Photo by Jhon David on Upsplash
I’m walking my Chihuahua ‘Chia’ and my friend’s Schnauzer ‘Simón’ on a chilly, overcast Monday afternoon in my neighborhood — El Centro Histórico in Mexico City. Simón likes to stop in every public flower bed, the only “green” spaces amidst this otherwise concrete jungle, sniff the plants, and take a tinkle, as if to say — “Simón was here.”
On the way back to my house, he’s doing just that when an old lady and her husband approach rapidly .“Saquelo de ahí,” the woman shouts at me. “Get him out of there.”
I’m taken aback. In Mexico, especially the city, people tend to mind their own business, and all of the neighbors let their dogs do their duty in these small, public gardens.
“¿Por qué?” I reply.
“Esta ensuciando,” She quips. “He’s getting things dirty.”
Is this woman really worried about my dog getting dirty?
“They’re dogs — Why do you care?”
She starts speaking quickly and angrily. With everything that goes on in this neighborhood — drunks and drug addicts passed out on corners, motorcycles blowing red lights, speeding down “pedestrian-only streets”— why is this lady so worried about my dog sniffing around a flower garden?
Her husband stands behind her, speechless. I don’t see his face — it is empty, the way the faces of cowards always are.
“Déjanos en paz,” I say. “Leave us alone.”
And then she hits me with the zinger: “Vete a tu país.”
“Go back to your country.”
I look up as she’s walking away. She repeats it, this time with more confidence and conviction, “Vete a tu país.”
I’ve lived in this neighborhood for eight years, and no one has ever told me to go back to my country. I can feel my heart rate accelerating.
“Pinche vieja cabrona,” I think. “Vete a tu barrio culero. Go back to your shitty neighborhood.” But it is too late to respond.
I walk to my local newsstand in shock. “Buenas tardes,” the man with three teenage boys who all rock flat-rimmed baseball caps just like him says. “Buenas tardes, amigo,” I say, as I pass him change for two loosie cigarettes.
I see Concho, the guy who maintains our building. Last week, he helped my wife fix a window. Afterward, we ate dinner together at our dining room table. “Que onda carnal?” I say. “What’s up, my brother?”
Something in me wants to tell him what just happened, but I stay silent.
I walk to the store, el pollería, to buy something for lunch. Two kids are carving up a chicken for a woman who’s about the same age as the stranger who just told me to go back to my country. Last week, one of the kids who works there told me he was turning twenty-five soon and that he was afraid of getting older.
The woman buying chicken is joking with them. “¿Por qué no cocinan el pollo, con mole or algo?” she says. “Why don’t you cook the chicken with mole sauce?”
She looks at me and smiles invitingly.
“I agree,” I say in Spanish. “So we wouldn’t have to cook it ourselves.”
Her dog, who I see nearly every morning hanging out at the local fruit stand, is walking freely in and out of the store, exploring smells.
“What’s his name?” I ask.
“Botitas,” she replies. “Little Boots.”
An older woman walks in. “¿Están ocupados, jovenes?”
“Are you busy, young men?”
“No, we’re not doing anything at all,” the almost twenty-five-year-old replies with a smile, although they are both busy carving up chicken quickly and efficiently — their sharp blades slicing through the pale meat like butter.
I smile. There is a playfulness in the air.
The older lady asks the dog’s name as he sniffs around our feet.
“Little Boots.”
“¿Qué?”
“Little Boots.”
“What?”
“Boots.”
She is in her late 80s and hard of hearing.
Nobody seems to recognize my accent. No one seems to notice that I am a foreigner in a foreign land doing the best I can to keep up. And if they do, they don’t seem to care.
I can feel something changing inside of me. Something is dying and being reborn.
My heart rate has slowed down. My anger has turned into a subtle joy. I almost tear up, but I don’t because it would be inappropriate to cry in a chicken shop. What would the almost twenty-five-year-old think of me then?
I walk back to my apartment with my fresh chicken breasts in hand. Yesterday, there was a family of immigrants sitting in front of our door all day — now they are gone. Two young kids and a mother no older than twenty huddled under the stoop sharing a tiny blanket as the father asked people passing on the street for change.
The father had light skin and green eyes. I looked into them when I asked, “Where are you guys from?
“Venezuela,” he replied.
“Headed north?” I said.
“Si,” he replied.
Late in the day, as a light drizzle began to fall on the city, I bought him a warm coffee, and my wife gave them and another family of Venezuelans a bag of clothes, a blanket, and a towel. Unfortunately, we did not have anything that fit the children, but the youngest girl seemed to like the Huichol-style hat we’d gifted. She laughed and giggled as she tried it on.
As day turned to night, my wife wrote down the names of cheap hotels, but by the time she was ready to pass it to them, they had left.
People are moving. The world is breaking. But it is also being healed.
It is not healed by supporting or defeating this or that politician. It is not healed by clever articles or new theories, by newscasters or pundits, outraged students or college professors, artists or activists, protests or calls for revolution.
It is healed by regular people performing small acts of kindness each and every day — a conversation, a handshake, a hand on the shoulder, a seemingly meaningless transaction or joke.
The world is breaking, so let us break together.
The world is healing, so let us heal together.
Let us look into each other’s eyes and say without words, “I understand.”