“Why are the two clans at war?” I ask. “I would love to know that right up front so I can understand the conflict better.”
The hat laughs at me. “You have to read the whole book to find that out,” he discloses.
“Oh.” I nod.
“I loved the image of the slaves gnawing at the hides,” the Harry Potter lady says. “And the space in the mouth where the rotten teeth have been pulled.”
“I think at the next meeting, we should read our chapters out loud instead of reading them beforehand,” the demonologist writer suggests.
“Oh, I don’t think I can do that,” Harry Potter says in a spray of nervous laughter. “My next chapter is rather steamy. ‘Death Train’ cannot be read aloud!”
“I think that’s a great idea,” I offer. “I find the most problems when I read my stuff out loud. And it’s good practice if any of us is lucky enough to do a reading somewhere.”
“I am never doing a reading,” the man in the glasses informs me. “Absolutely not—I would never agree to a reading.”
“Oh,” I say, and nod understandingly.
And then it’s my turn. I brace myself, already nervous, at the oncoming barrage.
All faces go blank when Harry Potter asks for comments on my piece.
“I didn’t read that one,” the demonologist says.
“I didn’t, either,” the man with the glasses says.
“I only read that copy you handed me,” the man with the hat says.
Harry Potter crinkles her brow, shrugs, and says, “Well, I glanced through yours and had a problem telling where the rising and falling action was, but I guess I didn’t upload your story to the website. Maybe we can do yours next time.”
“Oh.” I nod.
“All right!” Harry Potter says with finality. “So we’re reading aloud next time? I’m warning you—get ready for ‘Death Train’!”
And with that, everyone puts their notes away and the demonologist closes her laptop. Several people stay behind to chat, but I stick my folder in my bag, say thank you to Harry Potter, and then leave, feeling vastly insignificant and exhaling a terrific sigh of relief.
THE ACCIDENTAL PROFILER
It was ten in the morning and already the temperature was ninety-seven degrees. Waiting at a stoplight in Scottsdale at a very affluent intersection, I could see the heat rising off the asphalt like a moiré. Arizona heat, even in its infant stages before the temperature hits one hundred degrees, is unforgivable. It makes you feel like a piece of meat about to be thrown on a grill. Even I was sweating, sitting in my air-conditioned car that hadn’t yet been able to recover from the hours it had been baking in the driveway since sunrise. I had nothing to complain about, however, because directly across the street on the corner was a short man holding a giant sign for a shoe and luggage repair shop in the strip mall behind him. His head was tucked under the crook of one arm; he was trying desperately to shield himself from the relentless, white heat.
I pitied him. Nobody should have to stand on the side of a busy intersection in this heat—which was only going to get worse. You see this a lot in Arizona: people doing what they can to scrape by and send a little home to the families they left behind in less lucky countries. It’s times like these that make you glad you were born in the United States, my father’s voice suddenly piped up in my head. Greatest country in the world.
I nodded in agreement. He’s just trying to support his family, doing whatever he can, I thought. And the guy is so short—the sign is just a bit smaller than he is. Not only is he struggling in a strange country, but he’s a miniman. Very tiny. Bet he gets in a lot of fights. I wonder why he’s so short. So little. Maybe that makes it easier to get across. Do coyote smugglers charge by weight? That could be a benefit. A little silver lining on the illegal cloud. Frankly, however, I would never have children with someone that small. I wonder how small his toes are. No bigger than Good & Plentys, probably. How could you respect a man with such marginal toes? Kind of impossible. I would always be like, “Let me see your toes again. It’s like they’re Tic Tac toes. Are there even nails on those things?”
And then the light turned green and I drove off a mile toward my doctor’s office, where I spent the next hour and a half in the waiting room, watching pregnant ladies rub their bellies while I squirmed, because everything I had just shaved was starting to grow back. After the necessary was done, I ran out of there as quickly as I could, because any time I can make it through the hall of an ob-gyn’s office without someone asking when I’m due is a victory for me.
A victory that required a bagel. With cream cheese.
I was itchy.
So at around noon, I found myself stopped at the same red light in the hot intersection I had stopped at two hours before. And there, directly to my right, was the short immigrant man shielding himself from the sun with the luggage repair sign and wiping his brow on the sleeve of his black T-shirt. It was then that I noticed that the man was not a man but a boy. A little boy out in the sun at high noon, standing on a corner in one of the richest cities in our lucky country while the heat broiled him.
When the light turned green, I pulled forward slowly until I was only a few feet away from him. And sure enough, my suspicions were confirmed—there was no mistaking it. He couldn’t have been older than eleven or twelve. And he looked miserable. I drove twenty more feet before I became fully enraged.
“That is a little boy!” I yelled at no one in my car. “A little boy standing on that corner holding a sign on a Tuesday at noon! Here we are, on one of the highest real estate corners in Scottsdale, and a child is out there working in the street. This isn’t India! He should be in school, not standing out there in the heat for the five dollars he’s going to make from that luggage repair shop!” And no one, not one person, has stopped to do or say anything about it since I drove past the first time.
“That is ridiculous!” I seconded myself. “I’m not going to stand around idle while this type of thing goes on under my nose! I am going to do something!”
“You are?” I whispered to myself.
“I am!” I answered.
And then I flipped my car into a U-turn and headed back toward the intersection by the strip mall. Just then I remembered that I had a twenty-dollar bill in my pocket. “Today is the day that a little boy doesn’t have to work out in the sun,” I said aloud, pointing to no one in the passenger seat, and then pulled into the next gas station.
“I am going to do something!” I nearly cried with glee. “I am going to help a little illegal immigrant boy! And I am going to tell the luggage repair people exactly what I think of them hiring a little boy to stand in the sun all day long for what probably paid pennies an hour. What kind of people were they? Who goes and picks up a little boy and makes him stand on a corner all day in the sun when he should be busy being a child, laughing at rainbows and chasing butterflies? No. There was no way I was going to let them get away with this outrage, with this atrocity. They needed to know that what they did was wrong, that this was unacceptable, and that someone had noticed and decided to do something about it.
When I turned into the parking lot, my plan was to verbally accost the luggage repair shop people first and then deliver twenty dollars of American freedom and a bottle of water to an overheated little boy, but then I realized I had a problem. I didn’t know where this kid came from, but I had my suspicions that it was not close by. I roughly knew the area of town where the day laborers gathered in hopes of finding work—they usually met in the parking lot of the Home Depot closer to downtown, a good forty-five-minute drive from where I was. So that’s like an hour and a half round-trip for me to take him all the way back there. At least six bucks in gas, seven if I put the air conditioner on high. Which I would have to do, I mean, it was only going to get hotter, and I didn’t want to say to a newcomer to this country, “Well, it’s just going to be hot in this car a little while longer until I drop you back off in the parking lot at Home Depot.
” Plus, I was meeting a friend for lunch, and I didn’t want to show up all sweaty.
Or with a new, smallish friend. How would I explain that? Doctors Without Borders? I mean, I donate, but, I’m not, like, part of it. I don’t have a T-shirt or anything. Or a hat. I should have splurged for the hat. Hindsight. Damn me. I do use the free return address labels to pay my bills, though, does that count? Besides, there was clearly nothing wrong with him, not even a scab as far as I could see.
And the last thing I wanted to answer was the inevitable question in front of my friend: “No, I am not your new mother. I found you on the street, remember? Y tu mamá también en Home Depot. I know I am an American lady, but I am not Sandra Bullock. I don’t even like football. I’m sorry, I don’t. But it is a very good way to get to college, young man.”
So that was settled. I decided to talk to the kid first, give him his rescue package, then yell at the luggage repair people. That seemed sensible. After all, I couldn’t drag a kid—who probably didn’t even know where he was going—around all day with me as he moved all the AC vents toward himself. Nope. The lecture on morals would have to wait until after I handed over the water and the money.
Confident in my decision, I got out of the car and just as quickly got right back in.
Maybe this kid is just little for his age, I realized, maybe he really just is short with teeny-tiny nailless toes, maybe he’s a perfectly willing, minute-in-stature adult who would stand on a street corner while his kidneys shrivel because it’s better than the circus. How would I know?
I will ask him, I decided, before I do or say anything, I will ask him, but that just provides another problem. I’d taken Spanish for a total of six years, but never got beyond Spanish 102 and retained little of what I once knew. Pulling out my trusty iPhone, I solved the problem in three seconds flat, and frankly, it didn’t even come close to ringing a bell: ¿Cuántos años tienes?
How old are you?
¿Cuántos años tienes?
¿Cuántos años tienes?
¿Cuántos años tienes? I said over and over again in my head as I opened the car door.
¿Cuántos años tienes?
Then I stopped suddenly. If he says anything aside from ocho and movie titles, I’m lost, I only know ocho, and the only reason I even know that is because we used to have a ghost in our house who used to move the tuning dial on the radio to the Spanish station every morning. We’d be woken up by the same commercial for mattresses that yelled out a phone number without mercy, ocho ocho ocho ocho ocho ocho OCHO!
I don’t have time to memorize ¿Cuántos años tienes? and numbers one through eighteen, although I figured that should be self-explanatory, as in ochoteen.
“Problem solved!” I said, making the sound of snapping fingers in my head. I may not know his language enough for a reply, but I will indicate that he should answer by holding up his fingers. They must teach kids in every language how to do that when they’re small.
I practiced in my head: ¿Cuántos años tienes? then start flashing your fingers.
Excellent. Excellent! I would say, getting very excited.
I closed the car door and started walking across the parking lot toward the corner, the twenty-dollar bill folded up in one hand and the bottle of water in my purse. Surprisingly, I was not the only one on the sidewalk; several people stood nearby, waiting to cross the street, so I really didn’t look out of place as I approached the little boy with the luggage repair sign.
I stopped in front of him and pulled my hand out of my pocket, palming the twenty. And then I summoned up all the nerve I had been telling myself for the last ten minutes that I had and stood there for several seconds before the boy’s eyes met mine.
“¿Cuántos años tienes?” I asked slowly, flashing the five fingers on my left hand.
His eyes grew wide. He said nothing.
“¿Cuántos años tienes?” I said again, and flashed my fingers louder, but his eyes just grew wider even still. I could tell by the terror that spread over his face instantly what was going through his mind.
Aha! I thought to myself. The luggage repair people have covered all of their bases! I get it! If a strange person says anything, they told you to be quiet! Don’t answer or the police will take you away!
“It’s okay! It’s okay!” I said, trying to reassure him and making hand movements that in no way indicated age or requested to see his ID or passport. They were simply shaky hand movements, which I was sure, had the undocumented shoe been on the other foot, I would have understood as: “I am here to help you, young man. I am not moments away from deporting you back to your oppressed and futureless homeland.”
However, since we were lacking the proper avenue of communication, the look on his face shot from simple fear to utter terror, and in turn caused me to panic instead of turning to my iPhone for a helpful translation.
“It’s okay,” I tried to reassure him again. “I just wanted to know how old you are!”
Then I pulled the bottle of water out of my purse for some unknown reason. I suppose I felt that would prove that I was a helper with honest intentions, or maybe it was because I figured border patrol wasn’t exactly known for handing out refreshments on a particularly scorching day.
Now the people waiting for the crosswalk signal were turning to look at me, most of them ready to bolt in case I started to harass them for their passports, too.
“I’m twelve!” the boy suddenly said.
And true, technically it’s only two words, not very many, but it was a contraction and a number perfectly spoken in English without a trace of any foreign dialect or accent. Better spoken than if he had gone to any immersion school, I noticed. And undoubtedly, better than my iPhone Spanish. Plus, I thought, I don’t really know how big twelve-year-olds are, but certainly, they’re bigger than this. There has definitely been some malnutrition happening here or, at the very least, the lack of a daily vitamin on someone’s part.
“Are you sure?” I asked him, positive I was about to foil the script the luggage repair people had laid down to cover their trek into the terrain of child slavery.
“Yes,” he said.
Undeterred and still heartily suspicious of a young boy standing on a street corner in the middle of the day, I surged forth, determined to finish the mission I had embarked upon.
“Why aren’t you in school?” I queried, positive that this curveball was about to break the scheme wide open.
He shrugged. “I’m on spring break,” he replied, his expression of terror melting into one that consisted mainly of newfound annoyance.
“It’s Easter,” he added, stretching his neck out in the way a prepubescent does when he considers an adult to be on the fat side of stupid.
I nodded and looked down at the water bottle in my hand. Oh, what the hell. I was already here. “You want some water?” I said, stretching out my hand to pass him the water, as my other hand with the twenty tucked into my palm went slowly back into my pocket.
“My mom just brought me some,” he said, holding up not a bottle but a Tupperware jug full of water.
“So that’s their store,” I said, nodding over toward the strip mall. “Luggage repair.”
“And shoe repair,” he added, pointing to the sign in front of me.
“Wow,” I said, still nodding. “That’s great. I should get these reheeled, don’t you think? Probably. I don’t know. I shuffle a lot, I wear out the insides first. Do you know anything about that?”
He looked me straight in the eye and shrugged.
“Okay then, good-bye,” I said as I hurriedly walked away, for some reason not back toward my car but forward, so that I would have to go to the other side of the parking lot, cross it, and make a complete circle before I got to my car again.
“Hasta luego,” he said as I walked through the gravel landscape of the bank on the corner, over several curbs, through the ATM drive-through, and over the hot, hot, hot asphalt parking lot.
As I passed the gla
ss door of the luggage repair shop, I was never, in my life, so glad that I hadn’t taken it upon myself to deliver a lecture about hiring undocumented children to work on hot street corners, as if our country were one big shoe factory instead of being so full of opportunity and promise.
But I thought I knew one thing almost for sure. As soon as the tires of my car had screeched out of that parking lot, a sweaty twelve-year-old boy most likely threw a huge sign at his mother and said, “I’m not going out there again. It’s hot and a fat white lady just tried to buy me with twenty dollars and a bottle of smartwater! I want a real vacation!”
On the bright side, I’m just glad I was never in a position to have an illegal alien in my car, because I know I would have gotten pulled over for driving erratically while I tried to fairly position the air vents toward each of us, despite the fact that I was probably sweating more, and consequentially would have been arrested for human trafficking. That, and I was relieved that I didn’t have to pay for another person at lunch.
I do know, however, that several months later, after ordering a burrito at a drive-through at 11:30 p.m. on a Thursday and pulling out my money to pay for it at the window, I looked at the decidedly ten-year-old boy who was working the cash register and taking orders behind the glass, put five bucks in the tip jar that was taped to the window ledge, and said absolutely nothing. Even when he said “Gracias.”
TINY DANCER
The first thing I need to say in my defense is that I never asked to see Anne Frank’s panties. When I bought the tickets there was no mention of the possibility of seeing the tiny diarist’s crotch, no indication that the sight of her undies was “without a doubt” or “unless you fall asleep.” There wasn’t even a disclaimer inside the playbill or an announcement before the show that the content might not be suitable for all audience members. Namely, those who might really prefer to remember Anne Frank in a certain way, like right side up.
The Potty Mouth at the Table Page 6