Free It Chooses You by Miranda July

sad-looking. They kind of look like they’re crying.
    I wondered if I was projecting. But Matilda nodded in agreement.
Matilda: They’re tender.
Miranda: And do you make decent money from selling them?
Matilda: Oh yeah.
Miranda: What kinds of people buy them?
Matilda: Well, most are American, Japanese... because Hispanics, you know — they don’t spend money on collections.
Miranda: Where are you from originally?
Matilda: Cuba. I’m from Cuba.
Miranda: When did you move to the US?
Matilda: In December 1971. I was fourteen.
Miranda: And what’s been the happiest time in your life so far?
Matilda: When I was living in my country.
Miranda: In Cuba?
Matilda: Yeah.
    Matilda showed me around her house. The garage had been converted into a bedroom. Converted isn’t really the right word — all of the furnishings of a bedroom had been moved in, but it still had the automatic door that rolled up, and a cement floor. This was the master bedroom, where Matilda and her husband slept.



Her brother and son were in the proper bedrooms. I poked my head into one of these rooms. An elaborate collage of women and babies was taped above a twin bed.
Miranda: Oh, that’s a nice collage.
Matilda: That’s my brother’s. He’s a single man, and he’s a mess.
Miranda: So these are just like —
Matilda: He collects different kinds of actresses, actresses and babies. He’s a single one. Maybe he’s dreaming.
    The collage was really the least of it. All over the floor were piles of manila envelopes filled with similar pictures and labeled PICTURES OF JAILS AND YOUNG GIRLS AND BABYS AND PICTURES OF LAPD CARS and INSIDE PICTURES OF LAPD SHERIFFS CARS AND NICE GIRLS AND PICTURES OF BABIES AND ALSO PICTURES OF A PRISON.
    In my lexicon of signs and symbols, obsessively organized pictures of Prisons, Babies, and Nice Girls are an indication that something of great consequence is afoot. Someone is doing something unnecessary for reasons that are mysterious to everyone. Matilda’s brother, Domingo, wasn’t home, and Matilda didn’t have much to say about him.



I went home and stared at the pictures of envelopes until my curiosity overwhelmed me. So I called back and made a date with Domingo for a few weeks later. He was waiting on the sidewalk when we drove up — large, gentle, and nervous. The collage on his bedroom wall had changed, but it was still in the “Nice Girls and Babies” genre. It seemed impolite to ask about the items in question before I knew anything about him, so I began with what I knew.
Miranda: Do you remember when you came over from Cuba, or were you too young?
Domingo: I don’t remember nothing from over there. The only thing I do remember is living upstairs. That’s all.
Miranda: How old were you?
Domingo: I was six years old. I came as my sister did also, and my aunt as well, as a Cuban refugee. We didn’t come here illegally — at that time we were allowed to come from Cuba over here, free, without having to run away from Cuba or anything like that. Basically we were here and then a couple years later we became residents and then citizens.
Miranda: What’s a normal day like for you?



Domingo: I get up like about eight or nine in the morning. Get dressed, get a bag that I usually use, and I go to the Taco Bell that’s right here on Carmenita and Telegraph. I get a free soda because I know everybody there and I’m a humble person. I have a good heart. I like to help people, so I have friends there that I met. I called the corporate offices and I told them, you know, how great they are. There’s a young girl that works there — she’s very nice. She’s African American, but she speaks Spanish. If you go there she’s going to give you a smile. I’ve told her and her boss, you know, I think she’s great, and I’m going to keep calling the corporate office to get her promoted. There’s no person that she doesn’t smile around, and, you know, good morning, good afternoon, goodbye when they leave. She