QUIZÁS OR IN UTAH, WE YEARN
By Sylvia Torti
Javier and I are in the garden. He’s on his knees fixing the sprinkler. I’m swinging a net, trying to catch a bumblebee, trying to identify which one of Utah’s one thousand species she might be. I am not very good at bee identification.
Given the time he spends here, I’d say Javier isn’t very good at sprinklers either. I don’t care. He connects me to Latin America and Utah in different ways. We talk in Spanish about family, food, life. We yearn for other places. He wants to ask me out.
No me gustó, he says about the last guy. Me neither, I say.
Eras una loca, he says. He’s referring to the bees and the fact that I date gringos.
Quizás, I say.
Sylvia Torti is an ecologist and writer who has called Utah home since 1993. She is the author of two novels, as well as many essays and short stories. She is keenly aware of the two communities in Utah — the Anglo and the Latinx community that “serves” — in restaurant kitchens, house cleaning, roofing, yard work and construction.