Arrested: A Family Vacation
by Gillian Yassim

We lit the firework. As soon as the fuse had begun to burn, the wind snapped it out. We were tireless in our effort. And eventually, when the fuse was but a few centimeters long, it lit and the firework exploded in our hands. Matt and I surveyed the beach. No one had seen our foolish teenage attempt at pyrotechnics, and yet, we knew, for us, Mexico was over.

The anti-Mexico animosity had been building slowly over the last week, but when Matt and I scorched our hands with the M-1000, we knew the vacation was over for good. The thirty seconds we stood watching the remainder of our firework rain into the ocean was worth it. Neither one of us were concerned with our crispy hands. We knew what they would be-the straw that broke the camel's back.

"Do you think we'll get to have lobster before we leave?" Matt asked. All he cared about was his stomach.

"You know, for a little kid you eat a lot." I responded carelessly. I was wondering the same thing. We had eaten all our meals in the mustard yellow room in Puerto Nuevo. It was a favorite of Generalissimo Marques, the head of the army that had seized control of the part of Baja that we were staying in. The fishing village it was part of looked just like all the others along the coast, and the restaurant had been tucked in the maze of the streets. It was a well-kept secret in a seedy town. If my dad hadn't drained a few beers with the Generalissimo, I don't know that we would have ever found the best lobster in Mexico .

Matt's question drew me out of my head. "What are you thinking about?"

"The lobster. It's so good." My answer sounded far away.

"And you say I eat a lot? What about you?"

"I'm an athlete."

"We should tell Brandon he's fine."

"Nah, let him suffer a little."

"Gillian, my hand's starting to smell. Let's get Brandon and go back to the beach house."

My brother, quivering in his foxhole a hundred yards away, didn't know our vacation was over yet. He had screamed when the fuse ignited and the firework exploded over the waves, but hadn't made a sound since. We found him huddled under his sweatshirt, his back pressed flat against the sand. As we headed back to our borrowed beach house, Brandon stared at Matt and me: "You guys smell like burnt shit."

And we did. The second we walked into the sole room of the beach house, my mom saw Matt's blistered hand. Her shrieks were loud and unintelligible. They reminded me of a few days before, when we had strayed from Puerto Nuevo and had eaten dinner in town. The waiter had asked her to pick a chicken from the adjoining coop for her meal. It had taken her a while to cross the language barrier, but when she had figured out what the man was asking, she stood up and ran around the restaurant yelling about dirty Mexicans, chickens on the roof, and little angry bugs in the water.

"Gillian got burnt too." If Matt was going to endure her hysteria, he was bringing me along for the ride.

I tried to calm her down, "Mom, it's not a big deal. Just a little . . ."

" . . . black skin? Charred hands? Don't tell me it's nothing. There's not even a hospital you could go to!" She was becoming hysterical.

"It's fine, Mom. We have some hydrogen peroxide. I'll clean our burns." I was speaking in a calm, even tone.

"Wait 'til your father hears about this. I'm packing. We're going home. I hate this disease-ridden shit hole." My mom had started throwing things in bags. She wasn't wasting any time.

"Where's dad?"

"Drinking with that Federali man in the bar on the beach. He probably saw you two blow your hands up."

"Thanks." I stood up, left the living room/bedroom/kitchen that we called the beach house, and headed for the shack on the beach. At this time of night the bar would be closed, but as I approached I could see the front of the bar was still lit. I knew better than to enter through the front door. I knew that Generalissimo Marques had a habit of drinking with his pistol drawn. If I caught him off guard, I would be shot. I walked in through the employee entrance and announced my presence. I was greeted by the butt of Marques' gun. It was a couple of inches from my forehead. Had I not automatically raised my hands, I would have been knocked unconscious. I stood with my hands raised, "Dad, we need to go."

"Why, what happened now?" his speech was slightly slurred.

"Well, Matt and I burnt our hands on fireworks and Mom's having a conniption."

"Put some peroxide on it." He picked up his glass and took a long drink.

"Um . . . Dad, this is Mom. I think someone already called the cops."

Flashbacks of the week we had spent in Mexico came flooding back. We'd had the cops called on us four times in the last five days. My dad started recounting the incidents. There was the bazaar where my mom had found it necessary to buy a bracelet from every child who approached her. A problem only arose when she had run out of money before she had bought a bracelet from all the child vendors. A six-year-old girl had jumped on my mom's back pleading for a sale. In a moment of fear, my mom had flung the girl into a booth where women were braiding hair. No one was hurt, but we were asked to leave the small town of Ojo de Aguacanada and never return. The shrieking-chicken-picking incident had resulted in call number two to the authorities.

"And don't forget the Federalis on the highway, Senor." Marques spoke respectfully.

"I don't understand how she could think that no one in Mexico spoke English." My dad couldn't stop laughing. "Thanks for helping us out with that, Marques."

"It's no problem. Just don't yell 'Jesus fuckin' Christ' or 'dirty bastards' at any more Federalis."

"It was a bad choice of words, wasn't it?" My dad was still laughing, but I remembered the nozzle of the automatic rifle pressed to the window. It had been unnervingly close to my head. I couldn't remember being scared, though. Instead I kept wondering if the guy holding the gun, no more than two years my senior, knew how to use such a weapon.

Marques cut off my dad's laughter, "But don't forget, Senor, you had the cops called on you once this week." Now it was Marques' turn to laugh. The comment had sobered my dad up quick.

My dad's response was defensive. "I wasn't buying that crack pipe. The guy just came up to us on the beach. We were even riding those lazy burros."

"Si. That's why he thought you had money for the crack pipe." Marques was starting to lean on the table. He was laughing hard enough to make his belly jump. Suddenly he just stopped laughing. Then he stood, took the keys out of his pocket, and announced, "Locking up time."

My dad looked at his watch and asked me if I thought my mom had packed all our stuff. I didn't know, but I figured Marques wanted us to leave. I also figured it was a good time to leave. We needed to head for the border before the Federalis arrived.

After the trip to Mexico , our family didn't take a vacation. We took weekends in the desert or trips up the coast, but we never strayed far from home. This year my dad called asking me if I had a destination to propose for this year's vacation. He said he wants to take one last family vacation before I graduate from college. My suggestion was Jamaica . He laughed a little and then said, "Gillian, our family can't travel out of the country. We had enough multicultural experience in Mexico to last a life time."

Gillian Yassim is a student at Pitzer College . This piece was written for a course in Creative Nonfiction writing.