Lety Out Loud

by Angela Cervantes

  After Alma’s kinds words and Spike being whisked away, the room swirled with chatter and activity. Brisa and Kennedy joined the other cat heroes. Hunter and Mario were reading the animal profiles posted on the bulletin board. Still, Lety stood frozen. Spike’s departure had made the contest more urgent to her. Had she really agreed to be a shelter scribe and compete with Hunter Farmer, the fifth grader who read and wrote at a high school level?

  She thought back to her own words to Dr. Villalobos: Sometimes people or pets that are not wanted can still become heroes — if we give them a chance.

  If Hunter thought he was going to splat her like an ant in this contest, she was going to prove him wrong. She owed it to the hero dog Spike, and the hat-hating Finn, and all of the furry friends needing a forever family to squash the doubt and write profiles that were pure gold.

  When Brisa’s mom dropped Lety off at her home, her seven-year-old brother, Eddie, was sitting on the front porch waiting for her.

  “Lety! Lety!” he sang, rushing from the porch to unlatch the gate for her. “You missed the best day ever!”

  “You played hangman, right?”

  “With chalk on the playground and I knew all the words.”

  “Smarty-pants,” Lety said, opening the screen door for her brother. The minute she walked in, she could smell the spicy aroma of lentil soup from the kitchen.

  “Mrs. Camacho let me help the new kids. There’s Luis from Guatemala and Zeenat from … I don’t remember, but I got to be their buddies. We had paletas. And tomorrow, we have to bring in pictures of our families. Will you help me find one?”

  “Sure,” Lety said. She passed the dining table toward the kitchen to greet her mom but stopped once she spotted a stack of paint swatches. It was her mom’s tradition to bring her one swatch from every paint job, but this time there were at least a dozen stacked on the table. Each one, the size of a bookmark, featured several shades of purple and pink.

  “Did you know there were so many purples, Lety?” Eddie asked, taking a seat at the table.

  Lety shuffled through them and shook her head.

  “I did,” Eddie said. “I know all the colors already. Velvet violet, marvelous mauve, spring lavender …”

  While Eddie rattled off a list of purple paints, Lety’s mom walked into the room with a pot of soup. She placed it on the table and gave Lety a hug.

  “¿Te gustan?” she asked, lowering her eyes to the swatches Lety held in her hands.

  “Sí, son hermosas. Gracias!” Lety said.

  Lety’s mom had been an artist in Mexico who sold her paintings of birds, stray animals, and flowers in the main plaza of Tlaquepaque. Now she painted homes and apartments. Most people wanted their walls painted colors that her mom called sencillos, like beige, gray, and creamy whites, but she always picked up the most vibrant paint swatches for Lety. Lety and Eddie studied the colors and practiced pronouncing them every night.

  It always impressed Mrs. Camacho when Lety would describe colors not just as blue or green but instead as indigo blue or moss green. In this way, Lety felt her English was improving, but she wasn’t sure that knowing names for different paint colors would help her now as shelter scribe. Knowing paint colors certainly didn’t help her mom when they went to her first parent-teacher conference. Lety’s mom and teacher sat across from each other and traded silent smiles for ten minutes — it felt like forever to Lety — until a translator arrived.

  With Mrs. Camacho, things were a lot easier. She spoke Spanish, but she didn’t speak Aziza or Gazi’s language. Last year, when Lety witnessed Mrs. Camacho struggling to communicate with Gazi’s parents about a permission slip needed for a field trip, Lety recognized the deep scarlet shade of embarrassment that flooded Gazi’s face. From that day forward, she always made sure Gazi was never sent to the wrong bathroom or left to eat alone in the lunchroom.

  “How go first day of camp?” Lety’s mom asked, making Eddie grin.

  “You’re speaking English!” Eddie said. Lety’s mom smiled back at him.

  “I learn English, too.” She winked at him. “I’m best student.” Eddie shook his head, still cracking up.

  “¿Y? ¿Como te fue, Lety?” she asked Lety again.

  “Good. I volunteered to be a shelter scribe,” Lety answered. Her mom winced and Lety quickly translated for her. “Me fue muy bien. Voy a escribir historias para las mascotas —” Lety started before Eddie interrupted.

  “Cool!” Eddie exclaimed. “Can we get a dog?”

  “I hope so. I met a sweet dog today that would be perfect for us.”

  “¿Como se llama?” Lety’s mom asked.

  “Spike.”

  Lety’s mom laughed.

  “That’s a cool name!” Eddie said.

  “Maybe we can bring him home?” Lety asked her mom.

  Lety’s mom shifted her head from left to right as if thinking it over.

  “No se,” she answered. “Hablaré con su papá.”

  “Gracias, Mamita,” Lety said, grateful that her mom was willing to talk to her father. It was a good sign that her mom liked the idea of having a dog.

  “You have to say ‘thank you,’ Lety,” Eddie said. “We won’t learn English if we always speak Spanish. That’s what Mrs. Camacho says.”

  “She also says we shouldn’t lose our Spanish, Eddie,” Lety said. “That’s important, too. We don’t have to choose one or the other. The goal is to be bilingual.”

  Eddie shrugged. “We already are, but I’m going to be more than bilingual. I will learn all the languages in the whole world! So Mom has to learn them, too. English most of all.”

  “Aye, Eddie,” Lety said, shaking her head. “She’s learning as fast as she can.”

  “I know,” he said, and then got up and kissed his mom on the cheek. “I know you’re trying, Mamita.”

  Lety smiled at her brother and thought back to Eddie’s choir performance last Christmas. After the event, parents and teachers mingled in the school cafeteria. As she and Eddie bounced around, chatting with their friends and teachers, her mom huddled close with Brisa’s mom. Both of them were too shy to meet other parents with the little English they spoke. Maybe her brother was right. Deep down, Lety wanted what he wanted. She wanted her mom to be able to join conversations instead of standing in the back of the room scared to speak and say the wrong thing. Lety understood how that felt.

  Later that night when her father came home from work, Lety and Eddie kept him company at the dinner table. They made it a family practice to do their homework and drink a glass of milk while he ate his dinner.

  Lety flipped through an English dictionary to find words that would be at Hunter’s high school reading level. Kennedy and Brisa had said they’d also help her come up with words. Lety hoped they were having more luck. Eddie browsed through a family photo album for a picture to take to his summer ELL class the next day. She looked over at her father as he cut a piece of pork on his plate and scooped it up with a corn tortilla.

  “Papá, do you know any hard English words?” she asked. “I need five words for tomorrow.” He arched his eyebrows at her and wiped his mouth with a paper towel.

  “Todas son difíciles para mí, mija,” he said, and scooped up some more pork.

  “If you find difficult words, write them down and practice them,” Eddie said, dipping a chocolate chip cookie into his glass of milk. “That’s what Mrs. Camacho says.”

  Lety’s father frowned. Her father rarely spoke English, but he understood everything.

  “I can study the difficult words with you, Papá. I will be the teacher since I know English best,” Eddie said. Lety laughed at her brother, but it was true. For Eddie, English came so easily. Mrs. Camacho said it was because Eddie started learning English at a younger age. She said young brains are like sponges, absorbing new languages easily. Lety wished she could make her brain a sponge, too.

  Their father leaned over and proudly patted Eddie’s head. Lety’s father had been the first to come t
o the United States. He came to work construction with an uncle who had started his own business years ago. Her father was gone for an entire year. Every day her father was gone, Lety worried. She yearned for his voice in the morning, singing a song from the radio, and his boots at the door before they went to sleep. During that year, her mom, Eddie, and Lety lived with their grandparents to save money for their trip to the United States. Eddie barely remembered anything from that time — he was too young — but Lety felt the emptiness of their dad’s departure and the anxiety as they waited for the call to join him in a new country. When her dad and uncle had finally earned enough money to send for them, they filled their backpacks and left their home in Tlaquepaque for good.

  Lety’s father stood up from the table to take his plate to the kitchen, but before he did, he leaned down and planted a kiss on Lety’s head. “Tu estudias.” He tapped a finger on her dictionary. “Yo trabajo.”

  “Papá, you have to study, too,” Eddie said. “Not just work all the time.” Lety passed him a stern look to be quiet.

  “He works all day so that we can study,” Lety explained.

  “Tiene razon,” Lety’s mother said in agreement.

  “After English, I’m going to learn Italian so I can surprise my soccer coach,” Eddie chirped. “Then maybe Farsi or Tagalog. There are so many languages. Thousands! English is my favorite, though.”

  “Que bueno, mijo,” Lety’s mom said, pouring him more milk.

  “I can barely come up with five good English words,” Lety said, staring down at the dictionary. Her mom put a hand on Lety’s shoulder.

  “I do not know so many words,” her mom said. “Lo siento, mija.”

  “It’s okay, Kennedy and Brisa are helping me.”

  “Use one of these,” Eddie said, sliding a paint swatch with five different shades of pink on it across the table toward her. “These are good.”

  Lety closed the dictionary. She studied the paint swatch and slipped it into her book bag while Eddie moved into the living room to watch a cartoon called Zombie Cats. She joined him on the couch, but once their father came in and took his place on the corner of the couch, he switched the channel to a Spanish game show.

  Eddie groaned and dropped down to the floor with a sulk. Lety curled up next to her dad. The game show was called Cien mexicanos dicen. It was the Mexican version of Family Feud, where two families were pitted against each other to answer questions about everyday topics. Lety looked forward to the show because the host was funny and the families could win thousands of dollars. She liked to daydream that it was her family on the show winning fifty thousand bucks. The big prize wasn’t the only reason she liked the show. It was her favorite show because of the way her father’s stern mouth curved into a smile whenever the host made a joke. Tonight, the host asked the families to name something they never left home without. One by one, the contestants guessed wallet, cell phone, eyeglasses, purse, and a variety of wrong answers.

  “Identificación,” her father guessed.

  “ID,” Eddie repeated.

  Hearing her tired father come alive after a long day of work comforted Lety. Her mom joined them on the couch and patted Lety’s leg.

  “Papeles,” Lety’s mom shouted at the television as soon as she sat down. Lety looked down at her mother’s chipped fingernails, covered with splotches of cream-colored paint. And even though her mom usually wore a bandanna over her hair when she painted homes, Lety could see flecks of ivory white on a few strands of her mom’s brown hair. Her father had showered and changed into clean clothes as soon as he arrived home, but Lety could still smell the earthy aroma of a new construction project soaked into his dark hair and golden-brown skin.

  “Identification,” Lety yelled out. “Why aren’t they guessing that?”

  A shrill buzzer rang out on the show, signaling that the family had struck out. Now the other family had the chance to guess the remaining answer. They huddled close before shouting the winning answer: driver’s license/identification.

  Lety’s dad smiled wide. “Lo sabía.”

  “That family should have listened to us, Lety,” Eddie said. “We knew the answer.”

  “We knew the answer in two languages,” Lety said. “We would have won the big prize.”

  “Lety! Brisa!” Kennedy screamed in panic when they walked into the multipurpose room. She rushed up to them with a paper in her hand. “Hunter and Mario say that we agreed yesterday that they would give you five words, too. I don’t remember agreeing to that,” Kennedy said, glaring at the two boys.

  “¡¿Que?!” Brisa exclaimed. “No way!” she said, raising a finger at the sky.

  “Are those their words?” Lety asked, grabbing the paper from Kennedy’s hands. Kennedy nodded.

  “They’re ridiculous,” Kennedy said just as the boys joined them.

  “She agreed to it,” Mario said. “You can’t change the rules.”

  “You are the rule changers,” Brisa sniped.

  Lety scanned the five words Hunter had picked for her to use in the animal profiles. A lump formed in her throat. She wasn’t familiar with any of them. They were from another universe as far as she was concerned. Kennedy snatched the paper from Lety’s hands and waved it accusingly at Hunter and Mario.

  “C’mon! ‘Supersonic’? ‘Infectious’? ‘Rigid’? Where did you get these stupid words? And how is Lety supposed to use ‘colossal’ and ‘fusion’ in the animal profiles?”

  “You don’t play fair, Hunter,” Brisa added.

  “How am I not being fair?” Hunter said. He grasped the baseball hat on his head in exasperation. “You get to choose words for me, but I’m not allowed to pick words for you?”

  “You’re the one that bragged about writing at a high school level,” Kennedy said.

  “Can I see the words you have for me?” Hunter said to Lety, ignoring Kennedy’s scowl.

  Lety pulled her book bag off and dipped her hands into a side pocket for the paint swatch. Kennedy and Brisa also pulled out small notepads with scribbled words.

  “Your first word is ‘rambunctious,’ ” Kennedy said.

  “Easy enough,” Hunter said with a shrug, and jotted it down on his phone.

  “ ‘Gush’ and ‘beckon,’ ” Brisa offered.

  “More easy words,” Hunter said, and scoffed.

  “Seriously, Hunter?” Kennedy said.

  “How about ‘scrumptious’?” Brisa added. “I love how that word sounds. Don’t you? Good luck using it, Hunter.”

  “Easiest word in the world.”

  “ ‘Cerise,’ ” Lety said. Hunter’s smug smile twisted into a frown.

  “Is that even a real word? That doesn’t sound like English,” he said. “We have to use English words.”

  “It is English,” Lety said. “It is a deep pink color. I have it here.” She showed him the paint swatch. “See? Sweet Cerise.”

  “I don’t think so. Give him another word,” Mario said.

  “It sounds like cereza, which is ‘cherry’ in Spanish, but ‘cerise’ is an English word,” Lety said.

  “I don’t think it should count,” Hunter said to Mario. “It sounds Spanish or French.”

  “Oh, because you don’t use any Spanish-sounding words?” Kennedy snapped. “Last year, you had a piñata birthday party. With the robot piñata, remember? Where do you think ‘piñata’ comes from?”

  Lety and Brisa exchanged a look of surprise. They were used to not being invited to classmates’ birthday parties, unless it was an ELL student’s party, but they didn’t know about Hunter’s piñata party. Nor that Kennedy had gone to it. She had never mentioned it to them.

  “It’s a borrowed Spanish word, or did you not learn that in all those high-school-level books you supposedly read?” Kennedy said with so much snarky attitude that Hunter’s face turned cherry red.

  “Okay, fine. Whatever,” Hunter said with a shrug. He directed his gaze at Lety. “I’ll use your words. Do you agree to use our five words in th
e animal profiles, then?”

  “That wasn’t part of the deal, you guys,” Kennedy said, crossing her arms over her chest. “Lety, you don’t have to agree to anything. We can go have a conversation with Dr. Villalobos right now about this whole shelter scribe contest.”

  Mario gasped. “You can’t do that!”

  “We might get kicked out, and my grandma paid a lot for this camp,” Hunter said. “So don’t even think about it, Kennedy.”

  Lety wanted to say that her family paid a lot, too, but she didn’t want to sound like a copycat, repeating anything Hunter said.

  “You should think about that before you make up new rules, then,” Kennedy said.

  Lety felt like she was in a Mexican telenovela where all the characters are in the courtroom. In this episode, Kennedy was a fearless lawyer defending Lety. On the other side of the court stood the villains: Hunter and Mario. Yet Lety didn’t feel like the victim needing defending. Even though the words Hunter came up with seemed impossible, Lety wanted the chance to compete with Hunter fair and square. If she won, she’d win because she helped the shelter’s dogs and cats find their forever homes. She gathered the words she wanted to say in her brain and spoke up.

  “We’re not going to tell,” Lety said with a quick nod to Kennedy. “I’ll use their words, okay? Now let’s get to work.”

  Alma held a piece of yellow tablet paper with the names of ten dogs and cats. “Here you go,” she said, handing the paper to Lety. “Remember, no longer than a hundred words. Dr. V. likes sweet and simple.”

  “We got it,” Hunter said.

  “Sweet and simple,” Lety repeated, liking how those words sounded together.

  “Good luck!” Alma said, walking off to talk to some other volunteers.

  As soon as Alma was out of earshot, Lety gave the paper to Mario. With one quick rip, he passed both Lety and Hunter a list of five furry friends.

  “May the best shelter scribe win,” he said.

  Hunter dashed off with his list. Lety remained still, gazing over the names of her own furry friends. Her list included three cats named Chicharito, Lorca, and Bandit, and two dogs: Finn and a tiny Pomeranian mix named Bella. Brisa and Kennedy hovered close to her to see who she had.