Private tutoring jobs have been the butter on our bread this year. Without them, our weeks of suffrance would have continued long into the school year. Most of my students have flown off to Europe for their summer vacations, however, leaving me a little stranded for the summer months. It was a lucky (or blessed) break that at just the last minute I was recommended to help a student in CE1 (the equivalent of 2nd grade) with her reading for the month of July. Her mom didn't appear to do any reflective calculating about my hourly fee and simply asked for the 'maximum of hours.'
So I have been spending my vacation learning the routes of the bakkas and the worro worros in order to get across town for the cheapest fare possible. Once I arrive deep in the middle of downtown, I walk along the narrow streets lined with small stores and tall buildings and reminisce about Manhattan.
The little girl lives on the 7th floor of a building so fancy it reminds me of a hotel. On the outside at least. Once inside, I make my way to the elevators and find the walls an ugly yellow and the elevator dim. In true Manhattan style, it doesn't seem to fit with what I imagine to be exhorborant rent fees.
The apartment hosts white walls and and a full view of the lagoon. It is majestic and I imagine watching a storm come in over the water. There is no real style in the apartment, but it is full of things. Every inch of the table is covered with dolls and accessories, small houses, brightly printed boxes, ribbons, horses. The running machine is home to more toys of imagination, horses, and a beautiful carriage fit for a snow queen.
She is an only child and when I ask her what she will do in the afternoon she spills stories of fantasy and pretend. We write books about her neighborhood and I learn that she has two friends who live in buildings close by. They picnic at the park across the street, enjoying the swings and slide together. But mostly, she is alone - waiting to take a trip to her home in Miami where she has a pony.
We've been making "Monster Words"- a fun activity reinforcing short vowel sounds and incorporating a bit of color and changeable monster body parts. She likes this activity the most. Sometimes I ask her to draw a picture of the words that are new to her. The most interesting was a pan. I asked her what she would cook in that pan and she added a picture of eggs and bread and at the last minute she threw in some calamari. Just a typical breakfast, when she's not having her favorite pancakes.
One morning after I arrived, she told me she'd been working on something for the monsters. She brought over a long piece of cardboard filled with line after line of squiggly waves. I immediately thought of my friend on the corner, cradling her notebook, thoughtfully filling it with similar squiggles.
I had initially imagined this to be a piece about their differences, these two girls who spend so much of their time quietly alone in pretend play. I thought I would notice one with elaborate toys, fancy ribbons and boxes of crayons and markers. I imagined a contrast to the other with her chipped plastic bowls filled with mud mixtures and wooden stirring spoon.
I thought I would write more about the girl in the tower sitting on her white couch with views of the bridge stretching across the lagoon behind her while her nanny hovers close by as she finishes her breakfast. The girl who draws pictures of herself with no hands because she doesn't seem to need them much.
Then I would describe the girl on the corner whose dresses hang off her skinny frame as she eats bread for breakfast perched on the cement step outside the salon. The dirt street stretches in front of her and sometimes she is aware of the passersby and other times she is so engrossed in her play she scarcely notices. There are days when she happily has a few babies on her lap or she is clutching the hand of a smiling friend. Most often she is alone. In the evenings, she sits on a wooden bench between her mom and the man who owns the store next door. Loud music from the boutique lends a festive ambiance.
I thought I would write more about those things, but when I looked at that cardboard, filled with careful scribbles, so neat and intent and obviously taking a good chunk of her time to make, all I could see was the sameness. Two girls surrounded by adults who love them, lost in the world of childhood. Two girls with the same wistful smile as they move their toys through an imaginary scene. Two girls who lovingly care for their playthings. The girl in the tower and the girl on the corner- two girls who take their pretending seriously.
