GAILS IN HOUSTON
Big, sturdy, rather overweight, but nimble. Big smile, bigger than life, engulfs everything around it and leaves warmth and ease behind. Every movement of the head shakes up the load of dreads she is carrying. This is my shuttle driver from the airport to the hotel, who will make my stay in Houston unforgettable with her non-stop story telling, with her intelligence, with her southern warmth.
She will tell me she is originally from New Orleans. She will regret I won't see the true New Orleans when I get to go there some day. "It is all commercial nowadays." I hate it as much as she does. Commercialism washing away all the authenticity places and people have, how sad and how true. I already feel a connection with this woman. She studied psychology, pre-med and accounting. Don't know if all is true, but she must have studied something beyond high school, she is so different than other shuttle drivers I met in the last 14 years in America. Especially when she discovers I do child abuse prevention work, the questions she asks are evidence she is more than your steteotypical shuttle driver.
Her parents moved to California, which was the dream destination for every Louisianan at the time, perhaps still is. She was 16 when they moved back. A senior in high school, othered by "all the clans" that had long carved in stone in school, not only because she was the new kid on the block but also and more so because SHE was from California. "We were different, we spoke fast, we dressed different.", she hated it, in a year she was out. To where, she didn't say, I didn't ask, the flow of the monologue was so unique, so smooth, so uninterruptible... I just listened, took in everything she gave me, savored this, perhaps to be a once-in-a-life-time, for a migrant like me, experience till the last drop. I didn't ask much, she didn't need questions.
Her sister stayed, in the house where seven generations of her family lived and raised families. "Not big, a one bedroom house. My sister had the bed, my niece slept on the couch in the living room, and my nephew had the mattress on the floor. When my sister died, my niece moved to the bed and nephew to the couch. He will marry, will bring her bride to the couch and whatever they have will have the floor." I can't help but wonder if there still are any brides to accept the couch. Who knows perhaps there is. Perhaps violent capitalism still hasn't touched the remaining crumbs of African American folk culture in the depths of the south, yet. I hope the bride to come to that couch may find happiness without any resentment. It may be a bit difficult.
We are at the terminal, too bad, I did ask her whether her grandparents told her any stories when she was growing up and she did respond with an enthusiastic "Of course!" Alas we don't have any time, at least she doesn't. I give her my card, tell her my name, she reads my name with a perfect pronunciation. "French?" "No, name is probably Arabic in origin, but I am from Turkey." She tells me her name. "Gails", how pretty. She tells me she will write to me. We exchange smiles, I take her big smile and big heart with me, I wonder what she took with her from me.
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