Notes from public school - day 129
I lived in the west African country of Mali for three years.
My friends there taught me an old African proverb - “I am because we are. We are because I am.”
I love it.
I try to live it, too.
My community is a part of me.
I am a part of my community.
If I give my gifts and talents, if I give myself, to my community, then it becomes a more human community and I become a more human human being.
I tried to write this proverb into a small part of a larger story I am writing.
Here it is -
Gabby took the bus home to her apartment.
“Cómo estás, Luisa?” she asked the small woman in the window seat as she sat down beside her.
“Bien,” she answered. “A little tired. I cleaned a lot of rooms at the motel today. Y tu?”
“Si, bien. Un poco cansado, tambien. I scrambled a lot of eggs at the Scrambled Egg. I can’t wait to put my feet up and rest them. What you doing this evening?”
“I’m going to cook for my family and take my daughter to help me clean the doctor’s office. Then I’ll rest.”
Gabby put her arm around Luisa’s shoulder and hugged her.
“Eres una buena mujer,” she said. I’m glad you’re my friend.
“Y tu, mi Amiga. Y tu.”
Gabby got off the bus in front of her apartment on the west side of the city. She lived on the poor side of town. She and her neighbors didn’t have much money, but they did have a lot of kindness for each other.
‘Sup Gabby. How you doin’?” asked Bryant, who everyone called Big B. He had just come home from his job as a mechanic at the auto shop.
“Hola Big B. Not much. Just glad to be home. How was your day?”
“It was all good. The squeaky wheel got the grease, as they say, today and ev’ry day.”
“One of these days I’m gonna buy a car and the only person I’m gonna let work on it is you.”
“Deal. If you need anything, let me know, okay?”
“Sure thing! Same here.”
“You could come over and cook up some steak and eggs for me, you know.”
“Ugh, anything except that. I’ve cooked enough steak and eggs today...and ev’ry day!”
“Bet. I’m jus’ kiddin’ wit’ cha. Night Gabby. Be safe.”
“Night B. You be safe, too.”
She took her key out of her pocket and opened the door to her apartment.
It was one room. There was a holey sofa that pulled out into a bed with a small table and a lamp beside it. Three books, The House on Mango Street, The Old Man and the Sea and Poems for a Brown Eyed Girl, were on a bookshelf made out of a cut board and two concrete blocks against the wall. An ancient transistor radio was in the corner. A painting by Jasper Johns of three American Flags, one on top of the other, smallest to largest, was on the wall. It was a gift from one of her regular customers at The Scrambled Egg.
The room was simple and beautiful, like her.
She picked up the small book of poems, turned on the lamp, sat down on the sofa, stretched her legs in front of her.
She opened the book to the poem An Ode to a Migrant Woman’s Feet.
She read,
Her feet
were calloused and cracked
like rocks
in plowed ground,
like stones
in turned soil,
the soil
she walked over
barefooted
as her grandfather
turned the earth
with donkey and plow.
She had
the feet
of her grandfather,
for she had walked
beside him
down the long rows
of beans and corn
since the time
she learned
to toddle.
He had
walked
up and down
those rows
until his feet
were broken and bent
and made him appear
to be
continually
genuflecting
to God,
or to the wealthy land owner,
or to the land itself.
Her feet
would one day
be broken and bent
like that.
When her feet
were in the soil
it was
as if
they were part
of the land,
as if
they held the secrets
of the earth,
as if
they knew the mystery
of how seed
and dirt
and water
can become
a bean
in a pod,
a kernel
on an ear
of corn.
Her heart
was in her feet,
her heart
was in the land,
her heart
was the mystery
itself.
Her feet spoke,
"Estoy aquí,
I am here,
estoy aquí."
Her feet
were signs
to the world -
"I am
a human being."
“Estoy aquí,” she whispered to the world. “I am here.”
- Trevor Scott Barton, Stories for a Brown Eyed Girl, 2020
