At the pool, where I have found myself regularly after work, is a sign that enigmatically states, “Pool Capacity 541.” Every day for months, I have formulated the question, capacity for what? Is it 541 gallons of water, 541 people who can squeeze themselves into the pool, or 541 laps a person is allowed to swim before he will be asked to leave for fear of a fainting incident and subsequent lawsuit? I like to picture 541 people in this pool on a sunny day in July. Maybe it is an event for the Guiness Book of World Records, or a reunion for my entire high school, plus several of the cool teachers. Each time someone else steps in, I picture the crowd greeting her with a loud “Hooray!” as it tosses a beach ball in her direction. It would be like a big welcoming bathtub with rounds of laughter given out in turns.

Normally, as I muse on the meaning of the mysterious sign, I am periodically brought back to my surroundings by Gus, an older gentleman, who for reasons unknown to me, has the most lopsided stroke I have ever encountered. Before I knew his name, I fondly, and sometimes angrily, referred to him as “Slappy.” One can be calmly swimming in one’s self-appointed lane, when Whabam! A mini tsunami strikes a deadly blow to the face. Luckily, I have learned Gus’ rhythm and manage to either swim ahead of him or stay well behind. Unfortunately for other swimmers, Gus also happens to be one of the slowest swimmers I have known, but this is probably not at all related to his unique stroke. I am convinced that the saying, “Different strokes for different folks” is an explicit reference to someone like Gus.

At first, I was frustrated and dismayed that Gus’ and my swimming schedules were so well-synchronized. I couldn’t escape him, since we were both resigned to the slow end of the pool, he for reasons already stated, and I for rehabilitating a sprained ankle. I freely admit to chuckling at a teenage girl’s biting question to her friends as she watched Gus in action. “Is that even considered swimming?” But one day, Gus and I were both marginalized by a swim coach who had blocked half our lane. We started talking about swimming, and he volunteered that though he wasn’t very good at it, he enjoyed the calming effect of the exercise, and the reprieve from his computer science desk job. I found myself admiring him for attempting something challenging and admitting to inadequacy. And then it occurred to me, who knows? Maybe he had a stroke that left his left arm permanently out of sync with his right. Our judgment of others is so easily made without reflection.

Lately, I have been reflecting on the courage and power of the eight, nine, and ten year-old divers who practice at the opposite end of my lane. Watching these young girls stand with their backs to the abyss, bracing themselves and springing fearlessly into a free fall is both nerve-racking and awe-inspiring. I always watch in disbelief—how can they just fall back like that? Their effortlessness draws me in and I find that I cannot look away or breathe until I see their arms plunge through the glassy surface and reconnect with the water’s embrace. Surely, logic does not rule in this realm, as the girls practice the ultimate rejection of the notion that seeing is believing.

As I swim along, I try to imagine myself in their place. How would I react? Would I doubt myself in the face of those fundamental elements of air and water, neglecting to place due confidence in the power of my muscles and instinct? I conclude — or rather, my beating heart and the perspiration forming under my arms at the thought of leaping backwards, hanging on to chance, indicate — that perhaps I would fail to muster sufficient courage. Perhaps I would remain in a ball of timidity and trepidation, paralyzed from what is speculated of the unknown.

As I swim ahead and try to avoid Gus’ deadly sprays, I think about 541 lessons to learn from others and lose myself in the moment. I just found several; approximately 537 to go.

Y: I think we’re late. How do you know we’re early?

X: I just have a feeling, you know? Just a feeling… why would you think we’re late? Have a little more hope than that, come on.

Y: Are you kidding me? Because nobody else is here yet. Because I didn’t see anyone else while coming here. And because I don’t see anyone else coming anytime soon. Wake the fuck up, we missed it. We missed the entire thing. And now we’re fucked.

X: Calm down, drink some water. You’re dehydrated, you’re hallucinating. Next you’re gonna tell me there’s a damn oasis up ahead. I mean… that’d be sweet as hell… whatever, that’s not the point. Just keep your cool.

Y: If I’m dehydrated, then you’re probably dehydrated too! Why the hell should I trust anything you’re saying to me? Just because you’re calm doesn’t make you the wisest one here! Just because you-

Z: Both of you, shut up. Listen to me.

(X and Y immediately turn away from each other looking equally defeated, contemplating their stalemate, then turn to Z with faces of desperation).

Z: If no one else is coming, then we might as well enjoy these last few hours in peace.

(Uneasy silence)

Z: And if somebody is coming, as promised, then we should wait patiently. We should protect the cactus at all costs.

Y: Yeah, but what if we’re lat-

X: Shhh… I think I heard something.

Y: (Moves right up to X’s face in anger) No one… is coming. WAKE. THE. FUCK. UP.

X: (Looks straight back into Y’s face) I’m not letting you open the cactus. No way. You want to waste a bullet on me, fine.

Y: Why not? That piece of shit plant is as much mine as it is yours. You can’t tell me what I can or can’t do with it.

X: So you’re going to kill me so you can have the “piece of shit” plant all to yourself. Think about how hard we worked to get this, how much we went through, how we even survived to get here. Think about-

Z: Both of you, quiet. Save your energy.

(X and Y turn away from each other briefly, then turn back and say, “I’m sorry” with their eyes).

Z: That’s better. Now think back to the beginning, the very beginning. They said if we waited three days, the cactus would blossom. They told us not to try opening it until they get back.

Y: How do we know they were telling us the truth? How do we even know they’re coming back??? (Looks deliriously at the gun half-buried in the sand) We have at least three bullets left, you know…

X: Oh, so we should all just shoot ourselves and forget about the cactus. Great idea. Here’s another one: why don’t you be Captain Courageous and go ahead and- (Suddenly restrains himself and looks anxiously at Z)

Z: Everyone drink more water. They will come soon.

(X, Y, and Z all drink, then stare at the cactus).

CLOSE-UP SHOT OF CACTUS

Y: …Do you believe it will cure us? Do you believe the story?

X: (Looks up at Y and Z) I believe it. I have to believe it.

Z: (Continues to stare solemnly at the cactus) Doesn’t matter if I believe the story or not. This is all I have to go on. I might as well have some faith.

X: That’s not faith. That’s just believing in something because you have nothing left to believe in.

Y: (Almost inaudibly) What’s the difference…

X: I think we’re early.

Z: I think we’re late.

(In the distance, a growing thunder).

Although these days most hoods look and speak alike, there remain pockets of color and tongues, and crazy folks that make Manhattan fantastic. A peek into the frantic fishmongers of Chinatown and behind the lace curtains a few steps up a stoop, a woman practices her incense-lit spells. A trip uptown and life slows down, leaning on buildings with plenty of time, people watch neighbors come and go, singing and fishing for ganja behind the wheels of parked cars. East Village dresses in graffiti and cobblestone, smoking a mystic pipe in its dives, gardens, depressed teenagers and empty lots. Bond Street is drunk with modern architecture. Saint Mark’s is the underground sliced open. Washington Square Park is full of junkies and homeless chess players. ‘Get your drugs, legal or illegal, and vacate the park’ the police car mutters at midnight, circling around the fountain like a saddled knight. Downtown at the tip of the island, scribed on modern glass walls are the names and stories of immigrants coming in from Ellis Island, renamed, courageous and ready to start life anew. I wonder if they’ll ever inscribe my name at JFK.

Last short weekend I did not set foot in Manhattan. I am a Brooklynite. If Manhattan is the Rockies, Brooklyn is the Great Plains. It is a vast lowland with foreign chatter and hopes that travel wider than higher. Brooklyn is at times beautiful, at times broken-hearted with its sad canning factories and abandoned trolley rails. Some come to Brooklyn because herein money buys more, but I prefer Brooklyn because I find nothing I want to buy in Manhattan.

There’s far too many memories of Poppa to recall over the last two and a half decades, and relative to the rest of you, I’ve probably known him less than anyone else in the room. So there’s gotta be a lot of Poppa memories floating around in here. And knowing Poppa, it’s got to be one hell of a strange, delightful, mixed up sea of memories. But if there’s one thing all our memories can agree on — it’s that Poppa was not a traditional guy. He was unique. He marched to his own drum. He was an extremely complex man who took the greatest pleasure in simple things. The best times spent with my Poppa were often those simple moments…especially when his everyday wisdom and know-how came out to play.

I learned a lot of things from Poppa. He taught me how to arm wrestle. He taught me how to make knockout pasta. He taught me how to tell a good joke. He taught me how to tell a bad joke. He taught me how to give a great backrub. He taught me how to fight back. He taught me to be comfortable with myself and follow my goals. He taught me how to be confident. Likewise, he taught me how to talk to women (something he loved to do, especially waitresses, for some reason. When I got older, I understood why he liked to go out to dinner). He taught me how to look sharp, even if you had a couple of holes in your pants. He taught me how to mix up a great bowl of cereal. He taught me how to find the best happy hour in town. He taught me a lot of new words, usually words that were not in the school dictionary. He taught me how to pick a delicious piece of fruit – whether it be a watermelon, honeydew or grapefruit, all items always in over-abundance in their house.

He had a wonderful, wry, sharp and sarcastic sense of humor. He loved to play games, be it bridge with his friends, or more silly, inane games he played with us little ones. I’ll never forget playing the dollar game with my brother and Poppa when we were kids. In the dollar game, Poppa would hold up a dollar bill and all you could see was its backside. We’d guess what numbers were on the serial number of the bill - if we were right, we’d win a dollar. Even if we’d get them wrong, somehow we’d always end up with a couple of bucks in our pockets.

When I was a teenager, my mom was teaching me how to drive and we were in a parking lot practicing how to parallel park. Her coaching skills were less than stellar, and I was knocking over the orange cones we’d set up like dominoes. After the two of us exchanged some words that you wouldn’t find on Sesame Street — we thought to call up Poppa Arthur for some advice, the same guy who had originally taught my mom how to park his old Electra 225 back in the 70s. With great patience and wisdom, over the phone, even though he himself hadn’t driven for years, he walked me through his trademark masterful technique for wedging our old station wagon into that space. To this day, I use the Arthur Arlan parking technique and I can probably park a jumbo jet in a 5-foot space.

In my lifetime, Poppa and my grandmother Carol were always side-by-side. Though they certainly had their ups and downs, they called their relationship a true “love affair.” They were not just two people who lived together for many decades. They were madly in love and rarely apart for more than a couple of minutes. They adored one another.

Thanks to all of you for coming here today to remember my grandpa. Poppa, Arthur, Art, Pops, Boobie…in all the different ways we knew you and loved you, you were a good man, and we’ll all miss you.

Sometimes the leaves spiralled up the steel are more like tokens
ways to pretty-up a balcony, your love of things-growing
not like: the impossible furled bud at the tip, spitting up laces
like: I heard somewhere these things are beautiful—
I heard somwhere a person could love these things.

Sometimes a dog spits up grass walking by, your heart
skips a beat and your throat tugs empathetic
and you wish it were a thousand dogs, a thousand toroids
of wet hair keeled over—spacing like a magic-eye
of one big dog, itself. Sometimes
A thousand fences. Oh! A thousand walls.
Enough of them that we can choose.

The article gave me a good laugh, and then made me a little sad at the thought of all those poor, unwanted monkids whose only fault was monkeying around. However, I moved on with my day, as there were more pressing things to do at work, such as check my Gmail and browse photos on Facebook.

I soon forgot about the poor little monkids as I had new personal matters to deal with in my life. My mother had recently taken up a new hobby—nagging me. (Well, perhaps it’s an old hobby with a new twist). She had decided that since I am 24 and chronically single, she will undoubtedly die before she sees any grandchildren. She would call me with little gems like, “I’m so glad you’ve decided to go to grad school so you can meet a husband,” or “Make sure you study in the business school and law school libraries, because you won’t meet any men if you stay in the social work school.” Thanks, mom, for supporting my career goals. Occasionally, my mom and her recently divorced friends (who have JDate and Match.com accounts) would booze it up and shop for New York men for me. That’s when I would get fun emails with pictures and profiles of Jewish doctors and lawyers.

Now, at this point in my story, I’d like to point out that I was completely satisfied with the current status of my life. Marriage will happen someday, I’m sure, but at age 24?? Please! One of my favorite hobbies is getting drunk and making out with random people I meet in bars…you can’t do that if you’re married. Someday, I’ll grow out of it, but that day has not yet arrived. And then, there’s the whole issue of children. I’ll know I’m ready for kids when I stop feeling sorry for the women I see who are young and pregnant.

Although I thought I was sure that I did not want to be in a committed relationship, I started to have my doubts as my mom continued in her nagging ways. “You know, Julie Solomon just got engaged, and Jessica Smith is engaged, and Marcy Seligman just got married, and Jill Erdberg is moving to China with her boyfriend, and blah blah blah.” Perhaps I was missing out on something? Maybe I should be more interested in finding someone and settling down?

So, I did some real soul searching and began questioning my casual dating practices. This resulted mostly in an ever increasing guilt that I was somehow denying my mother her right to be a grandmother. I resolved to try to change my ways. Next time, I wouldn’t meet my man in a bar. Next time, I wouldn’t dismiss him after the first or second date. I was going to look for a long-term commitment. No more games. I was going to be serious.

Well, I guess my resolve wasn’t that strong, because my ways did not change, but the guilt certainly remained. I can’t say that it dominated my life in any significant way, but it did occupy my thoughts more often than I’d like. That is, until I went to visit some friends from high school in D.C. Please note that since these are my friends from Alabama, one of them is married and the other is engaged. I had brunch with both couples, which brought back those guilty feelings again. Here they were, so couply, so happy to be with each other, so supportive of one another. I started to feel again that maybe this was something I wanted.

Over the course of brunch, we had a lot of catching up to do. I told them about my first year out of college (I like to refer to it as freshman year of life), when I learned important lessons, like which bars had the best drink specials and how to survive a hangover at work without your boss noticing. Then I shared a few of my more ridiculous dating stories. They countered with their intricate knowledge of the best types of tupperware—they like the glassware with the plastic tops, because you can serve side dishes in the glass and it looks pretty on the table, but you don’t have to dirty another dish when you want to put the leftovers away.

We talked a bit about the stress that my married friend was undergoing since her husband had recently joined the Marines. She went weeks on end without seeing him while he was in training, and once he finished, they didn’t know where they would end up living. They were hoping for somewhere on the east coast, so she could be close to her family while he was away.

Walking out of brunch, I knew that I wasn’t ready for that kind of commitment yet, and I certainly wasn’t ready to settle into a life where storage containers were a topic of interest. I picked up the phone and called my mom. “Mom, get off my back, or I’m buying you a monkid.”

vines divine (you’re mineminemine) entwine my now
armorless amour like never before with your
lovelust. long live my lucklove
ensnared in your hair and your
nets and your nest and your neck,
tickled like a child’s chuckles
in its bashful beautiful wreck.
never ever
ever ever
say you

don’t feel the same w
a
y.

Rajastan is the part of India that you see in coloring books.  It’s bright and broadly drawn, immediate and jubilant.  It’s where florid jungle forests cradle castles built above baby blue lakes and men who are mostly mustached dance on endless, fluffy blankets of crème colored desert.  It’s the India with helpful elephants and lonely tiger cubs and monkeys that try to wear your hat.  It is the India you want to curl up and snuggle with.

Before I came here I talked about Rajastan with a friend who grew up there.

“Where are you planning to go?” she asked.

“I’m not planning to go anywhere,” I said. “I’m not going to spend my time being herded through tourist sites, stuck in a Jello mold of mid-western retirees and filthy backpack-”

“That’s not what I meant.  I meant do you have a general idea of what you want to do there?”

“Explore, head out on my own.  Meet people, try new things.  You can’t plan an adventure.”  It occurred to me that I needed to schedule a time to buy an appropriately cavalier-looking hat for my impromptu adventuring. “And the whole place is incredible. The cities are fascinating. The people are wonderful.  It’s this lucid dream world where mystical, magnificent things happen all around you.”

There was a significant delay to my friend’s response, as if my words had to travel a great distance to reach her.  “Yes, we are a magical people.  How exactly did you form this opinion?”

“The Eyewitness guide on India.  It has really pretty pictures.”

“Okay, but its not all like that.  People there are like people anywhere else.  You can’t just barge in there and expect people to be nice to you.”

“You have a shiny white pimple under your nose,” I retorted.

“Have a nice trip.”

And I have had a nice trip.  But like my friend’s face, it’s hard to look at Rajastan and not notice the erupting cluster of white heads scarring its surface.

Pushkar was the worst.  It used to be beautiful.  The city is built over a lake that’s adrift in an ocean of brown mountains somewhere in central Rajastan.  It probably looks like the letter “e” from an airplane. Most of the buildings line the edge of the lake like a fat crescent moon and a large white bridge connects a tip of the city across the lake back to its center.

The buildings look like siblings to each other.  They are all different, but the differences make you notice their similarities more than anything else.  Some are taller or wider than others, but they are all made from the same chubby white stone, have the same soft, flat features (arched empty windows and big square doors) and are all huddled against each other over thin little streets.

Families would come here.  For centuries it has been a quiet Mecca for traveling Hindus. They go here for the Brahma temple.  It’s an especially rare, especially sacred type of temple enshrined somewhere in the glistening city.

To get to the temple a family would start by crossing the lake; the men and boys in suits, the women and girls in saris, walking along the white arches of the bridge with their reflection drizzled up and down the shiny, sugary blue water.  Then they would walk within some shimmering street, watched by its family of buildings as they glided up into the temple.

But this secret paradise did not stay undiscovered for long.  Like the jewels of a hidden treasure, Pushkar’s beauty became a beacon for the world’s backpacking pirates.  And they have done terrible things to that place.

There are two ways to get to it.  You could drive, or there’s a train station at a neighboring city, which is burnt on the jagged crust of a desert adjacent to Pushkar.

Most people take a bus to Pushkar from the train station.  But the station is viciously crowded.  Like most things in India it’s not nearly big enough for the amount of people that pour through it.  It only consists of a long rectangular concrete platform and a ticket booth the size and density of a Port-o-Potty.  The ticket booth is stuck to a corner of the platform opposite the train tracks.  Attached to the booth is a line of stubby metal posts that extend down the back of the platform like vertebrae.  They sift passengers between the train and the street outside.

The street outside of the train station is a street because that’s what it is used for, not because it has any physical characteristics of a street.  It’s not paved. The street, the sidewalk, the storefronts, the alleys, and the flat plains that stretch to the horizon are all part of the same endless slab of scalding red clay. It has no edges or demarcations.  You know you are standing in it when an ox or a car or a camel is yelling at you to get out of the way.  There are no street signs.  Its occupants discuss when to turn, yield or stop through a dialogue of expressive grunts, honks and hisses. You know the bus stop for Pushkar is across from the train station because that’s where the bus is stopped.

When the station is empty, which is most of the time, it bares the details of corrosive neglect. Red silt covers the floor of the platform.  Paint peels from the walls of the sun burnt ticket booth. Scabs of rust calmly consume the thumb shaped metal posts.  The whole station is motionless, pinned in place by a thick breathless heat.

But everything changes when the trains come.

They drown the station.  An incoming train unleashes a deluge of people.  Each lumbers toward the station like swollen balloons.  They sway from their sloshing mass of humanity then burst open the moment they hit the station.  People rush out of the their doors, flood the platform and slam into the gasping metal posts.  The posts part the torrent into boiling, abrasive streams; each one drenches the adjacent road and crashes into the buses bound for Pushkar.

The rush snaps the desert apart.  The street gets clearly stamped out.  The trampling opens its cracked red clay and leaves a sticky brown mud, raised and wet like a sore. It’s also silent.  Any noise is deafened.  The ox and camels and cars know this.  They patently hold their breath while the flood of people pass over them.

The buses gulp up far more people than they can stand.  Each one swells until its windows are thick with limbs and its ceiling is bowed down under a smear of passengers on the roof.  Then they lunge into the brown mountains, desperate to relieve themselves the second they get to Pushkar.

Or at least I assume it’s like that.  I’ve never been there.  I didn’t want to bump into any other white people so I got to Pushkar by hiring a driver instead of taking the train.

I was there last week.  One day I wanted to go see its Brahma temple.  There are a few others in isolated locations in India, but it’s easier to go see the one in Pushkar, so I went there.  I didn’t know its specific location within the city, and after my second cross over the town’s bridge I asked someone how to get to the temple.

“Its right there,” the man motioned.  He was old, but his face seemed older than his body, it looked as overexposed as the city.

“Where?” I shrugged back.

“Right.  There.” He exclaimed with two jabs of his finger.  He was pointing behind him, at the roads leading out from the bridge we were on.  It was where I had just emerged from.

“No it isn’t,” I shook my head at him.

“Yes it is,” his finger insisted.

I did not know how to express that I had already been down those streets and had not seen the temple, so I shrugged again.

He took my hand and began to lead me back to the other side of the bridge.  I was wrong about his body.  It was as dry and brittle as his face.  He walked with the march of a rusted toy soldier.  There were three motions to his steps, each defined by the rigid movement of a single joint.  He ratcheted up his hip, straightened out his knee then fell on his extended foot.  The weight of his steps rang across the tin gears of his body.  I could feel them through his hand.

There were two writhing brown mounds blocking the end of the bridge.  As we approached them the mounds became giant, bristly haired leaches.  When we got closer it turned out they were people.  The hippie couple looked up at me from under their hemp blanket.  They both had the same hair, a globular mess that had assumed the pliability of playdough, and enough of it to make the blanket functionally redundant.  They both had the same clothes, that ill fitting, unwashed poverty camouflage that’s standard issue for hippie entrenchment, (one multicolored striped shirt with neck hole large enough to expose one shoulder, one extra large brown pant extending to the calf and curled on itself at the waist, three bead necklaces of unidentifiable ethnic significance).  One of them had facial hair, so I suppose that was the man.

They frowned at me the way I frown at a fingerprint on my camera lens.  When they saw me holding hands with the old man their faces constricted; their eyes, noses and frowns converged from annoyance to pointed hostility.  The man thrust his open palm at me.  I said “Oh sorry I don’t have any cash on me,” smiling, knowing that he really wanted me to say “Oh sorry I didn’t realize this was yours” while apologetically handing him the old man.

The hand retreated into the blanket.  When the old man walked in front of them they averted their sneers at me long enough to elaborately bow to him. He smiled politely and waited for them to get out of his way.  Neither did. After a moment we walked around the leaches and off the bridge.

Three roads intersected at the end of the bridge.  The old man pulled me towards the one to our left and used my own hand to point at its end.  I looked down the road I was involuntarily gesturing towards.  It softly ascended as it progressed, so that my view of its end was impeded by the advertisements that shackled together the second floors of the cafés and souvenir stores that stretched down either side of the street. There was a slick white banner between every building, pulling them together like wet tendons between hallow bones.

The stores were not well fitted to their buildings, each one expanded malignantly out of every door and window, clogging them with enormous menus and grotesque merchandise.  The juice bar on my right had two pineapples hanging like teardrops beneath its second story window.  The words “LASI” and “INTERNET” were smeared in lipstick hued paint over its doorway.  The banner pulling at the buildings face and lassoing it to the t-shirt shop across the street yelled “Mind Spirit Café! Juice Bar! Continental Food! Internet! Lonely Planet Recommended!”  The man at its counter gave me a professional, eyeless smile and beaconed for me to come inside.

No. No I will not come inside.

I wanted to yell that at him, to scream so loud that every native person in every one of their native countries could hear that I don’t like continental food or Lonely Planet or the Internet and that no part of this cafe appeals to any part of me whatsoever, and that this proud old building, a building that had undoubtedly nurtured generations of families, is not now painted like a trollop, hogtied and weeping, because of me.

I looked toward the old man.  At least he had to know that I thought this was disgusting, that I am nothing like those cowardly hippies and was on his side and that most importantly, none of this was my fault.  But he wasn’t looking at me or the juice bar.  He was squatting, peering down the street, squinting under the advertising banners that blocked my view.  I hunched down next to him and followed his eyes up the street.

And there the temple was, the last in a procession of marrowless buildings, mummified, wrapped under layers of advertising.

“That’s it?” I winced at the old man.

“What are you gonna do?” he shrugged back at me, then rose to his feet and slowly marched into the juice bar.

“Noemi is very wonderful,” Nelly said to me at last. “She help everybody.”

I agreed. “Noemi is the most important person in this office.” Anything you ask her to do, she says, “pero no problem,” and it’s done.

“Nelly is very good woman too,” Noemi demurred. “She help Hispanic people, teach English and other classes.”

“Oh neat,” I said. I told her how I’d started tutoring English conversation at the community college.

“Oh you help me!” Nelly cried, grabbing my arm. “You help me teach English. Come tonight.”

This appeal was somehow very persuasive. The sheer coincidence of it attracted me. I was looking at a pretty empty month before things got busy at the farm. I was ripe for a project. I’m interested in the Latino population of Corvallis, a sort of underground community, and in teaching English in general. Or maybe it was how Nelly is missing three teeth between her lower canines, how she smiles and calls me a beautiful angel, how she asked for help so openly. Either way — I went.

It took me a while to find the elementary school where class meets, and when I got to the front office she wasn’t there. She arrived 20 minutes late, in green, smiling, with a skinny blond kid in a high school choir sweatshirt carrying a file box. Carlos, he was introduced, the computer teacher. It was Carlos who told me they hadn’t had any students for months.
Carlos and Nelly and I went to the computer lab, after tracking down the cleaning woman to open it up for us. Nelly showed me the tests in the box, explained that students could continue online, and said she dreamed of building a school for Latinos in America.

A woman with three daughters aged two to 12 arrived for a computer lesson. Carlos taught, Nelly described her dream, and the girls entertained themselves loudly. The youngest wanted to play in the water fountain, and her big sister baited her by pulling her away every few minutes. After half an hour of this, Mamá gave up, telling us the little one has a water obsession.

“So why did you go back a second time?” my wise housemates asked the next week after class. I’d spent one and a half hours coaching Nelly in an online typing program (between her eyesight and her arthritis: hopeless) and then googling “how to write a grant proposal” and “Hispanic adult education grant.” I could see a long strange path headed out in front of me for as long as I chose to passively follow along. I wasn’t sure how to leave the fantasy-land. Carlos seemed a fellow transplant from reality, but he was also a bit under Nelly’s spell.

I went back a third time, determined to tell Nelly that if she didn’t have any students I wasn’t going to come—but that she could maybe call me if anybody showed up. I couldn’t totally ditch her, but I really wanted to at least make it clear that I was not the right person to write a grant proposal for her. I had enough projects, I’d decided. I do want to learn to write a grant but this organization is going nowhere and doesn’t even have anything to spend grant money on, since there are no students!

Lesson number three: I arrived before Nelly by a few minutes. Carlos, two students and their children and I greeted her when she stepped out of the Dial-A-Bus van with her filebox. She greeted us with handshakes, kisses on the cheek, hello my precious, and that toothless smile. We took the box for her, walked in and helped her sign in to the building. Carlos took one woman to the computer lab and Nelly and I set up a new man with some kind of test—middle school I think. Tell other people about this, Nelly told him. Do me this little favor.

This little phrase, from Nelly, is powerful. Just a little favor, she asks. Help me teach, help me make copies, come over when you’ve got a little time and help me set up my Internet connection. Could you please read the last called number on my phone, my eyes are bad. Could you please go to the carnival at the elementary school and advertise these classes for me? I’m tired after my dialysis. Why are you pushing to build a school, Nelly, before you’re really ready, before there’s any demand? Because, I’m sick, I’m old, I don’t have much time. Carry this box for me please? Then go home and take a rest, you’re tired, angel.

I quit at the end of May, and I’ve been feeling guilty about it for weeks. I wonder how the few ladies I’d started to teach, who were really dedicated and bright, are doing. Nelly’s English is okay, but her idea of teaching is handing out a vocab sheet and then gossiping in Spanish. I’ve been starting to think, maybe I could handle just one night a week. And it’s like she read my mind when she called me back at my church office asking if maybe I’d be interested after all this month? Just a little favor for her, though she knows I am a very busy person, and so smart and so beautiful? Apparently I respond well to base flattery because I signed up for Wednesdays this July. I almost backed out again, but then I heard that Nelly’s having heart trouble. Last time I called her she was in the hospital. And there’s this very bright woman, Maria, who gives herself homework, and whose children are actually very well-behaved, and I wonder how she’s doing…

Back in number three, as we walked into the computer lab I did my best to tell her that I could not write a grant for her. I don’t have time, I said clearly, and besides I didn’t know how. “But you’re smart,” she said. “You have those guidelines” that we’d printed off the Internet. “No, Nelly, I can’t—”

A high-pitched beep started in the lab, an incessant, piercing, eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee. It went on and on and on and we checked out various air conditioning machines and smoke alarms with no luck. The harassed cleaning lady, talking on her cell phone, came down the hall to check it out but had no idea what the problem might be. Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee. There was no way to study with the noise– we all left early. On the sidewalk outside I gave Nelly my cell phone number and she kissed me on the cheek. Bring on July.