Monday, December 22, 2003
PuddleCracker
It was dark December, 6:30 on a cloudy wet night. I was trudging from the main library to the Van Ness bus stops to get back home. I came to the corner of Polk Street, surrounded by beaux arts facades, dramatically uplit and triumphantly decorated for the holidays, and found four small figures at the corner. Four small female forms with dark hair, olive skin, sateen raincoats, rhinestone buckle pumps and tiny flouncy skirts. One wore a backpack with Hello Kitty on it.
They weren’t just girls, they were little girls. No more than seven years old - maybe a five and two sixes? And with them, their chaperone, a tiny woman, no taller than they were, perhaps in her thirties, with a woman’s face and a small child’s limbs, and dressed identically as her wards. They were going to see the Nutcracker, just a block down Hayes at the Ballet House; I could already see the columns bedecked with golden lights in the form of toy soldiers.
The four tiny figures all held hands at the corner in a chain, with the chaperone to one side. The girls were whispering in an excited hush about “Nutcracker” this and “dancers” that, until one noticed a big puddle in the gutter in front of them. “Puddle!,” she breathlessly informed her friends. “Puddle,” they murmurred back to her with approval.
The light changed and I stepped briskly out into the street. “Layani, DON’T!,” I heard the woman say sharply to one of her charges behind me. “...puddle,” Layani replied dolefully.
