How Tia Lola Saved the Summer

by Julia Alvarez

  The girls follow him down the length of the stone wall to the wire fence. Sure enough, on the other side, under a patch of grass that probably looks a lot greener in daylight, they find a half-buried plastic bag with a piece of paper inside. As Cari kind of solved the clue with her question, Victoria lets her unfold the note, labeled HERE IS YOUR FOURTH CLUE.

  “I’ll whisper what it says in your ear, and you can say it out loud, okay?” Victoria offers.

  “Often you have heard this told:

  All that glitters is not gold.

  I should know because I shed

  Blinding radiance from my head.”

  “I like how it sounds,” Cari says after she has repeated what Victoria has whispered in her ear.

  “But what does it mean?” Juanita is starting to feel frustrated. She hasn’t guessed a single clue.

  “Something that glitters but isn’t gold. Maybe something silver … with a head?” Esperanza is thinking out loud. “A silver statue?” Unfortunately, there are no silver or any other kind of statues on the property. Esperanza gives up. “I wish we’d gotten here a week ago, ’cause then we’d know what to look for.”

  Miguel can’t believe that the middle Sword, who was complaining about being in Vermont at all, now wishes she had come earlier! But Esperanza has a point. After a year and a half, Miguel knows every nook and cranny on their property. Right now his mind is sweeping over all of it: the dirt road, the long driveway, the big front yard, the back pasture, the house, the old shed with its tin roof that flashes when the sun strikes it—

  Whoa! Back up there! Isn’t flashing sort of like glittering? And isn’t a roof the head of a building? And the word “shed” is even used in the clue! Miguel explains his hunch to the girls.

  They all agree this is a brilliant guess. Thank goodness, Cari doesn’t ask Miguel to explain the difference between flashing and glittering.

  At the old shed, Miguel spots the fifth clue, hanging from a nail on the door. But before he can reach it, Juanita snatches at the note, ripping the paper in half. One piece is still in her hand, but the other piece is blown away into the darkness.

  “Just read what you can,” Victoria suggests after they’ve searched all around the shed with their flashlights to no avail. “Maybe we can figure it out.”

  “Something, something … ‘you will have to find.’ And then I think the second line ends with ‘mine’?” Juanita hands the torn sheet over to Victoria, who defers to Miguel, who’s pretty sure the word is “nine.” But that doesn’t help much. Find something with nine? Nothing comes to mind. Miguel can’t believe his little sister messed up their treasure hunt! What a klutz!

  But then, for the third time today, Valentino comes bounding toward Miguel. At least this time he has the courtesy not to jump on Miguel’s shoulders. He has something in his mouth, which he pushes into Miguel’s hand. It’s the lost half-clue! Excellent dog! If Mami ever consents to a new puppy, Miguel is going to put in for a golden-Lab mix just like Valentino.

  Miguel and Juanita puzzle the two pieces of paper together. Then Juanita reads:

  “This is the last clue

  that you will have to find.

  So head for home

  a stitch in time saves nine.”

  “The last clue is in our house. Hooray! We’re almost done!” Juanita cheers.

  “We still have to figure out where in the house,” Esperanza reminds her. “You guys have a humongous house.”

  “We should have a plan,” her older sister agrees. “Otherwise, it’ll take all night. So, why don’t we work our way down from the attic. That’s where Tía Lola’s room and your new room are, right, Miguel?”

  Something about the way Victoria puts those words together (“the attic,” “Tía Lola’s room,” “your new room”) gives Miguel an idea. A stitch in time saves nine. A stitch is about sewing … could it be that the treasure is hidden in Tía Lola’s old sewing room, which is now his temporary bedroom?

  Just ahead in the big, shadowy house, a light is shining in his room. At the window, a familiar figure is moving back and forth, as if busily checking on some last-minute details.

  “Come on,” Miguel calls to the girls. They race across the backyard and into the house and up two flights of stairs to the attic. Taped to Miguel’s door, they find a big black X. Inside, the room looks like a treasure trove. Piles of golden beads and candy are strewn everywhere as if a huge piñata has just busted open, scattering its contents all over the room. Seven plastic swords dangle from the ceiling. Tía Lola herself is dressed like a pirate, with a black patch over one eye and her own sword in her hand. But the best treasure of all, as far as Miguel is concerned, is the stack of finished, folded, brand-new uniforms on his bed.

  Three

  sunday

  Charity’s Challenge

  “So, what are we supposed to do with these swords?” Esperanza asks, waving hers dangerously close to a shelf of knickknacks in the dining room.

  They are sitting at the breakfast table, having just finished eating the blueberry pancakes Tía Lola cooked up in honor of her guests. The girls are waiting to hear what’s in store for their first day at Tía Lola’s camp.

  Miguel knows his plans: at three this afternoon, his teammates and Rudy are scheduled to come over. That is, if it stops raining.

  This morning, Tía Lola woke them up, bright and early, singing “Las Mañanitas,” a Spanish wake-up song. In the background, Miguel could hear a soft, soothing patter.… Soothing, that is, until he realized it was the sound of rain pelting the window. Oh no! The first day of practice might have to be canceled. Miguel was so grumpy, he tromped downstairs and didn’t say “good morning” to his guests as a good host should, as his mother was quick to remind him.

  Everyone was already assembled at the dining-room table. For some reason, they had all carried down their swords, as if they were their meal ticket. Miguel hoped he wasn’t going to be sent back up two flights to fetch the one with MICHAEL inscribed on the blade before he could eat his breakfast.

  The strange thing about the names on their swords is that they’re only approximations, like those monogrammed mugs or key chains on a rack, where you never find your name if it’s the slightest bit unusual. Maybe Tía Lola bought these off an English-only sword rack? “Juanita” has become “Joan.” Only Linda and Víctor have swords with their same names, although Víctor’s doesn’t have an accent over the i. “Victoria” is “Vicky”; “Esperanza,” “Hope”; and Cari’s is “Charity,” which she isn’t sure she likes. Especially after her father explains that charity means giving money to worthy causes, like to feed those sad-eyed, starving kids on TV, who always make Cari feel so sad and scared she has to change the channel.

  “Why the swords?” Tía Lola takes up Esperanza’s question. “In my camp, every camper gets a sword. Because every camper has something they will conquer during their stay at my camp.”

  “Even us?” Mami exchanges a look with Víctor. “I mean, aren’t we a little old to be campers?”

  Tía Lola puts her hands on her hips. “Don’t you two know you are only as old as you feel?” She quotes one of the English sayings she has been learning. “And being an adult doesn’t mean the fun or the challenges stop.”

  “You’re absolutely right, Tía Lola.” Víctor nods thoughtfully. “Sometimes we adults have the biggest hurdles to conquer.”

  “What exactly is a hurdle?” Cari wants to know.

  “A hurdle is like when you are running and there’s a fence you have to leap over or a hoop you have to jump through,” her father explains.

  “So is that what we’re going to do today?” Cari asks, frowning as she glances out the window. It looks stormy and thundery and scary outside.

  Tía Lola crouches down, eye level with Cari. Valentino gets on his feet, mistakenly thinking Tía Lola has a treat for him. “Sometimes there is something that’s hard for us to do, or scary, or a problem we have to solve. And we need all the help we can g
et. Your sword”—Tía Lola lifts her own sword from where it lies propped in the corner—“your sword will help you conquer whatever stands in your way, so you can become all you really are deep inside.”

  Cari looks unsure. Conquering problems, becoming who you really are—none of it sounds like much fun. And last night when she was so afraid of the dark room, of the strange noises outside, of the pirates who might return for their treasure in the attic, Victoria promised that camp would be filled with unscary, fun activities.

  “How come yours doesn’t have a name, Tía Lola?” Victoria wants to know.

  It’s only now that Miguel notices that Tía Lola’s sword is the only one with a blank blade. Probably there’s no English version of Lola, though of course, Tía Lola’s real name is Dolores. But a sword named Suffering? Get out! No one would buy it.

  “There is a reason,” Tía Lola says, tilting her sword this way and that. “My sword is reserved for the camper who needs the most help.”

  “I think we’re all going to look pretty silly walking around all week with pretend swords,” Esperanza gripes. She would have to see the negative side of things, Miguel thinks. But then, he himself was just thinking the same thing!

  Tía Lola stands back up and tucks her sword in her apron strings, grinning her infectious grin. “I do not mind looking silly, especially if it makes other people smile.”

  “That’s right, Essie,” her father observes. “And you know, maybe that’s something worth conquering, your fear of appearing silly. Especially if having that sword at your side gives you an advantage when you need it.”

  In the silence that follows this wise pronouncement, Valentino sighs. It’s so perfectly timed that everyone bursts out laughing, even Esperanza.

  The girls leave for town right after lunch. Today’s rainy-day camp activity is a matinee, to be followed by a “campfire” in the living room tonight. Víctor and Mami drop off Tía Lola and her campers at the movie theater, though at the last minute, Cari changes her mind. The pirate movie sounds too scary, with lots of bloody sword fights. Meanwhile, Miguel stays home, just on the off chance that the rain might stop. Besides, he has already seen this old Pirates of the Caribbean movie, not that he ever minds seeing a good film a second time.

  Just as the van turns out of the driveway and vanishes, the phone rings. “I’m really sorry, Captain,” Rudy tells him. “But I think we better call today a washout. Let’s hope for better luck mañana.”

  Miguel really hopes that the rain’ll let up by tomorrow. The team desperately needs to practice playing together. The only piece of good news Miguel can offer is that their uniforms are ready. The team can try them on after practice tomorrow. That way, Tía Lola can fix any that don’t fit right.

  “You’re being a great sport,” Rudy compliments him. No doubt, the coach can tell that Miguel is just barely slogging his way through the swamp of disappointment.

  When Mami and Víctor and Cari return home, Miguel meets them with such a grim look, they don’t have to ask if practice has been canceled.

  Soon Mami and Víctor are occupied preparing the living room for tonight’s campfire. They laugh and joke as they move furniture around and get a fire ready in the fireplace. Even though it’s summer, the rainy day is cool, and what’s a campfire without a fire? Miguel and Valentino get displaced so many times, they finally climb up the two flights of stairs to Miguel’s room.

  As he is going over his baseball cards, Miguel hears a soft rapping. At first he thinks it’s just the rain, but Valentino has gotten up and is standing by the door, his tail wagging. Great! Now Miguel has to deal with a visitor invading his privacy. “Yeah?” he calls out uninvitingly. “Who is it?”

  The knob turns. The door slowly opens. Standing there, her left shoulder shyly up to her ear, her sword trailing from her hand, is Cari. “Hi,” she says. Her voice is a whisper. “What’re you doing?”

  Miguel would like to tell her to scram, but she looks so small and scared. “Just going over my baseball cards,” he tells her. “Come in if you want.”

  Cari skips into the room, delighted to be invited. She plops herself down on the bed, lays her sword beside her, then looks all around. “The treasure’s all gone.”

  Miguel doesn’t know if he should tell her it was all pretend. Maybe it’d be like telling a little kid there is no Santa Claus. “After we took our share, the pirates came for the rest.”

  Cari’s eyes widen. She reaches for her sword, then decides maybe she doesn’t need it. Still, she keeps her hand on it. “The pirates came back to the attic?”

  Miguel nods. He’s good at solving clues, not thinking up stories and stuff. That’s why he was so impressed by Tía Lola’s clues last night, especially since they were in rhymes and in English. But Tía Lola confessed that el Rudy had helped her write them.

  “Aren’t you scared to sleep up here?” Cari asks in an awed voice. “What if the pirates get angry that we took their candy and try to hurt you?”

  Miguel shrugs. “They don’t bother me.”

  “That’s because you can work magic like Tía Lola, right?” Cari nods, answering her own question. “Essie told me and Victoria. So when the pirates come, you can just turn them into bully frogs like the ones last night.”

  Miguel can’t help smiling. “Bullfrogs,” he corrects her. No wonder Cari was so scared, if she thought the frogs were bullies. “They live down in the pond. And when they make that bull sound, that’s just them singing lullabies to their wives and baby tadpoles.” He says this last part to reassure her, so she won’t be scared of the loud croaking at night. Maybe Miguel’s not so bad at making up stuff after all.

  “They have wives and babies?” Cari is incredulous. “And they aren’t bullies?”

  Miguel shakes his head. “They’re more scared of you than you are of them.”

  “They are?”

  “Yep! Come on, I’ll prove it.” Why not? He doesn’t have anything better to do than sit around moping about the weather. And it might be fun to splash around at the edge of the vernal pond that never totally dried up this rainy spring. “Are you coming?” he asks, because Cari is still sitting on the bed, cross-legged, her two little hands clutched together as if she were praying.

  “But maybe the bullfrogs will jump out and hurt us?”

  “They won’t hurt you, you’ll see.” Miguel can tell that Cari is teetering on the edge of fear. But he ignores her hesitation, as if there’s no question that Cari is going to follow him into the beautiful, if wet, Vermont countryside. It isn’t Disney World, but it has its very own magic.

  Miguel heads for the door, Valentino at his heels, eager for any outing. Behind him, the bedsprings squeak, and next thing he knows, Cari is scurrying to join him. He can’t decide if she is being brave by coming or is too scared to stay by herself. As they enter the hallway, she calls out, “Wait!” and races back into the room, grabs her sword where she left it on the bed, and returns to Miguel, breathless with terror and triumph.

  “I’m in shock,” Victoria says that night as she pulls her marshmallow from the fire. They are sitting in front of the fireplace campfire, each one with a roasting stick. Cari has just related how she and Miguel caught the half dozen tadpoles that are now swirling around in the Mason jar beside her on the coffee table.

  At the table in the dining area, Mami and Víctor are finishing up a game of Scrabble. Tía Lola has been tending the fire, adding a log from time to time.

  “You did all this brave stuff without us?” Victoria shakes her head in disbelief. “You are really something, Cari baby—”

  “I’m not a baby!” Cari protests.

  “I mean ‘baby’ as in hot babe, cool chick,” Victoria says, exchanging a high five with her little sister. “And you are, Cari girl! You went up to the attic all by yourself to visit Miguel. You went out in a rainstorm, braving the elements, lightning and thunder—”

  “There wasn’t any thunder and lightning!” Unlike her middle sister, Cari won’
t take credit she doesn’t deserve. “That would have been dangerous. Dangerous isn’t the same as scary, you know.”

  Miguel has noticed this before. Cari is very particular about her vocabulary. That must be why she is always asking what words mean. She’s probably going to grow up to be an author, maybe an author of dictionaries. Somebody’s got to write them.

  “Okay, so there wasn’t any thunder and lightning, but you went out exploring to a pond full of bullfrogs that you were scared of last night.”

  “They’re more scared of me than I am of them,” Cari declares. She demonstrates by patting the Mason jar with her hand. Sure enough, the little tadpoles dart away frantically. “And the big frogs all hopped in the water when they saw us coming, and they stayed hiding and didn’t make a sound. Right?” She turns to Miguel. After all, this is too incredible to be believed without the confirmation of a witness. Miguel nods.

  “And they aren’t bully frogs, they’re bullfrogs, because they sound like bulls.”

  From the table, where their respective parents have one ear cocked to the conversation by the fireplace, Víctor says, “Way to go, Cari. You’re going to turn into a Vermont farm girl before the week is over.”

  “I love Vermont,” Cari announces. “It’s not scary here. It’s more scary in New York.”

  “One down and two to go,” her father remarks to Mami as they pack up their Scrabble game and join the campfire. Miguel must be the only one who overhears the comment, as the girls are busy besting each other’s stories of the scariest thing that has happened to them in New York City.

  When the girls run out of scary city stories, Víctor starts in on his own story of growing up in New Mexico. His family has lived there since before it was the United States of America, back when it was still part of Mexico. Before the story turns into too much of a history lesson, Victoria asks Mami about the Dominican Republic. What was it like growing up there? One thing leads to another, and soon Mami is plunged into the story of how she lost both her parents in an automobile accident when she was only three. Tía Lola, her mother’s younger sister, came from the countryside to take care of her little orphan niece.