From early morning until long after dark, she sits behind the cramped counter of La Colmenita, her tiny grocery store, listening to Spanish-language radio and chatting with customers. We have worked hard and survived. In the course of an afternoon, a dozen Latino workmen stop by for a six-pack and a couple of cheese pupusas.
Children count out pennies for chewing gum.
An old Salvadoran woman wheels in a cart, selling homemade atol, a sweet hot drink. Someone leaves a shoe box in the shop to collect donations for a crippled Guatemalan boy. But outside, the gritty sidewalk pageant never changes. Grizzled vagrants slump against the walls, arguing or panhandling. Young men hover around vendors' tables that blare competing salsa and merengue music.