taxista ii

[ stories from lisbon - april 22, 2014 ]

there was one taxi waiting outside of the expo area when we were looking to leave. we get in, we all greet him in portuguese except for my mother who says, "hi, how are you?" i hate that she speaks english here in portugal more often and with more confidence than she does in america. when we get into this cab i'm fed up - "when we are in america you insist on speaking portuguese and when we are in portugal you insist on speaking english, what point are you trying to make?" i suck my teeth. i've been doing that more frequently lately. i think maybe i associate sucking my teeth with internationalism. the taxi driver stares at me through pale blues eyes in the rear-view mirror and says, "it's okay, i speak english too." he held his stare a little too long and it made me realize that he had narrow cheekbones and wispy brown hair. i stare out of the window for the rest of the ride, trying not to catch those blue eyes again.

i listen to them talk. they talk about some university students who died by the water. he zooms through traffic, they talk about more tragedies, always ending each with, "it's such a tragedy." we are only going home so he isn't rushing for us, he's driving this taxi like a corvette, for his younger years, like a toast, or maybe like a tragedy.  he swerves and i look away from the window, catching his eyes in the rear-view mirror. the sunlight makes them more gray and i think of a cuban film i recently watched called una noche, where a young girl tells her hazel-eyed admirer to stop looking at her with those "assassin eyes."

they talk - another tragedy. but martina never lingers on sadness too long, so she makes a joke about a random black officer on the side of the road being her husband's grandson. of course my mother believes her joke to be true until we break with laughter. the taxi driver asks if her husband is dark-skinned. "and flat nosed," she replies, laughing. "like an angolan," she laughs some more. the taxi driver says no, angolan noses aren't as flat as those of people from guinea. martina laughs as he asks, "what about the cape verdeans?" she lifts her nose to the sky, "olhar - look, like mine," she smiles.

i stare out of the window, knowing that she dragged this on with this blue-eyed portuguese man as one of her sick jokes - her masked exposition of his ignorance. i felt his assassin eyes on me. he must've noticed that i wasn't amused. "my wife was blonde," he says as he gestures with his chin at a woman crossing the road, "...and dumb." they laugh. black jokes. blonde jokes. i stare out of the window.

"is she your daughter?" he asks martina. "my niece," she says. "geitosa, good looking," he says. "she's too young for you, you have any sons, any clear-eyed sons for her?" she laughs. "i do, but he's 21, so he must be too young for her," he says, stoically. "no, not too young!" martina and my mother shoot back simultaneously. "and she's american, eh, aammeerrriccaann," martina winks at him. "perfect," he says as i catch his eyes one last time before leaving the taxi. assassino, don't look at me with your pale eyes.