Rosa, the Mexico City Airport, the Officers' Bar and the Stowaway: Mexico Diaries III

The Mexico City Airport was so much smaller that I imagined. I was immediately approached, considered and queried about my flight. It turned out the weather had delayed my plane. I had 5 hours to kill in a tiny airport not unlike the one I had left on the first leg of my trip south, where I sat sipping Bloody Mary's with a fretting Dolly at 8am and watched workers spray great clouds of chemical deicer on the plane wings. Dolly saw no beauty in that early morning composition so vivid outside the enormous plate glass window, which, much like a Diego Rivera industrial mural, contained anonymous uniformed workers creating beautiful god-like natural phenomena, only toxic.

A smartly-dressed thirtyish professional-looking Mexican woman approached me, took my hand, apologized for my delay and asked if I needed anything. Surprised, I looked at her and smiled. A scruffy young girl who blatantly disregarded the dictates of proper dress and behavior was not used to such treatment.

"Are you hungry? I work for the airline. Can I get you anything? A candy bar? A sandwich? A drink?"

I smiled again, and after unlocking a door behind the ticket counter and leading me back into the metal labyrinthian recesses of the airport, we came to a nondescript door on which hung a small sign that read, "Private: Officers Bar".

Maria and I (yes! already on a first-name basis) cozied up to the nicely-lit bar, where the bartender, whose duties included a lot of polishing of glasses and blending into the woodwork, didn't even look up at us. It was obvious that Maria frequented this place. She said something to the bartender in Spanish and, without looking our way, he nodded slightly. There were uniformed pilots scattered here and there, and they glanced up at Maria with recognition, but she made no move to greet them. I imagined that she felt some deep disregard for them, even contempt.

The bartender waited quietly before us as Maria grilled me. "Cerveza? Do you want a drink?" She ordered in Spanish, "Dos Margueritas, por favor." Maria turned to me, totally tuned in, and asked, "What brought you to Mexico?" And over the course of the next three or four hours, Maria and I shared our deepest thoughts. She knew of my sexual laisons, and what Norte Americana girls were thinking and doing. I learned of her dislike for her mysterious job at the airport. Men passed in and out, always looking at her, and she stayed with Rosa and me, giving me advice. "You know how I stay so young? Lots of liquid, any liquid is fine," she said, sipping her third Marguerita.

I knew she didn't fit in here. She was smart and beautiful, but a woman, and there was nowhere for her to climb. I said she should come to the US, the land of milk and honey. She could come and visit me. She admired Rosa, who reclined on the bar in front of us. She wanted to know why I was drawn to such a doll, and when I talked about the simplicity of Rosa, she nodded.

Once a man entered the bar, whispered to Maria and her voice began to rise. The man left and she turned to me with a smile. She was doing her job, who do they think they are? We became co-conspirators in sisterhood, surrounded by men in uniforms. We laughed and ordered another drink.

When the message came over the intercom that my plane was boarding, Maria hustled me to my gate, and by then we were arm-in-arm. I handed Rosa to her and said "goodbye". She said she couldn't take Rosa, but I insisted. She hugged me and said we would meet again. Turning, I entered the plane and walked down the aisle, full of white faces looking up at me. Where had all these gringos come from?

Settling in, I pulled my journal from my backpack and looked up to see Maria hurrying down the aisle toward me. She stopped and hushed me. "Shh. Don't say anything. I am coming with you." Taken aback, all of my human impulses were tested at once. Seeing my look of panic, she said "I can't stay here. I will die if I stay here. I will be in the bathroom. After the plane takes off I will come and sit with you." She was surprisingly calm and confident, like an organized professional efficiently doing their job.

"You can't do this!" I was mortified at the law-breaking levels toward which I had veered, and suddenly became Pollyanna. "You will get in SO much trouble!"

But what about me? I could see all of the white peoples' eyes on me, as I sat in a morally frozen state between co-conspirator with my new-found soulmate and co-conspirator with an international law-breaker. "Holy Shit." I fumbled, and the white-haired couple across the aisle came to my rescue. "She tried to tell her to get off the plane," they told the men in suits who boarded in pursuit of my sister in crime. "She had nothing to do with it!" they cried, pointing at me. "That WOMAN is in the bathroom!"

As the men escorted a broken Maria down the aisle toward the exit she looked at me and said "We will meet again. I will call you."

And she did, once or twice, a few months later. I was living in my old bedroom in my parent's house and my main pastime was smoking dope and walking the hilly terrain of the town where I grew up. Funny, I hadn't noticed the geography all that much before. Her voice was distant and had a desperate but controlled edge. I kept the conversation light and aloof, holding on to my advantage, losing touch, letting go.