Waiting in Juarez

WAITING IN JUAREZ… Any gabacha whether worldly-wise and jaded or wide-eyed waif is apt to learn much after 4 months here, in terrible though bewitching Ciudad Juarez. But I will not list a litany of lessons gleaned… not now, only begin with one small confirmation spurred by cacophonous crowing. Since my south of the border sojourn I’ve heard it said and often that a rooster’s crowing at all hours signals a change in weather and so, after a long, torrid summer this morning’s gush of rain brought a wet, welcome coolness. The landlord, ( a Guanajatan taxista) keeps 3 roosters penned by his house they have not quieted since dawn, though the day drags drearily towards noon… Even his twin mongrels scruffy yellow curs have ventured from the shade beneath a mud-splattered van to noisily slurp rainwater from a 19-liter paint bucket just outside my door. His 2-year old grandson wails while the dogs dodge debris strewn about this littered lot. Tools, auto parts, coke bottles, a toilet. The rain has lulled though the coolness remains and my husband has walked into town he will bring me El Diario for I need something to read… but already I know that the news is the same the headlines still spell more murder the inner pages spill senseless mayhem. And here I am tired of sleeping trying to write well surrounded by scruff-marked oil smudged walls lying on a narrow bed waiting for the miracle of money And I gaze outside through a filthy broken window above the branches of a pomegranate tree and see milky pale Mexican sky and I wonder why the waiting? and how and when it will end. * gabacha - a gringa, American female. El Diario - One of the two major newspapers in Ciudad Juarez.