Color Box Town

The late afternoon sun washes across my perch as I lie on my stomach on the warm tiles, head hanging out over the street two stories below. This is my favorite vantage point, this roof deck that stretches the length of Masako’s house in San Miguel de Allende. From here, I can look down on Calle de Jesús and watch unseen as people pass below.

Even though it is only two blocks from the main zócalo, town square, this is a quiet street, primarily residential. The roadway is cobbled with rounded stones that have been polished smooth by the passing traffic. A narrow sidewalk, barely wide enough for two, runs along either edge.

The main cathedral dominates my view to the north. The indigenous architect who created this structure is said to have copied the design from a post card of a European church. The spires pink up in the late sun, making the structure look like a fairy castle.

San Miguel is a colonial town, its architecture influenced by the Spaniards and Moors, reflecting their passion for privacy. The blank-faced houses reveal little of what is inside. Panoramic views are up here, on the roof. The few windows along this street are barred and shuttered. Below my perch is the kitchen where pistachio green shutters, originals in this house that is over two hundred years old, open to let light in and give passersby a rare glimpse into the interior.

The colors of the town warm and intensify as the light turns golden with the sun’s descent. Walls are of raspberry pink, pumpkin chiffon, carmine, saffron, milky blue, the colors of sidewalk chalk or sherbet. My rooftop post on Masako’s house is painted the color of cut watermelons or strawberry jam.

A family of tourists passes below. Polo shirts, baseball caps, dangling cameras, plastic bags from a shopping spree, they head down the street and around the corner. Two Mexican girls, teenagers, in stretch jeans and cropped tops chatter past. One carries a handful of yellow freesia.

An open-bed truck finds a lucky parking place in front of our door. Picks, shovels, bits of old plaster, another renovation project in progress. This is a town where the old is treasured. Masako’s house still retains the flavor of the eighteenth century with its mesquite wood doors, hand-painted tiles and adobe walls.

I look towards the steep hill that rises to the east. Splashes of scarlet and magenta bougainvillea, pots of the pervasive crimson geraniums, honey-colored nasturtiums, falls of dusty-green succulents, draw my attention away from the more utilitarian black rotoplas water containers, electric wires and propane tanks common to most rooftops. Domed cupolas top many roofs, bringing light from above to the interior spaces. A massive tree, its branches spreading wide, emerges from the courtyard of a large compound.

I watch my shadow on the wall of the house across the street. The surface is plastered and whitewashed, but a portion of the facing has fallen away to reveal the stone structure of the wall underneath. I sit cross-legged on the edge, moving sideways so my dark shadow perches on top of the weathered wooden door across from me.

I hear the splash of water on stone and watch water from a cleaning bucket flow from a pair of long, dragon-shaped drainpipes that project from a house down the street. Ranchero music, the cheery music of northern Mexico that is heavy on accordions and always manages to sound like a polka, comes from a rooftop where a crew of carpenters creates a glass room. The avocado tree in the courtyard of Masako’s house comes alive with the sound of birds that settle on the branches as the sun dips lower.

My shadow self no longer dances on the opposite wall. I turn towards the west as the sun sets over the mountains behind Lake Allende. The air cools as the last rays lie horizontal across the roof and slip below the edge. The sky is apricot and mango, the colors reflected off the puffs of clouds on the horizon. My color box town fades as the sun rounds the horizon and is gone.

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