“That’s right! You were screaming until Tita wiped your eye with a paper towel soaked in milk.”
“It’s the reason I’ll never step foot in the kitchen again.”
“Come on, Gus, it’s not that bad! And besides, you know how to take care of it now.”
“My eye caught fire, Emilia. The pain was excruciating.”
“I like that word.”
“It’s a good one. And one that’s appropriate when rogue guajillo pepper essence attacks your eye socket.”
Gus points to a bag of pink candy that says DULCES DIANA NOUGAT FRESA.
“I love strawberry candy!”
Mom and Abuela would never let me eat this. I pick up the bag and inspect it.
“It’s from El Salvador,” I tell Gus, who has moved down the aisle.
He squeals suddenly, and I know he’s found his favorite candy. This is the aisle where they keep the good stuff.
“Look!” Gus picks up a tube with a lime-green label and a wild-eyed character on it. “Who’s scarier: Pennywise or the creature on the Pelon Pelonazo label?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “But it won’t stop me from eating that tangy tamarind perfection.”
I rush over and take a bag of Pelon Pelonazo. I feel so tempted to buy both candies! But I already broke the rules with Papi, and I should probably just stay away.
I head toward the register to see Don Carlos.
“Emilia, mi querida. ¿Cómo estás?”
“Hola, Don Carlos,” I say.
“Gustavito, ¿qué tal, hijo?”
“Bien, gracias, Don Carlos.”
We catch up for a bit. I tell him about my school project and that I’m adding Don Carlos’s Grocery Latino as the first stop on my tour.
“Pero, mi querida, ¡qué honor! ¡Gracias!”
He seems pretty flattered and says that I can ask him anything.
I use my phone to record him. He gives me some information about how the store runs and how he orders the foods he stocks on shelves. He explains how many employees he had when he started and how many he has now. It’s a lot if you include the Mexican restaurant in the back. He says he opened his store in 1996.
“¿Por qué?”
Don Carlos says that when he moved here from Venezuela in the mid-nineties, there was a huge demand for food products from all over Latin America and the Caribbean.
“Why?”
“Había mucho trabajo en esos tiempos,” he says.
“There was a lot of work here? For what?”
“¡Pues, para las olimpiadas en Atlanta!”
“Atlanta hosted the Olympics?”
“Claro.”
I love the summer Olympics! I love the Pan American Games, where countries from Latin America compete in summer sports, and the US games, even some of the European ones that lead to the Olympics every four years. The swim meets and track and field and gymnastics. How did I miss that the Olympics were in Georgia? Like, forty minutes from my house, Don Carlos says!
This store is practically the Pan American Games of food supply. Don Carlos has labeled the aisles with flags from different countries.
“You have so many different types of food, Don Carlos. From everywhere!”
“Somebody can be far from their country, but if they have food from home, they feel less far away.”
“Yeah,” I say, holding the nougat fresa. “Thank you, Don Carlos.”
“De nada, corazón,” he says. He takes out his iPad and flips it around to take a selfie.
“Para los fans del mercado.” He catches me and Gus in an awkward pose.
“The grocery store has fans?” Gus asks.
“Bueno,” he starts, “we have over ten thousand fans. Cool, ¿verdad?”
It is cool.
“And to be interviewed by a local reporter is going to get so many likes. There, I posted.”
Don Carlos takes another picture of the carnicería display.
“One more picture so the fans know the meats we have on sale.”
“Two posts in a matter of seconds,” Gus says.
“That’s twice as many as I post a day!”
“Seriously.”
“Oh, Don Carlos?” I say.
“¿Sí?”
“Before I forget, I’d like to buy the Diana nougat fresa, por favor.”
I hand him a few dollars and put the candy in my backpack. Gus eyes me.
“Living on the edge there, señorita.”
“It’s not for me,” I tell him.
“Yeah, right,” he teases. “It’s for your ‘friend’ who really wants candy because she can’t eat it when her mom is in town.”
“You shush!” I shove him gently, but he pretends to fly back and almost smacks right into a pillar. “You’re ridiculous, Gus Sánchez.”
I decide to visit Don Felix at the meat counter one more time.
“Don Felix,” I ask him. “¿Cuándo llegó a Merryville?”
Don Felix thinks for a moment.
“Yo vine en el noventa y quatro,” he says.
“1994! You’ve lived here that long?”
“Sí. Trabajé en construción en Atlanta. Ayudando con el estadio.”
“The stadium? You worked on that?”
“Sí.”
“How did you become a butcher in a grocery store?”
“Pues, hay que trabajar,” he says, handing me a small package. “Pa’que tu abuelita lo prueba.”
I take the wrapped-up meat—a gift for Abuela—while Gus wiggles his eyebrows.
“QUE. CUTE.”
“You, stop!” I thank Don Felix. He nods and offers a shy smile. Walking through Park View, looking around Don Carlos’s grocery store, and talking to people I’ve known forever makes me realize I haven’t been paying attention as much as I thought. I make a mental note to talk to Don Felix and Don Carlos more often. Even when I don’t have a project to do. You don’t know what you might miss if you don’t bother to ask a question.
Gus senses it’s time to leave. “¿Vamos?” he asks. “To film?”
I hate to disappoint Gus, but I feel like poking around more for my project. “I think I need to go back to the library, Gus. I’m sorry. Can we film tomorrow?”
“Um, sure,” he says. “I’ll just film more scenery today instead.”
I feel bad because Gus brought his bag and everything, so I think about a compromise.
“I’ll go to the library real quick and then we can meet up at the shop. I need to check in with Abuela first, but after we can film before it gets dark. Cool?”
“You sure? It’s okay if we go tomorrow.”
“Yeah,” I say. “I just want to look at news from the year Don Carlos started his business. So I’ll have more to say in my tourism guide.”
“Sounds like a plan, Señorita Torres.”
“Gracias, good sir,” I say, starting our handshake.
We both head out of the store and walk in the direction of the library. We pass the playground and watch Mr. Jackson slowly chase after his granddaughters as they laugh and run away from him.
I check my phone and find a few missed texts. One is from my dad saying he’s gotten some other good ideas from the book I left him. I respond with a smiley face and he replies with a thumbs-up and a heart emoji. The other is from my mom about doing homework together. I tell her that I’m already working on something on my own. She sends me a heart emoji and tells me she’ll talk to me later. Then she sends two more texts about how proud she is of me and how much she misses me. Mom gets super-texty when she’s not around.
* * *
I walk into the library with a mission to find out more about the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta—the year Don Carlos opened his store. I’m not sure if that information will be necessary for my project,
but I think a good tour guide should know their history.
Mrs. Liz tells me to go right ahead and start digging.
“And the microfilm machine is fixed! Changed the fuse myself.”
“Cool, Mrs. Liz. And thank you.”
I rotate the articles using the little knob on the right. The first one is about Centennial Olympic Park. I know that place. It’s in Downtown Atlanta. There’s a cool fountain in the shape of the Olympic rings that kids can splash in. It’s right next to the Georgia Aquarium, and across from one of my favorite places, World of Coca-Cola!
I learn some things about Centennial Park that I didn’t know, like that it’s twenty-one acres. In order to raise money to build it, people could make donations by buying bricks that were laid as pavers for the park. For thirty-five dollars, people could write special messages engraved on the bricks. The article says the committee raised over seventeen million dollars.
I do the math in my head. That’s almost five hundred thousand bricks, which is a lot of bricks to lay! I examine the black-and-white picture and read that there were tan and dark red bricks lined up together in groups throughout the entire structure. The flags around the park represented all the countries that participated in the games. It’s like Don Carlos’s store aisles, only with way more countries.
The next article about the Olympics is a recap of the opening ceremonies. It describes the impressive “pyrotechnics show,” which I think just means fireworks and stuff like that. And something Papi would probably like: there was a fleet of Chevys on monster-truck wheels that drove around the Olympic track.
There’s another article about Gloria Estefan singing a song called “Reach” at the closing ceremonies. Abuela loves Gloria Estefan! She calls her Gloria, like she knows her, but I’m pretty sure they’ve never met. It’s probably because they were both born in Cuba and came to the United States around the same time.
I keep scrolling and come across an article about a woman named Sara J. González who was hired by the Olympic committee to do Latino community outreach in Atlanta. She was a small-business owner and Cuban immigrant who fought for immigrant and minority rights in Atlanta. There’s even a park named after her. It’s the first park named for a Latina in the state of Georgia. I wonder if Abuela knows about her.
I take another reel and slide the film into the machine. Each time, I read a little faster.
My doctor told me that I show signs of what she calls “flow.” It’s like seeing a faraway planet I really like and thrusting the Millennium Falcon into hyperdrive to get there. Basically, when I hone in on something I’m interested in, it’s hard to distract me from it. I’m 110 percent in the flow right now.
The next article I read is about how Mexicans were recruited to Georgia in the mid-nineties to help finish construction for the Olympics. According to the article, immigration enforcement was suspended during this time to encourage workers to come to Georgia.
I think about the almost five hundred thousand bricks. Then I think of Don Felix. He must have been one of the workers who came to help finish the job before the Olympics started. The article goes on to talk about the “boom” in immigration and how much of it can be traced back to this moment.
I load another reel, which is dated pretty recently. Before I switch it out for an older one, something catches my eye. It’s a story about immigration laws in Georgia, but it’s about what’s happening with them now. The laws are stricter and give local law enforcement the power to check the immigration status of people who can’t provide identification when they’re asked. The article talks about a man who was deported to Honduras because he didn’t have immigration papers, even though he’s spent most of his life in Arizona and his kids were born there!
Abuela and Mami were both born in Cuba. What would happen if someone forced them to go back? What would happen to Papi? Where would I end up?
None of this seems fair. Who makes the rules about who gets to stay somewhere and who has to leave? My mind is a million stars blinking at once. I think about the Arizona man and his kids. Who’s going to take them to school?
Mr. Jackson walks his grandkids to Park View Elementary every day, but his girls might have to move to Merryville. Even the decision of which school you go to isn’t yours.
I chew the tip of my pen and tap-tap-tap it several times on the table. My face feels hot.
“You okay, Emilia?” Mrs. Liz comes out from stacking books to check on me.
“I’d like to print this out, Mrs. Liz,” I tell her, already looking for the print button.
“Sure thing, hun.”
I use tabloid-sized paper, the biggest the library has, to get as much of the article as possible. I thank Mrs. Liz and grab my things.
“You bet,” she says.
My Merryville tourism guide suddenly has more questions than answers.
Back at the shop, I immediately look for my dad. He’s not there. I’m disappointed, because I need to talk about what I just read. I text Mom while standing next to a blue Chevy Impala. Actually, it’s not blue. It’s blue velvet metallic. Gus’s dad told me once that vehicle paint isn’t just blue or red or yellow.
“Tienen nombres interesantes,” he said.
“¿Por qué?” I asked him.
“Pues ¡para darles más vida!” He waved his hands in the air expressively as he shouted, “More life!” Gus didn’t seem interested in any of this, but I was. His dad showed me the VIN on the lower part of the windshield by the driver’s side.
“Este es el número de identificación de este vehículo.”
“Vehicle identification number?”
“Eso,” he said. He told me that every car has a special number indicating all the details about the car.
“Cada carro es especial,” he said, smiling proudly.
I think part of him would love to paint cool designs on cars. He keeps a sketchbook that I’ve seen him draw in while sitting on one of the oil drums next to his stall. He makes really cool designs between bites of Tita’s special torta ahogada, a sandwich stuffed with cuts of seasoned pork and soaked in tomato sauce inside a crispy baguette called birote. It’s exactly as delicious as it sounds.
I get a text from Mom.
Mom: Hey! How’s it going, mi amor???
Me: i found some articles for my social studies project . . .
Mom: Cool! Tell me about them!
Me: i didn’t know that atlanta hosted the olympics
Mom: Yeah! But isn’t the tourism guide about our town?
Me: yeah. but when i interviewed don carlos, i found out some stuff and i read about a law that made me upset. can u talk?
Before I can text anything else, Mom is already video calling.
“Hey!”
“Hey, Mom.”
“What’s making you upset, boo?”
“This law! Can police really kick people out of the country if they don’t have an ID?”
I tell her about the Olympics and the workers who were encouraged to help when the laws were not enforced. My mom is quiet for a bit while she thinks of what to say.
“Okay,” Mom starts. She takes a deep breath. “Let’s break it down. You know I’ll always be honest with you, right, mi amor?”
I nod because I know it’s true.
“Instead of giving these workers a path to citizenship, the government just expected them to do the work and leave. Then some people got upset when the workers didn’t leave, even though they have contributed greatly to our state economy and have made a home here.”
I can feel a lump in my throat. I think Mami sees it. “But that’s why we vote—so we can have people in office who help create the type of place we want to live in. Whenever you see injustice, mi amor, you have to speak up and fight back. It’s everybody’s responsibility as humans.”
Of all the blinking stars in my head f
ighting for my attention right now, I see a small one flittering around like a firefly. Glowing then turning dark. Glowing then dark. I want to follow it to see where it goes. But how do I chase something that lights up and then disappears into the darkness? How do I keep it lit so I can see where it leads me?
“Injustice has long, winding roots, mi amor. Did you know that in the sixteenth century, over one million African slaves were brought to Cuba?” Mom asks, bringing me back to our conversation.
“Really?”
“Yeah. And those people, in bondage, brought traditions that helped shape Cuba’s cultural identity.”
“You’re talking about the Yoruba, aren’t you?”
“Yes, they came from Western Africa, to be exact. Much of what is Nigeria today. And those traditions and histories that have made their way to Cuba and other parts of Latin America are undeniable and they continue today. No matter how many people try to erase it or deny it.”
Mom tells me that injustice didn’t start today, and we must learn from history. I think about what I’ve learned doing this project.
Mami breathes in slowly. “You keep digging, mi amor. I have a feeling your tourism guide is going to bust some heads.”
My mom laughs. Her mouth is wide and her eyes are squinting with joy.
“Proud of you, boo. And remember that I’m here if you want to talk about what you find.”
“Thanks, Mom.”
“K, gotta go. Let’s talk tonight.”
“K, love you.”
When I end the call, the Chevy is staring at me from its stall like a motionless metal animal waiting to be cared for.
It’s just another car with a different set of problems. Sometimes people try to fix their own cars, but they don’t know how and end up causing more damage.
“Prognosis, Doctor?”
“Oh, hey, Gus!” I didn’t see him walk up behind me. “Well, the car is going to need a new rim and we should check the alignment,” I tell him.
Gus is flabbergasted. I like that word. It was on our language arts vocabulary exam a few weeks ago. I studied a lot for that test because Ms. McKennen said if the whole class passed, she would give us a Friday fun day, which is basically freewriting. I don’t really like writing, but the rest of the class does, and I didn’t want to be the one who messed it up for everyone. So I studied and when the grades came back, Ms. McKennen said she was “flabbergasted” by our performance.
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