11 Febrero: The poor come first
Days & Days
Franny (5) is so proud of her painting, “Mama” (acrylic on canvas), and I am so proud to be her art teacher.
11 Feb Wouldn’t Johnny Cash be Juanito Efectivo? Josephine asks. She shows me “The Life of Dolls,” her 8-minute black-and-white film made with the paper-printing camera our neighbors gave her. Franny brags, “I’ve unclogged a toilet before.” Bess is reading about the history of Twinkies. She tells her sisters there are companies that just crack eggs. “I would like that job,” Franny says. She would like to crack an egg. We talk about MaMaw, who has cracked many eggs. Franny’s cleaned her feet. She’s reporting to work. “I love my job,” she says. Her job (she hired herself) is to walk on my back, the backs of my legs. It feels like getting ironed, pressed, a panini tranquila, that’s me. Now she does this a few times a week, lucky life, and charges 5 pesos for “medium long.” I read my story at the English Language Library. God bless Fawn, and her inappropriate sense of humor. A motorcycle appears outside our door, a bag of trash. Cubans at the Cuban restaurant play Dominoes, how pretty. The Chair of Peter enters the chat: the poor come first. J.D. Vance is wrong, and so are mass deportations.