…and the Venezuelan, when asked what her complaint is about Hugo Chavez, tells me: “It’s the restaurants. I can’t stand that people who could not afford them before now can enter. They lack culture.”
…and the pastry vendors come in, sweaty, and sit with the owner, counting out their money, getting their percentage. They go to a corner table and get bowl of bean soup. They are still sweating. One fair, one dark, the latter from centuries of Mexico ….
…the Czech cleaning woman comes to the table; she’ll get lunch; she does not have teeth.
…the former factory worker tells me she has a new truck. She paid for it with factory savings. I ask her how safe the new truck is in Matamoros. She says, “No problem. My son who knows people makes sure they do not take it. And my son does not work with them.”
…the gardeners sweat; they come to the door for water. They go back to on-knees-to-weeds.
…my mother at with her black cleaning women. My mother goes to her couch to read; the cleaning woman is now at the ironing board.
…my parents and grandparents and other relatives did not eat with the peddlers who they permitted to sleep in the corner of a room, peddlers entering on foot in dusk, leaving on foot at dawn, packs full of needles, pins, scissors, tacks …shoelaces ….
