El Nino de La Loma
His right leg hurt more when his older brother went off to play with the other boys of La Loma. Sad that he wouldn't be able to join them in building the summer clubhouse, he wanted to limp after his brother. The pain in his leg moved up his body to nest in his stomach when he learned he had to go to the doctor's for X-rays.
The afternoon before he had been racing down the hill that gave this EI Paso neighborhood its name when the wooden go-cart he and his brother had built flipped over. The world did somersaults as his small-but-chubby body bounced around. Luckily, the go-cart, with him secured to it by one of his grandfather's belts, came to a stop before tumbling out into the busy street at the bottom of the hill. He never got to find out if the brakes made from the soles of old work boots worked or not. One of the tires came loose.
Later, when his grandmother asked what happened, he didn't tell her everything. He didn't want him or his brother to get in trouble. It was only the second week of summer vacation, and they decided that if he cried and cried--his right leg did hurt but not that much- then his grandmother might forget to get mad at them. The brothers didn't want to have to spend all their summer vacation inside, letting perfectly good sunlight and La Loma's vast desert go to waste.
Staying in the house while his brother and the other kids of La Loma collected scrap wood and tools for the clubhouse seemed the worst thing to ever happen to the boy. He didn't feel any better when he came home from the doctor's with a cast on his leg. Instead of chasing lizards in the desert and shooting off their tails with his slingshot or going through the yonque in neighbor's yards to complete the clubhouse, he would spend the long summer hopping from the bed where he watched TV to the other room of the house, where his grandmother cooked, washed, and listened to rancheritas on the radio.
His grandmother tried to make him feel better by letting him bring in the mutt that followed him wherever he went in La Loma. He'd named the dog "Mosca" because it was so dirty and smelly when he found it that it had a halo of flies around it. Fed and bathed, it no longer looked like a rag doll someone had thrown away.
Each day the boy spent indoors, his grandfather brought him more toy wrestlers to play Lucha Libre with and comic books to read. His grandmother also promised to make him whatever he wanted to eat. Fresh flour tortillas, star-shaped rice, and chile verde were the boy's favorites.
It was not long before his grandmother noticed the hours he spent looking out the window each day and felt sorry for him. She allowed him to walk outside. He learned to walk in the cast with the help of a walking stick born from a dried yucca plant. The top had the profile of an Indian Chief. With the walking stick, he slowly got around the open yard outside the house, not going farther than the caliche road that led away from La Loma.
Since he couldn't make it down the hill where his brother and their friends were building the clubhouse, he had to think of other things he could do alone. Once he got used to the walking stick and was able to use his other leg more, he got the idea to make his own clubhouse, for him, Mosca, and, of course, his toys.
His grandfather brought him cardboard boxes from Chew Din Mkt. He placed these against the back wall of the house and used tools and materials he found in his grandfather's cuartito. He cut holes in the boxes for windows and a square big enough for him and Mosca to crawl through.
By the middle of that summer, he started to spend more time inside his private clubhouse, eating his grandmother's burritos, playing Godzilla movies with his. Mil Mascaras y Mosca, and reading Richie Rich, pasting the most colorful pictures on the walls.
On some days, he wandered in the surrounding desert till his leg got tired, discovering many treasures for his clubhouse: all colors of shiny rocks, a moon-shaped hubcap, a sun-dried lizard, a chipped bowl with a rooster painted at the bottom, and a plastic crucifix that may have glowed in the dark once upon a time.
The crucifix, actually, had been given to him by Marito, a viejito in La Loma who went around collecting things others left at the curb of the caliche road. The old man would pile these abandoned treasures in a wooden cart pulled by a rusty bicycle. Although Marito was easily the oldest person in La Loma, he managed to make the trip up the hill every afternoon. This amazed many in La Loma because his bicycle looked more worn out each time, and the viejito didn't look to be in much better shape.
Summer to summer, very few things changed in La Loma. Marito was one of them. Everything about the boy's clubhouse was the way he wanted it except that as the months passed it got too hot inside. Even with the plastic milk jug of cold water his grandmother gave him, some days he couldn't bear it and rushed indoors where the fan by the window turned like an airplane propeller.
That's how he spent most ofthat summer in La Loma when he hurt his leg. On real hot days, inside watching TV, laughing hard at El Chavo de 8 although he didn't understand everything being said, and sometimes helping his grandmother, who said he cooked chiles on the comal better than anyone. On days when there was a desert breeze, he tucked himself away in his very own clubhouse, which leaned to one side because of one of the awful sand storms that passed through La Loma. He got used to being alone with only Mosca, his toys, and the games he invented to keep him company.
It wasn't until the last week before school started that his cast came off. The first thing he did was go down the hill to the clubhouse the other boys had built. It was so much bigger than his. All but the roof was made of scrap wood they'd salvaged from around La Loma. The roof was really one of those sheet metal signs seen alongside the road. When he climbed a rickety ladder, taking care not to fall, he read the faded, red letters: AMERICAN CLEANERS shirts 50¢ slacks 75¢.
The others told the boy that they found it in EI Gran Arroyo at the foot of La Loma. It was left there for anyone to carry away, they said. He believed them since he had seen many things floating in the dirty water. One time, he spotted a crate going by after a rain storm, and when they rescued it by making a chain of boys, they couldn't believe how rich they were. When they turned in the empty soda bottles to La Tiendita, they bought so much candy. Since he was the one who discovered the crate full of empties, he got a special treat: a lime snow cone with soft serve ice cream on top.
Mostly, all his brother and the other boys did in their clubhouse was sit around and think of what they could be doing. When the boy tried to get them to start a baseball game, they said it was too hot. Which it was, but still he wanted to make up for all the days he hadn't been able to play because of his broken leg. When he said they should go to La Tiendita, they showed him there were only a few pennies and some pesos in the coffee can.
With only a day of summer vacation left, tired of sitting around doing nothing in the big clubhouse, the boy remembered how much of a better time he had in his clubhouse. He ran up the hill, around to the back of his grandparents' house, excited about returning to what he had made with his own hands. He would wrestle Godzilla vs. Santos and let Mosca try to beat them both.
The good feeling inside him vanished--like clouds seizing the desert sky before a storm- when he saw what was left of his clubhouse. It had completely fallen over. The wind had buried it under dirt, trash, and tumbleweeds. After staring at it for a long while, he thought he could fix it, use adobe bricks for new walls, put more tape, hammer longer nails, start over. Instead, he walked away, taking only the Indian head walking stick he rescued from under the rubble.
He walked and walked, dragging the stick behind him, not paying attention to where he was headed. All that kept going through his mind was how fast the summer had gone by, the pain of his leg, and the loss of his clubhouse. When he finally noticed the sun was setting, almost time for dinner, he realized he had walked further than he'd ever been alone. From the top of La Lorna, he had scanned the alfalfa fields beyond the desert, but he'd never seen them up close. Now, behind him, La Loma rested like a giant toad.
He knew he had to get back before his grandparents became worried and sent his brother looking for him. As he tried to decide the easiest way up the hill, the sun setting faster, his right leg tired, he heard a noise by a large mesquite. It first sounded like a growling dog, but as he moved closer to the mesquite, it sounded more like the tired motor of his grandfather's truck on cold mornings.
The strange noise drew him closer to the mesquite. When he walked around the large stump--being careful not to get caught on the gnarled branches or step in any cacti--he saw what was making the noise. Marito. The viejito was asleep, his toothless mouth agape, snoring like no one the boy had ever heard, not even his grandparents. He was glad it was only Marito and not something worse, some creature that lived beyond La Lorna, as his brother had spooked him last summer.
Not so tired after his discovery, the boy was ready to rush up the hill when he noticed something different about Marito. Lying under the mesquite, the viejito's pants rolled up, no socks, he saw that Marito's legs were different colors--one the dark brown of his wrinkled face and the other much lighter, like the inside of an orange peel. Marito was still snoring.
The boy approached the viejito. With his walking stick, he touched Marito's dark leg. It felt soft, like his own legs, but when he poked the lighter leg it felt hard. When he did it again, it made a hollow sound. The boy was about to touch it with his hand when the snoring stopped and the leg moved.
The next thing the boy knew he was running up the hill, clawing his way through weeds and rocks. He scraped his legs jumping a rock fence. Dogs barked from all directions. He didn't look back, not even when he dropped his walking stick, wanting to get where it was safe, back to La Lorna, inside his grandparents' house.
He rushed in to find his grandparents and his brother sitting down to eat. He took his place at the table, apologizing for being late. In between catching his breath, he finished three glasses of water. When they asked him why he was all dirty and scratched up, he said he'd fallen chasing lizards. His grandmother went outside and came back with an aloe leaf. As she rubbed it on his arms, a cool sensation soothed his skin while his right leg throbbed.
All through dinner and as he tried to sleep that night, he kept reaching down to touch his leg, making sure it was still there, that it was real.
The afternoon before he had been racing down the hill that gave this EI Paso neighborhood its name when the wooden go-cart he and his brother had built flipped over. The world did somersaults as his small-but-chubby body bounced around. Luckily, the go-cart, with him secured to it by one of his grandfather's belts, came to a stop before tumbling out into the busy street at the bottom of the hill. He never got to find out if the brakes made from the soles of old work boots worked or not. One of the tires came loose.
Later, when his grandmother asked what happened, he didn't tell her everything. He didn't want him or his brother to get in trouble. It was only the second week of summer vacation, and they decided that if he cried and cried--his right leg did hurt but not that much- then his grandmother might forget to get mad at them. The brothers didn't want to have to spend all their summer vacation inside, letting perfectly good sunlight and La Loma's vast desert go to waste.
Staying in the house while his brother and the other kids of La Loma collected scrap wood and tools for the clubhouse seemed the worst thing to ever happen to the boy. He didn't feel any better when he came home from the doctor's with a cast on his leg. Instead of chasing lizards in the desert and shooting off their tails with his slingshot or going through the yonque in neighbor's yards to complete the clubhouse, he would spend the long summer hopping from the bed where he watched TV to the other room of the house, where his grandmother cooked, washed, and listened to rancheritas on the radio.
His grandmother tried to make him feel better by letting him bring in the mutt that followed him wherever he went in La Loma. He'd named the dog "Mosca" because it was so dirty and smelly when he found it that it had a halo of flies around it. Fed and bathed, it no longer looked like a rag doll someone had thrown away.
Each day the boy spent indoors, his grandfather brought him more toy wrestlers to play Lucha Libre with and comic books to read. His grandmother also promised to make him whatever he wanted to eat. Fresh flour tortillas, star-shaped rice, and chile verde were the boy's favorites.
It was not long before his grandmother noticed the hours he spent looking out the window each day and felt sorry for him. She allowed him to walk outside. He learned to walk in the cast with the help of a walking stick born from a dried yucca plant. The top had the profile of an Indian Chief. With the walking stick, he slowly got around the open yard outside the house, not going farther than the caliche road that led away from La Loma.
Since he couldn't make it down the hill where his brother and their friends were building the clubhouse, he had to think of other things he could do alone. Once he got used to the walking stick and was able to use his other leg more, he got the idea to make his own clubhouse, for him, Mosca, and, of course, his toys.
His grandfather brought him cardboard boxes from Chew Din Mkt. He placed these against the back wall of the house and used tools and materials he found in his grandfather's cuartito. He cut holes in the boxes for windows and a square big enough for him and Mosca to crawl through.
By the middle of that summer, he started to spend more time inside his private clubhouse, eating his grandmother's burritos, playing Godzilla movies with his. Mil Mascaras y Mosca, and reading Richie Rich, pasting the most colorful pictures on the walls.
On some days, he wandered in the surrounding desert till his leg got tired, discovering many treasures for his clubhouse: all colors of shiny rocks, a moon-shaped hubcap, a sun-dried lizard, a chipped bowl with a rooster painted at the bottom, and a plastic crucifix that may have glowed in the dark once upon a time.
The crucifix, actually, had been given to him by Marito, a viejito in La Loma who went around collecting things others left at the curb of the caliche road. The old man would pile these abandoned treasures in a wooden cart pulled by a rusty bicycle. Although Marito was easily the oldest person in La Loma, he managed to make the trip up the hill every afternoon. This amazed many in La Loma because his bicycle looked more worn out each time, and the viejito didn't look to be in much better shape.
Summer to summer, very few things changed in La Loma. Marito was one of them. Everything about the boy's clubhouse was the way he wanted it except that as the months passed it got too hot inside. Even with the plastic milk jug of cold water his grandmother gave him, some days he couldn't bear it and rushed indoors where the fan by the window turned like an airplane propeller.
That's how he spent most ofthat summer in La Loma when he hurt his leg. On real hot days, inside watching TV, laughing hard at El Chavo de 8 although he didn't understand everything being said, and sometimes helping his grandmother, who said he cooked chiles on the comal better than anyone. On days when there was a desert breeze, he tucked himself away in his very own clubhouse, which leaned to one side because of one of the awful sand storms that passed through La Loma. He got used to being alone with only Mosca, his toys, and the games he invented to keep him company.
It wasn't until the last week before school started that his cast came off. The first thing he did was go down the hill to the clubhouse the other boys had built. It was so much bigger than his. All but the roof was made of scrap wood they'd salvaged from around La Loma. The roof was really one of those sheet metal signs seen alongside the road. When he climbed a rickety ladder, taking care not to fall, he read the faded, red letters: AMERICAN CLEANERS shirts 50¢ slacks 75¢.
The others told the boy that they found it in EI Gran Arroyo at the foot of La Loma. It was left there for anyone to carry away, they said. He believed them since he had seen many things floating in the dirty water. One time, he spotted a crate going by after a rain storm, and when they rescued it by making a chain of boys, they couldn't believe how rich they were. When they turned in the empty soda bottles to La Tiendita, they bought so much candy. Since he was the one who discovered the crate full of empties, he got a special treat: a lime snow cone with soft serve ice cream on top.
Mostly, all his brother and the other boys did in their clubhouse was sit around and think of what they could be doing. When the boy tried to get them to start a baseball game, they said it was too hot. Which it was, but still he wanted to make up for all the days he hadn't been able to play because of his broken leg. When he said they should go to La Tiendita, they showed him there were only a few pennies and some pesos in the coffee can.
With only a day of summer vacation left, tired of sitting around doing nothing in the big clubhouse, the boy remembered how much of a better time he had in his clubhouse. He ran up the hill, around to the back of his grandparents' house, excited about returning to what he had made with his own hands. He would wrestle Godzilla vs. Santos and let Mosca try to beat them both.
The good feeling inside him vanished--like clouds seizing the desert sky before a storm- when he saw what was left of his clubhouse. It had completely fallen over. The wind had buried it under dirt, trash, and tumbleweeds. After staring at it for a long while, he thought he could fix it, use adobe bricks for new walls, put more tape, hammer longer nails, start over. Instead, he walked away, taking only the Indian head walking stick he rescued from under the rubble.
He walked and walked, dragging the stick behind him, not paying attention to where he was headed. All that kept going through his mind was how fast the summer had gone by, the pain of his leg, and the loss of his clubhouse. When he finally noticed the sun was setting, almost time for dinner, he realized he had walked further than he'd ever been alone. From the top of La Lorna, he had scanned the alfalfa fields beyond the desert, but he'd never seen them up close. Now, behind him, La Loma rested like a giant toad.
He knew he had to get back before his grandparents became worried and sent his brother looking for him. As he tried to decide the easiest way up the hill, the sun setting faster, his right leg tired, he heard a noise by a large mesquite. It first sounded like a growling dog, but as he moved closer to the mesquite, it sounded more like the tired motor of his grandfather's truck on cold mornings.
The strange noise drew him closer to the mesquite. When he walked around the large stump--being careful not to get caught on the gnarled branches or step in any cacti--he saw what was making the noise. Marito. The viejito was asleep, his toothless mouth agape, snoring like no one the boy had ever heard, not even his grandparents. He was glad it was only Marito and not something worse, some creature that lived beyond La Lorna, as his brother had spooked him last summer.
Not so tired after his discovery, the boy was ready to rush up the hill when he noticed something different about Marito. Lying under the mesquite, the viejito's pants rolled up, no socks, he saw that Marito's legs were different colors--one the dark brown of his wrinkled face and the other much lighter, like the inside of an orange peel. Marito was still snoring.
The boy approached the viejito. With his walking stick, he touched Marito's dark leg. It felt soft, like his own legs, but when he poked the lighter leg it felt hard. When he did it again, it made a hollow sound. The boy was about to touch it with his hand when the snoring stopped and the leg moved.
The next thing the boy knew he was running up the hill, clawing his way through weeds and rocks. He scraped his legs jumping a rock fence. Dogs barked from all directions. He didn't look back, not even when he dropped his walking stick, wanting to get where it was safe, back to La Lorna, inside his grandparents' house.
He rushed in to find his grandparents and his brother sitting down to eat. He took his place at the table, apologizing for being late. In between catching his breath, he finished three glasses of water. When they asked him why he was all dirty and scratched up, he said he'd fallen chasing lizards. His grandmother went outside and came back with an aloe leaf. As she rubbed it on his arms, a cool sensation soothed his skin while his right leg throbbed.
All through dinner and as he tried to sleep that night, he kept reaching down to touch his leg, making sure it was still there, that it was real.
