The Other Half of Happy

by Rebecca Balcarcel

  I turn my face to the window, hiding my own frown. Dad’s talked to me in English all my life. Why does he act surprised that I don’t speak Spanish? I picture Abuela waving at me from the back of a car that’s speeding away.

  Dad hangs up. He takes a deep breath as if to say something, and I look over. He breathes out, says nothing, and rubs his ear.

  The ear. That’s bad news. Whatever’s coming, it won’t be good.

  He looks straight ahead as he says, “You know a few Spanish words, m’ija. Maybe you try them out next week when we visit your cousins.”

  “I can count to ten, Dad. That’s about it. Don’t they speak English?”

  “Some.”

  “So I’ll be the only one who can’t understand anything.”

  I want him to feel bad. I feel bad. He’s changing the rules on me. If I can’t talk to my own family, it’s his fault. “You always said English is more important.”

  He looks back at Memito, which tells me I must have raised my voice. “That was for me, when I was a student,” he whispers. “Back then I needed practice.”

  It’s true. After he graduated from college, Dad let up on his English-only rule. But by then I was, like, seven. Even now, he never speaks to me in Spanish, just to Mom. Quietly I say, “Spanish is your secret language with Mom anyway.”

  Dad twists to look at me, but says nothing.

  As we turn into our neighborhood, I notice he’s been quiet for three blocks. I know I’m being a pain. Guilt pushes on my chest. Anger pushes back.

  AS THE SUN SINKS BEHIND THE TREES, Dad takes Memito to bed, and I start making my lunch for school. If Mom were here, she’d help. But it looks like she unchained herself from her desk after all and went to the university to buy books for her class.

  I’m getting out a paper bag when Dad sighs into the kitchen and slumps into a dining chair. I should say something about Abuela or Spanish, but I can’t think what.

  I take a sack lunch instead of buying because Mom won’t let me eat “fried whatever and sugary who-knows-what.” She says that becoming a mom changed her eating habits forever. Not a single Fruit Loop has entered our house since I was born. I’ve only seen them in commercials.

  I smooth organic grape jelly onto sprouted wheat bread. I wish I could take white bread instead, but at least PB&J is better than bean and cheese pupusas. Being laughed at in second grade was the first and last of that. I came home crying, and Mom promised to pack more common foods—as long as they were healthy.

  Dad watches me rinse the jelly knife and tuck my sandwich into a plastic square box.

  “Soon you’ll be making your soupcases,” he says in a sad-song voice.

  “I’m packing lunch, not suitcases, Dad. I’m not moving out for years.”

  He leans on the table, chin in his hand. “I remember the day you started the kindergarten.” He’s always listening to the fading notes of the past.

  I walk over and pat his shoulder. “It’s only seventh grade, Dad.”

  His shoulders drop. “Pues.”

  This is his word for agreeing. And his word for not agreeing. “Pues” means “well” and “there it is” and “if you say so.” What he really means is seventh grade is the end and seventh grade is the beginning and why can’t we tie down the sun?

  “Don’t be sad, okay?” The thing is, I can’t stop time. And why would I? My sixth-grade jeans don’t fit. Dad’s the one who quotes that Spanish knight they named me after, Don Quixote: “In last year’s nests there are no birds this year.”

  And anyway, I can’t think about the past right now. My excitement about tomorrow is paper-clipped to worry. I’ll be in junior high and practically alone because my sixth-grade friends live across a line that sends them to the other school. Already the school year feels like a carnival ride with iffy seat belts. The only upside is my plan to change my image. I’ve been the girl who can’t tell when people are joking, who takes everything to heart. This year, I’ll play it cool.

  I walk to the fridge and stow my lunch. I check off a list in my head. Lunch made, backpack zipped. Water bottle, I’ll fill in the morning.

  Dad takes a deep breath. “You know where to catch the bus?” he asks. “Your phone, it’s charged? You have everything you need?”

  “The corner. Charged. Yes.”

  And here I want to whisper, “It’s going to be okay, Dad.” Either that or shout, “I know what I’m doing!”

  I wish he would cheer up. There’s no way to tell him I’m stressed already without him being worried, too.

  “When you were born, I said to myself, ‘I will teach her guitar, the great instrument of Spain.’” His eyes look toward a distant place. “I should have started years ago. By your age, I was serenading the first girl who pierced my heart. I wanted to show you as my father showed me.”

  “I’ll sing in choir, Dad. And I won’t be serenading anyone. Guitar can wait.”

  “Los hijos del zapatero van descalzos,” he says to himself.

  I know this one—the children of the shoemaker go barefoot. Fine, I’ll go barefoot.

  He looks up. “As you say, the guitar waits for you.”

  That isn’t what I meant by “wait.” The sooner I get to bed, the sooner this conversation can end. I switch off the overhead lights and peer at him in the lamplight. “Going to bed?”

  “Not yet, m’ija.” He sits up straighter and looks toward the guitar. “How about singing ‘El Gallo Ha Muerto’?”

  “Now?” Dad taught me to sing that song on a car trip before my brother was born. It’s a round, which means Mom began the tune, Dad came in one line later, and I came in last, layering my voice on top of theirs. I had to cover my ears to keep from slipping from my line to theirs. Now I can do “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” and more. I love how rounds chase their own tails.

  I’d only known the sounds of what I was singing until I finally looked up the words one time:

  El gallo ha muerto, qué dolor.

  El gallo ha muerto, qué dolor.

  Ya no dirá más cocodi, cocoda

  Ya no dirá más cocodi, cocoda

  Cocodico-dico-dico-da

  I can sing my part, easy-peasy. When I’m not eleven hours from starting seventh grade.

  “I guess it’s late,” Dad says.

  The lamp makes an hourglass of light against the dark, one cone spreading out above the shade, one below. Dad, still hunched at the table, sits just inside its glow. “Will you wait up for Mom, then?” I ask, checking the clock that hangs above the sink.

  He blinks twice and comes back from wherever he was. “Buena idea. I’ll make her some coffee.” Mom will read past midnight and get up before I do.

  “Good night, Dad,” I say, bending in for a chair hug. He squeezes my shoulders, then presses my head against his. He holds me longer than usual. I know his heart sometimes wishes for impossible things. I guess mine does, too.

  I climb into bed and stare at the ceiling fan spinning and churning the air. In a matter of hours, I’ll be on the school bus. I should be eager, but I feel pushed off a ledge, falling up instead of down, floating away from everything I used to know.

  IT’S 7:20 A.M. and wouldn’t you know, my first-day hair sticks out on one side. I try to tame it with Mom’s straightening iron. By the time I like my face in the mirror, the clock has jumped forward, and I have less than five minutes before I need to leave. Five minutes in which I rinse my cereal bowl, fill my water bottle, hoist on my backpack. Five minutes in which I think, Will anyone like me? Will I get lost in the new building? Five minutes in which I kiss Memito, still in his race-car pajamas, while Mom calls out goodbye over the radio’s morning music.

  “Photo!” yells Dad, running out in his bathrobe.

  At the front door, I’m about to protest, but his phone is already poised. I stand up straight in my jeans and scoop-neck shirt. “You look nice,” he says, clicking the screen, but I read disappointment in his eyes. Yes, you’re seeing correctly, Dad; I’m not wearin
g the huipil. We’re standing in front of the Lake Atitlán painting, though, so I can’t exactly call this moment a win.

  Time to go.

  Then I remember my sea turtle. It’s a bracelet from Grandma Miller, a tiny sea turtle on a leather cord. I run to my room, where I’ve tucked it in a tin box made for peppermints. Grandma lives in Florida, and she bought it for me after we went on a sea turtle walk. We trekked with a guide out to the beach at night to watch a mama turtle lay eggs in the sand, then scoot herself back to the ocean with her flippers. Later, the baby sea turtles would hatch and paddle themselves to the ocean.

  Looking at my turtle’s strong little fins, I think I’ll be okay today. Unless everyone is already friends with everyone else. Unless my clothes look cheap. Unless my hair sticks out again. I tell myself not to think like that. I fumble, trying to tie the ends one-handed. My fingers slip, and the seconds speed up. “Mom!” I yell. “Can you help me with my bracelet?”

  “She’s in the shower,” comes the answer from Dad.

  Dad’s thick fingers can’t help me.

  I hold my breath and try again. Again the ends flop apart. I want to scold myself. Why didn’t I think of this sooner? I think of hitching it together with a safety pin . . . that I don’t have. I think of gluing it, taping it, attaching magnets.

  The shower water runs on.

  I want to reset my brain to the minute before I cared. Rinse my bowl, kiss Memito, stroll out the door early. Before I thought of the bracelet, I was happy. Now I’m miserable and two minutes late. But I’m the me I’m stuck with.

  Each second clangs in my head like a tardy bell. A saying of Dad’s pops to mind: “Donde hay gana, hay maña,” which means “Where there’s a will, there’s a way.” I look down at the bracelet. My little determined friend. Then I think of Mom and her practical mind. The way she stores items next to where they are used. The breadbox next to the toaster.

  “You’re coming,” I tell my turtle, then shove her into my pocket. “Bye y’all,” I yell down the hall, and run for the corner. So much for playing it cool.

  The bus bumps us to school, and I walk into a building five times as big as my elementary school. Hundreds of faces stream by. I clutch my backpack straps tighter. Each hall is labeled with a letter, which helps. I bushwhack my way through the first few classes. Rosters, assigned seats, lists of rules that I half-listen to. Texas history, Spanish, algebra. The class I’m looking forward to is choir, but it’s last.

  The bell rings, and the hall fills with students. How does everyone know where they’re going? Changing classes was easier in grade school, where we only switched between three rooms at the end of a dinky hall. I must look silly standing still. Deep breath. I look at my schedule. My next class, English, is in Port 3. Where’s that? I’ve heard of airports, ship ports, and USB ports, but none of this helps. I stand at the intersection of four halls looking for a sign or an arrow.

  “Can I help?” A man with the school mascot on his shirt guides me out the back door and points toward a blah-colored metal shed with wooden steps. A portable, in a row of portables. One has a big 3 on the side. Port 3.

  I wave my thanks and climb the steps.

  Inside is a room crowded with desks and walls crowded with posters. A short redheaded woman with a strong voice shouts instructions. “Sit wherever you want. I’ll move ya if I have to!”

  She starts down the roll, and I’m expecting the usual. Almost every class of my life has started with me giving a tutorial on how to pronounce my name. Not “kwee,” but “kee.” Not “ja,” but “hah.” “Kee-HAH-nah.” I’m used to it. But Ms. May rattles it off, “Quijana Carrillo,” no problem. I almost forget to say “Here.”

  Ms. May surprises me again when she says, “I never use PowerPoint. Puts a body right to sleep! In this class, no lectures. You’ll do the talking. I want to hear you think!”

  Looking around the room, I see startled faces. A boy with green eyes sits up straighter. I think I’m going to like this class, too.

  My eyes linger on the boy’s right fist. He’s holding something. All I can see is a string looped around one finger. He catches me looking and opens his hand. A red yo-yo. I smile. When he smiles back, a wave of energy passes through me. Or something. Something good.

  Ms. May sends us to lunch. “Be back by twelve-fifty, sharp! We’ll talk about your favorite songs.” Ohs, oohs, and hmms make up our exit soundtrack.

  But when I leave Port 3 and clomp down the wooden stairs last and alone, my confidence wavers. The green-eyed yo-yo boy is nowhere in sight. I sit at the empty end of a lunch table where I’m joined by exactly no one. I tap my sea turtle pocket and try to hear Grandma Miller’s voice. She likes to quote a writer who said, “Everything’s okay in the end; if it’s not okay, it’s not the end.” All of a sudden I feel like I must be miles from the end. Is everyone laughing with someone except me? I’m a lone grape watching the bunches.

  “¿Podemos sentarnos aquí?”

  A light-haired girl and her group look at me, all holding their lunch trays.

  Before I can process that she’s speaking Spanish and that her sentence starts with Can we, they’re sitting down and saying ten words per second. In Spanish. This never happened at my old school.

  “Don’t you speak Spanish?” a girl with glasses says.

  “Um.”

  “Aren’t you Quijana? From English?” She chews a tater tot.

  “Yeah.”

  The light-haired girl looks over. “Oh, you’re one of those. You don’t speak Spanish, right? A coconut.”

  “A what?”

  She snorts. “¡No sabe!”

  They swerve back into Spanish and speed off, leaving me in their dust.

  My sandwich tastes like a stack of notecards. I stuff my lunch sack into my backpack and tramp back to Port 3. It’s locked, so I sit on the wooden steps. I’m going to have to make a friend in this class, unless I want to be a lone grape forever.

  It’s hot. My hair is warm to the touch. Texas summers don’t end until almost Halloween.

  I pull out my phone and turn it on, which is not allowed. But I’m not technically in the school building or even in the portable, so maybe it’s okay. Still, I type quickly. I tilt the screen into the shade to read “coconut: slang term for a Latino who acts white.” This isn’t me. My mom is white. I drop my phone in my backpack, and I look out across the field. What does “act white” mean, anyway? How would I act half Latina?

  I twist and untwist the top loop on my backpack. Being a little kid was easier than this. I wasn’t half anything. I was a whole continent then, like Pangaea. Unsplit. Now I have tectonic plates. Mom looks at me and sees Grandma Miller’s cheekbones; Dad sees the Carrillo nose. I see one land mass, but I’m wrong. My body is Guatemala crashing into the United States. What happens to me, the whole me, when my plates shift, when my continents tear apart? No one told me twelve was earthquake season.

  A few kids saunter out from the main building. Then comes a big group. Ms. May opens the door from the inside. “All right, team, find your seats, and start writing the words to your favorite song. You’re about to learn rhyme schemes.” I’m glad to go in.

  While Ms. May explains rhyme patterns, I spy the tater tot girl. I see that she has a shiny, stiff backpack, obviously new. My backpack is last year’s, and man, it looks like it. Scuffs on the bottom, straps that used to be thick now flattened. I showed it to Mom, but she said, “Plenty of wear left.” She’s right that I don’t need a new one. Like Dad says every time we can’t afford something, “No perderás lo que no deseas.” Mom says it means “You can’t lose what you don’t desire in the first place.” So I shove the wish for a new backpack out of my mind, and try to forget that everyone else seems to have one.

  Ms. May struts up the aisle. “Who wants to share their song lyrics and rhyme scheme?”

  “Yes, young man,” she says to the yo-yo boy. “Remind me of your name.”

  “Jayden.”

  I memo
rize his name and then gasp as he starts reading out loud. He looks over at me, but continues. My face goes hot. We chose the same song. What are the chances? I try not to read too much into it, but I can’t help glowing. This day is looking up.

  With a bounce in my step, I find the choir room without a hitch. Mr. Green, a man with a bushy beard, a bald head, and round glasses, sorts us into sopranos, altos, tenors, and basses. I’m happy to be an alto; I’ll get to sing harmony and not just the easy melody. “We’ll learn to read music this semester,” Mr. Green says. “And we’ll give a concert in about three months.”

  A fidgety boy in the front row raises his hand. “Only three months?”

  “Don’t worry. You’ll know your parts back and forth and up and down by then. And we won’t just sing the notes. We’ll make music!”

  Inside I’m already singing.

  “QUIJANA! I’M SO GLAD we can finally talk.” Grandma Miller’s tilting her screen, and I see her white pouf of hair as I sit on my bed with my laptop. Then it’s a close-up of her forehead until she relaxes into her chair. “Tell me all about school. And don’t tell me fine,” she says, wagging her finger. “Save that for your parents. How was it really?” Grandma digs for the truth when she talks, her words like shovels.

  “Kind of like a roller-coaster—pretty good, but kinda scary,” I admit. “The building’s, like, huge, and I don’t really know anyone. The English teacher seems cool. And I’m in choir. But Mom and Dad made me take Spanish,” I grumble. “And . . . I ate lunch alone.” When Mom and Dad asked me about school, I left this out, but something makes me tell Grandma everything.

  She nods and spares me the advice that grown-ups usually give.

  “I took the sea turtle with me.”

  “Good call,” Grandma says. “Remember the night we saw them charge across the beach? I tell you what, we protected those nesting beaches back when I worked for Fish and Wildlife—placed orange cones around the nests, got people to turn off their crazy-bright porch lights. Each turtle should get her chance, right? Tenacious little guys. You keep yours close.”