fear. Just the simple fact that I hadn’t seen my father for more than four months increased my vulnerability.)
Jacinta refused her friend’s advice to phone her GP before we left to ask if we should to go the hospital instead. Having hesitated for too long, now she was in too great a rush. She insisted we leave immediately. She removed her twisted apron while her friend ran off to get her car.
Her friend was Dolores, a woman with a very wrinkled face, a brassy voice, and an arthritic skinny body. I can still easily summon the image of her elderly form hobbling across the street in a rushed and yet crippled walk.
I also remember that the gray roots of Dolores’s hair were visible, particularly from the rear. Riding in the back, I got a good view of them during the drive. Grandma Jacinta sat alongside me en route. I was fascinated by Dolores’s two-tone hair because the explanation for the gray’s weird stoppage and sudden conversion to pitch black was unknown to me. Sometime during the drive I tried to point out the phenomenon to Grandma. “Look at how her hair—” I began.
“Shh,” Grandma interrupted. She kept her eyes on the road and called out turns to Dolores, who knew them anyway.
“Honey, I’ve only driven to Dr. Perez a million times,” Dolores answered Grandma’s prompts in English, with that odd juxtaposition of accents typical of my Tampa relatives and their friends. Their English was spoken in deep South and Spanish tones, not within the same word, but alternating, one word with a Southern drawl followed by another with a Latin accent.
“Look at her hair,” I started again and this time my grandmother put a hand over my mouth. I was astonished and looked to her for an explanation. She shook her head from side to side with brows furrowed: a stern no.
I was impressed and fell silent. Only then did Jacinta drop the gag from my mouth. She also allowed herself a smile.
“What did you say, honey?” Dolores asked in English.
I didn’t reply. “He’s fine,” Grandma said in Spanish.
There was a brief silence. Jacinta said, “Did you miss Seventh Avenue?” She had asked this twice before.
Dolores ignored the question. “Are my roots showing?” she asked me in English.
Grandma leaned forward and pointed emphatically at Seventh Avenue as we passed it. She shouted something I didn’t understand in Spanish. We had missed the turn and now we had to double back. That took no more than an extra couple of minutes, but it exacerbated my grandmother’s anxiety. She berated Dolores for not paying attention. Dolores defended herself—for a change. By the time we pulled up to Dr. Perez’s clinic, Dolores was screeching at my grandmother, who returned the abuse in a deeper, softer and yet somehow much more furious tone. Meanwhile, I was distracted by Dolores’s question. What roots? I knew about tree roots and that the part of the carrot you eat is a root and I wondered if women, or very old women perhaps, grew roots, and where or what they might be for. In the mild state of shock that I was in, this dream-like notion took hold and I imagined all sort of grotesqueries emerging from Dolores’s thin and buckled body.
I was so entranced by the question that as Dolores joined my grandmother at the curb to help me get out of the car, I said to her, “Your roots don’t show.”
Dolores smiled. Her severely wrinkled face became all lines and cracks, as if the whole facade of flesh were about to shatter. “Good, honey,” she said.
“But I would like to see them,” I added.
“Some other time,” my grandmother said, already preoccupied with the task now facing her, namely entering the doctor’s office and managing this unfamiliar situation—overseeing the care of an injured grandchild.
The doctor’s waiting room was very cold and dark, because the air-conditioning was on high and heavy drapes were drawn across a wall of windows. I shivered while Jacinta explained the whole story to the
Jacinta refused her friend’s advice to phone her GP before we left to ask if we should to go the hospital instead. Having hesitated for too long, now she was in too great a rush. She insisted we leave immediately. She removed her twisted apron while her friend ran off to get her car.
Her friend was Dolores, a woman with a very wrinkled face, a brassy voice, and an arthritic skinny body. I can still easily summon the image of her elderly form hobbling across the street in a rushed and yet crippled walk.
I also remember that the gray roots of Dolores’s hair were visible, particularly from the rear. Riding in the back, I got a good view of them during the drive. Grandma Jacinta sat alongside me en route. I was fascinated by Dolores’s two-tone hair because the explanation for the gray’s weird stoppage and sudden conversion to pitch black was unknown to me. Sometime during the drive I tried to point out the phenomenon to Grandma. “Look at how her hair—” I began.
“Shh,” Grandma interrupted. She kept her eyes on the road and called out turns to Dolores, who knew them anyway.
“Honey, I’ve only driven to Dr. Perez a million times,” Dolores answered Grandma’s prompts in English, with that odd juxtaposition of accents typical of my Tampa relatives and their friends. Their English was spoken in deep South and Spanish tones, not within the same word, but alternating, one word with a Southern drawl followed by another with a Latin accent.
“Look at her hair,” I started again and this time my grandmother put a hand over my mouth. I was astonished and looked to her for an explanation. She shook her head from side to side with brows furrowed: a stern no.
I was impressed and fell silent. Only then did Jacinta drop the gag from my mouth. She also allowed herself a smile.
“What did you say, honey?” Dolores asked in English.
I didn’t reply. “He’s fine,” Grandma said in Spanish.
There was a brief silence. Jacinta said, “Did you miss Seventh Avenue?” She had asked this twice before.
Dolores ignored the question. “Are my roots showing?” she asked me in English.
Grandma leaned forward and pointed emphatically at Seventh Avenue as we passed it. She shouted something I didn’t understand in Spanish. We had missed the turn and now we had to double back. That took no more than an extra couple of minutes, but it exacerbated my grandmother’s anxiety. She berated Dolores for not paying attention. Dolores defended herself—for a change. By the time we pulled up to Dr. Perez’s clinic, Dolores was screeching at my grandmother, who returned the abuse in a deeper, softer and yet somehow much more furious tone. Meanwhile, I was distracted by Dolores’s question. What roots? I knew about tree roots and that the part of the carrot you eat is a root and I wondered if women, or very old women perhaps, grew roots, and where or what they might be for. In the mild state of shock that I was in, this dream-like notion took hold and I imagined all sort of grotesqueries emerging from Dolores’s thin and buckled body.
I was so entranced by the question that as Dolores joined my grandmother at the curb to help me get out of the car, I said to her, “Your roots don’t show.”
Dolores smiled. Her severely wrinkled face became all lines and cracks, as if the whole facade of flesh were about to shatter. “Good, honey,” she said.
“But I would like to see them,” I added.
“Some other time,” my grandmother said, already preoccupied with the task now facing her, namely entering the doctor’s office and managing this unfamiliar situation—overseeing the care of an injured grandchild.
The doctor’s waiting room was very cold and dark, because the air-conditioning was on high and heavy drapes were drawn across a wall of windows. I shivered while Jacinta explained the whole story to the
Similar Books
