an ear to listen

I’m just standing on the side of the street, just standing and occasionally tapping my feet together and stepping from side to side to keep warm. It is a brisk sunny morning, on of the first it truly feels like winter is coming and therefore it is not very comfortable to sit still, so most people walking by are just hurrying along.
She is a good two heads shorter than me, wearing a white knit had with her hair ends curling out of the sides, all perfectly rounded like my grandma’s, so I immediately guess that she still uses those foam hair curlers. Her light pink sweat pants fit high-rise and tight, and are also high-waters, but she doesn’t seem to mind since she has grey wool socks covering her would-be-bare-ankles that are popping out of her stained white Reeboks.
“He’s a flirt, ain’t he, that one?” she points to the man working the Halal stand about a hundred yards up the block, whose currently giving an attractive brunette a friendly hug. “Some kind of Muslim.” I just laugh, but don’t reply with any words or even any indication to encourage her to continue. But she does… “you know him?” I do, I’m standing here, still on this street corner, in what now feels like the freezing cold since I’ve been here from the past hour. I’m standing here and observing him for a film class, and as a result of my project, we have spent a decent amount of time together over the past few weeks, but I prefer not to allude to this. “Not really,” I respond with a smile, “you?”

Sometimes I find that it is more interesting to have people approach me, to speak to me without being provoked. This way I have little control over the topic of conversation. Perhaps it seems as if I am being rude at this moment, however, I assure you, I am only not being my overly receptive self. “Yeah, he has been here for quite some time,” the lady responds, “you know, they all do this, the immigrants that it is. It used to be the Greeks, with those gyro’s, and now it is all of this Middle Eastern food.” She has now proved the point that I have been thinking about and entirely sparked my interest; so I give up attempting to be reserved, which is quite challenging for me, and we begin chatting.
She has been living in Astoria for over thirty years and recalls the changes she has seen over the years with reference to the ethnic groups that have resided in the neighborhood. She tells me about her sister who lives in Tallahassee, while making a grimace and a puking sound, could you even imagine, she gasps. Everyone must be just the same, who would ever move there, we ponder together. We have it so good here, we do not even know what it is like, she continues, and we see so much of the world just by walking out the front door. She tells me she works from home, and sometimes when she has not been out all day, or is out of touch with the world, she goes down the street from some fresh pasta or her new found favorite, Thai food. She claims that sometimes she does not even feel inclined to watch the international news because it typically only offers such a negative perception of people who live on the other side of the world; a view opposed to the one she has created from her first hand experience with those who have immigrated from these countries.

You know who really has it tough right now? she looks up at me, eager, as if she is about to clue me into a little now fact, The Yemites. They even know too, it is as if they have a guilty conscious for things they did not even do. They run a shop down the street, a little deli and some other Yemites own another one just a few blocks away. The down a bit further closed up, and so yesterday I asked the guys at the one I frequent, “you know what happened at that other deli?” and they respond with the knee jerk reaction, “no- what’d they do!?” See how it is for them, they’re always on their toes, like some one is constantly breathing down their neck, waiting for them to make a wrong turn. And since sometimes they do, they’re always expecting to hear that as the news.
“Now my sister can’t even believe I shop at a place owned by these people, she’d be scared. She believes what they tell her on the TV, and I try explaining to her that it is not like that in the City.” And after some silence, since I am not really sure what to say, she turns her head away from me, then looks back and shrugs her shoulders, “well, thank god we don’t live in Tallahassee.”