Salt Fish, Polyester, Y El Numero Dos

Yay!! The wireless internet is working!! I was upset because the laptop was connecting to a wireless network but not letting me access the internet so I screwed around looking at Jessi's "My Pictures" (which by the way has a picture of Ed in drag playing an inflatable guitar) and when I was finished it was working again. Today I woke up three hours after I intended to but that's okay (really, it's not) because I still got done what I planned to get done (although if I had woken up on time I could have gotten 3 hours worth more of work done). My Uncle Raymond dropped me off at my grandmothers and I interviewed her for 2 hours. In this span of time I learned scores of information that I hadn't known about before. For one, even after Danish rule in St. Croix a great deal of land was still owned by the Danes and most poorer African Americans participated in the Cruzian equivalent of share cropping. I also learned (among other things) that I had an uncle named Vernon who died when he was just a week old because his heart only had 2 chambers. This made me sad, it seems that so much could have been prevented if medical attention was readily available to the poor. My grandma and my grandfather also didn't realize that they had sickle cell until She moved to New York and my aunt got really sick, it was then that they found out that everyone in the family had this disease that seriously affected every third child (which is two out of their 5 living children).
After the interview I stayed around for a little and looked through old photo albums. Although I have been denying it all of these years I now have to cave in and admit that yes, I do look just like my mother, its kind of eerie actually. I love photo albums and peeking into the past. I really want to copy all of the pictures and have my own set (ode to the 1970's from which most of the pictures in the photo album dated back to) but I have neither the time nor the resources for that. Among the dorky pictures of pubescent hair mishaps, poyester mini skirts, glamor shots and photo booth still frames was a really depressing family portrait of my grandma and her children all looking glum during their mourning period after my grandfathers went "missing". Everyone is sad and isolated looking(despite this being a family portrait) and my uncle (the youngest and only,at that time, living boy) is even wearing one of those little pins that pilots give to children (my grandfather went missing after his plane went down somewhere between Puerto Rico and St. Croix, he's probably dead... but one always hopes). Why would anyone want documentation of such a bad time in their lives? The brain forgets bad things for a reason, why would you want to jog its memory with a picture of terribly depressing things? Maybe the photo helped them grieve in some way. Before I left my grandmother gave me a gourd. Apparently her grandmother (who she stayed with alot because her mother was always working) used to cook using gourds as bowls. I also tried fish for the first time. I've decided that from now on I'm going to try things before turning my nose up at them. I've never had fish before (except swordfish which tastes alot like chicken) because it smells like... fish (BTW if you didn't know this already I have a condition called "picky eating", it has a 1:3 recovery rate). Today I tried Salt Fish and Funji (which are staple foods in St. Croix) Salt fish is just a kind of Fish with a sauce on it but Funji is mashed up okrah and cornmeal. The Salt Fish didn't taste too bad and I wouldn't be too adamently opposed to having some again and the Funji didn't have too much of a taste, it's kind of like rice, it takes on the taste of whatever you're preparing with it.
Anyway It was late and I needed to be getting back to my Aunts so I (and my grandma) took the bus. I felt really bad, my grandma is pushing eighty and has a bad hip but according to her she could smell my fear (of trying to find my way to the bus stops and transfers in the middle of the night) so she insisted on coming with me (much to my relief). I stopped by a family friend Mrs. Mercer and said hi. There was a really embarrassing point in our brief conversation when she said "And you are...", and I having encountered this question before in relation to my year in high school answered, "graduating this year". Mrs Mercer looked at me for a while and that's when my grandma intervened ans said "Jordan, Virginia's daughter". I was really embarrassed but luckily there were only three people present for the incident. On the street it was late and everything was closed we caught the 41 and then the 25 (my grandma lives in the Bronx and my aunt lives in Yonkers).
While we were on the bus spanish speaking lady and her young daughter boarded, they spoke no English (past the number 2). First she tried to pay the fare in dollars which aren't accepted, only coins. So the friendly passengers collected 2 dollars between them. Then she wasn't sure of her stop, so a game of charades was played in order to communicate with her. Eventually she got off 2 stops before the line ended right outside of her house (we had guessed that she was waiting until the end of the line and then transfering to the number uno bus... I guess her team wins) I'm glad that she got where she needed to go, it must be hard living in a country whose native language you don't speak. That's what I love about New York, there's such a mixture of people and personalities. I think I might move here some day.

Until next time...