Do You Have Work For Me?
Two weeks ago I went to Home Depot to buy a paint brush. It was a hot day. Well, hot by Seattle standards, which probably doesn’t qualify as hot to people who live outside the Pacific Northwest. I parked next to a small tree in the parking lot. When I came out of the store a nice looking guy in his early thirties was sitting near my car on the curb under the tree. He asked in Spanish if I had any work for him. I’ve been studying Spanish on and off for several years but my proficiency in the language is still pretty remedial. I can make myself understood but my sentences, as far as being grammatically correct, leave a lot to be desired. I’m going to say right now, this man never asked for money or for any kind of handout. He asked for work. I told him I was sorry, I didn’t have any work, which was true. He told me he was from Honduras and proceeded to proudly show me pictures of his mother and his daughter. I asked him where he was staying and he said he’d been sleeping under the nearby freeway overpass for two weeks but now “they” (I didn’t get what organization or friend that was) had found him a place to stay for the next week. “I’m so hungry,” he told me and I noticed he was holding the empty wrapper of a granola bar. I repeat, he never asked for money. Or anything, for that matter, except work. I don’t ordinarily carry cash but I looked in the car and discovered fifteen bucks. I offered it to him and he unexpectedly sat down on the curb, buried his face in his hands, and burst into tears. This isn’t behavior I normally expect from a Latino male and I didn’t know quite how to respond but my mom instinct kicked in and I bent down and hugged him. There’s a fast food restaurant on the other side of the parking lot and I went in and ordered a burger, fries, and a drink to go. I talked with the woman at the cash register. “I hope I’m not being inappropriate and racially profiling,” I said,” but I think I’ve heard some of the people who work here speaking Spanish. She smiled and told me in fact they all did. I told her the story of the man in the parking lot and she said, “Show him to me.” So I did. I handed him the fast food meal I had bought, at which point he cried again and said I couldn’t buy food for him. “Too late,” I told him. “I already paid for it.” He and the woman spoke rapid fire Spanish and when I turned to go he hugged me again. I cried when I got in my car but hoped I had helped as much as I could. I felt very entitled that I could go home to an actual home, had food to eat, a family nearby, and a place to sleep — although that night and for several more after that I didn’t sleep well.
