My mother frowns. It’s ridiculous that he wants to tell my mother what language she can speak in the place where she lives. But I keep my face blank, because my father feels far away, like someone you spot way down the block and wonder if it’s who you think it is. He annoys me in a way he didn’t use to, like he’s got just a bit more of a flinty edge to him. But the last time I lived with him, I had just turned thirteen. I’m different now too.
“Sorry,” she says, rolling the rr’s hard, even though that’s not how they say it here. “Is hard.” My mom took English classes back home, after we knew we were coming here. Every Tuesday night she’d take the bus to an aunt’s neighbor, who was Argentinian but went to college in Cleveland and who gave private lessons in exchange for sewing and stuff around the house. She was old, and smiled without moving her eyes. My mother didn’t seem to like going there, but she did, without fail. Maybe that’s why my father doesn’t see how stifling it is to speak only in English at home. He thinks we learned enough back home. Or we should have.
“It’s hard, yes, but is what better,” he says. Easy for him to say, since he had a three-year head start. When we got picked for the visas, he came ahead and got a job as a driver and saved up while we settled things back home. We sold our little house and lived with my abuela and sent him the profit so he could buy his own car and make better money. So for three years he’s been here, practicing. To him, English doesn’t feel like being dunked in cold water. If it did once, he’s forgotten.
The first month after he left us back home, the nights boomed empty. The neighbors turned up their collars at us as if bracing for a wind, pretending not to see us. “Ahí van las americanas,” I once heard old Doña Dominga mutter when she thought I wasn’t listening. There go the Americans. Or maybe she’d wanted us to hear.
That first month, my father WhatsApp’ed us every night. We were in different seasons but almost the same time zone. He was in a sweater and a scarf while I was in shorts. Later, when it came time for the brasero and gloves, he wore a flowered shirt he would never have been caught dead in back home.
“From a church,” he said as he ran his hand down the front of it self-consciously.
We got into a routine. He said we’d start to only speak English to each other so that I could get ready for when we’d move to be with him. “Pero, Papi—” I began.
“English!” he’d say.
“I already takes English class.”
“It’s ‘take,’ so . . . more work to do. Ready for question one?”
That was his protocol. Three questions I had to answer in English and couldn’t answer with the same thing I’d said the day before.
“Ready.”
“What did you learn in your third class today?”
My third class was a free period, but I didn’t want to explain. I wanted to give him an answer that would make him happy. “I wrote a poem.”
“What about?”
“That question two.”
“No. It’s a follow-up to one.” He laughed.
“About water. Water so cold it feels warm in your bones.”
“El Rio Mendoza,” he said.
“Yes,” I replied, trying to read the crinkles around his eyes. Was that sadness?
“Question two,” he said. “What’s an interesting thought you had today?”
I knew he liked this to be about current events, or history, or something that showed him I was awake in the world. “I wonder if France had king, he could . . . today.”
“France doesn’t have kings anymore.”
“No,” I said, the words fleeing me like skittish birds. “If today France had still the kings . . . the . . .”
“Monarchy?”
I had searched for that word in anticipation of our conversation but had forgotten it. “Monarchy, yes. If they still had monarchy, who would be king?”
“Have you found the answer yet?”
“No.”
“I’ll expect you to do it before tomorrow. Question three: What’s a dream you have for when you come to America?”
I’d given him dozens of answers by then, every day a different one. I wanted to ride a taxi painted yellow, and eat a burger like the ones you see in the movies, which looked bigger and juicier than the ones you could get in el centro, and go to the top of the Empire State Building.
“I have a dream the words will come easy,” I said.
I waited for the speech about how I should study more, practice and practice more, a speech I got about twice a week. But on that night, his shoulders shifted like he was bracing for a blow, and he muttered something about having to get up early the next day.
Eventually, the calls slowed to every couple of days, then once a week. At first, I was sad. But then, life swelled full. And then I wasn’t.
By the time I saw him standing in the airport waiting area, I felt shy.
I knew this man, my father, and also I did not.
He knew me. And also he did not. I haven’t shaken the feeling in the weeks since we got here.
My mother passes me more lentejas. She acts like she gets paid every time someone takes a spoonful of food. I shake my head.
“How is math class?” my father asks. I frown my annoyance. He adds, “A good job is important. You ask about engineering class?”
I blink at him. I want to unleash a torrent about everything I have to learn before I can ask what classes are available. But I don’t know how. The frustration bubbles in me.
My mother, the ultimate reader of a room, cuts in. “I make cake,” she says. She’s made it, she means. She also means that if I don’t eat more of these evil brown little beans there will be no cake. She also means that my father should back off a little. She’s always meant more than she says, in any language.
I scrunch up my nose and take another mouthful.
“The Americans have a saying,” my father says. “About cake. Eat your cake and have it too,” he says.
“That make no sense,” I say, annoyed at the lentils, annoyed to be speaking about English, annoyed to be speaking in English at all. “If you eat the cake, then you don’t have anymore.”
He shrugs, shoveling in another mouthful of lentejas. “Americans,” he says, swallowing them fast. “They think anything is possible.”
Breaking Ice
My second day of school goes only marginally better than the first. I know how to find my locker, and I definitely know better than to go up to the board in math class under any circumstances. I kind of know how to get to my classes.
I slide into my seat in ESL class just as Mr. T. kicks off class by asking, “Okay, who thought yesterday’s class was boring?”
There’s a girl in a neat button-down sweater, so heartbreakingly neat. I wonder if I look as eager to be liked. Another girl, in jeans and a head scarf, stares at her desk. A boy with shaggy brown hair leans back in his chair.
This is clearly a trick question. My fellow ESLers are on to him too, because no one raises their hand.
“Okay. ###### ######## ####### ice breakers.”
Ice breakers? I think I misunderstood. There is no ice anywhere in sight in this class. And I’m not sure why he’d want us to break it, anyway. I get this crazy picture of him bringing in a huge block of ice and letting us swing at it with sticks like it’s a piñata until little shards of it are all over the floor. I would enjoy that, actually.
He must sense the general confusion, because he adds, “Ice breakers! Like . . . ######### ############ ######## exercises. Ways to get to know one another. This one is called #### and Lines.” He holds up a sheet of paper. He’s printed instructions off the internet. “Okay, so first, we’re going to break out into groups based on the first letters of our names. A through G here!”
No one moves. We look at each other, searching for clues.
“You,” he says, pointing at a boy with jet-black hair, ice-blue eyes, and a compact, wiry build. He speaks even more slowly when he addresses us individually. “What’s your name?”
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“Neophytos,” he says. I know how it’s spelled because he’s written it tentatively on the front of a notebook on his desk and I can spy it from where I sit. He’s wearing a tucked-in button-down shirt and slacks. He’s overdressed like I am. “Neo,” he says more succinctly.
“Neo, okay, great. Not your turn yet. You?” he asks the boy next to him, the boy with the turban, beautiful brown eyes, and the coolest phone case I’ve ever seen, like an old-fashioned cassette player.
“Bhagatveer,” he says.
“Okay, B name. B, right?” The boy nods. “Over here. Can you tell me again how to pronounce it?”
“Bhagatveer,” the boy says quietly. The teacher smiles and repeats it.
“You?” He points at me.
“Ana,” I say.
He looks visibly relieved that my name is short. “Ana. Here with the Bs.” I walk over.
He goes through the rest of us until we’re clustered in four groups.
“Okay, see? That’s one thing we have in common. Now, everyone who is wearing blue, come over here and stand by me.”
He goes through several versions of this, colors we’re wearing, whether we like to swim or bike ride better. Everyone falls into different groups each time. I guess the point is to show us we have something in common with everyone.
“Birthday season. Fall, winter, spring, summer.” He points to different areas.
“In which country?” I ask.
He looks confused. “When is your birthday, Ana?”
“July,” I tell him.
“Great, so summer. Over here.”
I poke my index finger into my collarbone. “My country. July is winter.”
Understanding shifts over his features. “Oh? Oh, yeah, I guess so, right. Southern hemisphere. Okay. Then winter.” He points to a spot by the boy with the black hair and the cool blue eyes. Neo.
“Okay, everybody, ####### ##### ######## pretty even groups. Which is good because we’re going to do this next exercise in pairs. Your job is to interview your partner and find out something interesting about them to share with the rest of us. Okay?”
I stare at the boy. We’ve been fated by our winter birthdays, and it feels slightly unfair since my birthday and his are in totally different winters. At least I think they are. The boy stares back at me. His eyes are quick, and he looks windswept, like the kind of guy who belongs outside. His skin is still warmly colored from the sun, and his face is framed strongly by sharp eyebrows that must give away his every mood. I don’t even know what language he speaks, or if he speaks any English at all. Not that I speak so much.
“Hi,” I say.
“Hi,” he replies, accent thick.
I tell him where I’m from. “How about you?” I ask. He shrugs. I wonder if he understood the instructions.
I pull out my phone and I google a map of the world.
I point to him. “Your country?” I say, and hand him the phone.
“Qui-prei-o,” he says, pointing to his chest. That does not help in the least. He tries to expand the map, but it doesn’t zoom in as much as he wants it to. He points to the middle of the Mediterranean Sea. He furrows his eyebrows, confirming my hunch about how they give away his mood. He hands me back my phone, pulls out his, and googles on his own.
He shows me his screen. An island shaped a little like a lamb chop. Cyprus, it says.
“Speak Greek?” I ask. I studied that island in geography class back home. It’s way on the eastern side of the Mediterranean, tiny, looking like it’s about to be eaten by land from the north, east, and south. I know they speak Greek there. Turkish too, I think, at least on part of the island. In Spanish the name of it is Chipre, which sounds a lot like a chirping bird. I wish I knew how to tell him all this. Like: I see you. I know your country is small but I know about it.
He nods in response to my question. Yes to Greek.
I look around, and other groups are laughing, sketching things for each other on paper. By comparison, my partner looks like he’s resisting interrogation.
I wait for him to ask me something. He doesn’t. The silence stretches out awkwardly.
“Okay, I tell you about me,” I try, recalling my English lessons from back home. “I like to write poetry. I love my family and . . . traveling.” That’s not quite what I want to say. Not all of it, anyway. I did love the airplane ride we took to get here, but “travel” makes it sound like something I’ve done. What I mean is that it’s something I hope for. I want to see everything and everywhere.
There’s more silence. He studies my face with robot precision. I wait for him to ask me something. He doesn’t.
Finally, the teacher calls us back from our groups and goes around the room so we can all share what we learned.
“Neo likes cars,” I lie, just to see if he’ll react. He doesn’t. Mr. T. nods. “That’s great. Remind me to tell you about my first car. #### ## ### Mustang. I’ll bring you pictures.” Mr. T. points to Neo with his chin. “And what did you learn about your partner?”
Is that color on his cheeks? Or a smile breaking out on his face? “Ana like flies,” says Neo.
The teacher laughs, along with a few of the kids who seem to get the ridiculousness of the statement. I turn to Neo. I wish for enough words to ask him what the hell he’s thinking. He gives the beginning of a sheepish smile, the first one I’ve seen. He has a dimple, it turns out.
The teacher recovers. “Well, okay, we all like different things. Good.” The teacher moves on to another group.
I lean over and whisper at Neo. “Flies?”
He puts his hands out by his shoulders, like wings. “Aeroplano,” he says.
“Travel? Airplane? That’s not ‘flies.’”
“Sorry,” he says, not looking at all sorry. “I forget word.” His very blue eyes look like they are smiling at me.
The teacher finishes going around the room; I learn that Bhagatveer likes ice cream, and a girl named Adira likes video games. By the time he finishes, there are only ten minutes left. “Okay,” Mr. T. says, clapping his hands. “Freewriting time. Take out your journals.”
There’s a collective groan as everyone pulls out their notebooks. I turn to a blank page.
In the last twenty-four hours, I’ve managed to fill up three pages: words I’ve overheard in the halls, the name of a song that was playing when my dad picked me up from school yesterday, even some words from the mail I brought in last night, which my mom threw away since none of it was addressed to our family. At first, I thought this notebook was going to be dumb, that I’d barely use it at all. But in a place where I’m too nervous to speak, it feels good to write.
To my left, I hear a scratching noise. I glance over and see Neo scribbling furiously in his notebook, and I can’t help but wonder what he’s writing. Is he doing the same thing as me, jotting down all the weird, inconsistent rules of this impenetrable language we now share? His eyebrows knit in complete concentration. I know the feeling behind that look, the experience of being completely engrossed in something.
When his body shifts, I see what he’s doing. He’s not writing at all. He’s halfway through an exquisitely detailed drawing of a jumbo jet, its engines whirring, one small face waving from a tiny window. I can’t tell whose face it is.
I guess you can be mysterious in any language.
Overheard in the hallway at school
Fuckface. A face that likes to do sex?
Doosh nozl?
Shit biscuit?
Duck butter?
Bananas. Like “crazy”? If I had to pick a fruit that is crazy, I’d pick pomegranates, with their juicy beads hiding in impossible recovecos, from which it takes an hour to free them.
If that’s not bananas, I don’t know what is.
El Objetivo
I trail behind my mother. She’s in a loose cardigan, her brown hair in a ponytail at the nape of her neck. In the short time we’ve been here, she’s come to love this store, although I can’t quite figure out
why. At first, I thought it was called “Objective,” like, “The objective of this story is to explain why my mother loves this giant store.” Or at least that’s what my translate app led me to believe. Then I saw the logo and understood the other definition—bull’s-eye. How can a word mean both a purpose and something you aim at with a gun?
My mother wanders the store in a way she never did back home. She walks slowly and gazes at the well-stocked shelves, the array of T-shirts with sparkles on them, the macramé pillows, the serving platters, the yoga balls. It’s not like we didn’t have big stores back home. Here we shop with a strict list and a smaller budget, but it takes twice as long. Every few aisles, she stops, picks up something new, and asks me to translate the label. Like someone is going to ask her to write a report on the contents of this store.
“What this say?” She holds a light-green container out to me.
I study her face, searching for clues. What does she want to know? She’s hollow-eyed, her skin more mottled somehow. Tired, maybe? And why is she enforcing my father’s English-only rule, when he’s not even here, when it’s clearly so hard on her? She notices my hesitation and gives me an arched-eyebrow look. Her best compliance-compelling mom stare.
I sigh, scan the packaging, and punch the name into my app. “Foaming soap for sonic faces,” I say, reading the translation from my phone.
She wrinkles up her nose. “What that mean?”
I shrug. She has a phone but insists on me translating everything for her, like I’ve developed some special powers of understanding available only to teenagers.
We work our way through every aisle. The place is massive. I imagine small clouds forming under its impossibly tall ceiling.
“Is this?” she says, handing me another package. A hair product.
I square off in front of her. “Ma,” I say. “El Papi no está aquí. No tenemos que hablar inglés.”
“English . . . ,” she says to me.
“We don’t have to speak English,” I tell her. I think—
We don’t have to do it this way.
We don’t have to make it so hard.
Love in English Page 2
