Lety Out Loud

by Angela Cervantes

  “If they can’t afford food for their pets, why do they have them?” one of the girls asked. Zoe was just about to answer when Hunter cut her off.

  “Because they love them, Jenna. Duh!” Hunter said. “Just because they don’t have money doesn’t mean they don’t have hearts.”

  “Chill out, Hunter.” Kennedy sighed. “Sheesh! She was just asking a question.”

  “A stupid question,” Hunter mumbled.

  “You’re stupid,” Jenna snapped. “I wasn’t saying they didn’t have hearts.”

  “Okay, there are no stupid questions,” Zoe said, rushing in to control the discussion, but Jenna, Kennedy, and Hunter were still mouthing off at one another. “And no one is stupid, okay?” Zoe said, raising her voice to get the three of them to stop. Lety felt sorry for Zoe and sat up straight to show she was paying attention. Brisa followed Lety’s example. Once the bickering back and forth stopped, Zoe started again.

  “Sometimes people’s lives change,” Zoe continued. Lety looked at Hunter. He had pulled his cap down over his eyes and was staring at his sketch. “People lose their jobs, divorce, or get sick, and all of sudden they struggle to feed their families, including their pets. Our Rescue Team helps identify these families. We supply them with food and access to veterinary care until the family is back on their feet. It’s rewarding to lend this type of support to our community.”

  Zoe scanned the room, as if checking to see if she had put out the fire. Jenna pouted. Hunter dipped down farther into his chair and under his baseball cap.

  Lety was unsure if now was a time to speak, but she wanted to thank Zoe. She’d always felt that the most important words she’d learned in English were thank you. Mrs. Camacho always said that you could tell a lot about a person by what words they want to learn in another language. In the third grade, Lety remembered a group of fifth-grade girls stopping her after recess and asking her how to say “ugly pig” and “go away” in Spanish. It was the only time that these girls had ever spoken to her. On the spot, Lety had decided instead to tell them that “ugly pig” was guapa and “go away” was sale bien. As they walked away and repeated the new Spanish words back and forth to one another, Lety wondered why they didn’t want to learn nice Spanish words or expressions. If they only wanted to say mean things in Spanish, then what did that say about their character or how they felt about Spanish speakers like her? By teaching them nice words, Lety felt like she had achieved a small victory.

  Zoe called on Lety.

  “Thank you for helping the families keep their pets,” Lety said.

  “You’re welcome,” she said with a smile.

  Lety wanted to say more. She wanted to tell her thank you for helping out families who were poor in cash, but not poor in love. She wanted to tell Zoe and the entire room that if her family had a dog, it would be the most loved animal in the world. Her father, she knew, would feed the dog before he fed himself. That’s how he was in Mexico with all the strays that roamed the streets. Her mom also loved animals. In Mexico, her paintings of stray dogs and cats were always bestsellers among European tourists. When she sold one, she gave the strays a tasty treat of a tamale or taco. Lety wanted to say all of this but hesitated, frozen silent by her doubts about whether she could express it correctly in front of the whole room.

  “We don’t want money to be a reason for a family to give up their pet,” Zoe said. “That solves nothing.”

  “That’s right,” Lety said, surprising herself. Brisa and Kennedy snorted and giggled at her outburst.

  “As long as you love them, that’s all that matters,” Hunter muttered from under his hat. A wave of shocked murmurs spread throughout the entire room. Was Hunter talking about love? Brisa passed Lety a look of pure shock.

  “Mr. Shruggy Llama has a corazón,” she whispered. Lety wasn’t shocked that Hunter had a heart. She had witnessed him talking about his dog, Gunner. She had heard his soft voice. She peered over at Hunter, and when she did, he caught her glance and smiled.

  “Ready to swoon?” Lety asked Kennedy and Brisa. Bandit’s profile was pinned up on the bulletin board in the reception area where the girls waited for their rides home.

  “Nice use of ‘infectious,’ ” Kennedy added. “How’s Lorca’s profile? Are you done with it?”

  “Almost,” Lety said. Kennedy seemed happy with that and waved good-bye as she rushed out to her mom’s car. Normally, the girls would go over to Kennedy’s house to swim, but Brisa’s mom was picking them up today and taking them to the grocery store. She was six months pregnant and craving a special Bolivian dish called picante de pollo. She wanted to make it for lunch. As Lety watched Kennedy jump into her mom’s white SUV, she spotted Hunter outside alone. He shifted from foot to foot, kept his head down and his hands tucked into his jeans pockets. She hoped Brisa’s mom would show up soon so that she could say bye to Hunter as they left, but as soon as she wished it, a tan car drove up.

  “Sorry I’m late, Hunter,” the woman called out from behind the wheel. Lety moved closer to the window to watch. Two little boys were in the backseat.

  “It’s okay, Grandma,” Hunter said, opening the passenger door. He was about to take a seat when she yelled out again.

  “Oh, Hunter! I left the gas thing open again.”

  “I got it.” Hunter exited the car to shut the gas cap. “It’s all set.” Lety watched as he got into the front passenger seat and his grandma grabbed his face and gave him a kiss on the cheek.

  “Thank you, baby,” she said. Just then, Brisa’s mother arrived, pulling up behind Hunter’s grandma’s car.

  Lety and Brisa quickly rushed out as the tan car drove away.

  “Surprise!” Eddie shouted as the girls got into the car. “Are you surprised to see me?”

  Lety shook her head. “No, I knew you were coming. I heard Mom on the phone with Mrs. Quispe this morning.”

  “I wasn’t surprised either, Eduardo,” Brisa said with a wink. “Did you see Mrs. Camacho today?”

  “I see her every day. She brought her guitar.”

  “You guys sang today? What songs?”

  “We sang ‘This Land Is Your Land,’ and a song called ‘Beautiful.’ ”

  “I want to sing songs,” Brisa said with a pout. “You’re so lucky.”

  “I know,” Eddie quipped.

  “But you get to play with cats, Brisa,” Lety said. “That’s fun.”

  “You’re right, but I miss Mrs. Camacho and her guitar. Sing me ‘Beautiful,’ Eduardo. ¡Por favor!”

  “Okay,” Eddie said before starting up the first verse in his small voice. After a few verses, Brisa’s mom smiled at him through the rearview mirror.

  “Tienes la voz de un ángel,” she said. Eddie blushed but continued singing. Lety was amazed at her fearless brother, who was happy to sing sappy songs about being beautiful.

  At the grocery store, while Brisa and her mom stopped at the pharmacy counter, Eddie and Lety looked at magazines in a nearby aisle. Eddie had just grabbed a magazine filled with word searches and crossword puzzles when a loud man’s voice made them jump. It was as if the voice was right behind them. Lety and Eddie looked around, but the angry voice was coming from somewhere else. That’s when it hit Lety that the voice was coming from the pharmacy area where Brisa and Mrs. Quispe were.

  “You’re in America!” the man’s harsh voice roared again. Lety peeked around the aisle toward the pharmacy. From the edge of the aisle, she saw a man in a red baseball cap, yelling behind Brisa and Brisa’s mom. Eddie peeked, too.

  “Who is he yelling at, Lety?”

  “I don’t know,” Lety said. She stepped out of the aisle. The man was hovering too close behind Brisa and her mom at the pharmacy counter. Their backs were to him as he yelled over them toward the pharmacist. Lety didn’t like the way it looked. She took a few steps closer but stopped once Brisa met her gaze. Brisa shook her head slowly at Lety in warning, as if saying “Stay where you are.” Lety stopped in her tracks.

&nbs
p; “Sir! You cannot yell at them that way. You need to —” said a woman’s voice from behind the pharmacy counter.

  “I’m speaking to you, too. You need to speak English,” the man said. “Why are you helping them in Spanish? This is America. You’re just encouraging them.”

  Lety hated the way he said “encouraging them.” He spit the words out of his mouth like something that tasted bad.

  “Sir! I’m going to have to call my manager if you don’t stop this,” the woman said. Brisa’s mom dabbed her eyes with a tissue. Brisa took her mom’s hand, but they stood and remained there as the man hovered behind them. Lety’s mind shot back to what Dr. Villalobos had told them about aggressive dogs. Be stiff. Rigid. Don’t make eye contact. She stared down at the eggshell-white tiled floor with the smoky-gray swirls. Eddie clutched Lety’s arm with moist hands.

  “Why is he yelling?” Eddie asked.

  “I don’t know,” Lety said. “He’s mad.”

  “About what?”

  Lety shushed her little brother. “Don’t make eye contact with him.”

  “If you don’t know English, learn it or go back to Mexico where you came from,” the man continued.

  Eddie suddenly raced toward the man.

  “You can’t talk to my friends like that!” Eddie yelled. “They’re from Bolivia. Not Mexico. And they’re learning English like me.”

  “Eddie!” Lety yelled, going after her brother. Eddie wedged himself between the man and Brisa’s mom, but Lety quickly pulled him out and wrapped her arms around his small frame. She looked at the man and got a good view of his red-freckled face and brown hair. The man paused and looked over Eddie and Lety. She felt her brother trembling in her arms and it made her angry. The man wouldn’t hurt them, would he? They were in a grocery store filled with hundreds of other people. They were safe, right? Didn’t he see Brisa’s mom was pregnant? She was filling a doctor’s prescription. Why was he picking on them?

  “Tell him, Lety,” Eddie said, crinkling his brows at the man.

  Brisa finally turned toward the red-faced man but looked too frightened to say anything. Brisa’s mom was crying now, and the woman behind the counter was trying to comfort her.

  “Leave us alone,” Lety said, shoving the words out as straight as she could so they didn’t sound shaky.

  The man took a step back and scoffed.

  “Sir! I’m going to have to ask you to leave,” said another man, who was dressed in a shirt and tie. His name tag read STORE MANAGER. Lety’s shoulders dropped in relief. Eddie wriggled in her arms, and she realized that she’d been holding him too tight. She loosened her grip around him, but he stayed snug, not moving an inch.

  “You tell your employees to stop speaking Spanish. This is America. See if I shop here at your store again.”

  “That’s probably best, sir. We appreciate your past business,” the manager said, walking behind the man down the aisle and out the store exit.

  It was all over. Lety felt light-headed, like the time a soccer ball had smacked her on the side of the head. Mrs. Quispe grabbed all of them close to her and bawled softly as the woman behind the counter offered gentle apologies. A few people wandered by and gave them sympathetic glances.

  “That man was mean, Lety!” Eddie cried, turning to her and wrapping his skinny arms around her waist. “Why was he like that?”

  Lety held her brother close. “I don’t know, but he’s gone now.”

  Over the dinner table at Lety’s house, Mrs. Quispe explained everything to Lety’s parents. Eddie sat on his dad’s lap, burying his face against his neck.

  “I tried to make him stop, Dad,” Eddie blurted out every so often. “He was mean.”

  Lety sat on the couch with Brisa in silence, listening to their parents going back and forth, trying to understand why the man was so angry. Lety’s father shared a story about a time he was at a bank. A man accused him of jumping the line in front of him, although he hadn’t, and called him all sorts of names. Her father watched his words, knowing Lety, Brisa, and Eddie were listening. He rarely talked about his time alone in the US. He always reassured Lety that people were nice here. He never complained. Now he was sharing a bad story. Eddie looked up, horrified.

  “When did that happen, Papá?” Eddie asked.

  “No te preocupes, mijo.”

  “I want to know,” Eddie continued.

  Lety’s father said that the man yelled at him to get out of the country. Lety’s father didn’t know how to defend himself in English. No one else spoke up for him. He was embarrassed and left without cashing his check.

  Brisa shook her head slowly.

  “I’m not returning to the shelter,” she said softly to Lety.

  “What? ¿Por qué no?”

  “I have to improve my English, not make cat toys.”

  “But you love the cats,” Lety said.

  A tear trickled down Brisa’s cheek. “It’s true. Especially Bandit, Chicharito, Wilde, Lorca, Messi, Solo, and Sinclair. All of them, but it doesn’t help me. I have to be able to speak English like Eddie.”

  “But, Brisa …”

  Brisa shook her head.

  “You speak like Eddie.”

  “No, I don’t. I wanted to say something … something to that man, but my mind went empty.”

  “That’s because you were afraid. We were afraid, too.”

  “Eddie could still speak in English. You, too,” Brisa said.

  “Please come back to the shelter with me,” Lety said. “It won’t be the same without you. Plus, you said we shouldn’t give up. We are tough.”

  “I’m not. No more. English will make me tough. You, too. Come to ELL class. You are my desk buddy, remember?”

  “My parents paid a lot for me to be there,” Lety said. “Plus, I’m a shelter scribe.”

  “Then stay there. I’ve made up my mind,” Brisa said. The way she said it, Lety knew it was true and there was nothing more she could say.

  Lety swallowed hard. She didn’t want to be away from Brisa, but she couldn’t leave the shelter now. The choice between the shelter and being with Brisa was like someone pulling her heart apart. She wondered if this is what Dr. Villalobos meant by hurting “like the dickens.”

  “I’m going to just show up to Mrs. Camacho’s class. I hope she doesn’t mind.”

  Lety shook her head. She knew Mrs. Camacho wouldn’t mind having Brisa back this summer.

  “She’ll be happy, Brisa,” Lety said. “You’re one of her best students.”

  “The thing is, I was starting to feel like I belonged here. Being at the shelter with all the other campers, making toys for the gatitos, and … now I just want to be back with my abuela. I miss her more than ever. I want to be back in La Paz. This place will never feel like home.”

  “It will, Brisa,” Lety said.

  “How can you be sure?”

  “Because we’re here together.”

  Brisa took Lety’s hand and held it. Lety hoped she’d never let go, but deep down she could feel her best friend slipping away.

  Later that night in bed, Lety couldn’t sleep. She was upset that Brisa wasn’t returning to the shelter. Across the room from her, Eddie wriggled around in his twin bed and let out a few whimpers like the kittens at the shelter when they were afraid. When Eddie’s whimpers turned into an all-out sob, her father came in and switched on the light.

  “Mijo,” her dad whispered. He sat at the edge of Eddie’s bed and pulled the covers to see Eddie’s wet, teary face. “¿Mijo, por qué lloras?”

  “I don’t want people to yell at me.”

  Lety’s father wiped Eddie’s tears away with his calloused fingers.

  “No llores, Eduardo,” he said. “No cry.”

  Eddie’s sobbing crumbled Lety’s heart like chalk on the sidewalk. She was used to Eddie always being confident and positive. She imagined herself taking purple chalk and scrawling words that would make her little brother feel better. She remembered what Mrs. Camacho had said
about Eddie’s English being better because he was younger when he started to learn it.

  “People won’t yell at you, Eddie,” Lety said, sitting up in bed. “You’re young and your brain is a sponge. You speak English better than all of us.”

  “Not just me. I don’t want them to yell at you, Mom,Dad, or Brisa either,” Eddie cried, covering his face with his hands. “Or Mrs. Quispe. I don’t want —” Eddie voice broke into a long wail. Lety helplessly looked at her father, unsure of what else to say. Then her father did something she never expected. He reached for a paint swatch from Eddie’s nightstand. As Eddie sobbed, her father started reading the colors aloud.

  “Dark Denim. Durango Blue. Jean Jacket Blue.”

  Eddie dropped his hands from his eyes and glanced up at his father. A smile crept across his face.

  “Arizona Sky. Indigo Night.”

  “Papá!” Eddie laughed. “You pronounced all of them wrong.”

  “¿Qué? I say it correct, no?” Lety’s father winked playfully at Lety.

  “Noooo,” Eddie said with a chuckle.

  “Tomorrow, you and Lety teach me say English correct. Sleep now, mijo.”

  “Okay, but I get to be the teacher,” Eddie said, flopping down against his pillow. As her father tucked Eddie back into bed, Lety wiped her tears with her bedsheets.

  Her father came over, leaned down, and kissed Lety’s forehead. He smelled minty, like the medicine her mom rubbed on her hands after long days of painting cabinets. She wondered if his hands or back were hurting.

  Before he walked out of the room and switched off the lights, Lety called out to him.

  “Papá?”

  “¿Sí, mija?”

  “Are you glad we came here?”

  Her father paused at the doorway and gave her a tired smile.

  “Sí, mija. We make dream here. Better life for you.”

  “Even if they don’t want us here?”

  “Sí, mija. No one can stop dreams. Buenas noches, mi vida.”