When I lived in Ajijic, the lake flooded. It wasn’t the worst the village had lived through. People told me years before Lake Chapala came two blocks into town. The year I was there, she only swallowed the shoreline. But I remember the eery feeling I had seeing everything submerged. I used to be able to walk straight down Aldama from my hillside home, then walk along a dirt path that hugged the southern edge of the village beside the lake. All of that was submerged, even the cobblestones of my street disappearing into the water. I stood there for a long time listening to the lapping of the small waves, felt my mind twisting with the reality before it. I walked across town, approached the lake from the west.
I marveled at the way the basketball courts had vanished, the hoops sitting out in the water. The lake edged the tennis courts at the fence line as if by design. I watched the egrets sitting on the chain link, their unexpected furniture. The little sign asking people not to bother the birds was still visible, the tree it was posted beside surrounded by lake. Two people passed me on horseback, the horses legs churning up the mud. I cringed at what their hooves might find, hoped they wouldn’t be injured. It all made me glad I lived on the hillside, as often as I might have looked at homes nearer the lake with a certain longing. On the hillside, the thunder gods sat on our red tile roofs and laughed. But when the rains came, the rivers of our streets ran away from us. I stood watching the horses heading east where I couldn’t follow. I choose thunder, I thought.
Once I walked from Ajijic to Chapala and back. I don’t remember how many hours I spent doing it, but I remember being present for big chunks of time, taking it all in with new and thirsty eyes. I avoided the highway for all but a two or three block stretch in a couple of spots where it was the only choice. I walked through cobblestone streets in the villages, past horses and cows and goats on the dirt roads on the outskirts. More than once I sensed I was walking where gringos didn’t show up very often, and probably not on foot, a woman alone. I didn’t feel afraid, only conspicuous from time to time.
I hugged the lakeside when I could. I passed old brick buildings, glassless windows, the courtyards swept clean, women doing laundry outside by hand, the cluck of chickens behind low brick walls with bougainvillea spilling over them. Once I stopped for a long time watching a heron standing still in the shallows near the shore, and I felt the richness of the life there, the birds, the water, the place where fertile earth and decay overlap, reminiscent of my visit to the deep south here, maybe Biloxi. I marveled at the idea of owning land beside this lake, how much that would mean to me, but wondering if it could feel like that same opulence to the locals in their poverty. East of San Antonio Tlayacapan there was a stretch where the road became more of a walking path than a road, dotted with shacks, more plywood lean-tos than dwellings. I passed a man and two children. They were sitting at the edge of the road, a piece of plywood for a table, a bag of bread between them, the makings of sandwiches. I remember the surprise on their faces when I appeared. I felt like I’d just walked uninvited through their living room. I can still see the man’s face. He is chewing, and he nods to me in response to my greeting. But his eyes are wary, resentful. I am the invader.
“The pine tree is coming down in two weeks,” my landlord yelled at me. He was angry with me at the time. I’m hoping he didn’t really mean it, doesn’t follow through with his threat. Our pine tree has been through so much. She should never have been planted in this desert to begin with. Fierce wind took more than half of her away before I came. She was haggard, drying, teetering, it seemed, brushing close to death. But she rallied, and now the shade she casts is doubled, maybe tripled. And the spots for birds to perch or shelter have multiplied, as well. I pray she’ll be protected, pray she’ll thrive. I would hate to see her taken, a mean recompense for having grabbed onto life with such grit, such gusto. I’d be afraid, too, losing her would mean losing even more of the birds who like to linger in our little corner of the world.
Already there are fewer birds here than before. The bulk of the house sparrows have disappeared again, and the doves don’t fill the tray feeder in the mornings like they used to, all packed together, a picture I never did capture properly, all those pretty bird butts ringing the wooden frame. When I first began to notice their absence, in my usual fashion, I wondered if it was because of me. Had I been found wanting? Later, I considered other possibilities, but my first thought was I had not been enough in some way. Could it be the desert rats, cute little guys with big dark chocolate eyes, who eat the remaining seeds in the night? Do they eat bird eggs? Attack birds? I don’t know. I worry, too, it is because I switched to the cheaper bird seed. My new attempts at being frugal and the fact I can bring the twenty-pound bag home from True Value on the back of my bike has me using the dull, dusty feed with cracked corn and milo.
In Hopland I bought a hundred pounds or more at a time and blended them myself. It was cheaper that way, but it was a big procedure, up to my armpits in the plastic bags to mix them. But I loved the way the seeds moved through my fingers, rich with oils and colors. In Ajijic, I could walk to the next block over and buy my bird seed from my favorite tiendita there. They would scoop up the alpiste and weigh it in a plastic bolsa. I could get just half a kilo at a time, stroll home with it, so easy. I miss that. I always suspected folks were cooking with it, too, but I never asked. I know it can be used to make atole, a common hot drink, a comfort. But I trust many of my neighbors were feeding it to their birds, as well. On my block and the next, I would hear the exotic birds calling from the entryways of homes as I walked by. I didn’t know alpiste was canary seed until I moved back to the United States and went hunting it down for my bird seed blend.
I had sparrows in Ajijic, too, though never more than three or four at a time, and one dear hummingbird with a feather out of place. (He was the hardest to say goodbye to, after Ana and Rodolfo. I cried when I took his feeder down and left him with a paper cup of sugar water. He sat on the wire and watched me for a long time.) There were no trees on my block there, no real shelter, but still the sparrows would materialize at the tray feeder, eat the alpiste, chat among themselves. I’d sit on my veranda looking at the lake and listening to their quiet exchange.
Now in my courtyard I think again about buying a more expensive seed blend. Maybe I’ll offer it as a special treat from time to time. Or maybe I’ll begin winning more writing contests, left and right and left again, and I won’t even blink at the idea of returning to the rich, pretty birdseed my birds here became accustomed to. I hear the house sparrows behind me now, soft, muted, rounded sounds, satisfied from a midday snack, enjoying the shade of the pyracanthas and the cooling mist the dry, hot wind wafts their way in small puffs.
The sun reaches my feet, burns my right arm and hip as I write, but I keep going, leaning, crooked, toward my remaining shade. I remember the quiet chatter from my sparrows in Ajijic. I relish them in memory even as I savor the soft murmurs behind me now in the hedge. And even though the heat is still climbing, and even though I have much to do still as the day unfolds, I stop, linger, feeling oh so lucky, loving our little desert courtyard, this small oasis on a hot, busy day.
No Holds Barred 