A Rose Between Two Thorns

And so I fell out with them, so to speak, fell out into MexDonalds.

And there I met Maria Rodriguez-Lawson, her daughter and baby grand daughter. Maria enquired where I was from. She then asked me to explain the differences between the English word lead (as in’take the lead’) and lead (as in ‘lead weight’). daughter and baby were beckoned over. We talked for a while about Morlia, its surrounding towns and of course the carnival parade. But then my attention started to waver as she produced from her pocket a sheet of further English words whose pronunciation she asked me to demonstrate. And there was me thinking I had only come here for a quiet burger. I wanted out and was starting to fear I wouldn’t get it until after closing. But the daughter recaptured my interest with a suggestion that we hire a taxi and head out to a peak over looking Morelia. I have never been one to pass up an opportunity for a panorama, and this was no exception, even if it meant having to give further lessons in English.

We started our ascent slowly, weaving in and out of bends; all of us sat on the back seat;  me like a rose between two thorns.

Mrs. Rodriguez Lawson told me that she was a widow. Her Danny had passed away five years ago. He was an American service man, who had completed a Second World War tour of duty in the Middle and Far East and in Africa. They met after he returned, when he slipped into Mexico for a few days convalescence. She was seventeen at the time. Her obsession with perfecting her English was it seemed a kind of way of keeping in touch with him.

We arrived at the look out point and I was not disappointed, not because of the view down onto Morelia’s wealth of colonial buildings, more to do (as I indicated earlier) with getting a perspective on its sprawling nature. Drive for miles, don’t see a soul, and then the taxi suddenly makes it to the top of some rim, and voila, what looks like an endless settlement over the edge.

It felt like it was going to be one of those situations where my accomplices weren’t going to let me head off alone, back into town. No, the taxi driver was given firm instructions on the return journey to head for the family home instead. We arrived and I was ordered inside.

The three of us sat on a small sofa. Again I was wedged in the middle between mother and daughter.

Did I have a wife? Children? Did I know she (this from the daughter) was unattached? How about an email address? But then mother started to get jealous, and went into attention seeking mode. She got up and retrieved an old photo album off the shelf, crinkled with cellophane and placed it on my lap. She sat down and started to turn the leaves. Sepia pictures of Danny during his WWII tour of duty. Snap shots of him and his comrades in arms, standing side by side in Yemen, the Congo and Malaya. Interspersed in the African section were black and white postcards of topless native women.

The daughter stood up and retrieved a more modern photo album, which recalled her recent years, on a tour of duty as a first aid worker with a Mexican branch of the Red Cross. Mother edged her way that bit closer and brushed thighs with me. She told me of a surrounding town that might be of interest and it probably would have been until I realised that they wanted to escort me there the following day. But no way. The coffee I had bought in MexDonalds was turning out to be quite a long one. Tomorrow would be my last day in Mexico and I wanted time to myself.

Mother then looked into my face and said, ‘Do you realise you have beautiful eyes.’ The daughter nodded.

‘Yes, other people have told me,’ I replied.

I told them it really was time to go. We walked down to the bus stop and said our good byes.

Damian Rainford, July 2003

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(Header image: Zacatecas Mexico. All photos are authors)