The sun had just set, but it was still warm enough to be outside in shorts, which we were. I noticed Lisa was opening and closing her mouth, smacking her lips in an odd way.

“Thirsty?” I asked.

“Seriously! Let’s take care of it.”

I was very thirsty also, so we walked about half a block to the nearest mercado, one of our favorites, near el instituto, the mercado with comic books and the largest selection of soda pop I had found in Chihuahua.

“Should we have a beer?” Lisa asked. What an idea. But thinking of my recent stomach problems, I decided against it. The strawberry Nesbit looked much better to me than the cerveza.

“I wonder what the drinking age is here? I haven’t tried to buy a beer from a market yet,” Lisa said as she looked over the selection of Corona, Superior, Tecate, Dos Equis, Tres Equis and the rest of the Mexican beers. (I like the Tres Equis because the cans and bottles have 3 X’s on them and they look like poison. I want to take one of those cans home with me. That’s the type of souvenir I like—unavailable in the U.S., but common in Mexico. Hecho en Mexico.)

“I’ll find out.” I walked over to the man behind the counter, a tall, thin, brown-skinned older man with gray hair at his temples. I set the bottle of strawberry pop on the counter. We knew he spoke English because we had been to this mercado many times before.

“Buenas tardes,” he greeted us.

“Buenas tardes, good evening,” I answered. “Um – what’s the drinking age here?”

“Que? The what?”

“The drinking age.”

“What do you mean?” He looked confused.

“The drinking age, the age when a person can buy beer.”

“Any person can buy beer.”

“En los estados unidos, you have to be 18 or 21 to buy beer. How old do you have to be in Mexico?”

“Any age, we don’t have a law like that.”

“Fifteen years old? Twelve, ten, five years old?”

He nodded. “Anybody with money can buy anything in this store.”

“I see.” I saw Lisa choose a bottle of Superior. We paid for our purchases and were about to leave when Lisa thought of another question.

“Is it legal to drink outside, like, walking down the street?”

We were getting closer to downtown and the residences changed from houses to apartments, entire blocks of homes all connected together. We were walking down a narrow street with one-story brick and adobe buildings, and we suddenly found ourselves alone. No one else was in sight! Still, we were cautious. We didn’t want to light up out in the open. People could have been looking through the windows. We ducked into a doorway, which was recessed a couple feet, so we could light the joint. We decided we could walk with it as long as no one got close enough to smell it, since it looked like a regular cigarette. The situation called for more giggles than usual, and we could barely hold our composure.

“Look at us laughing, and we haven’t even lit it yet!” Lisa sputtered between giggles. “Just thinking about it makes us laugh!

“Would you like the honor?” I offered.

“No, you go ahead.”

The first match was a dud. It fizzled out in a puff of smoke before I could do anything with it. Well, what did I expect from 100-for-1-centavo matches, anyway?

“First match a dud, lucky bud,” Lisa chanted.

“Where’d ya hear that?”

“That’s what we always say when that happens.”

“Always?” I asked, giggling. “That has never happened to me before.”

“Never?” She asked, also giggling.

“Never.” We had the giggles – but we were determined to accomplish our goal.

The poem proved to be right. The second match fired up nicely and we began to smoke, flattened against the door, in the doorway, where no one could see us. It smelled so good and tasted great. We smoked in silence for a couple of minutes, then I saw a strange look come over Lisa’s face.

“What if the people who live here decide to come outside?” she whispered, pointing to the door.

“They’d open their door and find two American girls getting high on the doorstep!”

That was hysterically funny, but serious enough for us to move away from the door, onto the sidewalk again. Suddenly, the street was full of people, people were all over the place.

“Act normal,” Lisa said in a mocking voice.

“Normal? Who knows what’s normal in Mexico? Should we ask someone?”

“It’s normal to duck into a doorway when there are no people in the street, light a joint, then step out onto a street full of people. Notice how the people don’t seem to notice us? Are we invisible? Where are all the whistles and shouts and noises that we usually get when we’re walking around? It’s like we stepped into a doorway in our normal life, then stepped out into a different world, another time, another place.”

“Do you know how to roll?” she asked me.

“No! Do you?” A snicker.

“NO!” A guffaw. Hysterical laughter. Excellent smoke, but no way to smoke it! Oh, man!

“I don’t have a pipe. I didn’t think I’d be getting high in Mexico! My dad warned me about the dangers of getting caught ‘with drugs’ in another country, getting thrown in jail without any Constitutional rights to protect me. You didn’t happen to bring a pipe, did you?”

“I don’t even own one! How can we smoke this?”

“If only we had a roller. Hey, I know, I can use something like a roller, like a bamboo roller, something to roll with, make a roller, let’s see, what is that size and shape? I know, a dollar bill! Where is a hundred dollar bill?”

Actually, I meant a 100-peso bill, but Lisa knew that and she got one out of her purse.

I flattened the bill on the desk and centered one of the rolling papers on it. Then I put a small amount of pot on the paper and spread it out evenly. I rolled up the contents inside the paper and kind of squished it down into a cigarette shape, rolling the bundle back and forth between my fingers, pulled open the bill and licked the paper, then rolled it all up. I held it for a few seconds, then opened the 100-peso bill and saw the first joint I ever rolled. It was a little lumpy, but it looked good. I held it up to show her.

“You did it!” she shouted, then, “Shhh! We can’t let Cande see it. We can’t smoke it here, no, not in Cande’s house. She was talking about ganja the other day and how bad it is, how terrible.”

“Why’d she say that?”

“We were watching TV and they mentioned it on the news, all bad press, propaganda. You and I know it’s not as bad as the media says, but people who have never tried it think it’s so much worse than it is. They are afraid, fear of the unknown.”

“Really. Ignorance is the worst teacher.”

I wanted to smoke it then and there, in our room, since Cande never comes in our room, but Lisa insisted that we protect Cande by taking it out of her house. We decided to go for a walk. We told Cande we’d be back soon and went outside. When we were a couple of blocks from home, we had another problem: no matches. Neither of us knew the Spanish word for matches, and we didn’t want to go back and face Cande to get a dictionary. We were only a few meters from the nearest little store.

“You go in.”

“No, you.”

“Let’s both go in.”

We went into the mercado and looked around. We didn’t see any matches. A young man in his 20’s was standing behind the counter, and we assumed he worked there.

“Se habla ingles?” Lisa asked.

“No, no ingles.”

Great, he didn’t know any English and we didn’t know the word we needed to know in Spanish. How could we ask for matches? I decided to try my communication skills.

“Necisitamos…umm…como se dice…matches?”

I tried simple sign language as I spoke, but he just gave me a blank look.

“No te entiendo.”

He looked from me to Lisa, obviously not understanding. Lisa tried again.

“Para los cigarmos, porque…” Lisa mimed lighting a cigarette.

“Aahhh, cerillos!” He smiled, nodding his head. He reached under the counter and pulled out a small box of 100 wood matches.

“Si, si, cerillos!” Lisa shouted, smiling. We were all relieved and exited about our communication breakthrough.

“How much? Cuanto cuestan?” I asked.

“Para ustedes, un centavo.”

“No es gratis?” Lisa asked teasingly.

“Nada es gratis!” he said with a grin.

“Verdad, verdad.”

Lisa told me she had had a headache all day.

I shared with her, “My mom would automatically say, ‘Did you take an aspirin? If you didn’t take an aspirin, don’t complain to me about a headache,’ as if that’s the only possible cure. It never helps my headaches, so I don’t take it, so I can never tell her when I have a headache.”

“Aspirin eats my stomach, burns it.”

“Mine too! So, how do you spell relief from a headache?”

“Either m-a-s-s-a-g-e or h-e-r-b, the simple ways. Those are the only ways I can get rid of a headache, even a migraine.”

“Migraine? What’s that like?”

“Well, I guess they’re different for everyone, but when I get them, my head feels squished, and I feel spacey, and my vision is affected. Lights seem too bright and sounds are amplified, everything seems too loud. Everything bothers me.”

“What do you mean, your vision is affected?”

“Like, I see these little dots, little lines, at first a small patch, then it gets bigger until I do something about it.”

“Like a blind spot?”

“Exactly!”

“I always called those protein headaches’ because the only way I can get rid of them is by eating a concentrated dose of protein, like peanut butter, then the blind spot fades away, and I’m left with a major headache for a few hours. Aspirin doesn’t even begin to help. Usually I have to sleep for 10 – 12 hours.”

“Hours? Jenny, take one hit and your headache will be gone immediately! That always works for me. In limited doses, herb can be a miracle! Have you ever noticed how the benefits of herb are never mentioned?”

“Really, that’s for sure. It’s the only thing that can relieve my monthly cramps—the ones Mom says don’t exist because she never had them—and I’ve tried everything, from heating pads to hot baths to drinking a beer to those feminine-relief pills to special diets and special exercises. Nothing worked until I tried smoking a joint. That worked very well. No more cramps! Gone instantly!”

“Yeah, and it works as a laxative, too, not too powerful, but just enough when you need a little help. And when I hurt my back in gym class, the pain pills the doctor gave me made me sick to my stomach. A friend of mine helped my back relax and feel better with just a little taste of a joint.”

“That reminds me…”

I found my swim bag and looked inside.

“…I forgot all about what Dany gave me!”

Lisa watched me curiously as I pulled out my swim suit—I still hadn’t rinsed out the chlorine—and the folded magazine page packet that Dany had given me. I sat at the desk and opened the packet carefully. Inside were 6 rolling papers and about 6 joints worth of marijuana. It looked similar to the stuff Mario had had, dark green and leafy.

“Dany sold that to you?”

“No, Dany gave this to me.”

“Does he smoke it?”

“He said he doesn’t.” I told her about how he had gotten it from the lady at Robinson, and we agreed that the situation seemed a bit odd. But who were we to say what was odd in Mexico?

“Let me see it.”

I handed her the packet and she examined the contents. She looked, touched and smelled it, then gave it back to me.

Gotta run!

Chihuahua Aquaduct

(Yesterday morning…)

“Jenny, wake up, we gotta go! It’s 7:15! Wake up!”

I didn’t know what she meant, her words seemed so unusual. Then, as I got a glimpse of this reality, I noticed that my stomach was still aching. Tengo un dolor de estomago! My head was buzzing from lack of sleep, like I had just come out of a loud concert. Somehow, I managed to tell Lisa that I had to go to class later. I guess she went without me, because when I woke up at 12:30, she wasn’t here.

Right now—what time is it? I don’t know—I’m lying in bed, sick. I feel a little better than I did, but I’m still a long way from feeling good. I’m afraid to eat or move. I don’t want to throw up again! I want to talk to Lisa.

Does Cande know I’m here? The house is completely quiet. I feel so alone. The rest of the group is going to a waterfall today. Lisa said she didn’t want to go, because she wants to see Roberto tonight, but I think she went with them to the waterfall anyway.

I feel so miserable. Why didn’t Bart visit me? I went to see him when he was sick. Maybe he’s trying to get back at me for going out with Dany, but I thought Bart was my friend. I don’t want Dany to see me like this. I would love to see Bart. Where is Lisa? Doesn’t she care if I’m sick? No one to talk to, nobody cares about me. I miss Jeremy. I miss Mom and Dad. Maybe I can sleep through the whole weekend. I decided late last night that I wanted to go to the waterfall (la cascada) but I missed it.

Who misses me? (Nobody…)

Right then, Lisa yelled. “Ow!  My contact! It just popped out of my eye!”

“Your contact popped out of your eye? Mine have never done that!”

“Help me look for it! But be careful where you step!”

“Where would you go if you were a contact flying out of an eye?”

Even though it was very late and I was still feeling sick, I got up my strength and switched on the light. We started our search from the beds, afraid to step on the floor. Lisa thought she saw the tiny thing go one way, so we looked all over the floor by her bed, on her bed, under the night stand, under both beds. We were both so tired, we started getting giggly again for no apparent reason. We searched the whole room but couldn’t find the silly little lens.

“It’s not here,” she announced, after we both spent about an hour of crawling around the room.

“It MUST be here. You had it on in this room, it flew out in this room, it has to still be in this room!”

That sounded logical to both of us, so we continued our search with a bit of renewed energy. We switched places. She looked under my bed while I combed her bedspread. We were going to find that elusive lens! I was about to tell Lisa that it for sure wasn’t on her bed when I noticed she had fallen asleep on the floor.

I was determined not to give up! However, I guess I was also tired because suddenly she was waking me up, shouting in a whisper, “I found it!” She held it up to show me, as proof, a tiny, green-tinted lens. I pulled myself awake enough to see that I had crashed out on her bed.

“Where was it?” I asked hoarsely.

“Right there!” She pointed to a spot by the corner of her bed, a spot we had both gone over several times. Those silly contacts, popping out of eyes at strange times. What will they think of next? She removed both contacts and put them safely in the case. We each climbed into our own beds and promptly fell asleep with the light still on, at about 3:30 A.M.

Some time later, I woke up again, freezing, with pains in my stomach. I couldn’t be pregnant, could I? My period’s due in a couple of days. No, this tummy ache was what I had been warned against, this was what I got for drinking the tap water. I had only had a little bit, but that was all it took to get sick. I made my way to the bathroom and almost passed out. I stayed in there for at least an hour. It seemed like forever. Tears came to my eyes and I missed Mom and her comforting voice, her soft, healing touch. Only she could help me feel better when I was feeling so sick. Mama!

Finally, I felt like I could leave the bathroom and return to bed. I sort of crawled to the bedroom, pulled some socks onto my ice-cold feet, and fell asleep. I went into a beautiful floating dream, where I was floating over beautiful gardens and waterfalls, looking for a treasure. Lisa’s voice brought me back to our room.

“Lisa, how well do you know Roberto? What if he has something?”

“Has something? Like what? V.D.?”

“How do you know? Did you ask him?”

“Did you ask Dany?”

“No, but—”

“He doesn’t have V.D.!”

“Just because Roberto wears an old army jacket and doesn’t shave every day, that doesn’t mean he has a disease! You’re judging him by how he looks and dresses.”

“And grooms himself—or doesn’t.”

“Yeah, Dany looks all neat and clean, but I bet Dany has had a lot more lovers than Roberto has!  You are the one who better be careful.”

She could be right. I hadn’t thought of that before. Dany looks so good, the thought had never crossed my mind. And I couldn’t possibly get pregnant, either, unless I had planned it first, right? (And I certainly didn’t plan it! No, I am not ready to be a mother! I still need my mother!) Well. I hadn’t worried about that at all. It wasn’t too late to start worrying about it, but I had enough on my mind, and worrying wouldn’t help.

“We’ll never know, will we?” I asked, thinking that if I do get V.D., then I’ll know. Why hadn’t I thought about it before? Love is not only blind, love is dumb. Or, to put it correctly, people in love don’t always think.

I didn’t want to argue with Lisa, so I decided to stop acting like Mom. I just didn’t want Lisa to get in any trouble, that was all.

“Just be careful, OK? I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

Pause. Long Pause.

She didn’t answer.

“You could use a rubber,” I suggested.

She giggled as she rolled off the bed. The tension was broken.

“I thought of that! But how can I buy one? Do they have them in men’s rooms at the gas stations? Where do they sell them? At drug stores? And how do you say rubber in Spanish?”

Good questions! She HAD thought about it! Good girl! “I guess you’d feel stupid asking Roberto.”

“Jenny, that’s a great idea! I mean, if we’re going to touch each other, be intimate and make love, we should be able to talk about it. He’s so sweet, I’m sure he’ll understand. Right?”

“Right.”

“I can just tell him I don’t want to get pregnant. Then, if I’m already pregnant, I’ll know the baby is Mario’s.”

That’s planning ahead.

“Ask him to get the rubbers. It should be his responsibility too, not just yours alone.”

“She said you—never mind. I don’t want to get into this, this is between you and JoAnne.”

“Why? There’s nothing between me and JoAnne. Couldn’t they tell what she was doing, acting upon her jealous impulses? I am the most non-violent person you’ve ever met, I am a lover, not a fighter!”

“She—she accused you of being more than a lover. I know it’s not my business, but I would like to know, tell me honestly, did you and Bart ever do it? Honestly.”

“I told you, no! Did he say we did?”

“No, but I was wondering… did you ever do it with two guys within the same cycle?”

“What do you mean?”

“If you did it with two different guys between your periods, and you got pregnant…”

“Lisa, what are you saying? Did you…”

“Roberto. Did you meet him? He is so sexy. He has deep, blue eyes, and the cutest curly hair! He really turns me on. We were out walking, and we went to a park, and we wanted to, I wanted to, and I know he did, but it didn’t seem like the right place or time. I didn’t want to stop myself, he’s so sexy! But I kept it under control.”

“Roberto?” Did she mean the short guy with the army jacket?

“Curly brown hair? Smiles at you but not at me?” I didn’t think he was cute at all. He was not nearly as beautiful as Dany!

“Yeah, isn’t he cute? He’s so nice. I want to be with him, and we have a date for tomorrow. He has a place for us to go. It’s so romantic, he is so romantic!”

“What about Ben?”

“Why are you asking about Ben? Ben is different. He is more intellectual. He’s 26 years old, like an older brother. I like him, but he doesn’t turn me on like Roberto does. Besides, Ben went out of town for a day or two. You know, don’t you think it’s strange that a guy 26 years old still lives with his parents? Back home, any 26-year-old that lives with his parents is either a mama’s boy or a real loser. But here, everything is different!”

Haven’t I been thinking that? (Yes.)

(Hold on, be right back)

The rest my companeros that I had come with left without me on the bus. I felt so sick, I couldn’t get up. I thought I heard Mom’s voice, telling me to relax and breathe deeply, and to put my head between my knees if I felt faint. I felt like I was going in and out of a dream. Then I was in a room, like a little nurse’s station or something and Manuel came and gave me something with lemon in it. He said it would make me throw up, and I wanted to, but I just couldn’t. I dozed off in the room for a minute or an hour, I don’t know, and I put on my sundress over my swim suit. I was getting ready to get on the next bus, but Manuel stopped me. Dany was already gone. I didn’t know when he had left. He didn’t bother to say good-bye, but he did tell me again that he loves me, and that he wants to go out again. (I know I didn’t dream that part.)

Manuel told me his father would give me a ride home, and I said, gracias, no, I could take the bus. Manuel insisted. I had no choice. I was fighting sleep the whole ride home, but I got here safely, thanked the nice man, ran to the bathroom again, then crashed, fell asleep hard. I woke up and could hear people speaking Spanish, and I wasn’t sure at first where I was. When I finally got my bearings, I wished Lisa were here to give me some socks, but she wasn’t. I was freezing and shivering.

I remembered I had broken a date with Bart, and Lisa was probably with Diego, all three of them at their home for dinner, where I was supposed to be. But no, I was disoriented, I was sick, I was lying on the cold bathroom floor. What could I do? I couldn’t possibly make it to the phone in the hall. That would require too much heat and energy, and I didn’t have much of either one. I crawled back to bed and fell asleep again, hoping Lisa would appear and wake me. I eventually woke by myself, and Lisa still wasn’t home. I dozed again.

Some time later, Lisa’s voice woke me up.

It was 1:00 AM.

She said everyone in our group was mad at me for staying at the park.

“Mad at me? I was sick.”

“JoAnne told everybody it was just an act to keep Dany away from her, and they think you are really low and manipulative.”

“Yeah, like Dany was just about to go after her. He stayed with me all day by choice, until he left the park, but JoAnne was already gone by then.”

“I told them you weren’t like that, but you weren’t there to defend yourself and she really trashed your name.”

Manuel, Me and Lisa at Robinson

After class, Lisa, Diana, JoAnne and I got on the bus and went to Robinson. JoAnne was after Dany and has been to the park every day since she heard (through the grapevine, I presume?) that Dany took me out. She wants him now, but he hasn’t accepted the challenge that no other man will accept. He can’t get up his courage, he doesn’t have the nerve, he’s not that desperate! She is very nice, in her way, but she makes guys want to stay as far away from her as possible. She comes on too strong, like thick coffee. And, honestly, I can tell why people don’t want to be too close to her, because I was there once; she has pukey-smelling breath. She smokes cigarettes constantly and never brushes her teeth, so her general odor is not a pleasant one. Smoke has settled into her clothes and hair permanently. Until she cleans herself up and learns how to act like a calm, rational human being and not a starfish, suctioning on to every thing she can stick to, Dany won’t even look at her twice. He likes the natural, beautiful look (like mine) and sometimes I feel (in my paranoid moments) like he won’t even look at me twice! But he sure flashes me that smile. JoAnne doesn’t have a chance with him, as was proven once again.

I told Dany I wasn’t feeling well, and he told me he was off duty today. He told me he had come to the park just to see me, so we spent the rest of the day together, talking. He invited me to lunch, but I was too sick to eat. He asked me if I like marijuana. Before answering, I asked him if he did, and he said he had tried it but didn’t like it, but he could get some for me, if I wanted some. I asked him how much it would cost. He laughed, stood up, and walked away from me.

I watched him walk across the park to the gift shop. (He was wearing that incredibly sexy, red Speedo bikini and a white polo shirt.) He said something to the lady working there, and she went out a back door while he waited by the cash register. A couple of minutes later, she returned with something in her hand, about the size and shape of a small wallet. She handed it to him and he folded it and put it in his shirt pocket. He said something else to her, she looked at me, and they laughed. I just kept smiling.

In a few minutes Dany returned to the lounge chair by the diving pool where I was sitting. He handed me the packet, a folded page torn from a magazine. I could feel the bulk of something inside. As I started to inspect it, he touched my arm.

“Not here,” he said quietly, glancing around.

“No one can see me from here.”

“People are watching. You take that home and do it. Put it away now.”

He didn’t have to tell me twice. I had just wanted to look at it, to see if it was the real thing and to see if it was as good as Mario’s. However, I had to wait. I put the packet in my bag.

“Are you sure you don’t want some?” I asked him.

“Bring some when we go out.” Maybe he did like it, just a little.

Dany told me he wants to come and visit me back home! Sure! I would certainly be proud if he were to visit me, and by next summer, I’ll have my own apartment. I told him that, and he said he will visit me there. He spoke with such a soft and sincere voice, I wanted to believe everything he said, but I know guys don’t always say exactly what they mean. They say what they think we want to hear, which is not always the best thing to do. Anyway, I can’t make any judgments as to whether or not Dany is being totally honest with me. Perhaps he was just fantasizing with me, giving both of us a dream. It is exciting to think about!