Memoir: El Negrito y La Niña, Part 2

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Missed part one? Read it!

© 2001-2002 R.C. Barajas

Part 2

This is the second in a 3 part series.

eeks went by. My Spanish was improving daily, thanks largely to a co-worker named Gertie, who not only showed endless patience with me, but who did me the honor of teaching me the current Bogotáno slang, as well as many rather off-color words and phrases. Squinting behind the smoke from her cigarettes, she would correct my use and pronunciation of these and nod in satisfaction when it all came together correctly.

But I still stumbled in my comprehension, especially when trying to understand fast-speaking clients, and I would blush with shame each time I brought out something from the back they had not asked to see. More than once, having caught the word "watch" in a rapid-fire sentence, I had dutifully trudged back out to the sales floor with a weighty tray of new Concords, Rolexes and Diors from the safe, only to be greeted by a puzzled stare, often turning to thinly disguised amusement from the customer as I realized they'd come not to purchase, but simply to pick up their watch that was in for repair. If Gertie was on the floor, she would try to preempt such moments, but she was often smoking in the back, and so I was left to squirm in my own embarrassment.

Saturdays were my best days, when, for a change, I worked harder than any of the others. That's when groups from the US Embassy would make their pilgrimage to the store. They earned additional hazard pay in dangerous, war-torn Colombia, and often came on the weekend to spend their dollars in a place they trusted and where there was always good coffee, someone to listen to their gossip, and an armed guard at the door. Some of them were calm, adventurous souls who made an attempt at the language, appreciated the culture, and took good advantage of their two year stint. But there were others -- the brazen ones who showed up in their casual weekend warm-up suits that they never sweated in, who gripped their dollars fiercely and wheedled extra discounts and sat in the soft leather chairs as if they owned the place. I enjoyed taking their money -- all of them -- but I particularly savored making a sale to the most objectionable of their kind, their excess cash positively dribbling down their fronts as they shrewdly scanned the trays of jewelry. Somehow, extracting their money helped me convince myself of my absolute separateness from them.

But most of the time I did not know where I belonged, either culturally or professionally. I felt the owners of the store had little idea of what to do with me. I was foreign, I was trained and educated, I had strong opinions about what I would and would not do, which was outside the realm of their experience with their niñas -- their girls, their saleswomen. When I expressed bafflement to Gertie about the use of the word "niña" to refer to all their female employees, she exhaled a long column of smoke, and shrugged at me with a non-comprehending smile -- "niña" was fine with her, as long as she was paid and well treated. I had hit a cultural rift.

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