“If it weren’t for these fucking shoes…” Mila thought.
It was midafternoon. Julia had gone out, and Mila could not wait to slip out of the house to visit the kids from la quinta.
She ran out as fast as those shoes would let her, hideous black patent leather things with straps.
Midway down Talara Street, she could already hear the joyful racket. Boys from the homes inside the quinta were rushing about, in pursuit of whatever adventure occupied them that afternoon.
There had been no introductions. Mila walked that stretch of Talara Street often enough; it was her turf. One day, a couple of kids waved her in as she walked by.
That was that.
It soon became one of her regular stops. A couple of blocks farther along was a bodega, where most of the time all she could afford to do was look.
And between the bodega and the quinta, there was always the same fellow.
He’d emerge from a house through an enormous doorway, almost like a garage entrance, wearing a plain T-shirt, white or perhaps beige.
“When you turn twelve, ya hear? You’ll be my girl, you’d like that?” he’d call out from across the street, grinning.
He made a point of saying it a toda boca, as though making some grand announcement.
Mila had no idea what being somebody’s girl meant. She just thought the fellow was funny.
He never once crossed the street.
It was a different world at the quinta.
Mila felt welcomed, comfortable spending hours with people she barely knew, yet somehow felt looked after. Here she could simply enjoy herself among other children, running about, making noise, doing whatever children did when left to their own devices.
One of the mothers, a generously proportioned woman, would bring out enormous pitchers of Flavor Aid for everyone.
And there always seemed to be enough.
Mila couldn’t join in when the jump rope came out. Not in those dreadful dresses.
Julia had referred to the children of the quinta as gente de pueblo. The house on Salaverry, where Mila lived, was large and imposing.
And then there were the rosquitas.
An old man came by on warm, sunny afternoons, pedaling past with his white box, blowing a horn to announce his arrival.
“¡Rosquitaaas, rosquitas calientes!”
Whenever Mila had a few extra coins, she would nonchalantly approach the man and buy herself some of the little pastries, warm and fragrant.
She ate them on the spot, to avoid sharing.
Mila didn’t walk back to the big house on Salaverry until dusk.
