It's a Sunday and we are fiending for something sweet. No bake cookies it is but alas we have no butter. In the dark, I am sent to the house to the right. We've had dinner with them, I've watched soccer games with the husband, they've given Booker toys...good neighbors, to be sure.
But they aren't home.
I consider the next house to the right who I've never interacted with, but who seem like nice people. Something about a sizable group of women smoking on the porch keeps me walking.
I consider the third house to the right; a retired couple with a great lawn. Once, they offered to watch Booker after only a five-minute conversation with us. "We do it all the time" she said. It was a reluctant and silent "no" to that offer, but maybe they'd be good for some butter. Not home.
Next I spot one of the neighbors to the left, watering her lawn. We haven't associated with her and her family much up until tonight. We looked at their wares during a garage sale once. We've said "hi." They have weekly parties that make for some memories. Memories not so much from the revelers peeling out into the street in a drunken stupor, but the honest-to-goodness, straight-from-the-movies drinking songs that stop just short of them knocking their bottles out of the air with their six-shooters. At any given time the husband and associates are sitting in the dark, conversing. Tonight I gave them something else to chat about. This is how it played out, straight from Spanish II back in Senor Roling's class:
Me: Hi.
Neighbor woman who's watering grass in the light of the streetlamp: Hi.
Me: Do you have butter?
Neighbor woman: (Puzzled look)
Me: Um, tienes manteca?---Do you have butter?
Neighbor woman: (Puzzled look again, then ventures a guess) Margarina?
Me: Si, es como margarina. Hay margarina y hay otro...manteca. O mantequilla?---Yes, it is like margarine. There is margarine and there is the other--butter. Or how about mantequilla (also a word for butter)?
Neighbor woman: (Puzzled look again. A pause. Then in English:) Butter?
Me: Si, si.
Neighbor woman: (Goes inside and gets tub of butter)
Husband sitting in the dark with friend watching the whole thing: (Laughs)
Me: Gracias. (I flee back to the house with my bucket of manteca or mantequilla. Or butter as it
is apparently called south of the border.)
I like our neighborhood. Mucho.
3 comments:
nice neighborhood you have, mine is the loudest one, no shame!
im not sure but I think that manteca is lard, atleast thats how I remember the word as.
Manteqa is lard, I would like to have noisy neighbors like that , but at least they don't stay awake all througout the night with their (I imagine) awesome collection of songs I assume
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