The little Hispanic girl at the stationer's on Park Avenue South just now asked me my name, and repeated Tonio when I replied Tony. ¿Estranjero? Is he a foreigner? she asked her embarrassed mother, the proprietor, as I was leaving with the red pens I had bought for editing English but now used to delete the No, fué nacido aquí I had been about to say, to show that I too was a native.
From Voices of the City, edited by Rosamond King, Charles Russell, Marie Carter, and Robert Hershon. Copyright © 2004 by Tony Towles. Reprinted by permission of Hanging Loose Press. All rights reserved.