The kicker was that it also changed the meaning. Para in Spanish means “for.” Pera, the word I was actually saying, means “pear.”
Poor Jorge. If I said, “Este libro es para ti” (This book is for you), it came out sounding like This book is pear you.
I could just imagine Jorge’s thought process: Pear? Pear? What pear?
What other monstrosities had I cooked up with my poor pronunciation? It must have been pretty bad because Jorge was once again stopping to do a vowel drill.
He wrote the word LALA on the board.
“LA-LA,” he said, emphasizing the wide-open mouth of each syllable.
Then he wrote the full list:
LALA
LELA
LILA
LOLA
LULA
For each of those, he also changed the second vowel:
LALA
LALE
LALI
LALO
LALU
At the end, he had a five-by-five grid on the whiteboard of every combination of vowel sounds. He had me say them all out loud, and I struggled to hold back my urge to pronounce LALE with the silent e at the end (like my English-trained brain assumed) and with a long a.
“LA-LE,” I said with some effort.
It was like having mental hiccups, going over the list and finding the rough spots. The faster I said them, the more those errant English controls would take over and steer me off course. I felt like I was trying to block out club music blaring in one ear while trying to read a book. It could be done, but I was constantly distracted and had to spend so much energy to suppress the noise.
But like sandpaper over rough wood, with practice, I was wearing down the rough spots. I needed that Spanish reflex, the unthinking, unquestioned response to a Spanish word that just made the right sound tumble out of my mouth. I needed muscle memory. Jorge was helping me get it.
Just then, two students walked in. One was in her late sixties and wearing a sundress; the other was in her forties, blond, wearing a tank top and bejeweled flip-flops.
“¡Hola, Jorge! Sorry we’re late,” the younger woman sang as they took their seats.
“Buenas tardes. ¿Ustedes traen su tarea?” Do you have your homework? Jorge asked.
“Um . . .” The blond woman shuffled through her papers.
“Sí, pero no tuve mucho tiempo para estudiar y . . . um . . . entonces . . . no tengo todo,” Yes, but I didn’t have much time to study, and, um, so, I don’t have it all, she said as she flattened out half a piece of paper on the table.
Nonplussed, Jorge smoothed back his jet-black hair and started the lesson. Today we would be learning about Spanish idioms.
“‘Echar agua al mar,’” he began. “¿Qué crees que eso significa?” What do you think this means?
“To hit? To strike? Water at the sea?” the older woman offered.
“Close. ‘To throw water at the sea,’” he said. “Pero ¿qué signfica eso?” But what does that mean?
“Para hacer algo cualquier no tiene un cambio?” I said, not totally sure about my word order. To do something that doesn’t create a change?
“Sí, muy bien, Cristina,” he said, changing my name to the Spanish. “Significa hacer algo que no tiene ningún efecto. No tiene sentido.” It means to do something that has no effect. It makes no sense.
Was that what I was doing? Was I dumping bucket after bucket of water into the sea? Could I ever change my brain to slide into Spanish a little easier, to stop this feeling of running through mud? Or would I be like the other students in my group, treading water for months, maybe years, inching along the vast highway of language learning, the end nowhere in sight, finding myself a year from now, or two, or three, sitting in a classroom like this, with these same students, or students just like them, learning the textbook expressions and canned vocabulary of some other teacher, who had taught and failed dozens of identical students like us before?
Did Jorge have a single fluent student? I wondered. I didn’t ask. I didn’t want to know. I put my head down and wrote the words Echar agua al mar in my notebook. Next to it I wrote: To throw water into the sea. Pointless.
• • •
WHILE I WAS AT CLASS, Drew would stay home with Cole, who went a little stir-crazy during the day. The sun got so hot from midmorning until evening that the streets would empty. Cole would find things to do. He’d ride his bike around the house, play with bubbles on the cool tile of the veranda, or chase Drew around with a sword. Then Drew and Cole would come in the creaky old Dodge Caravan and pick me up at school.
“¡Hola, Cole!” I said, trying to use Spanish with him so he’d start picking it up.
“Mama! Park!”
There was a small park near our house, and every evening we’d walk over. It was Cole’s absolute favorite thing in the world. There was a basketball court, an outdoor exercise area, and a gazebo. He’d ride his bike around and around the perimeter for as long as we’d let him. He was obsessed with riding his bike, and the only flat, paved area to do it was there. But right now it was midday and dead hot. Even the dogs were sleeping.
“Cole, no hay niños en el parque ahorita.” Cole, there’re no kids in the park right now, I said, hoping to dissuade him.
He didn’t believe me. When we got back to the house, he asked again, so I walked down to the park and showed him.
“Mira, no hay niños.”
“Where are the kids?”
“Colegio.” School.
He just looked at me.
“School,” I repeated in English.
“Okay, Mama,” he said, and took my hand to walk back to the house.
Inside it was barely lit. We kept all the lights off, the doors wide-open, and the fans turned up to high. A soft current of air ran through the house and kept us cool enough so that we didn’t need AC. Every afternoon I made lunch in the kitchen, mixing equal parts of corn flour and water to make masa, the dough used for tortillas. It was meditative to make fresh tortillas. I wrapped my tortilla press with plastic wrap, the same way I saw the ladies at the taco stand do it, so the dough wouldn’t stick. I took the dough in my hand, rolled it into a ball, placed it in the middle of the press, brought down the heavy wooden block, and pressed on the lever until there was no more give. If the water and flour mixture was correct, when I lifted the handle, there would be a perfectly formed tortilla. If not, it would stick or crumble and break. I adjusted the mixture as I went until it was perfect, and then I slipped into the repetitive task of rolling, squeezing, and peeling tortillas, then toasting them on a flat skillet, known in Spanish as a comal.
If I was making regular tacos, I used no oil. But if I had some leftover cochinita pibil (slow-roasted pork with achiote), I could make huaraches (Spanish for “sandals”), which are oval-shaped discs topped with meat. For those, I cooked the dough in lard (known as manteca de cerdo or literally “pork butter”), which was sold in the supermarket in two sizes: small (about the size of a pound of butter) and large (a tub the size of a large popcorn in a movie theater). Then there was always pico de gallo, although it was known here as salsa mexicana. Though at first I’d made individual batches of pico at every mealtime, I soon bought a set of large red Tupperware buckets, not too different from what kids play with at the beach, but with plastic covers, and made giant vats of it. It was how I saw all the local women doing it, and it quickly made sense. I could chop a few dozen roma tomatoes, some onions, a bunch or two of cilantro, and some garlic, then cover it in fresh-squeezed lime juice and make enough for the week. It went on everything. An omelet for breakfast? Add some pico. Tacos? Grilled meat, fish, sandwiches, or soup? Pico, pico, pico.
We loved the combination so much that we made it every day: fresh tortillas, grilled meat, sliced avocado, pico de gallo, shredded lettuce, lime, and a little bit of habanero sauce.
It was easy to start using Spanish with Cole during these lunches. He understood everything based on the context.
“¿Más pico?” I would say, pointing to the pico de gallo.
He would nod.
“¿Quieres sandía?” I would ask, showing him watermelon.
Another nod.
For the first while he clearly understood the Spanish words I was saying at mealtime—agua, pico, sandía—but he wouldn’t say any of them himself. Then, one day—
“Mama, agua,” Cole said to me. I just looked at Drew.
“¡Agua!” Cole said again when I didn’t respond.
“¿Sí, sí, claro, un momentito, okay?” I said as I went to the fridge to get the water pitcher and fill up a cup. I handed it to Cole and he gulped it down, then handed the cup back to me and padded off to the courtyard. Drew and I just stared at each other.
“Wow, that was awesome,” Drew said finally.
“He’s learning Spanish! Holy crap.”
We walked outside and settled on the couch. I put my feet up on Drew’s lap and he absentmindedly stroked my shin.
“Well, so, what should we do? Do you think he’s still learning English?” I asked him as he stared off into the garden.
“I don’t know. It’s great, though. It’s working,” he said, turning to me, “but, and no offense here, is it bad that he is going to hear most of his Spanish from someone who isn’t fluent? Is he going to have an accent?”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “I mean, from what I’ve read, as long as we’re in a Spanish culture, then any accent he gets from me will work itself out. Think of it like this—if someone moves to the United States from Puerto Rico at a young age, even if their parents speak absolutely terrible English, they always grow up to speak English just fine, and even have an American accent. Always. I mean you never see someone who moved there as a little kid, talking like their parents.” I watched Cole dig under the jaka tree with a beach shovel. He was meticulously removing soil and placing it in a pile on the cement courtyard.
“So does that mean we have to live in Mexico forever?” Drew asked.
“I don’t know. It would help, that’s for sure.”
The dogs started barking next door. The Jehovah’s Witnesses were back, canvassing the neighborhood. It was too hot to be out walking around, but even in this heat they were dressed in crisp long-sleeve shirts and dark slacks. Drew waved to them as they passed.
“Drew! Don’t wave at them! They will come visit us again!” I whisper-yelled at him.
“It’s fine, they know we’re not on the market. Besides, they are not here for us. They want to save Mexicans; no one goes to Mexico to save American tourists,” he responded, picking up my foot and rubbing the arch.
“Anyway, when the baby comes, what should we do? Should we teach her Spanish, too?” I asked, offering him my other foot when he finished.
“Yes, I think so. Besides, she will be Mexican, after all.”
He got up to check on Cole. Cole’s handiwork was impressive. He was now moving the small paving stones from the retaining wall of the garden into a big pile in the middle of the courtyard.
“Hey, buddy, let’s put these back, okay?” he said, picking up rocks. Then he addressed me again, “Christine, our kids are going to be bilingual! Our daughter is going to be Mexican! Stop worrying!”
It was true about the Mexican citizenship part. One of the advantages to having the baby in Mexico was that she’d pick up dual citizenship: Mexican by place of birth and American from her parents. If we wanted, she could have two passports. It also streamlined our path to permanent residency if we ever wanted to stay long-term.
Though I still struggled a bit with my vowel pronunciation, on the whole my Spanish was improving at an amazing pace. And as our language project neared completion, my thoughts kept jumping ahead to what was next. Where would we live? What languages would the kids speak? What languages would they be educated in?
“Hey, Mama!” Drew yelled to me, holding a running hose in his hand menacingly.
“No!” I said, and dove for cover. Cole cackled and ran over to me.
“Mama, Mama, Mama!” he said, crawling up on me.
“¿Qué quieres?” I asked.
“¡Agua!”
Twenty-four
I opened my eyes and looked at Cole sleeping next to me. It was one of those rare quiet moments, just after the roosters stopped crowing their early-morning wake-up call, and before the vendors started hawking their wares on the street, agitating the neighborhood watchdogs, the little perritos who spent their days barking from the roof of Rosa’s house. My belly rested heavily on its side, and the baby was wedged so tightly in my rib cage that I had almost never-ending heartburn. I stroked Cole’s hair back and kissed his forehead. The baby would be coming soon. These were some of Cole’s last moments as an only child and I wanted to soak them up.
After a bit, I gingerly rolled over and swung my legs out of the bed. Using my arms as my sole support, I pushed my rotund torso upright and began the hobble to the bathroom. I could hear Rosa in the kitchen, singing under her breath as she cleaned the house. She didn’t talk to us much, just focused on her work, scrubbing the house down, mopping the nearly two thousand square feet of tile and sweeping the even larger courtyard and garden of the never-ending supply of fallen bougainvillea flowers. In the days she had off, the house collected dust like nothing I had seen before, the clouds of fine dirt kicked up by passing trucks floating up above our garden wall and settling everywhere. Even the windows needed to be wiped down with a wet cloth every couple of days. Combined with tending the garden, she squeezed everything she could into her weekly twelve hours, just barely getting it all done.
Thank God for Rosa, I thought every time she was there.
I made my breakfast, a fruit smoothie with milk and oatmeal. I had sworn off salt for the last trimester, in an attempt to keep my blood pressure low and avoid preeclampsia if that was possible. Still, my blood pressure was slowly rising each week at my weekly appointment with Dr. Laura. My hands and feet were swelling with edema. My face looked puffy and moon-shaped. I had started gaining weight at a rapid clip, even though I had kept my diet as clean as possible. I was eating all the glorious fruits and vegetables that Mexico produced, making all my meals from scratch, and yet my body kept ballooning. I knew what that meant. There was only one cure for preeclampsia—to have the baby. However, I wanted to avoid a second C-section if I could, and going into labor naturally would be better than inducing on that front.
Our friend Pam had flown down from Canada a few days earlier. She was staying in our extra bedroom for the month, to watch Cole during the birth and to help out after the baby came.
Pam was already on the veranda working on her laptop when I finished blending my smoothie. Her reddish hair was pulled up into a messy bun on top of her head and she was frowning at her computer screen.
“I can’t get this photo to upload,” she said as I sat next to her with my strawberry concoction.
“We’re going to Dr. Laura’s office today,” I said, sipping on my shake and looking over at her screen. She was editing a photo essay for a Canadian travel magazine she sometimes wrote for.
“Cool,” she said. “So do you think you will have the baby soon?”
“I don’t know. We’ll see,” I replied.
“Are you excited?” she asked, leaning back from the computer.
“Yes. I mean, I can’t wait to finally see her, but I’m nervous about the birth,” I said, and put down my cup. “Look at this belly!”
“I know, you are huge, it’s so adorable,” she said, and laughed. Pam and I had known each other for a long time after meeting in Thailand years before. We were both avid travelers and writers, and we’d kept in touch over the years. The last time we got together, Cole was just a baby.
“I have to prac
tice my Spanish medical terms more; I am not even prepared for this,” I said.
“Yes, but they speak English, too, right?”
“In theory, I hope. Dr. Laura speaks good English, at least. As for the others, we’ll see.”
Drew and I packed up the car and headed down to the city. In Dr. Laura’s air-conditioned office we sat like students waiting to get test results on an exam they weren’t sure they’d passed. The nurse weighed me, clucked at the uptick in my weight, and took me into the doctor. Dr. Laura kissed me on each cheek, then sat me down to take my blood pressure.
“Okay,” she said, and returned to sit behind her desk. She took a breath, then addressed us: “So are you ready to induce this baby today?”
No! my heart screamed. I decided to take a more measured tack.
“Yes, if necessary—but what about waiting to see if it can happen naturally?” I asked, and Drew reached over and held my hand.
“Yes, well, I think we have reached that point.” Dr. Laura leaned in. “Remember I told you we would keep an eye on your chances of developing preeclampsia? Well, your blood pressure is right on the line, and you have a lot of edema. I am concerned that if we wait any more we won’t have any options.” She folded her hands in front of her calmly.
“And if we don’t induce, if we try to wait and it doesn’t work—then we’d have to go straight to a C-section?” I asked, putting together what she was saying.
“Yes, and I am not sure this will work. But we can try. Or we can schedule the C-section right now, it’s up to you. But you said you wanted to try for a VBAC, so if that’s what you want, then we should induce you now.”
I looked at Drew and smiled.
“We’re going to have our baby today!” I said, trying not to cry.
“Come on, let’s get started,” Dr. Laura said, and led me into her adjoining examination room. Drew came with me, and Dr. Laura explained that she would be applying a light dose of induction cream to my cervix, and then she’d send me home to see what happened.
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