Roadside
Esteban Rodrguez
Mexico rises into view like a textbook description of a dead civilization;
its silhouette1 piercing the scaled soil, the streaks2 of afternoon mirages3,
the caliche billowing across the windshield as my mother pulls into a roadside
stand. Still a few miles away, and I already see how poverty mimics4
the effects of age, how it wears the fragmented skyline with corrosion5,
subtracts layers of durability6 off a buildings frame; how the city mirrors
the black-and-white photos of abandoned war zones; how a fence can lose
its purpose, become symbolic7, while the river below it bleeds a history
of unsuccessful bodies no one ever claims. Before we cross over, graze
the peripheries8 of those who havent tried their hand at an exodus
the barefooted boys selling Chiclets, the old and toothless women seated
on the bridge, the sleeping infants strapped9 in serapes to their mothers chests
we weave, like we do every weekend, through rows of shoulder-high water
fountains,
pattern-painted pots, and ceramic10 statues of Aztec gods ready for someones
yard,
each a variation of mud-brown and red, and as hot as stove-grates when I run
my fingertips along their rims11, note the way my mother does the same.
She doesnt pull back though, doesnt squeal12 or flinch13, her endurance for pain
callused on her hands like the callused face of the old woman on a lawn chair
beneath a tarp, where they begin to make small-talk in their muffled14
Mexican tongues. Behind them sits the womans Chevy, whitewashed15
and windowless, its bed stacked with the inventory16 she didnt take down,
and I recall those playground jokes about how in spite of the small space
they have, Mexicans can fit anything inside a car; a punchline17 that whether I
find
funny or not, I imagine shell embody18 when she towers her ceramics19 back
inside
her truck, aware that even as my mother scans the worn-out price tags
of each pot, we arent going to buy a thing. And as they exchange a few nods
like outdated20 currency, I watch the old womans hand reach out and touch
our shadows the way old women touch everything that isnt theirs, feeling
the indifference21 with which we slip between her grip, how the sunlight cracks
our skin like pottery22 as it breaks.
