In Tijuana you get used to the beggars, I suppose. They’re everywhere, pooling in the cracks of the city, a human grit of sorrow and misery. They gravitate toward the border crossings and Avenida Revolucion and the Zona Rio, where American tourists roam with fat wallets and unprepared hearts. Because you have to prepare your heart. Harden it. Tell yourself I feel nothing for them. Otherwise there’s no way you can navigate this obstacle course of people sitting on newspaper and scraps of cardboard, reaching out with cupped hands and plastic cups, faces distilled into misery and shame. Not without an empty purse and a broken heart.

Sometimes I think I’m getting the hang of it, this seeing of beggars without really seeing them, without really feeling for them — but then something always happens to puncture my heartlessness and reduce me to near-sobs.

Today it happens while we’re powerwalking down the crowded sidewalks of Paseo de Los Heroes, aiming for the Plaza Rio shopping mall and its cineplex where American movies are playing. A woman who can’t be much older than Nick sits crosslegged on a discarded newspaper, her face upturned to the passing crowd in desperation, eyes brimming with the pain of her life. She has her dirty blouse hiked up, exposing a breast with a baby feeding. Next to her is a young teenage girl in an identical pose — crosslegged, t-shirt hiked up to expose a breast, baby feeding. They’re sharing an empty ice cream bucket, placed between them and jutting into the path of pedestrians. Mostly green American money barely covers the bottom.

“Oh. My. God,” I gasp, realizing they’re actually mother and daughter. Immediately I break down and fumble at my purse.

“Don’t.” The word is stony.

“But…”

Nick plants a palm on my tailbone and gives me a little shove, propelling me past the begging mother and daughter. “You see any Mexicans giving them money?”

I watch over my shoulder for half a block. Only Americans veer toward them and drop money in their bucket. Mexicans stroll right past, seemingly oblivious to their dire plight. “No,” I finally admit.

“What’s the lesson I keep trying to drill into you?” His profile is smooth and unperturbed. Already focused on the next thing.

“Always do as the Mexicans do,” I recite on cue, then sigh miserably. “But really, what kind of lesson is that? Five bucks don’t mean much to me, but imagine what it means to them.” I shiver in the hot sun. “Imagine what it means to their babies.”

“You can’t save the world by giving money to the beggars who look worse off than all the other beggars. All you can do is buy yourself some peace of mind.” The sweaty warmth of his hand vanishes from the small of my back, leaving me on my own little island of strappy sandals and guilt complexes. “Did you really want to make things right with them, or did you just want to feel better yourself?”

“How am I supposed to answer that question? I don’t even know how you begin to make things right with them!” And saying it, I suddenly realize that’s why I want to feel better. Because I don’t know how to make them feel better. I don’t know how to fix this messed-up world.

“I’d rather be smart about my charity,” Nick is saying. He grabs my hand and pulls me over to a deeply-wrinkled woman sitting on a plastic milk crate, vending flowers from a bucket. A hand-lettered cardboard sign says ROSES $1 EACH. The blooms are dangerously fringed with wilt, leftovers from floral shops. She probably buys their throwaway flowers at a vast discount or even gets them for free.

“A flower, senor?” the woman says, revealing flashes of teeth that are mossy with age. Her gaze flickers hopefully between Nick and I, trying to set up that situation where the boy is guilted into buying flowers for the girl. Then she notices my crooked gaze and crosses herself with a gnarled fist, warding off the evil eye.

“Para mi novia” — for my girlfriend — Nick winks at her, picking out a single red rose from the bucket and dropping a $5 bill in her outstretched hand. “Quedese con el vuelto” — keep the change — is his goodbye, as he spins on a hiking boot.

“Muchas gracias, senor!” she calls after him.

He hands the rose to me with a lopsided grin. “Now you can’t say I never buy you flowers.”

I trot along beside him, a rose that will be dead by morning clutched against my chest — the board-flat chest that somehow makes Nick puddle in desire — and I’m feeling almost ridiculously happy. He may act like a hardass, but underneath that icy aloofness is a man with a heart that’s so big and caring and vulnerable that he has to protect it. He has to protect himself. It’s the little gestures that really give him away. When he does something for others, a kind gesture, even just a look filled with compassion –

Oh god.

A beggar girl. Maybe 5 or 6 years old. No parents in sight, no siblings. Just a lost little thing alone on the hot dusty sidewalk, no gum or trinkets to sell, not even a cup to raise. She folds her hands in pitiful desperation, silently imploring us to give her more than our sympathy. When we don’t, she trails after us on bare dirty feet, a palm outstretched, her unkempt hair blowing in the backwash of passing cars.

All my sudden happiness is just as suddenly gone. I want to…god, I don’t know. Take her home with us or something. I squeeze Nick’s hand in misery and bury my face in his shoulder and start crying. “Shhhhhh…” he whispers into my hair, then “Aw shit!” when I stumble over a crack in the sidewalk and bang into his nose.

I’m in mid-apology when we reach the glassy doors of the Plaza Rio mall, an American-style indoor oasis of upscale shopping and floors paved with shiny tile and an honest-to-god food court. Up the bank of escalators is the megaplex, 15 screens of cinematic escape. Security guards loom amidst the shoppers, keeping out the riff-raff.

Riff-raff like the little beggar girl, her reflection a few steps behind ours, still trailing after us, but no longer bothering to hold her hand out, just following without any hope left. Then the doors swish shut behind us and we’re in an air-conditioned haven that could be anywhere — Kansas City, San Diego, maybe even Iowa — if you don’t look over your shoulder and out the windows to where she’s still standing, like I just did.