In
Target, in the aisle of the coffee machines, an old woman started
speaking to...
In
Target, in the aisle of the coffee machines, an old woman started
speaking to me in Portuguese. It didn’t seem to matter that I didn’t know the
words, not to either of us. She wasn’t asking for help; there was nothing
questioning about her speech. She talked and talked. I made out the words love and god and she pressed her hands over her heart and smiled which I
translated as the happiness born of love, and she mimed tears, twice, drawing
her finger down her cheek, which I translated as the sadness born of love. She
touched my arm, dirty from digging four-foot holes in the Somerville dirt that
day for a deck we just started building. She had a magic touch, tender,
warm, rare, a contact with the palm that spreads to feel like your whole self
is being embraced. She talked and I stood by, my cart loaded with stupid
objects of living – a tray to divide forks from knives from spoons, a spool to
load with toilet paper, a shower curtain, a can opener, and in my hands I held
a stovetop espresso maker, like the one I’ve screwed together and lit a flame
under almost every morning for the last five years. Like the one at home,
except home isn’t home because I moved out of it on Tuesday. And the woman spoke and I didn’t understand, and I did, and I tried not to cry
and she leaned in and kissed my cheek, as though she was my grandmother, had
known me all my life, and loved me.
