Goats Redux

Life on our street teems like a telenovela, those popular soap operas to which many Mexicans are devoted. Birth, death, marriage, divorce, a couple of near-murders, the odd theft, we’ve seen it all. Layers of raucous laughter stratify the street, and song and greetings and the banter of children at play. A net of exuberance draws together family and friends and friends of friends.

We were happy spectators. Until the day the goats moved in.

The bawling drew me, high pitch, strung out, anxious. I looked through the cyclone fence that separates our back yard from our nearest neighbor. Two small goats bleating like newborns, twin noses pressed against chicken wire walls of a lean-to shed. Apparently unhappy with accommodations, the goats complained throughout that first day, night, first week, second week.

Then silence so loud I went to investigate. The shed was empty. Out on the street I saw my neighbor try to fold and stuff the goats into the back of her van. I asked where they were going. With a laugh she said, "Comer (to eat)," her fingers tapping her lips. While I hoped she meant the goats were going to visit a more fertile grazing ground, in my gut I knew they were going to grace a dinner table. Gone to their gustatory reward.

Then one day two new arrivals, trailing yellow leashes, walked through our open gate, clip-clopped down the stairs, circled the tile ledge surrounding the Jacuzzi pool, nosed up to me, brown eyes soft, curious. My husband and I each grabbed a leash and dragged the goats next door.

"Hola," we called. Twice, three times. No one responded. "Let’s just put them in their pen." As we made our way around the side of the house we passed an open air toilet, a pile of plastic kitchen ware worse for wear, mounds of debris, detritus, unidentifiable.

The goats tugged on their leashes, apparently anxious to reach the lop-sided lean-to at the back of the property. We let them go.

It was a shock to see how our neighbors lived. Adults, children, grandchildren always clean, neatly dressed, but their home was a hovel. A junk yard hovel from which we daily hear bursts of laughter, song, good-natured teasing. Hard contrast with the way we live: bookshelves dusted, picture frames T-square straight.

What are we missing here?