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�12 ways to consider a bodega� I. Red�flash and�orange flash� light bulbs carousel the awning. My window at night�flights above a funhouse. II. Green platanos�4/$1 �bodega across the street. Where else?�La marqueta �7/$1�eight blocks away. My check gives my sprain knee the finger. III. A few young, white-middle class women, all drunk�Caps in the air! �bar Rampage�We hereby announce: 1 of 5 new social work grads buys a pack of Winstons with broken Spanglish. Man behind the counter smiles back, �Sorry, I do not Speak your Language. I am from Yemen.� IV. Look Up�bunch of t.v. screens facing the register. Cashier keeps an Eye on the customers (and an Eye on Third Base). V. Raul Julia�POWERFUL Puerto Rican Thespian�renamed Shakespeare �Guillermo��turned the pages of Speak with Distinction by Edith Skinner, and found the following exercise: �Bodega. Topeka. Topeka. Bodega.� Imagine him chuckling. Then, with the tear of Othello, slowly pronounce: �Maw. Thah. Law. Kah.� VI. School lets out�Lots of children buy Candy, Soda, Sandwiches at the corner bodega. One afternoon�School lets out �the police Closed down the store, and the neighborhood was quiet. VII. After the police could not find� Unlocked�the door of the bodega� Ham and cheese�Sliced�i waited� precisely a half a pound each. VIII. The Old Domincan bodega? The awning is still there? Inside, a bunch of post-college kids sit at the bar drinking Beer, play Pool, surf the Internet, as a folk singer on Guitar, from down South, tells everyone what she misses most about her Hometown. IX. Hanging out front of the bodega, young hermanos Whistled at a young jew with fast high heels and Froze�when she Jumped in my arms with a very, berry pie she bought at D�agostino�s. X. After 12 years, my step-dad abandoned us. As a result, we barely had money at home. So Ma made me go down the block and ask the bodega if she can buy food on credit. i was embarrassed, but they always opened their notebook. And at age 13, i often hated being Man of the apartment. XI. Like a kid following Ma�s list of specific foods and detergents, a cassette player celebrated from behind the counter Hector Lavoe�s plea for forgiveness. He lived in our neighborhood. But now loud speakers are tuned to Dido as she sings with the women of north London and a lonely, teenage girl, Puerto Rican with a palm tree air-brushed on each finger tip, rings her uncle�s register. Compared to the older men who often sat behind the displays, her straight face says hi to no one. Maybe she thinks i will ask her to sleep with me, as other young guys on the block might have done? So i say nothing. Y�know, some change of music. XII. The first bodega in the Lower East Side, chicken or egg of Nueva York? Behind the counter: a Jew, a Chinese, an Italian, a Polish, a German, an Irish, a free Black, or a radical Nuyorican? Before the Spanish-American War? Or after someone sold their share of family land back on Boriquen to board a Propellar Plane? And the storefront, yellowish as others now? So that in the snow, it stood out as the warm sand of Carib? Or a block of cheese for mice? |