Hawk & Handsaw
waves to me and goes back to her soap opera. But when she sees the plastic cup, she looks up again and points. “Una amiga nueva,” I say. “La Cucaracha Poqueña.” Marleta does not speak English, and I know only little Spanish, so she raises an eyebrow, uncertain what I intend to do. I go to the edge of the patio, remove the notebook, and it only takes a moment for the cockroach to slide down, spreads its wings, and glide back down to the floor. Marleta smiles, shakes her head. She is a housekeeper in this hostel, and it is her business to fold sheets and wipe faucets. In her country, insects do not disappear for months at a time. They buzz and creep and crawl, day in, day out. Marleta may never miss them, because she’ll never feel their absence. They are only pests, always in the way. One dies, a million will replace it. Marleta turns back to her television. The freedom of a bug means nothing to her.
Dog
A dog stands on the corner. I watch him cross the street on his own – no collar, no leash, not so much as a stranger’s voice to guide him. He mans the sidewalk, and he doesn’t even flinch when a garbage truck growls past. His tongue rolls out, and he watches me. I’ve heard about dogs down here – where there isn’t much money for dogcatchers or animal shelters, no money for flea collars or special shampoos. Here, a stray dog is dirty and dangerous. They roam the streets in search of rubbish to pick through. When a dog emerges in an alleyway, no kind neighbor whistles and scratches its neck, studies its brass license and calls the emergency number. People don’t always waste the cash on neutering, spaying, regular vet visits, or inoculations either. Dogs roam free in the hot days and warm nights. When they stumble into other dogs, or a rat in the gutter, or something rabid and snarling – sometimes they fight. Sometimes they lose. You never know where they’ve been, but in Mexico you always assume the worst. This one looks healthy and groomed, but I can’t take any chances. A few paces from the dog, I cross the street. He watches me, panting, until I turn a corner and disappear behind a gate. I wonder where he’ll sleep tonight, what he’ll find for supper, what he risks by wandering another day.
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journal of creative sustainability
Fish
In front of a wood shack, a fish hangs from a string. The fish is a wide medallion, the size and shape of a Frisbee, and it hangs face-up, because the string connects to its mouth. The fins flare out like dark green razors. Men stand around the fish, calling prices into the street. The men are burnished, and their olive shirts are unbuttoned, revealing bulbous bellies and arms like sausages. Cars and pickup trucks roll past, and passengers survey from their rolled-down windows. Nobody who loves the taste of seafood can ignore this particular fish. Its scales are dark and rich and the color of seaweed. As people drive past, the fish sketches their faces with hunger. Everybody wants a taste of its burnt skin. They want to feel that flaky meat melt within their mouths. They want to swallow salt and lemon. I am one of these people. I want to slice it into morsels and chew the wheaty meat. This catch should adorn my plate and no one else’s. And yet. I think about this fish, which is fresh, which means it was recently alive. Alive and swimming in the Gulf of Mexico. Those same fins paddled the fish through webs of sunlight. Those gills absorbed oxygen from the water. And then, sometime this morning, the fish bit the wrong food. There was no way the fish could know. One morsel is as tempting as another. The hook dug into lip, and the fish was dragged into forbidden air. The fish wheezed and flopped, but nothing could free it from the hook. Now the fish is dead, and it dangles from a nylon line, and its flesh tempts every stomach that passes. One moment you’re swimming, the next, you’re punctured by a hook and yanked into the sky.
Water
In some places, they tell me, the sea turns seven colors. I can’t distinguish them – some are dark and some are light, but the men of Cancún tell me that there are seven colors, exactly. The tint changes with the setting sun, until everything merges into blackness, but still the colors are seven. When I ask about the Dark Spots, Mauricio explains that these are the deepest parts of the Gulf. “In some places, you can walk for miles and the water will only
come to here,” Mauricio explains, holding a hand to his sternum. “But if you step to your left or to your right, you will fall forever, because the bottom is so deep.” I don’t believe him, because I’m almost certain the Dark Spots are marine flora – great forests of kelp and seaweed. But I don’t live here, so I pretend to understand. “I had no idea,” I say, because maybe there are trenches that plummet miles into the sea, and the ridges are so dark that they turn the water black. What would Mauricio think of Pittsburgh’s three rivers? Would their colors impress him? Today, thousands of miles from here, they have frozen into millions of crystals. One of the few things I miss right now: standing on a bridge, studying those gray and silver triangles that fade into fog. A young waiter named Juan comes from Guadalajara, and he describes a river that runs past his family’s house. “The river is the color of the ocean,” he says. When I ask how come this turquoise shade, he shrugs his shoulders and says that there are many stories. When I ask him to tell me one, he selects his grandfather’s: there was a Great Battle, and one army built a wall of strange stone. When the walls were pummeled by artillery, they collapsed into the water, and their sediments stained the water bright blue. Juan shrugs again as a breeze flows past us on the dark balcony of a cocktail lounge. Even Juan does not believe Juan’s story, but I don’t bother to disbelieve it. War has done worse than dye a river. It wasn’t long ago that a good myth was worth more than a dull theory.
Rubbish
A creek of garbage riffles through the woods. This was once a shortcut, which was slowly beaten down by footsteps and became a walking path. Now there is only the water line of plastic jugs and glass bottles, tattered T-shirts, and spare socks. Everything is muddy, and the supermarket colors are dulled by sunlight. Visitors never see this: where rich tourists stay, the sidewalks sparkle like tile counters, the roads are dark and freshly paved, and not even a gum-wrapper blemishes the lawns and walkways. But here, far away from the all-inclusive resorts, is a regular barrio, where houses are small and hotels are cheap, and every crack
is stuffed with trash. The brick walls are lined with junk. Trees grow through skins of litter. Whatever can’t be used, patched up, or handed down gets tossed in roadside trenches or hurled into the woods. This is a place where men would chuckle at my suggestion of green recycling bins. Use that Pepsi can again? they puzzle. For what? Cancún is only 40 years old and, not so long ago, was a fishing village that nobody had ever heard of. But then the beaches were corralled and hotels began rising into the sky. Four-star restaurants sprang out of wetlands and brush. Legions of people scrambled here, and when the city emerged, the last thing on their minds was the land itself. Money and beaches. Sex and mojitos. Everything seems disposable. How could I blame those who believe as much? Aren’t I mimicking them, just by walking here, breathing their air, tossing my third water bottle in the trash? What am I going to do? Fly it back to the U.S. for a proper reincarnation? On a lonely road, which outlines the grounds of a not-yet-built hotel, a man staggers toward me. He is old, and his body is lopsided and fat. His yellow-and-blue swimsuit swishes along scarred, prickly legs. When he swallows the last of his beer, he flips the can into a bush, where it lands without a sound. We pass each other without a glance or word, and when I look for the can, I see it’s not the first: a tribe of them lie on the roadside, their gold aluminum too weathered to gleam.
Sandcastle
I walk past clusters of strangers. Maybe they’re staying in the tall white hotel that looms over us. Maybe they’re intruders, like me. I zigzag among their tanning chairs, their glass tables and whole kingsize beds made up with sheets. I avoid the shade of their umbrellas and curtains, because I have not paid for them. Here, respite from the sun is rented. On the beach, I spy a mound that was once a sandcastle, but the waves have melted it down. The towers and walls have eroded, leaving only a hump of architecture. The sandcastle is no longer majestic; what remains is just a ruin, its grandeur sucked out with receding waves. “It was amazing,” says the Lawyer from Long Island. “You should’ve seen it. This little girl built it. She took forever. She looked real serious about it, too.”
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