiness with and petrol gas of the Ford. Jesse pulled over a bit more and parked. Heppy, my step father, opened my door to point at a dog with three legs dying in a mud gutter in the glare of red and yellow lights. His blood was still flowing. They all laughed at my revulsion, pulling me into a restaurant on the other side of the dog that I stepped over with his eyes looking elsewhere.

The restaurant smells made me hungry and I forgot about the dog in the street. It was bright. There were calendars with paintings of women with low cut blouses raising rifles in the air or holding wounded men with cactus in the background hanging on the walls. Everybody in the paintings had sombreros on and it looked like hot weather.

We sat at a table with a dirty table cloth and a waiter came and took orders. He came back smiling and brought us a heaping of tortilla chips in a woven basket, some plates, napkins and utensils. Heppy scooped a chip into a little earthenware bowl with a green sauce and offered it to me. I put the whole thing in my mouth because I had started thinking of the dog again and it burned my tongue and throat, and I vomited on the floor. My mother slapped my head as the waiter rushed over. Heppy rushed me outside to let me vomit in the street next to the three legged dog. When I finished, checking to see that I hadn’t thrown up on the dog, Heppy said he was sorry about the hot sauce.

I knew then that I would live in Mexico when I grew up.