"Hey!" he called.
"Next time park slower!"
Park....slower? I mentally asked myself. How do you park slow?
"I got two kids in the car!"
"Okay." I responded and continued walking.
"AFTER YOU TWO GET DONE SCISSOR FUCKING!!!!" he shrieked, face red with rage while he tore away in his minivan.
"What was that?" my sister asked, walking up beside me.
"I think it's a reference to lesbian sex." I responded.
"Men always trying to get us to do that." she commented, and we continued walking toward the store.
"How long should I wait until I walk or move furniture onto the new floor?" I asked the man that had been repairing the trailer floor for most of the morning. I asked him in Spanish, telling him apologetically that I was trying to get a little practice in. He actually seemed happy to not have to wrestle with English and engaged in a lengthy conversation that ended with him telling me that he was undocumented and from Honduras. Only his wife and kids were here in Georgia; the rest of his family was still back there. Then, he told me that he will probably never be able to see them again.
"I don't have a driver's license," he mentioned.
"I can't get one in Georgia, but I am very careful. It's the bad people that give all of us a bad name, make people want us to leave."
No, I thought, it's pure xenophobia. And, a complete lack of appreciation for what you do for this country. The school district couldn't find enough workers to repair our buildings and started hiring contractors. From what I am seeing, the contractors are predominately men like the guy that fixed my trailer floor: hard working and undocumented. I thanked him when he was leaving and then put my face flat down on my desk the minute after he closed the door.
"Have you seen this?" the text from my neighbor questioned, accompanied by a picture of one of the limbs on our massive oak tree, split and hanging by a thread.
"No! It must have just happened!" I scream-texted.
"It just fell." he answered, accompanied by a picture of the giant limb spiked right in the middle of the street.
We started driving home. As I got to the street behind my house, I saw firetrucks pulling up and blocking the street off. We drove around the block. The limb was huge and resting on the power lines in front of the house on the other side of the street. I sat there in the pouring rain staring at it, unsure what to do.
"If you could be eating your favorite food right now, what would it be?" I asked Yaaz as part of my beginning of the year icebreakers.
"Nachos and scrambled eggs." he answered, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.
"Hey, that new kid of yours, the one who barely speaks English?" Ms. Kent began.
Hot Rod, I thought.
"Yeah?" I answered.
"Well, he let off some words when he was leaving school, cursing."
I laughed a little.
"Like what, ass or something? Poop?"
"BITCH. MOTHER FUCKER. You should have heard him, screaming it right in front of the front door during dismissal."
Great.
I walked out of the back door and toward the trailer. A Spanish-speaking couple that had been power washing the school was outside, painting the exterior doors. Their elementary-age daughter was with them, in the middle of the school day, painting a door.
*Photo, Doll's Head Trail
*Title, Leo Sayer
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