We sat in the rooftop terrace around a small card table. We were the three kids my mother could rope into a chore that would pay us a quarter each. My feet dangled without touching the floor. Mama had cooked a pot of glue with cornstarch, water and lemon juice. The pot sat cooling in the middle of the table and a couple of old paintbrushes lay next to it. There was a stack of “Cohete El Aguila” labels and a case of firecrackers, each one a four-inch square of red paper and gunpowder. Our job was to glue a label on each packet. In the sky, a kite or two danced among the clouds. The air was crisp and the sun shone strongly. We whiled away the afternoon around the little table in silly banter, slapping on labels.

It was December in Guatemala, and we were happy to be in the middle of our summer vacation. School was out from October to January. Christmas and New Year’s Eve were coming, and pasting firecracker labels was only part of the excitement. We helped in the store, our Chinese store where a little of everything was sold. I stood on a stool to punch the numbers in quetzales and centavos on the old cash register and turned the crank on the side to make its drawer fly open with a cheerful brrring. I greeted the customers. ¿Qué deseaba? What would you like? And they answered, Cohetes, niña. Satín para vestir al niño Dios. Firecrackers, little girl. Satin to dress the baby Jesus. Terciopelo para la capa de la Virgen María.  Manta roja para el nacimiento. Velvet for the cape of the Virgin Mary. Red cloth for the nativity scene. Estrellitas. Un regalito. Sparklers. A small gift... I helped curl the ribbons to decorate the gift-wrapped packages.

We lived in the back of our store, in the heart of Guatemala City. On our downtown street there was a shoe store, a hardware store, a haberdashery, a jewelry store, a clothing store, a bakery, a snack shop. The owners were immigrant Jews, Turks, Palestinians, Chinese, and Guatemalan ladinos. Everyone knew the others’ routines and something about their families. They greeted each other every morning as they opened their stores and again in the evening when they closed. Sometimes they would go to another’s shop to buy something, like bread and sweets, or needle and thread.

The blind beggar made his rounds asking for change. The barefoot boy with a tray of roasted peanuts came at snack time. The kid with the torn shirt carried the daily paper under his arm and shouted its headline, one that he himself could not read. The European saleslady, perfumed and in high heels, arrived with a portfolio of nylon stockings hoping my mother would place an order, and left a few fine German candies for us. The Indian women came for threads to weave with. The President of the Republic came once to shake hands with the shopkeepers, surrounded by his military retinue in dark glasses. 

In our chaotic commercial street, the window dressers hired for the day decorated the store windows with garlands of tinsel, spray can snow, and stenciled Santa Clauses and reindeer. Blinking Christmas lights and glittering balls hung around the mannequins. The shop windows ushered in a fake winter.

At some stores, mariachi songs, boleros, and cumbias played onto the street through loudspeakers. The sidewalks thronged with shoppers and vendors hawking fried plantains, candied pumpkin and figs, and things like brooms and pails. I sat on the front stoop and watched.

Evenings before Christmas, a posada procession would pass by on a side street. Women carried a swaying float, an anda, with the resplendent sculpture of the Virgin Mary decked in velvet, silver embroidery and a crown of golden rays. In the black night, the candles and her crown sparkled with mystery and beauty. A small band of trombones, drums and cymbals followed her. Then came children, grownups, balloon and snack vendors walking in merry disarray. Someone would toss firecrackers before the procession as it made its way to the church down by the market. I would stand on the sidewalk and watch in awe.

On Christmas Eve at twelve midnight, the city exploded in celebration. My father was a taciturn and gentle man, but firecrackers made him into a boy again. Papa would string together three or four strands of “machine-gun” firecrackers, lay them flat on the sidewalk, and light them with a stick of incense. Then he would set off Roman candles that whistled willy-nilly and popped a hundred feet above us. We swirled sparklers in circles around our fake Christmas tree and our own nacimiento, the nativity scene.

At one in the morning, we ate Guatemalan tamales colorados, glistening packages of corn and achiote sauce wrapped in banana leaves that my mother had cooked in a huge blue enamel pot. It looked like there were hundreds inside it.

In the days that followed we worked ourselves up to a different kind of frenzy. Sharply at noon and again at midnight on New Year’s Eve, the pyrotechnics burst around the city, and the loud booms of rockets exploding up to the clouds made my heart jump.  Now the Chinese paisanos organized the Dragon Dance, even though the real Chinese New Year was weeks away. Why not? At noon, ladinos, Indians, and shopkeepers of every sort gathered with us before the store. We welcomed the Chinese dragon to dance away evil spirits and bring our store good luck. To the din of Chinese drums and cymbals, a little funny-man character with a big round head and a fan teased it with a fistful of money tied to a bamboo cane.

Recalling his childhood in China, my father strung together ten, fifteen strands of those machine-gun firecrackers, and hung them down the front of the store so that they would spill another ten feet on the ground. With an incense stick he lit the fuse and stood there to make sure it took. Fearfully I held my ears tight. The long red strand cracked and popped from the sidewalk all the way to the top of the store, culminating in the huge BOOM explosion of the fat round “mortar” that crowned it. The Dragon’s head surged amidst the sparks and smoke as it grabbed its reward from the little man. The smell of sulfur lingered and mounds of scarlet paper lined the sidewalk. 
At noon and at midnight on New Year’s Eve, out of mother’s blue enamel pot came hundreds of jungdz, the Chinese version of tamales — little pyramids of rice wrapped in bamboo leaves.

The year had ended, and our street life resumed its daily hum. But not for long, for Three Kings Day would soon come on January 6. In our street our cultures met, meshed, even clashed, and, in the rhythms of daily life, lived on in a kind of rough harmony.

Posted December 2009