Gringos in Wonderland

Gringos in Wonderland

Loa Allebach

English 121

It’s 6am. A dead grey cat lays stiff on the sidewalk, crumpled in a heap. A screeching car alarm has been piercing the air for at least 20 minutes. The ragged single mother in the building next door yells at her kids in Spanish. An impatient parent blares his horn outside the living room window… the smell of fried eggs, sulfur, marijuana smoke and trash wafts up through the alley as families of rats and cockroaches scurry off to their daytime beds. Someone is blasting mariachi music as the neighborhood homeless begin to stir and take the day’s first swigs of cheap whiskey. It is another glorious morning in the City of Angels.

Buried doggedly under my comforter I try snuggling deeper into my pillow to catch five more precious minutes of sleep, but soon realize it is hopeless. Admittedly awake, my heavy eyelids concede with a groan to my growling stomach, I might as well get out of bed.

My neighborhood is one of few options for folks at my income level. Housing is stacked like chicken coops on a farm truck, sometimes packing eight people into a cramped one-bedroom apartment. We the inhabitants, most of us well below poverty level, are affectionately referred to in periodicals as the “armpit of society,” although I personally prefer the phrase, the “filthy, infected hangnail of society.”

The population is primarily black and Hispanic, except for us. When my kids started school at Charles White Elementary just up the street, they were the only two Caucasians in the school; including students, teachers, and administration. (Charles White, as it turns out, was a black man.) With the exception of the new building managers, whom I expect to stay no more than 3 months, I haven’t seen any other Caucasians. Some people instantly despise us, others stare as if we’re some kind of modern marvel and street cons berate us to see how naпve we are; but most of the people here are actually pretty nice.

When I enrolled in school, I went on the search for an apartment nearby. Since the school is near a slum, rent is fairly reasonable; but with a fresh bankruptcy on file and a documented income of $723/month, it is difficult to get apartment managers just to accept an application. For weeks I scoured craigslist and the local papers, searched phonebooks and cruised the neighborhoods looking for “For Rent” signs, before I found a place in our price range that would work with us.

Nobody really belongs in this garbage dump. It is not uncommon for the water to be turned off during the daytime for an entire week. The buildings are infested with pests, elevators rarely work, mailboxes get broken into, hallways are scattered with trash and food remnants, walls littered with graffiti,