by Luis Urrea
Wait till Oz gets here.
They were right: as soon as Oz took over the show, what had already been a successful morning kicked into some bizarre overdrive. Victor took off once, twice, three times with vanloads. Skateboards, surfboards, food, clothes came in. A trucker tore in from the freeway in his eighteen wheeler and handed Oz a ten-dollar bill. Four, five, six vanloads.
Seven. It was coming far faster than we could load it. Even when the Marines hauled away a large pile for the Toys for Tots program, we were having trouble keeping up. By five o’clock, Victor was speeding in and out, hauling the donations up to Pastor Von’s offices, and the stuff was apparently rising to the ceiling. After the ninth load, more drivers had to come in—we were running double loads in tandem.
It continued after dark: a ten-speed bike; $140 in groceries, neatly boxed. An unemployed woman pulled up in her car. “I got a blanket,” she said. “I was just cleaning a lady’s house in trade for a cake. You wanna see the cake?”
We walked to her car. The cake was in the front seat.
She handed me the old blanket. “Wish I could give you more,” she said.
Pastor Von finally appeared to be interviewed. On the air, Von told Oz about a group of orphanage kids in Tijuana who had decided to give Christmas to children in the garbage dump. Each child took one of his or her own toys, wrapped it nicely, then went to the dump and selected a child to give it to. I always imagine a hush all over San Diego at that moment, like the hush that befell us all in the parking lot, everybody pausing for just an instant to consider it.
As the last vanloads pulled out, and the torrent of donations finally began to slow, I went inside and collapsed on the couch in the lobby. A “jock” named Pam Wolf was doing the last show out in the dark, wrapped in a blanket. It was raining. A biker rolled up, reached under his leather jacket, and pulled out a teddy bear.
We’d spent thirteen hours out there, and none of us had really seen what the magnitude of San Diego’s generosity was. We had seen it being whisked off, but it would be an hour or so until we got to see how huge it had turned out to be. I had been trying to think of an appropriate thank you for Oz and Cynthia, and all I could think of was to give them my only picture of Negra. They’d huddled shoulder-to-shoulder in the cold wind, the picture flapping between them.
And still, people came. They rattled the door. Cynthia would jump up to open it, and someone would hand her a toy. The last, sweetest thing was what finally overwhelmed her. A young businessman in a shirt and tie appeared at the door with six large coffees. “You’ve been out in the cold all day,” he said. “Take these, and Merry Christmas.” She sat on the arm of the couch and cried.
Still, Christmas had not yet come.
Cynthia, Oz, and a group of workers stood in the Spectrum Ministries building and gawked. There was stuff everywhere: toys, clothes, coats, blankets, shoes, cookies, cans of food, bread, candy, bicycles, Walkmen. Some of us sorted out four hundred of the best toys for the next day’s “X-Mas.” We had selected Trincherazo—the old “Lower Dump”—because it was isolated enough to be controlled. Von was going in the next day to bathe the kids, and they would announce the toys late in the day, before too many hundreds of invaders could hit the hill. Probably, our only invaders would come down from Panamericana. The radio crew and I would swoop in at the last minute.
Late in the night, when all the physical labor was done, we lounged around trying to get to know each other. Efren, one of Von’s full-timers, appeared, and he told us a suitably appalling story about one of the dump-people. A man named Jessie had somehow gotten his throat cut and not died. Efren and a young woman were there when Jessie pulled open the rag he’d been using as a bandage. The flap under his chin fell open, and maggots tumbled out of his throat.
The girl vanished behind one of the vans; Efren hurried off to vomit.
Oz said, “I’m going to go vomit right now!” and shut himself in a bathroom.
“But I looked back,” the missionary said, “and this girl was cleaning the worms out of the hole in his throat. I couldn’t believe it. I said, ‘I thought you were vomiting.’ She said, ‘No. I went behind the van to pray. I asked God to let me see Jesus in that man, and that’s what I did. I made believe I was cleaning the wounds of Jesus.’ ”
That one pretty much capped off the evening.
Victor and Oz made a plan to rendezvous in Tijuana somewhere. I was too tired to pay much attention. We said our good-nights, and we drove away.
The next day, we gathered again in the 91X parking lot, empty now and unexceptional. It was Saturday, December 22, near two in the afternoon. Oz, in the studio, was wrapping up his show. We had Victor’s van loaded with over four hundred toys in bags, boxes, and bundles from Von’s office. A Volvo pulled up. Three little girls peered out at me; their dad got out and said, “You still taking stuff to Mexico?”
Oz, “Probably the worst deejay in the world,” rushed out late. Dwight Arnold was at the wheel of the “X-Van,” with Cynthia riding shotgun. We agreed to follow them through the border, since the guards would probably not choose to harass a radio-station vehicle. We sailed through, on our way to our rendezvous with Victor—we thought.
We cut through town, looped up onto the east-west highway that runs to Playas de Tijuana, and we got lost. We looked everywhere for the overpass where Victor would meet us. It was nowhere in sight. We drove through the crumbling dirt canyons that all seem to be crowded at one end with new shacks. At an impromptu recon stop, I hopped in the “X-Van” and we roared off. Suddenly, we were entering Playas de Tijuana and I said, “We missed it. We overshot it.” Dwight pulled into a shopping center, and Oz and I began a short series of interviews of Tijuana Law Enforcement Officials. “Perdone, oficial,” we’d croon, “sabe usted donde se puede encontrar la colonia llamada El Trincherazo?” (Greatly respectful, we spoke in the florid usted form: “Excuseth thou us, Officer, but wouldst thou know where we might find the neighborhood called El Trincherazo?”)
The cops would all rise up about an extra foot in height, look off, then say, “No.”
We were already about a half hour late. I would find out that Von and the missionaries, faced with several hundred cold, restless, and vaguely irked people, resorted to silly busy-ness to avert a minor riot. They lined everybody up in straight lines of fifteen each, and when they had everybody neatly lined up, they moved the lines up and down the hill. After forty-five minutes, Victor gave up on us and radioed that he was coming in. Von, finished with the bathing of the kids, with the giving out of food, with every task available to stall, then resorted to giving out the tickets that would get the kids into the gift room.
Meanwhile, Oz and I were schlepping through the mud of a depot for water trucks. These rattletrap flatbed trucks—many of them dating from the late fifties—roam Tijuana with huge water tanks in the back, pumping water into cisterns all over town. We figured if anyone knew how to find a lost barrio, one of these drivers would. But the one we asked squinted an eye and stared at us. “Trincherazo?” he said, as though tasting it.
“Yeah!” I said. “It was the dump, a couple of years ago. Now it’s two barrios—one at the top of the hill, one at the bottom. This is the one at the bottom. Near the new factories.”
“The new factories! You’re on the wrong road for the new factories.”
“We are?” Oz and I fairly sang.
“It’s the next road. Toward Ensenada. There’s an overpass.”
“The overpass!”
Back in the van.
“Don’t worry about a thing,” I lied. “I know exactly where we are.”
We stumbled on down the road, peering up various arroyos that failed to be our turnoff. Suddenly, there was an off-ramp that said ENSENADA, and it wasn’t a lie anymore. The hills connected with my memory—there was the place where water gushes out of the cliff in storms, there was the little whitewashed bridge, and over there was the army base. On its slopes, white stones etched out the insignia of
various army outfits—the Fifth Infantry Battalion had crossed carbines forming an ominous X.
“Make a U-turn,” I told Dwight.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, absolutely. Turn around. That’s the road up to the old dump.”
We turned around and went up the ramp to the overpass.
“Turn right. Up the hill. Trust me.”
I hadn’t even seen this road for over five years, but it was like my own driveway. “Keep going,” I said. Oz and I were crouched behind the seats, kneeboarding the ruts. I told Cynthia, “You’re going to see the places you were reading about.”
A deadly-looking pair of cops hanging at a house with a bunch of dopers waved us on up the hill—“Just follow the road up and over. It’s open all the way down. Just keep going.”
“Thank you!” I called.
One of the dopers came at us, shouting, “No Christmas? ’Onde ’stá mi Christmas!”
“What’s he want?” Cynthia said.
“Presents,” said Oz. “He’s asking where his presents are.”
Dwight hit it.
It was stunning, coming over that hill. The dump had been replaced, just as I’d heard. Little houses and shacks and hovels and sheds absolutely crammed every foot. I said, “There, on the right! That was Pacha’s house.” Cynthia craned. “Over here used to be the pig village!” It was now a row of some of the better houses. “Negra used to live right there!” I tapped Cynthia on the shoulder. “See down there? That’s where Jesusita lived.”
“The one who got murdered?”
“Murdered?” said Oz. “How’d she get murdered?”
“Somebody blew her head off,” Cynthia reported mildly.
“Head?” said Oz. “Off?”
“Turn left!” I said.
They looked out the windows at the ruin. We could have been driving through a movie set.
The dirt track bent down sharply, and we began to pick up followers as we descended. Everyone with a radio listened to 91X down there—many kids in Tijuana consider it the hippest product Tijuana has ever offered the world. There is great loyalty to any call letters starting with “X.” “La radio!” kids chanted in ones and twos.
Suddenly, a dementedly cheerful black-and-white dog—part pit bull and part who knew what—took the lead. She placed herself directly in front of the van, trotting so close that there were times when her tail brushed the front bumper, and she barked madly at everyone in our path. She looked back at us regularly, with a dog grin on her face, and shouted, “Woo! Woo!” Our canine herald cleared the road, all the way down, and as we made our way through the last lake of cocoa-brown water blocking the road, the crowds came into view. She barked us into the middle of them, then sat down and began to scratch at a flea under her front leg.
I’d opened the van’s sliding door on the way down. I crouched in the opening, calling to all the families who had lost heart waiting for us. “Go back! Christmas!”
Oz was shouting, “Go back down! To Von!”
People were waving, calling at us. One really wild little boy trotted beside the van, face nearly black, yelling at me, “¡Raite! ¡Raite!” (Ride! Ride!) I nabbed him and pulled him into the van. He and Oz started jiving right away. Then we were nearly there, and a group of women saw me and shouted, “¡Luis! ¡Luis!”
I said, “Somebody remembers me after all these years.”
We stopped, and I jumped out of the van. The gathered lines of people were freezing and restless. Worried missionaries hustled all over the place with no apparent goal in mind. The children, clutching their tickets, yelled, “¡Jugetes!” (Toys!) and “¡Creesmas!”
Three little girls charged into me, yelling, “¡Luisluisluis!” and kissing me. I didn’t know who they were. I looked up. And Christmas came.
Negra’s mother, Doña María, was walking down the hill. And with her, a pretty young woman, very pregnant, and the young woman put out her fingers and touched me lightly and stared at me. She had the smallest hint of blue eyeliner under her eyes. I looked at María. “Yes,” she said. “It’s her.”
“I never forgot you, Luis,” she said. “Did you ever forget me?”
Negra.
The temperature had dropped to the upper thirties on that hill, due to the fierce wind. She wore a light sweater, jeans, and shoes. Her hands felt like something pulled out of the refrigerator. We held each other, wandered around the area. Two of the little girls were hers—Elsa and Nayeli (a Mixtec word meaning “Flower of the Fields”). The other girl, Marta, was Negra’s niece. She was the same age as Negra when we first met. Negra and her mother were raising her.
The next baby was due at any time. I put my hands over Negra’s distended belly. María said, “Get her out of here, Luis. Get her out.”
I wrapped Negra in a blanket. She tucked my hands under her arms to keep my fingers warm. We looked out at the perfect view of San Diego; it looked like bronze, the color of wheat fields in spring.
———
Almost five hundred toys were distributed that day. Every child who came left with a toy. Oz found the dopers and homeboys irresistible—he bravely joined sulking groups of them, handing out key chains and buttons, chatting happily in cholo Spanish. Cynthia dove straight in, disappearing into the small building where the gifts were.
Here’s how it worked. The toys were laid out in the same building where the baths had been given. They remained unwrapped so the kids could see what they were, and the offerings ranged from stuffed animals and dolls to soldiers, wristwatches, board games, and sports equipment; there were cars, trucks, Barbies, rubber wrestlers, squirt-gun sets, radios, coloring books. These were all spread out on tables and the floor. Von stationed gringos at strategic points around the room to prevent general looting. A squad of other gringos guarded the door. Each line of fifteen kids was brought to the room, and they turned over their tickets as they went in. They were free to choose whatever caught their fancy. On the way out, they received a mark on the back of the hand so they couldn’t sneak back in for another gift. Around every corner of the small building, you could find kids eagerly licking their hands and rubbing them desperately on their pants.
In the days to come, the missionaries repeated this scene at the active dump, at Panamericano, at the Satánicos’ barrio, and at other colonias and orphanages around the city. Today, if you go into any of the tar-paper houses scattered over the hillsides of these neighborhoods, you are likely to find new dolls still in their boxes, or teddy bears on scavenged beds, going gray with the dust of the canyons.
The two new bikes were raffled. Everyone got a ticket, and the stubs were put in a plastic bag. With the bikes, the missionaries raffled off a bear over three feet tall and a plush orange snake about six feet long.
In the neighborhoods where there was no building to distribute the gifts, the vans were pulled into U-shaped half circles, and the kids entered the gap in groups of two or three. Meanwhile, games of skill dotted the periphery, so they could win further things—candy bars, Cokes, paddleballs. It looked for all the world like the fair had come to town. The mothers could be seen, later, hauling the gifts and the food and the candy up the steep cliffsides, their children yelling and laughing.
The thing that leaps out at you at every site is the absence of men. Time and time again, there are families whose fathers have gone across the wire, not to return. And if you look at the chests of the kids and teenagers, you can see scabies pits, and angry little red welts.
Back at Trincherazo, mothers begged for blankets, but there weren’t enough for them. Confronted with a group of about twenty women vying for the one extra blanket I carried, I had to choose one woman. It was a dark luxury, to be carrying the only available blanket on that hill. I picked a teenage mother whose baby was wrapped in part of a bed sheet. Elsewhere, kids and winos were encrusted with 91X buttons. They wanted to shake hands with “El Oss.” Smiling, he was slowly sinking in a pool of yammering children. An old woman went up to Cynthia and pu
t her frozen hand on her cheek to say thanks. Cynthia took off her gloves and put them in the woman’s hands.
———
Negra had a long climb ahead of her—night was coming on, and the cold was really clamping down. She lived back up the long hill. Victor and I piled her and her kids and her mother in one of the vans. They made us stop to pick up a woman who had recently undergone abdominal surgery, and who was also struggling up the hill, clutching her stomach. We banged up, then, noisy and laughing, Negra holding my hand in both of hers, the little ones admiring their toys. We were like a family for a minute. Marta tucked her head against me, laying her skinny back across my front.
Negra lived in an abandoned chicken coop. She led me inside. Incredibly, it was almost exactly in the same spot where she had lived years before. So much had happened to her—they had fled Tijuana in despair and gone home to Michoacán. Times were no easier—in fact, harder—for them in the south. “At least,” Doña María said, “here you have garbage!”
Upon their return to Tijuana, Doña María fell in with a man who brought violence and abuse into their home. Negra had to flee: in her elegant phrase, “Situations obligated me to leave.” She was fourteen. She settled in a canyon barrio only six miles from Panamericano, but I’d had no way of knowing where she was. There, she had survived. And now, they were back in this chicken shack.
It was dark. The floor was indistinguishable from the mud that slopped in the yard. Gaps in the slats of the walls wider than a finger let the breeze cut through the room. Three ducks wandered through, commenting on the scene. The apparently ubiquitous pit bull delivered kisses to everyone who came near. Negra’s one bed had been scrounged out of the trash. We sat on it together, the little ones happy and shiny-eyed.
Nayeli had scabies marks on her belly. Negra’s sister had come back for a short visit from her new life in the U.S.—she’d brought them a small artificial Christmas tree. It stood on some papers beside the scavenged stove, on which two frying pans of cold fried rice gave up their perfume. There was one small gift for each of them under the tree, wrapped in jolly Woolworth paper. Negra’s sister had gotten across the wire, and she’d managed to marry. She had things like Christmas trees and a house with a floor, with windows, bathrooms.