Depende de - Jessica Vibberts

It is quiet here.

No banda music booming
Distorted from over-exerted speakers
No bombs exploding like transformer boxes in a wind storm
Scaring away the saints and my sanity

No neighbors holding drunken family reunions
that get warmed up somewhere between
2:07 am and the time you should be waking up
if you had ever been able to sleep in the first place

No incessant bark of dogs from concrete rooftops
Or roosters who are confused about sunrise and their job description

No high-pitched squeal of the camote man
There is no camote man
No cinco peso tamales
For that matter, nobody is walking the streets ready to assuage your every craving
No buenos días from every familiar stranger
​No provecho from the crowd before you lift your fork
​
The lights are dim here
colors dull like hypnosis
Streets are orderly and lined with sterile, perfect stores
that look the same whether you’re in Santa Rosa, San Rafael, or San Ramon

Who isn’t a saint by the way, just some guy, Ramon, who started a tent village
that bloomed into a suburb
Like any good pueblo
But he was Mexican

And so is Elba, who appears at my office once a week
bags of hot tamales slung on her shoulder ($2 not cinco pesos)
¿Que días vienes? I ask her
“Depende de”
It depends

Mexico isn’t just tucked into corners here
It is life blood
The neatly arranged arteries of grapes laid on hillsides like blinds on windows
Strawberries dipped in chocolate
Your glass of wine that sustains your sanity, or insanity

It is in the words you throw around like they are yours
Fiesta and Siesta
Butchered street names and cities you call home
But you don’t know their soul

It is in the jobs you don’t want
that in Mexico provide pride and dinero
for familia and la vida
the trabajadores, the workers
who build the life we take for granted

It’s in the DJ speaking Spanglish and playing Norteño music
that makes me cry though I don’t even like it
But not because I don’t like it, because I do. Or did. Or would.
Because it became a part of the fabric of mismatched
neon oranges and pinks that shouldn’t go together
but do and now are my life, but not my life here
Not completely. But a bit.
Because Mexico is here

And so am I.
For how long?
Depende de.

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