Mama's Dog Day

From a telephone conversation with my miami-based mama yesterday:

MAMA: The front door neighbror’s dogs were getting in my property and tearing up my plants and they had even made a hole in the ground to tear out one of my fruit trees so I went to the neighbhor and told him about the dogs and told him he should keep his gate closed because the dogs were getting loose.

ME: Right.

MAMA: Loose, he says, like he didn’t know his dogs were running outside. All the neighbhors have had the dogs in their property. And then he looks at me sternly and I say, come, come over so you can see the holes. No I don’t need to go see anything, he says. Well in America it’s illegal to let your dogs run loose. Miami’s not America he says.

ME: Uh huh…

MAMA: So I’m going to call Animal Control and then we’ll see if we’re in America. And he says to me, when they come YOU’LL be the one arrested, not the dogs. And so I left.

ME: What an asshole. Did you call?

MAMA: I called Animal Control from a number Fito [another neighbor] gave me and the lady said there was nothing they could do and I told her listen, the man’s sons wear baggy pants and she said to be careful and Fito gave me her number, and she says, if your car is vandalized or if something happens on your property call the police. That means other people have complained about them.

ME: Wait, baggy pants?

MAMA: Yes.

ME: What does that mean?

MAMA: You know the baggy pants, that’s what gang members wear.

ME: That’s a stereotype, you can’t—

MAMA: Delinquents . The other neighbors tell horror stories about what they hear coming from that house, the stuff they scream, and their sons are involved with gangs. That, I know.

ME: Okay…

MAMA: So nobody can do anything because they’re afraid, of course. The dogs came in yesterday and since that lady said to be careful because the family must have connections I just tried to shoo them out with a bucket without being seen but these things make me very nervous and my stomach has been terrible. I had six diarrheas that day.

ME: Six?

MAMA: Mm hm. That’s why I called because sometimes the best pill for my stomach is to hear the sound of a wonderful son’s voice.