Love in English

by Maria E. Andreu

  When he finishes typing, he shows me the screen.

  I would like to argue back to that guy. Although punching is part of the universal language.

  I laugh and take the phone back. Have you ever been in a fight? I translate from Spanish to Greek.

  Neo’s eyes widen, surprised by my personal question. He shakes his head.

  I figure I’ve already started down this road, so I’ll just keep going. We don’t know each other well, but I sense that he may be as tired of walking around apart from everyone as I am. So I ask another question via the phone. Do you miss home?

  He types it in. Yes. I miss dancing.

  I cannot picture him dancing. “What kind of dancing?” I ask out loud now.

  Nightclubs. No nightclubs here, he types, adding the sad emoji.

  It’s like that back home, too. I’ve been surprised by how little the kids here have to do at night. Back home, we were out every Friday and Saturday night, and there were clubs that were just for teenagers.

  “How long you live here?” I ask. We have practiced some basic questions in class, and I try one out.

  “Four month,” he answers.

  “Why?” I ask.

  “Father,” he tells me. It’s not a complete explanation, but I sort of know what he means.

  “Your whole family come?” I ask. Our questions may be only a few words, but we are talking. In English.

  He shakes his head, turns back to the phone, and types out a message. Mother and sisters all stayed home. I came with father because his job bring him. He tell me to come because my parents thought it would be good for me to practice English so I could succeed in college.

  “Will you go back soon?” I ask. It surprises me that the thought of him going back makes me a little sad.

  He shakes his head. I want to be an architect. The architecture school I want to attend is here, he taps out carefully.

  “What do you want to build?” I ask.

  He takes the phone and shields it from my view as he types his answer. Then he shows it to me, beaming a big smile, the full one, chin dimple pronounced. EVERYTHING, it says. He lights up like I’ve never seen before.

  We talk more, with and without the phone. He tells me about the building that first made him think about becoming an architect, on a vacation to Athens. I tell him about a story I once read, about a boy who builds a building so big at the end he doesn’t know how to get out of it. Before I know it, I look up at the clock and realize that class is almost over. Mr. T. starts going around the classroom and handing back our assignments, speaking to us in turn about them. For a moment, I’m nervous—I’ve gotten more adventurous with my assignments lately, have started taking more risks in English. But that also means more opportunities to mess up. I know I make mistakes, as hard as I try not to. If he’s grading for grammar and spelling, I am probably toast.

  He stops at Neo’s. “This piece you wrote made me think of this article,” says Mr. T. I glance at the computer printout that Mr. T. puts on Neo’s desk: The Glossary of Happiness, it says. I make a note to ask Neo about it later.

  When Mr. T. sets my latest poem down on my desk, I realize there was nothing to be worried about. I got another A.

  “You’re a poet, Ana,” Mr. T. says. “You’re a poet in English, too. Keep writing. Okay?”

  I smile. It feels like someone cracked a door in a dark room and suddenly I can begin to see shapes around me.

  Ever since I arrived, I’ve been fumbling around in the dark with English, trying to find a place where I belong. I still don’t know, but I have a glimmer of an idea now, the tiniest light.

  Mr. T. stands expectantly over my desk, waiting for my response. Luckily, my answer is the first word I ever learned in English. “Yes,” I say, smiling. “Yes.”

  The ough in ouch

  It’s tough when you cough

  When you have no dough (or moola or Benjamins—who are the Benjamins, anyway, and why is it all about them?)

  And you think that lough should be spelled lough, but it’s low

  But it’s bow

  As in you bow your head

  Because it hurts that the language in this new country seems to be trying to make you mute

  When you have so much to say.

  It makes my heart sore.

  But it makes me want to try hard.

  And soar, up, up, up to the sky.

  Running a Relay

  Forks on plates. Scrape. Click. Scrape. I remember reading somewhere that you’re not supposed to let your fork make noise on your plate when you eat. Or maybe that’s with soup. It’s exactly the kind of politeness rule my mother would bug me about, once upon a time. But family dinners have gotten pretty quiet under the English-only blanket. If you can’t think of the word in English—and most of the time I can’t, and neither can my mom—silence is a safe alternative. If my dad notices how silent he’s made dinners, he doesn’t let on.

  “How is school?” he asks, finally.

  “Okay,” I respond.

  “What’s favorite class?” I’m pretty sure he missed a word there, but I don’t feel sure enough to correct him, even though there would be a sweet sort of satisfaction in it.

  “Math is good,” I say.

  He is pleased by this. “Yes, math is good.” We sound like a show for first graders. There’s more under the surface, of course. Math is good because a job that takes math—engineering, medical school—is the kind of job my dad has told me more than once I should strive to get. I don’t hate the idea, since math comes easily to me. But I also don’t love it, either. I don’t like the shove in any direction. There’s so much for me to take in, and I kind of want to stand in this moment before being pointed at the next.

  As soon as I think this, I feel guilty. My family is not running a marathon. We’re running a relay. My parents have gotten me this far. Everything I do is to get us further. I carry their hopes along with my own.

  My mother’s phone rings. The tone hasn’t finished its first buzz when she’s scraping her chair back. She makes her way wordlessly to their bedroom. It’s one of my aunts, probably, or maybe my abuela. There used to be a rule against taking phone calls during dinner, didn’t there? I reach back to another time, another place, another table.

  I can’t remember.

  I call Valentina. It goes to messages. I don’t leave one.

  The Club for Breakfast

  Walking into ESL later in the week, I spot Harrison in the hall. He leans back on a locker, talking to the Very American Girls from math. Harrison looks at me and waves, and they follow his wave like heat-seeking missiles. I try to wave and also casually pretend I’m not waving, which is as awkward as it sounds.

  Neo slides into his desk right before the bell. Mr. T. walks in a full minute after the bell, surfer hair shaggy, button-down shirt crumpled over corduroy jeans, fabric worn at the knees. Teachers never dressed like this in Argentina. It slightly thrills me, like the rules are suspended here.

  Today we slog through a lesson on verb tenses, run and ran, not runned, which would be more logical, that kind of thing. It makes me wish I runned away, but I sit still.

  Finally Mr. T. puts the book down, takes a breath, and says, “This stuff really can be boring, right? I don’t know how you do it.”

  I sidelong a glance at Adira, who meets my eyes from across the way. She arches her eyebrows at me. Neo sits up straighter.

  Mr. T. walks up to the board and speaks as he writes a list of words. “Okay,” he says. “We’ll go around the room. Are you a princess, a brain, a jock, a rebel, or a recluse?”

  I google “recluse” and go to images. It is a type of spider. A pretty hideous one.

  He turns to us. The room is filled with the silence of confusion.

  “Oh, come on now. Don’t make me feel old. #### ## ### # you must have seen The Breakfast Club, no? It’s a classic.”

  Bhagatveer nods shyly. Everyone else still looks confused.

  Mr. T. approaches
us, turns a chair around, straddles it. “The Breakfast Club, people. A holy ###. A guide for living. A ### #### ## of everything that means something in life. Love. Self-worth. Togetherness.”

  More blinks.

  “It’s a movie.” He sighs.

  Oh.

  He gets back up. “Look, here’s the deal. I’ll cover this book stuff because . . . well, it will help you. ### #### ## ###. If there’s anything more American than The Breakfast Club, ##### #### ######. So that’s your homework. Go watch The Breakfast Club.”

  I glance at Neo. He gives me a perplexed little shrug.

  “And, ##### #### ### #### #### ## #### school library has two copies, plus we’ve got streaming subscriptions too. Not that I had anything to do with that.” He smiles mischievously. “You can watch it in one of the viewing rooms. We’ll discuss it next time.”

  The bell rings and I try to picture going to the library. Asking for the movie. Hoping someone else hasn’t gotten it first. Watching a whole movie, no doubt confused most of the time. But I don’t want to disappoint Mr. T. either.

  Neo’s face betrays similar worries. He turns to me. “Movie . . . we watch?”

  I nod. Obviously. It’s homework. I always do my homework.

  He points to his chest, then to me, then back. “We watch?”

  Oh. He means together. I like that thought better, someone to help me figure out this whole new system. And maybe understand the movie too.

  “Yes.” I nod.

  There is an expression I have learned in America: misery loves company. I think it means that if you are unhappy, it is good to be with someone else unhappy, too. But for the moment, I actually do not feel unhappy at all. I guess happiness loves company too.

  I smile at Neo. “See you in the library.”

  Buckle Up, Honeys

  Here are two things I didn’t expect. Altagracia’s car smells like a meadow full of flowers. And she drives like my grandmother, if my grandmother could drive. Someone’s grandmother. You’d figure that someone whose appearance seems to scream “I don’t care what you think” would care a lot less about speed limits and traffic laws. But she comes to a full stop at every stop sign for a beat too long, and signals meticulously. Romeo Santos plays in the background, but it’s almost too faint to hear.

  We’re on our way to her house to do a makeup tutorial for her Instagram. I’m weirdly nervous. I’m on her curl side, not her shaved side, and as she talks they sway to their own rhythm.

  “You know, I wouldn’t have guessed you’re from Argentina when I first saw you,” she says, then rolls her eyes. “That will probably work in your favor here, sadly.”

  I think about that for a moment, what my lighter complexion seems to signify here. How my family goes unnoticed until we open our mouths. But back in Argentina a white girl who speaks Spanish isn’t all that surprising, since we are a nation of immigrants who speak Spanish.

  “Anyway, I know it’s hard to be new here,” she says. “The people #### #### know #### #### ‘different.’”

  “How long have you lived here?”

  “My parents met in New York at one of my mom’s art shows, but when their careers took off, they moved here to, you know, be all suburban and shit. It was a big deal, and they thought ###### ### #### favor, bringing me to a place like this.” She gestures again. “You know, the kind of place where I have to drive extra carefully so I don’t get stopped. I was five. It was . . . it was a favor like ###### brussels sprouts are a favor?”

  I’m not sure I got all that right. But she goes on. “So I grew up with all these blanquitos, but after my parents split, my mom moved back to the DR, and I spent at least part of every summer there. So ###### ###### ####, bouncing from the city to suburbia to Santo Domingo, with people I was told were my people, and who were, but not too, you know?”

  I nod. I’m not sure I know. But I’m beginning to understand, maybe just a little, what it’s like to be from more than one place. And thus from no place at all. Altagracia seems like she’s so from here, with all the people she knows at school, but she’s also had to deal with feeling different.

  She turns onto a wide, treelined street. It ends in a giant circle with a small, perfectly manicured island in the middle. Red bushes, lime-green bushes, perfectly round mounds of white flowers, and a tree that looks like it just got a haircut. Every house around the giant circle looks big enough for several families, like a house you’d see in the movies. Is this where Altagracia lives?

  Altagracia pulls into a driveway to the right—also a circle—and drives around to the front of the house. Every bush in the front of the house looks as severely angular as the ones on the little island in the middle of this dead-end street, box shapes and perfect spheres, like someone is allergic to letting plants grow how they want to.

  We walk up to the door and she punches some numbers into a keypad. No key. Inside, the ceiling soars like a church. Everything is beige with white trim. The walls. The curtains. Straight ahead there’s a glass table with a big glass sculpture. It glints as the light hits it.

  “Welcome to our humble abode. My dad is afraid of color. #### ######### ##### the neighbors will think we’re too ethnic. Come ### #### family room.” I am listening but also trying to take in her house. I have never been in a house this big.

  She walks me into a sunken room. More beige on the wall, white on the couches. She leaves and comes back with a pitcher of lemonade and two glasses. How do people who have houses like this also go to school with people like me who just got here and have nothing?

  “Where is everyone?” I ask as she sits next to me.

  “My dad works crazy hours. You’d be surprised just how many dental emergencies #### ####### #####. #### ###### many people want to have ##### teeth the size of #######. His girlfriend . . . who knows. This one’s kind of new, so I never know if ##### pop in or not.”

  “Your family must be proud of your dad.”

  “They are,” Altagracia says. “But he also frustrates my Abuelita.” She laughs. “The family might have been happier if he’d just married a nice girl and stayed with her, you know? Although they do love saying there’s a dentist in the family. We’re the definition of making it to them.”

  I take a moment to wonder what it will mean for us to make it. It’s more than I know how to talk about. “So you do makeup?” I ask, changing the subject. The words feel awkward on my tongue. Do makeup?

  She lights up. “Well, ##### ####### ####### watching YouTube. Muchas de las blanquitas #### #### not what I needed. Kind of like when I first moved out here and no salon knew what to do with my hair. So I figured out how to do it myself. I knew I couldn’t be the only one. I just decided . . . what if I try? I did a video on my phone and posted it on my Finsta. And, like, #### ####### followed me on there said nice things, ##### ###### ##### I didn’t know liked it too. And then I read up on people #### ###### making money, and I thought, ‘I’m smart enough to do that.’ Build a following. Create a skin line, maybe. All natural, #### ##### ## help people? So here I am. You’ll be my first ‘guest model.’”

  “Oh, wow.” I am jealous of her focus when I am just aiming for survival. I want some of what she has, that limitless confidence.

  “Anyway, tell me about you. Are you liking it here?”

  Am I liking it here. I don’t know the answer to that. There’s nowhere else now, I know. But the thought of always feeling like a fish out of water is too big to hold sometimes.

  “Is okay,” is all I say.

  She narrows her eyes at me skeptically.

  “You like boys? Girls? Both? I like girls myself.”

  I smile at the question. It feels pretty American that she didn’t assume but asked. “Boys.” It’s none of my business, but the question falls out of my mouth before I think about it. “Is it okay with your parents?” I had a friend in Argentina who had a hard time coming out because as much as things have changed, some people can still be intolerant.

  “Surprisingl
y, yes. I know it’s not always like that. But luckily my parents were pretty cool. My mom’s an artist, and they have all different kinds of friends. It was touch and go there for a while with some of my more judgy aunts. We’re good now, though.

  “Anyway, back to you. Anyone at school in particular?”

  I feel heat on my neck. “I don’t know.”

  She jumps up, lands back down on the sofa in perfect cross-legged position. “Oh my God, you do know! Your face just gives it all away. Who is it? Spill!”

  I look away, smile despite myself, smooth the front of my pants. “There’s a boy in math class. He’s just nice. There’s nothing.”

  “Who?”

  I want to start the friendship with honesty. But is this embarrassing? Do girls like Altagracia have crushes on people they barely know? I have seen everyone in the hallway saying “What’s up, Gracie” and giving her high fives as she walks past. She is obviously someone people like. It makes me shy to admit the nerdier parts of myself, the parts that swoon over a guy who has barely only told me his name.

  “Harrison.”

  “Harrison?” she asks.

  I nod.

  “Harrison?” she asks again, like she heard wrong. She sounds so confused that a thousand scenarios start to play out in my head. Maybe he’s got a girlfriend. Maybe he doesn’t like girls? Maybe he’s already told her he doesn’t like me? Okay, no, that last one is paranoid.

  She laughs. “C’mere,” she says. She stands, and I follow her up a beige-carpeted staircase to an enormous landing with ceilings twice as tall as I am. As soon as she opens the door, I can tell it’s her room. It’s the opposite of the beige house. Vibrant walls a color between pink and orange. A huge makeup mirror like the old-fashioned movie stars used to have, with big round light bulbs all around it and a thousand magazine cutouts of made-up faces. And opposite all this, a bed bigger than my parents’ bed.

  She leads me to the window. The house next door is far, but we can see straight into one of its windows on the second floor. The walls are navy blue and there’s a band poster I can’t quite make out. There is a string of perfectly manicured evergreens between this house and that one, but they’re no taller than the first floor.