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,” Luisa answered.
“Un poco cansado.
I cleaned a lot of rooms at the motel today.
¿Y tu?”
“Si, bien.
A little tired, too.
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 me 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 to her 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 out in front of her.
She opened the book to the poem An Ode to a Migrant Worker's Feet.
She read,
feet
are
calloused
and so cracked
like rocks in plowed ground
she walks over the land barefooted
as her abuelo turns the earth with donkey and plow
she has the feet of her abuelo, for she walks beside him down the long row of beans
her abuelo walks down the rows until his feet are broken and bent by genuflecting to land or the land owner
when her feet are in the soil, it is as if they are the land, as if they hold the secrets of the earth, the mystery of seed, dirt, water
becoming a bean in a pod, a kernel on an ear of corn, a red tomato
her heart is in her feet, in the land, the mystery
feet speak, "Estoy aquí," "I'm here"
feet are signs to us
"I'm human"
"I'm
here"
“Estoy aquí,” she whispered to the world.
“I'm here.”
- Trevor Scott Barton, stories for a brown-eyed girl, 2020
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