I could tell you about their hands.
The foil didn’t stand a chance. Their fingers licked the edges of those squared, metal sheets of paper faster than flames in the night sky, nail polish cemented on and flickering like fireflies, and I watched because I couldn’t look away. They were magicians. I could tell you about that…
Or I could write about their voices. We would sit in a row. Chang sat to my left, Rosa to the right. I intercepted every morsel of conversation: low whispers and spontaneous cries ricocheting above the countertop where our hands kept busy. Rosa made music with sentences full of symmetry and punctuated by her rhetorical invitations:
“Sherry, I just look right at her, you met Sherry? now she didn’t bring no salad, no fruit, can you see? no fruit for salad – she didn’t bring it – that Sherry, what you do? I just look at her, say, ‘Sherry!’”
Stories for the heart. I would listen and drink greedily of her enthusiasm. She spoke as if she cared about her routine stories of fruit salad and a woman named Sherry. And she made me care too.
When Chang was angry she talked like a tornado siren. Her eyes rolled back in a certain hysteria known only to her (and maybe Rosa, who would close her eyes tightly and nod and nod and nod…) and I watched as Chang’s voice rocketed, sourced by the breath within her lungs that fed off her one-track heart: even when she whispered her passion swept me up in its currents. And her voice still sounded like a siren demanding attention…just from really far away. When she was quiet, she rapped her words in even rhythms. Maybe some would call those low tones ‘disappointed’, maybe some ‘resigned’ if they weren’t watching closely. I think back now and call them a lesson in gratitude. For the little things. For the kind of hope that doesn’t take a knee.
I could tell you about their voices…
Rosa would sing when there wasn’t anything left to speak. It sounded like the pulse of ancient wisdom that (at the time) I imagined coursed through every wrinkled person’s veins – I was only twenty-four, and hadn’t yet realized most “older people” are still learning too. Age doesn’t promise wisdom, but Rosa had it in her bones, and she released it in her lullabies while we worked, side by side by side, rocking in the waves of her melody.
Growing older doesn’t give you those songs for free. You earn them, or you don’t.
You see, these women didn’t walk with the arrogance and ignorance of privilege. They’d been stripped of any pretense of right quite regularly, repeatedly, by greedy eyes and insatiable appetites. They were daughters of forgotten promises, malignant secrets, careful deceit…
Chang had worked in a casino, before the chocolate factory, folding laundry at the back. Wasted opportunity. For the white collars, the ones in charge, I mean. She should have been a dealer with hands like that. And she knew it.
And she decorated those creases in the foil with gentle caresses of victory. She was an overcomer.
She told me once, “The towels at the casino. The foil here. The dishes at home. The face of my husband. My fingerprints stick to everything I touch; through these I leave my secret legacy.”
I’ve tried to notice the things I touch since then.
So, it is their hands, too, and their voices.
And every day I sat beside them, these women, Rosa and Chang, I waited. I was patient. I waited for their belief in the somethingness of life to rub off on me. For their magic to make a difference in the caverns of my skeptic soul. And now that I think about it, I realize it’s not only their hands or voices you need to know; I want to tell you about their faces.
Living.
Lots of faces don’t quite make it there, or they had it once and lost the wonder. But these women…they had living faces: expressions you could touch, trace the lines in their travel-worn wrinkles, veteran joy comfortable even in grief and suffering and banality. I felt like their faces were more real than my own, and when they weren’t looking, I adjusted my smiles and frowns, though I knew I couldn’t fit in. They would often tell stories of injustice and laugh at the absurdity of prejudice; their faces showed no brokenness, the twinkle in their eyes echoed Maya’s timeless rhymes.
I knew I couldn’t fit in.
I hadn’t walked where they had, and frankly, I would have responded in fear and rage where they responded with overcoming.
But I could soak it up, and their faces bathed me in that light that’s brighter against the darkness.
I guess I’ve told you everything there is to tell.