“Do you know how bad you look if you cut down a tree?”
“You just can’t.”
“When we all moved in here Bai Stefan, rest in peace, would take all the kids –
OOOoo we had so many kids! You wouldn’t believe it, all of us the big apartments had 2 kids!”
“Thats 2 kids by 6 floors, there were 12 kids!”
“Bai Stefan, he was a teacher, but he was retired.”
“And he would take the kids around and they planted all the trees.
Such a good thing for the children to do. Oh he just loved the children.
and they loved him back.”
“They didn’t realized how thick it would get!”
“These trees have already made it to your aunt Pepa’s apartment on the fourth floor,”
“They’re almost to your big brother Tosho’s apartment on the fifth floor, and soon enough, Babo, they will reach me on the 6th floor!”
“ooooo yes,” Aunt Pepa chimes in.
“It’s a Jungle. I’ve wanted to get rid of it for so long. I can’t do anything without a lamp during the day. Can you imagine?! A lamp!”
She shakes her head and slowly gets up off the bench in front of the entry with me and Baba Maria as the homemade rakiya she sets on an upside down bucket near the bus stop every evening has grabbed a passersby’s attention.
one of these days… she trails off to make her sale.