(Our Daily Bread)

                                            By Grace Westbrook  (M.A. Candidate,  R&S program)

There are all kinds of sounds to get used to when you move into a new neighborhood and this neighborhood was full of unfamiliar sounds that took some time getting used to.  One particular sound sparked my curiosity right away; it was a honking like that of a clown walking by with squeaky shoes.  I quickly discovered that this sound came from a street vendor, who’s horn meant to get the attention of potential customers inhabiting the many apartments that lined the street.  My husband and I had just moved into our new Los Angeles apartment, the top story of an old house on a street people referred to as “the barrio”.  People in our (white) circles of friends referred to the barrio more generally as “north of the highway” – understood as a place to be avoided, if possible. 

Well, it wasn’t possible for us to avoid “north of the highway” with this move - Matt was looking for work and I was a full-time student.  The prospect of Matt getting a well-paying and permanent job was looking less and less promising as the weeks passed.  He was waiting to hear back from a possible job opportunity that seemed perfect but this wait lasted for months. This move took place in between my fall and spring college semesters so I spent my days unpacking boxes and investigating all of the new sounds outside our windows.  The windows were poorly insulated so the sounds of the barrios - the Spanish romance language, children playing, the cars whizzing by on the busy street and the honking - crept through the cracks of the windows and filled the air.   

A few nights after moving in, I found myself alone in our new apartment hearing what sounded like a cry for help.  I rushed to the front window and saw on the dimly lit sidewalk a man on the ground being kicked by another man.  I dialed 911 and described to the dispatcher what I saw happening outside my window.  When the man kicking finally (and hesitantly) decided to stop and walk away a group of young Latinos surrounded the man who was trying to get up.  They were all holding something that I was trying to explain it to the dispatcher but, because of the dark, couldn’t tell what it was. 

 “Are they holding knives?” she asked. 

 “I don’t think so, it doesn’t look shiny but I can’t really tell,” I said, my adrenaline level reaching new heights. 

A minute or so later the man finally stood to his feet and the group of Latinos started to walk away.  As they got closer to my window I discovered what they were holding – they were all eating corn on the cob. Then seeing the vendor truck parked just down the street I had a small comic relief from my impetuous imagination.  But, this act of violence confirmed my suspicions about el barrio and a fear gripped me for weeks afterward.  Every unfamiliar sound sent me looking through the windows expecting to see the worst. 

When a couple of our friends heard about our first week in el barrio they knowingly expressed their concern about our choice of neighborhood and even confessed to having looked in the classifieds for something better for us. They even provided us with the listing they had found.  I was surprised to find out that someone was more concerned about our situation then I was.  As time passed, we noticed that when we made plans with friends they insisted on having us at their house and they asked us questions like: ”So, have you seen any more corn-muggings?”  We came to see that the highway was the great divide… and we found ourselves on the wrong side of it. 

As the weeks went by, Matt found a couple of temporary jobs that paid between a half and three-fourths of what we needed to survive.  Every day and week that we waited to hear back from the permanent job opportunity we gained new insecurities about our future and our goals.  Could we still afford the luxury of my going to school full-time?   Would I have to work and, therefore, delay our graduate studies a year?  Would that become one more year that we didn’t start a family?  Our concerns became more immediate every day and they weighed heavier on us each week.  The now familiar (but no less annoying) sound of the vender’s horn seemed to join us for breakfast, lunch and even dinner as we talked about how we were going to survive if this job didn’t come through. 

One afternoon, Matt was trying to fill out another job application but the constant nagging of the vendor’s horn became too loud for him to concentrate and he cursed the neighborhood and all that it brought with it.  The air was thick with people talking on the corner, the vendor’s horn, children playing, cars whizzing by and ice-cream trucks.  We felt the tug of gravity, as if being pulled on an inevitably downward spiral… but there was nothing we could do except get up the next day and try it again.

The next morning I woke up early thinking about our worries and fears about the future.  I made a cup of tea and perched in front of my favorite window - just in time to see the annoyingly loud vendor get out of an old, beat-up car.  The vendor, a short Latino man, found a shopping cart in front of our house and began filling it with mangos, spray bottles, and other miscellaneous items, then draped a few garbage bags over the side of it.  I had seen the way he would put mangos on a stick and cut them to look like budding flowers and had wondered what it was that he sprayed and sprinkled on top before giving them to his happy customers.  I wasn’t curious enough to eat out of a shopping cart from a man I didn’t know, but I thought that it must be tasty.  His customers were always happy! 

As I watched this man prepare for his day’s work it struck me - he must do this for 12 hours some days!  And I couldn’t quite recall if there was a day of the week that he didn’t work.  Just then he removed his baseball cap, and with closed eyes and concerned brow he crossed his chest and touched his head, in prayerful expectation that the Almighty would provide his pan de cada dia.  Then he reached for his horn and the sound that rang through the air was like the voice of God.  The vendor became a brother to me… and his struggle was mine.  I began to worry about how he was going to survive.  I wondered how much money he made and how many people he needed to feed. 

When Matt got home I told him what I’d seen that morning. The honking no longer sounded like an invasion in our home but it had became a daily reminder to us that many people, especially the people of the barrio, struggle each day to find their bread, a situation that we had begun to identify with.  I found myself getting defensive with my friends when they made remarks about my neighborhood.  These are my people… I am el barrio. 

It was March now and the bells of el barrio’s cathedral were ringing.   I had been inside the cathedral on a walk one day and fell in love with the multi-colored marble pillars and the stained glass windows celebrating the Saints, the Madonna, and the Child.  Having been raised in a Baptist church, Lent was almost completely wasted on me but I had learned some things about it over the years.  We decided that rainy night to observe the day that began the 40 day period leading up to Easter - Ash Wednesday.  We’d never been to Mass before and didn’t know what to expect, when to sit, kneel or stand, and we didn’t expect the whole thing to be in Spanish!  But it certainly made this new experience all the more beautiful to us.  At first I tried to interpret the liturgy, exercising my years of Spanish lessons, but then, the mostly indistinguishable sounds of the melodic Spanish language filled the air like a peaceful breeze and sometimes like a gusty wind when the congregation responded in liturgy. These sounds began to utter my deepest feelings - feelings I didn’t have words to express. And, maybe it was the sounds of el barrio that meditative night, or maybe it was el Espiritu Santo but when we bowed our heads we prayed, “God give el barrio sus pan de cada dia.  And God… give us ours, too.”