Stella Diaz Has Something to Say

by Angela Dominguez

  “And grab more nail polish.”

  I nod my head. I’m not good at painting my nails, but Jenny likes doing it and always makes our nails look pretty. I need to practice because I’d like to be able to paint little cat and fish designs for us.

  Jenny falls asleep before I do. I lie awake wishing I didn’t have to go back to school on Monday. Then I come up with a better wish. I wish for a real Fantastic Time Machine so that I could time travel. I’d travel back to earlier this night and tell Jessica off. First, I just have to come up with the perfect comeback. I think and think, but nothing comes to mind. Maybe I do just stare, and maybe I do need Jenny to talk for me. So I decide I’d still travel back to earlier tonight, except I’d tell Jessica’s parents to stay home instead of going out. That would work, too.

  Chapter Nine

  This year, my relatives from Mexico City come to visit for Thanksgiving. Even though we don’t even celebrate Thanksgiving in Mexico, my family still likes to visit then. Actually, I kind of think they are obsessed with it. Mom uses all the recipes from Betty Crocker, the most American cookbook, for our Thanksgiving meal, and my relatives get excited about it. American food is exotic to them!

  Still, our dinner is not just American food. Mom makes a couple of special Latin dishes like picadillo and elote. She also likes to have some of my relatives’ favorite foods as snacks when they’re here, like guava, pan tostado, and papaya.

  To buy the special foods, we have to go to another town. It’s very different from where we live—almost all the signs are in Spanish. It’s a little far, so the only times we go are when we need to go to a store called La Sorpresa.

  “Let’s go pick up some supplies! Things for your tía and abuelo,” Mom says as she drives to our favorite store.

  La Sorpresa means “surprise” in Spanish. It’s sort of the perfect name for the store. Even though it’s small, it’s filled with so many shelves that every turn is like a surprise.

  The biggest surprises happen when we get to the produce area. I see so many interesting vegetables and fruits. There are prickly pears, coconuts, yuca, and huge bananas called plantains that are not really bananas. I even see cactus!

  “People eat this?” I ask my mom, poking at one of the cactus leaves.

  “Sí, it’s nopales. You like it.”

  I gulp. This is nopales? “You mean I’ve been eating cactus?” I don’t understand why I haven’t noticed the spiny needles going down my throat.

  She laughs, knowing what I’m thinking. “You take off the needles before you cook it, that’s why.”

  “Whew…”

  Nick grabs a piece of a wrapped golden cake that looks like pound cake except it has sesame seeds. “Wait, this is a quesadilla, Mom?”

  “Oh, that’s delicious. Grab some. They eat that in El Salvador. Your grandmother makes it sometimes.”

  Mom’s mom, my abuela, loves to cook. Because Abuela grew up in El Salvador, she makes all these different dishes from Central America, Cuba, and Spain. She even makes Italian because some members of her family were from Italy. Boy, I’m happy about that, too. Mom knows how to make lots of those delicious dishes because of Abuela.

  “I thought quesadillas were with tortillas and cheese?” says Nick.

  “They are, but that’s a Mexican quesadilla. This is a Salvadoran quesadilla.”

  I get quiet as soon as I start thinking about all the countries that speak Spanish. There are so many and all of them are different in their own ways: they have different foods and even different ways of speaking Spanish. I barely know anything about them, especially Mexico, where I am from. Then I realize that as much as I think I might fit in better in Mexico than in the United States, I really wouldn’t. I know only a handful of things about Mexico from my family, definitely not enough to make me feel like I fit in.

  The truth is, we don’t go back to Mexico City too often because it’s very expensive to get there. I do know that Mexico City used to be the world’s largest city. When I close my eyes and picture it in my head, it makes Chicago seem small. Mom used to say that when Nick first got to Chicago, he would say everything was flat and empty. He later changed his mind after we drove through Iowa.

  “Mom, tell me about Mexico City again,” I ask, wanting to picture where we came from.

  “Mexico City is in a valley surrounded by two volcanoes. One volcano is called Popocatépetl. The other is Iztaccíhuatl. According to Aztecs, Iztaccíhuatl is a princess and Popocatépetl is the warrior who protects her.”

  She’s told me about the volcanoes a bunch of times, but I still love hearing about them. It makes me feel like I come from a place that’s special, and that I’m connected to that place through her. Mom continues telling us about her home as we stroll through the aisles of the grocery store. I see other families and smile at them. They smile back. I wish I felt more comfortable speaking with them. Still, hearing so much Spanish feels nice to my ears. It’s like a warm blanket. Plus, there are so many fun words that sound better in Spanish than in English. Like café instead of “coffee” or buenísimo instead of “really good.” Although I would never use both words in the same sentence. Café is not buenísimo. It’s gross.

  Nick pushes the cart while Mom grabs glass jars of pimentos and aceitunas off the shelves. If they weren’t too hard to open, I’d eat the aceitunas right away. I love olives almost as much as I love albóndigas. Next, Mom searches for the guava and the cheese. Then she checks things off the list and scans down, pausing after a second.

  “Your abuelo likes matrimonios when we play cards.” Mom’s face lights up as she says abuelo.

  Mom is very close to her dad. When my parents divorced, he stayed with us for a month. He even walked me to school every day. He is also the only person I try to speak Spanish with other than Mom. That’s because he lets me talk really, really slowly and takes the time to listen to me. He’s so nice that I don’t even mind when he laughs at me for saying the words wrong or not rolling my r’s.

  Mom reviews her list one last time. “We almost forgot the frijoles,” she says, pushing the cart back toward the aisle with the canned beans. As Mom searches for the frijoles, I see a girl my age talking to her abuelo in Spanish. For a moment, I feel a little jealous. My jealousy is quickly replaced with a sinking feeling in my stomach. I realize that my relatives are going to be here tomorrow. I cross my fingers and hope that I’ll wake up knowing more Spanish.

  Chapter Ten

  The next day, Nick and I wait at home while Mom picks up my relatives at the airport. She doesn’t take us because she says we’ll get bored at the airport. Because my relatives are coming in from a different country, they have to go through customs, which is where they check you to make sure you are not bringing any illegal goods into the country. It can take a really long time.

  This trip it’s only Mom’s sister, my Tía Juanis, and my Abuelo Apolinar. I haven’t seen them in two years, so I’m a little nervous. Abuela rarely comes because she’s very particular and doesn’t like traveling anymore. She’d rather just stay at home playing cards. It would be easier if it were my Tía Margarita visiting. She comes more often because she travels the world all the time and sometimes stays over in Chicago for a day or two in between her trips. Of all my relatives, she speaks English the best, so I like talking to her the most. She also is very creative, a professor, and speaks four languages. I want to be as smart as her when I grow up.

  While she’s gone, Mom puts Nick in charge of watching the turkey. My job is to set the table. I know that’s because I have an artistic eye. Nick doesn’t know how to fold the napkins into triangles like they do in the fancy restaurants on TV. I even make little name tags in the shape of a turkey for everyone’s seat. For a while, the house is quiet and I’m able to draw. Part of me wants to hide in bed with a book instead of doing Thanksgiving. I feel anxious, almost like it is the first day of school again.

  But before I can go hide, I hear the front door.

  “¡Hola, mi a
mor!” says Juanis in a loud voice. She swallows me up in a big hug and kisses both my cheeks. I can’t see anything because of her fuzzy sweater, but I can smell her perfume. Juanis wears a lot of makeup. That’s different from Mom, who only wears a little makeup when she goes to work.

  Juanis pulls away from me, then goes to Nick. I can finally see that she’s wearing a crazy patterned sweater and leggings. Her short red hair looks wilder than I have ever seen it.

  “Hola. ¡Que guapo!” she says as Nick beams. He likes being called good-looking.

  Juanis gets along really well with Nick. She used to take care of him after school when we lived in Mexico City. I sit on the couch and draw while Nick talks to Juanis in Spanish.

  I don’t get a chance to talk to my family as much. To them, I am just the artista who makes drawings. They don’t really know me like they know Nick. He was in first grade when we left, while I was just a baby. They don’t know what questions to ask me, like what is my favorite fish or my favorite book. And even if they did, I wouldn’t know how to tell them in Spanish. So I let them talk without me.

  Abuelo walks in next with Mom. He’s a little slow because he has a limp from losing one of his legs in a bus accident when he was my age. He manages to get around everywhere thanks to his wooden leg, but he never complains about it. Even when he takes his wooden leg off at night, he whistles as he hops into bed.

  “Hola, que preciosa está Stella,” Abuelo says. When he calls me pretty, I have to admit I feel a little less weird. He puts down his guitar and laughs a big belly laugh as he hugs me with both arms.

  Abuelo sniffs the air. “¿Dónde está la comida, Nick?” Abuelo is obviously hungry as he hugs Nick.

  “Casi,” says Mom, which means the food is almost ready. She takes Abuelo’s bag and guitar to Nick’s room. Abuelo always brings his guitar when he visits. He used to be a performer in Mexico, playing on a radio program.

  We freshen up real quick, and I also feed Pancho. “Happy Thanksgiving!” I say as I drop an extra food pellet.

  Then Mom says, “¡Está listo!” announcing that the food is ready.

  Everyone sits down at the table as Mom brings out the dishes. There’s turkey, cornbread stuffing, mashed potatoes, and roasted vegetables. We even have sweet potatoes with marshmallows! Mom says she saw the recipe in a cookbook, but I think it’s weird.

  My favorite things to eat are the dishes that are not American. We make this stuffing called picadillo, which is ground meat with aceitunas. The olives make it feel special, like it’s our own treat. Mom also makes elote, corn on the cob with crumbled Mexican cheese on top.

  I want to dig in, but Mom says we have to say what we are grateful for first. Everyone says a few things in Spanish. When it comes to my turn, I just say very quietly, “Mi familia.” I feel as shy as I do when I’m at school, but this is different. At school I’m only shy about saying the words right, but here, around my family, I just don’t have the words to say everything I want to say. If I could have said what I’m grateful for in English, I would easily have gone on and on. There’s so much! Like all the sea creatures in the sea, Mom, Nick, and Jenny, my best friend. But I can’t. Not in Spanish.

  I do try sometimes. But when I try to speak Spanish, Juanis will finish my sentences for me. Like when I say,

  “Quiero…” I say, looking at the picadillo.

  “Más pavo,” says Juanis, who starts putting more turkey on my plate, which is not at all what I wanted.

  I push my turkey around with my fork. It’s hard to want to talk when people aren’t even listening to you.

  We eat until we are stuffed like pavos. Mom decides to look at photo albums before dessert. “Vamos a mirar fotos de la familia.”

  It’s funny to see pictures from before I was born. Everyone is wearing different-looking clothes, not to mention their different hairstyles. Both Mom and Dad had long hair! Nick had blond hair instead of the dark brown hair he has now. There are even pictures of Dad with his family and Mom’s family.

  Nick points to a picture. He is hitting a piñata with Dad, Abuelo, and my dad’s brother, Carlos. “I remember that. That was when I turned four years old,” he says.

  “And these are the puppets I had at my birthday party.” He points to this picture with these amazing wooden puppets.

  Mom, Juanis, and Abuelo nod. Nick remembers so much.

  On another page, I see another picture of Abuelo, Tío Carlos, and a woman I don’t know toasting.

  “Mom, who is that?” I ask.

  “Oh, that’s your Abuela Carmen on your dad’s side. Her hair is a little different there. That’s probably why you didn’t recognize her.”

  I’ve only seen Dad’s parents once since we’ve moved to the United States. While the grown-ups talk, I ask Nick, “Is Tío Carlos nice?”

  “He is. Or at least he was back then. He’d play fútbol with me and Dad.”

  I sort of remember seeing my tío. He used to live near us. We’d see him regularly until my parents divorced. Then we stopped seeing him and he moved to Colorado.

  Mom flips to pictures of when I was born. These are my favorite. I like seeing the pictures of me with tiny little bows in my hair. Everyone agrees that I was the cutest baby. There are also photos of everyone holding me, including Nick. He leans over and messes up my hair.

  “La bebé,” Juanis says. She touches my arm and gives me a kiss on the cheek. She immediately wipes the pink lipstick off my cheek and grabs my chin.

  “Tú sabes que soy tu segunda madre, Stella,” Juanis says. Sometimes she likes to tell me she’s my second mother.

  I nod my head. “¡Sí!”

  Juanis might not always listen, but I know she loves me.

  After we’ve given our stomachs a break, we eat three different kinds of pie: apple, pecan, and pumpkin. I show Juanis and Abuelo my drawings of the animal project while we eat.

  “¡Que bueno!” Abuelo says they are really good. He especially likes my manatee.

  Nick then begs Abuelo to play the guitar, and he begins to play many songs I know. I love singing along, but sometimes I stay quiet to watch Mom sing. She looks so happy singing with her dad.

  Mom looks at me. “You know, when I was your age, your abuelos would have these amazing parties. Abuelo and all his musician friends would sing all night.”

  “But what about your bedtime?”

  Mom laughs. She translates what I said to Abuelo and Juanis, and it makes them laugh, too.

  “Ayi, Stella,” says Abuelo.

  I tap Mom’s arm. “Why is that funny?”

  Mom sees that my eyebrows are raised up.

  “Don’t worry, mi chiquita. It was just cute. Things are a little different in Mexico. Families throw more parties and people are a little less strict with bedtimes.”

  “I wouldn’t mind that,” says Nick.

  I don’t say anything. Part of me wishes we never left Mexico. Sure, the parties and less strict bedtimes would be great, but I also think things would have been easier. We would see each other all the time instead of once every other year. If I lived near them, then they would feel like my family, and not like visitors or just like Mom’s or Nick’s family. Mom also wouldn’t have to do everything by herself and we wouldn’t be alone anymore.

  Abuelo starts singing my favorite song, “El Corrido de Chihuahua,” and motions to me with his guitar. I know all the words, so I start singing along.

  Mom stands up. She pulls me to the floor to dance with her and twirls me until I start giggling. She finally stops twirling me, and everything keeps spinning for a second. When I can finally see straight, I notice that my whole family is giggling with me, too, even Nick. I’m really happy that giggling and smiling is something that doesn’t have to be translated. You just know it when you see it.

  Chapter Eleven

  “Do you want to go with me to my office, Stella?” Mom asks the Sunday after Thanksgiving. “I need to catch up on some work.” Mom sometimes has to go to work on the w
eekends when it’s really busy at the office. This time it’s because she took a few days off to spend time with Abuelo and Tía while they were visiting.

  “Yes!” I say. I race upstairs to change out of my pajamas.

  I love tagging along with Mom to work. I like to see where she spends her time every day while I’m at school. Nick normally goes biking with Jason instead, so it’s our special outing.

  Mom has an important job as a boss at a radio station, which means she has to look professional all the time. She even has to wear high heels that make her super tall. I like to try them on sometimes, but I can only walk in them for a second. I love the noise they make though. Since it’s the weekend, we both wear sneakers instead.

  Instead of driving, we ride the Metra train to Mom’s work downtown. The train station is covered in signs that say “Metra: The way to really fly.” As we ride the train, I like to pretend I’m a grown-up like Mom. I even borrow her briefcase to carry my fish book to read on the train. I read all about clown fish on the ride.

  “Did you know the real name for a clown fish is anemonefish?”

  Mom nods while checking her email. “I heard that once.”

  “Well, did you also know that male anemonefish take care of the eggs?”

  She puts down her phone. “That I did not know. Lucky anemonefish moms.”

  Mom looks out the window for a second. I feel bad that she has to do everything by herself. Dad’s not around and he never sends money. The excuse for why he never helped before was he had no money, but now that he works for Tío Carlos there isn’t really an excuse.

  Mom flutters her lips and turns back toward me.

  “Okay, my little sea explorer,” she says, wrapping her arm around me, “tell me more fun fish facts.”

  After I tell her more about the anemonefish for the rest of the ride, we get to her office. I’m excited. Going to work makes me feel important and grown-up. As we enter the building, we have to wave a badge.