The First Six Years Were Confusing

The house I lived in from (approx.) ages 3-6.

My best friend, Rachel Gonsalez, lived next door to my family. Rachel was a lot like me - Mexican-American, small, a girl with brothers and we were both in kindergarten. I thought of Rachel as the best possible friend, even though I had some secret envy on my part - mostly due to our differences. One difference was that Rachel had a dog. It's name was Gomez and it was a beautiful German Shepherd that barked all the time, jumped a lot and licked Rachel's face sending her in a laughing frenzy every time. The second difference was that she had a father who lived inside her home. Rachel's father was an enigma to me. He didn't yell, fight with his wife or go on long, mysterious absences and when he did return, smelling like a vat of old Coors and Camel cigarettes.

My family had a cat we named Sheba. It was black and rarely stayed around longer than two days in a row and certainly didn't ever want to be petted. Indeed it ran off the moment it saw a hand come near it. Sheba had simply used my family as a occasional way station. As a six-year-old girl, I had fantasized receiving affection from my kitty and thus devised a forced-fed affection attack. I trapped Sheba under a laundry basket and held her there while I tried to gently pet her with a ruler. Sheba clawed, hissed, scratched and bit at the basket and ruler while demonically spinning in a circle in the upside-down basket. I loved that cat.

What tract housing looks like. THIS is the San Diego I knew.

We lived on Bloomfield Avenue in San Diego. This is not the San Diego that inspires people to dream of living there, basking in the beaches or taking in the palm trees and suntanned, bikini-clad young women. This is the part of San Diego that is tiny tract house after tiny tract house with its tiny front yard, tiny backyard, sidewalks and harbors lower-income dwellers working as waitresses, drivers, day laborers, house cleaners and other hard-working folk. Most of my neighbors were Mexican-American like my family.

Ice Plant (flowering) ground cover. Photo by Martin LaBar.

Every weekday, I met Rachel on the sidewalk just outside our homes and we'd walk the half mile to Freese Elementary School to our afternoon kindergarten class. Of course, we'd walk home together, as well, and would be joined by other neighborhood kids at the end of their school day. After school, and mind you this was in the day where kids weren't assigned homework every day, we'd play until dark. We'd usually play on the sidewalk directly in front of our homes. We'd draw using ice plants. When using the pointy, somewhat triangular-tubed plants for drawing or writing, they'd leave brown stain marks on the sidewalk which would eventually fade away after a few days. Our neighborhood sidewalks were littered with kids' drawings and sayings. Most I could not read and on occasion asked my mother would a certain combination of letters spelled. "That's naughty! Don't ever spell that again," she'd yell before sending me to my lonely bedroom to reflect on what I had just done wrong.

"Let's pet Gomez," said Rachel, likely rubbing her lovable dog's loving antics in my face.

"Okay, great!" I replied, genuinely enthusiastic. We made our way to her backyard, where Gomez was chained to his dog house and bounding up and down, thrilled to have company. Rachel's loving father handed a dog biscuit to her and kissed her on the cheek. I was slightly annoyed.

"Hey, hey, Gomezie...I gotta treat for ya. Gotta sit, boy." Rachel held out the biscuit, which the dog inhaled in such quick speed I didn't even catch the whole sitting action. "Guh boy, guh guh boy," cooed Rachel as she stroked Gomez's head. She walked over to his dog house, with its angled roof, and said, "let's climb it." She stood nearby waiting for me.

I stayed put, just outside the reach of Gomez's chain. After gobbling the biscuit from Rachel's hand, it was clear the dog looked to me for additional treats. Now I wasn't used to dealing with animals that weren't trapped in upside-down laundry baskets, so I wasn't too sure what my next move should be. I did know I wanted to attempt to climb the dog house. And I certainly wanted to pet the dog on the head, like I had seen done on Lassie, but these things seemed too risky. I picked up a nearby stick. I don't know why.

Gomez was now jumping around in a frenzy and pulling doughnuts in his small amount of space.