Today is Children’s day here in Mexico, schools have parties and stores have give aways and constests for kids. Not all kids get celebrated today, too many are on the roads and not in school. Here is a story I wrote years ago, when my daughters were still children.
I came out of local big box store and saw a young girl looking across the parking lot at me. She was dressed in pale green jacket that was too large, shorts and the ever present flip flops. Her long stringy hair was tied untidily in two pigtails. She did not look like a local kid, but she did not look like a Central
American immigrant either. She stared at me as I pushed my cart across the parking lot. I felt sure
she would approach me, but she did not move. I arrived at my car and popped the trunk. I
turned to load my groceries and then, there she was staring up at me.
Hola – I said to her, and she looked down to the ground.
–Could you give me a peso. – She mumbled, obviously uncomfortable. I asked her to wait while I
unloaded my cart. I do not like to take out my wallet in the parking lot and I had my hands full and
could not pat my pocket to see if I had any change. I asked her where she was from to get her to
chat to see if I could pick up an accent. She looked up at me a bit confused and said her parents
were from Mexico City. As she spoke I noticed that her two lower front teeth were adult teeth but
the rest were still baby teeth. Just like my little six year old daughter. I felt a wave of sadness as I
looked at this little one, begging in the grocery store parking lot, and thought of my daughter who
was in school at that moment. I wanted to ask another question as I unloaded, but another girl
walked up. She was about nine, thin with the same medium brown stringy hair. She was dressed
in a white shirt with a too large neon orange vest. She had a black baseball cap and a whistle
around her neck. It was the uniform of the people who direct traffic in the parking lot for tips.
Without a word she bent over and grabbed the 10 lb. bag of laundry detergent off the bottom of
my cart and hoisted it into my trunk, then she started in on the rest of the groceries.
The little six year old grabbed a bag with a bottle of soda of the cart, but the bottom of the bag tore and the bottle fell back into the cart. Her sister scolded her. Groceries unloaded I asked her if she wanted
to push the cart back to the front entrance of the store, that is a service I will pay for as parking
lots here a usually jammed with carts left by shoppers who can´t bother to walk them back, but
she just stared at me and her sister took the cart. I got four pesos out of my pocket, two for each
girl. I watched them move away. The little girl who approached me was new to it all, shy and
scared, but the older girl was a pro. As I drove out, I saw the little girl stretched out on a
cardboard box in a bit of shade. I drove home, but could not get the image of the little mouth
begging me for money, the mouth that looked so much like my own daughter´s.
0 comentarios