So I’m at a client’s house the other day…
Innocently feeding her baby, minding my own business and also trying very much to mind the baby’s face and hands since, due to a lack of high chair, she was sitting in my lap.
Mom enthusiastically chopped a chicken into 40 pieces right in front of my sensitive little vegan face while ranting about how her husband is up to no good and oh how she should have married her ex-boyfriend instead.
She waved whole thighs with the skin and fat dangling from the bone in one hand and in the other, what looked like an axe, all while cooing nostalgically about prince charming and how she can’t believe she let that fish get away and he was so beautiful and sweet and gentle and caring and chivalrous and if only she had been allowed to keep any of the photos of him because …
“Jennifer you would just die, I mean really die, seeing how handsome he is” and… and … and…
Somewhere between the mashed bananas and having the baby barf rice cereal directly into my cleavage, my client is quite suddenly feeding the numbers of her calling card into the cordless and then yelling in Creole at some guy on speakerphone.
And then in French…
“REMEMBER?? The beautiful woman I told you that you would love? Yes! She’s here! I’ll pass her to you!”
At which point the telephone is wedged forcibly between my ear and my pablum smeared shoulder despite my best attempts at using the baby as a shield and backing myself into the corner behind the kitchen table.
“Allo? Allo!!?”
I quite reluctantly but politely engage in a rather laboured attempt at a superficial conversation with a complete stranger.
“I don’t understand what he’s saying… his accent is too thick. What’s his name? What’s your name?”
“Ehtlèh”
“What do you do exactly?”
“Vas tu m’envoyer des photos?”
“Oh I don’t know Aidlé, I’m not sure how my boyfriend would feel about that but thank you, that’s very sweet of…”
“Photos? T’es belle oui?”
“What? Eidleigh? Sorry what? The line is really bad and ”
“Veut tu me rencontrer? Viens tu à Haïti?”
“Oh.. I’m not sure about that. I don’t even know how to say your name you know and…”
“I speak eeglish”
“Oh my god so cute Aydlai, seriously. Cutest accent ever but I’m going to pass you back to your ex now okay?”
My client wipes her chicken fingers off and takes the phone from me, promising Heidlaigh that she’ll give me his cell number and that I’ll be sure to text him many beautiful photographs of myself.
Half an hour later, when I am leaving her house she reminds me not to forget her ex’s # and pushes a piece of paper at me. And just as I am about to protest I read the name written above the number
Because these things really do happen to me. They really honestly do.