The Three Women on the Phone Outside of the Library
#1: She is telling her friend that this is the last straw, and that she needs to calm down, and that she will not stand for this anymore.
#2: She’s pirouetting, punctuating long streams of Spanish with solo chest bumps, little kicks, odd English slang (“dude!” “duh!”). Spanish was my father’s first language, and when his Jewish Mexican family comes in from Mexico City they chastise him for failing to teach me the language. It took me ten years to realize that my grandmother’s pet name for me, translated, meant “shut up.” Hearing the language spoken always makes me feel vaguely guilty.
#3: She is sitting, motionless, with the phone to her ear. She hasn’t said anything since I got outside. She’s either dead, in the process of getting dumped, or being told an extremely boring story.
