THE END OF A DREAM

By Juan Montoya

A few days ago I was wandering around 12th and Adams streets when I noticed that Chato's had become Norma's.
Located across the fountain from the Tapiz Building that houses the city's historical heritage office, Chato's used to be the only bar on Market Square that had the old records on an old jukebox that featured flipping 45's. One of the albums - "Love Me Do" by the Beatles - was one of my favorites. At two song per quarter, and five per half-dollar, you could just about listen to an entire side of the original album for a buck.
Well, the old juke box with the flipping 45s is gone and replaced what could only be described as a command control center for the USS Enterprise on Star Trek. All lit up and enticing you to download one of zillion of tunes from cyberspace, the songs come in at two for a dollar. And if it's not listed on the selections, it'll cost you a buck per tune.
Gone is Chelo Silva y Los Alegres de Teran. You have Beyonce and Shakira and Yassil and Wenzel or something like that. You play it and some brother starts screaming at you something like "Hey Doble U! Doble U!"
The place is still dark and damp, even on the hottest summer day. It is located more or less at the Adams Street side of the building that is directly opposite of the old Arturo's Bar on the bus terminal side. Some tenants are said to live in the upstairs rooms, although it's hard to believe anyone would venture past midnight in the area. It smells of old people and dust, like a dark attic.
I walked in and saw Norma, the new owner, a pert, short woman in tight jeans and a darker shade of blonde. The perfunctory leopard-fur pattern blouse and gold high-heeled shoes completed the outfit.
The girls fichando beers turned away from me and continued their chismes when they saw I wasn't a live one and just there to have a cold one.
Norma served me a beer and continued talking to her friend from inside the small bar. The friend was drinking a 7-Up. She looked at me and gave me the universal Mexican greeting by lifting her eyebrows slightly. You could tell she was just being courteous, nothing more.
I told Norma that I had just come from another planet and that had parked my spaceship atop the Tapiz Building.
"Ah, si? Eres de otro planeta? Bienvenido a Norma's," she laughed. "Te presento a mi amiga, Angeles."
I shook the woman's hand and I could tell she wasn't one of the regulars. Her skin had a coppery tone like a semi-shiny penny. Her hair was nicely styled and curled just above her neck.
"You work here?" I asked, probing.
"No, I'm her friend and I don't work today, I'm just visiting."
I found out that she had been born in Matamoros, but had first gotten a visa, acquired residency through a relative, and was now working in a perfume shop in a Brownsville mall.
Wouldn't her boyfriend mind if she hung around these places?, I asked her.
"No tengo," she replied. "We broke up abut a year ago."
I sensed a tinge of melancholy in her answer and, stupidly, asked why.
She looked at me sizing me up as if she wondered whether I could be trusted or was worthy of telling me something intimate to her.
"When I came to Brownsville I had a little boy who was only one year old," she said. "His father is from Matamoros and he can't cross. So when he wanted to see him, I would walk him across the bridge and then had him crossed by coyotes across the river."
It was during one of those crossings that tragedy struck. The boy was part of 10 or 12 people crossing the river that day. He slipped from the coyote's hands and sunk into the swirling currents of the Rio Bravo.
"The coyote told me that he tried to get him, but he couldn't. The rest of the people crossing just stood there watching. No one did anything to save my baby. He was just three years old. I never saw him again."
I cleared my throat in embarrassed silence as she struggled to maintain her composure.
The body of her baby was never found, she said after a decent interval. And her boyfriend in Matamoros blamed her for his drowning and dumped her, she said.
"Coming to this country y0u find out that it's not as nice as they say," she said. "You can make some money, but sometimes I wonder if I wasn't better off where I was."
After a few more beers, I said my goodbyes, squeezed her shoulder on the way out, and walked out into the fierce early afternoon sun that seemed to sear my very soul.