Translated from Spanish by Jacqueline Loss
“Summer, like summer,” she said. I was about to introduce myself as “winter, like winter,” or perhaps even spring or autumn, when it was my turn. All the seasons converging on a summer day. But she didn’t tell that to me, rather to an old man at the front of the line. He didn’t seem to hear well. Maybe he suffered from the sort of deafness that only gets worse over time. With his hand on his ear, he leaned forward to ask the cashier to please speak up a bit. For a moment, the only thing that went up in pitch were her cheeks. With little saliva and without adjusting the volume of her voice or smiling, she repeated to the customer, “Summer . . . like summer.” Just loud enough for the people way back in line to hear.
In my case, although I was right behind the old man, I wasn’t at all interested in what was barely a dialogue, perhaps because my English is deafer than the old man’s deafness. I supposed they were speaking about something related to the purchase. But it wasn’t so—the old man heard well. She was the one with the problem. She even had a name tag attached to the strap on her uniform that identified her as Summer but, in no way, did it read “like summer.”
So, besides apparently not hearing well, the old man must’ve had equally poor vision because her name tag was practically in high definition, crystal clear. Nevertheless, he didn’t insist, thanked her, collected his bags, and went out, I assume, from where we all come in. As for me, I got to the counter and put down two cans of black beans.
I stood there watching the old man through the glass door, who headed in the direction of the parking lot. But Summer took me away from the itinerary of her previous customer, so I wasn’t able to determine the make of his vehicle. Since my gaze was elsewhere, I didn’t notice the amount rung up on the register either. When Summer let out a “7.50,” it sounded like “70.50” in another language. It landed on me in Spanish; had I been a German, the amount would’ve sounded quite legitimate for just two cans of black beans. I looked at her somewhat admiringly, and I realized once again that the dilemma was hers. Her accent gave her away, even if she said very clearly that her name was “like summer.”
I took out my food stamps to pay. Summer said “Sorry,” that today they weren’t accepting food stamps. What a surprise. That never happened to me at my favorite market where I have the habit or fortune of going a few times a week and of paying with food stamps. I suspect more than 90 percent of the products they sell were provided by the state, or rather not the state, but . . . Washington: the government that gives me food stamps and must be the supplier for that type of store in a country where almost everything is private.
Perhaps Summer has food stamps—not because she works there or necessarily because she’s a single mother, but rather because her accent, at best, is that of a newcomer who arrived without knowing more than four or so words in Michael Jackson’s language. Besides her language, there wasn’t much to note. She had all the characteristics of an American woman, what I mean is of the typical blond woman. And beyond her complexion, culturally speaking, she reflects the typical image of today’s generic woman, born and bred in the USA, whether blond, southern Chinese, African American, Latin, or whatever ethnicity on the planet—someone who hadn’t inherited any familiar lineage of the undocumented. What Summer was missing was pronunciation, a thing that surely would improve the next time I stumbled upon her.
That’s just what happened, not at the store but at a pharmacy. She was behind the counter once again and with a name tag but during the night shift. That’s to say, everything seems to point to her having two jobs and wanting to secure the American dream. Like every immigrant, she drags along a lack of expectations that cannot be erased despite finding herself in the richest country on the planet, in the “empire,” as the official mass media would call it in my country of origin, Cuba.
I couldn’t help it. Before presenting my credentials or the bottle of naproxen I was going to buy, I pointed at her name tag, and I said in a really upbeat kind of way, like Walt Whitman in Leaves of Grass, “Summer, like summer.” “Like weather,” said the woman who’d been previously known as “Summer, like summer.” That “like weather” omitted whatever plan I might have had on her. She left me speechless, and I needed the old man from last time in front of me. But at this pharmacy at 10 p.m., there’s never a line or any emergency on the shelves. I gave her my bottle of blue capsules; I needed one as quickly as possible. Medicine can’t be bought with food stamps, rather with any ATM card. I’m hoping this time it doesn’t occur to her to say they’re only accepting cash, because I haven’t a penny in my pockets. The digital screen of the cash register read twelve dollars, and my debit card slipped through the slot of the little apparatus without Summer slipping in “like weather.”
Based on scientific fact or perhaps on fiction, the comparative device of “like weather” captivated me more than “like summer.” Even the pronunciation with which she uttered the phrase was worthy of a voice-over on American TV or of an oral thesis by a soon-to-graduate-university English major. Congratulations and the highest average for her! But there remained a few seconds of a filmic close-up, flashback, and fade-out to go. First it was Summer, no longer “Summer, like summer” and definitely not “like weather.” The moment she pronounced this last part of her supposed name, her smile changed just as weather can without any advanced warming. Her face got stiff and infected mine, which indeed was as full of smiles as there are sweet mangos in the town of Güira de Melena. But we were in a drugstore in Tennessee, and I couldn’t take my eyes off her face . . . time like Steve Jobs’s Apple in whatever Mac store, and my left index finger was still pointing at her name tag. Of course, all this occurred in split seconds. Suddenly we were in a kind of “absolutely nothing happened here,” but she couldn’t avoid blinking down at the zona franca of her name tag and my finger, still pointing. Finally we realized, at least in this pharmacy, she wasn’t named Summer. On her nametag, another name could be perfectly read: “Milka Nováková.”
Immediately I remembered all those Milkas and Novakovas in elementary school with their name tags that looked almost as if they were distinguishing garments on the uniform’s suspenders, at times hooked or attached by a clasp, the color gold, to the neckerchief’s knot. Maybe none of them was her, but she still had the same appearance of an infancy anchored to another future. She hardly smiled. She offered me a bag for my bottle of naproxen; we didn’t cross glances of any kind. Before heading toward the same place as the man with the supposed deafness, I said “Thank you” in Russian, and she almost said, you’re welcome in Spanish.
