Since I was in the very last seat, I was the last student to read. And when it was finally my turn, I read well. I remember it was a long article about the astronauts in the space program, and I knew every word.
I read until I’d finished the article. Then I closed the magazine and looked at Mrs. Miller. “That was very good, Sylvia,” she said. “Stand up.” Rearranging the other students, she immediately moved me to a desk in the middle of the classroom. I wasn’t the worst student anymore! I’d moved halfway up the class in one day, just because I was a good reader. It was as if my first few days at the last desk in the last row had been erased from everyone’s memory.
It was so strange to me, as if all of a sudden I was somebody different. I wasn’t, of course. I was happy not to be the worst student in the second grade, but I still felt sorry for those children who’d had a hard time sounding out their words. Somehow, I didn’t think it was their fault. Maybe they’d just never had the chance to attend Head Start, the way I had.
My class photo
Chapter 7
No One to Talk To
“Glemboski, over here!”
“Stewart, you slowpoke!”
“Out of my way, Thompson!”
I swung on the monkey bars, my braids hitting the ground with a thwap, thwap on each upside-down loop, shouts from the baseball field rising over the playground noise. Every once in a while I’d hear “Acevedo!” and I’d know Mario was out there with the other boys.
After a few weeks in my new school, I was still startled to hear names like Radwanski, Burton, Schramm, Wallace, and Boudreau on the playground—kids whose families had come from all over Europe. At my old school, we sometimes spoke Spanish on the playground, and most of the children had last names like ours: Trujillo, Sánchez, García, González. Now I almost never heard Spanish words at school, as if Alameda Elementary School were in a different country from where my family had lived before.
Only the boys shouted one another’s last names while throwing a ball or tearing around the field. The girls’ voices were quieter, rarely rising above the din. But unlike at my old school, both girls and boys used the playground equipment. At Bradley, I’d sometimes skip rope or play hopscotch with the other girls, but they’d never join me on the monkey bars. I was always welcome to do what they were doing, but they had no interest in trying something new.
Now, at Alameda, I loved that I wasn’t the only girl climbing the monkey bars. I’d watch the other girls, so agile and flexible, flinging themselves from one side of the metal bars to the other in just seconds. A few would even launch themselves off the top of a swing, which I could never get quite right—I always seemed to launch myself too late. I recognized a couple of the girls from other classes in my grade, but they never seemed to notice me. I was still the new kid here, and I felt very alone.
In those days, boys could wear jeans or overalls to school, but girls had to wear dresses or skirts unless the temperature was below freezing. When that happened, we were allowed to come to school in pants—as long as we wore a dress over them.
If the weather was good, I’d wear shorts under my dress so I could play on the swings and monkey bars without showing my underwear. I also liked to swing on a horizontal bar that was a few feet off the ground, my braids hitting the dirt surface of the playground each time I swung around.
When I got home, my mother would shake her head and say, “¡Tu pelo está sucio . . . otra vez!”—Your hair is dirty again!—because my head was so dusty.
Mami knew I wasn’t going to stop running around. If my hair got dirty, that was okay with me. I’d smile at her, and she’d call me her machetona, her little tomboy. I’d glance around at the crowded living room with its familiar furniture, at my little sister looking up from her doll, waiting for me to play with her, and I’d sigh in relief. I was home.
I’d grab a homemade flour tortilla and slather butter on it, then roll it up like a flute. “Only one,” Mami would say. “I don’t want you spoiling your appetite.” She’d hand Laura a petite tortilla that she had made just for her and tell us both to go outside and play.
Thanks to my mother and Tía Angélica’s constant care, Laura was regaining her spark and enthusiasm for people. She could walk and run again, but she didn’t say very much. She seemed especially puzzled when Mario or I spoke in English, and she was more comfortable speaking in Spanish. She loved looking at birds and listening to their songs. When someone mentioned school, though, Mami just looked sad. Laura wasn’t old enough for school yet, but I could see that even a couple of years from now, she might have trouble learning in a first-grade classroom.
Still, she was my little sister, and we played together every day. Outside in the backyard, we’d make up stories with Laura’s dolls, careful not to uproot the new grass. Mami had started an herb garden with mint and oregano and planted rosebushes. She took such special care with the roses that they didn’t dare not bloom.
Some days Laura and I would use the hose to water the plants in the backyard. Even in early spring, it was hot outside, so I didn’t mind when she splashed me.
Soon Mami would come out to take the laundry down from the clotheslines. The air was so dry that after a couple of hours, the clothes were stiff as boards. I’d reach up and tug at a sheet or a pair of pants, and the clothespins would go flying. I wasn’t tall enough to reach the smaller things, like our socks, so Mami had to help with those.
“Did you make a new friend today?” she’d ask me. “What did you learn in school?” I never knew how to answer her, so I’d look for clothespins on the ground until she changed the subject and remarked on how beautiful the Organ Mountains were in the distance. I knew Mami would be sad if I told her how much I still missed my old school, and I couldn’t tell her that I didn’t speak to the other girls in my class, not ever.
I knew Mami was puzzled that I hadn’t made friends, but I couldn’t talk about it. Even if I was more of a tomboy than the girls back in our old neighborhood, I’d known them as long as I could remember, and I felt accepted by them. Now I felt shy. I didn’t know these new girls at Alameda Elementary. With their loose blond hair and fair skin, most of them didn’t look like my family.
In the cafeteria at lunch, I’d see girls from my class at a table, deep in conversation. After a few weeks, I knew their names: Cindy, Liz, Sarah, even another Sylvia. But that didn’t mean I was going to sit with them or play with them at recess. Instead, I’d find an empty seat at another table and eat quickly by myself before going out to the playground, or I’d run home to share a sandwich with Mami and Laura.
Often when I arrived home, Mami would be sewing, maybe a new dress for Laura or me. I knew she wished I shared her interest in clothes and fashion, but she loved me even though I didn’t care too much about those things. As far as I was concerned, the future everyone expected for girls—getting married and keeping house, sewing and cooking, taking care of children—was far away. In the meantime, I liked to ride my bike, run around, and play outside.
One place where I saw other girls like me was on television. In those days, Disney’s programs, like The Mickey Mouse Club after school and its Sunday-night shows, had as many tomboys as princesses. One Sunday, Disney broadcast The Parent Trap with Hayley Mills, a movie about twin girls who grow up apart but meet at summer camp. I was enthralled by their characters’ daring escapades. My favorite shows were about girls who had adventures, who were allowed to do the same things as boys. But I didn’t know any girls like that in real life.
In our culture, sons were valued over daughters. My father loved me, but he had different expectations for Mario and me. Mario got a library card without having to save a single penny, let alone five dollars, the way I had. Papá expected me to get good grades in school, but it was never with the same interest that he took in my brother. Papá never asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, the way Mami did. I knew he expected me to get married, have children, and keep house, just like Mami. He even said so som
etimes.
This made me mad, but it was just how things were. Besides, Mario was two years older than I was. He learned to read before I did, and a lot of other things, too. That didn’t stop me from trying to catch up. I envied Mario. It was easier for boys to grow up and have adventures, I thought. I didn’t know what to do about that, but over time I became ultracompetitive with my brother.
In the meantime, after we moved, Mario was better than I was at making friends. While I was playing by myself at recess and walking home alone after school, he’d found a whole group of new friends, boys who lived in our neighborhood.
One day after school, Mario told us, “These kids all think I know how to play softball like they do. Well, I don’t.”
But Mario’s friends taught him how to play catch and swing a bat, so he could play softball with them. Mostly, though, they played army, either with toy guns and cardboard forts or with model airplanes and tanks they blew to pieces with firecrackers. The majority of his new friends were from Anglo families, because that was who lived in our neighborhood.
To help ease us into this new life, Mami adopted a puppy, a cocker spaniel–German shepherd mix, who soon became the king of the neighborhood. She and Mario named the dog Fito as a joke—a Spanish twist on the American Fido. I liked playing with Fito, but he was really Mario and Mami’s dog.
I remained sad and fearful, still unsettled by the move. Every morning, I dawdled over my cereal at breakfast, begging Mami to let me watch the Captain Kangaroo show until almost the very end. I knew I could do that and get to school on time if I ran fast enough.
Normally, my mother would have teased me for my skittish behavior, but she left me alone. Even though she was happier in our new home, she too was still coping with all of the changes in our lives.
How could I explain what was bothering me when I didn’t understand it myself? Part of it was school: at Bradley Elementary, the teachers told us what we needed to know. I had a good memory for facts, so I did well. At my new school, we had to work out more of the answers for ourselves. That wasn’t as easy. Even though I thought I was doing well at school, I always worried that I wouldn’t have the right answer and the teacher would move me back to the very last seat in the last row. If that were to happen, I didn’t think I could stand the shame.
After school, I’d rush home and lock the door behind me, something I’d never done when we lived on Griggs Street. My brother and I used to fight, like all brothers and sisters. Occasionally, I would lock Mario out, usually by accident but sometimes on purpose, and he’d mash the doorbell until I let him in. “It’s safe here,” he’d tell me. “You don’t have to lock the door!”
But I kept locking the door. I couldn’t tell him why I had to; I just did. I felt safer at home, away from my new school and the blond girls who seemed nice but were still strangers. There were a lot of things I couldn’t explain to anyone, but I felt as if I needed to protect us. Locking the door just seemed like the right thing to do.
Me, in third grade
Chapter 8
Learning to Pass the Scissors
As winter turned to spring, I still ate lunch by myself and spent recess alone. If someone had asked whether I was lonely, I would have said no, because I wouldn’t have known what else to say. I never liked to talk about how I was feeling, especially when I was still confused by all the change in our lives. But except when the teacher called on me, I went through the long days without speaking. When the bell rang at the end of the school day, I hurried out of the classroom, not looking to see if anyone else might be going in the same direction as I was.
One spring day after school, I was nearly home when I saw a girl, also named Sylvia, right around the corner from our new house. Sylvia Black was one of the smarter kids who sat near the teacher in our classroom. Today she was dressed in a brown uniform, one I’d seen on a few other girls. She hurried to catch up with me, so I reluctantly slowed down. Slightly out of breath, Sylvia said, “I didn’t know you lived around here. I live on the other side of Alameda.”
“What are you doing here?” I asked her. I hadn’t seen her in the neighborhood before.
“Going to Brownies,” she said. “It’s Girl Scouts, but for girls our age. Do you want to come with me?” I’d never heard anything before about Brownies or Girl Scouts, but whatever they were, I wasn’t interested.
“I don’t know,” I said, half hoping Sylvia might not wait for me. “Maybe. I might have to help my mother.”
“That’s okay,” Sylvia said. “I’ll wait while you ask your mom if you can go. You’ll like it—it’s fun,” she added.
How does she know I’ll have fun? I asked myself, sure that Brownies was for girls who already had friends of their own. Furthermore, I’d noticed that Sylvia didn’t seem to have many close friends. I was not at all sure that I wanted to be friends with her—or anyone.
My mother was in the kitchen when I went inside, trying to figure out what to ask so she’d tell me I had to stay home. “You don’t have to say yes, but this girl from school is going to a Brownies meeting or something. She said I could come, and she’s waiting outside.” My words came out in a rush. “It’s okay if you say I can’t go,” I added, hoping Mami would say just that.
My mother smiled at me. Wiping her hands on her apron, she walked with me to the front door and waved to Sylvia. In Spanish, she asked me where the meeting was, and I translated the question for Sylvia, who recited the address in English. Satisfied with the answer, Mami said she’d see me after the meeting. Now I had no choice—I had to go.
From the moment I walked into the Brownies meeting, I could tell it was different from anything I’d ever experienced. The meeting was in a house near ours, but this house was bigger and it had a garage, not just a carport. Inside was a group of cheerful girls in brown uniforms and two women—troop leaders, Sylvia explained—who greeted me warmly and seemed very glad I was there.
The girls were all crowded around the kitchen counter, drinking fruit juice and eating cookies. I recognized some of them from school. One or two girls said hi and I smiled back, just a little. Someone handed me a cup and told me to help myself. Then the leaders called us to start the meeting. We all went into the carpeted living room, and I saw that the furniture had been pushed back against the walls.
The leaders’ names were Mrs. Provine and Mrs. Davenport, though this Mrs. Davenport was taller than my former Head Start teacher. I wondered if the two Mrs. Davenports knew each other. The girls sat down in a circle and Mrs. Provine said, “This is Sylvia Acevedo. Let’s go around the circle and introduce ourselves.” One by one, every girl said her name.
Next, each of them held up her right hand with two fingers in the air, and in unison they said, “I promise to do my best to love God and my country, to help other people every day, especially those at home.” The troop leaders joined in too. I realized they were reciting a pledge of some sort, and everyone except me knew the words and what to expect. The girls were so organized and orderly. A few of them had a book called Girl Scout Handbook with an emblem printed on the blue-green cover. I learned later that there was a separate handbook for Brownies, but no one in that troop had it.
The Brownies were preparing for an upcoming nature outing in the park. Everyone seemed to take it for granted that I would join them. That afternoon, we were cutting fabric and newspapers into strips and weaving them into something called a sit-upon. I loved this idea: now we wouldn’t have to sit directly on the ground, because we’d have our nice portable sit-upons. I knew my mother would appreciate them too, since she was always after me to keep my clothes clean. I was sorting through fabric strips and old newspapers, listening to the chatter around me, when the girl next to me asked for the scissors. Wanting to be helpful, I handed them to her eagerly, point first.
Suddenly, Mrs. Provine was at my side calling all the Brownies to attention. I looked up at her, puzzled. She asked two Brownies to stand up and gave one of them a pair of scissors. Then she aske
d the girl with the scissors to pass them to the other girl. Carefully, the girl holding the scissors put her hand around the closed blades. Next, she held out the pair to the other Brownie, handles first. She turned to me and said seriously, “That is the safe way to pass scissors.”
The other girl added, “You also never run with scissors.”
Mrs. Provine turned to me. “You see, Sylvia. This is the way Brownies pass scissors safely to others.”
And I did see. At first I was embarrassed. I’d been singled out and told I was passing scissors the wrong way. But as the other girls went back to making their sit-upons, I saw that nobody was looking at me. Nobody was making fun of me or teasing me for being wrong.
I remember continuing to sort out the fabric strips for my sit-upon, thinking that I hadn’t known there were rules about passing scissors. No one had ever told me about such a thing. Now I knew the rules, so I could do it safely too.
Suddenly, the crowded living room brightened, and I felt as if a weight had been lifted off my chest. I felt hopeful.
If these girls and their leaders cared so much about how to pass scissors, how much more would they care about other things? Brownies and Girl Scouts make plans, I thought. They make sit-upons so they don’t get wet or dirty when they sit in the park, and they pass the scissors the right way. They care about how to do things correctly and safely, and they wanted to teach me these things too. And, I realized, that meant they cared about me.
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