When I was in elementary school and we lived in Colorado, I spent three consecutive summers in Juárez, Mexico. Since my parents worked, there was no one to watch me. So, when school let out, my parents drove nine hours to El Paso, then across the border to Juárez, where they dropped me at my grandmother’s house.
With so many people there—grandparents, great-grandmother, aunt, cousin, and three uncles—there was always something going on. Always someone yelling. Always an uncle to wrestle with. Always another uncle who’d jam dirty socks in my mouth when I tried to sleep. That always made them laugh.
“A DORMIR!” my grandfather’s voice would rumble from across the hallway. He was a butcher who left home hours before sunrise, so he’d be in bed before sunset. Whenever my uncles and I got too loud, he’d yell at us to go to sleep.
I had trouble sleeping. Not because of the dirty socks, though that didn’t help, but because of the heat. There was no air conditioner, and the box fans on the open windowsills only did so much. The front and back doors were left open for the wind to rush through, but that also wasn’t enough. During the day, the heat could reach triple digits. At night, the heat could wake you and make you wonder if anyone would notice if you went outside, turned the hose on, and drenched yourself in water.
A couple of summers ago, when the air conditioner at my home in El Paso broke during the middle of the night and I woke up covered in sweat, I was reminded of those summers in Juárez. That heat is one of two things I remember most from those days.
if you drove
