One Beautiful Mess

I am finally feeling like this place is my home. Today I spent almost the entire day with my 10 year old neighbor – one of my best friends here. She’s so sweet. She always helps me clean and cook. She taught me how to cook rice correctly (since the last time I burnt it and thus am not prepared for marriage) and then we shared the arroz y habichuelas while listening to some 80’s music. Afterwards, I did some work while she played with Abbie. She loves to say “sit” and “shake” and watch Abbie obey. She likes to help me rearrange my stuff, loves helping me clean my house, and just likes my company in general, I think.

Anyway, at the end of the day, I was getting ready to leave for my English class that I give on Saturday nights, and I went to my dresser drawer to take out some money to buy a drink on the way there. My 500 pesos (which I had seen earlier in the day) was gone! Now there was only one person (other than me) in my house today so there was no doubt in my mind who had taken it… my sweet little vecina friend. I was so disturbed. Here I had invited this girl in my house (this wasn’t the first time either; this was probably the 20th time), fed her my food, shared with her my things, let her use my toiletries and paint her nails with my nail polish, fixed her a hair band to match my own, etc… and she had stolen from me! I was just so saddened by the thought of it. If I can’t trust one of my best friends here, who can I trust? And I was also upset because I knew this meant I would be at odds with one of my neighbors – someone who I like to have over and spend time with and that I wouldn’t be able to have her over ever again. It was just distressing.

I saw her mother on my way to class and told her about the 500 pesos I was missing. When I got to English class I was so disturbed that I didn’t feel like giving the lesson. I told the students (all single women who I consider my good friends) what happened, and we decided it was best to get it settled right away instead of waiting until after class. One of the women went with me to my house to sort things out. The father of the girl was outside of my house when we arrived and my friend asked if we could talk to his daughter. I had a feeling that we were going to have an argument with the mother and daughter and that it wasn’t going to get sorted out. When I heard this little girl coming up the path, I started to get nervous. I wasn’t sure what I was going to say or how to approach the subject. I was anxious to see the look on her face to see if I could read her and get a feel for the situation. As I was anticipating the worse, the sweetest little face, wet with tears, appeared on my doorstep with 500 pesos in her hands. She was so upset. I gave her a hug, as my friend praised her for doing the right thing and returning the money. The little girl shook as she tried to explain through her tears that she was scared that her mom was going to burn her hands. Yes, burn her hands! Her mother had threatened to put her hands on fire. I couldn´t believe it. I felt even worse. Can you imagine?

My friend, also a mother of 3, then went to speak to this girl’s mother to convince her not to punish her daughter physically, that already she had learned her lesson and that she felt bad enough about what she had done, that we’re all humans and we make errors, but at least the daughter was raised well enough to know that when she makes an error, she has to fix it. It was such a beautiful moment for me to hear my friend work her magic with her words and convince the very upset mother not to physically harm her daughter. She said, “Listen. I am a mother, too. We can’t mistreat our children. We have to teach them but not through hurting them. They need our love. Please promise me you won´t hurt her.” After about 10 minutes of pleading, the mother finally agreed to not burn her daughter´s hands. My friend looked at me, as she hugged the mother and daughter together and said, ¨These are my people, Tara. These are my people.¨ What I thought would be a terrible mess turned out to be a very touching moment. I will never forget it.