Be Careful!

The sidewalks are always flooded with water outside of this house on the corner of Barrett and 29^th Street. I’ve always wondered who lives here and what they’re doing with all the water that leaks from under their fence onto the sidewalk, creating puddles of this precious resource.

Today I find out. There’s a woman, round and curvy, with short brown hair and big sunglasses on, rinsing off her silver Prius in the street. I step off the curb in order to walk around her but she gives me a big smile and waves. Do I know her? I don’t think so yet she acts like she knows me.

“Oh, you hurt yourself you poor thing!” she exclaims, pointing at my bandaged wrist in my blue scarf sling. “What happened to you?” she asks, sympathy dripping from her. I shrug. Stop in the middle of the street to avoid getting hosed.

“I fell and broke my wrist.”

“Oh, you poor poor thing! That is just terrible! It happened to me too!  Your wrist! It is very bad!”

“Yeah, I tripped over somebody’s garden  driftwood border and fell hard on the sidewalk and caught myself with my hand and my wrist just snapped in two.”

She shakes her head, makes a Oh-I’m-so-sorry-face as a  big black car turns from Barrett and starts to barrel down the middle of the street. She quickly pulls me onto the sidewalk “Oh be careful!” she says, laughing.

“I know,” I say. “I do need to be careful. I don’t need to get run over on top of everything else! She nods serious. “So, you broke your wrist, too?” I ask.

“Oh yes. It was a long time ago!” She laughs softly, shaking her head. “What happened? We’re old! (Am I? I always resent being included in this category but I have to admit now that it’s true) “I am 65 now,” she continues.  “The bones they are not as strong as when we were younger.”

 “That’s true,” I say. “I have osteoporosis.”

She nods, frowning slightly. “Yes, and the food we eat it; is not as good as when we were younger. I went to the farmer’s market and there were all of these baby chicks with their little heads and then I look over and there was a grown chicken but it still had a little head. Its body was huge and round!” She draws a round ball motion in the air with her hands to show me how huge the chicken’s body was. It was about the size of a basketball. Then she showed me with her thumb and index finger a little circle for the size of the chicken’s head.  Sighing in disgust, she pronounced: “It's hormones! And then we eat that-- it is not good for our bodies!”

 I nod my head in agreement. “Yes, plus all of the pollution in the air!” I wave my good hand at the smoky sky. She nods, “Oh yes ! The sky, the clouds, the food, the air ! It is all pollution!”

We stand for a moment together in the street before I ask her if she speaks Spanish. I always try to ask people without just assuming simply based on how they speak or look because you never know. She beams though. “Si, hablo Espanol!” And then takes off on a torrent of fast Spanish-- something about owning her house --something about La Senora that lives with her --something about cooking. I can’t follow it of course and start laughing. She doesn’t notice at first but continues her fast-paced narration talking about how when she learned English she had to practice speaking even though she was shy about it. This much I get and nod and say, “Yes, yo necessito practicar mas tambien!” I switch to English, “However, my pronunciation is terrible!”

She shakes her head no. “No es bueno!”

 I laugh. She’s so sweet.

Finally, I ask her her name. “Hilda,” she says.

“I’m Carolina.”

“Oh Carolina!  she repeats. “It is so cute!”

 I don’t tell her this is my Spanish name; that my real name is Carol. I actually like Carolina a lot and remember how I was dubbed this when I taught up at Merritt College in the writing center. I worked with a group of young women who were from Mexico. When they found out I was Carol they all laughed and said, “Oh Carolina! You are Carolina!”  From then on, I kept this as my Spanish name. But today Hilda just gets my Spanish name because after all we are speaking Spanish. Well at least she is!

She goes on to tell me about how her mother broke her hip and how the hip is a very bad bone to break.  I agree and tell her the story of how my grandmother broke her hip when she was in her 90s and we all thought that that was it; she wasn’t going to carry on in this world any longer but, in fact, she recovered and lived for several years after this. Hilda loves this story. It makes both of us laugh, happy, that even though we are in our 60s, if we break our hip years from now, we will heal and still live for years.

  I tell her that I need to go; that I have to work. She nods and turns on the hose again to finish cleaning the Prius. I want to say how her car will be very pretty and clean in Spanish but it’s just too much effort so I say it in English. However, I can say nice to meet you in Spanish: “Mucho gusto, Hilda.”

She beams and says, “Mucho gusto, Carolina. Be careful!”

 I wave, signaling will do as I walk gingerly round the corner up Barrett St., the sound of hosed water hitting car metal following me. A cadence of Spanish singing in my head.