{i miss paper letters}

Laetitia lived at the dump on the edge of town.  She had many stories of how she’d come to exist under such trying circumstances, and would tell a different version to each person who asked.  She didn’t mind being asked, it was something of a game to her.  According to her, people had many histories; what did it matter which ones were true?  And anyway, how could it be proven or disproved?

Another game she liked to play was “Color of the Day”.  She could never understand the concept of a “favorite color”; how could a person choose one and stick to it?  She loved all the colors, even black, which many folks didn’t even consider a color.  Each day when she rose with the sun, she would exit her milk-jug igloo followed by her mangy little terrier and begin to forage.  Before beginning, though, she would ask the mutt affectionately deemed “Wiggins” what the color of the day was.  The dog would inevitably bark out an answer which she seemed to understand some how, and she would repeat whichever color had been chosen by the dog aloud.

What’s that, Wiggins?  Today is “Chartreuse”?

Off they’d go in search of anything that was identifiably yellowish-green that could be sold for scrap.  Due to obvious obstacles, some days the color would change around noon if not much had been garnered under that particular criteria.  Brown days were easy; white was most challenging.

One day I went to the dump in search of an article for the college paper where I’d managed to secure a spot on the “Human Interest” desk.  I had some ideas in mind: harmful effects of methane gas on neighborhood children, the violation of sanitation workers’ rights, you know, something heavy-hitting, fodder for a Pulitzer I don’t mind admitting.  That was the day I met Laetitia outside the context of her urban legend.  That day she had fallen from grace as a French fashion model and ended up in the dump as a result.  She showed me some tattered catalogues in her igloo; I politely refused the “tea” she offered me while extolling the virtues of burning trash for fuel.  We spent the afternoon chatting, but somehow after three and a half hours, I didn’t have much to iron out into a story.  I tried to catch her off guard in my growing desperation.

I turned to face her head on and asked her the real reason she had chosen to live in the dump.  It’s simple really, she replied, I trust in the trash.  It’s already been discarded so what does it have to prove to me?  For the first time in my life I was rendered speechless.