“What baby?”

“Sherree’s little sister,” a small girl who’d been silent before spoke up. “She coughed and coughed, and Señora Mercedes took her to the hospital; that was when—”

“Shut up!” The big girl with the long braid smacked her. “I told you you could play with us if you kept quiet—well, here you are blabbing your big mouth off, same as always.”

“I am not!” The little one howled. “And Mommy says you have to look after me anyway.”

“Mina!” I cut in, not sure which one I was addressing. “Let’s go talk to your mother and leave these two to sort out their problem.”

A girl with short curly hair looked at me. During the discussion she had hovered on the edge of the group, an outsider with the in crowd.

“I guess you can come up.” She wasn’t enthusiastic. “But my mom’s afraid of dogs; you can’t bring your dog inside.”

Half a dozen shrill voices promised to look after Peppy, but I thought it would be more prudent to return her to the car. Even a beautifully mannered dog can turn fractious with strangers, and childish strangers also couldn’t control her if she decided to follow me—or chase a cat across the street.

Chapter 10: Found in Translation

10 Found in Translation

“My mom doesn’t speak much English,” Mina warned me as she took me inside.

“Neither did mine.” I followed her up the narrow stairs, where the smell of old grease and mold vividly brought back the tenements of my own childhood. “We spoke Italian together.”

“My mom only speaks Arabic. And a little English. So you’ll have to talk to me unless you know Arabic.” As we climbed the stairs she took a fringed scarf out of her jeans pocket and tied it around her curls.

Mina’s mother—Mrs. Attar to me—received me in a living room that I also knew from my childhood. I used to sit in places like this when my mother took me with her on social calls in the neighborhood: overstuffed furniture encased in plastic, a large television draped in a piece of weaving from the Old Country, a thicket of family photos on top.

Mrs. Attar was a plump, worried woman who kept her daughter planted firmly next to her. Even so, she insisted on offering me hospitality, in this case a cup of thick sweet tea. Hers might be a seat of poverty, but her manners sure beat those in Oak Brook.

I drank the tea gratefully: the heat outside became overwhelming in the overstuffed room. After thanking her for the tea, and admiring the weaving on the television, I broached my subject. I hoped Mina would do an accurate job with the translation.