One morning the house was so quiet that I decided to walk outside and explore my surroundings. Making sure that all ghosts were sleeping in the Cemetery I wanted to try to find out if the stench in the air was causing the discomfort I suddenly felt in my throat.
The morning I walked out of my aunt`s house Here, I easily recall that I had made up my mind not to return to that place. I had absolutely no idea what I was looking for other than the stink in the air and its reason for making me feel uncomfortable. But I was certain of one thing. I was afraid. I was afraid of two things. I was terrified of the unknown. The unknown to me represented the dead buried deep in the ground under tomb stones that had haunted me one night too many. I was terrified at the thought that my aunt Elvira, just two and a half blocks away, would surely find me. I would never permit that. The thought of finding my mother has now drifted further away from me. I am depressed and feel wounded by the memory of a beating and it remained with me in my ear and neck. This memory is the scab from the wound that has been with me ever since.
I paused at the wooden bridge built over the Alazan Creek below and looked up at the smoke that the incinerator was shooting up in the air. I walked slowly towards the people who were scavenging the trash and garbage piles strewn on the ground of the incinerator plant. My natural inclination was to approach the nearest person who I could identify with. It is here that I met Augustine.
Augie, as he insisted to be called was older than me I could readily see. He appeared to act self assured as he had separated himself from the older people around the piles of trash. He also seemed extremely defensive as he stood firm when I approached him. I would quickly learn that he too was dragging a very heavy cross struggling to survive after being discarded by his parents just like me. "What the hell are you doing here", he asked me. "You better go home before your mother comes looking for you here" he added as he looked away and appeared to be in disbelief that a child like me wearing clean clothes and shoes would be there. "I don`t have a mother" I told him. "I am running away because my aunt has "hit me" and is looking for me to hit me again", I tried to sound convincing. "I am very hungry and my aunt will not give me food" I said. Maybe my desperation led me to misconstrue which aunt "hit me" and my aunt Hortencia. That exchange of words between us led Augie to stand up from his stooped position to listen to my story.
"And where are you running to?" he wanted to know. "I don`t know, but I have to get away far from my aunt`s house" I said. "I am going across the creek to the hills where people live and I have been there before" I looked at him as I spoke. He looked at me and wanted to know when I had been there. I explained everything, including my trip there with Jesse, Here, and about the train and the railroad tracks. It was clear to me that Augie had developed the same instinct as me that led him to feel compassion for those suffering like him. He said I could come and stay at his spot on the hill, as he referred to the homeless encampment.
He was eleven years old. Flung over his shoulder was a brown potato burlap sack. He collected old rags and cloth material to sell. He lived in the shanty house community where Jesse and I had been days before. I went with him and remained there living among the illegal squatters. My new friend was simply "Rags" by name, as it stuck on him forever.
After spending a few minutes watching him look for rags in the trash, he stopped and asked me if I was sure about running away. I said that I was. We walked to the wooden bridge that I crossed coming to the incinerator but did not walk across. Instead he showed me how to slide down the dirt slope of the deep trench to reach the edges of the Alazan Creek. This route he told me, will take us around if we followed the creek until we reach the spot to climb up to the hill. "You must learn to hide from the Police", he told me. "They take kids off the streets and place them in jails" he said. I of course did not know what that meant, but I did not care, nor was I afraid anymore.
Augie liked to talk. Almost as soon as we starting walking by the edge of the creek once we reached it, he begin telling me how he became homeless and how he went to live in the shanty town on the hill. He said his large family was shattered by the onslaught of the Great Depression. His family was a large one so they had to split in groups to survive. He had lived outside of San Antonio when his family separated but he came to the hill and now knew the city like the palm of his hand he boasted. He disliked Jesse though, and that bothered me because Jesse was my friend. Augie said Jesse had no business on the hill because he had a family that fed him and had a place to live and sleep. I had never thought of Jesse like that but I thought Augie was right. I remembered how Jesse was having fun playing dice. Now it made sense that he did not worry about his tomorrows like Augie and I would. Still Jesse was the first friend I ever had.
I could not believe it when I saw an entire family living at the edge on the bottom of that trench. Somehow built on thick wooden limbs from fallen trees was a shanty hut with smoke coming out from under the burlap tarp where a woman was cooking in a large pot. Intentionally I walked close by to see into the pot. I was hungry and wanted to see if I could somehow get invited to eat. A man came from the creek where he was getting water and told me to move along. A short distance away there was a man sleeping on a cardboard box under some tall weeds. Augie told me that these people were hiding in the bushes. Homeless were not allowed to roam in the streets. Most did not have ration coupons to buy food so they struggled to find whatever they could on their own. Augie went on to tell me that people could not just enter stores and buy food, because there was no food to be bought, and then coupons were required. I think that explained to me why my aunt Hortencia did not have food in the house. It also explained why the house was in darkness so early in the evening. Kerosene for lamps and stoves was also rationed.
We reached the trail that we needed to climb to get to the shanty homeless town. I already knew that I was was about to enter into a world of illegal squatters, but I was not afraid. I was now without doubt on my own. I had no place to go back to on my own terms nor did I want one. Somehow, I thought, one day I would find my mother. I knew that I did not hate her and with what I had learned since she left me I understood that perhaps it was for the best.
Someone asked, "You`re back?", and I turned to look at the woman. She was the same women who had fed me her gruel by a fire it seemed to me so long ago. "How is your ear, dear?" she asked me. "It still hurts me", I said.
She held out her arms and I went to her. I felt safe here.