The Old Woman

"She's pretty", said the woman standing at my side. We were watching an older lady make her way through things piled up at a flea market.

Pretty? I said to myself. And I wondered if there was something lost in translation. The woman speaking to me was Hispanic and I thought perhaps she couldn't think of the correct word.

The older woman was obviously of person of limited means. She was wearing an orange and brown print skirt that didn't at all match her too big yellow and green plaid blouse. The stringy brassy-blonde ends of her hair were neatly pinned against her head with bobby pins. The top half of her hair was gray. Her face was well-wrinkled and pocked. Her teeth were crooked. She picked up a pen and some other item that were marked with low prices.

"She's pretty", my new acquaintance, repeated.

I thought about it some more and thought maybe she didn't mean at all the outward appearance but rather than inward one.

I don't know if I understood her, but finally, I said, "I know what you mean."