Daniel Acosta, Memories of a Mexican Boy Growing up in El Paso: A Death in the Alley

One weekend my parents were invited by close friends to stay at a cabin in the mountains of New Mexico at the resort town of Ruidoso, which was only a couple of hours away from El Paso.  Ángela and Élfida agreed to look after me with my best friend, Ruben.  I had on my best clothes, which Nana Cuca told me to wear as a surprise for my parents.

Of course, I got them dirty when I was playing with Ruben.  When my parents returned home, I overheard Ángela whispering to my parents that I was a bad boy and disobedient.  I was livid and almost cried while they accused me of being rude to them.   

“Señora Acosta, Danny es muy travieso y es un moscoso,” Ruben’s grandmother, Ángela, and his aunt, Élfida, outright lied to my mother.  I never became fluent in Spanish but loosely translated they said was I mischievous and a brat.   

It did not help that Ruben and I often had fights, which these two horrible women remembered and held against me.  One day Ruben and I were happy and playing together, the next day we were fighting with each other.  We often had dangerous fights with the throwing of rocks at each other--Ruben crouched behind a stone fence surrounding his home, and I hid behind my house for protection because our house did not have a fence.   

I became quite adept at throwing rocks high in the sky that fell like bombs over his fence.  During one of our rock fights, one rock fell perfectly on the top of Ruben's head, and Ángela demanded that I be punished by my parents.    

“Señora Acosta, tienes que castigar Danny immediatamente,” (punish him immediately) Ángela screamed at my mother.   

Ruben's head was quite bloody, but nothing serious, like losing an eye.  My mother told me to come into the house anytime Ruben and I started fighting.  I think she knew that I was not always the troublemaker.  

Ángela and Élfida were next-door neighbors to Nana Cuca.  Their personalities were completely different than Cuca, who wore colorful clothes and loved to laugh and tease the children.  Cuca had a great sense of humor, was fun-loving, and was a very caring woman.  The other two women wore dark clothes and stockings with awful looking shoes. They always seemed to be mad at the world.   

Their two homes reinforced these differences.  Cuca’s house, which was painted a bright white color, had a small front yard with a white picket fence and vines growing on the enclosed screen of the front porch.  From her front door we could see the dirt-brown Franklin Mountains looming in the distance.  The living room was bright, cheerful, and very clean.

In contrast, Ángela’s house had an open, ugly porch with no front fence and the house was painted pink, which over time had grayed and no longer looked pink.  Their backyards were also much different.  Cuca’s house had a peach tree and shrubs with patches of grass over the ground, while Angela’s backyard had no trees nor greenery, and the ground was simply dirt and scattered rocks.  I vaguely remember that they had some chickens kept in a decrepit shed, and the chickens were let out to eat seeds strown over the ground.  

Cuca’s garage blocked the view of their ugly backyard, serving as a dividing line between the two houses.      

“Danny, please come on over and play with me,” Ruben would often beg me because they would not let him leave the house.  

I would give in and play with Ruben at his house, but not for long because Ángela and Élfida made it clear that I better not mess up the living room and not make any racket while they listened to the radio in Spanish. Ruben and I quietly played cards or board games like Sorry. I liked to be with Ruben, but the house had an unpleasant smell, and the linoleum floor was always grimy and somewhat greasy. Because we sat on the floor to play our games, I left his house with dirty hands and pants.     

The alley was rocky and dusty and was dotted with weeds and trash blowing in the wind, with dented silver-colored trash cans behind the houses on each side. I ran behind the garbage trucks when they came once a week to pick up trash, and some of the garbage men often threw me pieces of gum and candy.     

“Let’s go,” my father yelled outside the porch. 

At least once a week, I would be left alone at home.  The family car was a small two-door Chevy coup and could only fit my parents and two sisters comfortably.    

They would often go out to eat at Jimmy’s Bar down the street on Piedras. It was one of the few times my mother did not have to cook for the family, and she enjoyed getting out of the house. It was a tight fit for all of us to ride in the car, especially now that my younger sister, Celia, was getting bigger and could no longer sit on my mother’s lap. Tina, my older sister, demanded that she also go out to eat at Jimmy’s Bar for hamburgers and fries. Besides it had a jukebox, and she could listen to some of the songs she liked. Celia was two years younger than me and could not be left alone at the house. It was clear that I had to stay at home and have a cold burger and greasy fries when they returned. 

I was told to wait and not leave the house. I was about six years old. During one of their outings, I became worried when I thought that they had been out too long. Although it was getting dark, I quickly put on my shoes and jacket and started to run up the alley to Cuca’s house. But just then I heard loud thunder in the sky and saw lightning in the distance; I felt raindrops and immediately returned home. I was about to cry but through the window of our enclosed porch I saw the family car coming down our rocky driveway. I acted like nothing had happened.    

Late one afternoon I had been watching a cowboy movie on TV at Cuca’s house and I had to get home for supper before it became dark. I went out in the ally only when there was daylight. I was scared to be in the alley alone at night because it became pitch black with only some light coming from windows of houses on either side of the alley. As I was running down the alley in the waning few minutes of sunlight, I thought I saw a large bag of garbage in the distance.   

As I got closer, I finally realized that it was a person and gasped when I saw that it was Ángela. Her mouth was partially open as if she were trying to yell for help. I quickly ran past her body and told my mother what I saw. I had never seen a real dead person up close, not counting those I saw on TV. Everything became a blur, and I don’t remember how she was taken to the hospital. The neighborhood children were told that she died of old age. All of us kids thought she was a bruja who was evil and mean; I did not play in the alley for several weeks.   

I was nine or ten when I saw Ángela lying in the alley. I always wondered why I was not that upset when I found her body in the alley. Maybe it was because I never liked Ángela and Élfida. I consciously avoided being alone with either woman because they openly told me in crude Spanish that I was a spoiled brat. During my grade school years, I was very scared to be around them, much less want talk to them. They seemed to have a permanent scowl on their faces, and I really thought that they were witches.  

Ruben and I never talked about the death of Ángela. I never understood how Ruben survived living with them.   

After her death, Ruben and I continued to play together and walked to and from school during our grade school years and through the 7th grade. One day a lady came to his house, and I was told by Cuca that the well-dressed woman was his mother, who was living in New Jersey, and was ready to take back her son to live with his true family. We exchanged letters for about a year.

I spent my early childhood playing in the alley and running up and down the alley to get to Nana Cuca’s house. I had good and bad times in the alley. It was my path to be with Cuca and to see Ruben.