New Years with Old People

An old woman cares for an even older woman in the apartment across the hall from me. They are both ill; the old one physically, the even older one mentally. Sometimes they sit out on their balcony while I sit on mine and we say hello.

The caretaker is from Georgia (the country, not the state), and because Turkish is not her mother tongue I can understand her quite well. She has an unsightly mole on her chin but her apartment is always spotless. The Georgian televion station is playing whenever I've been over there.

I brought over a dish of Turkish delight (actually called lokma), the fancy kind that you can get at the malls and that feels more like a marshmellow than the traditonal gummy squares you can find at corner stores. It was New Years Day and I did not feel like interacting with anyone, much less make forced conversation with a neighbor I don't know very well. Sometimes I think its better if you push yourself in odd ways, as though mustering the courage to talk to a benign woman across the hall will make me braver in the long run.

I knocked on the door and presented the dish of lokma while saying Happy New Year in my best Turkish. I'm quite sure I seemed friendlier than I felt. She made me sit and brought me a dish of asure, a Turkish pudding that contains the kitchen sink: raisins, various types of nuts, rice, this one even had corn nibblets in it. I forced a bit and said how delicious it was. Then she told me the old woman whom she carried for was dead. Actually, what she said was she's finished. I did wondered if she didn't know the Turkish word for dead or she assumed I didn't know it. She'd told me the same thing the last time I'd ran into her. For a moment I wondered if the old woman had died twice, and then I thought that langauge plays funny tricks on your mind.

I don't really have much to say. She didn't have cancer, she told me. I don't have cancer either, I thought, but saying it aloud woulnd't be funny. I stared at her mole. She talks at me, not to me, but I don't mind. I try to listen but instead I mentally compare my apartment to hers.

I wonder if I've stayed long enough and eaten enough to leave, as if the size of my of my bites and the number minutes I sit will determine the quality of my visit. Just as I am about to say I have to get going our downstairs neighbor knocks on the door. She talks quickly and seems to get frustrated with me easily. She proceeds in asking me questions via our Georgian neighbor (we don't know each others names but for some reason I don't think it matters). During the conversation I usually nod my head, and respond with the Turkish expressions for "really?" and "you don't say?" I don't use yes or no for fear of affirming or negating something I'm not quite sure of.

The Georgian asks me how old I am, and my other neighbor holds up fingers. The Georgian asks me why I don't get married, and my other neighbor repeats the word married and makes a gesutre of rubbing her ring finger, as if I am deaf or mentally retarded. The other woman holds up the number of fingers. I think about all the times I must use numbers in Turkish: when I ask for copies at school, when I pay for my groceries. I wonder if I am half-retarded.

I laugh and say I don't know. She asks me how long the flight is from here to Chicago, and I say 11 hours. She's asked me this question three times before. I think I must seem really boring.

They ask if another teacher will come when I leave, and I say I think so, but I don't know who. I heard the last teacher who lived in my apartment could only say merhaba. She was an older woman, and her husband died in my apartment. The Georgian woman told me this the first time she had me over. Sometimes I think its better to pretend I don't understand.