Madre, can you spare a peso?*

Omar (on the left) and Manny (the other one) work at the trailer park.

Manny's worked at the park since before I got here. How Omar came on the scene, I'm not really sure. In the five years since I've been here, we've gone through a string of workers. Manny's dad worked here for years until he got pissed off and walked off the job. We had some kind of hot gangsta dude for a a very brief time. He took to lazing around rather quickly and was pretty useless. One guy's work schedule kept getting interrupted with stints in drug/alcohol rehab. Just before the gangsta dude we had Daniel and Martin but Martin got scared off when he accidentally tripped the neighbor's alarm. Daniel is delivering bottled water which is a pretty good job.

Suddenly last summer Omar showed up.

Poor Omar! He has got to be one of the shyest people I've ever met. Muy timido! He would ride around in the truck with Manny looking like a scared rabbit. Manny would yell "shut up Omar!" in english (callete! in espanol) and Omar would giggle. We discovered that Omar was married to a woman who had something like four kids from a previous relationship and she and Omar added three more to the bunch. Not too long after Omar started working at the park he and his wife split up and he moved in with Manny.

One day Omar came to my porch alone and sat in one of my camp chairs. I was at the computer and could see him through the window. I went outside and Omar rattled off a memorized script which I could barely understand except for two words "pagar" and "sabado." I've been hit up for loans many times so I figured that's what he wanted. "Cuanto?" I asked. "Dos cientos." I went inside and scrounged up 200 pesos and gave it to him. Again he repeated the script - he'll pay me on sabado (which is payday). Saturday rolled around and there was Omar with my 200 pesos.

We developed a routine. Mid week he would come over and sit in a camp chair. I'd go outside. That's when I would see his wife waiting for him on the side of the road. She'd come to Omar asking for money for the kids; he'd come to me asking for a loan. One time he only wanted 100 pesos. So after that I'd go outside and hold up one finger on one hand and two fingers on the other. One or two? Mostly it was two. I'd give him his money and every Saturday he'd pay me back. Manny had taught Omar that if you want to be helped by the americanos, you have got to pay them back or they will cut you off.

Now that I'm living outside the park, I haven't seen much of Omar and Manny. However the other morning they came by to hit up Banco Madre. Manny put the 5-gallon water bottle (garrafon) on the dispenser for me then Omar rattled off his script. Manny said he needed money too. I feigned shock. Tu tambien Manuel? Si, madre, si. So I went and got two 200 peso notes and handed them to the boys. Omar giggled the whole time.

I've seen a lot of changes in Manny over the past few years. He's grown into a responsible man who's looking for a good Christian woman. From what I understand, Omar tries as much as he can to help out his wife and kids and once a week goes to her place and spends the night there. (Hopefully just visiting and not making more babies!)

Manny and Omar - I couldn't have asked for nicer adopted sons.

*this is for Bill S.

How To Write

A month gap in blogging mostly due to settling into my 8-month house-sitting gig. But also transcription work picked up. And I've been writing a novel. I don't know how people can write more than one piece at a time. For instance, Cheryl Strayed wrote her book Wild while also penning various essays and doing the Dear Sugar advice column over at The Rumpus. Luis Alberto Urrea dusts off old pieces while working on new. I guess a lot of writers do that but that's hard for me. I started another book about life in a trailer park only this trailer park is in Mexico and not southern Arizona but there's this novel that's been nagging me to get on it so I dropped the trailer park book for that. And I kind of dropped blogging too.

There are a lot of books out there on how to write. I own a few: Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird, Robert Olen Butler's From Where You Dream, Stephen King's On Writing, Ray Bradbury's Zen in the Art of Writing, some books on screenwriting like Your Screenplay Sucks by William Akers, and books specifically on memoir writing (Judith Barrington's Writing the Memoir). Each book offers at least one piece of advice I've latched onto. For instance Anne's shitty first draft and Ray's writing should be fun. Most writers advise writing every day. Stephen King goes even further and recommends 1,000 words a day. Maria Doria Russell (Doc) wrote on facebook that she'd only written something like 459 words that day but 6 of them were great (I'm paraphrasing because I can't find the exact post). If I remember correctly when I saw Luis in Tucson he said he went long periods without putting pen to paper but the words were percolating in his head so that when he did sit down to write, he wrote muy rapido, almost like transcribing the story as he saw it in his mind's eye.

One of the biggest impediments to writing is our internal critic. In the NY Times series Writers on Writing, Kent Haruf (Plainsong) says he writes in the coal room in the basement of their house.

It's the old notion of blinding yourself so you can see. So you can see differently, I mean. I remove my glasses, pull a stocking cap down over my eyes, and type the first draft single-spaced on the yellow paper in the actual and metaphorical darkness behind my closed eyes, trying to avoid being distracted by syntax or diction or punctuation or grammar or spelling or word choice or anything else that would block the immediate delivery of the story.

This is akin to Anne Lamott's shitty first draft - just write the damn thing and edit later. And Stephen King recommends that a) don't let anyone read your book while you're writing that first draft and b) after the first draft is finished, put it aside for a few months. When you begin the editing process you'll be seeing it with fresh eyes.

There's been a strange shift in the way I write from memoir to novel. With the memoir I wrote fast and furious, wanting to remember as much as possible - just get it down! - then hack away later (and I've probably hacked too much but that's another story). Every morning I got up and wrote. I was excited to be doing it. After all, I was writing about me! (two exclamation points in one paragraph is one too many, btw)

Now the novel...in a way it feels more like a chore. Kind of the way I feel about doing those saggy upper arm exercises when, really, they're not a lot of work and once I'm doing them, the time flies and I feel very virtuous afterward. However, there are ways in which the novel and the memoir are similar: I know the main character, I know how the story begins and how it ends. Unlike the memoir, it's all the stuff in the middle I'm not too sure about. But here's the weird part. When I sit down to write I may not know where the book is going next - does she have an affair with the nice man who's given her shelter? - but the book seems to know where it's going. I sit down and type out the next scene with no forethought. It just happens. A scene in this case is only a few pages long and I'm not really sure how many words that is. I don't care. I write a scene and usually stop there. But that book is always open on my laptop. Sometimes I'll go back and begin the next scene. Maybe just a sentence. Maybe a whole paragraph. It doesn't seem to matter because the flow is always there.

Another difference is the ease with which I'm writing dialogue. With the memoir, I sucked at dialogue so I pretty much left it out. Maybe because I was trying to write as close to the truth as possible and that's pretty darn near impossible when you're trying to remember conversations, most of which happened while you were drinking.

And one last thing: Even when I'm not physically writing the novel, I'm thinking about it. I'm thinking about my main character. She is the last thing I think about before I fall asleep. She is always with me. I guess she's telling me how we get to the end.

Spanish Word of the Day - Peligroso

As most people know, the other day 49 bodies were found in the state of Monterrey, Mexico. They'd been decapitated, mutilated. The drug cartel Zetas claimed responsibility.

Every time something like this happens, it reinforces people's fears of traveling to Mexico. It is too dangerous (peligroso)!

In our local expat email newsletter someone posted a link to a Lonely Planet blog post about the safety of traveling in Mexico: Are Americans Safer at Home than in Mexico. I recommend the article and the comments from gringos who live and travel in Mexico. But I had to laugh at one comment by someone from Oregon who said that in Mexico they've not experienced any crime whatsoever - no burglaries, murders, etc. I so badly wanted to post a response but had a problem creating an account so I'll respond here.

No robberies or burglaries? Are you kidding me? Things are stolen all the time. But does it happen more here than in any neighborhood in the U.S. where you have the homes of wealthy people abutting homes of poor people? I'd say it's about the same. That's why people in the U.S. live in gated communities or have home security systems. Most of the thieving is of small items - shoes, shiny objects, beach chairs - but some can be major like having all the copper stripped from your home. (I know from news accounts that that is a problem in Tucson. Not sure about other parts of the U.S.)

Just the other day a friend's camouflage crocs were stolen. He always leaves his shoes outside his trailer door and, no, he didn't think the dogs had taken them. During happy hour our security guard pulled up on his bicycle and asked if we'd seen P. around, the amputee in the wheelchair, because he thinks P. stole them. Okay, so he thinks the shoes were stolen by a guy with no feet. That's possible. I guess he could've stolen them to sell. But for him to maneuver the wheelchair around all the tables and grills and planters on the patio would be quite a feat even for someone with feet.

Last night P. approached us in his wheelchair wanting to sell some pearls. "Let's see if he's wearing your crocs," I joked. He wasn't. But where's his fancy motorized wheelchair some gringo gave him? I don't know. That's probably another interesting story.

Now this brings me to our security guard. If you want someone to stay up all night patrolling the grounds, best to hire a drug addict and best if he's addicted to a speed-like drug. Our security guard's drug seems to be meth - he's got all the signs from toothlessness to skin eruptions to paranoia. I've heard a couple scary stories about our security guard from a man who's known him for years. The first story is that he tried to murder his girlfriend by burning her up in their trailer. The other story is that he was friends with a gringo who disappeared and he somehow gained possession of the gringo's possessions, his home and property.

Recently our security guard had a puppy. He tortured the puppy and the puppy was taken away. This is not the first time he's abused an animal.

Some little boys came into the park and he shot them with rocks from his slingshot. Turned out one of the boy's parents were paid guests at the park. They left in a huff. I said, "You can't go around shooting little kids just because they're playing in the park."

So that's our security guard.

As far as I know the most serious crimes committed in our little town this past snowbird season were committed by a gringo - the two counts of attempted murder by my neighbor. Oh yeah, and pedophiles. We've had our share of those and thankfully we got rid of our resident pedophile.

I'll conclude by saying Mexico is safe. Just stay away from gringos and don't piss off your security guard.

It's Over

Another snowbird season comes to an end.

Late yesterday afternoon as I sat reading in the lounge chair on my porch I was overcome with a feeling I'm not sure I ever felt before: Ecstasy. Contentment and happiness are elusive enough but ecstasy? That's a rare one.

The motor home to my right is gone. I can see the sea. I can feel a breeze. I can hear the surf. The big ugly bus in the space in front of me is gone. I can see the sea out my front porch door. I can see the sea through the front window of the trailer.

I can blast my music if I want because I have no neighbors. If friends come by and want to party, the guy next door (who tried to kill his wife) isn't here to turn on his spotlight in an effort to run them off. (In retrospect, thank goodness that's all he did.)

It was a quiet snowbird season in the park up until the last couple months. There was one emergency hospitalization in a psychiatric hospital in Hermosillo followed a week later by the neighbor trying to kill his wife along with bear spray spraying and machete-ing people. Then a friend suffered a stroke which meant another Hermosillo hospitalization.

It's no wonder then that as the last of the big rigs pulled out and the vista opened up I was overcome with joy, peace and thrilled with the return of solitude. Of course there are people I'll miss but they'll be back in October and others will arrive and we'll see what kind of dramas next year's snowbird season will bring.

Except I won't be here, in this trailer park.

I'll be in a real house just a little bit down the beach from the trailer park. At this point it's a long-term housesitting gig - the owner will be back for a couple weeks around Christmas - then I'll go back to her house until she returns for a couple months in the spring. It looks like it will be a perfect arrangement. I'll be close enough to my trailer that I can walk over here every day and water plants, feed cats, hang out, have a presence at my home so no one's tempted to break in and steal my copper wiring (which is why the house owner wants someone at her house, having returned to a home stripped of copper). And to make sure the trailer doesn't get overrun with mice and palmetto bugs (the cats should help with that).

My hope is that this summer will be more tolerable when it comes to the heat because I'll have room to spread out and won't be confined to this air conditioned box. And because the house is right on the beach, there should at least be a breeze.

This is going to be quite a change - going from this tin can to a real house, and not just for a month but for months. I didn't like home ownership because I felt isolated, preferring apartment buildings and trailer parks. So it'll be interesting to see how I feel about it now. Will I miss the park and the dramas? Or will there be a balance as I roam between the two places?

I'm excited to see how this plays out...nearly ecstatic.

New Old People

They are in their 80s or 90s now, these people who began coming to Kino Bay 30+ years ago. They came to camp, to vacation, to fish. At first they brought tents and trailers. Then they built homes.

Drinking margaritas with girlfriends whose ages range from 40 to 60 we joked that we are the new old people. We are the same ages these old farts were when they first got here. Thirty or so years from now we’ll be replaced by the new old people. On and on it goes.

Among the expat/snowbird community I swear the mean age must be 70. (Or is that median age? My data analysis days are only seven years gone but right now I can’t remember which is which. At any rate, the white people here are old.) So imagine the excitement generated when two hot guys under 80 showed up at the bar. Way under 80. Like 40. And not just hot but fun, friendly, generous and flirty. No sexual innuendos for these guys; the sexual flirtation was explicit, in your face. We drank it up. We were giggling girls. We couldn’t get enough of these guys.

Kino is not a town young Americans come to party. It is a town young Mexicans come to party – especially this week (Semana Santa) and next (Semana Diabla) and summer weekends. And most of us prefer it this way. We don’t want Kino to turn into a Rocky Point. But once in a while it is nice when boys come to town and spice up the lives of us new old women.

Florence and the [Washing] Machine

Has someone ever done you a favor but they did it wrong or not to your liking but you couldn't really say anything because they were being nice so you had to hold your tongue?

One weekend I was camping with my girlfriends (the Kamp Kittens who, when it was winter, morphed into the Kraft Kittens) and I was feeling cranky (or was that kranky?). I probably should've stayed home but I decided to be social and go. Our first morning I wanted to sleep in and be left alone but one of the women came over to my tent and presented me with a cup of coffee. How nice of her, right? But she'd put cream in my coffee and I like it black. I was polite and thanked her but all day I mumbled why the hell did she put milk in my coffee? doesn't she know how i like my coffee? why would someone do that? 


A friend of ours was dying only we didn't know it at the time. I mean, she was in her 30s so how could that be? She was single and so us women friends did what we could to take care of her. One time when she was in the hospital one of the women did her laundry and brought her bras, panties, t-shirts, things like that. The woman in the hospital bed wasn't as nice as I'd been about the coffee. "The next time you do my laundry could you please use unscented detergent?" Or she'd reprimand us because we brought the wrong underwear. When we cleaned her apartment, we had remembered to recycle, right?

The night of the wife beating I'd grabbed the only blanket I had (outside of the comforter on my bed) to throw around my friend as she hunkered down in the dirt under my trailer. Later I put it around the shoulders of one of the bear spray sprayed men. I'd given away all my other blankets during a cold spell last year including my one and only sleeping bag. This blanket had been given to me by my realtor when I moved into my house - a pretty off-white Pendleton throw. It was one of the few household items I brought with me when I left Portland.

I didn't expect to see that throw again or if I did, I figured it would be a mess - a mixture of dirt, blood and bear spray. When I got home from Tucson the blanket was on my picnic table. It was clean. It was felted. It was shrunken down to half its size. Flo, God bless her, had washed it. A 100% wool throw thrown in the washing machine. Didn't she know not to do that? Had it reappeared I probably would've bagged it up and waited for my next trip to Tucson to have it dry-cleaned. But how could I say anything? So when Flo came over I thanked her profusely.

I may give the throw another wash and then dry it in Demo's dryer to thoroughly felt it. Maybe I'll make it into...uh, what? A purse? A door mat? A bed for the cat? A pillow cover? Could I needlepoint it? Hang shells from it? Hey, Kraft Kittens, got any ideas?

All Hell Keeps Breaking Loose

I just finished typing up my version of the events for the police, the district attorney, the judge, whomever needs to see it. It was a pretty easy task because I'd run through the story of that night hundreds of times - in my mind and to other people. But there is one part I have a hard time recalling in detail. It's the part where I wasn't killed or bear spray sprayed.

The man in the RV right next door to mine tried to kill his wife. What would you do if you heard your friend screaming? Police always say domestic violence calls are the most dangerous and they warn the public to stay clear and let the police do their job. But the police were slow in arriving and I felt we had to do something so I started banging on the RV door.

This is about the creepiest image from that night: The husband came to the door and smiled at me through the window. "Everything's fine. She's just drunk." He walked away and resumed beating her.

I guess our banging on the RV and screaming at the husband pissed him off enough that he left his wife alone in the back bedroom and when he did that she managed to fling herself head first out the emergency exit. A huge feat and fall for a woman her height (around 5 feet tall).

This is where events get foggy. Another neighbor carried the wife to the lounge chair in front of my trailer. I went inside to get a blanket. When I came out I saw the wife slide off the chair and crawl under my trailer. I watched her husband walk the road in front of my trailer with bear spray in his hands, arms straight out like that pepper spraying cop at the Occupy campus, direct shots to the eyes of two men standing there, direct shot to the eyes of the nice Mexican woman who lives at the end of my row. Where was I that I saw this but was out of the line of fire? I must've been hiding in the shadows next to my trailer where I could see that the wife was under my trailer and that the husband was spraying people but he couldn't see me. I tossed the wife the blanket.

The cops arrived and found the husband. After he'd been cuffed and taken away the wife came out from under my trailer. That's when we learned that another neighbor - the man who had banged on the RV and yelled at the husband right along with me - had received a machete blow to the head. One thousandth of an inch more and that man would be dead, the blade slicing into his brain.

I tended to the two men who had been sprayed, leading them to chairs, turning on the hose, grabbing towels. I sprayed water directly on their faces, rinsed the towels, held them to their faces. BAD MOVE! When I saw the towels the next day - turned orange like they'd been dipped in napalm - I realized I'd been reapplying the bear spray to their faces. And I had failed to keep my hands thoroughly rinsed so they burned all night long along with the area around my mouth.

There was one funny moment. I had to lead one of the men back to his rig. When we got to his door he said "take off your shoes." I mean really, he was worried about the carpet? I led him to his bedroom where he stripped naked while I turned on the water in the shower, being careful to only see his backside.

It wasn't until two mornings later when I woke and realized that if I hadn't gone to tend to the wife at the other side of the RV, if I'd been standing by the door when the husband came out with the machete, I'd be dead. He's a big man. No way my little head - as stubborn and hard as it is - could've survived that blow. And how was it that I avoided the bear spray?

Thankfully no one died. The wife is banged up but okay. The machete'd man will survive. The bear spray sprayed people were resuming normal activities the next day.

What about our decision to get involved? I think our relentless yelling and banging on the RV is what caused the husband to leave his wife alone for the time she needed to escape. Would I do it again? You betcha. But I now know to move away from the door when the husband emerges.

The husband is being held in a Mexican jail on two counts of attempted murder. It will be interesting to see how this plays out. Since living in Mexico I've witnessed expats suffering medical emergencies and sudden deaths. I've seen how the judicial system works for Mexicans. This will be the first time I will see how that system works for an American in Mexico. Of course most people I know hope he rots in a Mexican prison but I wonder if they (his lawyer? the American consulate?) will try to get him extradited.

Most people were shocked - they seemed like such a loving couple. When someone said that to the wife the next morning we looked at each other. I said "I'm not surprised." I knew her husband didn't like me and I didn't like him either. I'd seen bad behavior (not on this level) from him before. This year I felt that things were not right over there.

Domestic violence and RV parks, they seem to go hand in hand, not just here but when I lived up in Amado, too. Retirees mostly. People who are bored. Who maybe drink too much. Who share a small space. I spent years living in close proximity to other people - mostly apartment buildings - and I never saw this much spouse beating.

So far the wife is hanging tough. She's got lots of support from the community and her family. It's difficult to throw over a 30-year marriage but I think she can do it.

I got an email from her the next day when I was up in Tucson. She said everyone in town knew - Mexicans and Americans alike. Can't you just picture the talk in the barrios? "Did you hear about the crazy gringo who almost killed his wife and machete'd a neighbor?" Aye carrumba. Things have been a little too crazy in the park in the recent weeks. Let's hope these things don't happen in threes because if so, we're due one more.

Spanish Word(s) of the Day: cochino and hipocrita

I see that el cochino is complaining that the left is denying him free speech. Hm. What about the religious right (for example) protesting a movie they think is anti-Jesus or anti-God or anti-religion? According to el cochino's stance, aren't they denying that movie's producers their free speech? Or is it okay for the right to protest and call for boycotts and advertising withdrawals but not the left? That's called hypocrisy.

From Merriam-Webster: a feigning to be what one is not or to believe what one does not; especially : the false assumption of an appearance of virtue or religion

Let me explain the free speech issue as I see it. IMHO people have the right to say what they want (unless it incites violence against a particular person or group of people) and I have the right not to support them and to urge others to withdraw their support, i.e. advertisers.

Here are a few examples of the right's hypocrisy surrounding the Ms. Fluke/birth control issue: They're okay with the fact that Rush smuggled Viagra but he's not a cochino (the male equivalent of a slut). They're disgusted with all those babies on welfare but don't want to give women access to birth control. They don't want their taxes going for family planning but as Jon Stewart so eloquently put it: get over it! We all have taxes going places we don't support (WAR for example).

The other day a friend who spends all his down time watching Fox "News" said Rush shouldn't have called "that girl" a slut but she was one because she had too much sex. Every time she had sex she had to take a birth control pill which meant she had sex likes 3,000 times a year. Whoa, all us women screamed from various seats in the truck, you don't know how birth control works. And after we told him - one pill a day no matter if you're having sex or not - he still didn't believe us. He didn't believe that women knew more about birth control than he did. How in the hell can someone take the bullshit uttered or screamed on Fox as absolute truth? It's beyond me.

This friend of mine has daughters who most likely at some point in their lives were on birth control. One got pregnant quite young. How would he feel if someone like el cochino not only said his daughters were sluts but also that he was a lousy and irresponsible parent?

I believe the left should keep up the heat on Rush (Christian Science Monitor). If nothing else, it may clear up some misconceptions about birth control and family planning. (But are people willing to listen and learn? It seems doubtful.)

Although I'd love to see Rush without a radio program, and I'm thrilled that as of this writing he's lost 21 advertisers (Politico), I haven't signed a petition to Clear Channel to give him the boot. I want Rush to die a slow and painful radio death. Besides, he'll find some way to reincarnate himself. Still, my fantasy is to see Rush dirt poor and having to rely on all those "socialist" programs he rails against: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps. He'll be too poor for Viagra. (Do women actually have sex with him? Is he married?) Maybe he'll wind up living out of a shopping cart (a BIG one) and do his soapboxing on street corners with a tip jar by his side.

The more these controversies come up, it seems the stronger women get. We've been complacent, thinking these battles were won years ago only to have the beast we thought dead rise up and attack us again. It's like the right's robocop. But us women, we're resilient.

Oh-oh, I'm feeling my inner Helen Reddy rising to the surface: I am woman, hear me roar.

Spanish Word of the Day: Espontáneo

The whole day was spontaneous. We went to the garage sale in New Kino which was kind of a bust but I did buy an acrylic container for shells. I asked how much and the lady said 50 cents. Fifty cents? I couldn't wrap my mind around that. I'm in Mexico and she wants 50 cents? Finally she said 6 pesos. Okay, now that I understood. (Don't get me started on expats who deal in dollars.)

We were stopped at the intersection and my friend asked if we wanted to go to breakfast. I said no, I'd rather just go home. Then she said one word that changed my mind and changed the course of the day: mimosa.

Three mimosas later we were at the Kino Bay RV rec room watching the pool tournament. Got there in time to see Demo shoot. After that we walked across the street to Jorge's. The Coca-Cola delivery men were there and I saw Jorge pick up his guitar.

I was supposed to go out to dinner that night but I spontaneously decided to stay home. It had been such a perfect day.

Spanish Word of the Day: Mesero

Most of my favorite waiters have hit the skids. I was thinking about them yesterday as I walked the beach.

The first time I met Carlito (who said his name was Charlie) he gave presents to my friend and I. Turns out Charlie did that a lot, giving presents of wood carvings, baskets, boxes covered in shells. He was a pretty good actor, miming parts of his conversation when trying to get his point across to us non-Spanish speakers. And he was very on top of things when our Margarita Monday got out of control.

One day Charlie showed up at my door with a sad story. (I didn't put too much energy into wondering how he knew where I lived.) His daughter was in the hospital in Hermosillo. She'd been hit by a car in front of school and he needed money to pay for her leg brace. Of course I would help but I couldn't give him much and he said that was okay, he was grateful for anything.

Turns out that was total b.s. When I asked the other meseros about Charlie they said he no longer worked there, that he had no wife and no kids. I saw Charlie not too long after that. He was on the pier with a puppy. He didn't look at all like the vibrant waiter who gave us presents.

Little Juan hit bottom hard. A handsome kid with a pretty wife who seemed way more sophisticated than he, when he left his waiter job he did odd jobs for some of us at the trailer park but mostly he worked as a diver. I saw him on the beach one evening and I nearly didn't recognize him. He was drunk, crying, his eyes swollen. "Muchos problemas," was all he said. Not too long after that his wife beat him up, kicked him out of the house, then got a restraining order against him so that he couldn't even see his kids.

Around that time things were disappearing from the park. One night as I sat at the computer, door wide open, someone cut the screen in the kitchen window, reached in - their hand only a foot or two from where I was sitting - and took the notebook off my kitchen counter. I was oblivious to the whole thing until I wondered where my notebook was. The next morning I found it outside the kitchen window on the top of the ladder the pinche ladrone had used to reach the window. He must've thought the notebook was a purse. Small items were missing from my porch - scissors, sunglasses, Bic lighter. I never felt threatened. I thought maybe it was someone I knew.

Jesus who had the greatest smile had been deported from the U.S. after a stint in prison. I knew he wouldn't make it in Kino. There's nothing for an L.A. boy to do here but get a girl pregnant, which he did. His smile faded, he got very thin, then he quit his waiter job and moved to Calle Doce. I can't imagine what he does there to make money. Work in the fields? Process shrimp? Maybe he moved on to Hermosillo. Maybe he deals drugs.

It breaks my heart. The downward spiral happens quickly in a town like this, a town without much in the way of work options. A town where a lot of people still live without electricity and running water, who live with too many kids and not enough food. And yet there are those who manage to live quasi-middle class lives. They work at the hardware store or they own the bakery, the flower shop, the meat store. But for the rest, for the young men and women, their futures are bright only if they can get to a big city. And without money, even that is out of reach.