That weekend, I read the book from cover to cover. I learned all the rules by heart and pored over the drawings that showed how to pick up the ball and fling it down the alley. If you knocked over all ten pins at once, that was a strike, which was the best way to score. But if you left any pins standing and knocked them over on your next try, the bowling rules said that was a spare. You got two turns to knock down ten pins, and those two turns were called a frame. I didn’t know why they used those words, but I liked knowing the terms because it meant I was learning something new.
After I studied the drawings, I practiced in my bedroom, gripping an imaginary ball and sending it down the alley with a flourish. I kept the door closed so no one would see me looking in the mirror to be sure I was standing just like the person in the pictures. Finally, on Saturday, my friend and I walked over to the bowling alley and signed up for a team. I had saved my weekly allowance so I could pay the fees and rent bowling shoes.
I quickly found out that real bowling wasn’t exactly the same as pretend bowling in my bedroom. But by the time my library book was due, I could knock down most of the pins, and so could the other kids on my team. Before long, we were winning trophies, and I was one of the team’s best bowlers.
If it hadn’t been for the badges I’d earned in Girl Scouts, I would never have had the courage to learn how to bowl. Because of the badges, I knew that I could teach myself to fulfill a goal and work as a member of a team. With a little help from the library, I used those skills to join the bowling league. I still remember the smooth texture of my first bowling trophy against my fingers as I gripped it tightly, filled with excitement, running home to show my mother.
* * *
Since Papá was a chemist, he needed to keep up with chemical journals, so twice a month, he’d go to the library at New Mexico State University, in Las Cruces. Over time, Papá had become more and more preoccupied with his job, and he continued to work very hard. Sometimes he and Mami would argue about things we kids didn’t understand. When we argued that way, we’d sometimes get a spanking if Papá was home and lost his temper because we were too loud. If he wasn’t around, Mami would lock the two of us who were arguing in the bathroom until we were friends again. But when Papá and Mami disagreed, there was nobody who could tell them to behave.
After Papá and Mami argued, my father would spend more time at the library. When Mario and I went with him to the Branigan branch, I’d always leave after a couple of hours. I loved to read, but I couldn’t sit inside all day. I had to run around! But Mario was like Papá, his nose always in a book, spending all day in the library.
Still, I did my fair share of reading. By the time I was in fourth grade, I was reading everything I could get my hands on. I was at the top of my class. Then something happened that changed the way I thought about my future.
I knew that I would be going to college one day, though most of the adult women I knew had finished their education in high school—or even grade school, as Mami had. Except for my teachers, Tía Alma was the only woman I knew with a college degree. When I thought of college, I pictured a school like Alameda Elementary, except that I would be older and taller. I might even have my own car!
I didn’t understand yet that in college, students focused on one course of study, and that unlike our public schools, colleges cost money to attend. I just knew I wanted to go.
I didn’t talk about these thoughts with anyone at the time, though. I was more interested in earning Girl Scout badges, riding my bike, playing games, and reading every book in the library. I enjoyed my bowling team and I loved basketball, my favorite game at recess. High school and even junior high seemed very far away.
My fourth-grade teacher’s son had gone away to college, and he had sent her photographs of different universities around the world. One day, my teacher decided to share them with us. She set up a slide projector with all of the photographs, showing large modern brick complexes and buildings whose dark stone walls were covered with ivy. Then one slide jumped out at me.
This college didn’t look like any place I knew in Las Cruces. The buildings were beautiful, with red tile roofs and rounded archways. And the surrounding lawns were the greenest I had ever seen.
I raised my hand. “What’s that one?” I asked.
“That’s Stanford University, in California,” said my teacher.
“I want to go there,” I said.
She walked over to my desk. “It’s a really great school,” she said, smiling. “You’re a smart girl. If you want to go there, you can.”
A college was a real place, I realized. It wasn’t just something people talked about to get kids to do their homework. I could pick a college and go there, even if it was far away from Las Cruces, New Mexico. If the other girls I knew wanted to get married and have children, I could still choose to do other things. I could be someone who had adventures, like the girls in the Disney shows.
I was nine years old, living in a small desert town. And on that day I decided I would go to Stanford.
Me in fifth grade—get ready world!
Chapter 12
A Troop for Everyone
One of the best things about Junior Girl Scouts was earning badges. We had earned some on our first camping trip together, like Cyclist and Troop Camper. The trip had been only one overnight, but I’d loved every minute as we set up our tents in Apodaca Park, prepared our meals, and sang songs around the campfire while we roasted marshmallows for s’mores. Even going to sleep outdoors, surrounded by my friends in their own sleeping bags, was exciting.
The first year of Juniors, when I was in fourth grade, I did the Observer badge. I loved the weekends spent outdoors, looking for cloud formations, constellations, and insects going about their business. I even gave a presentation to my troop about the rock formations in the nearby Organ Mountains. Each time I earned a new badge, I would proudly sew it onto my sash.
After our camping trip, Mrs. Beeman said to me, “You know, Sylvia, I remember you looking at the stars.”
She had noticed how much I loved to look up and wonder at the stars, drinking in the majesty of countless points of light as they stretched into the black velvet of infinity. Sometimes after sunset I would climb the mulberry tree in our front yard and stare at the heavens. I had read that Robert Goddard—the father of modern rocketry—also used to climb a tree, gaze at the stars, and dream about visiting outer space.
“Is there a badge for you somewhere in the stars?” my troop leader asked now. “Maybe studying space?”
After this conversation, I checked my Junior Girl Scout Handbook, but I didn’t see any badge that fit. Then, several months later, in my second year of Juniors, Mrs. Beeman brought up the subject again, telling me that the handbook for Cadette Girl Scouts, who were older, had a Science badge. She thought I might enjoy the projects since I’d liked the Observer badge so much.
I wasn’t so sure I wanted to earn the Science badge. The other girls in my troop were about to start working on their Cooking badge, and I wanted to do that, too. Mrs. Beeman encouraged me, though, saying I could earn both a Cooking and a Science badge, and she lent me the Cadette Girl Scout Handbook so I could see what the requirements were.
After the meeting, I read about the Science badge. It sounded like fun, so I decided to try it. I took a package of tomato seeds and sprouted them by keeping them in moist newspapers. Then I planted the seeds outside, and soon I was able to pick tomatoes for us to eat. I added chemicals to growing plants to see what would happen. For another requirement, I had to collect newspaper clippings about the space program and atomic energy. And I had to learn about levers and demonstrate how they worked.
I enjoyed fulfilling the requirements for the Science badge. But the handbook said that to complete the badge, I also had to design a science project of my own. At first, I didn’t know what that could be. Then I had an idea: maybe I could do a project with Estes rockets.
In those days, everybody talked about space travel. When I was four yea
rs old, President Kennedy had vowed to put a man on the moon, and now, with President Johnson promising the same thing, NASA—the National Aeronautics and Space Administration—was working to make it happen. So lots of kids—and their parents and teachers—were excited by rockets, and by astronauts too, such as John Glenn, the first American to orbit the earth.
Estes rockets were model rockets that could actually be launched high into the air. I’d heard about them from my brother and cousins, and sometimes I heard boys at school talking about them. If they could shoot model rockets into the sky, why couldn’t I?
Mario built models all the time, so I asked him, “Where can I get Estes rockets?” He said the store where he bought his plastic World War II airplane models—Hobby Hut—might carry them. But he also received catalogs in the mail, and he had an Estes model rocket catalog in his bedroom.
We looked at the catalog together, and Mario helped me figure out the differences between the various rockets, how hard they might be to put together, and how much they cost. I picked out a model, took money from my savings account, and sent in my order. After three long weeks, my rocket arrived in the mail.
The rocket kit contained a cardboard tube, fins and a nose cone cut from balsa wood, a plastic parachute, string cords, and instructions. The rocket engines came in a separate package of three. They were self-contained, with solid fuel propellant. Mario helped me glue the fins into place and showed me where the nose cone would go. Then we put the parachute together, and finally, we painted the rocket. Everything had to be assembled precisely for the rocket to fly true and for the parachute recovery system to work. Waiting for the glue and paint to dry seemed to take forever. I was eager to launch my rocket.
Since the engines were started by electric igniters, Mario had to borrow a battery-operated launcher from a friend. On launch day, Mario and I carried the launcher and rocket to a nearby empty lot. We folded the parachute just so and slid it into the front of the rocket’s body; then we clamped the nose cone into place. We inserted one of the engines into the tail of the rocket, crimped an igniter into the engine nozzle, and connected the igniter to the launcher’s wires.
With the rocket mounted on the launcher’s guide rod, we stepped back and I recited an official-sounding NASA countdown, starting with “Ten.” At “Liftoff!” I twisted the launch key to ignite the engine.
Nothing happened. The rocket sat on the launcher.
After some trial and error, we learned that the electric igniters were finicky. If the rocket didn’t launch, we had to wait a couple of minutes to make sure the engine hadn’t started to burn before adjusting the igniter. After several tries, at last I turned the key and the little rocket zoomed upward in a trail of smoke.
Several hundred feet above us, the engine detonated the ejection charge with a pop. We watched as the parachute unfurled, and the rocket floated toward the ground. I’d done it! We ran after the rocket since we weren’t sure where it would land. I was thrilled to find it nearby, undamaged and ready for another flight. That afternoon we launched it two more times.
And soon I had earned my Science badge.
* * *
While I had been firing off rockets, most of the other girls in my troop had begun working on the Cooking badge. I helped Mami in the kitchen sometimes, but aside from our Christmas celebrations, I’d never been too interested in cooking. Still, at our meetings, the rest of the girls were excited about the recipes they’d been trying. I didn’t want to miss out on anything.
Since most of the girls had already started earning the badge, I needed to hurry if I wanted to catch up. The first requirement was that I know how to measure out dry, liquid, and solid ingredients. To demonstrate that, our troop leaders decided we would have to cook something from a recipe. We would do that at home and tell our troop about our experience. I liked cookies, so I decided to make peanut butter cookies.
Even though Mami had been learning English, all of our cookbooks were in Spanish. I could read some Spanish, but not as well as I could read in English. “Do you need help?” Mami asked me.
“No, I know what to do,” I answered confidently. After all, I’d been helping Mami and Tía Angélica with their baking since I was little. While Tía Angélica didn’t live with us these days, she was a talented cook, and I loved being in the kitchen with her. Now I found a cookie recipe, and even though it was in Spanish, I thought I could figure out the directions.
Feeling grown-up, I pulled out a mixing bowl and added the ingredients—sugar, butter, an egg—carefully checking each one before mixing it with the rest. I added flour, using the cup measure, then coaxed peanut butter into and out of the measuring cup with a spatula. I saw that the recipe called for baking powder and baking soda, one half teaspoon each. I read the measurements in the Spanish cookbook and translated them into English in my head.
I was almost done with measuring! The next ingredient was salt. Moving quickly now, I read the quantity in Spanish, thinking that the c in “cucharadita” meant cup. A cup of salt sounded like a lot, but that was what the recipe called for. I measured out a cup of salt from the container and dumped it into the bowl.
Once all the ingredients were mixed in, I pinched off small pieces of the cookie dough and rolled them into balls. I lined up the balls neatly on the cookie sheet and flattened each one with a fork, making a crisscross pattern. I set the timer and watched to be sure they didn’t get too brown. They smelled wonderful, and they looked perfect.
The first batch of cookies was cooling on the racks, and I was getting ready to slide a second batch into the oven when Mario wandered into the kitchen. Without even asking, he grabbed a cookie and stuffed it into his mouth. Then he rushed to the sink and spat it out. “This is awful!” he exclaimed.
I thought he was teasing me! Indignantly, I started to answer back, and Mami came into the kitchen to see what the fuss was about. When Mario told her the cookie tasted horrible, she took one from the rack. After a very small bite, she looked at me. “Sylvia, explain to me how you mixed up the cookie dough. Go through every step.”
Step by step, we went over the recipe, in English and in Spanish. When I explained that I thought “1 cucharadita” meant one cup of salt, Mami’s eyes widened.
“You added a cup of salt to the cookies!” She was aghast. “‘Cucharadita’ is this!” she said, waving the teaspoon in front of my face. “‘Taza’ is the word for cup, like here.” She pointed to the measurement for flour in the recipe. “There are few recipes that would ever require a cup of salt!” Even before she finished speaking, I knew she was right. I had measured out all the other ingredients correctly, translating the Spanish words for cup and teaspoon—taza and cucharadita—into English, but I wasn’t careful at the end of the recipe, and I had made a mistake in translating the measurement for salt.
I could see Mario smirking, and even Mami had to hide a smile. I felt like crying. I knew the mistake was all my fault.
I cleaned up the kitchen, wrapping the cookies and the rest of the dough in newspaper so I wouldn’t have to see them in the garbage bin. All the other girls were getting their Cooking badges, and now I’d be the only Scout in my troop without that badge on my sash.
I asked Mami if I could try again.
Now Mami looked sad. “Peanut butter is expensive,” she said. “We can’t afford more.”
She went into the pantry, and I followed her. “What do we have?” she asked, sounding thoughtful. We had flour, tomato sauce, and yeast. “Let’s make some pizza,” she said.
I found a recipe right on the package of yeast. As I got out the ingredients, Mami asked if I needed help. The directions were in English this time, so I said no. I could read all the words in the recipe without any trouble!
I opened the package of yeast and poured it into a mixing bowl. The directions said to add warm water. Remembering how important it was to get the temperature right for the rocket to launch, I heated a pan of water on the stove. When it boiled, I measured out a cup and
poured it over the yeast. I mixed in the flour, salt, and cooking oil and kneaded the dough for a long time, until it was a smooth ball. I put it back in the bowl with a towel over the top and waited for the dough to rise.
At first, I checked the pizza dough every few minutes, until Mami came into the kitchen and suggested I go outside and play. When I came back an hour later, the dough was exactly the same size. Nothing had changed, except the top had dried out.
Once again, Mami went through the recipe with me, asking what I’d done at each step. Then she said, “Sylvia, we have another packet of yeast. Throw this out and let’s try again.”
She explained that I had killed the yeast with the boiling water. I hadn’t really understood that yeast is alive and that it creates the bubbles that make the dough rise. The water had been too hot, just as it would have been too hot if I’d spilled it on myself.
This time Mami didn’t ask me; she stayed around. When we got to the part about pouring warm water onto the yeast, she told me to test the temperature by sprinkling a drop or two onto my wrist. If the water burned my skin, it was too hot. It had to be just a bit uncomfortable.
I added the water to the yeast, gave it a quick stir, and waited ten minutes. The mixture was brownish-gray, with bubbles rising to the surface, just like a chemical reaction. It didn’t look like something I would want to eat. Still, I added flour, salt, oil, and more warm water, mixed it with a wooden spoon, and then kneaded it on a wooden board. The dough felt warm to my touch, and this time it rose when I left it in the bowl for an hour. I rolled it out, spread tomato sauce and cheese on top, and baked it in the oven. Even Mario said the pizza tasted good.
I remembered that as I had kneaded the dough, I had thought that this process was just like building and launching my Estes rocket. In both science and cooking, you had to follow the directions, and you had to get the heat just right. Making a science experiment work was like cooking: if something didn’t work, you could figure out why and try again. And if I could cook, I could do science!
Path to the Stars Page 11