Friday evening arrives in no time. Meg and Charlie’s mom drops all my guests off at once. “Hola! Dinner is almost ready.” I lead them into the dining room. “While you are waiting, open these. I made you each a present!”
Valerie gasps in surprise.
“You didn’t have to do that, Celeste!” Meg says. “It’s not our birthdays or anything!” But I can see she is excited too.
“I know,” I explain as I hand them each a small package wrapped with tissue paper and ribbon Tía Graciela cut from an old hat she no longer wears, “but where I come from, we like to give little presents for no reason at all, not just at birthday parties and holidays.”
“See, didn’t I always tell you that Macaroni was a little weird—okay, very weird—but totally awesome?!” Charlie grins at me as I give him his gift. “Hey, this is heavy. How’d you lift this, spaghetti arms?” he teases me—which I now know is his way of saying “Thank you” and “You’re my friend” and many other things that maybe I will one day teach him to say—as he unwraps the rock I found on the seashore. The waves had polished it perfectly smooth into a round and curvy shape with what looks like a tail at the end that reminds me of a whale. It is a deep, dark gray color, the color that will always make me think of Maine. On one side I carefully painted in a black eye and marked where his flippers are, and put a shy smile on his face. And on the other side I wrote the word for whale in Spanish: “Ballena.”
“It’s a whale!” Charlie laughs.
“And it’s a paperweight,” I tell him. “Because your papers are always falling off your desk in school.”
Charlie looks at me without the mischievous smile he always wears. And his dark eyes grow very wide. “You see everything, Celeste!”
“I try.”
For Meg and Valerie I found pretty pinkish shells and strung them on purple ribbon so they could wear them as necklaces. Meg gets up from her chair and throws her arms around my shoulders in a big hug. And Valerie follows and puts her arms over both of our shoulders.
“Celeste, I am sorry that I was so nasty when you first came here,” Meg murmurs with her head bent low.
“Me too,” Valerie adds, her blue eyes wistful.
“Me too, Celeste,” Charlie pipes in. “You saw me, but I didn’t see you . But . . .” He hesitates, then adds, “Now I do!”
Tears of happiness and relief fill my eyes. I can’t speak. I just look at them all and nod and smile. For so long I felt so alone without Kim. And even when I had Kim and Tom by my side, there was a certain loneliness still because we were all outsiders—we were united by feeling like outsiders and missing where we come from. But now I feel like the ground beneath my feet is the steadiest it’s ever been since I came to Juliette Cove.
My mind flashes back to Butterfly Hill, and I feel Lucilia, Marisol, and Cristóbal with me. Somehow, in my new home with my new friends, I feel so much closer to home.
“Awwww. Enough of this mush!” Charlie finally returns to his old grumpy self. “Macaroni, I am starving. Let’s eat some of your people. . . . I can’t believe you boiled spaghetti, you cannibal!”
We all laugh.
Then Valerie asks shyly, “I’ve always wondered: What is in that notebook you always carry around with you? You’re always writing in it at recess, at lunch, even during gym class!”
“Macaroni, read us something! I double-dare you!” Charlie says.
I pause. Charlie’s eyes are so bright, I know he truly wants to know. So I decide I can be brave, and get my notebook.
“Okay. I usually write in Spanish. But sometimes I try English because Miss Rose says it’s good practice. So, this is my first poem in English. I wrote it a few days ago in the woods.” I pause again, unsure, but they are nodding at me, so I say, “Well, here it goes.”
I take a deep breath and find the pages are shaking in my hands. Don’t be nervous, Celeste. These are true friends. You were given a gift so you could share it with others. From far away I hear my mother’s voice, soothing and guiding me.
I Walk Barefoot
I walk barefoot through the forest
To feel the grass, the soil, the moss.
My toes buried beneath the ferns
Search the roots of the forest
And find the roots of me.
Step by step I make a path.
Step by step I discover myself.
How could I know the trees are my sisters
When my roots began in a faraway soil?
Until I took off the shoes I wore yesterday
And buried my feet beneath the forest,
Beneath the same eager earth
That the whole round world calls home?
“Wow, Celeste, that is so good! I can’t believe you wrote that in English!” Meg exclaims.
“No kidding,” says Charlie. “Macaroni, you should be a writer someday.”
I feel myself blushing. I am not sure what to say, but finally a strong smell reminds me: “Let’s eat!”
I run to the kitchen and take the pot of pesto sauce from the stove—and not a moment too soon. The pesto at the bottom of the pot is burned! “¡Ay, no!” I groan as I skim a spoon over the top of the sauce, say a little prayer, and taste what is left of my creation. Phew!
I heap each plate with a generous serving of pasta and sauce, cross my fingers in my imagination that my friends will like it, walk to the dining room, and announce, “Pesto a la Andes!”
I hold my breath as Charlie dives in. “Yum! This is awesome! You really cooked this yourself, Macaroni?” he asks with his mouth full.
“Really yummy!” Meg slurps up tendrils of pasta that have escaped from her fork.
I let out a sigh of relief and take a bite myself. It really is yummy! “What’s your secret ingredient?” Valerie is licking pesto from her fingers.
“At home my Nana Delfina—she is like my nanny, and she was even my mother’s nanny when she was a girl—well, she cooked for the whole family.”
“Like a maid?” interrupts Valerie.
“Yes . . . well . . . that and so much more,” I try to explain to them. “She’s not just some servant who eats her dinner in a tiny back room. She is also a member of the family. She has her own bedroom next to mine. She cooks our meals, but then she sits at the table with us. She loves us and we love her.”
But their faces still look puzzled. It’s just so different here!
“So . . .” Meg’s voice is a mix of curiosity and envy. “She does everything in the house? You don’t have any chores? Your mother doesn’t even have to cook?”
I shake my head. “Not really. Mamá is kind of a bad cook anyway. She always burns the food, like my Tía Graciela.” I lower my voice so she won’t overhear us from the living room, where she is writing letters.
“Not like you at all, then!” Charlie says to me with a wink. I blush. He noticed!
“No, not—at—all,” I stammer, then give a conspiratorial wink back. Valerie and Meg are too busy gaping at each other to notice.
“No chores!”
“Wow, you are so lucky!”
“You mean you didn’t even have to make your bed?”
“Well, of course I made my bed!” I say with my mouth full of pasta. I take a sip of grape juice, which I poured into wineglasses to look fancy, and gulp. “Abuela Frida, my grandmother, says that a lady makes her bed and braids her hair each and every morning.”
“Do your friends have chores?” Valerie asks me.
I shake my head. “Not really. Well, Cristóbal Williams had to help his mother at her fruit stand, but they were poorer than most of the families at my school. Papá told me a lot that we were the lucky ones in Chile, and because of that, he and Mamá wanted me to spend my time reading and studying, and also getting lots of exercise outside and sleep on school nights.” Then I add, as an explanation, “They are doctors.” My friends nod and exchange curious glances.
Questions
There is a long silence. But I feel their questions in
the air like an approaching thunderstorm. Then all at once they rain down on me, hard—all the things I don’t want to talk about.
“Celeste,” Valerie begins nervously, “I don’t want to make you sad, but . . . what happened to your parents?”
“Do you get to talk to them on the phone? Will they visit?” Meg adds.
“Why are you here when they are back in Chile?” Charlie looks at me intently.
I take a deep breath. Talk to my parents? It has been so long that sometimes I get scared that I won’t remember their voices. “No,” I say simply. “It is too dangerous to talk on the phone. But only my grandmother and nana are there, anyway, at Butterfly Hill.” I look up. Six wide eyes stare back at me. Three silent, open mouths. “My . . . my parents are in hiding.” My voice falters.
Valerie reaches for my hand. “Don’t cry. Everything—”
“But why?” Charlie cuts her off, so insistent, he sounds almost angry. “Hiding from what? Did they do something wrong? And are you hiding too? Is that why you are here?”
“Well, yes . . . I guess so.” Me, in hiding? I had never thought about it that way. “I feel more like I am waiting . . .”
“But where are your parents hiding, Celeste?!” Meg asks impatiently. “Why aren’t they with you here?” Good question. Why aren’t they? I had never thought about that either. Why couldn’t we have all come here together?!
There is so much confusion in my mind, so much sadness in my heart, but I try to tell them what I do know. “My parents had to hide quickly,” I say, squeezing Valerie’s hand hard. She squeezes back. “They left when the president was killed and a general took power, because he was making people like my parents—people who help the poor and believe everyone should be equal, like in this country—disappear.”
“ Disappear ?!” They say the word in unison.
I nod. “Disappear.” That awful word. That question mark that dots itself with the point of a knife in my head. That constant ache. “Some people are kidnapped and locked in jails somewhere. Some, the lucky ones, already escaped and went into hiding like my parents, or are exiles in faraway places like me. And some”—I hesitate—“are killed.”
They blink at me in utter silence. How can they understand what I am telling them, if I can hardly understand it myself?
More silence. Finally Valerie tries to change the subject. “I like what you said in your poem about the trees listening to us.” Her fork plays with the last strands of pasta on her plate. “Don’t laugh, Meg”—she gives her best friend a quick glance—“but when I was little, I used to talk to the trees.”
“But why did you stop?” I ask. “Keep talking to them! What I wrote I really believe,” I say. “Since the forest is alive, it must hear us in some way, and know us. Just in a different way from how people know each other.”
Meg casts Charlie a sidelong glance. But Charlie avoids his sister’s eyes and looks at Valerie.
“Celeste, so you think there is another world out there, like ghosts and witches and things like that?” Valerie asks, her blue eyes round as the plate set before her.
“My Nana Delfina always talked to me about the spirit world. She says it is natural, and nothing to be afraid of. In her culture what we call witches are not scary but wise women, medicine women who take care of people. She told me sometimes spirits stay behind to help us who are still living here.” I give Valerie’s hand another squeeze. It is cold despite the humid summer evening. I know she is thinking about her mother. “And our loved ones stay close to us to be our guardian angels.”
Valerie smiles gratefully at me.
Meg begins to giggle and then tucks in the corners of her mouth.
“What do you think, Macaroni?” I don’t hear one drop of sarcasm in Charlie’s voice.
“My Abuela Frida always told me that the important thing was to have faith—that we live what we imagine. And that is how I know I will see my parents again. I imagine it every day.”
Eighth Grade
Since reading my poem to my friends, I now imagine one day seeing my poetry in a bookshop in Valparaíso. Tía Graciela says that dreams only come true with effort, so I decide to write every day for the rest of the summer. Every evening I walk through the woods to a circle of trees with a perfect sitting stone in its center. And there I write in my notebook. “Even if you just write one word, Celeste,” Tía Graciela encourages me, “you come that much closer to filling a page.” Sometimes I think of only small things like: There is something delicious about summer evenings in Maine, cool and sweet like a dish of strawberries.
When I see the fireflies with their bright little lanterns floating around my face, I know it is time to go home. I can see the house lights shining through the trees. Tía Graciela turns them on so I can find the house . . . like a ship finding the harbor.
Tonight I stay out a bit longer and imagine the flowers starting to peek from the ground on Butterfly Hill. I hope they are not afraid to bloom. Even though the General still rules Chile, even a dictator can’t stop the springtime. But here in the other half of the world the days are getting shorter and the nights longer and cooler. Autumn is coming, and tomorrow is the first day of school.
The eighth-grade teacher, Mr. Gary, is a tall man with light blue eyes, salt-and-pepper hair, and a picture of his daughters on his desk. He seems like a kind and gentle man. He says that my English is so much better that I don’t need extra help. “You will learn even more quickly when you have no other choice,” he says, smiling at me. He speaks so much faster than Miss Rose! I look back at him nervously. “Trial by fire.” He smiles again, encouragingly. “Extra credit if you figure out what that means by the end of the week!” Oh gosh, is that extra credit or extra homework? How will I ever keep up in class?
I like Mr. Gary, but I try to visit Miss Rose’s classroom whenever I can. When I show her some of the poems I have written in English, she hugs me. “Celeste, I am so proud of you!” Then she pulls a piece of lined paper from her desk and hands it to me. “I found this in Kim’s old desk while I was cleaning my classroom this summer.”
There is just one sentence on the paper, written in Kim’s careful penmanship: Celeste is my forever friend.
I read those words, and it’s like having her next to me for a moment. I see Kim’s hands making paper birds. Her eyes with the look of yearning for home. “Miss Rose,” I say, “I promise that I will study hard to improve my English and make this year my best ever on Juliette Cove. I will do it for Kim because she always tried so hard, and now she can’t be here herself. And someday I will become a writer and she will read my stories, wherever she is.”
Scraps of Life
The day after Halloween there is no school. I sit with Tía Graciela at the kitchen table, but I don’t have much of an appetite for breakfast after eating so many caramel-filled chocolates the night before. Meg and Charlie invited me to go trick-or-treating for my first time. I tried to say no at first—I was feeling blue—but Charlie insisted. When I finally agreed, he said “¡Gracias!” in Spanish, so I dressed like a snowflake, something I know will be falling from the sky soon. I wore all white clothes and glued cotton balls over every inch of me. I even had a white cap covered with cotton balls on my head! And Tía Graciela sprinkled me with silver glitter and gave me a little pumpkin to carry to keep any mean spirits away.
“Did you have fun last night, Querida?” Tía Graciela asks me. I push the round toasted oats, a cereal I have finally come to like, back and forth in my bowl and watch them slowly expand like sea sponges in the milk. “Mm-hmm.” I did have fun, but today I feel tired and down. Maybe it is because all morning Tía Graciela has been telling me news of Chile she has received from her friends living in other countries, like Spain, where it is easier to get news from South America. She is always taking the same letters out and rereading them. Sometimes it makes me frustrated to hear words like “censorship” and “hunger” and “disappeared” over and over again.
I pick up a piece o
f yellowed paper folded in threes near the bottom of the pile and scan a few lines. I read aloud: “ ‘My brother asked the government permission to throw a party for his son’s seventh birthday and was denied . . .’ ”
I remember how Abuela Frida forbade me to walk in the park with large groups of friends. “No more than three of you, or they’ll call it subversive! They could arrest you!” Even in memories the fear in my grandmother’s voice still sends chills up my spine.
Subversive. I remember Gloria saying it as well. It sounds sinister, all twisted like a serpent. I don’t ever want to write it down. I hear myself let out a long sigh. My chest feels tight.
“But listen.” Tía Graciela’s voice brightens. “There might be a change soon! My friend says that exiled Chileans as well as French people have been standing outside the gates in Spain every day for a whole two weeks!” She reads on, and I watch as hope lights up her face. “They hold signs with the General’s face crossed out with a big red X. And other signs that say: ‘¿Dónde están?’ Where are they?”
¿Dónde están? ¿Dónde están?
“Where are they?!” I cry out, unable to hold any longer the question I carry with me every day. “Where are Mamá and Papá? Where are Lucila and Ana? Where is Principal Castellanos?!” I fold my arms over my chest and stare at Tía Graciela. “And how many more have been disappeared or had to leave like I did?” I demand. Suddenly I hear myself shouting, “I don’t want to think about dark jails and the people I love in them!”
I Lived on Butterfly Hill Page 15