by Adi Alsaid
I can’t even wait all the way through a YouTube ad without hitting Skip.
Ita walks into the kitchen holding an old box. “Come,” she says to me. “Sit.”
“Me?” I point a finger to my chest. I look from Ita to Mom. The timing of all this—and the encouraging smile on Mom’s face—makes me wonder if Clarí said something to Mom about my little meltdown yesterday.
“Sí.” She sits down at the table and opens the box. It’s full of old pieces of paper. I sit beside her as she sifts through them all, not really searching for anything. Just looking. The box is full of beautiful images—magazine clippings of beautiful people or clothes or buildings, those National Geographic-type photos of animals or places. They’re all really old, the paper crinkled and starting to yellow. She reaches a stack of photographs, and I recognize me and Clarí when we were little. Ita passes it to me with a smile.
“Que linda,” she says. How cute. She waits for me to look at the photo, then grabs hold of my cheek and gives it a pinch.
“Ita,” I laugh, brushing her hand away.
A photo of a beach catches my eye as she sifts through the stack. I reach for it as Ita puts it down next to her and I know I remember this place. The way the palm trees lean in, surrounding a half-moon bay. And the color of the sand. Red. Almost like Texas dirt.
“That’s Playa Colorada,” Mom says over my shoulder. I didn’t even know she was standing there.
“It’s in Venezuela?” I ask.
Ita nods. “Sí.”
“I’ve been here before?” I ask, sure that I must have.
“Te acuerdas?” Do you remember?
“Sí. Me acuerdo,” I say, impressed at my on-the-fly conjugation. But I know we learned that one in junior high Spanish. “Or, I think I do.”
Ita tells me the story, or starts to tell it to me, then switches to telling Mom. Her way of asking her to translate.
Mom tells me that we went there a few months before we moved to the States. That I had so much fun that day, I didn’t want to leave. As she talks, some of the details start to fill in.
“I think I do remember. Clarí buried me in the sand...”
I look at Ita and she nods, smiling. Her smile makes me remember more than the beach. I remember the whole day. Playing with the other little kids, sitting with Ita in the hammock Dad strung up between the palm trees, Dad hacking away at a coconut, trying to get to the sweet water inside. Mom digging that giant hole in the sand so that Clarí could bury me up to my neck.
Ita digs through the rest of the photos, and there it is. A photo of just my head, sticking out of the red sand and Clarí holding the shovel with an evil grin.
Ita grabs the first photo from the tabletop. The one with the pretty palm trees. She says something to Mom, nodding to me.
“She wants you to paint this.”
“Me? I thought she was the one painting,” I say to Mom.
“I show you,” Ita says to me.
And she does. We start with the sky, blending blue and white into thin, wispy clouds on a sunny tropical day. The oil paints blend together so easily, and you can keep blending the colors even after you’ve spread them on the canvas. It takes some getting used to, but I love the feel of it.
After a while, I don’t even notice how long, Mom leaves us on our own. The second I realize she’s gone, my chest gets tight with worry. What if I have a question, or Ita asks me something and I don’t understand? But after blending the reds and browns and yellows to mimic the bright color of the sand, I realize we don’t actually need words right now. I pay attention to the way she changes the angle of her brush, and I watch as she shows me how to get the texture of the sand to translate onto the canvas.
The brushstrokes are their own language.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sharon Morse was born in Caracas, Venezuela, to an Argentine father and an American mother. When she was six, her family moved to her mother’s hometown of Houston, Texas, where Sharon refused to speak a word of English until her first bite of a Shipley’s donut. Sharon still lives in Houston with her husband and four kids, three of whom have disabilities. When she’s not busy advocating for her kids or writing, you can catch her in the kitchen where she runs a small cake business. Find her online at sharonmorsebooks.com and on Twitter @sharonmorse. This story is her first publication.
CONFESSIONS OF AN ECUADORKIAN
Zoraida Córdova
Dear Yoda,
I know that my last entry was dated three years ago on the first day of 7th grade after Horacia Móntes kicked me out of our Spice Girls cover band, but it’s me, Paola, and I’m back. Hi. Hello. Hola. It would take me a hundred years to tell you everything that’s happened, and my mom says I can’t buy another diary until I finish this one. So, in the words of Inigo Montoya, “Let me sum up.”
The rest of junior high school sucked. Not the cool kind of suck like being a vampire (I’d make a very good vampire by the way). It sucked in a way scientists haven’t even begun to find a solution for.
7th grade: I lost all of my friends because Horacia said I had no talent and was not as pretty as she is. That’s fine. I mean, it’s not actually fine. She called me a Really Bad Thing* that I had no idea was an insult. Now that a few years have passed, I’m glad she broke up our friendship. My cousin Gabriela who is one year older than me and way cooler than Horacia said that I shouldn’t surround myself with heifers who will put me down. Did you know that a heifer is a cow? I definitely didn’t until today. (That’s not what Horacia called me.) Anyway.
We also moved into a two-family house. My mom, grandma, tía Felicia, and ñaño Toto pooled all their money and bought our very first house. Mom, grandma, Lily, and me live on the first floor. Tía Felicia, her husband, and my cousin Ronaldo are on the second floor. My mom’s youngest brother, ñaño Toto, lives in the basement but he’s barely ever home because he works in Manhattan and his commute back to Queens Village is over an hour and a half. Anyway, that’s the only good thing about that year, even though I have to share a room with my little sister.
8th grade: I graduated junior high and became a citizen of these United States! I wish that my mom had told me to, I don’t know, brush my hair for the photo? I already hate my nose and that my hair is too in-between curly and straight. Now I have a certificate that says I’m an American and a photo that says I was hatched in a Dagobah swamp.
Getting your citizenship kind of feels like getting your graduation diploma. It’s the same shape and cardstock with gold cursive letters and some official-looking seals. Except, when you graduate school, you know what you’re getting right away: more school. But when you pass your citizenship test, what do you do? Do you keep studying and memorizing dates and the names of presidents? Horacia was born here and she doesn’t even know that Pocahontas was a real person or that Puerto Rico is a commonwealth of the United States. She didn’t have to take a test because she was born in Brooklyn a decade after her parents immigrated from El Salvador. Lately, I’m not exactly sure what it means that I’m an American citizen.
I was born in Guayaquil, Ecuador. My little sister, Lily, was also born there, but we moved to New York when I was five and Lily was ten months old. Lily has no memories of Ecuador. I have some but they’re fuzzy. I remember a big house and a metal swing in our backyard. I remember a mango tree and a goat that died after a rainstorm. What am I supposed to do with those memories now? The way my mom talks, we’re never going back. It’s confusing and I don’t have anyone to talk to about it. I know if I asked my mom she’d say she can’t afford to be confused because she has to work. Sometimes I wish we were the kind of family that talked instead of the kind of family that swallowed our real feelings like bad medicine.
My citizenship diploma, or whatever it’s called, is in a blue leather folder in my closet. We should really get a fireproof safe because what happens if it burns or there’s
a flood or I lose it? Does that mean that I have to go away? Do I have to sit in that office all over again staring into the face of an angry old Italian man who scowled so badly he looked like the time I over-boiled a potato?
I just don’t know, Yoda. Mr. Johnson made us keep a reading journal and I think it helped me write better essays. If only I could figure out a way to get straight As in life. Maybe writing down everything that lead to My Cousin’s Big Fat Disaster Quinceañera will make this tight feeling in my chest go away.
Finally, 9th grade rolled around. Everyone made a big deal about starting high school, but I didn’t get what the big deal was other than everything being terrible. I think I have to break it down into further sections.
9th grade—Part A: Remember my ex-best friend Horacia? Well, she came back and started dating MY COUSIN RONALDO. So she was here all the time. Et tu, Ronaldo?
It’s not his fault, I guess. Gabby says boys only think with one thing, but she didn’t exactly say what that thing was supposed to be.
The sad part is that I used to love Horacia. There was a time we were inseparable. We went to P.S. 95 together. Her mom used to send me an extra pupusa stuffed with cheese and chorizo for lunch because my mom didn’t have time. When I got my period at ten, I thought I was dying. My mom was at work and I was too embarrassed to tell ñaño Toto, so Mrs. Móntes gave me a pad. I’d had a nose bleed earlier that day and thought the blood was going the wrong way. But then after she called me a Really Bad Thing* I realized my friendship with Horacia was over. How can you give someone a friendship bracelet one day and then decide you hate them the next? How can you be “part of the family” one day and then ignore them in class?
Gabby says not to worry about it. That life is long and I’ll have amazing friends one day. But what about the parts of life I’m living now? For instance, a few weeks ago when I walked down the halls at school and Horacia shoved into me and called me “Ecuadorkian.” It felt like being punched in the face. I wanted so badly to not let it bother me. But I gave in. I hit her and got my first detention ever.
To top it all off, my ñaño Toto said I had to be “the bigger person” and apologize. That words are just words. But he’s wrong because I know words can hurt just as badly as any punch.
When she came over, Lily and I had to sit in the living room with Ronaldo and Horacia as “chaperones” because Horacia’s mom would only let her come over if they “chillaxed” with us. And if Ronaldo wanted to show Horacia his FIFA World Cup collection (no one wants to see that, Ronaldo) then I had to be in his room, too, like a chastity ghost or something. Ecuadorian parents—Latinx parents really—always have their minds in the gutter. No, not even the gutter. They’re where the gutter empties out in a pit of perverted thoughts. I swear that all they think about is sex. Even if you’re not having sex. I’m definitely not having sex, but it seems like everyone around me is obsessed with it. My mother and grandmother won’t even say the word. They just talk around it. For instance, if there’s a boy too close to me at the bus stop, my mom glares at him until he leaves, and dead ass, her eyes bulge out of her head like a scene from Beetlejuice. The first time I invited friends over, she might as well have shined a light in their eyes and swabbed the inside of their mouths for some DNA.
Oh, I have friends now, by the way. We’re the weirdos who hang out at the abandoned bus stop across the street from the school.
Anyways, she was dating Ronaldo, so Horacia took over my personal space and we had a Cold War going on over the TV and stereo all summer. She wanted to listen to Britney Spears and I wanted to listen to Green Day. I thought I was going to win this war, but after what happened yesterday, I’m not so sure.
That brings me to 9th grade—Part B: I ruined my cousin Gabriela’s quinceañera last night and my family hates me. I did something bad. Like real bad.
It all started eight months before the quince. It was the coldest fall I can remember and the day I met the girl who would become my best friend. Alyssa Aragon was standing at the abandoned bus stop and so was I. The problem was, neither of us knew that the bus stop didn’t work. We thought that all the punk and skater kids were there because they were also trying to get home.
There was a particular boy there dressed in a black hoodie and combat boots. Even though he was scowling and SMOKING A CIGARETTE, I enjoyed staring at him. He didn’t look too much older than me, maybe fifteen or sixteen. He caught me looking and smiled. I felt like something amazing had slammed into me and I immediately became obsessed with him.
Enter Horacia with her two friends in matching new low-rise jeans and the same North Face jacket that everyone in school seemed to have. My jacket and most of my clothes were hand-me-downs from ñaño Toto. I had on an ugly corduroy jacket and boots that were half a size too big so I wore two pairs of socks to make them fit.
Horacia saw me and rolled her eyes. We’d had a ceasefire after the last time she told the Spanish teacher that I didn’t speak any English. Poor Mrs. Hunter. She spoke REAL SLOWLY and turned tomato red when I opened my mouth and proved Horacia wrong. She didn’t even get in trouble. Then, I left my gum on her seat and she told my mom. We had to buy her a new pair of jeans. Gabby told me I have to get better at revenge.
“Hey, freak,” Horacia said to Alyssa.
Alyssa didn’t look up from her journal. She also has a diary, but she hasn’t named hers the way I did.
“I’m talking to you,” Horacia said. “You’re a Satan worshiper aren’t you?”
Alyssa snapped her notebook shut and looked up. She had the prettiest oval eyes with long black lashes. Her raven dark hair reached down to her waist, ending at bright bleached tips. When she tucked loose strands behind her ear, I could see that the whole cartilage was studded with glittering piercings.
“Actually, I am,” Alyssa said and grinned.
Horacia and her friends stopped laughing. Alyssa stood up and started speaking in tongues. She shook her body, thrashing her arms around, and flipped her hair over to look like La Llorona. Then she held her fist out, opened her palm, and blew invisible dust in Horacia’s startled face.
Some of the other kids were watching. The brooding boy with the combat boots smirked and kept smoking his cigarette. I was ready to applaud and everything.
“Now let me wait for the bus in peace,” Alyssa said.
Horacia must have realized by then that Alyssa was not, in fact, a Satanist. “You do know this isn’t a real bus stop? Dorks.” For some reason she thought it was hilarious. I could see the moment a light flicked on in her head. “The Devil and the EcuaDORKian.”
There was a chorus of “Haha Ecuadorkian” all around us.
Then she and her friends left and I sat there staring at the tops of my sneakers wishing Alyssa really were a Satanist so the ground beneath me would open up and swallow me whole.
“So, this is not a bus stop,” Alyssa said. “I just transferred here. What’s your excuse?”
“I missed the cheese bus. I’ve never taken the public one before.”
“At this point we might as well walk. I’m Alyssa.”
“Paola,” I said.
Who knew I’d have a reason to thank Horacia? If not for her, I might not have talked to Alyssa and realized that she was just as lonely as I was. Friendships are forged through tough times. Like Sam and Frodo. Han and Chewbacca. Sailor Moon and the Sailor Scouts.
As we walked home from the bus stop, I noticed a name stitched on the arm of her green canvas jacket.
“Hey is that from Lord of the Rings?” I asked. “I’ve been trying to read the book before the movie comes out.”
Alyssa laughed but didn’t think I was a giant loser talking about fantasy books. “It’s my last name. Spanish, I think. My family’s Filipino.”
That’s the moment Alyssa and I discovered that we were basically the same people. She was born somewhere else and immigrated to New York whe
n she was a kid, just like I did. The only difference is that the school board made her repeat a grade. She used to be fluent in Tagalog, but after she got teased by the other kids for it, she didn’t want to speak it anymore, which makes me sad. It almost feels like having to cut off a part of yourself, a tongue maybe, just to fit in. I wish things weren’t like that.
Technically we’re the same age, but she’s one year behind. She transferred to Queens Village because she was getting bullied so badly at her private Catholic school with girls throwing literal rocks at her. She has a pretty wicked scar on the side of her temple where one hit her. Also, she says wicked a lot and I’ve decided to use it. She also introduced me to this amazing show BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER. But I have to go to her house to watch it because we don’t have cable and my grandma would freak out about me watching a show with witches and vampires.
I don’t know what I’d do without Alyssa. She even came in and helped with Gabby’s quinceañera. Getting her to help was about the only helpful thing I did, really. Three months before the party, one of Gabriela’s friends left without a word. She just stopped showing up to school and answering Gabby’s calls. I overheard my mom and tía Felicia whispering in the kitchen that the girl’s family got deported and thank God that it would never happen to us. I spent the whole night thinking about it. How was my tía so sure? When ñaño Toto came home that night at MIDNIGHT, I asked him why people got deported. He said that it was when people overstayed their visas or came to this country without one.
“Did we have visas?” I asked him.
I noticed how tired he looked from his long commute. Ñaño Toto is really my uncle. He’s my mother’s youngest brother. Ecuadorians use the words ñaño and ñaña for their siblings. Since my mom leaves for work at five in the morning and comes home barely in time to eat dinner and fall asleep while watching her telenovelas, my uncle Toto (Antonio) helps take care of me and Lily. He’s been happier lately, dancing around to his favorite Freestyle and house music. Not that he was miserable before but being a social worker for little kids in bad situations really takes a toll on him.