The guys were finding tons of stuff. There were lots of other major walls in history—who knew? Greece’s wall along the Turkish border, Hungary’s wall along the Serbian border, and, of course, the Great Wall of China. I tried not to think of Dad, whether he was studying some wall right now, trying to figure out how to scale it. There’d been no news in three and a half weeks. Mom was now in permanent freak-out mode, like, back to sorting socks and underwear by color. She set up the spices in alphabetical order! And yelled at Christopher when he put back the cinnamon after the coriander! And why wouldn’t she be losing it? At least I had school to distract me. Dustin. But Mom? She didn’t even get that housekeeping job.
“You all here?” Jade asked. I must have been staring off into space.
“Yeah.”
She pursed her lips, didn’t believe me. But she also knew when not to push.
“Yo, Lili,” Brianna said. “I found another great quote.”
“Awesome. Add it to the Google Doc.”
I went back to reading. Jeez! “Did you all know that the US-Mexico border cuts some communities like, in half? So they have to have their papers with them all the time if they just want to, say, go to the grocery store across town? Does that even make sense?”
“Hmm,” Brianna said as she was cutting and pasting; I wasn’t sure if she was responding to me or it.
“And, not for nothing,” I went on, “but when the US government built a wall between San Diego and Tijuana, people just found other ways to cross into the US.”
Brianna closed her laptop. Jade put down her charcoal pencil. She’d been shading in the Afro of a girl speaking into a microphone in her sketchbook.
“And get this.” I couldn’t stop. “At one point the government spent twelve billion dollars on constructing some kind of fancy lighting to detect people crossing the border. That’s insane! Can you imagine if they’d used that money to, like, build better schools in Central America or Mexico instead?”
At this point Brianna and Jade were grinning at me like proud parents.
“What!”
Jade laughed. “You’re really into this project, Lili. That’s whatsup.”
“Right?” Brianna added. Then she looked conspiratorially at Jade. “Yo. So you should lead the presentation, then.”
“What! Me? Hell, no. Thanks, but no thanks.”
Jade and Brianna raised their eyebrows at each other. I had a feeling this conversation was going to crop up again.
Just as we were packing up—the library was about to close for some special event for staff—a lady with hot-pink spiked hair came up to us.
“Hello, ladies,” she said. “I’m Miss Amber. I’d like to invite you to a creative writing class we’re having around the corner.”
“A what?” Jade blurted out. I couldn’t help it, that made me laugh. Brianna too.
The lady didn’t flinch. She smiled all bright and just charged on. “A creative writing class. It’s at a place called 826. Here.” She handed us some orange flyers. “It starts in half an hour. I’d love to see you there.”
I glanced at the flyer to be polite. “Hmm. How much does it cost?” I asked. Jade nodded in that knowing-best-friend way.
“It’s free!” Miss Amber said, all happy.
“Thanks, but I can’t go,” Brianna said. “My dad is picking me up in ten minutes, and he said if I’m not outside and ready, he’ll leave me here. And he would, too!”
We started laughing again. I hoped Miss Amber didn’t think we were being mad rude. Then Jade said, “Liliana will go.”
“Jade!” I yelped.
“Yeah, she’ll go right after we finish up here. Thank you.” Jade took a few more flyers. Miss Amber was now smiling like a crazy lady.
“Great! I’ll see you in a bit, then. Liliana, right?”
“Right.”
She smiled and walked over to some kids who were watching YouTube on the desktop computers.
“Jade!” I growled, giving her a kick under the table. “Thanks a lot. Now I have to go to this thing.” I shook the flyer.
Brianna shook her head. “You don’t have to do nothin’. You don’t know that lady.”
Jade sucked her teeth. “Liliana. Don’t even be like that. You know you love to write. And that English teacher has been doggin’ you—so go see what’s up! For real. Just go.”
“Fine. If you go with me.” I crossed my arms, calling her bluff.
“Fine,” she mocked. “If you go with me.” She called mine. Done.
* * *
Jade did go with me, as in, she walked me to the front entrance of the building, coats on because the wind was picking up, but then she left to go meet up with Ernesto. I actually didn’t mind. Inside 826 (a strange name for a writing center, right?) one of the walls was painted dark orange, and there were like ten ceiling-high bookshelves. I sat down at one of six wide wooden tables. About eight other people, all ages, were scattered among the tables. In the middle of each sat a thick stack of plain white paper and a glass jar full of pencils and—yes!—gel pens in all kinds of colors. Cool. Some adults wearing these long green lab coats were in the back, tutors I figured, Miss Amber among them. I guess they did some wacky stuff here at 826, like, on purpose. I picked out a bright purple pencil, already sharpened.
The doorbell buzzed, and a group of kids jostled in, laughing and yelling together. Ten seconds later another girl burst into the room, holding a massive iced coffee from Dunkin. “Yo, don’t be starting without me!” She raised her cup in the air and rattled the ice cubes. Her nose ring glinted.
Miss Amber took a seat at the head of one of the tables. There were about twelve of us altogether. Then she beamed at me. “I’m glad you made it.”
“You heard me, Miss Amber?” the girl with the iced coffee yelled, hustling over.
“I heard you, Keisha. We would never dream of starting without you.”
“That’s whatsup.” Keisha and her entourage sat down.
Miss Amber had us fill out name tags, then go around the room and introduce ourselves—all girls except one Black dude with a Mohawk and earring—and tell where we went to school. Mostly the kids went to Boston Public, a couple of charter schools, all in high school. When it was my turn, I said, “I’m in the METCO program at this fancy-ass high school like an hour away, but it’s not so bad.” We also had to name what our favorite cereal was… an icebreaker or whatever. A couple of people gave me the chin up when I said Froot Loops.
After Mohawk-guy said Shredded Wheat—whaaaa?—Miss Amber said “All right. Let’s start with a warm-up exercise.” My first thought was, Ugh, exercise. Just what Mrs. Grew would say. Dang. I hoped this writing prompt would be better than the ones at school. Then Miss Amber said, “We’re going to write a six-word autobiography.”
A six-word what?
“Here’s an example!” she said, cheery as all get-out. Supposedly Ernest Hemingway had written a six-word story, like a thousand years before. Miss Amber had memorized it: For sale: baby shoes, never worn. Then she explained what the words meant. The baby hadn’t survived, and so that’s why the parents had to sell the baby shoes. Get it? Never worn. I know.
We started to write. Well, by “we” I mean everyone but me. I guess thinking about the baby shoes made me think about the baby’s parents, all sad, like deflated or something. Then I pictured Dad, which led me down a whole other trail of thoughts. Miss Amber roamed from person to person, then paused at me. Or at my empty paper. But she didn’t do the squat-by-my-side thing, or the try-your-best teacher thing. To my surprise, she said, “Sometimes, staring into space helps.” Huh? “Don’t think about it too much. Stare. Daydream. Wonder.” Double huh? “Okay. Maybe instead of objects, your six words can be emotions, hobbies, or even words in another language, or in the form of a question. What questions do you have about the world? Remember: no more than six words. You got this.”
So I did what she said—stared, dreamed, wondered. I thought of the question Steve asked m
e that day at the fire drill: Where are you from-from? Truth, when I think about where I’m from, I feel proud, like yeah, I’m from Boston. But then, well, I’m Latina, and my parents were born in Central America, and I’m from “JP” or “the city.” What people like Steve were really doing was not asking a question but making a statement: You must not be from here. So for my six-word autobiography, I wrote: Don’t ask me where I’m from. Yeah. And when Miss Amber asked us to share, for once I didn’t hesitate. I read it aloud: “Don’t ask me where I’m from.”
Silence. Head nods. Me, exhaling. I felt lighter just having said it.
“Liliana, thanks for getting us started. Can you tell us more about why you chose those particular six words?” Miss Amber encouraged.
“Well…” I refocused. “I’m sick of people asking me where I am from. No—where I am ‘from-from.’ I am sick of people assuming I wasn’t born in this country or that I don’t speak English or that I eat rice and beans every night for dinner.”
Two girls laughed. But in an I got you way.
I felt lighter and lighter. And I couldn’t stop. I told them about the meme of Rayshawn with a noose made of basketball net, and how there was like, no diversity at my school.
“What town is your school in?” Miss Amber asked.
“Westburg.”
Her eyes went all bright. “Wait! Do you know Mrs. Grew?”
Whaaaaa? “Um, yeah. She’s one of my teachers.”
“Get out! I know her from graduate school. She was a mentor teacher in my program. She gave a presentation once on how she’d organized a GoFundMe page where her class actually raised enough money to go to Washington, DC, on April vacation that year. I was so impressed.”
My mind = berserk. “For real? You actually know Mrs. Grew?”
“Yeah. She’s a really fabulous teacher.”
Mrs. Grew?
“All right,” Miss Amber was saying. “I didn’t mean to get us off track. That’s a fantastic six-word autobiography, Liliana. So telling. Okay, who wants to go next?”
A girl named Gabriela read hers aloud: “No, I do not eat dogs.” We were dying! Another girl, named Christina, read: “Write poems, eat, sleep, then repeat.” Yeah, this 826 place… it was different.… Different was good. Though I could not believe that Miss Amber and Mrs. Grew knew each other.
29
For homework in Mr. Phelps’s class we’d read an article on the subject of intersecting languages in the modern world. Now he was asking what we thought about a multilingual society, what the benefits and drawbacks of it were for any nation. As usual, he glanced meaningfully at me. As usual, my heart was beating fast. But this time it wasn’t because I didn’t want to share; it was because I did. But… I didn’t raise my hand just yet. One girl, Erin—also the class president—did, though. “Mr. Phelps, seriously.”
“Is that a comment, Erin?”
“I’m just saying, this is America and all, and we speak English. So anyone who comes to this country should learn English. I mean, it’s not a crazy idea. That’s our language. Like, if I went to Russia, I’d be expected to speak Russian, right? I wouldn’t expect Russians to all learn English because I was there.”
I kicked at my chair leg. Here we freakin’ go again.
Erin adjusted her hair band. She must have really loved those things; she wore a different color, like, every day. Today’s was lavender. And she still had a tan left over from wherever her family had gone for Thanksgiving. Who goes away for Thanksgiving? Isn’t the whole point to stuff yourself with turkey and mashed potatoes and pie and wear sweaters and watch movies with your cousins? That’s what we did every year—this year without Dad. No one even mentioned him the entire day. Mom worked that morning, helping a family in Brookline cook and clean for their guests, then came home super exhausted, and we ate stuffing and mashed potatoes and pie (which the boys made)—and waited for the turkey to finish roasting till midnight because, yeah, we’d forgotten to put it in the oven early enough.
Now Erin squared her shoulders, not done. “I’m just saying that it’s one thing if you want to speak more than one language, but shouldn’t everyone be expected to speak English in the US?”
A guy named Andrew called out, “You’re just pissed because you probably suck at foreign languages. Take Spanish with Señorita Kim. She’s so easy. She plays movies and soap operas or whatever, like every day.”
A couple of kids laughed. I kept kicking at my chair leg.
Erin looked Andrew square in the eye. “Whatever.”
This girl named Sarah chimed in. She had gorgeous hair, like down to her butt. I think she was growing it out to donate to cancer or something. “You know, Erin has a point. When my family and I went on safari in Zimbabwe and Kenya last year, we had to learn like ten words in Shona and another ten in Swahili.”
“Oh my God,” a guy in the back muttered. “That must have been exhausting.”
I laughed. I couldn’t help it.
Mistake. Phelps pounced.
“Miss Cruz? Do you have something to contribute to the discussion?”
I took my hands out of my pockets. Something to contribute? Yes. But I knew that if I spoke up, I’d have like forty eyes on me, like I was the representative of all Spanish-speaking people in the friggin’ universe. So I shook my head. Pass.
Mr. Phelps looked disappointed. “Anyone else?” he asked.
“You know what I hate?” Erin’s BFF Kate called out.
“What’s that?” Mr. Phelps sat back on his stool.
“How Spanish is taking over TV.”
Now Mr. Phelps folded his arms. “I’m not following.”
Kate looked exasperated. “You know, how sometimes there are lines or jokes that are in Spanish in shows, and I’m expected to understand them. Without subtitles!”
“Yeah.” “Uh-huh.” “Yup.” “Oh yeah.” So many kids agreed with her! I couldn’t believe it.
Erin’s hand shot back up.
Mr. Phelps eyed the clock. “Yes?”
“It happens in music, too. Like, every time I stream music, there’s always something with lyrics in Spanish. ‘Despacito,’ anyone? It’s so annoying.”
My left knee started bouncing. What, were we an inconvenience? Annoying? I couldn’t take it anymore.
“So, um, excuse me.”
Boom. Forty eyes on me. Called it!
“Miss Cruz?”
I cleared my throat. “Yeah, so, are you all even aware that, I mean, the word ‘Florida’ means ‘flowery’ in Spanish? And that ‘Colorado’ means ‘red’ or ‘red-colored’? These words are in Spanish because the Spanish were actually here before the English. I’m just saying.” The last part I had read about in our textbook, so I kind of thought I deserved extra credit, no lie.
Dead silence. I could hear the clock ticking on the wall. Then one kid in the front row said, “I’m hip.” I almost slid out of my chair. It was the Asian kid. Cambodian? Whoa.
“Thank you, Miss Cruz,” Mr. Phelps was saying. “You raise an excellent point—”
Then I remembered something else, and out came “Yeah, and the border of Mexico and the United States used to be different before. Like, Mexico actually included the states of Arizona and New Mexico and parts of Texas and California.” I’d read that in one of the books from Mr. Phelps’s shelf. Actually, I should remember to use that info for a slide for the assembly.
Mr. Phelps nodded. This time, I didn’t care how many eyes were on me. I really didn’t. But then Erin said, all snippy, “Yeah, well, that’s not the case now.”
“Well,” I jumped on this (with a capital A attitude, I’ll admit). “I’m just saying that yeah, you may feel annoyed having to press one for English or whatever. But imagine how annoyed you’d be if someone came and kicked you off your own land and told you that your language, food, culture, everything, was wrong. And you had to change it. Or die. That’s messed up, right? That’s annoying, right?”
The class blew up.
&nb
sp; “Oh…”
“Boom…”
“She told you, Erin!”
I couldn’t tell what Erin was thinking. She began reapplying lip balm in slow motion. But then all of a sudden she stood and ran out of the classroom. Her face looked on the verge of crumpling.
Mr. Phelps hopped off the stool. “All right. Everyone, take out your notebooks. Write a paragraph reflection. I’ll be right back.”
Here’s what I wrote:
Oh, great. Now I am going to be labeled the angry Latina who told off the blond white girl. See, this is why I never say anything in class.
A few minutes later Erin and Mr. Phelps came back into the room. Erin’s face was beet red. She snatched up her backpack and left the room once more. A couple of kids gave me dirty looks. But I hadn’t said anything that was that bad, or untrue. And you know what, I’d had enough. Enough. “Mr. Phelps?”
“Yes, Lili?”
“Can I get the bathroom pass?”
“Yes, sure. Go,” he said distractedly.
Part of me wanted to run to the nearest bathroom stall and cry. Another part of me just wanted to pretend to be sick and take a nap in the nurse’s room. But then I had a better idea. I dug into my backpack and wrote out a fake pass for Dustin using my most convincing teacher handwriting—the messier, the better. I crumpled up the paper a little (to make it look more authentic), then walked to the math wing, pretty sure Dustin was in algebra. I felt almost light-headed as I stepped into the doorway. The teacher was writing out some scary-hard-looking equation.
And—damn. Steve was in this class too. He saw me first and began to cough real loudly. The teacher looked over at me. “Yes?”
“Oh. Hi. The, um, librarian needs to see Dustin.” I lifted the pass, but the math teacher simply waved a green Expo marker in the air and returned to the problem on the board.
Dustin’s eyes bulged, but his expression stayed cool. He strode past the rows of students and ignored Steve’s coughing, which at this point sounded like a case of TB. For sure I thought the teacher would catch on, see that there was no real need for him in the library, that this was totally cause for detention, but no. She was already on to the next equation.
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