After I got through all five kinds of cookies, Mami didn’t say anything at first. She looked thoughtful. I knew the cookies were an extravagance for us. When Papá went to visit his father, he frequently brought back cookies from Juárez, Mexico. One box cost less than these and contained dozens of cookies.
At last, Mami said, “I will buy a box of Peanut Butter Sandwich cookies.”
I wasn’t surprised at this. Mami loved peanut butter. Then she said, “Let’s buy a box of Shortbreads and two of the Chocolate Mints.”
Four boxes! Mami was as committed to the cookie sale as I was, I realized. I grinned at her, thrilled that I had made my first sale.
After I’d written it down on my order form, Mami told me I was allowed to sell cookies to other customers. Seventy-one boxes to go! I had a lot of work to do.
Even before she made me sell her that first box of cookies, Mami had been involved in Girl Scouts. It had begun back when I was in Brownies, when she started bringing treats to our meetings. As she became friendly with Mrs. Davenport and Mrs. Provine, she began helping them.
Until she had met my troop leaders, Mami didn’t have friendships with anyone outside our immediate family who spoke English. My troop leaders were housewives, like her. Over time, they and Mami had gotten to know one another well, and my mother’s English had improved by leaps and bounds.
One day while I was in Brownies, my leaders had asked Mami if she could help collect and keep track of our membership dues. She said yes, and she took her responsibilities very seriously. She helped our leaders keep our financial records in order, and I got used to seeing her with sleeves for coins and plastic pouches for dollar bills. As she gained experience, Mami’s confidence increased.
When I flew up to Juniors, Mami flew up in another way—by becoming a United States citizen. She already had a green card that allowed her to be a legal resident. All four of us children, along with Papá, had been born in the United States, so we were citizens. Now it was Mami’s turn, as my troop leaders put her in touch with a service that helped her complete the process.
Papá hadn’t seemed too interested when Mami first told us that she had decided to do this. He said he didn’t see that it was necessary. “Why would you need to be a citizen when you have your green card?” he’d asked, mystified.
Ever since he’d been offered the job years earlier at the White Sands Missile Range, Papá had worked hard. He never missed a day, even if he was sick, and he was proud that he was able to support his family, as most fathers did in those days. As far as he was concerned, Mami needed only to keep house and care for his children, and now he said that if she got her citizenship, he wasn’t sure she would need him for anything except his paycheck.
I had no idea what Papá meant, but around that time, he was often short-tempered. Mami said he had been passed over for a big promotion at work, and this had upset him.
Still, Papá could see how hard Mami was studying for the citizenship exam. She had to know all about American history and government, and she was determined not to miss a single question on the test. On the day she became a citizen of the United States, he told her he was very proud of her. We all were!
Now Mrs. Beeman showed how much trust she had in Mami by asking her to be in charge of the cookie sale. It was a big job, but Mami loved challenges and learning new things, so she said yes.
In our meetings, we had talked about the way to sell cookies. Our troop leaders had taught us how Girl Scouts were supposed to approach a sale. Once we had asked someone to buy our cookies, we weren’t allowed to leave until they had placed an order or had told us no three times.
If someone said no the first time, I had to ask, “Why don’t you want the cookies?” If they said they couldn’t eat them, I could suggest they take them into work, school, or church. If they said they didn’t like the flavors, I could point out a new flavor they might not have tried before. And if they said they didn’t have any money, I could tell them that they didn’t have to pay when they ordered the cookies, only when I delivered them. And it was convenient: I would bring those cookies right to their door!
After I sold my first boxes of cookies to Mami, I sold more boxes to our relatives and members of our church. I still had a long way to go to meet my goal of selling seventy-five boxes, though. The next step was to start selling to people in our neighborhood.
While Mami kept tabs on how far along we were with our cookie sales, I was knocking on doors. Every day after school, except when we had our Girl Scout meeting, I’d change into my uniform. I’d make sure the blouse was tucked in and my sash was neat. Then I’d take my cookie order form and a pencil and set out. In those days, you could choose whether to sell cookies on your own or with a friend. Most of the time I went with another Girl Scout, a friend from my troop, but on the streets around our house, I went by myself.
The first time I knocked on the door of someone I didn’t know, it was a neighbor whom I had seen but never spoken to. She came to the door in a pink bathrobe. I asked her if she wanted to buy some Girl Scout cookies. To my surprise, she said no.
I looked at her, my feet rooted to the spot, as I heard Mrs. Beeman’s voice in my head, telling us never to leave a sale until a customer had told us no three times. “Is there someone else at home who might want to buy cookies?” I blurted out. Again the lady in the pink bathrobe said no.
Finally I asked, “Is there someone’s day you want to make by giving them Girl Scout cookies?” At that, the woman smiled, and she finally said yes. As we discussed the various cookies, I was overjoyed, just the way I had felt with Mami.
Through sales like this one, I learned persistence. That gave me the confidence to talk to more strangers. The numbers started to add up: five, ten, twenty boxes. Soon I was keeping a list of streets in my neighborhood and doors I had knocked on.
At each door, I would start by introducing myself and saying the name of my Girl Scout troop. Then I would describe the different kinds of cookies. Sometimes the person would buy a box or two right away—they might have tried Girl Scout cookies before. One or two people even told me their daughters used to be Girl Scouts.
But some people wouldn’t buy cookies, even when I asked them three times. They weren’t rude, exactly, but they didn’t let me spend much time talking to them. So I’d go on to another house, and another.
By the time I had sold seventy-five boxes, I knew how to make a sale. I was confident, when I rang each doorbell, that I could turn a potential customer’s no into a yes. I’d earned the right to go on our camping trip, too, because I’d raised the money we needed for me to go. My seventy-five boxes had earned $18.75 for our troop!
Selling cookies completely changed the way I thought about my life. I had learned invaluable skills: how to sell, and how to create opportunity for my Girl Scout troop—and for me. I could create possibilities for myself. That gave me confidence and the courage to dream big dreams.
As the cookie sale drew to an end, Mami was in charge of collecting order forms from all the girls in my troop. She totaled up how many boxes of each cookie had been sold by each girl and sent in our troop’s order to the regional Girl Scout headquarters. Mami came to our next troop meeting to tell us the total number of boxes we’d sold and how much we’d earned for our troop. We all cheered! It was a lot of money. I especially liked it when Mrs. Beeman told us we’d earned more than the troop had the past year or the year before.
Then we had to wait a few weeks for the cookies to be delivered to our troop leader’s home. They arrived in big cartons marked with the names of the cookies inside: Chocolate Mints, Shortbread, Peanut Butter Sandwiches, and more. We each had to use our order forms to make a stack of the cookies we’d ordered, right in Mrs. Beeman’s living room. The stacks were tall, too big for any of us to carry. Our leaders told us to leave the boxes where they were and see if anyone from our families could help us take our cookies home.
The simplest way to bring the cookies home would be in the ca
r, I thought. Mami knew how to drive. That night, I asked her, and she agreed.
The next day was Saturday. I told Mami we could pick up the cookies any time that day. But Mami said we had to go to Mrs. Beeman’s house early. She wouldn’t let me take my cookies home until every other girl had picked up her boxes. Mami checked their counting too, just the way she’d overseen my stacks of coins long ago, when I broke open my cat bank. As each girl checked and double-checked her stacks of boxes, Mami nodded in approval, giving the girls permission to take their cookies away.
When the last girl left with her boxes, we took my own boxes home. Then I borrowed my brother’s red wagon and delivered all the cookies I’d sold, except for the ones I would deliver in church the next day. After I’d carefully placed those in a stack, we had four boxes left, the ones Mami had bought from me on the first day of the cookie sale. She opened her purse and counted out two dollar bills, and I handed her the four boxes. She looked at them, as if considering which one to try first, then opened a box of Peanut Butter Sandwiches. She gave one cookie to Laura and one to me, and then she picked one for herself.
I took a bite, and peanut butter flavor flooded my mouth. Laura had already gobbled down her cookie. “Muy sabrosa,” Mami said.
I smiled. I’d earned this cookie. “Delicious!” I replied.
Chapter 11
Our Family’s Love of the Library
While Mami was making friends in our new neighborhood and volunteering with my Girl Scout troop, Papá was doing what he had always done. He visited his family, his mother and sister near us in Las Cruces and his own Papá in El Paso. He made sure Mario and I were doing well in school and hugged my little sister each night when he came home from work.
He got up at five thirty every weekday morning to go to work. Then, on Saturdays, he’d sleep late. Mami didn’t like it when he did that, especially when she had chores for him to do.
Papá knew everything. He loved facts and knowledge, and he loved to explain things, especially to his children. Mario and I spoke two languages, but Papá spoke three: Spanish, English, and German. He’d learned German in college and used it in his advanced chemistry courses, and he kept up his reading skills all his life.
Sometimes my father would goad Mario by pitting the two of us in a contest, usually over a history or a geography question. “Mario and Sylvia,” he’d say, “let’s see who can name the most state capitals.” Even though my brother was older, occasionally I knew the right answer before he did.
When that happened, my father would chide my brother. “Beaten by a girl, Mario?” he’d say, and Mario would be angry. I’d feel a little sorry for him, but that didn’t keep me from trying my hardest to beat him every single time.
Because he was a boy, Mario got the lion’s share of Papá’s attention. Even when I won a contest, Papá seemed to pay more attention to Mario’s loss than to my win. Laura always knew how to get Papá to notice her with a hug and a kiss, but between Mario and my father’s books, newspapers, and chemical journals, Papá didn’t have much time for me.
Besides, no matter how hard I tried, I didn’t win Papá’s competitions too often. Mario was really smart, and because he was two years older than I was, he had covered more subjects in school. He and my father both loved history, especially military history, and Mario liked to read about famous battles. Because they were so interested in World War II, I grew up knowing a lot about D-Day, the Battle of the Bulge, and other battles from that war.
Papá knew so much about history because he loved to read. Not a day passed when he didn’t have his nose in a book, at least some of the time. Whenever a new best-selling thriller would come out in paperback, he’d buy a copy and spend the weekend devouring it. Back then, it seemed every store had racks filled with paperbacks—even the convenience store offered racks of books. Papá liked the library, too. Every other Sunday he would go to the university library, and on Saturdays, if he wasn’t visiting his father in El Paso, he’d often go to our local library. If we wanted to spend time with him, that was where we went too. When we were younger, Papá would take Mario to the library, but I had to beg to go with him, and he’d be stern with me, telling me not to bother him once we were there. Now that we were older, though, he never minded us tagging along.
Both before and after we moved to Kay Lane, our public library was the Branigan branch in Las Cruces. It was an adobe building constructed during the 1930s and had a mural painted on the arch above the checkout counter. The mural showed a Spanish Catholic monk from the year 1610 presenting an open book to a group of Native Americans, including a little boy. Would the monk have read the book to me? I wondered. Did he ever read a story to that little boy?
We all liked to visit the library, but Mario went with Papá every chance he got. If Papá was doing something else on a Saturday, Mario would go on his own, and he would stay as long as he could, just reading in a corner. Sometimes Mami would call the library and say, “Send Mario home. It’s time for supper.”
The librarians were nice, and they got to know my family well, greeting us by name whenever we visited. We knew their names too. But they had rules. One was that we had to be quiet. Another was that up until age twelve, children were allowed to take out books only from the children’s section.
Whenever we arrived at the library, Papá would go right away to the display of newspapers and magazines. “Be good,” he would tell us, pulling the day’s newspaper off a rack as we headed into the children’s room. If we wanted to find him, we’d look for him in the adult reading room. He never came with us or helped us choose our books, and we didn’t expect him to.
I decided that if I wasn’t allowed beyond the children’s room, I would simply read everything on its shelves. Maybe then the librarians would let me read books from the rest of the library.
Without the library, I would never have read as much as I did. We had very few books at home, and I read each one cover to cover until I had nearly memorized it. One time, when I was just learning to read, we were in El Paso and stopped in a department store with a bookstore. My parents bought a book for me about a nurse named Clara Barton. It was the first time I’d ever read about a woman who did important things, even helping to win a war. On the way home that day, I sat on my mother’s lap and read, not even noticing when we turned into our driveway in Las Cruces.
My mother hadn’t yet learned to read English, so when I came to a word I didn’t know, she would spell it out in Spanish to my father. He would then pronounce the word in English. I read that book so many times, Mami learned the whole story in English. I loved reading about someone who had lived so long ago and was still remembered now, a century after her work as a nurse in the civil war.
Once I had my library card, I discovered a whole series of biographies about the childhoods of famous people, and those books became my favorites. I liked knowing that famous people like Abraham Lincoln, Florence Nightingale, and Harriet Tubman had been kids like me, wondering what they would do when they grew up.
We could take out a couple of books from the library each week, and over time I really did read all the books in the children’s room.
I had loved to read ever since my days in Head Start. When I was in first grade, my mother learned about books that were sold with records. Children could follow along in the book as they listened to somebody read the story on the record. Since Mami couldn’t read to me in English, she bought me a portable record player that folded up like a suitcase so I could listen to the recorded books, and when she could afford them, she bought me those books, too.
I understood that this was Mami’s way of encouraging me to learn, and it made me feel special. I used the record player for reading, but I also let Laura listen to music with it. When she was a little older, she’d play the record of “Waltzing Matilda,” her favorite song, over and over and over. I got tired of the song, but I never tired of my sister’s joy in it.
There were some books that we couldn’t check out of t
he library, such as the large, heavy encyclopedias. Sometimes I’d just flip through the D volume, reading about Denmark, dodoes, drums, and anything else that caught my eye. Then I’d switch to B and learn about Belgium, beetles, and basketball.
After Mario and I started school, my parents bought us the World Book Encyclopedia, a set of twenty illustrated books. Each letter of the alphabet had its own volume, with the exception of some of the less common letters, which shared volumes. My parents also bought a world atlas. These reference books were a big investment, and Mario and I devoured them. We loved the anatomy section of the encyclopedia, where translucent pages revealed the human body’s skeletal, digestive, and respiratory systems and even its layers of skin.
In those days, there were no computers in school or in our homes. If we wanted to find out something, the library was our Internet and the librarians were our Google. We could ask them any question, and they would help us find the answer. That was how we learned about the world outside of Las Cruces.
One day, a friend of mine from Girl Scouts said a bowling league, just for kids, was forming at the local bowling alley. If we joined, we’d be on a team, playing against kids from other teams in the league.
No one in my family had ever been bowling before. I wasn’t even really sure what bowling was, but I liked the idea of being on a team. And because of my Girl Scout experience, I knew I could learn how to bowl if I took it step by step, just like when I earned a badge. So the next time I went to the library, I asked the librarian, “Do you have any books about bowling?”
“Just a minute,” she said. She disappeared into the nonfiction section for adults and came back a minute later with a small book. Even though it wasn’t from the children’s room, she said I could take it home. The cover showed a smiling teenager holding a ball that was bigger than his head. Excited, I checked out the book.
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