to stand for a second and then sagged to my knees.
“Rafa!” Grandma cried out. She dropped her dust mop and rushed across the street to me. Within a minute, other elderly Latin women—two were lifelong neighbors—appeared and they surrounded us as I walked gingerly toward the house. Grandma, I’m sorry to report, was not her usual commanding self in this crisis. She was frightened and helpless. She didn’t drive, and she didn’t want the one friend of hers who did to take me to the hospital. In fact, she didn’t want me to go to the hospital at all, but preferred that her GP see me. I suspect what she really wanted was to wait until my grandfather returned and then my parents could take me. Twice she asked if I was sure that my arm was broken. The other women argued with her—very gently, I noticed—that whether it was broken or not, I was in pain; that something was wrong with my arm since I couldn’t move it; that it might be hours before Grandpa appeared, and so on. This distrust of the outside world and relegation of duties to certain family members (only Grandpa drove; only he was fit to deal with doctors; and anyway only their Latin doctor should see me) was characteristic of my Tampa relatives. My grandmother loved me very much, acutely in fact. To see me in pain must have hurt, but leaving her house in a strange car (even if it belonged to a lifelong friend) to go to a strange hospital and allow strange people to take care of her grandsons broken arm was an overwhelming series of unusual decisions and tasks, all outside her range of expertise and security.
The conflict brought a flush to her pale cheeks (she almost never went out in the sun). She looked discombobulated: her apron was askew; she had a smudge of dirt on her forehead from when she helped me up off the lawn. Her neatness and self-possession had fled.
I wasn’t feeling well and I was frightened. Both were exacerbated by the absence of my mother. Grandma’s unusual hysteria was also worrisome. They led me to Grandma’s porch where I sat in a wicker chair, my limp arm laid across my lap. It was throbbing from the inside out, a peculiar reversal of my normal experience of injury. Grandma gave me aspirin and a Coke. She put a straw in the glass bottle and held it to my lips while she and her friends argued about what to do. I understood their discussion in bits and pieces, since it was played in the almost musical hysteria of their Spanish; had they spoken in English, the interruptions and speed of their argument still would have made it difficult to follow them.
At first the soda’s sugar was helpful. The nausea and light-headedness were relieved. But with the recovery of my blood sugar came fear. It was vague, appropriately enough. I knew that eventually my parents would arrive, I knew that my arm was going to be all right sooner or later, but I was afraid that somehow it all wasn’t going to work out, that I was going to be crippled forever and that I would never see my mother or father again.
“Miralo,” one of the women said. They stopped talking and watched me, heads tilted sympathetically. I had collapsed into uncertainty and fear. I was crying. “Pobrecito” another said and stroked my cheeks. They were wet with tears.
That settled it for Grandma. She would accept her friend’s offer to drive us to the GP. She told me later that she hadn’t seen me cry since I was a baby; she explained in detail that I wasn’t crying when she first found me on the lawn or moved me to the porch; that I didn’t cry when I had the measles, or a painful earache; that I … and so on, making a myth (a flattering myth) of me as a stoic and thus this exceptional moment of weakness proved the intensity of my agony. (In fact, I believe that I cried as easily as most children, maybe more easily. Anyway, the tears weren’t caused by physical pain. I was disoriented and there was much in the air, understood imperfectly by me, to provoke anxiety and
“Rafa!” Grandma cried out. She dropped her dust mop and rushed across the street to me. Within a minute, other elderly Latin women—two were lifelong neighbors—appeared and they surrounded us as I walked gingerly toward the house. Grandma, I’m sorry to report, was not her usual commanding self in this crisis. She was frightened and helpless. She didn’t drive, and she didn’t want the one friend of hers who did to take me to the hospital. In fact, she didn’t want me to go to the hospital at all, but preferred that her GP see me. I suspect what she really wanted was to wait until my grandfather returned and then my parents could take me. Twice she asked if I was sure that my arm was broken. The other women argued with her—very gently, I noticed—that whether it was broken or not, I was in pain; that something was wrong with my arm since I couldn’t move it; that it might be hours before Grandpa appeared, and so on. This distrust of the outside world and relegation of duties to certain family members (only Grandpa drove; only he was fit to deal with doctors; and anyway only their Latin doctor should see me) was characteristic of my Tampa relatives. My grandmother loved me very much, acutely in fact. To see me in pain must have hurt, but leaving her house in a strange car (even if it belonged to a lifelong friend) to go to a strange hospital and allow strange people to take care of her grandsons broken arm was an overwhelming series of unusual decisions and tasks, all outside her range of expertise and security.
The conflict brought a flush to her pale cheeks (she almost never went out in the sun). She looked discombobulated: her apron was askew; she had a smudge of dirt on her forehead from when she helped me up off the lawn. Her neatness and self-possession had fled.
I wasn’t feeling well and I was frightened. Both were exacerbated by the absence of my mother. Grandma’s unusual hysteria was also worrisome. They led me to Grandma’s porch where I sat in a wicker chair, my limp arm laid across my lap. It was throbbing from the inside out, a peculiar reversal of my normal experience of injury. Grandma gave me aspirin and a Coke. She put a straw in the glass bottle and held it to my lips while she and her friends argued about what to do. I understood their discussion in bits and pieces, since it was played in the almost musical hysteria of their Spanish; had they spoken in English, the interruptions and speed of their argument still would have made it difficult to follow them.
At first the soda’s sugar was helpful. The nausea and light-headedness were relieved. But with the recovery of my blood sugar came fear. It was vague, appropriately enough. I knew that eventually my parents would arrive, I knew that my arm was going to be all right sooner or later, but I was afraid that somehow it all wasn’t going to work out, that I was going to be crippled forever and that I would never see my mother or father again.
“Miralo,” one of the women said. They stopped talking and watched me, heads tilted sympathetically. I had collapsed into uncertainty and fear. I was crying. “Pobrecito” another said and stroked my cheeks. They were wet with tears.
That settled it for Grandma. She would accept her friend’s offer to drive us to the GP. She told me later that she hadn’t seen me cry since I was a baby; she explained in detail that I wasn’t crying when she first found me on the lawn or moved me to the porch; that I didn’t cry when I had the measles, or a painful earache; that I … and so on, making a myth (a flattering myth) of me as a stoic and thus this exceptional moment of weakness proved the intensity of my agony. (In fact, I believe that I cried as easily as most children, maybe more easily. Anyway, the tears weren’t caused by physical pain. I was disoriented and there was much in the air, understood imperfectly by me, to provoke anxiety and
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