Through and around the shelves of shampoo and hair brushes filters the sound of voices. I am looking for simple brown rubber bands on a wall of scrunchies (they’re baaaack!), barrettes, and sparkly things. The voices, three or four talking over each other, are louder than they need to be, but not in argument. The conversation tumbles on itself, switching from English to Spanish and back again midsentence, never settling into either for more than a phrase or two. Someone’s having a PAR-teeee for an hijo, yes? From what I gather, it’s gonna be good. Bring your primos.
The New Mexico accent is a mestizo dream, all juggled vowels and willful cadence. It’s in an awful hurry to get it done manaña; it saunters at a dead run. The pace of the tongue matches the pace of driving, of paperwork, of any little thing you might do in a day–all following its own time signature. It embraces its own caricature; it’s a proud badge of place, a secret handshake, a line on a map. My Appalachian roots, my hillbilly tongue get it, even if my white skin and my Anglo name do not.
As much as the broken-open sky, the jagged Sandias sugar-coated with snow, and the unexpectedly riotous earth tones around me, this is one thing I have come to love about this place, and fiercely: a new color for an ear’s palate.
