'Bertha', photo by Lee Merrill Byrd

            With my eyes I can see Bertha pull out in her truck minutes later, she and her daughter Nancy in the cab, Arturo and Bobby and Reuben each sitting up in a corner of the truck bed, looking like kings. Where is she taking them? I'd like to run out and ask in English. Actually I'd like to ask in Spanish and have them understand me, but would they trust me enough to say, "We're going to the Juicy Pig Bar & Grill. Or we're going to the Jokers Pub and Bertha is taking us because she doesn't want us to get in a car wreck. She'll wait outside with her daughter Nancy until we've had a few quick ones and then she'll carry us home." Or maybe she won't wait outside, too modern a woman and doesn't want Nancy to get the wrong idea. She'll drive home and wait for them or the cops to call. That way she can watch the telenovela, fall asleep on the couch until she hears the phone. Then drive back and bring the three men home.

            It's for these reasons I'd like to speak Spanish. I'd like to know all the little remarks that go to make up a history, a history that culminates in three drunk men being driven off by one of their wives so they can continue to drink. I'd like to know the thoughts that go on in Bertha's head, surely only Spanish thoughts, that make her see this as a reasonable option.

            I'd like to learn Spanish so that I can listen in and joke with and become friends with the new lady who Bertha has invited to live in her basement, the lady who is Reuben's girlfriend (Reuben, the father of Samantha across the street), whose family has thrown her out because who knows? The reason must be in Spanish. I only get the English version, the crumbs thrown to the dogs. Reuben too has been thrown out of his house, for reasons best understood in Spanish, but maybe it is this common theme, the being thrown out, that has knit him, not such a good catch, with this new lady who lives in the basement, maybe not so good a catch herself. I want to know more about all of this. I want to learn Spanish so I can know why Bertha, after all these years of misplaced generosity and kindness, after having taken in so many strays, people and animals and being so indulgent with her drunk husband, has three daughters who can't seem to get anywhere in the world, who struggle and struggle, pushing Spanish baggage uphill like Sisyphus, always tumbling down and back just a little further than when they first started.

            I want to know Spanish so I can patch together all my English-speaking moments with the glue of Spanish insight.

            I want to know Spanish so I can know what those kids are yelling to each other as they come bursting out from Louisiana Street, only momentarily crossing Louisville and my field of vision, filled with information as if from another world.

            I want to learn Spanish so I can be the lead singer in a mariachi band.

            I want to learn Spanish so I can find out why Estella Macias says the Mexican family living next to her on the left is irresponsible. My English eyes see a perfectly nice husband and wife with four children. The husband plays with his kids. The wife walks with the baby. Everything is out in the open. But Estella with her Spanish-hearing ears knows that they are irresponsible and someone else seems to know too because a lady comes to our house from the Child Protection Agency. She has got the word, probably in Spanish, that they are not taking care of their children.

            I want to know Spanish so I can see what the people on the other hand side of Estella are singing in their loud high-pitched voices as I pass by their house on Wednesday night. It's a church meeting, that much I can figure even in English and I know that because it's Wednesday and every church in every country meets on Wednesday, verdad? But what they're singing I can't be sure though I hear the name of Jesus. Would I trust them if I knew Spanish? Would I be able to understand why they have 13 people living in their house, at least half in their basement; why they let the grass the former owners had so nicely developed go to dirt and why every so often the mother is out in the front very early in the morning watering that dirt with the same intensity and desire my husband uses to water our grass? Is that something to understand in Spanish? Does grass only speak English? Dirt only Spanish? Or vice versa?

            I want to know Spanish because I'm tired of living in the present tense, forever lost in the here and now. I am Lee. I clean. I go. I make. I buy. But I can never seem to clock in

'Arturo', photo by Lee Merrill Byrd

Spanish the things that happened to me ten minutes ago. For yesterday, I have only my thumb jerked over my shoulder (for tomorrow a bony finger stretched out in front) to indicate that I cannot fathom or memorize the endings of verbs that speak of past and future time.

            I want to know Spanish so I can understand what the people my husband and I pass in the park, the ones who are lying on a blanket and kissing, are saying as they come up for a breather: "Geez, she's skinny. Or him, what's on his leg? What's he wearing on his legs? Do you suppose he has varicose veins? What an old pair they are!"

            I want to learn Spanish so I can understand what those two ladies I pass in the morning say, old ladies (like myself), who drift into each other as they talk, bumping together, coming apart. They see me in the still early 6 a.m. dark. "Morning," I say. "What the heck does she mean by that?" they ask themselves. "Mrning. Is it a comment, a criticism? Why doesn't she just say buenas dias like normal people?"

            I want to learn Spanish so I can figure out what happened to Mr. Garcia and his wife Fannie who live in the crumbling house down on the corner. Why did their five kids never leave the house except to go to school? Why did they never answer the door? Why was Fannie thrust out and what was said by Mr. Garcia to make the kids decide to hate her so much that when I am asked to carry her all these many years later to the funeral of her middle daughter Bertina, now a grown woman though dead, Fannie and I sit in the back of the church, many rows away from her former husband and her children and her grandson, and when the children and the husband pass by us behind Bertina's casket, they will not look in Fannie's direction, though a hand darts out from one of her daughters--flesh of her own flesh!-- and throws a long-stemmed rose in Fannie's lap. I want to learn Spanish so I can figure out why the lot has fallen to me alone to drive her. Why not Esther? Or Norma or Bertha, ones who could provide comfort in a language she could understand? But no, Fannie wanted me who she hasn't seen in 20 years and Fannie only speaks Spanish and so I cannot offer her anything but an arm around her trembling shoulders and a squeeze on her elbow as the tears come pouring down from behind her dark glasses.