Around noon, an aging sedan rolled up. A skinny, baby-eyed, girl-woman got out, stepped up to the courtyard gate, and gave me a puzzled smile through the bars. She had long, metallic-red hair, mod side-bangs, and fluffy white ankle boots.

“Teresa?” I asked.

She widened her eyes, as if shocked at the very thought. “Yvette.”

“Un momento.” I rushed toward the house to find someone to unlock the gate.

Yvette is Teresa’s daughter, a twenty-year-old psychology student at the University of Ciudad Juárez.

Yvette is Teresa’s daughter, a twenty-year-old psychology student at the University of Ciudad Juárez. She had arrived to take her aunt Mireya, grandmother Isabel, and me to her mom’s house, a forty-minute drive through the gauntlet of Juárez.

We first drove through the busy old streets of el centro, or downtown. Tiny businesses crowded cheek-to-cheek sold clothes, food, electronics, repairs, and more. It seemed half the shops were vacant. El centro was starting a fast, runny, crumbly slide into decay. Mireya and Yvette discussed why so many shops were boarded up or abandoned: the owners couldn’t afford monthly extortion payments to the cartels.

Once-upon-a-time, with Americans crossing the border to shop for novelties and bargains, Juárez used to be a great place for entrepreneurs.

“It’s such a waste,” Mireya said, “since Juárez is a perfect place for a small-business person to flourish.” With people coming to Juárez to work in American and other foreign factories, and, once-upon-a-time, with Americans crossing the border to shop for novelties and bargains, it used to be a great place for entrepreneurs. Now it’s a horror. “The same thing happened in America in the 1920s,” Mireya said, comparing the cartels’ stranglehold on Juárez to the power the mobs had in Chicago and New York during Prohibition.

Yvette’s oversized eyes grew rounder as the car crawled through the narrow streets. I wondered why she looked so scared. Surely this street full of people wouldn’t erupt into gunfire on a sunny Friday afternoon. Would it?

She visibly relaxed when we reached the broad Avenida 16 de Septiembre. The thoroughfare passed under the main bridge to El Paso, then changed names about four times along its extensive length. The avenue was lined with so many modern restaurants, car dealerships, big box stores, and warehouses that it felt as if we were passing through the shopping districts of multiple American suburbs. “Juárez is so big,” Mireya said. “Juárez is huge,” I echoed.

Mireya’s (left) sister, Teresa (right), greeted us with a broad smile and open arms. Like her mother, the beribboned Diana (middle) was smiling and quiet.

The long, sleepy drive took us to an apartment-size, two-bedroom home, huddled behind another locked gate. Mireya’s sister, Teresa, greeted us with a broad smile and open arms. The friendly, chubby, unassuming woman kissed my cheek, then insisted that Isabel and I rest on the couch, while her seven-year-old daughter Diana and little cousin Sebastian played underfoot. Teresa and Mireya refused my offer to help prepare lunch, and I didn’t insist, because the kitchen was so tiny that the two sisters kept running into each other. Two couches and a dining table lined a shotgun room where I had to uncross my legs to let people pass, and the table had to be pulled away from the wall so we could eat together. Even then, we ate in shifts, because Mireya’s brother Cali and a friend joined us, making nine for lunch.

Instead of the tight quarters getting on everyone’s nerves, it seemed to only increase their closeness. Chatter and laughter warmed every nook and cranny. I’d spent plenty of time over the years with my own Mexican cousins from large Catholic families, so the chaos felt more or less normal.

Teresa was very attentive to all of us, but grew shy at any hint of attention to her. Still, when I praised her fantastic pork chile colorado, she confided with a chef’s pride the secret to her tangy red sauce: orange juice. For dessert she’d baked a moist carrot cake balanced with a light, pleasing coconut frosting.

Sebastian bounced a tiny ball in the house. When I bounced it back to him he missed and it bonked him on the nose, sending everyone into gales of laughter.

My greatest pleasure was watching and listening to the two children, maybe because this required only rudimentary Spanish. Like her mother, the beribboned Diana was smiling and quiet, though not too shy to show off her swimming awards. Sebastian recited his long list of physical injuries, real and imagined. The real one was a bruise under his eye, which he insisted Diana had given him. Everyone laughed at this fib. They’d seen what had really happened, though I couldn’t understand what that was. No one seemed to mind when Sebastian bounced a tiny ball in the house, so I bounced it back to him. He missed and it bonked him on the nose, sending everyone into gales of laughter – another injury for his list. Though the kids played hide-and-seek and giggled like kids everywhere, when it was time to go they seemed exceptionally disposed to hug and kiss the new person in their midst.

Toward evening, Yvette’s and Diana’s dad stopped by for an hour to cuddle and talk with his daughters. Mireya explained that he doesn’t live with them, though he won’t give Teresa a divorce. “He’s too possessive,” Mireya said. Over the weekend she tossed out a few comments about the machismo of Mexican men, but this time she simply added, “He’s such a good father to the girls.”

As the sun lowered outside, Teresa asked me, “Are you scared to be in Juárez?” I said that I’d traveled to dangerous places before and that I tried not to dwell on it. I explained that I felt safe with Mireya and her family, since I trusted my friend not to take me anyplace too dangerous. At this, I shot Mireya a warning glance, making everyone laugh again.

Teresa drove us back to Isabel’s house at twilight, and her daughters came along. When we arrived it was seven o’clock and night was falling. I wondered why they risked driving after dark in this city under siege.

Maybe fear becomes so exhausting after a while that it turns into a giggling nervousness, or foolish fearlessness, or numbness through which an inner voice occasionally calls out: “Hey! You could die any moment!” Does everyone answer that voice the same way I do? “Yes, but I have a feeling it won’t be today.”

I woke to the safe sounds of a gas burner igniting, a pan shifting, an egg sizzling. It was only then that a rooster started crowing somewhere in Colonia del Carmen. Perhaps he sets his clock by Isabel. I lingered in bed, until I heard Isabel and her daughter Mireya muttering in Spanish and figured it must be time to come out of hiding. I had no clear idea of the hour. My cell phone is my usual watch and I hadn’t brought it, unwilling to pay roaming charges in Mexico, or risk having it stolen on the desperate streets of Juárez.

Every day Isabel washes dozens of towels and smocks for her son Noeh’s hairdressing shop.

When I emerged it was 7:30, and Isabel was hanging laundry in the chilly morning shadows of the courtyard. Every day she washes dozens of towels and smocks for her son Noeh’s hairdressing shop. She then made us a delicious herbal tea from canela (cinnamon) and flor de azahar (orange blossom).

“Good for calming the nerves,” she said, “para la tranquilidad.”

“I need that,” I teased. “I have an energetic personality.”

She smiled and offered her sincere hope that her tea would help.

More …

As Mireya and Cali had promised, their mother didn’t live far across the river from El Paso, Texas. After Cali drove through downtown Juárez, he spent five minutes winding through dark neighborhoods before turning into Isabel’s driveway. He unlocked a padlocked gate to pull into the courtyard. The gate had been there before Mexico’s drug war. Juárez has long known big-city, border-town dangers.

The inside looked bigger than the outside suggested. In the new addition, an old-fashioned wood stove warmed and cheered the room.

The house wasn’t small, though it might seem poor by American standards: a graying, peeling sprawl of cinderblock, brick, and adobe. “It’s too bad they can’t fix up the outside, isn’t it?” Mireya said. “No one wants anyone to know that they have anything and attract attention.” Juárez sees plenty of robberies these days.

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Their mini-marshmallow stature and pre-intellectual chatter marked them as targets: those undersized, over-bright kids who get stuffed into lockers by eighth graders. Cassie made beeping noises. Talia talked so fast that the ends of sentences tumbled out ahead of the beginnings. Cami, one of only two seventh graders, smirked at both the chatty sixth graders and the only slightly less chatty adult: me. But during our eight-week Lighthouse Young Writers Workshop, I discovered they would all survive, because they’d learned to sublimate the horror of middle school by pouring it into creative writing.

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I woke in terror and opened my eyes to green tubular objects floating toward me — string beans, or slow-motion bullets. I yelled, startling my husband. When I snapped out of it I reassured Dale, “It’s only what always happens.” Meaning: “It’s only because night terrors are my thing, not because I’m traveling to Juárez,” although that was precisely the problem. I closed my eyes and pictured my breasts exploding. I wondered what Dale would do if I were shot. It was too much to contemplate. I asked God to keep me safe, and fell back to sleep.

We took a bus to El Paso’s old-fashioned, brick-and-mortar downtown.

I woke a short time later to catch a flight to El Paso with my neighbor Mireya. Before I left the house, I removed my engagement ring. Mireya, who used to live in Juárez, said, “I’m glad you left your ring at home.” No point attracting robbers with a diamond, especially one with sentimental value. I still wore my wedding band, an instinct from younger days when traveling solo meant constant sexual harassment.

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This Thursday, I’m traveling to a place that should have yellow caution tape around it. According to the news, according to family and friends, according to the U.S. State Department, if I’m looking for danger: non-essential travel to Chihuahua, Mexico is the way to go, especially Ciudad Juárez. When I told my grandfather I was going to Mexico to do research for my historical novel, he shouted a bit, then insisted, “OK, next subject.” But hey, sometimes Grampa shouts when he and Dad are deciding where to grab breakfast on Sunday, so I didn’t take it personally.

According to the U.S. State Department, if I’m looking for danger: non-essential travel to Chihuahua, Mexico is the way to go, especially Ciudad Juárez.

I’ll only be in Juárez for a day and a half of my five-day round-trip from El Paso to Casas Grandes. Don’t tell my husband, but I’m more scared about the twelve hours I’ll be on a Mexican highway. I plan to hide a couple hundred bucks in my shoe, in case I need to pay off highway robbers. Remember when our parents used to say, “That’s highway robbery!” and we thought it was just an expression?

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Being open when we travel is like standing atop a cliff, enlivening but risky. One year ago tonight, friends and I celebrated my memoir with a release party. To mark that anniversary, I’m sharing with you a story that never made it into They Only Eat Their Husbands: A Memoir of Alaskan Love, World Travel, and the Power of Running Away…

THE LOWER 48
35 years old – near Rialto Beach, Washington

As I climbed the final steps to the promontory at Cape Flattery, the most northwest point in the Lower 48, a pair of hazel eyes looked into mine. The way he said “hi,” it was as if he’d been expecting me. “Hi!” I replied, smiling. We stared down at the noisy waves washing in and out of blue grottoes hundreds of feet below, and gazed out at the immeasurable expanse of water bearing down on the cape. The Pacific faced no obstacles from the horizon to this point, and its accumulated power was eating away at the green-draped cliffs atop which we stood.

We stared down at the noisy waves washing in and out of blue grottoes hundreds of feet below. (Dreamstime stock photo by Fallsview)

As comfortably as if we’d known each other for years, the stranger and I talked animatedly about the travels that brought us here. When I said I’d taken a swing-dancing lesson in Seattle, he said, “You’re kidding! You swing dance?” He grabbed my hand and swung me around atop the cliff, and my laughter entered the wind and waves. I felt the rock beneath us shuddering under the onslaught of surf.

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I prefer hiking Colorado’s thirteeners (13,000-foot-peaks) to its fourteeners, because they’re less crowded with peak baggers, yet equally beautiful and often just as challenging. The Herman Gulch trail to The Citadel kicked my butt, and I loved every moment. I was surprised to discover such a wild and untamed jewel so close to I-70.

Many hikers stop at Herman Lake, below Pettingell Peak. But after that it keeps getting better, as the jagged towers of The Citadel appear. The eight-mile round-trip hike took longer than my husband Dale and I anticipated, so I only made it to a patch of high rock just below the twin summits. Even from there, I had a stunning view of the Continental Divide. I plan to return to conquer both peaks.

It’s easy to drive to the Herman Gulch Trail from the Denver area. Take I-70 West and get off at exit 218, the next exit after Bakerville. Bear right on the .1 mile service road, which dead-ends at the trailhead. Here’s what you’ll see when you hit the trail:

Did you know that during the Vietnam War, U.S. soldiers referred to life in America as “Back in the Real World”? I’m excited to announce that Vietnam veteran Ed Turner and I have co-written a novel by that name, which has just been released as an e-book. Back in the Real World explores the lasting effects of war and the healing power of human connection.

Back in the Real World explores the lasting effects of war and the healing power of human connection.

My co-author earned the Bronze Star as a door gunner on a Huey. Ed Turner is a member of the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment Veterans of Vietnam and Cambodia. He has an accounting degree, but spent much of his career as an FBI agent and fraud investigator. He has read good novels on Vietnam, but has long yearned to see a story about the extraordinary effects of war on ordinary survivors. I’m proud to have helped him realize that vision.

Co-author Ed Turner has read good novels on Vietnam, but has long yearned to see a story about the extraordinary effects of war on ordinary survivors.

Here’s a synopsis: Michael Frost is a Vietnam vet who once made a mistake that cost men their lives. Decades later, his inability to forgive himself is tormenting him and tearing his family apart. Kimberly Mancini is a Vietnam War orphan, half-Vietnamese, half-African-American, whose mother gave her up as a baby. Decades later, her inability to shake a lifetime of abandonment, loss, and violence haunts her and threatens to destroy her family. In Back in The Real World, two survivors find themselves on a collision course with the past, which may be their only path to redemption.

Working on this book has taught me a lot about both war and peace, and I believe it hides unexpected gifts for readers. I encourage you to buy a copy. Here’s an excerpt:

BACK IN THE REAL WORLD

CHAPTER ONE
Richmond, Virginia
2005

Michael Frost rubbed his fingers against weary eyes until he saw small red and green explosions erupt against the lids. He stood up from the blurring lists of numbers, closed the ledger, and emerged from the cramped room at the back of the small homeless shelter. The mission building used to be a grocery store, and he could swear he still smelled the produce that once lined its aisles, but that was probably just the food from the kitchen.

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If you haven’t yet read my travel memoir, They Only Eat Their Husbands (Ghost Road Press, Nov 2010), please check out these compelling reasons from memoirist, blogger, and world traveler Susan Blumberg-Kason, who chose it as her: Book of the Week.

I felt honored and humbled to read her unsolicited review. And I was the most tickled by one basic phrase that seems to follow the book wherever it goes: “Lee’s utter and complete honesty.” I chuckle as I wonder if there are a few people for whom this idea is more like: “Lee’s utter and complete lack of shame.” Whatever the draw, my editor has told me that books from small presses get discovered over time. I’m grateful to see he’s right, and to share this find with you… in case you haven’t found it yet.