Path to the Stars

by Sylvia Acevedo

  While all this was going on, Papá was reading or watching television. He kept to himself—not in an unfriendly way, but he didn’t join the party in the kitchen.

  On Christmas Eve, after a long day of cooking, we would have family and friends over for dinner. Some of the friends who’d helped out with the tamales would stay and their families would come, and the Barbas—Tía Alma, Uncle Sam, and my cousins Debbie, Cathy, Sammy, Jacob, and Ana—would come too. Everyone would be in a wonderful mood. After we ate, we’d run around the house and play games with our cousins and friends while the grownups sat and talked.

  We didn’t have alcohol at our family dinners. Instead, my mother made hot cider and Mexican hot chocolate for our Christmas Eve dinner. This was partly because my family was Baptist and partly because my mother forbade my father to bring alcohol into the house. In the past, he’d sometimes had a problem controlling his drinking. Now he and Uncle Sam might enjoy an occasional beer, but that was all Mami would allow.

  A few weeks before Christmas, my mother would have gotten out the holiday decorations. She nudged my father and Mario to string up the multicolored lights outside along the roof. Then, on Christmas Eve, we would add sand and a small candle to dozens of brown paper bags to make luminarias. As the sun was setting, we would line the sidewalk by our house with them. Sometimes other neighbors would join in and line their own sidewalks with luminarias, though most of our neighbors just had holiday lights.

  After dinner, our guests would leave, and we’d pile into the family car. We’d drive around Las Cruces to see the Christmas lights in other neighborhoods, especially those in La Mesilla, a village of adobe buildings on the border of Las Cruces. Though our neighborhood was pretty and we thought our street was beautiful, not all the houses were decorated. But everyone in La Mesilla put out holiday lights, and they lined their lawns and sidewalks with luminarias throughout the holiday season and especially on Christmas Eve.

  In the neighborhoods with many luminarias, my father would turn off the headlights, driving slowly in the dark so we could see the rows and rows of flickering lights. In the back seat, we’d excitedly vie for window space, secure in the feeling that our family was together and happy. There would be Christmas carols on the radio, and we’d sing along, the only time I remember my family singing together. In the car, I could sing as loudly as I wanted, and everybody thought my voice was fine. By the time we got home, we were all tired, and we children were sent to bed right away.

  On Christmas morning, we woke up to find stockings filled with hard candy, nuts, and an orange. When we would complain that it was just food, my mother would remind us that she had grown up in abject poverty, with no presents or stockings. She and her brothers and sisters were always hungry, so a stocking filled with food was a real gift. To my mother, the stocking was a sign that she could provide for her children. I knew that she filled them with love.

  In the days leading up to Christmas, gifts would have accumulated in our living room. We would all have a few, but Mami always received more than anyone else. Many times when I was delivering Christmas food, a family member or a friend would hand me a wrapped present for my mother. The gifts were a reminder that she had a life outside of our family and that many people loved and admired her because she was always thinking of others. While we children looked forward to our own gifts, I was proud of Mami for receiving so many presents.

  My parents had firm rules about not sneaking peeks or opening gifts before Christmas morning. They said that waiting was part of the magic of Christmas. We could touch the gifts and even rearrange them under the tree, but we weren’t allowed to shake them. Still, we liked to count and organize the presents. We would sit by the tree and try to figure out what could be inside the boxes. When a gift didn’t resemble anything that we might have asked for, we figured it was clothes, and we were usually right.

  I was frequently the first one to open my eyes on Christmas morning. I’d wake Laura, then bang on the door of my brother’s room before going into my parents’ bedroom and shaking my mother’s shoulder. Once we had all gathered around the tree, we could open the gifts.

  My parents were good about getting us both practical gifts and presents that were fun. Mario was a fanatic for model airplanes. A model World War II airplane was always his first choice for a gift, and he assumed that was what the rest of us wanted as well. He would give models to our cousins Sammy and Jacob, then go to their house and build them. He received clothing, too, and so did Laura and I. These items were something special, like a more expensive jacket than we’d normally expect, not ordinary school clothes. Even our dog, Fito, always got a wrapped present, usually a rawhide chew. After all, he was a member of our family too!

  By the end of Christmas Day, I’d be worn out by the preparations of the day before and the excitement of the day itself. Savoring the warm peace of the quiet house, I’d go to bed, filled with love for everyone in my family: my parents, Mario and Laura, our dog, my aunts and uncles and grandparents and cousins.

  Mami liked to keep the house in order. With three—and later four—active children, she made sure that we always cleaned up after ourselves and made our beds. Even Laura had chores. Every December 26, I would wake to the sound of the vacuum cleaning up the needles from the Christmas tree. Before she made breakfast, my mother would take down the tree and put away all the ornaments. She disliked the sight of overflowing garbage cans, so later that morning, my father and Mario would haul the tree, still festooned with tinsel, and all the other trash to the dump. When they came back, we’d sit down to a lunch of leftovers. The outdoor Christmas lights could remain for another week, but inside, we had moved on. Now it was all about the new year.

  Christmas in our house on Key Lane, 1968

  Chapter 10

  Learning to Save and Budget Through Cookies

  By the spring of third grade, I’d grown out of my Brownie uniform. The skirt was too short on me, and the blouse was too tight. The socks had worn out long ago, though I still liked to wear the headband sometimes.

  I had real friends at school, Liz and Cindy and other Brownies in my troop who were also in my class. I sat with them at lunch and played with them at recess. We sometimes gave the two-fingered Brownie greeting when we saw one another at school. We had two stars on our too-small uniforms, one for each year we’d been Brownies.

  We had done many things in those two years. We’d made cornhusk dolls and tambourines out of paper plates. We’d played games like Sa Po Po, where we had to beat out rhythms in an order that went faster and faster until we all collapsed, laughing. We’d discovered the meaning of the Brownie name in a folktale about two little girls in faraway England who learned how to help around the house. We’d taken walks while singing the Brownie hiking song, which went, “We are the happy Brownies. We are the busy elves. We love to help each other, and of course we help ourselves.” I loved being a busy Brownie elf!

  Mami had made friends through Brownies too. She saw my troop leaders often and sometimes helped them with projects.

  Although my Brownie uniform was too small, Mami wouldn’t have to buy me a new one. Instead, at the end of the school year, I would join all the older Brownies in a ceremony. The troop leaders explained that we’d be “flying up” to Junior Girl Scouts, and next fall, we’d wear the green Junior uniform with a sash and a beret instead of the Brownie beanie. We’d all receive cloth Brownie wings to sew onto our new sashes. The wings meant that we’d belonged to a Brownie troop and we’d flown up. Then, as Juniors, we’d get to work earning badges, something we hadn’t done as Brownies.

  * * *

  The Junior Girl Scouts had their first meeting in the school cafeteria on the very first Wednesday of fourth grade. I knew many of the new Juniors from our Brownie troop, but not all of them. There were some older girls there too, fifth and sixth graders. I thought they looked grown-up, full of confidence, their sashes already sprinkled with badges. Mrs. Davenport had flown up with our Junior troop, an
d we had a new troop leader, Mrs. Beeman, as well. We sat in a circle, and for the first time, I recited the Girl Scout Promise holding up three fingers instead of two, the way we had with the Brownie Promise.

  After we’d gone around in a circle and introduced ourselves, Mrs. Beeman said she had a question.

  “What would you like to do this year?” she asked us.

  Girls spoke up excitedly. “I’d like to go on a bike trip,” one girl said. Another said she wanted to go bird watching. Somebody else wanted to learn to cook. When one girl suggested camping, several others agreed.

  Everyone seemed to think a camping trip would be fun. We voted and quickly decided that would be one of our activities. I would have said yes to anything. I was surprised that the troop leaders would let us decide for ourselves what we would be doing.

  Since it would be our first overnight trip, we decided to go to a campsite that was part of Apodaca Park, right in Las Cruces. The leaders liked it because it was fenced in, and we could set up tents and build a fire to make s’mores. I didn’t know what s’mores were, but the older girls cheered when someone mentioned them.

  Before the meeting ended, Mrs. Beeman reminded us, “Don’t forget to look through your handbooks this weekend. You can find ideas for badges to complete while we work on our camping trip and other activities.”

  Well, I didn’t wait for the weekend. That very night, after finishing my homework, I thumbed through my Girl Scout guide, looking for descriptions of the badges. Juliette Low, the founder of the Girl Scouts, had said that badges were a symbol that we had learned something well enough to be prepared to give service in it. Each badge had a list of steps to be checked off to show mastery.

  I liked the idea of badges such as Troop Camper, Outdoor Cook, and Cyclist, which our whole troop could accomplish together. I saw other badges that interested me too. I even made a list, picturing myself in my uniform with a sash full of colorful cloth badges for Health Aid, Musician, Books, and more. There was even a badge called Observer, which involved taking an adventure hike, looking for weather signs, and learning the constellations.

  Still, for all my enthusiasm about badges and camping trips, I felt a knot settle slowly into my stomach. I loved the sound of the activities and the badges. But Mami had already bought my Junior uniform and a new handbook for Junior Girl Scouts. We didn’t have extra money for trips and activities.

  Maybe I couldn’t be a Junior Scout after all, or maybe I could go to the meetings and earn a few simple badges, but nothing else.

  At the next meeting, as we took our places in the circle, the other girls were buzzing with excitement, discussing their plans for the camping trip and the badges they wanted to earn. “Sylvia, is something wrong?” Mrs. Beeman asked.

  Surprised to be singled out, I said that I didn’t think my family had the money for Junior Girl Scout activities. Then I looked down, ashamed.

  Mrs. Beeman laughed. “Don’t worry,” she said. “We’ll sell cookies!”

  I looked around, confused. Was she laughing at me?

  Then she elaborated: “Sylvia has a good point. The activities we’ve planned will cost money. But don’t worry,” she repeated. “We’re going to earn the money to do the things we want to do. How are we going to do that?”

  She looked around the room. “Cookies!” said one of the older Girl Scouts, echoing our troop leader.

  Cookies? What did they mean? I saw some of the other new Juniors looking puzzled too.

  The older girls explained that every year, girls across the country sold boxes of cookies—special cookies that you could buy only from the Girl Scouts—to raise money for their troop activities. Now it was our turn.

  Mrs. Beeman’s talk of earning money to fund our activities was new to me. I had my own savings account, the one I’d started so I could get a library card, and I’d been adding to it over the years. I liked the way the total in my passbook grew with each new deposit.

  But my family lived paycheck to paycheck. Like all the mothers I knew except for Tía Alma, who was a schoolteacher, Mami didn’t have a job, and Papá’s salary barely paid for everything we needed. What’s more, we were a family of six now. My baby brother, Armando, was born when I was eight, in January of my third-grade year. I was so excited; we hadn’t had a new baby in the family since Laura was born.

  My parents didn’t have much money saved. We all loved Armando, a happy, active baby, but after he was born, my parents seemed even more worried about paying their bills. Mami was thrifty and good at finding ways to save money, but each new expense seemed to catch my parents by surprise. That was just how things were in my family.

  Now the Girl Scouts were teaching me how to plan and save for the future. We talked about how much money we’d need for our activities, and Mrs. Beeman told us how much money we had in our bank account from the past year. I didn’t know our troop already had a bank account!

  We decided that we’d save the camping trip for the spring, when the weather turned mild. That would be many months from now and after the cookie sale, so we’d have the money for supplies. We talked about what would happen if it rained on the date we chose and how we would make alternative plans.

  As we talked, I looked around at the other girls, amazed. In my family, we never discussed our future activities in this way, never made the connection between deciding what we wanted to do and planning in advance to be sure we had the money saved up. I loved my parents, but this was something new, something they couldn’t teach me—and the Girl Scouts could.

  Then we talked about badges. We were going to ride our bikes to the campground, meaning we could earn our Cyclist badge. We would learn the rules of traffic and some basic maintenance, like how to oil our chains and how to make sure the tires were pumped up for a smoother ride. We would be camping outdoors, so we could work on our Troop Camper badge: making charts for all of the camp jobs, and planning games and nature walks.

  I raised my hand. “What about the Observer badge?” I asked. “That has hiking and learning about the outdoors.” The other girls and my troop leaders liked that idea, and Mrs. Davenport asked me to plan the activities we would have to do to earn the badge.

  The previous year I had begged my parents for a bicycle, and Mario had begged them too on my behalf, because I rode his bike so often. At last I had been given my own bike, a green Western Flyer. Mami told me that three times around our block was a mile, and I’d spend whole afternoons riding around the block, counting the miles.

  Now, with the rest of my troop, I started working on the Cyclist badge. I realized that all by myself, I could keep my bicycle in order and ride it safely, just by following the steps to earn a Girl Scout badge. After I learned to check the tire pressure, I checked it so often at the local gas station that the manager finally gave me my own personal air-pressure gauge. It even had a clip that I could fasten to my pocket. I liked the way the steps in the Cyclist badge progressed, from easy challenges like stopping and starting to larger projects for our whole troop, like planning an all-day expedition and a community safety activity. Not every badge needed to involve the whole troop, but I liked the ones that did.

  Over the next few weeks, we continued to plan our camping expedition. We’d eat three meals on the trip—dinner, breakfast, and lunch—and we discussed what supplies we would need and how much they would cost. By the time we finished planning the camping trip, we had a budget.

  Once we knew how much the trip would cost, Mrs. Beeman explained how the cookie sale worked. The camping trip would cost one hundred dollars, but it wasn’t the only activity that we’d have to fund from cookie sales. We were planning a day of arts and crafts, and we needed to purchase art supplies. We needed materials to make new sit-upons. And later in the fall, we’d go on a hayride and have a barbecue.

  Each box of cookies cost fifty cents and would earn our troop twenty-five cents. The other twenty-five cents paid for the cost of the cookies, and some of it also went to the local Girl Scout offic
e. To earn the money for the camping trip, the hayride, and our other activities, the members of our troop would have to sell seventy-five boxes of cookies each.

  Seventy-five boxes! Even with my extended family and our church, I couldn’t sell that many cookies to people who knew me. I’d have to sell to neighbors and people I didn’t know.

  I had no idea how to begin.

  But by now I wasn’t surprised to learn that the Girl Scouts had a plan for how we would sell cookies.

  Most important, whenever we were selling cookies, we had to wear our uniforms. The guide said, “The way you act when you wear your uniform shows that you really mean your Girl Scout Promise. You are proud of your uniform, so you keep it neat and clean.” I’d have to keep my uniform in top shape at all times.

  The first box of cookies I sold was to Mami. And she did not make it easy for me! I had never tasted a Girl Scout cookie, but I had a paper that showed pictures of the boxes and gave brief descriptions of the cookies. She said I had to tell her about all the different kinds of cookies before she would buy any of them.

  I stood in front of her, wearing my uniform, straight and proud. “First,” I said, “there are Chocolate Mints, chocolate cookies with a minty chocolate coating. Then there are Peanut Butter Sandwiches, two crunchy peanut cookies with a creamy peanut butter filling between them.” By now, my mouth was watering as I described buttery shortbread cookies, vanilla sandwich cookies, and the exotic Koko cookies, sugary circles topped with chocolate and flakes of coconut.