Here there and everywhere

I looked into the doll-like glass eyes, caged in by pastel frames of the little girl.  "Don't let her play you," one of her teachers told me the other day, "she is disabled, but she can follow directions".  "WALK to the rug" I told her.  She ran.  And pushed other kids.  "Emily.  Stand up" I commanded directly.  She refused.  In front of everyone.  "Emily, stand up" I asked again, quietly, extending my hand.  She refused again.  Her teacher came in, unexpectedly.  I got the kids singing and walked over to her.  I was frustrated.  "Emily is refusing to do what I asked, in front of everyone" I lamented.  "Yeah well, she does that, she's disabled....".  "Well, she can't shove the other kids, she just can't" I said with frustration.  She walked over and said loudly, "Emily, get up!" and then picked her up, kicking and wiggling to the far corner of the room.  Emily was screaming, crying, her face red, like a trapped animal.  The doll eyes darted behind the pastel frames.  I wanted to shoot myself.  I am so sorry, Emily. 

I remember carefully placing my glasses on a gravestone in the old cemetery by my house, and then somersaulting down the hill that faces the old textile mill.  I was drunk. Big green hills in the middle of the city had to be good for something.  I went to my sister's house and tried to race my niece on foot, while she was on roller skates.  I watched her skate up and down the street in the twilight, looking like an elegant swan.

I sat in the border wait line in Otay, eating a cup of corn.  So good, so very good.  Alec and I had flown to Los Angeles for the long weekend.  I had carefully booked us a cheap hotel by the airport due to our late arrival, which just happened to be convenient to South Central and Watts.  We hung around the city the next morning and went out to the pier, then beat it south.

So good to pull into Mexico.  Mi querido Mexico.  We ate like pigs, and did a nostalgia tour of our old neighborhood.  While heading back to the border, I nailed a huge pothole, like I have a million times in Tijuana.  I figured it was no big deal, until a light on the dash came on with exclamation points, on the rental car that wasn't supposed to be in Mexico.  I pulled off.  "Está pinchado" the gas station guy told me; I could hear the air coming out while he was putting it in.  "¿Hay una llanteria cerca?" I asked.  Why of course.  Tijuana is full of tire repair places.

"The rim is bent" the guy answered me in perfect English, after my sketchy Spanish description of what happened.  Great.  Another man walked over with a sledge hammer.  Instead of feeling nervous, I felt suddenly at ease that a Mexican with a sledge hammer could get that wheel on the road again in the simplest and most economical way.  They ripped it off, pounded out the rim, patched the tire and rotated it to the back, in less than ten minutes.  For gringos.  With a rental car with Arizona plates.  "It's six dollars," the main guy told me "and whatever you want to give him for the work on the rim". 

And now, back to work tomorrow.