I'm standing on the narrow wooden step of the house where I spend my days, as the first drops of rain begin to fall. The rain is not concerning the adults, so I'm not concerned either. I am standing under a cover that protects me from getting wet. The sound of the rain is like the sound of a baby rattle as the drops fall on the wooden roofs, the metal roofs, the roofs made from discarded fiberglass. It rains rarely here; this land is dry and usually uncomfortably hot. Adults call it the desert but I don't think it is. Crops grow everywhere on the other side of the fence, lettuce is grown in big fields in long rows. People from this side of the fence go through the gate in long lines and they show papers to the two men in blue uniforms standing in the hot sun and inspecting their white pieces of paper and waving them through. It's a silly job because they always just wave the white-clad people through each day, in their wide brim hats and their loose wind-blown clothes, to pick lettuce in the sun. No one is ever stopped or turned away at the gate. The workers will put the lettuce in big boxes, the boxes will be loaded onto trains and trucks and taken away. I don't know where the trains and trucks go, far away I think, to lands where people pay money to eat food that we have just by walking outside and picking up off the ground. When the sun begins to go down, after the people pick the lettuce, they come back to this side of the fence where their homes are.
I travel the opposite way, my grandmother brings my little sister, Bonnie, and I from the lettuce side of the fence each morning to my babysitter. My babysitter, Maria,lives in a little village outside of the town and a little way from the gate. In the evening when grandmother comes to pick us up, I watch the people coming back through the gate after working in the fields. The men in blue uniforms smile at us and don't ask to see any papers. We return home in our car to my grandmother's house, to the bedroom where I sleep and my sister sleeps, where my toys are, where our chickens are, where the forest of corn plants is. I play in this forest when I'm home one day a week, I take my little sister into the forest of corn and we hide and pretend to be alone and living in a land where I am king and my sister is a princess and no one can find us.
My grandmother lives in a house on the lettuce side of the fence. The house has a long low hen house in the back. I help her collect eggs each morning from holes in the back of the hen house and put them into baskets. She also has a cafe in the town, the town is called El Centro. She sells her eggs from the cafe where she works and also uses the eggs to cook food for people. This is how she makes the money for us to live in her house and to pay my babysitter who watches us almost every day. My mom left us three years ago to marry a man and have a new life. Grandmother says that my mom was too young to have children, that she was just nineteen when she left and she felt she couldn't raise me and my sister. She told my grandmother that we would be better off without her. I don't remember my mom, I don't remember what she looked like or how her voice sounded, so it's okay and I don't miss her.
The rain continues to come down harder with big wet drops, now I listen and imagine little men with hammers all pounding the tin roofs together; the wooden roofs, the roofs of the many places people live in this little village. I am happy to see the rain coming down, after a time filling the dirt path with little streams. The dirt path is so dry, usually walking on it kicks up dust, dust that gets in my eyes, dust that chokes me and makes all the children cough, now the rain will turn the path to mud. The rain makes streams and rivulets, little streams that seem to me to whimper silently as if complaining about the dirt and dust. These streams are fun to splash in and run through when Maria's not looking. She's mostly never looking, she is always very busy caring for my little sister. After the rain everything will be clean except for the children, we will be very dirty from playing in the water and mud. The mud splashes up on to us as we dance in the rain. It smells so good after the rain washes the bad stuff away. There is a lot of bad stuff, stuff the dogs and chickens leave and old food that is left on the ground.
Maria teaches me to say Solo tengo cinco años, the people reply Tan tierno. They nod their heads, they smile and sometimes put their hands on my head or pat me on the shoulders. I don't want to be a tender little boy, I want to be a strong boy, a boy people will respect, even a boy people will be afraid of. It's hard in this world to be a little boy.
The rain is coming down faster now. A man in a green uniform comes to the door, he talks to me and says things I don't understand. When I don't do anything because I don't know what he wants me to do, he reaches down, holds my shoulders and moves me to the side, out of the way. He does this in a very gentle way that doesn't hurt me so I don't mind, and then he knocks. Maria comes to the door, Bonnie in her arms and he says things to Maria I don't understand. He talks to her for a long time and gestures with his hands. I watch Maria's face, she holds Bonnie closer to her and looks frightened. She speaks to him very rapidly, I understand that she is afraid, she points to me and gestures down the hill. He says no and shakes his head. Everybody here uses words I mostly don't understand. It's the same on the other side of the fence except I do understand more words over there. I think that's because the words people say over there are the only words people use, here they speak their language to each other but mostly when they speak to me they say things in the words people use over on the other side. They use words like rest, lunch, come inside and don't play with that, it's not a toy. Over here when they speak to each other its only in their words. I did understand some of what the man in the green uniform said, he said agua and cero but I see there is a lot of water. Agua means water and cero means zero. The man says a lot more to Maria and Maria speaks back to him in their language, I can't understand everything they're saying but I understand a little, I understand Aguacero but it doesn't make any sense. He is a big man with broad shoulders and a big black mustache. I like this man. I watch him move to the next house and speak to the people who live there, they solemnly nod their heads and they also look afraid. I'm not afraid, of rain, of wind, of anything. Why should I be afraid of rain?
I like staying on this side of the fence. There are lots of other children and they teach me new games. Javier is my friend but he can't speak my language. Football is fun but my favorite game is to hypnotize a chicken by touching its beak to a straight white line, the chicken takes a long time to wake up and when she does everyone laughs. The person whose chicken stays asleep the longest wins. I try to talk to the boy I am with, I try to speak with Javier, I ask him, "Why do the chickens, the hens, las gallinas go to sleep just because you put their beak on a white line?" Javier smiles and shakes his head, he doesn't understand me. I point to the hen and then raise my two hands like I'm resting on them, like they're a pillow and close my eyes. Javier looks at me, smiles and shrugs his shoulders, "no lo se" is all he says. I say, "Okay let's play football." He says okay and we kick the ball up and down the dirt path, soon other boys join in and I have a wonderful time playing this game, kicking the ball around, up and down on the path.Because I spend the night across the fence and live in a place far from neighbors, far from their houses, because of the corn fields and lettuce fields, these are the only boys I get to play with. I have no friends at my grandmother's house.
Maria will take the money grandmother gives her and go into town to buy little white wheels of cheese for the neighbors. The market is also full of bright colored wooden toys. When I ask Maria if she will buy a toy for me she just shakes her head. She tells me she can't buy them because the money is for more important things. I just want one that doesn't cost very much money, I watch Grandmother give her a lot of money, not every day but often. Grandmother tells me that I can't take my toys from her house to Maria's house. She tells me that the children here in Maria's village will take my toys from me and not give them back. The children here are happy to share toys like the stick of chalk we use to hypnotize the chickens or the ball we use to play football. I don't think they will take my toys away from me. Maria calls the city where the market is El Centro, grandmother calls it Mexicali. Mexicali is a beautiful city and the buildings are much older than in our town called El Centro. Near the market where we buy the cheese is a great big park filled with trees and benches. In the center of the park is a circular stand that is high up and you have to climbs stairs to reach it. Bonnie has to be carried up because she can't climb stairs yet but I can walk right up the stairs and look out at the city. In this city the streets are made of stones pushed into the ground. There are flags everywhere and plants with bright flowers on the sides of the old stone buildings. The air is always sweet with the aroma of the flowers. On special days people will come up to the stand with their instruments and play music for the people in town. Today we can't go into town or go to the store because there's too much rain.
In the city where grandmother's cafe is, streets are just flat and black. There the buildings are plain and made of wood, mostly white and there is almost no decoration, no flags and no flowers. The village where Maria's house is does not smell like flowers either. I don't like the smell there and it takes me a
little while to get used to it each morning.
The streets in the town here are full of people shopping. The people who work every day to pick lettuce in the fields on the other side of the fence also shop here in the evening when its cooler. They buy things like tortillas and frijoles, practical things they share with their neighbors. I like the stone streets because they're pretty, but you have to be more careful when you walk. Bonnie sometimes trips, she would fall if I didn't hold her hand. I am proud of the house I come to everyday. It's not at all like grandmother's house with doors inside, between the rooms. Grandmother's house has wood floors and here the houses have dirt floors. Some of the houses on this side of the fence don't even have doors on the front of the house. At my grandmother's house everything is so private, the neighbors live far away, almost everyone there has a car.
Here I can look inside the houses when I play or when I walk by with Maria. The houses are so close together and there are not many cars. You can see the people standing or sitting on the wood and straw chairs, you can see the blankets that hang across where doors would be, blankets with stripes and patterns in bright colors. Also, there are bright-color calendars from the panaderias where people buy tortillas and pan dulce. These calendars have pictures of pretty ladies dressed like Aztecs. Not as pretty as Maria; Maria is beautiful. Now the water is coming down so fast that it sounds like a lion's roar must sound, like the engine of a car, like the fan in the swamp coolers on a hot day in the houses on the other side of the fence. I wish I was at grandmother's house, its warm there and the house is big with lots of different rooms and with a bathroom right inside. On the other side of the fence, in front of grandmother's cafe, men with hard looks and rough clothes stand in the street and on the sidewalk. I wish I could stand like these men, they stand there looking so tough, like they're not afraid of anything, standing with a cigarette hanging from their lips. I could stand here with my hands in my pockets but without a cigarette watching the neighborhood people rushing around.
The people are rushing around in the rain and I am standing here watching but no one notices me. People are laying wooden boards across the paths so that you can walk across without getting muddy. The boards zig-zag from door to door so that you have to slow down to move along the little trail. There is only enough room for one person to walk at a time so you have to stand in the doorway or under an eave to stay dry until you can have a turn walking. Everyone gets wet but no one's shoes get muddy.
The people are gathering their dogs and their chickens and taking them inside their houses. I think this is funny because the chickens are hard to catch, people run after them and just as they about to catch a chicken, the chicken jumps into the air and flies a little distance away. Sometimes a woman trying to catch a chicken wearing her long skirt falls in the mud, this happens again as I watch and I start to laugh. Maria hears me and runs out to the porch, she tells me not to laugh at other people and their misfortunes. Pobrecito she says as she picks me up, I hear this word on both sides of the fence because everyone says this to me, pobrecito, they also say it to my sister. I hear this word often. "You have to come in now mijo, it's getting late and cold, it's raining very hard. Tonight, you will have to stay here."
Maria stands with her hands on her hips, she looks at me in so many ways, stern, sad, scared. I am shocked nearly speechless. "Maria, we've never spent the night here. Grandmother won't understand. She'll be sad. I want to go home to my bed. I'm afraid to stay here!"
"No mijo, its already getting very dark and the stream is already running very high and very fast. It will be dangerous. Muy peligroso. Your abuela will understand, she will see how hard it's raining and know that I will take care of you, nothing bad will happen, you'll see. Now come in the house and I will fix you and Bonnie a nice dinner and you can go to sleep. In the morning it will all be much better, you'll see." It is getting darker and colder. I am worried. Would grandmother be standing at the gate waiting for us or would she forget about us when we didn't come? Would the paths and the streets be filled with water tomorrow in the evening? Would the gate in the fence still be there? The stream was just a little way down the hill, will the water fill up the dirt path and wash all the houses away? I don't know how to swim.
Maria prepares a dinner of cheese melted between tortillas, just like we have at lunch. I am so sleepy, Maria has me lay down on the floor. She covers me with a blanket and gives me a rolled-up blanket for my pillow. She holds Bonnie on her lap and rocks gentle with her in her arms, singing sweetly. Everyone here is so kind, I am happy that I am in this place, where there are other children. I tell myself that I never want to leave but, in the morning, I know I will want to be home.If it's not raining tomorrow, I will go home with my grandmother, I will have a lot of stories to tell her. I dream of the stories I will tell, of rain, of chickens running in the mud and of a man who came to tell everyone what to do. I listen to Maria singing and I fall asleep.
