Fruit Store, Ecuador

My college essay.

 

At the Fruit Store, Ecuador

Her metal instrument digs determinedly into the hardened gum. The make-shift knife scratches over the cement, cutting intricate patterns of crisscrossing lines, then silently again through the toughened goo. Scrape. The knife pulls over the cement again. Again. Over and over. How long the gum has hardened there, when she had discovered the game of slicing it, or where she acquired the metal tool I did not consider.

 I sit on a cement square along a dark and grayed sidewalk, speckled with stains of black. Just inches from our sidewalk square, the speeding vehicles continuously slash the space of air above the narrow street. Kneeling side by side on the dirty cement, I enter her world, absorbing her focus. Feeling neither the urge to embrace her nor dismiss her as an inconsequential child, I kneel beside her without invitation. The girl receives me, simply because I choose to enter her world.

She murmurs into the ground, her own baby talk, innocent Spanish, charming all the more for its juvenile assertions. I cannot understand her words, but she communicates her security of the world. This is how it works, and I am going to show you. For a reason I cannot explain, her soft persistence gives me a feeling of hope.

Her small toenails are spattered with chips of nail polish. “Que lindas. Me gustan. Te pintaste las uñas,” I compliment.

She makes no move to look at me, and accepts my accent as I accept her indiscernible baby talk. Free of words, I follow her and listen to what she really has to say.

With a half tilt of her head, her eyelashes flicker over dark glossy eyes. She gives me her eyes in flashes, preferring not to welcome me, lest in the introduction I become a guest. These moments of acceptance transcend language, appearances and labels.

Exuding self satisfaction, she turns away with the imitated authority of a mother. Along the graffitied wall of the fruit shop an assortment of stuffed animals, dirty with dust and exhaust, lie scattered. “Son tus juguetes?” I ask. In answer she retrieves one of her stuffed toys.

The stuffed bear’s fur is soiled yellow, weathered, and has clumps of dirt that resemble shredded cardboard. His nose has long since vanished, but out of the dirty fabric rest two eyes, as shiny and black as the girl’s.

Lifting the bear with purpose, she places him in front of the sidewalk. Pushing the knife handle into the cushion of his paw, her hand presses over both, and guides his hand; he too joins our engrossment in the crisscross of the gum. 

I look up into the open door of the fruit shop where her mother finishes bagging the papaya and guabana for my father. The fruit seller glances unsmilingly at her daughter and me; my father motions to me that it is time to go.

Without breaking the mutual spell, the small girl drops the tool and the bear. She pats my knee, as if to comfort and reassure me, nodding firmly that, “Sí, ya tienes que ir.”

I leave her without goodbye. A disconcerting peace strikes me; she has touched me, and I don’t want to lose that.

 I turn my head to see her a last time.

She still kneels alone on the dirty sidewalk, inches away from menacing traffic, contentedly scraping gum, at peace with the world.

The little girl gave me a moment to live entirely outside of classification or labels. Immersed in her world of the sidewalk, she felt no threat to her own world by my entrance, and neither asked me my name nor tried to classify me. She received me, so different from her, without hesitation. I melded into her world without introduction.

In the small fruit store in Tumbaco, Ecuador a little girl waits on the cement while her mother works. In my mind she neither remembers nor forgets me, but lived with me a part of her world. I left her forever, but I carry with me her example. She provides an example not of tolerance, which is to focus on differences, but of having the security and peace with one’s own world that enables one to enjoy another’s.