The Mexican Year

Another bright oven-hot day in Mexico, the kind we survive with sunglasses and the Explorer’s windows rolled down. Empty plastic water bottles are piled up to my ankles because I refuse to toss them out the window, the common Mexican practice that fills ditches with litter. We’re somewhere on the outskirts of Puebla, a heavily-industrialized colonial city that sprawls across the altiplano in a grimy smear. On either side of the highway are factories peeling away in huge complexes topped with smokestacks and water towers. The corporate logos are a litany of jobs lost in America and gained here — 3M, Alcoa, IBM, Whirlpool, DuPont. Dominating all of the factory complexes is the humongous Volkswagen plant, which produces every last Jetta in the world. Nick chortles as we parallel its chainlink fringe. The Volkswagen parking lot is filled bumper-to-bumper with Fords, mostly.

For a while it seems like the factories will never end…until suddenly they do, and we plunge into suburbia. I feel like I’m back home in Tijuana. The blocks are dusty and crammed with cement-block homes. Store windows advertise all the same merchandise you can buy at an American mall, only with prices in pesos. Schoolyards and parks are the occasional oasis, almost lost in the traffic and earth tones, a verdant fantasy in my peripheral vision.

When a police car tailgates us with lightbar flashing, Nick pulls over in a storm of curses. Time for another mordida — literally “little bite” — which is the polite way of saying bribe. He prepares to pay from our dwindling handful of cash, but the cop just checks our tourist visas. For once the smudged papers are a ward against corruption. Afterward we crest a hilly road with a view of the horizon, lumpy with volcanoes like Popocatepetl, smoldering into the cyanide-blue sky.

A Gigante sign towers over the rooftops. With unusual patience Nick waits for a healthy gap in the traffic, left blinker click-click-clicking. We pull into a black ocean of asphalt gridded with parking spaces. Only half a dozen cars are actually parked at the supermarket, all of them right by the entrance.

“Let’s go over there,” I say, pointing to an isolated spot in the middle, 100 yards from the nearest car. Nick turns the wheel obediently, grinning like a fiend. It’s a pickup line and he knows it. The truck is barely in park before I’m straddling him, my sundress hiked up and hiphuggers pulled aside, the steering wheel rubbing into my back. Puebla? Just a place we had a quickie.

He’s tortured, panting, hostile with his hips — but not on the brink of release. I grind even harder into his choppy thrusts, my arms wrapped around his neck, talking dirty in my abandon the way he likes. Suddenly my vision is exploding into stars, his sloppy kisses smothering me until I can’t breathe, and I was never so happy to drown…

When I open my eyes again, Nick is wearing an uncomfortable look. “What’s the matter?” I ask in a small panic, wondering if we’ve been spotted.

He glances down at my swelling belly, which sits like a lump between us. “I keep thinking…” A bead of sweat trickles down from his bald spot and disappears behind an ear. He doesn’t finish the sentence.

“What?” I can feel him softening inside me. “What is it?”

Nick’s icy blue gaze is roaming the empty parking lot around us. He laughs desperately. “I keep thinking…the baby can see us.”

An overwhelming feeling of tenderness floods through me. “You know what the book says,” I say gently, citing our Qu’ran — What To Expect When You’re Expecting. “The baby just feels it like a gentle rocking — ”

“I know what the book says.” His shoulders bunch, lifting me off him and back into the passenger seat with barely a grimace of exertion. “But I still keep thinking it.”

“Do you, um, want me to…” Descending from orgasm I’m back to being shy again. I bite my lip and murmur, “Do you want a…blowjob? Would that be better?”

Nick’s answer — he tugs his jeans back over his hips, buttons them, and zips the fly.

Now it’s my turn to contemplate my swelling belly, not very big yet, but already popping the seams on my sundress. A sigh lifts my still-flat chest. Maternity clothes. I need to buy my first maternity clothes. “It’s only going to get worse,” I think aloud, picturing him coupled with a big pregnant beachball.

He pauses halfway out his door. Past him the Gigante supermercado is countless empty rows and several lightpoles away. “You craving anything?”

“Not anymore,” I grin shyly, still tingling with afterglow.

A brusque smile. “Besides that.”

“Green peppers!” I blurt, surprising myself. Where did that come from? But suddenly I want them more than anything in the world. “Green bell peppers. Just…raw. I just, you know…”

Nick is already receding across the parking lot, a tall silhouette with an abbreviated grocery list in his head. Heatwaves boil up around his long strides. I watch the glassy doors snap open and snap shut, swallowing him into air-conditioning and colorful shelves of food. Then I take out my dog-eared notebook and favorite swirly purple pen and scribble this poem:

THERE’S NO TURNING BACK NOWDon’t ask how I got pregnant
in a third world country
with condom foils littering the floor
23 years and 0 college degrees
and not even divorced yet.

Nick stepped out of an Old Navy ad
and into my life
the chatty gringo at home
on Avenida Revolucion
and almost taller than me.
Hard to believe — that was only
last November.

Love at first sight? Maybe…
on a day in a marriage where love
was an afterthought.
If Grandfather was alive he would say
Nick and I
did not meet by accident.

I don’t pretend to understand him
a baffling gender in microcosm
– and worse, American –
slaving for perfectibility and mere things.
But he says we’re not going to leave each other
not in forever
and I like the sound of that.

Now my belly is rounding
with our baby boy
and Nick’s favorite bumps, well…
they’re still just bumps
with aspirations.
I may never buy a maternity bra.

Whenever he goes away
he takes the sun in his eyes
and leaves me in longing darkness
a heart in this passenger seat
beating for him.

I always figured I’d be a natural at panhandling, considering that it’s just asking strangers for money. Most people don’t have the balls. They’re too uncomfortable, or afraid of rejection, or unwilling to debase themselves. Hell, most people don’t have the courage to ask for a date. But I’m the kind of dude who’ll ask anybody for anything, and usually get it. The only reason I never tried panhandling before was motive — nobody begs for money unless they have to, right? Except now I’ve got motive galore. My girlfriend is pregnant, my wallet is empty, and my cellphone service was just suspended for non-payment. The only way Nooshin and I will survive to payday next month is if I panhandle a couple hundred bucks in the meantime.

Like most things in life, panhandling is harder than it looks. Especially in Mexico, where you’re competing with all the Mexican beggars — including some adorably rapacious kids — for the hearts and money of tourists. Since I don’t have a copy of Panhandling for Dummies, I’ve been learning my panhandling lessons in the school of hard knocks.

For starters, you need an elevator pitch. In Mexico you’ve got about 5 seconds to explain why you’re American and asking for money. Otherwise tourists assume the worst — you’re mixed up in all the shit filed under DRUGS, you’ve got federales crawling up your ass, blah blah blah. My elevator pitch is “I’m an American grad student and I got robbed at knifepoint.”

Then you need the right look. It’s kind of tautological — you expect a homeless beggar to look like a homeless beggar, right? And by “look” I’m not just talking about the way you dress, I’m talking about posture, attitude, everything. In my case that means trying to look vulnerable and victimized, which is hard work.

Finally you need the right approach. Do you raise $100 by panhandling $1 from 100 tourists, or $100 from 1 tourist? Mexican beggars prefer the shotgun approach. Partly it’s the law of averages — ask enough tourists for money and somebody will open their wallet or purse for you. But they also know $1 is a small price for a tourist to pay to expatiate their First World guilt. Meanwhile nobody thinks $1 will make a difference to an American, so I’m stuck targeting rich-looking tourists and asking for $10 or $20 or more.

That’s why I’m loping across this Pemex parking lot in the direction of a behemoth RV with Arkansas license plates. It probably cost $200,000 to drive that thing off the dealer’s lot. Wealthy American tourist, dead ahead.

Past the shiny rump of the RV is a man pumping gas. He isn’t the puffy and sunburned retiree I expect. He’s fiftysomething and rawboned and hard-looking in a throwback toughguy way, with a straw fedora pulled down over one gray eye. He’s the only person in tropical Mexico dressed in all black — black polo shirt, black Dockers with a black leather belt, black cowboy boots. His forearms are mottled with pre-cancerous sunspots.

“Excuse me, sir!” I say breathlessly, wearing my friendliest expression. “I’m an American grad student and I got robbed at knifepoint and, and…” I let my voice break with desperation. “…I really need to borrow $20 so I can make it to Mexico City.”

His steely gaze slides from the gas pump gauge to me. “Robbed at knifepoint, hmmm?” he says in a cold drawl. I can’t tell whether it’s a question, or a dismissal, or what.

I’ve been robbed at knifepoint in Mexico before, so it’s easy for me to describe the experience. The man doesn’t even blink, giving me the distinct impression that he’s been on the wrong end of a pointed knife himself. Robbed of shock value, I steer the conversation back to my goal. “So that’s why I need the money. $20 will buy me enough gas to get to Mexico City.”

Silence. A silence so utterly complete I can hear the spinning gauge. We contemplate each other across the oil-stained gravel. His disdainful look is screaming GET LOST, but I can’t. Not without $20 to gas up the Explorer.

Finally he cracks, if you can call it that. “You’re a graduate student, hmmm?” It’s another of his indeterminate statements.

“Yeah. From UCLA.” I fumble a business card out of my jeans pocket. Nick Roberts, Fellow, Department of Latin American Studies, University of California Los Angeles. The embossed logo glints in the sunshine when I reach out my arm.

The man takes the card and considers it stoically. Beside him the gas pump gurgles for a moment, as if sucked dry, then resumes its steady flow.

Suddenly the side door of the RV bangs open. “Honeypie? Carl, honey?” drawls a prissy ash-blonde woman dressed like this is Santa Fe, New Mexico. She descends on spike-heeled cowboy boots, kicking up her fringed jeanskirt. Her peasant blouse is untucked, but pinched by a silver belt with turquoise pendants. “Oh! Who’s this?”

“Nick Roberts, ma’am.” I lean past Carl to extend my hand. “Pleased to meet you.”

“Pleased to meet y’all, too.” Her eyes are muddy and unfocused, and gin wafts on her breath. “I’m Amy-Ann, and this here’s…whoops, you already met Carl!” She lays a tanned hand on his shoulder, more for stability than intimacy.

“I was just telling Carl about how I was robbed at knifepoint,” I say, and segue into my increasingly well-worn fiction.

Amy-Ann holds a theatrical pose — leaning slightly forward, a hand cupped over the “O” of her mouth, eyes wide. “Lordy!” she gasps from time to time. Carl seems to harden a little more with her every utterance.

“…and that’s why I’m troubling you and Carl for $20, if you can spare it.” I roll my shoulders in an abject shrug. “My fiancee and I need gas money to make it to Mexico City.” I’m half-winging it, half-deliberately choosing to say fiancee instead of girlfriend or research assistant.

Amy-Ann leans even farther forward, taking the bait the way only a middle-aged woman with no ring on her finger can. “Y’all are…engaged?”

I try for a smile that’s coy but proud. “Yeah. We’re getting married this fall.” Then inspiration strikes. “October 22,” I say, repurposing Nooshin’s due date. “It’s her dad’s birthday.”

The moment is perfect — Carl glowering at me from beneath his straw fedora, Amy-Ann melting into drunken romantic sympathy — until we’re interrupted by the CHA-THUNK of the gas pump shutting off. The dials are frozen in an obscene combination. 6,293 pesos. That’s about $585.

I spin on a hiking boot heel, the jungle landscape whirling around me. “I’ll find somebody else with $20 to spare.”

Behind me Amy-Ann’s turquoise jewelry is clinking. She’s in slow and unsteady pursuit. “Wait, hon. Don’t go leaving now. We aim to help y’all out. Ain’t that right, Carl? Carl?” When he doesn’t reply, she drops her voice an octave. “Carl, do the right thing by these folks. I ain’t telling you twice.”

I don’t know whether that’s an implicit threat to withhold sex or money or whatever, but it works. Carl is a transformed man. “Aw, hell. Nick, come on back here. I can’t let you walk off with only $20. That just wouldn’t be right.”

I retrace my steps to the RV, where he’s fumbling open his wallet while Amy-Ann beams in approval. “Sir, I really can’t — ”

“Here. You take it. Go ahead, take it..” He’s brandishing a fistful of money. The multicolored pesos and green dollars add up to something more than $100. A fortune in Mexico, if you know how to stretch it.

“Thanks so much. God bless the both of you,” I nod gratefully. And I don’t have to fake the grateful part. I retreat across the sun-scorched asphalt, waving goodbye to Carl and Amy-Ann and their black hole for fossil fuels.

Nooshin has been observing the entire exchange from the passenger seat of the Explorer, tucked beneath a cupola of palm trees at the far end of the parking lot. Through the windshield she watches my approach tensely. I can see tendons standing out like piano wires in her neck. The stakes are that high.

“Well?” is her nervous greeting, twisting toward me. “Did you get anything?”

I slide behind the steering wheel and slam the door shut. “Check it out!” I laugh, holding up the money. “Fuck Mexico City! We can make it all the way to Guadalajara on this much!”

Nooshin’s big mocha eyes widen, staring at our salvation. Then they widen even more. “Nick! That’s, like…$100!”

Past the upraised arc of the bills I see her beautiful face, every delicate feature aligned in relief. She’s perfectly kissable, and that’s what I do…until her right orb peels away, wandering toward the highway and its steady blur of traffic. That’s where our journey is taking us — through the rainforest and across the altiplano and into Mexico City, the second-largest city in the world. I have friends there. Well okay, acquaintances. Or just…fuck it. I know people in Mexico City. And hopefully they still want to know me.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been a magnet for unwanted attention. At first it was just my crooked wandering eye, which seemed like a curse from God. Then a double curse — in grade school I sprouted like a weed, until I towered freakishly over my classmates, girls and boys. And finally a triple curse of utter booblessness and almost no hips and a flat boybutt, when all the other girls were blooming into women. So I’m used to the sidelong glances, even outright staring. I’m used to the fervent whispering and pointed fingers and muffled giggling. I’m used to the people who blurt out questions — “What’s wrong with your eye?” — and the teasing, the cruel jokes. I’m even getting used to the superstitious Mexicans who think I have el mal ojo — the Evil Eye — and hurriedly cross themselves.

But this is a different kind of attention. A kinder, gentler scrutiny. Now gazes don’t linger on my height or my lazy eye. Instead they focus on my tummy, swelling noticeably beneath my tight wardrobe of tanktops and t-shirts and sundresses. I’m pregnant and showing for all the world to see. And the world seems to like me better this way. People beam at me. Senoras with kids in tow approach to make smalltalk, asking me how far along I am and offering advice from their own pregnancies, blurs of Spanish that leave me nodding my head in uncomprehending gratitude. Gruff campesinos with calloused hands and stinking breath offer up their bus seats. Mexican yuppies armed with briefcases and cellphones give me their cabs and wait for the next one.

I didn’t expect to be self-conscious about the pregnancy attention, but I am. My swelling tummy might as well be a gigantic blinking neon sign — I HAVE SEX. The unmarried and unprotected kind, as you can tell by glancing at my ringless ring finger. Whoever dreamed up the Spanish word for pregnant — embarazada — knew exactly how I feel. It sounds just like “embarrassed” even though it’s a false cognate, I think.

Right now I’m trying to extricate myself from an awkward bout of belly-rubbing. An ancient mexicana dressed like a nun is running her gnarled hands all over my tummy. She doesn’t have a tooth left in her mouth and her Spanish, pronounced in a strange gummy lisp, is basically unintelligible. Maybe she’s blessing me in the name of her Catholic version of God. I hope so, anyway.

Impeccable timing — Nick screeches to a halt against the curb, tapping the Explorer’s horn lightly. Through the windshield he’s giving me a complicated look, part I’m-glad-to-see-you and part what-the-hell-is-that-hag-doing-to-you? Then he leans over and throws open the passenger door. I say “Muchas gracias!” to the nun and escape into the strains of Rage Against the Machine, pouring out of the cab in a thumping blast.

My welcome is an open-mouthed kiss, and I melt into it happily. Nick tastes like huevos rancheros and coffee. “Hey,” he says with a lopsided grin, breaking away. “I like your hair that way.”

“Really?” I raise my hands tentatively, feeling the pigtails tied up into loops. It’s a hairstyle I noticed on the cover of a bootleg Puffy Amiyumi disc the other day. “I couldn’t tell if it looks cool on me or not. I kind of feel like an anime character.”

“Trust me, it looks cool. Way cool.” Nick punches the gas and we snap back into our seats, hurtling down the broad sun-drenched avenue. I watch the speedometer jump from zero to terrifying in a couple eyeblinks. Oh well. At least the horrible clanking noise is gone.

“Sounds like they replaced the engine,” I say, as white-painted palm trunks fly past my window.

“What?”

I hold down a button on the stereo and make the music dwindle. “I said, it sounds like they replaced the engine.”

“Well, yeah. Of course they did. Hang on!” He yanks the steering wheel sharply, careening around a corner. “The dealership had a used engine with 60,000 miles on it sitting around. That’s almost 80,000 less miles than the old one, you know. Now this truck is going to last us another five years.”

The pronoun “us” is a surging happiness inside me, the kind I immediately disavow. I must’ve heard him wrong. He didn’t really say that. I don’t want to get my hopes up. But it’s still there when I replay his words in my mind. Now this truck is going to last us another five years. Us! He said US reflexively! Behind that rico suave facade he really is thinking of me and him as a we! As a family, even.

After a while I ask, “How much did it cost?”

“I think it’s better if only one of us has to cope with that number.”

Yikes. That wasn’t the answer I expected. My imagination is a calculator spinning out of control. “How much, Nick?” I ask, trying to keep the panic out of my voice.

His Kangol hat turns my direction. “You sure you want to know?”

“Yeah,” I say. Fearfully.

“1,000.”

“1,000…pesos?”

“Dollars.”

My heart stops beating. “That’s everything we have left!”

“Pretty much,” he nods.

“But…but…!” I sputter, my hands writhing like snakes in my lap.

He reaches over and quiets my hands. “We just need to make it to payday next month. Then everything’s going to be fine.” Typical Nick. His glass is always half-full, even when it’s empty.

The Rage Against the Machine disc finishes playing. Instead of another CD he switches to the radio, picking a bouncy mariachi station — on purpose. The bright rhythm is infectious. I find myself tap-tap-tapping my tummy to the beat. I wonder if the baby will grow up to like Mexican music as much as I do. Outside the windows traffic is lingering around us, giving me time to read license plates and bumper stickers. Nick is driving sedately now. That’s when I realize his crazy driving was just to test the Explorer’s replacement engine. It’s a strange inversion, the way his once-usual driving habits — frantic speed, tailgating, running red lights, suicidal passes — have now become unusual.

Suddenly the flat sunny blocks rise into a shaded hilltop enclave. The Explorer is still rattling over cobblestone streets, but lined with huge ginkgo trees instead of palms. We revolve lazily around a traffic circle with a statue of Marco Polo in the middle, mossy with age and wreathed in bird poop. The passing shop windows are full of pastries and exotic low-slung furniture and mannequins draped in expensive-looking clothes. In a local park I see kids — some tanned, some sunburned — racing through clay tennis courts on bikes and scooters. Further on is an Episcopalian church on low stilts and a gingerbread concert hall that belongs in Moulin Rouge.

“This is Las Palmas, the old foreign district,” Nick is saying. “When Mexico won its independence from Spain that was also the end of the Spanish trading monopoly. Other European nations poured in to get some of the action — England, France, Germany, you name it. Veracruz was swampland back then, so they built on this hill to get away from the mosquitoes.”

“Why do they call it Las Palmas when there are hardly any palm trees?” I ask, glancing up at the verdant canopy of ginkgo foliage. “They should call it Las Ginkgos instead.”

“Ha! I never thought of that before.”

He pulls over in front of a demure office duplex with smoked glass windows and etched-brass nameplates. Lizards scamper through the elephant-ear ivy that’s climbing the brick walls. The edges of the lot are marked with sections of wrought-iron fence, as if the neighboring mansions need to be held at bay.

I follow Nick onto the sidewalk, which is carpeted in rusting ginkgo leaves. He pauses for a moment, pointing at a Lexus sedan with a weird license plate, some numbers and a Finnish flag. “Still a lot of consular families living here, judging by all the diplomatic license plates.” Then he glances around at the mansions. “I bet foreign corporations also own some of these homes and give their senior managers free room and board. Like, a perk-type thing to get them to serve abroad.” He briefly encircles my shoulders with an arm, then lets it drop into a butt-squeeze. “Imagine trading Amsterdam or London or Rome for this place.”

Standing in the shaded glen of the duplex’s entrance, one nameplate says WILLIAM CARROLL, ESQ. and the other says CLINICA DUMITRESCU. We’re here for my four-month prenatal checkup, so we pick door #2. Inside the clinic is decorated in a restful blue water theme — cobalt walls, marine-patterned carpeting, almost-black teardrop couches. A young Mexican receptionist in a pinstriped dress waits behind a table instead of a desk, showing off well-toned legs as she stares into her computer screen. I don’t envy her, trying to keep legs crossed while seated patients wait for the doctor.

Within a couple minutes I’m filling out paperwork and Nick is paying the receptionist. In my peripheral vision I can see his reluctant fingers hover over his wallet, counting out the few bills that remain. We’re going broke just the way Hemingway said — slowly, then quickly. And our quickly is today. $1,000 to get the truck fixed, and now $35 for my prenatal visit. UCLA’s next payday is an eternity away.

Suddenly a royal blue door bangs open and a fashion plate struts out. Dr. Dumitrescu is wearing his hair stylishly mussed and zip-up dress boots and what’s obviously a tailored lab coat with his name embroidered above the heart. The dress shirt underneath is silk and open at the collar, revealing a thick platinum chain that complements his Rolex. He smiles in perfect bright welcome, showing off expensive dentistry. “You are the Americans, no?” he says in English thick as cookie dough.

“That’s us,” Nick sighs, jamming his wallet into his cargo pants. “I’m Nick Roberts, and this is my girlfriend Nooshin.”

“Nick, so good to meet you,” the doctor says, shaking his hand. Then he repeats the ritual with me. “Nooshin, so good to meet you.” The receptionist trots over with my paperwork and a look passes between them — they’ve paid. Then he leads the way into an examining room. “Nooshin…” he begins to say, and mangles my last name. “That is Iranian, no?”

“Yeah!” I say brightly. “How’d you know?”

“I get patients from all over world. This, one of things I love about Veracruz.” Dr. Dumitrescu waves me onto a digital scale and frowns. “You not weigh much yet.” He scribbles furiously on his clipboard in a language I can’t read.

Nick is leaning against the wall with arms folded, studying him with feigned disinterest. “How long have you been in Mexico, doctor?”

“10 years.”

“You came here from Romania, huh?”

“Yes.” A vague dreamy look sweeps over him. “I graduated from top school in Romania year early, I was…how do you say? Achiever? Good achiever? But…” The look shatters. “Life is hard there now. So hard, people not have so many babies any more. Maternity wards are old with old equipment, and pay…” He holds up his hand, the thumb and forefinger almost touching. “Pay was this small. I came here for good pay, for better life.”

“Why here? Because you knew somebody at the Romanian Consulate?”

Dr. Dumitrescu’s eyes twitch a little, narrowing. Somewhere in their hazel depths is a reason to change the topic. Turning back to me, he says, “Please sit on table, Nooshin.”

Obediently I perch on the edge of the examining table. The doctor hovers over me in a bustle of movements — taking my temperature and blood pressure, checking my glands and lymph nodes, listening to my lungs and heart, feeling my distended stomach. His touch is soft and warm, but sterile-smelling from antiseptic soap. Meanwhile he keeps up a running interrogation. Is this my first pregnancy? Does my family have any history of miscarriages or stillbirths? And so on.

As soon as I can get in a question of my own, I ask, “Do you think it’s bad that my breasts aren’t getting bigger?” A stricken note creeps into my voice. “I still can’t fill a training bra, let alone a maternity bra.”

Dr. Dumitrescu’s reassuring smile is just what I need. “Your breasts will be size they need to be. And they will get bigger.”

His gaze flickers over at Nick, as if expecting him to shout “Hot fucking damn!” or something. Instead Nick just gives me a lopsided grin. I blush tenderly at the man who loves my bumps just the way they are.

“Time to meet baby,” the doctor says, flattening me onto the table and hiking up the hem of my t-shirt. Then he pulls over an ultrasound machine from the corner. He squeezes a dollop of cool gel onto my belly and dips the receiver into it, smoothing it around. An image flickers on the ultrasound.

“That’s…the baby?” I gape in wonderment. Oh. My. God. I have a tiny little person inside me…

“Looks like an alien,” Nick says. And not in a joking tone of voice.

Dr. Dumitrescu is taking screenshots and measuring distances on them. “Let me get different angle.” He digs at me with the receiver. “There. See baby’s face? And there, hands. Feet there. And…” Suddenly he laughs, a warm rumble.

I’m almost too dazed to react. “What? What is it?”

“There, his penis. See? That, right there. Congratulations! You are having boy.”

Nick rises from his chair for a closer look. “Wow,” he mutters, contemplating the screen. After a while he straightens up, blinking rapidly into space. “We’re going to have a boy. A boy.” Then he whirls on me and I realize he’s blinking away tears, maintaining his composure but just barely. “Nooshin, we’re going to have a boy!”

I’m already blubbering. Big sobs of shock and joy and love are shuddering through me and spilling down my cheeks. Looking into my own heart I see the future from the wrong end of a telescope, blurry close-ups of a delivery room. My face is a sweaty mask of pain and concentration. A bloody head is crowning between my thighs. Nick’s hand is locked in mine. Then the vision dilates, encompassing the whole amazing wonderful terrifying scene, and dilates even more — a Tijuana nursery with no gifts or visitors, two homes in California where I no longer exist, an Iowa farmstead that compelled Nick to leave and never look back, farflung relatives and in-laws in a country I don’t even remember fleeing…

But none of that matters right now. The ultrasound is spitting out a picture of the screen. Our baby. Our baby boy.

Growing up in the landlocked state of Iowa, I was always fascinated by ships. Big ocean-going ones, not the aluminum Lundcrafts we used for duck hunting and bass fishing. During harvest season I used to perch in the combine from dawn until dusk until dawn again, gobbling up endless rows of corn and soybeans, imagining myself at the helm of a transatlantic ocean liner in the middle of a watery nowhere. The fantasy never got particularly realistic. I just hovered in that escapist vision, which was based on Love Boat reruns and the blockbuster “Titanic”. Later in high school I almost — almost — enlisted in the Navy, which would’ve gotten me the hell outta Clark County and off the farm, but dropping out to join the armed forces was no way to spite my father. He’s been there, done that, got the tattoos. Excelling in the abstruse world of academia and getting a Ph.D., now that’s the kind of thing that spites my father.

During my first visit to Mexico, a summer-long college roadtrip from Iowa to the Guatemalan border and back, I was drawn to Veracruz by the towering container ships and its legendary port. This was the Fort Knox of the Spanish empire, a place where the vast plunder of the New World was warehoused until armadas convoyed it across the Atlantic. But I keep coming back for the contrasts of Veracruz. The jungle overlapping the city overlapping the Caribbean. The bustling ultramodern port that hasn’t lost its sleepy colonial charm. The Mexican dive bars catering to dockworkers and the UN-style dive bars catering to the international multitude of sailors.

Right now I’m eyeballing some of those sailors from the bathroom window of our hotel room, which overlooks a broad rope-strewn dock. A Liberian freighter is tied up and encased in cranes. African crewmen descend a gangplank and stroll down the dock, flashing teeth, opening their mouths in laughter. 300 years ago they would’ve been slaves destined for the sugarcane plantations that blanket the coast. Today they’re headed for a waiting string of Mexican hookers, colorfully posed along the dock’s chainlink fence, and then a cheap flophouse like this one, maybe.

Nooshin’s voice drifts into the bathroom. “I think it sounds like an Asian language this time. What do you think?”

I peek into the hotel room, cellphone clinched to my ear. The bed is queen-sized, but she’s precariously balanced on an edge, naked and caramel-skinned and trying to get as close as possible to the struggling air-conditioning vent. A singsong exchange is carrying through the thin walls, along with two softer Spanish voices. A couple foreign sailors and their “dates”, doubling up on a room to save money.

“Yeah, definitely Asian,” I agree. “But not Chinese or Japanese. Maybe something like Malay.”

The singsong exchange dissolves into laughter, then the relentless whack-whack-whack of headboard-slamming. Nooshin and I make eye contact — or as much eye contact as we ever make, considering her crooked right orb is still focused on the TV. Something brief and amused and glowing passes between us. We’re not complaining. We just finished a couple hours of headboard-slamming of our own.

Then the ringtone in my ear becomes a voice. The UCLA health insurance ombudsman. I wave off Nooshin with an apologetic gesture — nature calls, sorry — and close the bathroom door. In hushed tones I ask the questions that need to be asked, describing her plight. No health insurance, no money, no nothing. Pregnant. Due in October.

“So if I’m understanding you correctly, she’s indigent,” concludes the helpful voice in my ear.

“Indigent,” I echo in weary shock.

“It means — ”

“I know what it means,” I say testily, cutting him off. “Just tell me how the fuck she gets health insurance, okay?”

“Uh, yes sir. Does she meet California residency requirements?”

“What do you mean?”

“Has she been living in California for at least one year?”

A migraine is suddenly spreading across my bald spot. I try to rub it away with a palm. “Nah. She used to live in Kansas City, and someplace like Philadelphia before that. Now she lives in Tijuana.”

“Then she isn’t eligible for Medi-Cal.” When I’m silent, the ombudsman turns apologetic. “She isn’t eligible for any insurance coverage from the State of California. Not without residency.”

There’s a long dragging pause. I can hear Nooshin flipping through the Mexican TV channels, cranking the sound louder to drown out the headboard-banging from the other room. I let the pause drag even longer. The background noise increases in volume. Finally I cup my free hand over the cellphone and my mouth and whisper, “What if I marry her? Can I add her to my health insurance as my spouse?”

“Sir? Hello? I’m losing you…”

I repeat it in a louder whisper. “What if I marry her? Can I add her to my health insurance as my spouse?”

“I can barely hear you, sir.”

“Hang on,” I say, and symbolically flush the toilet before rushing out of the bathroom.

Nooshin is watching me with both eyes now, still naked, one hand clasping the remote, the other draped across her swelling tummy. “Who are you talking to?” And when I pause at the door, “Where are you going?”

“I’m still talking to the dealership,” I say, already twisting the doorknob in my sweaty fist. “I just need some fresh air. Be right back.”

She’s staring at me like I’ve got two lying mouths instead of one. “Fresh air? It’s 100 degrees out there.”

“Like I said, I’ll be right back.” I escape into the hallway and slam the door behind me, fleeing toward the elevator. “You there?” I say into my cellphone.

“Yes, sir. But I missed what you were saying before.”

The elevator doors squeak shut and I stab the 1 button. “What I asked was, can I add her to my health insurance if I marry her?”

“She doesn’t have coverage right now?”

“No! That’s what I’ve been telling you, dude. She’s uninsured.” The elevator doors open again, revealing a lobby that only a foreign sailor — and his Mexican hooker — could love.

“Then the prenatal care and childbirth wouldn’t be covered. However, if you were married, you could add the child as a dependent.” The ombudsman coughs briefly, a clarifying gesture. “Well actually, you can do that even if you’re not married. You just — ”

“So basically…” I’ve arrived on the sidewalk outside the hotel, a scalding humidity with a view of cranes and masts. “…what you’re telling me is that we’re screwed.”

“I’m sorry, sir. I’m just giving you the facts. That’s my job, you know.” There’s another cough. “You mentioned that she used to live in Missouri? If she still qualifies as a Missouri resident, she could apply for Medicaid there. Sir?”

I feel like hurling my cellphone into the Gulf. Instead I snap the clamshell shut and take deep cleansing breaths. About a hundred of them. There’s no fucking way I’ll let Nooshin go back to Missouri, because that means going back to her husband. Back to her in-laws. Back to everything she already ran away from.

More deep cleansing breaths. So I’ll have to come up with $2,000 some other way. So fucking what? I sleepwalk through tougher shit than this. Raising money is cake for a dude like me. I’ll call my friends, call my profs, call my family. The Nick bank, making a withdrawal. That’s all I need to do.

Veracruz is like nowhere I’ve been in Mexico, a Caribbean port city of broad streets and even broader sidewalks. The whitewashed buildings seem stranded on their spacious blocks, like ships of colonial architecture — arched porticoes, wrought-iron balconies, crenelated rooflines — adrift in lawn and flowerbeds. Everywhere I look there are palm trees with white-painted trunks. Just a few blocks down are the docks, where towering gantry cranes clank and grind in endless labor, and giant container ships with strange flags bleed rust from their portholes. Overshadowed next to them is a weathered stone fortress that sprawls into the gulf, guarding the harbor with empty gunpits, immaculately landscaped with flowering shrubs and a tourist bridge that soars across a reflecting moat. Past another set of docks I can see the beach, a pearly lip dotted with straw-roofed pavilions.

Next to me Nick is striding briskly despite the atrocious heat. Sweatstains are spreading from his armpits down the logo of his powder blue UCLA t-shirt. His cellphone is pinned to an ear, the upraised elbow dripping a rivulet of sweat. He’s chatting amiably with a telephone representative of the Mexican national healthcare system, finding out how much it would cost for me to get health insurance. Can’t have a baby without it…

He briefly tilts the phone away from his mouth. “I’m on hold,” he whispers, even though dock equipment is pounding in the background. “Veracruz was the first Spanish settlement on the North American landmass, way back in 1519. Hernan Cortes called it La Villa Rica de la Vera Cruz, ‘The Rich Town of the True Cross’. There’s the future of the Spanish empire for you, predicted in a name. Gold and God — in that order, baby!”

I nod miserably beneath a swamp of damp hair. You can see every contour of my weird pregnancy — stubbornly nonexistent boobs, swelling tummy — through my sweat-plastered sundress. My oversized runner’s watch is a black heatsink scorching my wrist. Even my strappy sandals feel mushy, as if the wedge heels are melting.

Nick’s icy blue eyes are the only cool relief in sight. “Keep drinking water,” he encourages me, gesturing at my fourth — fifth? — bottle of Agua Pura, and goes back to his conversation.

Dutifully I take another gulp. All this water and I still haven’t had to pee, it just keeps leaking out my pores. At the end of the street is the Gulf of Mexico, warm as blood. I find myself glancing over my shoulder, wondering how far we’ve walked. My heart puddles when I realize it’s only been a couple blocks. I can still see the shiny colorful lot of the Ford dealership, where we dropped off the Explorer hoping they can replace the engine. Nick claims the dealership is one of the oldest in Mexico, and I believe him. There’s a vintage Model T in the showroom and framed black-and-white pictures of mustachioed bandidos on the walls.

Nick’s voice is suddenly incredulous, then hectoring, then resigned. He snaps the cellphone shut. “Well THAT fucking sucks.”

“What?” I ask.

“You could get on the Mexican national healthcare plan no problem, only a couple hundred bucks a year, but get this — they don’t cover pregnancy until your third year of enrollment.”

I can’t think very well when I feel like a frying egg. “But…but…the baby will be born by then!” I finally realize.

“Yeah. Exactly.” Nick wrings out his Kogal hat with violent strangling motions, then slaps it back onto his balding head. “Don’t worry, I’ll think of something.”

“Well, medical care is really cheap here. We only paid $20 for my exam back in Guanajuato, remember? How much do you think it costs to have a baby?”

“$2,000 at one of the private hospitals in Tijuana. I already checked.”

“$2,000? Holy crap!” I stumble, more from panic than my awkwardly high heels, and grab onto his slick arm. “Nick! $2,000!”

He pauses to help me regain my balance. “It’s cheaper at a public hospital, but they have year-long waiting lists. Hey, no crying. You know me, right? I’ll think of something. I always think of something.” The handsome angles of his face don’t know how to align. They keep shifting between confidence and uncertainty.

Distraught, I wander into the shade of a courtyard, where a bronze sculpture of leaping dolphins is surrounded by fragrant bougainvillea and a single wooden bench. It’s probably someone’s front yard, but I don’t care. I collapse onto the bench and bury my face in my hands.

“Hey. Nooshin.” Nick touches my bare shoulder, a gesture that almost scalds in this heat. “Hey.”

I peek through my fingers at those muscular calves, at those well-worn hiking boots. His leg hair is matted with trickles of sweat. “What?” I almost shriek.

“Relax, would you? It’s going to be okay.”

“Okay? It’s going to be okay?” I stare up at him in disbelief, my heart thumping in terror. “I’m going to have this baby in our house in Tijuana, and YOU’RE going to deliver it!”

Nick retreats hastily. “Well, we could get a midwife. That’s how most Mexican babies are born, at home with a midwife.” He seems to turn inward, considering it.

“Most Mexican babies are born at home with a midwife because this is a developing country! Everyone would go to a hospital if they could afford it!”

“But — ”

“I’m having my baby in a hospital with an obstetrician and a maternity ward and an epidural and EVERYTHING I NEED!” I want to yell at him some more, just so he’s super duper clear on that point, but I’m too breathless and panting.

He sits down heavily on the bench beside me. “Maybe we can save up the money. A couple hundred out of my funding each month, a couple hundred out of your paycheck. We could get to $2,000 by October.”

“How? By not getting your truck fixed? By not eating? We don’t make enough money. Seriously, we just don’t.” Salty tears are stinging my eyes. I lean over and wipe them away with the sleeve of Nick’s t-shirt. “Do you think I could get a job back in Tijuana? Or maybe in San Diego and commute across the border? A job with health insurance?”

His profile is grim. “Even if you could find a job with health insurance, they wouldn’t have to cover the pregnancy. No American insurer would.”

“What? How could they get away with that? My pregnancy is a preexisting condition, right? I thought there’s a federal law about preexisting conditions, a law that, that…” My voice trails off. I don’t know enough to keep talking.

“There is a law. It’s called HIPPO or HIPPA or something like that. But it’s fucking swiss cheese. Full of loopholes for the insurance industry. Like, they don’t have to cover your preexisting condition if you were previously uninsured.” Nick shrugs miserably. “UCLA always warns us about it — don’t let your insurance lapse, because preexisting conditions won’t be covered when you re-enroll.”

We’re stranded in a dreary silence that pours over us like the heat. Overhead a window squeaks open and a voice bellows down at us. I’m too distracted to translate the Spanish. I just crane my neck backwards, until I’m tilting back at an upside-down face. The man is surly and big-looking, with features set like oases in his wide cheeks and broad forehead — pinprick eyes, a tiny yelling mouth. Suddenly the yelling stops. Noticing my crooked wandering eye, the Evil Eye to superstitious Mexicans, he hurriedly crosses himself and retreats back inside, leaving us alone in his front yard.