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Anonymous, ’24. Nonfiction / Essay.

I travel light. The only things I would ever need on almost any trip would be my
wallet, my necklace, my phone, and of course a couple changes of clothes. But that’s
basically it. Granted I don’t travel a lot, but when I do, I never end up using the
countless leisure items stashed away in my suitcase or backpack. Obviously having a
few more items would make my life easier, but if I had to get on a plane right now, those
3 would be the first things I’d be sure to grab.
My wallet has a sentimental value to me, aside from its intended purpose. It’s my
grandfather’s old one, from the 80s. It’s not anything crazy, simple leather and a clear
plastic ID display, from Walmart. It’s a nice enough wallet, and it’s served me well for the
3 year’s it’s been mine. Big and bulky, it fits all my cards, identification, my license and
on the rare occasion that I have some, cash. But it has so much history.
I imagine if you held it to your nose and inhaled, it would smell like a logging
truck, my grandfather’s summer job as a teen. Like timber and diesel and sweat. Or
maybe like a classroom, whatever a classroom smell is. A Colorado highschool
classroom. A suburb of Denver. It may smell like alcohol, or stagnation. But of all the
possible smells it may very well smell like, it probably just smells of cheap leather.
To be honest, he never even had the wallet until he was a math teacher. He
barely even used it. The heaviest thing I carry in that wallet are my grandfather’s
memories. Before he ended up in an unhappy marriage, before he had to give up his
dreams and become a teacher. When he was young, fresh out of high school with the
whole world in front of him. In that wallet I carry promise.

In that wallet I also carry my license. A license doesn’t seem that important, but
the journey I went through to get that license will stay with me forever. When I think
about driving, the first memory that comes to mind is sitting on my dad’s lap when I was
7, and steering the car through a national forest in Colorado. Or my first time driving on
a highway ever. That was the summer of ‘22 in Monterrey. I’d been going to drivers ed
in the United States, but driving in Mexico was a whole other beast. There, big container
trucks drove in the left lanes, blinkers were nonexistent, and the speed limit was a
minimum.
My dad had drunk a little too much at the family gathering, and we needed to get
back to the house we were staying in.
“Ey Alden, ¿puedes manejar hasta la casa? Te puedo guiar.” He told me. I didn’t
have too much confidence in the directions he would give me, so I loaded up google
maps just in case. We started off, making our way down winding unfamiliar streets.
Eyes looked out at us from just beyond the streetlights, and groups of men sat on the
edge of sidewalks, on little plastic chairs, sipping Tecate, Modelos, Barrilitos, and other
various beers and inebriating substances. My dad was in the passenger’s seat of the
minivan, eyes barely open.
“Dale a la derecha en el semáforo.” He said pointing at the street light. When I
turned right like he asked me he let out a little yelp. “Te dije a la izquierda pendejo, que
no me escuchas o que?!” No matter how many times I tried explaining to him that no, he
had indeed told me to turn right at the light, he still insisted that he said left.
But none of that mattered now. The only way was forward, the road too narrow to
turn back around. The wall next to me seemed to grow in height, and my heart began

pounding. We were on the onramp to La Carretera Nacional, one of the biggest
highways in Monterrey. My dad quietly muttered to himself in the passenger seat, the
only phrases I could occasionally pick out were things somewhere along the lines of we
were going to die, I’d wreck the car, or that I wasn’t ready. Oh I was ready buddy. I
pushed down hard on the gas, and the car took off. In no time I was going 40, 50, 60, 70
all the way to 80 miles per hour. My dad closed his eyes and tried to look away from the
road. At this point I was only going off of google. Despite my dads misgivings, I made it
through without a scratch to the body work, finally convincing him to let me go for my
road test. The setting sun glistened off of the skyscrapers scattered about downtown.
That skyline has changed so much since then. When I was back in Monterrey
this Thanksgiving there were almost double the amount of skyscrapers that had been
there only 1 year ago. My uncle told me that a lot of them are empty, functioning as
massive money laundering operations for the cartels. From a distance, they seem
smaller given how spread out they are, but up close and under them, they tower over
the shacks and shanties of the poor, giving a very vivid representation of the stark
wealth divide in Mexico.
But all those buildings fade away when you enter Los Puesteros Del Colegio
Civil, one of the largest open air markets in Monterrey. Everything melts down to ground
level, the throngs of people and the smell of street food fills the air, a scent so heavy it
feels like it has its own gravitational pull. The streets would be considered dirty
anywhere else, but here they’re like a canvas, telling the story of thousands of feet
walking through here, daily. Though the streets are wide, the market stalls press in on
you, constricting your view even further. The people too. So many people. Times

Square has nothing on Los Puesteros. The only individuals you can actually make out
and distinguish are those within 5 feet of you. Past that, everyone blends into a
shapeless mass of flesh, shirts here, arms there, occasional heads turned towards
vendors hawking their wares. The same pre recorded line sounds out from many of the
stalls, barely making it over the sounds of the mob.
“El patrón se volvió loco, paselepaselepasele. 12 calcetines por 100 pesos,
paselepaselepasele!” repeating until infinity. I turned away from the stand, ready to
move on. My dad effortlessly maneuvered his way through the crowd, looking as if he
was part liquid, flowing through the people. I tried my best to keep up, bumping into
people here, tripping over cables there. I was a broken record, spouting off the same
“Perdon,”
“Compermiso,”
“Lo siento,” every 5 seconds. I was like a foreign bacteria moving through a body,
making my way through unfamiliar arteries of people and cheap goods. My dad leaned
out and pulled me into a building, into one of the indoor markets. On the outside, these
2 story cement brick and stucco warehouse looking structures didn’t seem too big. But
once you got inside it was as if you stepped into a tesseract, the inside folding out into a
labyrinth of rooms, shops, and so many different items. From knives and guns, to little
knock off action figures based on popular internet trends. That was the only place I’d
ever seen a skibidi toilet doll. Walking further into the building we stumbled on a whole
area just selling fake jordans. I spent a little time looking at them but decided against it.
Then, through the chaos and loud music, I saw a little jewelry spot. Necklaces and
earrings glittered in the LED lights. Walking over a little silver chain caught my attention.

It was simple, yes, but it was well made. I walked out of that building with my neck 10
dollars heavier than when I walked in.
I love that necklace, almost always putting it on before leaving the house. I take
care to always keep it off when I take a shower, and always put it back on my shelf at
night. It’s become a sort of morning ritual of mine. I get up, unplug my phone from the
charger, put on my pants and shirt, put my wallet in my pocket and my necklace over
everything, tucking it under my hoodie. Though these items may not be unique in the
material, nor the brand, nor the craftsmanship, each one of them is mine, and each is
unique through the memories I have because of them. I could never replace the
experiences I have with these items. These are the things I carry.