Ercelia is maybe the most impressive woman I’ve met, one of the only women who emotes the same rusty nail wound tending, jagged splinter pulling, eternally empathizing, soft, hard, gritty, mother love that defined my childhood. She reminds of my mother and all of her sisters, the girls engrained with iron sinew, cultivated with the callous hands of WWII military parents- not that Grammy and Grandpy were severe but they demanded a work ethic- illuminated with the precious idea of the sixties, the doors open policy to love and thought. Her dark pony tail hung nearly half way down her stout frame, not quite as long as my aunt’s, but close. Silver caps run along the edges of two or three of her teeth. Her skin is darker on the folds of her cheek bones, where the sun’s light has shimmered her smile for nearly sixty years.
As I began the interview she pulled another wicker chair just across from my own. We sat in the front most room. The brute gray cinder-block house is built like a railway car, the rooms all extending down in a line. It made for an interesting depth of color and light as the backdrop for our interview. Our space glowed mellow with the dropping sun of the late afternoon as Ercelia massaged the small leg of the little girl draped on the couch, sucking her thumb to dreamland. Behind Ercelia the enormous blackened pots and smoke stained walls of the kitchen loomed in shadow, and out beyond the kitchen the verdant green of the banana trees’ wide palms glowed through the door-less open porthole of the furthest room.
We began as I always do, “full name? nick name? address? How many people live in this house?”
Ercelica smiled at this last question. “Eleven,” she told me.
She is caring for nine, not all her own, but all hers. Three weeks ago she cared for seven, but she works at a school that provides food and care for children whose parents aren’t capable, and on a recent school vacation two of the students didn’t have parents to go home to, so she took them in.
We had a moment as my mind changed form, abandoning interview mode for something suppler. Peace Corps asks that within the first three months of service volunteers interview every household in their community, or at least 100 households if in a larger community. As I’ve worked towards this goal I’ve developed a sort of interview swagger, a way of conversing that allows for meaningful deviation from the interview at times while directing the general flow towards the target questions that I wrote. But as starry eyed Ercelia explained to me that the little girl lying on the couch next to me is sick from an infected tooth the swagger went out the window. Her husband has a warm soul and tends to the mixed crop of fruiting trees in their backyard to provide baseline nutrition for the house, but he’s been out of work for years. She accounted the various side projects that she has taken on to support the day to day. One of her projects is a stand where she sells fried cornmeal sandwiches called arepa. I lit up and explained that the waterfall-side food stand I’m working on would seem a perfect local for her to sell her cooking. The little girl started to rustle on the couch; Ercelia rubbed the girls feet and she started to suck placidly again. “This is what I’ve been looking for,” she said. “I tell God that I need something,” she said. Still with her hopeful smile, she gestured around the house with her eyes, pointing out the two boys running into their room from outside –baseball bat in hand— as their father yelled after them to put their shirts back on, the draped curtains hanging where doors should, and the charred wall that backdrops the wood burning cook stove. “What I’m trying to say is,” she began, but I stopped her. “I understand,” I told her with a smile. “I understand, you’re looking for a little bit of help.”
“Thank you,” she said.
I understand that things like a child’s infected tooth are not easy to deal with when you live in a cinder block house in a disenfranchised rustic community, especially when that child is one of nine.
As we came to the latter part of the interview Ercelia’s husband sat down beside us. I asked about the agricultural practices they employ and they joyously grabbed me by the hand and lead me into the backyard. Beans, plantains, avocados, and mangos dangled around me in all dimensions. Ercelia grinned proudly as her husband gave me leaves to smell and taught me the names of many tropical fruits that I had never seen before.
As we wrapped up the interview I gave Ercelia a kiss on the cheek, the customary greeting and goodbye between friends in the DR.