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A Vacuum, an Old Spanish Woman, and a Conversation I’ll Never Forget
If it walks like racism and talks like racism…
“Your house must look very dirty, then, Natalie?” Tía Pili said, turning the small nozzle attachment between knotted, arthritic fingers.
Conversation hummed as we dined on the patio outside — laughter, the clinking of cutlery, children decorating their napkins with pencil crayons.
Yet suddenly, I had been singled out; plucked from the easy rhythm of lunch and pushed under the microscope.
“Um… no, Tía Pili, not especially. Why do you say that?”
“Well,” she smiled, “because you’re Black.”
In the summer of 2014, I got invited to a tiny, rural village in Castilla-la-Mancha to celebrate a friend’s grandmother’s birthday.
María Pilar — affectionately known as “Tía Pili” — was turning 82, and the local community was throwing a barbecue to commemorate the occasion.
Given that there were only 120-something inhabitants to begin with, and nearly every one of them was a relative, it was essentially a family party with little old me thrown in.
Tía Pili was a formidable woman. What we call marchosa in Spanish — spirited and fun-loving.
