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Miss Noemi 4.12.98
I haven't mentioned this but the house on the side of us that is not a burnt shell of a pre-Civil War two story structure, is a one story four-plex in which resides one 87 year old white woman. Mrs. Noemi Rodriguez has lived next door to this house for over 40 years. Her people and an occasional nurse look in on her from time to time but essentially she is
alone. Sometimes I selfishly worry what things will be like next door when Miss Noemi dies and the four-plex next door, instead of housing one frail and very quiet old woman, might become the habitat of 12-20 new and exciting Dumaine players.
I have not seen Miss Noemi in her back yard picking bay leaves from her tree in over a year. On Mondays and Thursdays she will begin the momentous trek from her raised porch to the sidewalk to put out her one very small bag of
trash. More often than not she will be intercepted by Shelton who will accept the quarter she keeps in the pocket of her worn house dress and puts the trash by the street so that Miss Noemi does not have to leave the confines of her
fenced property.
I was frightened of her at first, assuming that anyone whose body formed so many right angles to itself, must be in severe pain, and therefore must be mean, and cranky, and cantankerous. I was in my postage stamp back yard one
day pulling weeds and Miss Noemi came out to pick leaves for a soup. I had never really seen her face because her torso bends at the waist and head at neck so that her face is always at the ground or into her own bosom.
So when she straightened up that day, first from the waist, and then the neck, to greet me with the most gleefully youthful smile, I was once again confronted with that annoying sensation of feeling that everything I know and
everything I think, is wrong.
I was relieved when last week the ambulance left out of here without Miss Noemi.