Doña Eida, 84 years old, stands every day on the bridge at the entrance to downtown Escazú, from 6:00 a.m. until the first drop of rain falls. In one hand she holds kitchen cloths printed with vegetables, and in the other, a bag of mangoes. She places her plants on the ground and asks God for good sales.
Everyone who passes by to greet her calls her “grandma.” They hug her warmly, exchange a smile, and ask how she’s doing.
Her way of dressing is excessive: layers of hand-sewn fabrics, patterns, colors, flowers, socks, scarves, hats, bibs. All at once. All intertwined. A braid with a white ribbon. Soft hands inside a pink apron.
With a single greeting, her universe opens up, saturated with street stories, plant advice, and relationship wisdom.
Doña Eida marks the waning Tuesday on her calendar to cut plants, taking advantage of lunar magic. Before leaving work, she says goodbye to the security guard at the shopping center next to where she works. She cracks a few jokes and hugs him. He’s the one who calls her a taxi when the drizzle starts.
She returns her chair to the Fresh, crossing the street as she does every day, where the guards have nicknamed her “Perlita.” She puts two plants into a cloth bag, three mangoes into another, and the loose change she earned into her apron.
The entrance to her house is tangled with plants. What at first glance looks like overgrowth quickly turns into the most exquisite nursery. She starts pulling out onions, sweet potatoes, lilies, and plants that only she has, because everything “takes” with her.
Rue should be used for virtue, but kept far from envious people. Rosemary for abundance. A pink flower at the entrance.
Among children’s toys and hanging clothes rests an altar to the Virgin at the back of her house. Religious images, plastic flowers, photos of Jesus, sculptures of apostles, candles, and a green tablecloth with molasses candies and saints.
Her house was given to her, then it burned down, and later it was fixed. Some of her grandchildren live with her and others don’t. A neighbor reports her to her children if she goes out too early. Her children lock her in her room when she’s sick so she won’t go out to work. Because if they wake up too late, Doña Eida will already have escaped.
“I work because I want to. No one mistreats me. I joke around there, I entertain myself, I make a little money. If I stay here, I start thinking, things hurt, I can’t sleep.”
A woman who never stopped working. She sold cold coconut water, Swiss cookies, pupusas, mangoes, tamales. She worked for years at a nursing home, where they still keep a place for her, just in case she ever needs it.
But her real place is on the street, on her chair, on the bridge, every day, waiting for people to pass by so she can joke around.