I remember the beer so vividly. Cold crisp aluminum with a Modelo logo on it, always laying strewn across the neighbor’s front lawn. The neighbors — our tenants — had a problem, obviously. But I didn’t know it then. I just had to clean them up.
When my parents first moved to the south side of Chicago, they got a good deal on their house. At the time, Chicago Heights was a haven for a lot of newly arrived Mexican families, and we happened to move right into the heart of this blooming community. I remember that house very fondly. The four pillars on the porch gave it a stately presence. The blue hue of the wood spoke of serenity on the street.
When I was strong enough to push a lawn mower, it became my job to landscape both of those houses on Schilling Avenue. It seems that my father wanted to instill a good work ethic within me at 11 years old, and when he offered to pay, I couldn’t refuse. He was a proud Mexican man, with hazel eyes and thick brown eyebrows that illuminated resilience. It made sense why he wanted his son to develop the same ambition that brought him to the U.S. The weekly allowance became my incentive to mow that lawn every Saturday, every summer. I wanted to save up for that beautiful blue bike I saw at Walmart. I was only 11, but I desperately needed a hot ride to park at the corner store down the street.
When I first began, I didn’t know how rowdy those tenants could get. Our usual tenants tended to be from a similar background to us: Spanish-speaking immigrants who sent as much money as they could to Mexico. They would work various jobs, from pizza cooks to car wash employees. Sometimes they would bring us a pizza if they felt generous when they stopped by to pay their rent. My brother and I often observed them when we played outside; it was always dark hair, brown skin, swollen knuckles, and coarse voices. I remember a few of them, and the stories my dad would tell us about them.
Mene was a lighter-skinned Mexican who always wore a flat-bill hat. I think he was balding because from the few times I did see the crown of his head which always looked fainter and fainter. He would rotate his hats out several times a week to show off his fascination for American baseball teams. His favorite was the black New York Yankees hat — it was the one he always wore when going out. My dad always asked the man to get him a similar one but he always made an excuse.
“Cómprame una Mene,” my dad would shout when he saw him leave.
“Next time boss-man,” he would reply in his broken English. My dad and he both knew where he was going: the liquor store on Ashland. I guess Mene never got around to buying my dad that hat, but he made sure he got the 24-pack of Modelos.
Rey was the other tenant who lived in the lower unit. He was a warm shade of brown with studs on his ears. He looked short, but he was taller than he appeared to be—almost like how a stop sign looks tiny from afar but when you stand next to it, you realize it’s actually seven feet tall. Rey wasn’t seven feet but he was a little bit taller than my dad. I guess the wife beaters he wore and the knee-length shorts shaved off a few inches from his height. Even so, my favorite thing about him was when he made jokes with me and my brother, especially when he saw us walk back from school.
“¿Qué aprendieron hoy?” was the daily inquiry about what we learned that day.
“Nomás pura matemáticas” I would respond, complaining about just learning math that day.
“Las matemáticas no sirven para nada,” He would say about the uselessness of math. I thought it was funny he said that, given that he was a cashier and cook at the Mexican restaurant nearby. My brother made it his concern to tell Rey about lunch they served at school that day. Equally, Rey made it his concern to tell my brother that he couldn’t live off his replacement lunch of Hot Cheetos and Brisk Tea.
I don’t remember much of the other tenants, mostly because they left so soon after arriving. A lot of them ended up getting a girl pregnant and found a bigger apartment, while others just decided to go back to Mexico. The longest anyone stayed was Mene and Rey, and that’s why we were sort of close. They were the consistent drinkers of the neighborhood too, and the ones who orchestrated the parties on Fridays. Actually, I wouldn’t even call them parties. They were just a couple of brown men standing around griping cans of beer with the same swollen knuckles that had cycled in and out of that next-door apartment. The occasional speaker with music would arrive, but the weekly convention did not need Mexican corridos to set the mood.
When they did convene, though, it would only be small talk interrupted by large swigs of beer. It’s like they were trying to see who could get drunk the quickest, and if it took 7 beers, so be it. But when they did hit that sweet spot of intoxication, the laughter was infectious.
“Eres bien feo guey! Te pareces a una baca,’’ Mene would say to Rey in reference to his big nose. I didn’t think Rey was ugly, as Mene believed, but he did need a better skincare routine.
“No tu guey, te pareces a un burro” Rey would snap back. He was right though. Mene did have pointed ears that made him look like a donkey. Another tenant whose name I didn’t know would affirm Rey’s comeback and say that Mene’s ears are the reason he couldn’t keep a girlfriend.
To an 11 year old, this was the most hilarious shit ever. It was highly entertaining to watch these men interact, to douse themselves in beer, to hear their cackling all through the night. I eventually asked my dad why they drank so much and why they never cleaned up.
My dad solemnly replied, “It’s because they’re adults now, and they pay their rent. Also, you would be out of a job if they stopped.” I never asked again.
But no matter how entertained I was, I knew that Saturday morning would be a long day of work. It was no big deal though, because my mom’s chilaquiles gave me enough energy to get me through the humid Chicago summers. I woke up early to go next door and inspect the staircase of the apartments. If there were a substantial amount of cans, I would have to go to the garage and get two black garbage bags. If the drinking load was light, I would only get one. It was so gross to pick up those cans one by one, placing each drink of the night before inside my black bag. At the time, I never understood why those men chose beer—beer was gross.
After I purged the grass of the memories of the evening before, I would pull out the lawn mower. I was shorter than the handles, but still, I revved the engine as hard as I could to get the job done. I was fascinated how the red lawn mower ran up green grass like a razor to the scalp. I’d give both of our houses a much needed haircut, and the next day the lawn would shine brightly with Sunday morning dew.
“¡Síguele Amigo!” They would say when they saw me struggle. It meant ‘keep going’.
“De nada!” I yelled because I knew I was getting closer to that bike.
I pushed and pulled every corner, struggling to make straight lines. However, no matter how much cleaning I did the hour before, a beer can would always hit the bottom of the blade, shutting the engine down with a high-pitched PING! Frustrated, I lifted the machine and removed the can.
By the time I was done, I smelled like warm Budweiser and bleeding grass. I was exhausted, but the crisp $20 bill always had a way of easing my woes.
“Look at you! Making big money Alancito,” Mene would say in a sarcastic tone.
“More than you,” I would reply with quick banter.
It’s like we had a symbiotic relationship with each other. Those tenants would provide the work and I was the one who did the work. We both knew that if they stopped drinking, I would be out of a job. My dad made sure that I cleaned the grass before I cut it, and if there was nothing to clean, I would get less pay.
I guess the reason I remember this one specific memory is because I understand it more now. as a kid I only saw beer cans and bottles, never what they truly meant, or as to why they got there. I would hear the cackling and the music from my open window on a Friday night, enjoying the show but dreading the work that I would have to do the following morning. I never took into account who those men were, and I see it now that I am in college.
These men shared the same background as my family: Mexican, immigrant and trying to make a living in America. I didn’t know that most of them were in their twenties, at the cusp of adulthood with no idea who they were or how to speak the nation’s language. They were simply working to pay their rent, to put gas in their tank, to send some money home, and to spend the rest on beer.
“What a waste,” I usually thought. But I learned that alcohol was the easiest way to forget; the beer was a way of silencing the horrors of their journey here. Right before I left for college, I had a conversation with my dad.
“Whatever happened to Rey and Mene, and all those other guys?” I asked.
“Rey has a baby girl now and he lives in Indiana. Mene found a job in Texas through a relative,” he answered.
“That’s good. You remember when Mene got so drunk he forgot his name and his birthday?” I laughed.
“Yeah Mijo, but I seriously think Mene still doesn’t know his birthday.”
“What do you mean?”
“His mother never told him the day he was born, and he was the last of eight children so no one really cared for him.”
“How did he get here, then, without a birthday?”
“Like everyone else Mijo. Mene was a close friend of mine because I helped him cross the Rio Grande. We were with the same coyote, in the same group, in the same truck to Chicago. I almost saw him drown.”
I was at a loss for words. I remember how my dad spoke about crossing the border, but I never knew that they did it together. I guess that’s why my dad never questioned his drinking habits, because he understood Mene’s trauma; Mene was only trying to drown out the voices from the river that almost drowned him.
“Why didn’t you drink, Dad, if both of you had such a similar story?”
“Mijo, my father died from an infected liver when I was three because he drank so much. As much as I wanted to, I knew that I couldn’t do the same to you and your brothers. I had to find other ways to cope. So forgive me if I have such a short temper.”
I didn’t know what to say. My own father who made me the ambitious young man I am today was the same as the neighbors who I criticized as a child. So in a way, the tenants who lived next door actually lived with me, but they were shaped in a different form: they were my dad.
When I moved to California at 18, so far from Chicago, I was forced to grow up in ways I didn’t think were possible. I was placed on an unfamiliar ground where palm trees replaced corn fields and oceans replaced lakes. Three months prior, I was in high school, not knowing I was saying goodbye to my childhood. If it was hard for me, I can’t imagine how hard it was for them.
Mene, Rey and my dad were a part of a generation of immigrants that left their crippling financial situation back home to chase the American dream. They wanted to see for themselves if it was real, to see if they could make it big like so many others before them. As unfamiliar as I was in California, I had the luxury of calling my parents and friends anytime I wanted, as long as I adjusted to the time zone. I, for one, spoke the common language of the U.S.
I can’t fathom how my dad spent weeks without calling his mom, and how hard it must’ve been to not understand the conversations on the streets. I didn’t know much about Rey and Mene’s backstory, but I assume it was no different from my father’s. So when they ended up living next door to each other on the street full of Mexicans on Schilling Avenue, I realized it was all for me. It was for the next generation so that their children could have a better life than the one they tried to escape.
It is easy to fall in the hole of the unfamiliar, to let sorrow consume you to the point where the only remedy is trapped inside a glass bottle of Budweiser. I don’t know why I remember those beer cans from those Saturday mornings, but the memory exists. Those men have since moved out, and I too, have moved out, but new tenants live there now. I wonder who picks up those bottles and cans for them.
