In the Middle of the Night...I Go Walking in My Sleep...

This morning I am awakened at 3:41 by the sound of my roommate sobbing. Rubbing the sleep from my eyes. I fumble for my glasses on the lampstand and shove my feet into my waiting slippers. As I shuffle clumsily to the door, I realize through my sleep-induced metal fog that the sobbing is not getting louder. About the same time a female voice began speaking in Spanish.

My roommates do not speak Spanish.

Confused, I stop and listen. I'm a bit more awake by now and I realize someone, or rather two someones, are having an emotional discussion in the parking garage of my apartment building. I look out my window and see a woman and a man sitting on the cement ledge, two stories below my window.

Sigh. Well, she's obviously upset, I tell myself unnecessarily. Maybe they're just on their way into their own apartment.

I lay back down, close my eyes, and will myself to go back to sleep. I listen to the sounds of their speech; his deep voice, an indiscernible bass, obviously trying to soothe. Her higher tones, obviously not being soothed.

I begin to rehearse in my mind how to say, "Miss, please. We would like to sleep. It is very early." I even practice the whiny voice (aforementioned in this blog) that will make me sound minuscully less like a gringa and more like I might have some grasp of the language.

I decide I'm ready. And I wait. Maybe they'll finish and go away. Alas. Even the most confrontational among us have these hesitations.

"What if something really terrible just happened?" I argue with myself. "Not like she broke up with her boyfriend [in truth, my first guess] but like someone died or just just got mugged in the street or she lost her job? Am I really so heartless as to interrupt this conversation?

I decide to let it run its course.

Fifteen minutes later, my practical side wins out over my compassionate side. I'm very awake by now. "Don't these people have an apartment? Or at least, go outside. People are trying to sleep here, after all. Maybe they don't even realize that others can hear them."

It's this false sense of civic duty that finally wins the battle. They deserve to know they can be heard, and we (the people in the bedrooms above and below me) deserve for them to be told. What this distraught couple DOES with their newly acquired information is up to them.

And so, waiting for the next swell of volume in the drama below, I stick my head out the window and say in my best sing-songy whine, "Senorita, por favor! Queremos dormir..."

I have forgotten in the moment the line about it being early. But I think the rest went well. It's too dark to see the woman's face, but I can tell she's looking up at me when she says in English, "I'm sorry."

Slightly disgruntled at the backhanded insult of replying to my Spanish with English, I settled back down into my bed. I console myself with the thought that, perhaps if nothing else, this poor woman will get a bit of joy from giggling at my poor Spanish. And I snuggle down to go back to sleep.

But I cannot. Sadly, I am wide awake by this point in my mid-night drama and hence, I sit at my dining room table, posting a blog at 4:42 on a Saturday morning. All is quiet in my apartment save the hum of the refrigerator and the far-off noise of someone's dog barking. The lights in the city are less pretty at this hour. They all seem orangey and worn out, like they know morning is coming and so have ceased to give their full effort.

I think about my life here. Sleepless four AM is a good time for pondering. How strange it seems that I live in South America. How much I love it and miss home at the same time. My love/hate relationship with all cities I've experienced. My summer trip home and all the people I'll get to see. Next year, how I want to change and improve my classes. My students, the funny things they did this week and what I need to teach them next week. My family, warm in their beds in chilly Ohio.

Birds are starting to chirp, which is my cue. I'm going back to bed. The plan is to read until I get sleepy. I'm in the middle of my second reading of The Lord of the Rings trilogy by J. R. R. Tolkien. And it's Saturday, so I can sleep until I wake up.

Or am awaken by another mid-night crisis. :)