My first-grade neighbor, who travels to and from elementary school with us daily, has been wearing Burberry Brit the last two days. And not just a gentle little streak of it behind her ear, either—no, she’s got it full-force slathered onto her hands and neck, from the smell of it.
My youngest child’s pre-school teacher was the one who caught onto the smell. It’s a fragrance she loves. When all the children waltzed into the pre-school room one morning this week, as is our new custom in the mornings while making our first drop-off, her head whipped up and she said, “Who’s got on the Burberry Brit? I love that perfume. I used to have some, but I ran out.”
Clueless about the name of the scent, and only aware that it originated from our neighbor, I told the teacher what I knew. She and I speculated, briefly, on why a seven-year-old would be wearing this very expensive fragrance.
What the teacher doesn’t know is that the girl’s parents are recently-arrived Mexican immigrants, who do not read much in Spanish, or speak English much, and have taken jobs at area farms and McDonald’s over the last couple of years. They live in a third-floor apartment in a multi-family house on my street, in a neighborhood filled with such apartments, where I wonder if they can save anything beyond what they must spend on rent and food.
Lately, the girl had been telling me that they would probably have to move, because the rent was going up. They have been housing not just the girl and her mom and dad, but also her aunt, uncle and their baby-now-toddler son as well. Other kids in the family stayed in Mexico—several of them.
Today, I learned that they are going to stay in the apartment for now, but that the aunt and uncle will have to find another place to live. Something tells me that someone in the home must have a little extra spending money, at least if they’re buying Burberry Brit. But what do I know about expensive fragrances.