Native Speaker Read Free Page B

flavor my name is?”
    She was about to remind me of it but I said
Boswell
aloud, very slowly as if in a recital or bee. I guessed somewhere in the Commonwealth.
    â€œI’m too easy,” she cried. “You even got the Massachusetts part without trying. It’s so depressing. You don’t know what it’s like. An average white girl has no mystery anymore, if she ever did. Literally nothing to her name.”
    â€œThere’s always a mystery,” I offered. “You just have to know where to look.”
    â€œI bet,” she said.
    I was immediately drawn to her. I liked the way she moved. I know how men will say this, to describe that womanly affect they find ineffable. I am as guilty as them all. There is a hurt that pinches your throat or chest when you look. But even before I took measure of her face and her manner, the shape of her body, her indefinite scent, all of which occurred so instantly anyway, I noticed how closely I was listening to her. What I found was this: that she could really speak. At first I took her as being exceedingly proper, but I soon realized that she was simply executing the language. She went word by word. Every letter had a border. I watched her wide full mouth sweep through her sentences like a figure touring a dark house, flipping on spots and banks of perfectly drawn light.
    The sensuality, in certain rigors.
    â€œSo I work for a relief agency,” she said, warming up. “I drive a pickup truck. I deliver boxes of canned food and old clothes to some neighborhoods around town. Many of the people there are illegals, Mexicans and Asians. Whole secret neighborhoods brown and yellow. Tell me, am I being offensive?”
    â€œI don’t think so.”
    â€œOkay. Anyway, they know my blue truck. They forget my face but they know my truck. I carry a box into a house. I check if the infants and children look healthy. The sick ones go on a list for the health service. I come back outside and people are always waiting there. They just want to talk. They know me as the English lady. All day I give lessons from the back of the truck. I sit there and they talk to me. I help them say what they want.
How much is this air conditioner? Does this bus go to Sunland Park Racetrack? Yes, I cook and clean and I can sew
. Now I teach a class at night. The same people and more. I try to turn them away, you know, because of fire codes. They look at me confused and don’t move. Half of them end up standing. They bring their babies because they heard you can learn in your sleep. What can I do? I let them all stay. Everybody in this town wants to learn English.”
    I offered her what I could of me, inventing a story around the basic reasons why I was in El Paso. She didn’t push. Nils finally came around but Lelia didn’t say much and he said he had to step out for more crushed ice. We didn’t see him again. For the next hour or so we took turns getting each other beers, until she came back the last time with a plastic cup full of tequila.
    â€œIt’s still too hot in here,” she said. “Let’s go outside. There’s a little park a few blocks away.”
    We sat on a bench among the sleepers. It was a clear night, the moon, a few high clouds. I’d given her my suit jacket. Some others were awake, talking and drinking like us. I heard them speaking Spanish, and I heard English, and then something else that Lelia said was called
mixup
. Its music was sonorous, rambling, some of the turns unexpected and lovely. Everywhere you heard versions.
    â€œPeople like me are always thinking about still having an accent,” I said, trying to remember the operation of the salt, the liquor, the lime.
    â€œI can tell,” she said.
    I asked her how.
    â€œYou speak perfectly, of course. I mean if we were talking on the phone I wouldn’t think twice.”
    â€œYou mean it’s my face.”
    â€œNo, it’s not that,” she