maybe because mother starved me with stories - i never remember her reading me a bedtime tale -that i latched on to the few morsels i was able to eke out from her. but this, much as i would love to believe, i somehow found it hard to swallow.
mama used to tell me that i was - how to tell this without blushing? - a very charismatic boy. not only to the easy to please tottering pregnant women in our neighborhood but to the more stable, four legged creatures. livestock raised by our neighbors, according to my mother, were somehow drawn to me, as well, when i was yet a boy.
this is how i remember mama's story. one day, when i was yet in my terrible two's, we were invited to a wedding reception in our block. nothing entrancing there. until such time that we were to leave.
that time, the bride's household had a lactating sow. rambunctious twelve litter. as we left, mama claimed that three of the sow's piebald piglets followed me home.
despite her attempts to shoo them back to their mother's sty, the seemingly crazed piglets wouldn’t budge. the three trailed me home and then resolutely milled around my scabby legs until our neighbor, forsaking for a moment their guests, had to come and pick up the straying shoats. according to mama, the shrieks of the piglets were heard throughout the neighborhood as they were towed back to their mother's fold.
as temperature cranks up to my liking, cafés in my bronx neighborhood have started laying out again their outdoor seating. this morning, trying to take advantage of the weather, i decided to chuck my trusty greasy diner in favor of this uppity café. espresso al fresco beats watered down coffee on a greasy counter top roundly in spring.
into my second demitasse, a stunning young woman, wearing only the flimsiest of cardigan with her beat up denims, took the table to my right. as soon as she took her seat, i could sense a palpable whiff of something i could not explain, of energy, perhaps, permeating the al fresco area. and it's not the espresso talking.
the waitress, without being hailed, quickly scurried to the woman's table. and just like that, this surly waitress, the one who just dumped the menus in my table and that of the two guys across me earlier, was now overly solicitous with her.
and as i tried to get the attention of the waitress for my bill, i felt this remorse, slightly perhaps, but it was there. this for not believing easily my mama's story.
as i left the café, browbeating myself for leaving an incommensurate tip for the lousy service, i had this feeling that any minute soon, the pigeons battling for bread crumbs in the nearby bakery would soon swarm at the feet of the woman who, i was convinced, could charm almost anybody.