The Mexican Year

So I’ve gotten in the habit of speedreading Nooshin’s notebooks while she’s taking a protracted leg-shaving shower.  And yeah, I feel guilty about it.  Can’t-stop-myself guilty, like when I was a horny teen raised to believe that masturbation was a passing lane on the highway to hell.

Her notebooks are the only private space she has in this claustrophobic house, where the walls are so thin I can hear the crinkle of a tampon wrapper.  She leaves one notebook out as a decoy, a corner jutting from beneath the pillow on her new twin bed.  Its pages are filled with rambling observations of Tijuana life and ink sketches based on the polaroids that she snaps.  But the other notebook – the juicy notebook – is tucked into the bottom of her backpack, hidden beneath everything piled on top.  How I found it there…

Well, like I said.  I’m feeling can’t-stop-myself guilty.

The juicy notebook’s pages are full of confessional revelations.  Fractured poems of crushing insecurity.  Unsent letters to her sister Nasrin that read like plaintive wails.  And since we’re talking Nooshin here, lists.  Heartfelt lists of things that would’ve made her a better wife, places to visit before she dies, the rollercoaster emotions she’s felt in a single day.

I was kind of relieved, kind of disappointed to discover that my name rarely makes a cameo anywhere in her notebooks.  I’m just a “he” or half of a “we”.  Maybe it’s because she doesn’t think about me very often.  Maybe it’s because she already thinks about me too much.  So nothing takes me by surprise when I flip to the latest page in her juicy notebook and find a poem with “we” and “our” and “he” in it:

Tijuana

the first week we live here there is no electricity
we navigate the dark by flashlight
and use the refrigerator to keep pancake mix away from the mice
water runs rusty in the toilet
if it flushes at all
and I decorate the floor with buckets and pots
when it rains

our first visitor is a dead cat
motionless on the “lawn”
a tiny rectangle of pink and aqua-colored patio pavers
we did rock-scissors-paper to see who’d shovel it
into the garbage can
he cheated
to lose

he can’t make the backdoor light work
even after he replaces the bulb
and the fuse
and the switch
and the socket
and each time
he confronts the fuse box or touches hopefully dead wires
I remind myself that he’s lucky
if no electrician

I’m responsible for the wine rack
a pretentious model of many wooden pieces
that I crowd into form
with carpenter’s glue and muttered pleas
“it’ll be so cool!” he keeps encouraging
although he drinks our wine faster than we can store it
living here

it is my fifth move in as many years
from the house in Terrazas Park where I grew up
to wifely imprisonments across the map
and now this place in Tijuana which
I suspect will be imprinted as a series of residential crises
that unwind like a sitcom arc

I can’t believe this is home
a destination all the other moves never reached
but that’s love for you
maybe

Well, nothing takes me by surprise – until that last part.  And worse, how quickly the bathroom quiets and opens.  I’m a stampede out of her bedroom, almost caught red-handed.

Nooshin emerges with a towel wrapped around her head, which only exaggerates her skyscraper height.  She’s swimming in a too-big hoodie and plaid sweatpants that hang on her legs like drainpipes.  Only her new bunny slippers fit.  Looking down at them she almost runs right into me.  “What’s up?”

I wave a bottle of New Year’s fuel at her.  “Come on.  It’s almost midnight.  Let’s go drink our cheap champagne.”

“It won’t make me sick, will it?”

“Probably,” I sigh.  Her tolerance is measured in sips and vomits.  Proof that she was a good Muslim until she met me, I guess.

We trickle onto the front stoop and sit hip-to-hip in the murk, huddling for warmth.  The breeze makes it feel even colder than 50 degrees.  I pop the plastic cork, letting it fly into the street, and pour champagne into coffee mugs.  The sickly-sweet crap doesn’t even taste like I spent seven bucks on it.  It goes down my throat like alcoholic Gatorade.

Around us the horizon is already lit for the new year.  Mexican kids are setting off bottle rockets and sparklers that flare above the rooflines into the dark sky.  A few blocks away is the glow of Colonia Libertad’s business district, still hung with Christmas lights.  Beyond the dark lip of the border fence is broad daylight, a chain of floodlight towers reaching from the Pacific to the Sierra Nevadas.

Nooshin shivers into me.  “Do you have any New Year’s resolutions?”

“Nah.  I never got in the habit.  My family doesn’t believe in New Year’s resolutions.  We’re supposed to be perfect year-round.  What about you?”

She tucks her knees under her chin.  “Well, I came up with this huge list…”

I swig my champagne and settle in, yawning.  Nooshin is big on lists.

“…but mostly it boils down to this – I’m not going to disappoint you.”

I wait for more, but there isn’t any.  “You’re not going to disappoint me,” I say in bafflement.

“I promise I won’t.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Like, I’m going to become fluent in Spanish.  I’m going to learn all this stuff that you take for granted, stuff about Mexico.  I’m going to digitize the entire archive and help you with other projects.”  She sips her champagne and coughs.  “You’ll be glad you met me, Nick Roberts.”

The words are transfixing.  I’m already glad I met her.  Too goddamn glad, considering the collateral turmoil.  Nooshin has changed my life like a natural disaster.  I was a grad student mercenary until we met, a couple miles west of here on Avenida Revolucion.  Now it’s two months later and I’m living in Tijuana with her, even though she’s still married to a guy I only know from her photo album and that broken nose.  I need a Nick-to-Nick talk.  Dude, what the fuck?

“I thought this was going to be the worst year of my life, the way it was ending up.  Leaving Saman – and my family disowning me for it, you know?  I was so afraid of being all alone.  But then I met you.”  Her smile is a shy glimmer in the dark.

“Yeah, well…”

“Well what?”

“I could say the same thing, you know.  I figured the best thing about this year would be finishing my coursework, and passing my orals, and getting the fuck out of UCLA.  But then I met you.”  My voice trails off into a chain of firecrackers, hissing and popping in the street.

The coffee mug in my hand clinks. “Aide shoma mobarak,” she says, and empties out the rest of her champagne onto the pavers.  “That means Happy New Year in Farsi, if you were wondering.”

“Feliz Año Nuevo is how you say it in Spanish.”

“Rappy Roo Rear!  In Scooby Doo speak.”

I nudge her with a shoulder, laughing.  “That’s got to be the worst Scooby Doo voice I’ve ever heard.”

“I warned you I’m no good at voices, didn’t I?”  She glances over at me, her crooked eye flashing more white on one side than the other.  “I’ll remember this New Year’s for as long as I live.”  A sentiment that could’ve been sarcastic, a cutting remark like Phoebe would make, or my sister Wendy if she went off her happy pills, but coming from Nooshin it’s genuine.  She wants to treasure this memory as long as she can.  I wonder if she knows I feel the same way.

I’m stumbling through a dream of foggy reaching hands and doors that won’t open and shadows on clouds when I hear the barking.  Torrents of it.  Sudden and intense and approaching.  I sit bolt upright in the unfamiliar darkness, clutching the sheets to my chin, feeling my heart flutter against ribs.  The barking intensifies.  I glance around wildly.  Glowing green digits tell me it’s an insanely small hour of the night.

Tijuana.  I’m in a tiny cinderblock house in Tijuana.  With Nick.  He’s a snore droning through the thin door.

I have to reach down toward the alarm clock shining on the bare concrete floor, since I don’t have a nightstand yet.  My hand knocks over books and an empty water bottle, until it finally closes around the flashlight.  Then I slide from my new twin bed and stand at the window, aiming the beam through the interior blinds and exterior bars.  The racket is almost deafening, as if wild dogs are swarming our front yard, but I can’t see anything.  The cone of light plays across the Explorer and empty pavers.

Then silence.  Or as much silence as you ever get living this close to the border fence.  Helicopters are whupping back and forth overhead, Humvees are revving around.

The local dogs were probably chasing some of the wetbacks who muster in the neighborhood for a midnight crossing.  Or so I guess, clicking off the flashlight and returning to bed.

Sleep is a warm black tar sucking me in.  I don’t stir again until hands are clapping, insistent and close.  “Wake up.  Hey.  Nooshin.  Wake up.”  Nick is standing in the doorway, watching me with eyes like frozen propane fires.  He’s fully dressed in jeans and an untucked oxford with the shirtsleeves rolled up.  “Come see this.”

I trail him out of the claustrophobic bedroom, pausing only to shrug into my new robe, rubbing sleep dust from my eyes.  His broad shoulders squeeze into the false dawn and follow the periphery of the house.  Behind him I’m tiptoeing carefully, barefoot, dodging rocks and broken glass.

He stops so abruptly I almost run into him.  “Our first visitor,” he announces, pointing at a motionless furry shape in the trash-littered yard.

A dead cat.

I haven’t seen any cats in Tijuana.  Plenty of dogs, feral and roaming the streets, but no cats.  Maybe this is why.

Nick moves forward with a shovel in one hand.

“What are you doing?” I ask plaintively, trying not to look at the dead cat.  Its milky eyes.  The ugly spilling gash in its side, where things had feasted.  All the rusty stains around its muzzle from life leaking out.

“I need to get this thing into the trash,” he says.

I stop him with an extended fist and palm.  “Rock scissors paper.”

“What?”

“Rock scissors paper.  For whoever has to clean this up.  It’s only fair.”

Nick waves me off.  “You’re already the boss of everything indoors.  This is my responsibility.”

“I’m the boss of everything indoors?  What gives you that idea?”

“It’s true, isn’t it?”  He starts to slide the shovel under the cat, causing a slimy gray coil to ooze out.

My vision turns watery with tears, but I jab at him with my fist and palm.  “Rock scissors paper.”

“Fine.  Have it your way.”  Nick sighs heavily and plants the shovel blade-edge into the ground.  “Rock scissors paper.”  Then he makes a fist and palm and thrusts it at me.

We smack our fists into our palms in counting gestures.  One…two…three…

I make my hand flat.  Paper.

Nick’s hand is in the shape of a – rock?  I could’ve sworn it was scissors.  “Go back inside, Nooshin.  Get some sleep.”  He plucks up the shovel and turns to our first visitor, but not before I glimpse him smirking in triumph.

That’s how I find myself at the kitchen window, huddled in my new robe, crying a little.  I’m watching a man shovel a dead cat into the garbage can.  A man who cheats at rock-scissors-paper in secretive compassion, and put me in charge of digitizing an archive, and offered shelter when I had nowhere else to go.  A man I didn’t even know two months ago, when I fled my husband for the first time.  And in this moment, as dawn spills over the neighborhood like pink lemonade, I have to force myself to stop thinking about Nick – stop feeling these emotions, stop fantasizing – and go back to bed.

To be honest, I didn’t know what I was getting with Nooshin the roommate.  Okay, I’ll be more honest – I was fucking clueless.  Last roomie I had was freshman year at Iowa State and he was an inveterate slob.  Bryce, his name was.  Thanks to him I used to find skidmarked tighty whities on the floor, crushed beer cans in the dirty laundry, and used condoms everywhere.  No wonder a neat freak like me has avoided entanglements ever since, even if they’re just of the mundane domestic variety.  But Nooshin got under my skin, into my head, through my ribcage.  I figured I could make something work with her, find an equitable division of labor, even if she was a slob too.

What I didn’t foresee is that she’d just take over the household.  First she arranged the kitchen and tried to clean the uncleanable bathroom.  Then she progressed to the laundry and everything associated with meals – food prep and cooking and washing the dirty dishes.  Now she’s wearing a rut in the road between here and Wal-Mart, surprising me with a list of our domestic needs and the cost breakdown required to pay for them.

I stand in the unfinished doorway between living room and kitchen, staring at the neat columns running down the page.  Meanwhile Nooshin sits at the kitchen table, her ad hoc office.  “I’ve been setting up house every year for five years,” she smiles breezily, as if that explains everything.  And maybe it does.

The very first item on the list – beds, twin (2).

“Beds,” I say.

“Beds,” she echoes.

“Okay.  I agree with you there.”  So does my back.  My sleeping bag lifestyle is killing my spinal column.  There’s a hell of a difference between sleeping on dirt in a tent and sleeping on concrete in a house.  And god knows that futon is due for replacement.  “But I can’t get a twin.  I need a double.  I’m so used to that piece of crap futon.”

“Double-sized for you, then.  I’m cool with a twin.”  Nooshin laughs into her lap, a wistful sound.  “It’s probably going to be a long time before I sleep in a double bed again.”

I’m not touching that one.  Instead I ask, “Box springs or no box springs?”

“You can’t be serious.”

“What?”

“Nick, we are not sleeping on just plain mattresses.”  To emphasize her resistance, she brushes back the veil of her bangs, pinning them behind her ears.  Her eyes remind me of twin cups of cappucino, dark and steaming, until the right orb ruins the effect by drifting toward the sink.  “Is that your idea of an upgrade?  Moving up from a sleeping bag to a mattress on the floor?”

“Look, I’m just throwing it out there.  We’d save – ”

“You know what?  Go ahead, save yourself 50 bucks or whatever.  I’m getting a box spring like a civilized person.”

I look back down at the list, where my gaze snags on the next item.  “Tupperware?  I brought a bunch of tupperware.”

“The ones you brought are just the little kind, for leftovers.  We need the bigger kinds that can hold packages and even boxes.  Like, for cereal and pasta and sugar and…”  She glances around at the kitchen cabinets, voice trailing off, overwhelmed.  “Well, for everything, really.”

“Tupperware containers for everything?  Why do we need tupperware containers for everything?”

“Duh.  Because there isn’t enough room in the fridge to protect everything from the mice.”

I’m a farmboy with zero tolerance for rodents.  “Forget the tupperware.  Mousetraps and rat poison, that’s what we need.”

Nooshin pushes back from the table and walks over to a cabinet, producing a box of graham crackers shredded open at the bottom.  Crumbs dribble out of the box when she holds it up.  “See?  If stuff like this was in a tupperware container the mice couldn’t even smell it, let alone chew through to it.”

A compelling demonstration, but I only give her the satisfaction of a shrug.  A little ways down the list I stop again.  “Water purifier?”

“Just for our drinking water.  It must be cheaper than bottled water.”

For a while there’s nothing but the sound of her fingernails scratching at a stain on her jeans.

“Throw rugs?” I ask in dismay.  “Posters?”

“Now you’re in the non-essential part of the list.  See the heading?  I think we should decorate a little.  Make this place feel more like a home.  Don’t you?”

My response is a derisive snort.  Then – “Hey!  You put a wine rack on here.”

Nooshin’s tone is becoming increasingly defensive.  “I know, I know.  We don’t really need one.  We can just leave the bottles on the floor.”  My wine bottles look like dusty artillery shells lined up against the kitchen floorboards – or where the floorboards would be, if this house had any.  “I just thought it would be nice to – ”

“No, I like it.  I think a wine rack is a great idea.”  I tack on a reassuring grin to emphasize that I’m not being sarcastic.  I’ve always wanted to be the kind of guy who has a wine rack.

She notices that I’m folding my arms across my chest, the list dangling from a hand.  Her face turns hopeful and hopeless at the same time.  “So?  What do you think?  I know the list is kind of long, but…”  She tries to lighten the mood, forcing a grin.  “Anything I missed?”

“Actually, yeah.  Mirrors.  There are no mirrors on this list.”  I’m watching her thoughtfully, focused on the way she wears her bangs pulled down, an inky wall against the world – hiding that crooked wandering eye, but also her steep cheekbones, sharp tapering jaw line, lips fuller than the rest of her.  Hiding her beauty.

Nooshin breaks my scrutiny by looking away.  Downward, really.  Toward the bare concrete floor.  “I don’t need a mirror.  I already know what I look like,” she says in a voice that makes something crack and heave inside me, because she doesn’t really know what she looks like.  She doesn’t know at all.

The morning has turned on that invisible pivot between dawn and noon.  Last thing I remember was Nick calling out  “See you later!” and the squeaky brakes of his truck backing into the street.  Then I fell asleep again.  Now I can hear the periodic rumble of jets scraping the roof, traffic humming on the asphalt roads and shuddering on the gravel ones, dogs barking in the dirt and dust.  I blow out a deep breath and watch flies buzz overhead.

Another day that begins like this, with me sleeping in late.  Maybe my body is still healing from Saman’s punches and my fence-climbing fall.  I glance around a bedroom lit with ambient daylight.  The only decor is the futon Nick thrust on me while taking a sleeping bag himself.  A few things lie here and there – backpack spilling open, several bags with new clothes inside, the Tijuana newspaper I was reading to practice my Spanish but rolled up into a flyswatter.

I pad across the bare cement into the bathroom, where I force myself to stare into the so-called mirror, just a small reflective tile above the sink.  A scrawny girl with matted hair stares back at me, eyes flat as oilstains in her tired face.  Her tanktop is soaked with sweat.  The “I (heart) MANGA” graphic across the front is barely distorted by the bumps of her chest.  The girl looks as if she forgot how to smile.

Then I realize I’m only seeing the girl in the mirror because the bathroom light turned on.  Electricity, yaayyy!  My counterpart in the mirrored tile is flickering out of stoic exhaustion, her face brightening as if Nick just cracked a joke.  She didn’t forget how to smile after all.

It’s amazing how much happiness you can fit into a little thing, like pulling a light cord — and having the bulb arc to life.  I run around the house, plugging in the television and the DVD player hooked to it.  Recharging the batteries we’ve gone through.  And omigod, using the stove’s burners and oven.

But I’m already late for today’s agenda – exploring the neighborhood on my own.  Yesterday Nick gave me a tour of Colonia Libertad and showed me how to find my way back to the house.  Now it’s my turn to prove that I’m no longer the Nooshin who hid inside her fears and insecurities during those five years with Saman.  I’m going to show Nick that I’m girlpower personified.  I’ll even draw my own conclusions about Colonia Libertad thankyouverymuch, and decide which locals are worth befriending or avoiding all by myself.

The only thing that scares me about outside is the dogs.  Mangy feral things that scrounge through garbage and chase cars and snarl at people.  The only dog I knew growing up was a slavering mastiff in Long Beach, which may explain why perros scare the poop out of me.  Luckily I now have pepper spray on my keychain.  I don’t know if anyone has ever maced an attacking canine before, or if pepper spray even works on dogs, but carrying it around makes me feel better.

I emerge into a warm overcast noon, old Polaroid camera in one hand, mace keychain in the other.  I stand in the patchy sunshine for a while, just soaking up the freedom.  For the first time I’m not seeing the mishmash of housing, handbuilt shacks next to palatial stucco homes next to fenced-in junky lots where the cardboard boxes may be inhabited instead of discarded.  I’m seeing a place where I can go in any direction I want.

First I walk north to the border fence, a strangely pathetic sheaf of corrugated aluminum that peels back in places, revealing the sliced-open chain link fencing underneath.  No wonder impoverished Mexicans trickle down this road and gather here at sunset, all their worldly possessions on their backs.  It’s easy to get through, if not across.

Then I turn around and retrace my steps toward the main drag, slowly realizing that my casual use of “blocks” to describe the distance along this street isn’t correct.  The houses just kind of spill into each other, and what I thought were side streets are actually the occasional driveway or deadend alley, as I discover when I explore one.

Backtracking to the street, I have my first encounter with the local dogs.  A couple of them trot past with tongues hanging out, kicking up little plumes of dust with their paws, not even turning my direction.  I breathe a sigh of relief so huge it almost hurts.

That’s when it hits me – the neighborhood is utterly deserted.  Those dogs are the only sign of life.  I haven’t seen a single person, not a single vehicle in motion.  Everyone is somewhere else – or just terrified of the ungodly tall girl with the evil eye.  In their absence the neighborhood has become an oasis of peace and quiet.  Except for the stupid planes thundering overhead.

The main drag is just a bigger and broader variation on the same old gravel road.  Its expanse is almost funereal.  I pause to watch a towering dust plume draw closer and closer, until it resolves into a dump truck.  The driver stares at me through his dirty windshield, mouth hanging open a little.  Apparently he’s wondering how a solitary gringa managed to wander this far from the tourist district.

Feeling more confident now, I head for the corner store, an unmistakable landmark because of its exterior – bright yellow cinderblocks fading to the color of pee.  A couple plastic patio tables and chairs sit outside the front door, unoccupied in the blotchy sun.  Inside is a claustrophobic mélange of shelves crowded with colorful boxes, glass-fronted refrigerator cabinets placed weirdly, barrels of fresh fruits and vegetables, piñatas dangling from the ceiling so low I have to duck.  I can barely turn around in the aisles, they’re so narrow.  Beneath my Nikes is a floor of perilous linoleum, heaving and cracked.

I don’t buy anything because I didn’t bring money to buy anything.  I exit practicing a checkout conversation in my head, prepping for the time when I’ll actually make a purchase using Mexican pesos.  The shopkeeper is a graying spindle of a woman watching a telenovela – soap opera – on a tiny black-and-white TV.  She doesn’t make eye contact with me, doesn’t even reply when I say “Buenas tardes!”

On my way home I find a half-dead dog flopped against an alley wall.  A plastic bag of snack crackers is tucked beneath her snout.  She looks self-reliant and pathetic at the same time.  Bending over her, I realize she’s just a puppy, really.  She doesn’t even have the strength to open her eyes when I pet her, smoothing the garbage out of her coat.  I want to bundle her into my arms and carry her home, oh god I want to…

But I don’t.  Nick wouldn’t stand for it.  He’d point out all the other starving mangy dogs that need befriending.  He’d ask me where I was going to get the bucks for dogchow and veterinarian care and blah blah blah.  He’d launch into his cruelly pragmatic speech about how Mexico is a developing country, a Darwinian crucible, and you sink or swim.  Talking about the puppy, all the feral dogs in general, but maybe me too.

This postage stamp of a house is shot through with sunbeams and dust particles when I emerge from the bathroom, putting away the improvised toilet plunger I built out of coat hangers.  Across the street a racing-striped minivan is engorging a family of Mexicans dressed in their holiday best.  They mill across their hardpan lawn, occasionally casting a curious glance at the rustbucket Ford Explorer with Iowa plates, their new American neighbors.  In the distance a church bell is tolling the hour, one solemn gong.  You might presume they’re headed for mass like good little papists, but I happen to know they converted to Mormonism a couple years ago, apparently in hopes of securing an interest-free loan to start an auto repair shop.  The shit you learn from gossipy storekeepers.

“Hey Nooshin, come out here!  I’ve got something to show you!”  Then I catch myself and start laughing.  “Well, not show you.  It’s still kind of smelly in there.  Just listen.”  I lean into the bathroom and slap the toilet handle.  Water rushes and gurgles and finally dies into leaky quiet.

The bedroom door opens a crack.  Her right eye peeks at me, the dark iris slowly drifting away.  “You fixed it?”

“Hell yeah.  The toilet is officially working again!”

“Yaayyy.”  The exclamation barely reaches my ears, it’s so unenthusiastic.  The door closes again.

“You ready to go?”

“I still can’t decide what to wear.”  Nooshin’s voice is a muffled groan of frustration.  “God, maybe I should just stay here.”

“Fuck that.  You’re coming with me.”  I never figured her for the type of woman who obsesses over clothing, but apparently she does.  “Ready or not.  Which is it?”

Hinges creak behind me.  “How does this look?”

Nooshin is frowning down at her floral-print shirtdress, a pattern of sunflowers on a soft yellow background.  The top three buttons are open, revealing her sharp clavicles and the white scoop of a tanktop underneath.  I follow the line of buttons to a shirttail hem, then bony knees and thin calves and finally a pair of brown lug-soled boots that make her even taller than me.  The effect is ruggedly delicate, if that makes any sense.

“What do you think?” she asks, raising her gaze shyly.  “Be honest.”

“I liked you better with that big honking bandage on your nose.”

“Nick!  This is serious.  I need you to tell me what you really think.”

“I think you should stop fishing for compliments and get your ass in the truck already.”  I refuse to believe a girl can be this clueless that she’s beautiful.

Driving around Colonia Libertad, I toss her an oversized map of Tijuana and give her a crash course in the vitals of navigation.  How she can fix her position by triangulating from local landmarks – the runty skyscrapers of downtown, antennae-studded Miraval Hill, dead towering smokestacks in the nearby industrial park.  Where she can catch the express bus to the tourist district, or a reputable taxi.  What roads to follow to the San Isidro and Otay Mesa border crossings.

“You mean…”  Nooshin’s face lights up in her cowled hijab thing.  “I’ll get to drive your truck?”

“Not fucking likely.  This is Mexico, last time I checked.  But you’ll need to know a cab driver is taking you in the right direction.”

“Oh.  Right.”  She jots another note on the map spread across her lap.

Next I loop around General Abelardo L. Rodriguez International Airport, named after an interim president who died in corruptacular retirement in La Jolla, California.  The airport looks more municipal than international, just a couple stubby runways lined with rusting aluminum hangars.  The control tower is whitewashed and decorated with the next best thing to a Nativity display – a Nativity banner.  Adjoining it is a single-story terminal about the size of a tour bus.

I slow down – unnaturally slow, for my lead foot – so we can watch jets scream over American airspace and scrape the border fence as they land.  Nooshin is enthralled by the spectacle of gigantic aircraft shoehorning into the minuscule runways.  Until she realizes we could die a horrible flaming death if a 747 trips over the fence and pancakes into our house.

Back in our neighborhood I cruise the asphalt streets first, then the gravel ones, pointing through the dirty windshield at places she is – and isn’t – allowed to go.  When she asks, I readily admit the distinction is arbitrary.  I’ve already made the rounds of these places, introducing myself to shopkeepers and clerks and waitrons, feeling them out.  If I got the wrong vibe, any sense that they might try to take advantage of Nooshin’s unfamiliarity with the language and culture and currency, then wham – I put them on my blacklist.

I’m worried her reaction will be hostile, bristling with resentment at being told what to do and what not to do.  God knows my female colleagues at UCLA would scream bloody murder – even if they’d never been south of Beverly Hills, let alone south of the border.  But Nooshin just blinks in surprise, glancing around at the storefronts and open-air stalls and sidewalk vendors selling crap out of carts.  “You talked to all of them?  Thinking of me?”

“Well, uh…yeah.  Partly thinking of you, at least.”

Nooshin aims a lopsided grin across the cab at me.  Beside the still-purplish bridge of her nose those dark eyes are narrowing – in appraisal, in validation, in something like amusement – and I get the eerie sensation that she’s reading me like a comic book.

“And here we finally are,” I announce, executing a sharp pedestrian-scattering turn into the parking lot of Wal-Mart, the new consumer epicenter of Colonia Libertad and anchor tenant for an attached strip mall of glassy American-style stores.

There’s an explosion in the passenger seat.  “Nick, look – it’s a Wal-Mart!  I didn’t know they had Wal-Marts here.  And over there, that store must be, like, the Mexican version of Old Navy, and – hey, is that a video store?”  She whirls around and grabs my right bicep in both hands, squeezing my arm in excitement.  “It is!  We can rent videos, Nick!  Videos!”  A rueful laugh.  “Now all we need is electricity.”

“This is the one place in our neighborhood where you’ll be okay at any store.  They’ll give you the right change, and they take plastic too.  But best of all…”  I extricate my arm from her grasp and use it to point due east, out Nooshin’s window at a receding avenue.  “Two blocks that way is our house.  You can walk here anytime you want.  During daylight, of course.”

“Of course,” she echoes happily, too distracted to gripe about the no-Nooshin-at-night rule.  “So what are we waiting for?  Let’s go check it out!”  And she slides out of the Explorer, bubbly with delight, an unrecognizable version of the girl who showed up at my place on Noche Buena.

I trail after Nooshin’s billowing shirtdress, admiring the flashes of thigh whenever the wind catches it right.  I assume her cheerfulness is due to the prospect of shopping, that familiar and reassuring chick-ritual.  But then she glances over a sunflower-patterned shoulder at me and halts, a hand outstretched to hold mine – “Nick, come on!” – and time seems to stop for a moment, until she catches herself reaching and hurriedly uses the hand to brush away her bangs, whirling like a storm cloud around her shy embarrassed smile.