A Small Bag of Red Berries
When a bag of fruit becomes the center of the universe
Today, I was sitting in Mesa Grande, the cafe I most love to frequent in San Miguel de Allende, when I noticed an old, weathered woman entering the place. Dark-skinned, wrinkled, and small, she was moving very slowly across the room, more like shuffling than walking, stopping at each table and attempting to sell whatever it was she was carrying in her gnarled left hand.
Averting my eyes, I felt myself withdrawing, not wanting to encounter yet another beggar of the day needing something else to survive, but she kept coming, pausing now and then to rest.
When she finally made it to my table, all she did was stand. That’s it. Stand. She said nothing. She did nothing. She just stood there, holding, in her hand, what appeared to be a bag of small red berries. I continued pretending to be busy, looking down, not wanting to be yet another refusal she would get that day, hoping she would leave, but she did not — now the still, sudden tribal center of the room.
Unable to ignore her presence any longer, I slowly raised my head, then looked into her eyes. She held my gaze. Like a flower. Like the way a baby, without guile, looks at a stranger. Gently, she shook her bag of berries, explaining without a single word that she was not a beggar…
