The House on Carnaval Street

by Deborah Rodriguez

  For many women in Mazatlán, their dreams remain just that—dreams. Money is tight, especially since the cruise ships stopped coming. And that’s why some, my girls told me, turn to the one profession you need no experience to enter.

  “You know Samantha, yes?” asked Martha. I couldn’t recall anyone by that name.

  “She’s the one you’ve seen hanging around Martha’s family,” Noah explained. “The one with the really, really short skirts? They say she’s a prostitute.”

  “Are you kidding me? A hooker? She looks like a kid!” I remembered noticing her when she dropped by Noah’s to pick up an old stereo he no longer wanted—she was a scrawny-looking thing with braces on her teeth.

  Just then Analisa came through the door and settled in for her weekly manicure.

  “Who is a hooker?”

  “You mean a hooker-hooker? Or just someone who sleeps around a lot to get her phone bill paid?” I asked the girls. Analisa repeated the question in Spanish.

  The girls nodded rather nonchalantly. “Sí, es una profesional,” said Teresa as she started removing Analisa’s polish.

  “Why would she do that?” I asked. Teresa rattled off an answer.

  “She had to take care of her family,” Analisa translated. “She was twelve and her mother left for the States, her father had no job, and she had younger sisters.”

  “That’s terrible,” I said, bouncing a wiggly Italya gently in my arms.

  Teresa continued telling her story to Analisa, who repeated it to me. “When she started she was a teenager, and only had one client, a narco who paid for everything, including her boobs. Then he was killed.”

  “So what happened then?”

  “She wanted to go back to school, but she could not make enough money in a regular job.” Analisa turned to me. “You know, Debbie, there are lots of girls who do this here. Girls who also work in normal jobs. So many jobs only pay you ­fifteen hundred pesos every two weeks. They have a secret life. It is too hard to take care of your family on so little pay, especially when your husband leaves, or when your family does not help.”

  I did some quick calculations in my head. That was only about fifty-nine dollars a week. Granted, the cost of living was lower down here, but it would still be impossible for a woman to live on her own on those wages in Mazatlán. I had struggled with the question of what to pay my girls. It was important to me that they earn a decent living, but I felt I had to be careful not to overpay, as I had seen firsthand the effects of overinflation. It happened all too often in Kabul, where, say, a doorkeeper who might overnight go from making a hundred and fifty dollars a month to an unheard-of salary of thousand dollars, thanks to the arrival of a foreign company. Six months later, that company leaves town, and leaves the doorkeeper with the burden of a whole new lifestyle he can no longer afford.

  The girls went on to explain the hierarchy that exists in the profession. The Velvets girls, and those like them who were working at the nightclubs where you could get absolutely anything you wanted for a price, make the most money. They said most of those girls, or “dancers,” are from Colombia or Brazil, or sometimes Russia. Then there are the ones who work parties or in brothels, and on the street, who have “agents” managing their careers. At the lowest rung on the ladder are the cantina girls, with their painted, upside-down V-shaped eyebrows and their shirts even tighter than the ones my girls preferred. Not all girls serving at cantinas are prostitutes, but the ones who do turn tricks don’t get much in return.

  “Ask Teresa if Samantha’s family knows what she does,” I urged Analisa.

  “She says of course not. They would kill her if they find out. She has a boyfriend who doesn’t know, too.”

  What was going to happen to her in five or ten years? What if she wanted to, or needed to, get out? Could she? Did she have a backup plan? Things could turn bad, and turn bad fast. I knew. Then I thought about the little flower girl, and all the other young girls I saw wandering the streets hawking their wares. How many years away might they be from having to make a decision like this?

  “There is a woman on my street,” Analisa continued, “she had to go to Tijuana and work for a company when her husband left her.”

  “What did she do? What kind of company?” I asked, knowing that there was money to be made closer to the border.

  “You know, a company that hires girls.”

  “You mean she was a stripper?”

  “No. She does the same as Samantha. She had to feed her babies.”

  “So her husband left her with nothing?”

  “There was no law, Debbie. Now Mexico is getting the laws for the fathers to pay for the children. But Mexican women are strong. We fight for everything we have.”

  There was no arguing with that. But still, I couldn’t stop myself from wanting to do something. What really got to me were the stories my girls told me about abusive husbands and fathers who would smack their daughters at the drop of a hat. I had witnessed it right on Carnaval Street. One evening, from my roof patio, I heard the unmistakable sounds of a domestic battle. “You are nothing but a cockroach! Get out of my house or I’m going to kill you!” At least that’s how I interpreted the words. The man continued to rant, his intensity rising by the minute. The woman was silent. “I’m going to beat you until you are dead!” he screamed. My heart racing, I peered over my balcony to see if my neighbors were reacting to the commotion, to see if anyone was doing anything. But they were just going about their business, with one ear cocked toward the shouting. I had to call the police before this poor woman was murdered! I grabbed the phone, suddenly realizing that there was no way I had the vocabulary to handle this in Spanish, so I dialed Martha for help.

  “Oh no, Debbie. We don’t do that in Mexico. That is a family thing. That’s just the way it is.” Martha warned me that it might not be safe for me to intervene. The whole thing made me sick to my stomach.

  I kept my eye out for the woman over the next few days but never caught sight of her. I was used to catching a glimpse of her every day or, if not, hearing her sing as she washed and cleaned. A few days later, a terrible stench began to fill my house, like old garbage . . . or decaying limbs. I began to picture the poor woman’s body in a plastic bag, dumped in the empty lot out back. As the days got hotter and hotter, the smell got worse and worse. I was just about to ignore Martha’s advice finally to call the police when María arrived to clean the house. She wrinkled her nose, pulled me into the bathroom, and pointed to the drain. “Rata.”

  Okay, so maybe we dodged a bullet, so to speak, with that one, but if I had to hear that’s just the way it is one more time, I thought I’d scream. Even though violence against Mexican women was an issue that was routinely swept under the carpet, or worse, deliberately kept from public awareness, anyone with half a brain knew it existed, big time. How could it not in a machismo culture where women were so overtly considered inferior citizens, where education was often not an option for girls? I had heard somewhere that close to seventy percent of Mexican women have experienced some form of violence, most of it in their own homes. I thought about all that my Tippy Toes girls had told me about their own lives, and all those ­stories about the women they knew. And most of them were the lucky ones, relatively speaking. I thought about some of those street vending girls I had seen acting way too familiar with foreign men while their mothers intentionally looked the other way. I also thought about my brief conversation with Connie under the angel tree at Sharon’s Christmas party.

  Kids! The kids were the ones who needed the help, who needed someone to show them a way to take control over their futures, before their futures were stolen from their grasp. I knew I couldn’t change hundreds, or more likely thousands, of years of cultural norms, or pull everyone out of the cycle of violence and poverty, but I knew there was something I could do.

  I was lucky to have a mom who once told me I could be a
princess. Maybe the girls around here needed someone to tell them they, too, could be a princess . . . or a hairdresser.

  Before I knew it, my life had become so busy I barely knew if I was coming or going. The word of mouth on Tippy Toes had spread like freshly brewed gossip, thanks to those guinea pigs who had bravely taken one for the team. I’d run back and forth from the salon to Macaws, which I’d turned into my ­personal office, twenty times a day between appointments and paperwork and checking on my girls. And yes, despite my protestations, I had started doing hair.

  Here’s the deal. Once you decide to do hair, you commit to doing more than just a job. You become The Hairdresser, which comes with a certain level of expectation and responsibility that you just can’t walk away from, and I really wasn’t sure if I wanted to go there, once again. At first I took advantage of the water hookup Sergio and Bodie had insisted on to take care of the handful of friends I had previously been working on in my kitchen. That was fine. It was much more convenient and ­comfortable for all of us. Then the disasters started to come through the door—blondes with brunette streaks, baby-fine curls brittle with bleach, hair so black it was blue—victims either of communication problems or of local beauticians ­lacking the proper training. People were begging for help, and I was there to perform triage. I even considered, at one point, marketing myself as The Hair Doctor. For a while that’s all I did. And then, before I could stop it, my appointment book was drowning in ink. I just didn’t know how to say no.

  My days were starting way too early, gulping down a fast cup of coffee at Macaws as I watched the Tippy Toes girls parading down the street to work in their matching hot pink polos, a sight that never failed to make me smile. Noah and Martha would arrive with Derek and the baby, and I’d rush over for a morning cuddle before she’d be driven up to The Hill to her other grandma’s. We’d settle in to work, Noah cranking up the music and switching on the coffeepot, the girls trotting out the mops and buckets and brooms. Soon Denis would arrive with stacks of fresh, clean towels before settling down for a smoke in the Adirondack chair on the sidewalk outside, perfectly positioned to greet the world as it passed him by. It couldn’t help but remind me of my dad after his own retirement, going to work as a greeter at Walmart to keep himself occupied. But for Denis it was just a comfortable perch on a friendly street.

  All of Mazatlán seemed to gather at Tippy Toes. Those plate glass windows were a magnet for passersby. A friend inside getting a pedicure? Perfect excuse to pop in for some chitchat and a cup of coffee. And most people didn’t even need an excuse. The buzz of those early days cost me at least one good Trip Advisor review. As one of my rare disgruntled customers wrote, I went expecting a relaxing two hours . . . it was a constant barrage of well wishers and friends having lots of conversation. Sheesh. I guess we were just a little too Steel Magnolias for that one’s taste.

  For me, it was all good. It felt like home, and the days would go by in a heartbeat, with the setting sun reflecting off the windows across the street before I even had a chance to realize how busy I had been, or how hard I had worked.

  My time off became precious. A long lunch, an afternoon of shopping, curling up with a good book—those were now distant memories. Especially now, with new family added into the mix. You see, around here, a lot of the time it’s all about the children. Among my expat friends, I was the odd woman out on that score, as none of them had family around. At first it took some getting used to, I have to admit. Everything seemed to revolve around kids. There’s even a special holiday for them—Children’s Day—when every mother in town demands the day off to shower her offspring with love, attention, and of course, presents. Me, I thought that’s what birthdays were for. And then there’s Guadalupe Day, the ­holiest day on the calendar in Mexico. That day, everywhere you turn there’s a pint-sized Indian, as this is the occasion for parents to dress their kids up in traditional Mexican clothing. Even little babies wear wide-brimmed straw hats, and for the girls, long black braids woven with red and green ribbons clipped into their hair. Martha had already started a search to buy a lighter-colored pair, to match Italya’s dirty-blond locks. On Día de la Marina, they all dress up as sailors. On Mexican Army Day, as soldiers. There’s always some street party going on. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to squeeze my way around one of those big bouncy trampolines smack in the middle of a blocked-off, music-filled, piñata-strung Carnaval Street.

  One Sunday Denis and I had to excuse ourselves early from our traditional brunch with the gang at Macaws. It was ­Derek’s birthday, and we had been invited, for the first time, to a party up on The Hill. I have to admit I was a little nervous. “You don’t want to go up there,” Martha had said to me every time I expressed a curiosity about seeing where my grandbaby was spending her days. Even Noah was told not to go up there alone, and never to go up at night, back when he first started seeing Martha. I knew it was dangerous. And I also really, really wanted to see those killer views of the ocean that had to be up there.

  The long way around is the preferred, or to put it more bluntly, safest way to get to Martha’s mother’s house. Since that means parking at the bottom and doing the rest by foot, Denis and I locked the doors of the Mini behind us and started up the wide path, arm in arm. Noah met us at the top of the first staircase.

  “Is it a long way up?” I asked, my heel slipping off the top of my four-and-a-half-inch wedgies as I stumbled on the rubbled cement. I knew it was a stupid choice of shoes, but I wanted to look my best for the occasion.

  “It’s not bad. But you just missed all the excitement. There was another raid.”

  Noah had told me this happens a lot on The Hill. Masked men with big guns storming through the rabbit warren of little houses in search of drugs, weapons, and money. Apparently it’s so common that the folks who live up there barely look up from their breakfasts.

  Gringos aren’t usually seen on The Hill. But by now everyone knew Noah, and knew I was his mom. And Denis? He just stuck close behind. Indeed, as we made our way through the maze of graffitied façades, the purples and greens and lemons and tangerines and aquas all crashing into each other in a crescendo of color, nobody blinked an eye. Not the woman leaning wearily on her elbows on the sill of a cutout window high above the street, a string of potato chip bags for sale behind her head, not the trio of kids banging on an old arcade game crammed against a cinder-block wall, not the two women parked in plastic chairs, the backs pushed up against their facing front doors, their knees so close they could almost touch. Only the dogs seemed on edge, barking wildly from behind locked front gates as we passed by.

  By now we had turned off the main path and were following Noah in a convoluted route that had us weaving smack through people’s front rooms. I kid you not. It was impossible to tell where one home ended and the next one began. You’d pop in and out of slivers of sunlight, one minute with a spectacular cliffside view of the ocean on your right, the next minute nodding politely to some guy watching TV from his sofa.

  “That’s where the lookout sits,” said Noah, pointing to a dirty velour couch perched on a roof.

  “What are they watching for?” I innocently asked.

  Noah rolled his eyes. “Federales, or military, of course.”

  This is where my granddaughter spends her days, I thought to myself, peering down a precipitous garbage-strewn drop that ended practically all the way down at the fancy shoreline homes.

  “Want to meet one of the neighbors?” Noah asked facetiously, as something in the dirt rolled over and moaned.

  “Is he sick?” I asked, watching the man wave his arms in the air, his baseball cap falling off to one side.

  “No, he’s just a drunk.”

  A rooster gingerly led his family around the slowly gyrating body, as if it were simply a part of the landscape.

  “Pleasure to make your acquaintance!” Denis called out. I punched him in the shoulder.

>   “We’re almost there,” Noah assured me. “See, there’s ­Daniela’s mother’s house, right up there.” I followed his gaze up to a clothesline hung with trousers blowing gently in the breeze, to underneath, where a gnarly-looking mutt was patrolling from the roof. “Martha’s mom lives right next door.”

  I could hear music and laughter floating through the open door. From the look of what was going on inside, the kids must have already consumed liters of Coke and gobs of candy. They were bouncing around like rubber balls, the girls swiveling their little hips in perfect time to the beat, the boys waving invisible lassos above their heads. Even the ones who were just learning to walk had all the moves. I couldn’t help but burst out laughing myself.

  “Where are all the guys?” I asked, after greeting everyone.

  “Guys?” Martha handed the baby over to Noah. “My father is here, in his room. The men, they don’t come to these things.” Denis shrugged and helped himself to a plate of ceviche. Teresa and Daniela shot me a look.

  “What?” I asked, looking around the room.

  “In Mexico, we never let the man get his own food at home or at parties,” Martha explained.

  “Seriously?”

  “It shows they respect us, they know we know what is best.”

  I had to think about that one for a minute. Then I silently vowed to try it out on Denis sometime. I’d serve him my personal favorite—red wine and Pop-Tarts.

  “And it shows other people that you love him.” Martha bent down to listen to a little boy who was tugging at her shirt. He pointed at Denis as he whispered in her ear. “He wants to know if Denis is a real Chinese person.”