My Life in Argentina and Beyond

The woman had found the pink Victoria’s Secret robe on the street. She had taken to her boss’s house and washed it along with the other dirty laundry. Now she was sitting in front of the old TV with the robe wrapped around her. Cinderella was dancing with the Prince. The Disney movie was one of her childhood favorites and she had remembered it with fondness all these years. Sometimes dreams do come true, she thought. Sometimes girls (and women) get what they want and nothing bad happens to them afterwards. She shrugged her shoulders. At least some women get good things. When Cinderella’s stepmother broke the glass slipper, the woman cheered as Cinderella took the other slipper out of her apron pocket. She is no wishy washy heroine. The words were spoken out loud to her cat.

Saturday, August 8, 2009: She was standing on the corner of Broadway and Havemeyer in Williamsburgh, Brooklyn--right by the bus terminal. The woman had her light hair up in a knot. She was wiping her face and neck with a small white cloth. She was wearing two or three black garbage bags, the kind the sanitation dept. uses. I called 311, but the screeching noise of the nearby subway made it difficult for me to talk to the person on the other end. Can anyone do something for her? I asked.

Sex is not love but sex and love (between a man and a woman, for instance) often go together. When you are in love, you want to touch and feel the person you love. You usually do not want to admire one another from afar. Eugenia Renskoff

Last night the Italian woman, better known as the star tenant on the 5th floor nearly lost it. I was in the bathroom doing my business and I had turned on the faucet to let her know someone was in there. But that wasn’t enough for her—she came into the bathroom without knocking when I seated on the toilet. I got angry and told her to be polite, but it didn’t help much. Then, the guy next door’s girlfriend was in the bathroom cleaning something up. The Italian woman and I were waiting outside the bathroom and she knocked on the door (something she hadn’t done for me). When the girl apologized the Italian woman told her to use Nina’s bathroom. I think the guy and his girlfriend sublet their space from one of the other tenants on the floor but the bathroom is inside the tenant’s apt.-like setting. The guy started to say something about his being a plumber and offering to make a sink in the Italian woman’s other bathroom space (the one that she uses with her friend and co-tenant). The Italian woman looked daggers and told him in a very high tone of voice that her rent had just being raised and that her bathroom usage was still restricted. I looked at the guy (who seems a very nice person) and he understood that this is a very touchy subject for the Italian woman (and I can fully understand why). I told him who he should talk to if he really wants to build this other sink. Nobody likes not to have their very own bathroom. Her actions were still very rude and if I had opened the door while she was in the bathroom, she would have filed a complaint against me.