Two Bags of Groceries
Consuelo teaches in my school, a grade above me, sixth grade. He’s a handsome Latino, inclined to smile, owns the gift of charm, yet he doesn’t abuse it. He’s forty with flawless Mediterranean skin, jet black hair, just had his first child. Plays a mean guitar and has a drop-dead, knockout American wife he met in France. She’s of the tribe too – a teacher in the district.
Consuelo started calling me Paul about a year ago, which goes a long way with me. I hate being called “Mr. Karrer.” But more important, Consuelo began asking me questions about my life and he remembered the answers. Two weeks ago we commiserated about a kid.
Restaurant – Teachers’ lounge in Castroville Elementary School, a small twelve by forty room containing: a table with ten chairs, couch, Coke machine, microwave, and a sink.
My meal - I had made my own sandwich, peanut butter and jelly. I’d snagged a blackberry yogurt, a semi-bruised banana, and half of a large-sized Hershey’s dark chocolate bar. A filled at-home water bottle sufficed for my drink.
Consuelo’s meal - he had packed his own burrito, marinated beef with volcanic green sauce, a few strips of thin red onion thrown on top, in a corn flour tortilla and a Tupperware bowl of menudo (a traditional Mexican spicy soup made with tripe, lime, chopped onions, chopped cilantro, crushed oregano) and in Consuelo’s case heavily dosed in red chili peppers. This soup awaited abuse by our communal microwave. His meal looked and smelled temptingly far better than mine.
Consuelo munched on his food and I chewed on mine. We sat directly across from one another. We were the only two teachers in the room. Consuelo caught my eye and signaled with his hand that he wanted to say something when he was done with his mouthful. I waited.
“So how’s your shitter?” he asked with a little food still in his mouth.
“Ernesto? Poor kid doesn’t have a chance. He craps himself at least twice a day and the kids treat him like a leper.”
Consuelo shook his head. “The kid’s got a lot going against him.”
“Yeah, I know. I had a meeting with the principal, shrink, the mom. Maaaaan, both the mom and the kid are undocumented and the mom is reluctant to get anything done. Medicare won’t pay for illegals. She’s supposed to bring him up to Stanford, but she can’t afford it. She barely made it to the meeting. She came in directly from the fields still in her hairnet and yellow waterproofs.”
“He’s in my after school music class.” Consuelo shook his head in the negative “He’s got pure talent with the guitar. But I had to kick him out because he doesn’t know how to interact with the kids.” A pained look hit Consuelo,
“I figured they were undocumented.”
“Yeah, like I said both of them.”
Consuelo eyeballed me, put his burrito down. “I crossed when I was six.”
I stopped eating. “SIX! You crossed the frontier at age six?” I said this not because I didn’t hear it. I was stunned. I had used the word frontier intentionally. Mexicans called the border La frontera. The frontier.
“Yes,” he started eating his burrito again, “It was boom time in my Tijuana. But my dad was a drunk and my mother was good for nothing. She was beautiful and that may have been her problem, probably her curse. And she was young too –probably another curse.”
“Know what year that was?”
“1980, never forget it. My mom left me at a drop-off house on the Tijuana side. This teenager, a friend of the family, was the coyote. He was taking me across.”
“Isn’t it like four-thousand bucks a crossing now?”
“Yeah, now, but it depends on where you’re crossing and where your final destination is. In those days the gangs didn’t have the border all sewed up. The coyote took me across for nothing.”
“What do you remember? Smells. Images.”
He looked up as if trying to pluck memory from the ceiling. “It was Northern Tijuana, undeveloped area, plains only. The only light was moonlight. Then we started hearing the bird and my coyote got all shaken up.”
“A bird?”
“Not any ole’ bird…the bird…a border chopper with spot lights. We ran for bushes. I don’t think they saw us. Probably just doing a sweep.”
“What else?”
“I remember walking so fast, trippin’, trying to keep up with this big kid. But no matter what, he just held my hand like it was glued. If I fell, if I tripped, when we ran, he didn’t let go. It must have been really difficult for him.”
I turned to make sure nobody had entered the room. No one had. I faced Consuelo again. “Jesus H Christ, Consuelo . You’re gonna’ make me cry.”
“Sorry. You want me to stop?”
“Dear God, no.”
“O.K. then… so this teenager kept comforting me the whole time. We walked for the rest of the night over hills. At least it felt like all night. But realistically it couldn’t have been more than two-and-a-half hours. I recall stumbling, falling, and walking… walking those rolling hills. And then we got to this industrial complex. A mesh wire fence, way taller than me and a brick wall five or six feet tall separated us from the US. For a little kid that wall reached to heaven.”
I bagged my sandwich. There was no way I could eat it now. I put things away as quietly as I could so as to not disrupt Consuelo’s flow.
He continued, “The teenage coyote climbed up on that brick wall, trying to position himself to pull me over. Just at that moment a fucking dog came out of nowhere and bit him. He jumped back down, grabbed me, now we ran farther along the wall. Climbed over more fences. And we made it. Ironically we ended up in a parking lot of a place called Safeway. That was the meeting place in Chula Vista, my aunt was there. My brother, her friend. My aunt was worried sick and then when we showed up, she was grateful. The coyote refused payment time after time. In the end my aunt forced him to accept two bags of groceries. Then we drove on Highway 5 just south of Temecula. There was a checkpoint.”
“Any images you still have?”
“Sure, everything seemed fresh, clean, and the lights were so bright and high up on the poles. My aunt kept on saying, ‘Duermete, mijo, duermete.’”
“Translate.”
“Sleep little one, sleep.’ I think she was afraid I’d blow the crossing at the checkpoint and she wanted me asleep. I don’t know why but even now when I hear her voice saying that in my mind it comforts me.” A calm smile grew on his face. “I went to sleep and when I woke up I was in East L.A.”