Quendi: "We laugh together."
They are dipping their fingers into the same plate, eating the same pupusa.
Shanell understands Spanish, but doesn't speak it. Quendi can speak Spanish and English. They giggle. They finish each other's sentences. They talk about the hottest music. They like bachata, salsa, merengue. And the song "Gasolina."
Mattie McLain, co-owner of Carrie's Foodmart and Deli, talks to Domingo Salazar, who has come to buy cigarettes. Miss Mattie is closing out, having rented the store to a woman from Central America.
(Juana Arias -- The Washington Post)
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"It's the bomb," Quendi says. "It's reggae, all in Spanish."
In the kitchen, her hands are wet as they press the corn flour into pupusas.
The door swings open. A black man in a blue pinstriped suit walks in. You think he must be a native of Washington, and wonder whether he even likes Salvadoran food. Then he says he is from Cuba: Pablo Sanchez, executive director of Salomon Zelaya Center, a transitional shelter for the homeless around the corner.
"Look at me," says Pablo, 53. "I'm black people who speak Spanish de Cuba."
Pablo came to the United States in 1980 during the Mariel boatlift, when Fidel Castro allowed Cubans to emigrate. More than 125,000 people left Cuba then, arriving here to be called "Marielitos," a label that came to mean the undesirables, because some were freed from prisons.
"I came in a very small motorboat. It was very dangerous," Pablo says. "I went to Miami, then to Washington. Because I had problem with English, I was homeless 12 years. Gracias, mi Dios, He gave me opportunity to open a program . . . for homeless."
Gloria, he says, is the mother of Columbia Heights, giving to those in need. She gives him three bananas and five oranges for his men.
Pablo walks back to his house. He complains that some newcomers -- gentrifiers -- want him to close. People in transition, their lives are confused and messy.
The pupusas are not perfectly round, but they are perfect.
The Grocery
Up 14th is the Clinic for the Hurting, where a pink sign proclaims "Jesus is Lord" and preaches Romans 10:9: "That if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved."
You try to open the door, but the door is locked. Perhaps the block has been saved. A sign warns no loitering. So you cross the street and enter the Morazan Grocery, which promises products from Latin America and the African Caribbean.
There is Fred Battle, trying to order lunch from a menu in Spanish: carne con arroz, frijoles, platanos. Battle, 39, took Spanish when he was a student at Roosevelt Senior High, a long time ago, but nothing stuck. All he can remember is hola.
He remembers when the soul food joint had a line out the door. He says every now and again he gets tired of too much fried food and wants baked chicken. This is the only place on the block, he says, that sells baked chicken.
He points. The woman behind the counter, with her long black hair tied under a scarf, smiles. She speaks no English and he speaks no Spanish. They talk with their hands. He points. She points. He grins. She smiles. He nods. "No, no rice," he says. She nods. No beans. She nods. She puts the chicken leg in the container.
Battle pays and leaves. All is understood.
The Barbershop
Two doors down from Gloria's, you look through the window of Gaines and Brown Barber Shop and turn the knob to go in, but the door is locked. You see two thick Bibles, the kind that kept the family tree, lying open in the big window.
Jerome Rivers, the last remaining of a trio of barbers, is inside waiting for a customer. He opens the door with a gracious smile, says he has a few minutes before his next appointment and explains the story of the Bibles at the door.
