“Oh!” Abuela Frida exclaims as she slowly walks toward the dinner table. “Emily Brontë. How she knew love!” she speaks to us in German. Her voice is as animated as a young girl’s. “Chapter nine gave me goose bumps! I would read it over and over again when I was your age, Celeste.” Abuela Frida closes her eyes. Then as if she is reading from a page in her mind, she begins:
“If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger: I should not seem a part of it.”
How like my grandmother I am, I think, as I begin to translate the words from German to Spanish for Nana Delfina. My own copy of the book opens to that passage every time I lay it down on its spine—that’s how many times I have turned to it!
We all bask in the rays of Abuela Frida’s smile. But then the light in her eyes begins to dim again. She falls quiet. Is she missing my Abuelo José? I think of Lucila. I know that the passage talks about the love between Catherine and Heathcliff, but somehow it always reminds me of Lucila. She must be alive somewhere! So we all—me, Cristóbal, Marisol, especially Marisol—“should still continue to be . . .”
After dinner I sit on the purple swing under the eucalyptus tree. I feel impatient . . . for what? For my friend to return, yes. But for something else, too. For something to happen? But what?
I see Nana walking through the garden toward me. She begins to speak in that stern, listen-to-Delfina tone I have known since I was little.
“Niña Celeste. Your Nana Delfina knows you very well. You are full of worry. Delfina understands. But Delfina thinks what Nana’s girl needs to do is to find a purpose. Too often my Celeste wants to be alone. Nana Delfina has noticed this. And Nana Delfina has a project for her girl.”
Delfina pauses and looks down to the ground. “If you accept.” Her voice sounds nervous. Nana has never been shy about asking me—or any of the family—to do anything! In fact, she usually tells us!
“Go on, Delfina,” I coax her, patting the pink swing beside me. Nana looks back and forth to make sure the neighbors aren’t watching, and then she tosses her apron over her shoulder and hops onto the swing.
Her face as serious as ever, even with her legs dangling in the air, Delfina continues: “Niña Celeste, even though the family never talks about it—probably not to embarrass Delfina—you know that it is hard for Delfina to read and write.”
I look down at my own feet hanging idly above the grass. Suddenly I feel ashamed for all I have, when my nana has so little and asks for even less. “Sí, Nana, I know.”
“Delfina only went to school for about two years. Delfina had to walk almost an hour. You know Delfina didn’t get her first pair of shoes until arriving in Valparaíso. So, on days when the ground froze, we stayed home. And bit by bit it seemed more important to stay home, and to help Delfina’s parents with the work there. Delfina began to weave shawls with Mamá to sell in the markets. And to cook and take care of her baby sister.”
I kick my legs forward and jump from the swing to land right beside Delfina. I am astonished to find that I have grown taller than her, and hadn’t even noticed. “Then I am going to teach you to read! Wait right there!” I run into the house and upstairs to my bedroom. I pull every box out of my closet and search through them—old finger paintings, photo albums, and dolls scattering to the floor around me. It has to be here somewhere! Finally, at the bottom of a box of old dresses, I find my old phonics book from second grade!
I run back outside to the swings. “Let’s start right now, Nana!” I say as I open to page one and motion for her to sit on the ground beside me. And we sit there, under the eucalyptus tree, and talk about the sounds every letter in the alphabet makes. Then we blend letters to make simple words. We begin with three, and then four, and then five letters.
I remember that this is how I learned to read, sitting on Papá’s lap. We would make up sentences that rhymed so I could learn letters and combinations and the sounds they make. “The cat sat on the mat. The hen is in a pen.”
Delfina smiles impishly. “How about, Celeste is small, but her brain makes her tall?”
I laugh until my side aches. “Nana! You are a poet!”
¿Dónde Están?
Sunday is overcast. I sit at the kitchen table reading Wuthering Heights. Delfina sits next to me, practicing writing by copying down a page from my old “notebook of words.” Every so often she tugs on my sleeve so I can help her sound one out. “Ser . . . en . . . dip . . . ity.”
“Oh, like Delfina’s magic!” she exclaims, her eyes lighting up.
“Kind of,” I say, thinking how teaching something you know is just as hard as learning something new. “It’s magic that people call good timing.”
Nana turns her head back to the page and writes the word down. I watch her shaky S rise and fall on the page. “How mysterious it is to learn to read, Celeste,” Nana Delfina tells me as she slowly forms the Y. “All these words speaking to Delfina but in silence.”
The telephone interrupts us. Delfina springs up and runs to the hall. A few minutes later she comes back. “Your friend Marisol,” she tells me, her pencil already back on the paper.
“¡Hola, amiga!” I say into the phone. “I’m glad you called! Guess what? I am teaching Nana Delfina to—”
Marisol speaks over me in a rush. “Cristóbal just called! We are going to Plaza Aníbal Pinto!”
“Why are you going all the way down there?” I ask, slightly annoyed that Cristóbal called Mari first, and then annoyed at myself for being annoyed in the first place! Why do I care? It ’ s not like I like Cristó—
“To join in the demonstration.”
“What demonstration?”
Marisol lowers her voice. “My parents don’t want me to go. People who want to know what happened to family and friends who were disappeared during the dictatorship are gathering outside the government buildings. They are demanding information. If those who disappeared are alive still or, if not, what the government has done with their bodies. . . .” She pauses. My heart beats fast. “I heard a man talking on the cable car. He said many people who lost loved ones during the dictatorship gather in one of Valparaíso’s main plazas every Sunday.”
“I am coming with you,” I say decidedly.
“Let’s meet in front of Café Iris in one hour,” she says. “And bring an umbrella!”
I open the coat closet and pull out my raincoat. “Nana!” I poke my head into the kitchen. “I am going out with Marisol.” I wince. It’s not a lie. But it’s not the whole truth, either. “We can go over the list of words when I get back.”
Delfina looks up. “Be back in time for dinner, Querida. I don’t want your parents to worry.”
I quickly run to Abuela Frida’s room, where she is napping, her plate of half-sucked lemons on her night table. I kiss her forehead. She would understand why I have to go to this rally.
I meet Marisol and Cristóbal outside the café. The first thing I see is the sign in Marisol’s hands. Lucila’s picture, larger than life. Her eyes like almonds. The dimple in her chin. And below, the words. LUCILA LÓPEZ. 14 YEARS OLD.
Plaza Aníbal Pinto, one of the largest squares in the city, is crowded with people holding large signs like Marisol’s above their heads. So many photographs of missing people! Most of them look so young!
Other signs have giant letters in red paint asking, ¿ DÓNDE ESTÁN? WHERE ARE THEY?
Or black paint demanding, ¡ JUSTICIA! JUSTICE!
I am stunned at the number of faces of missing people waving in the air. And the number of heartbroken faces below them. Waves and waves of the heartbroken yet hopeful. Some angry. Some sad. Some whose mouths are shouting, “¡Justicia!”
Marisol presses Lucila’s photograph to her chest and elbows her way through the throng. Cristóbal and I follow her into the middle of the plaza. Hundreds of people are marching in a circle.
They chant: “They were taken aw
ay alive! We want them back alive! Tell us where they are! Tell us where they are!”
All around us, protesters bang on pots and pans. Pang, pang, pang! Spoons are being whacked against metal saucepans, and pot covers clapped together like defiant cymbals.
Students from the university pour into the streets, playing trumpets, flutes, and drums. Taruntun tun. Taruntun tun. “¿Dónde están? Where are they? ¿Dónde están?”
Echoes of voices and clangs vibrate inside me. Then the rain begins to fall. Harder and harder, the rain beats the ground as if it is marching with us. It shouts like a dented saucepan.
“Look!” Cristóbal points. “There are Marta Alvarado and Señor Castellanos!”
“Where?”
“There! By the fountain! See her red coat?”
Cristóbal takes us each by the hand and pulls us toward our teachers. They look surprised to see us. It is hard to hear one another over the chanting crowd, but Marta Alvarado motions for me to come close and whispers into my ear, “You are participating in the history of your country!” Our eyes meet. Her smile is fearless.
She Used to Have All the Answers
Sunday evening, when everyone seeks a quiet place to digest their empanadas, I look for my mother and find her sitting on the green couch next to Abuela Frida, who has fallen asleep in her rocking chair. Neruda’s “Tonight I Can Write the Saddest Lines” lies open on Mamá’s lap, and she is gazing out the window with her chin resting on her hand.
“¡Hola, Mamá!” I whisper as I wrap one of Abuela Frida’s blue scarves, this one half-finished but long enough for my mother’s slender shoulders, around her.
“Hola, Querida.” Mamá’s face looks tired.
My mother pushes the book aside and reaches out her arms. “Come here, my little girl. You are still small enough to sit on my lap, and I can tell you have something serious on your mind.” Abuela Frida stirs a bit but doesn’t wake up. She spends so much time in sleep lately. “It’s most comfortable there,” she tells us.
How good it is to still be able to sit on Mamá’s lap, even though I am thirteen years old. “Mamá, I get to have you and Papá back with me, but Lucila is missing . . . so many are. . . . Sometimes I feel embarrassed about how lucky I am—I have you, and Papá . . .”
“All we can do is be grateful, Celeste.”
“I know, Mamá! But I want to do something!”
Mamá puts her finger to her lips. “Hush! Don’t wake your grandmother.” I didn’t realize my voice had grown so loud.
“And it’s not just that, Mamá,” I whisper. “Why isn’t anyone doing anything?! Why can’t Presidente Espinoza send out search parties? And why can’t she jail all those military people who did such awful things? It wasn’t just the General who was evil. . . . We can’t all pretend nothing ever happened!”
Mamá is quiet. She used to have all the answers, but even she can’t know why there are so many unfair things in this world.
“Maybe, Celeste, you will explain all of this to me someday. I still don’t know. . . .” She rests her chin on my head and sighs. “Maybe you will be one of the people who make a difference.”
The Assignment
At the end of Spanish Literature class on Monday, Marisol and I huddle close to talk about the rally. “Did your parents find out? Do you think it could actually help find Lucila?”
“Maybe if someone had seen her—”
Señor Castellanos’s booming voice interrupts us.
“Señorita López. Will you excuse us? I want to talk with Señorita Marconi for a moment.”
“Sí, señor!” Marisol throws me a question mark with her eyes and scuttles out of the classroom. I gulp. Does he want to talk about the protests? Is he going to tell me it’s too dangerous, maybe ask if my parents know? Which they don’t . . . yet.
“Celeste, sit down.” He gestures to a seat in the front row. “I have great news for you!” I breathe an audible sigh of relief.
“Today the Juana Ross School received a letter from the Ministry of Education, signed by our new Presidente Espinoza. She wants the young people of Chile to write about what they want for this country we are reconstructing. It is a contest called ‘My Dream for My Homeland,’ and the prize is a scholarship for college, and the most important newspaper in the country, El Mercurio, will publish it.” He pauses, holding up the letter. “I want you to write a letter, Celeste. Use your gift of words and all the experiences you have gained in the past few years, to show Chile how resilient we are, and what wondrous possibilities await in our future.”
My heart starts its all-too-familiar butterfly beating. Me? Me?! I hardly know what to say, so I stammer, “Maybe—I will—write it, Señor—Castellanos.”
He shakes his head with stern eyes but a slight smile. “No, Celeste Marconi. I know you, and I know you will write that letter. They gave us an official envelope so that the school can mail it for you. I expect it on my desk in no more than a week.” Then he grins. “Consider it the most important homework I’ll ever assign to you.”
I nod and instantly feel the weight of responsibility—that word my father always says with a long roll of the Rrrrrs for emphasis—on my shoulders. But—oddly!—it doesn’t make me stoop forward or sink into the floor. Somehow—oddly!—that weight makes me stand taller.
I decide to walk all the way home instead of taking the cable cars. The afternoon sun casts beautiful shadows on the cobblestone streets. I wave to the chess players in the square, and as usual, Don Gregorio takes off his fisherman’s cap and nods his head to me. Sometimes I stop to chat with him, but today I just want to be alone to think. Is it finally time for me to let others read my words? The whole country? In a newspaper? You haven’t won it yet, Celeste! You have to write something first!
I think of Kim, of Tom, of Charlie and Valerie, of Miss Rose, of Lucila and Ana, of Abuela Frida, of all the people I have promised I would one day become a writer. I have never felt so excited or so terrified.
My Dream for Chile
On Saturday the letter is on my mind all day, but I seem to find many excuses not to do it. Studying for my biology test, trying Mamá’s silver hoop earrings on in the mirror, reading some more of Wuthering Heights, napping on the green sofa in Abuela Frida’s parlor while she snoozes in her rocking chair.
All but a crescent of the bright orange sun has been swallowed by Valparaíso Harbor by the time I crawl onto my favorite perch on the roof with my notebook and pen, and a pillow.
“Celeste!” my father calls up. “Do you want me to bring you a candle so that you can see what you are writing?”
How do they know I am writing? It’s so hard to have any privacy around here! “¡Estoy bien! I’m fine, Papá!” I try to shrug off my annoyance, but my voice is somewhere between a shout and a sigh. “The stars are my candle; just ask Mamá how she did it when she was a girl!” I hear my father chuckle and his footsteps descending the creaky wooden stairs.
I carried Tía Graciela’s conch shell up with me. I take a deep breath, put it to my ear, and listen. The sound of the sea, its wordless language of constant rhythms, soothes me. I listen to the tides, my body slowly rocking back and forth, back and forth, until—finally—I am ready to write.
Gracias, Presidente Espinoza, for calling on the young people of Chile to share with you our dreams for our homeland. I take this opportunity to write to you with humility and gratitude. My Abuela Frida, who came to Valparaíso as a Jewish refugee from Nazi-occupied Austria, taught me that placing these two words—“humility” and “gratitude”—side by side makes the most generous offering in any language.
I am from the port city of Valparaíso. My city reminds me of a balcony because of the way it is always teetering farther toward the ocean. From this balcony, and from the roof of my own house atop Butterfly Hill, I think and write about what my country could be.
Soon after the Dictator came to power, my parents went into hiding. I was an exile in the state of Maine in the northernmost United State
s, about as far from Chile as you can imagine, for nearly two years. Now I am home, but at night when I look at the lights over Valparaíso Harbor, I am also seeing the Juliette Cove Harbor in Maine. I have learned that although the planet Earth is immense and diverse, our world is truly one. The swells of the same ocean move all of us in these interconnected lands that we only imagine as separate from one another. People like to think of themselves as individuals. But I believe that in our hearts, Chileans know differently. We know the meaning of solidarity. We understand that what happens to a neighbor also happens to us.
I love my country. It is full of generous and courageous people. So many times our cities and towns have been in ruins, and so many times we have risen up again. And in our most recent history, thousands of people, some only a little older than me, were disappeared. And though we have yet to see so many of their faces, I believe it is contests like this one that will inspire my generation to make sure we lift one another to a place from which Chile cannot fall again. Earthquakes do not shatter our dreams.
Honorable Presidente Espinoza, I want to work to end illiteracy in our country. My dream for the new Chile is that all Chileans learn to read and write. I have always loved to read, and I dream of being a writer someday.
It also is my dream that every resident of Valparaíso, and eventually every town and village in Chile, have access to free literacy classes. I dream that they are able to take these classes without spending money on transportation, or losing wages. I believe this is the key to our freedom. Reading and writing, which mean the ability to learn and express oneself freely, will help Chile heal from our past and create a happy future.
Respectfully,
Celeste Marconi
Cerro Mariposa
Fireworks over the Harbor
New Year’s Eve has arrived! It’s a hot summer night, and although I brushed and brushed to make my hair smooth, I can feel little curls starting to spring at the back of my neck.
I Lived on Butterfly Hill Page 24