81 year old lady who lives in Bagtown. She’s short and has a really wide ass, wears pink pants and has a little hairy dog who makes her complain at. Doesn’t have a boyfriend, doesn’t want one. “they’re too self centered” She prefers the dog.
The first time I saw her was on the sidewalk. I walked up to her to say hello not knowing how she would react. To my surprise she was open to conversation. I mentioned her plants growing in front of her house looking for a topic. We could hear her dog yapping away from the window. “Oh be quiet” she yelled at him from the sidewalk, he didn’t care and kept barking. She showed me her tomato plants and I started to ask her questions. She is the first born of seventeen children. “I was a still born, doctor thought I was dead.” But she wanted to live and there she was…alive and old. She’s not lively in the way she moves, too fat. But her eyes make up for the body that traps her and when she laughs they light up full of life.
She lives in front of the Hotel. It’s a dingy place, often empty but it’s the only place in town to have a beer. Besides, it does have it’s moments, but most of the time it’s empty, with Tania, my friend who works there as the bartender. She just sits there on the front porch talking to the few customers and smokes cigarettes.
Pearl seems to like to talk so I asked her if I could come and visit her one day “yes, drop by any time” she went on to invite me to make pickles with her. A couple of days later I rang the doorbell, I could hear her yell “shut up!” to Tinker, her dog. She opened the door, smiled and said “Come on in” Inside her house was a poster that said ‘If I want your opinion, I’ll give it to you’ She started talking to me about some guy who works for the town. “I’ve got a cockroach down there” (meaning her storage room) she thinks he goes down there to snoop. “you mean Bobby?” “I call him asshole” she replied.
Pearl seemed pleased to have an apprentice in her kitchen and started giving me lessons; “that’s it with pickles, you gotta use your head”. It was the first one.
