Coping With Unequal Burden of <i> La Crisis</i>

Diego is stationed a few feet from the mall’s valet parking stand--where at the moment two Rolls-Royces and a Mercedes-Benz have garnered the show-off spots of honor--ringing his borrowed bell.

Diego never stops ringing the bell, although sometimes its tinkle wanes. This is because of Diego’s wrist, which can get tired from all the back and forth.

The bell and Diego’s red, flat-top cap and matching uniform let everybody know that he belongs to the Salvation Army, only he has trouble pronouncing those words.

He doesn’t speak English, aside from the “thank you” that he offers with a wide smile in return for donations to his little red kettle, which these days has a slotted lid in the hope of preventing theft.

In Spanish, though, Diego can talk up a storm.

The mall is busier than usual today. Sales have been advertised, workers are taking long lunches and people in general are better dressed than the weekend crowd. I’ve just come out of a men’s store, where I’d been in search of a gift for my dad.

They didn’t have what I was looking for--a shirt with a certain collar tab, in a certain fabric, with a certain look. Because of the man-who-has-everything syndrome, I have become a persnickety shopper. It’s the thought and the gift that counts.

The sales clerk understood. He gets a lot of my type around here.

Outside, Diego is ringing his bell in an even keel. His uniform fits him rather snugly. With a few accouterments, maybe he could play Santa. He has a round, jolly look. And you can tell by the rhythm of his bell that he can pump himself up.

“They pay me $5 an hour,” he says. “And I’m happy to have it. It’s eight hours a day, seasonal work. But I’ve been looking and looking, filling out applications. There’s nothing.

“Where do you work?” he asks.

I motion over there, at the newspaper. Yeah, Diego’s tried that, too. He can drive a truck, so he thought maybe he could deliver some newspapers. But there was nothing there.

Diego is from Honduras--a legal resident, he points out, thanks to his daughter, an American citizen. She brought him here five years ago after his butcher shop outside Tegucigalpa went bust.

He has four other grown children, and eight grandkids already. He just turned 60--and here I thought I was close at guessing 45. The fountain of youth must really be a pool of genes.

And to think, two eager sales clerks had just tried to sell me on “cells” at a cosmetics counter.

The clerks said that all of their Swiss employer’s patented products contain cells that rejuvenate the skin. They said I just had to try it, and then they brought out their best stuff and smoothed it on the back of my hand.

“And what kind of cells are in this?” I asked.

“Black sheep placenta,” one of them said.

“ Sheep placenta?”

“ Black sheep placenta,” she sniffed.

A small bottle costs $80. I passed. The Christmas season is becoming surreal.

Now Diego is saying “thank you” to a woman who has deposited $1 in his kettle. His bell is keeping time. “Thank you!” the woman comes back. She is young and beautiful, dressed to the nines.

On a day like today, Diego says, his kettle could end up with $90 at the end of his shift. That’s not bad, charity-wise, considering la crisis , he says.

The meaning of this crisis is understood--recession mostly, and everything that trickles down from that. People are feeling a little tight. “But there is the hope of Clinton,” Diego says with a shrug.

Diego has been out of work for a year. His wife works as a housekeeper. She has seven children back home in El Salvador to support. Diego had a good job at an auto-parts business, but then the company moved to the desert.

He turned down an offer to move with it. He thought, “No problem,” that he’d find more work. He rolls his eyes, shakes his head.

He got this job through his church. “I’m a Christian,” he says.

I’ve got to get back to the office. Diego tells me to go well and to have a Merry Christmas. You too, Diego, I say.

The valet parking stand is very busy now. A Jaguar comes, another Mercedes pulls away.

La crisis affects us all in different ways.