Down in the Mexican Part of Town

　

　

Down in the Mexican part of town, Rolly walked his dog, Buddy. They walked in the gutter, avoiding broken glass that might cut Buddy’s paws, and, on old irregular sidewalks, raised and tilted by the roots of sycamore trees. Buddy was a yellow lab and, when he met people, he grinned at them and wagged his tail. In Washington, President Trump was inveighing against immigrants and his decrees separated children from their parents at the Border and, so, the older men that Rolly met in that part of town were aloof and avoided his eyes even when he spoke to them directly. The boys and teenage girls were equally impassive and didn’t return his greeting when he said hello. But the women generally smiled shyly and said something to Rolly and his dog although he couldn’t always understand what their words.

The neighborhood was residential with small, neatly groomed houses and alleyways where there were garages and sheds, some of them lathe frames wrapped with plastic to incubate tomatoes and flowers during the colder months. A tiny treeless park with scuffed lawns was located among the houses. Some playground equipment, swings and a slide and a wheel-shaped merry-go-round occupied a corner of the park. Beyond a narrow field with soccer goals at both ends, there was a corral made from cracked and splintered wood panels enclosing a weedy patch used as a hockey rink in the winter. It was very hot in the late afternoon when Rolly walked his dog and the park was without shade and deserted.

Rolly decided to cut through the empty park. This was an infraction: a sign warned in English and Spanish that dogs were not allowed. But no one was around and Rolly was already carrying in his right hand a plastic grocery sack wrapped around a coil of dog poop. At the corner of the park, near the playground, a big black pick-up was pulled along the curb facing in the wrong direction. A Latino woman with a pig-tail held a cell-phone to her ear. As Rolly watched, a little boy, about three years old, pushed open the back door and ran as quickly as he could toward the playground equipment. The child looked over his shoulder mischievously as if daring the woman to follow him. He was a small brown boy with huge eyes.

The woman in the truck put down her cell-phone and shouted something to the little boy. He did a defiant dance kicking up the pinkish pea-stones near the slide. The woman shouted again, but the child ignored her, trotting to and fro as if unsure whether to swing or slide or ride on the merry-go-round. It was clear that the boy’s mother was calling him back to the pick-up, but he wanted to play and pretended not to hear her. Buddy tugged at the leash and wagged his tail to show that he was interested in the child. Perhaps, Rolly thought, I should drop the leash and let the dog prance over to the little boy. Buddy was very gentle but Rolly was sure that this would frighten the child and, probably, drive him back toward his mother waiting in the pick-up. Black and brown people are afraid of dogs, Rolly thought – it’s an instinct in them. But the dog was already an illegal entrant in the park and Rolly didn’t want to unduly frighten the child and Buddy was big and rambunctious and if he jumped on the little boy, he would surely knock him over and, then, what?

The mother revved her engine and honked the horn once. The little boy scampered around in circles still pretending to ignore her. So she, then, put the pick-up in gear and slid forward about a half car-length. The child’s response was immediate. He threw up his arms in horror and opened his eyes as wide as he could wailing in a shrill voice. Then, he spun on his heel and ran with a stagger toward the big black pick-up. Of course, he caught the tip of his shoe in the gravel and fell forward in a scatter of stones. Then, he sat in the rock shrieking at the top of his lungs and flapping his arms like wings around his head.

– That was irresponsible, Rolly thought, but Mexican parents often took risks with their kids that White people wouldn’t dare. He remembered a Mexican father cutting grass with a riding lawn mower, a small toddler bouncing up and down on his knees as the whirling blade flung grass and pebbles in all directions.

Rolly sighed. Buddy leaned forward against the taut leash. – Live and let live, that was best, Rolly thought.

The mother opened the door of her wrong-way parked pick-up truck and hurried toward the child. She was obviously irritated. The truck’s engine purred – no one was around. The only visitors to this silent neighborhood were the wind and the seasons. The howling little boy sat next to the slide. The tall slide cast a long shadow in the late afternoon light and, towering above the child, the slanting channel in its aluminum flange looked lofty and very steep. The slide’s old polished metal reflected the bright sun and shone like a scimitar glistening in the heat.