Wish Upon a Stray

by Yamile Saied Méndez

  “That’s the right attitude,” Señorita Nancy said cheerfully.

  After a polite goodbye to my teacher, I gathered my things and followed my mom out the door.

  Mami held my hand, and we walked side by side in silence, each lost in our thoughts.

  Finally, she cleared her throat and said, “Your principal was so sad that you won’t get to sing in the graduation show. She asked if you’d like to sing at your goodbye party …”

  It was hard enough to contain my emotions when I spoke, but when I sang, I let my whole heart soar like a bird stretching its wings. If I was going to do a good job singing, I couldn’t rein in my emotions. There were many unknowns in the future, but one thing I knew for certain: I didn’t want to cry in front of the whole school. I wanted my friends to remember me as bubbly, happy María Emilia and not the one who cried when life offered amazing opportunities.

  “I don’t know if that would be a good idea …” I said, and Mami didn’t press me for more.

  All the way to my brothers’ school to collect their report cards, my mom and I listed the things we needed to do and assigned the best family member for the job.

  The concrete to-do list helped me feel better.

  The boys’ teachers were equally sad that we were leaving, but unlike Señorita Nancy, they had a completely different version of what was really happening.

  “Oh my goodness!” the principal exclaimed, laughing, the color returning to his pale face. “I thought … So all of you are … ?”

  Mami’s cheeks were flaming as she explained, “Yes, yes, we’re all moving!”

  Francisco and Mateo looked at each other and shrugged.

  “Mimilia’s not staying back, then?” Francisco asked.

  They both looked at me with such sadness and concern that I didn’t even have the heart to joke. “No, mi amor,” I said. “I’m not staying behind. Do you think I’d miss this adventure?” They hugged me before the words were completely out of my mouth.

  The four of us walked home, my brothers saying goodbye to every park, playground, and treat shop we passed. In spite of the cold spell that had fallen over the city, soon the trees would bloom. I wouldn’t be here to see the city change from winter into spring and summer, my favorite seasons.

  I wouldn’t hike to the first Aconcagua base with my dad.

  I’d never sing in the concert or graduate with my friends.

  Nahuel and I wouldn’t even have the chance to become friends now.

  So many things I wouldn’t get to do. Things I’d looked forward to for so long.

  When we arrived home, Estrellita was sleeping next to the space heater.

  She looked so frail and tired. Mami had been right. I hadn’t needed the vet to confirm it, but I didn’t want to see the truth. My cat would never make the long flight. It would be selfish of me to pluck her out of the comfortable life she had.

  At least she and Lela would keep each other company while we were gone.

  “Tía Yoana and Violeta will be here soon to help us pack, but let’s get a head start,” Mami said.

  “Pack clothes for how long?” Francisco asked. “Mama, how long will we be gone?”

  Mami bit her lip. “My contract is for one year.”

  “I don’t have three hundred and sixty-five underwears!” Mateo exclaimed, his big brown eyes looking bigger than usual.

  Mami laughed at my brother’s words and said, “Just pack underwear and socks for a couple weeks. We’ll do laundry and get new stuff too, you know?”

  “New stuff!” Francisco jumped in the air.

  “Yes!” Mateo exclaimed, and took off running frantically around the house, trying to fit all his stuffed animals, LEGO, action figures, and the leather football the Three Kings had brought last year inside a tiny toy suitcase.

  “Only a year, Mami?” I asked.

  Mami ruffled my hair as she took out a giant photo album from her backpack and put it back on the bookshelf. “Initially,” she said. “For now, yes. I’m hoping to get a permanent position though—”

  The doorbell rang and Mami went to answer it. It was Tía Yoana and Violeta.

  When the three of them came back to the kitchen, Mami gazed at my brother’s suitcase and in a firm voice said, “Remember they have soccer balls where we’re going. You need to pack clothes. Winter clothes, children. The essentials,” she added, looking at me.

  Everyone’s definition of essential was different. My mom and Tía Yoana laughed when they went over the things my brothers had crammed in their backpack pockets, but emotion swelled inside me. Who could judge that little notes from frenemies at school and fútbol teammates weren’t important? The scraps of paper and cheap toys contained their little hearts, and I hurt for them.

  Violeta following me closely, I went back to my room and took out my old journals from my suitcase and put them in a box in my closet.

  “I’ll make sure everything stays just as you left it,” Violeta promised me, and gave me a big hug. “I’ll miss you, but I’m excited for you.”

  We stood in silence in front of my closet. I didn’t know how to start. And then she gave me a package I hadn’t noticed she was holding. “Here. So you can think of me.”

  I opened it and saw it was her favorite shirt. A button-down with hummingbirds and butterflies printed in pastel colors. As if I needed something to remember her when she’d forever be in my heart.

  “Thank you,” I said, and placed it first in my suitcase.

  * * *

  The news of our move spread to family and friends, and during the next few days, our house was buzzing with the sounds of chatter, music, and laughter as everyone helped us pack and clean the house.

  The night before the flight to Buenos Aires, our first stop, five big suitcases sat by the front door. Tío Gonzalo, one of Papi’s friends, would put them in his pickup truck to take to the airport when the time came.

  With nothing else to do, I finally locked myself in my room to say goodbye to my life as I knew it.

  For the last week, and after her last escapade the night of the storm, Estrellita had mostly slept around the clock.

  I was an optimist, but something in the back of my mind told me she had already said goodbye to the things she had loved when she was young and was ready to cross the rainbow bridge soon. Not even the cheese I had brought her for a late-night snack was enough to wake her up. She seemed so tired. She’d had a long life as a cat. But I wasn’t ready to say goodbye.

  The familiar lullaby left my lips with modified lyrics for my precious cat. “Ninna nanna, ninna, oh, esta gata, a quién se la doy?”

  My breath shuddered. In spite of the lyrics, I never wanted to give my cat away to anyone. Estrellita blinked at the sound of my voice and started purring when I petted her soft fur. Once again, I wished with all my heart for a way to stop time.

  Not forever.

  I wouldn’t be happy forever frozen in this sad night, the saddest night of my life. But I wanted to pause it long enough to take a deep breath and have my chance to say goodbye to this part of my childhood that was ending.

  A soft knock on the door startled me. A second before I burst into tears. But duty called, and I swallowed all these feelings rumbling inside me. I’d have to wait for another moment to process it all. I couldn’t let my parents think I was sad, that they were ruining my life.

  “Come in,” I said.

  Lela’s head poked through the cracked door. Her eyes were misty too. Since the moment we’d met at the airport when I was a baby, she and I had never been apart for more than a day. I already missed her smile every morning and the mushiest hugs in the world.

  “Can I come in for a second?” she asked with a tentative smile.

  I patted the bed next to me, and she sat. Everything had been such chaos; we hadn’t really talked about how we were leaving her. She held a big white binder in her hands. Through the plastic cover, I saw the photo of a young girl from long, long ago. Even though she smiled, I recogniz
ed the sadness in her eyes. She and I looked nothing alike. Even in black and white her skin looked porcelain fair, and her eyes were light. My skin was the color of cinnamon, and my eyes were so dark they looked black. But somehow, looking at her was like seeing myself in a photograph.

  “I brought you a little something,” Lela said, and handed me the binder.

  “What is it?” I asked, opening it and going through what looked like letters inside plastic page protectors.

  Lela swallowed, like she needed a second to compose herself. I pressed my lips hard so I wouldn’t cry. There was so much I wanted to tell her. There was so much I wanted to hear from her. I always thought we had all the time in the world, and now time ticked away.

  A song lyric rang in my years. Nothing good lasts forever …

  “Remember Nonna Celestina?” she asked.

  The name took me back in a kaleidoscope swoosh of memories all the way to when I was even younger than my brothers. Back to when I still didn’t have words to label my feelings. All I had kept from those years were scents and sounds. The name Celestina brought back the memory of lemons and a warm voice that echoed off the kitchen walls like the pitter-patter of raindrops on the patio tiles during a hot summer evening.

  It took me a second to conjure her face, but I remembered her.

  “Nonna Celestina was your mom! Mami’s grandma,” I said. “We had the same birthday!”

  “You remember!” Lela said.

  The October I turned five, Nonna Celestina turned one hundred years old. The local news station, Channel 7, had come to the house to interview her, and she’d been funny and snappy as always.

  A few months later, she gently passed away in her sleep. After that, my family moved in with Lela, who’d said the house was too big now that Nonna was gone.

  She was Lela’s mom, and they had been the best of friends. Lela always got teary-eyed when she talked about her, and now wasn’t an exception.

  “You still miss her so much,” I said, patting Lela’s hand. “I just remember her laughter and the songs she used to sing all the time.”

  “When you were little, she used to call you little Celestina. She remembered what it was like to be a small girl, even if it had been so long ago. This is the only photo we have of her when she was twelve.”

  “Like me!” I exclaimed, studying the photo.

  How I wished I’d known my great-grandma better or that I could see a video of her at my age. My brothers and I had thousands of pictures of us taken every year. Papi had to keep buying external storage for the computer to hold all of them, all these memories of our lives. But she’d lived in different times.

  Lela’s mind seemed to be going in the same direction because she pointed at the binder and said, “We don’t have a way to hear her voice when she was a child, but she wrote letters, which is almost the same thing. Nonna had lots to say. She wrote constantly to the people she loved who stayed behind in Naples when she moved to Argentina. She wrote to her own grandmother Nonna Rosa.”

  “Your mom’s grandma would be my great-great …” I counted with my fingers, my mind already boggled by the pressing of time and distance.

  Lela joined me in counting and then confirmed, “Great-great-great-grandma.”

  I couldn’t picture it, so Lela grabbed a pen and a piece of paper from my nightstand and diagrammed it for me.

  “Five people up the line from you,” she said. “Nonna Rosa; then Mamma Anna-Maria; my mom, Celestina; me, Adelina; your mom, Pilar; and you, María Emilia. Nonna Rosa and Celestina were inseparable. They loved each other so much, they weren’t going to allow an ocean, a lack of telephones, and unreliable mail carriers to keep them apart.”

  “How did they do it?” I asked.

  “Letters,” Lela said.

  I turned page after page.

  Lela continued. “I never read Italian. How sad I lost that connection to our culture, no? But my mom, who wasn’t going to let a language barrier keep me from knowing her family, translated the letters for a school project I had to do long, long ago. We made copies for each little family branch. When your mom left for the university in Rosario, I made her a copy. Soon, your cousins wanted their own. I saved a copy for you. Your mom said you wanted to go back to the United States for college. Is that right?”

  “When I said I wanted to leave, I didn’t know what that really meant, Lela.”

  She tapped my chin, and I looked up at her. “Of course we never know what change feels like, Mimilia,” she said. “Although I knew this day would come, I thought we had more time.”

  “Me too, Lela.”

  “But I think this is the perfect time for you to get to know my mom, your nonna Celestina. I thought what better than through her letters? She was twelve when she left Italy, and this photo was taken a few months after she and her family arrived in Rosario.”

  “Where Papi was born!”

  Lela pointed at me on a family chart and then made a line all the way to Nonna Celestina. I read the small labels about great-great-grandparents that had room for sixteen people. The number made me dizzy. It was impossible to imagine all those people who’d come before me, and whose names I didn’t even know.

  Lela kissed my forehead. “Put this in your backpack. I’m sure her words will help.”

  “Thank you, Lela. I’m going to miss you. I’m going to miss our charlas,” I said, hugging her tightly and trying to memorize the warmth of her arms wrapped around me, the scent of her apple shampoo, and the way her voice lit up a whole room.

  “We’ll talk on the phone every day.”

  “It’s not the same as talking face-to-face,” I said.

  Even Estrellita peeked at me when she heard the whining twang in my voice.

  Lela laughed. “It’s not the same, but it’s better than nothing. It’s not like when your mom left and all we had were calling cards or letters. You don’t know the agony of processing photos only to realize none turned out, or that when they did, they got lost in the mail. Now we can video-chat whenever we want. I’ll still see you every day.”

  A phone conversation would never compare to one of her hugs or being together in the warmth of her kitchen. Still, I didn’t want this last conversation to be sad.

  Lela tipped my chin with her index finger once again. “I know this move is happening at a complicated time in your life. But I promise you that if you open your heart, a lot of opportunities will come for your family. Your mami got her dream job. Your brothers and you will get to perfect your English. And the five of you will be tighter than ever as you try to overcome the trials sent your way.”

  At the thought of trials, the little hairs stood on my arms and I shivered. Leaving Estrellita and Lela—leaving my life—was already the worst thing I could imagine.

  Lela must have sensed my fears. “I know you will be the best example for your little brothers,” she said. “Celestina’s letters will help you. She went through the same thing, and in her words, you might find some light in this situation.”

  I hugged her again, inhaling her scent. “Thank you, Lela,” I said. “I promise I’ll see the bright side.”

  Lela left, and the house was quiet. I looked out the window, petting Estrellita beside me. It was so late and dark not even the stray dogs ventured outside. The cold, cold night sky sparkled. As if agreeing with all of Lela’s words, the stars winked in and out.

  Out of the darkness, a light streaked across the sky. I closed my eyes and tried to make a wish, but my heart was so full of feelings I didn’t know what to wish for.

  So I said aloud, “I’ll save my wish for when I need it,” to whoever was listening for wishes and made sure they came true.

  I knew it was silly, but I felt just a little more prepared with a wish in my pocket.

  The whole neighborhood came out to say goodbye. My little brothers were so excited at being the center of attention without having to act out that they didn’t know how to behave. Proof of that was their silence.

 
Like them, I was stunned to see tears on our friends’ faces, and even people who I didn’t know loved our family so much, like Don Basilio, the vegetable grocer from the stand two streets over, who had seen my mom and then me and my brothers grow up. But everyone was also happy that we were starting such a big adventure. Leaving Mendoza was a sad and a happy thing at the same time.

  I promised myself not to cry because I was afraid that if I let one tear drop, the others would follow like an unstoppable waterfall.

  I wished I’d made this promise after saying goodbye to dear Estrellita.

  When I gave her the last snuggle, she gave me a head bump in return. She blinked a few times and then went back to sleep. My heart shattered in a million pieces. I swallowed the pieces before they turned into tears, and they knotted in my stomach.

  Mami and I rode with Violeta and Tía Yoana to the airport. The whole ride Mami and Tía talked nonstop, as if they had to fit everything in.

  In the back seat, Violeta and I held hands, knowing that words wouldn’t be enough.

  At the airport, where we took picture after picture, even more people turned out for goodbyes. Nahuel and the rest of my English class, including Mrs. Prescott, stood by the escalator. How I wished I’d asked her advice on how to leave everything behind and start from scratch. It was too late for that now.

  I hugged all my friends, even Nahuel, with a blush.

  I caught Violeta’s eye as our flight was being called.

  I don’t remember who made the first move, but soon we were in each other’s arms.

  She hugged me tightly and whispered in my ear, “Don’t forget me. I put a baggie with burrito in your backpack so when you drink mate you remember us.”

  As if I could ever forget her! My cousin and friend. I looked her in the eye so I could memorize her face, even though I hoped to still see her on my phone and the computer every day.

  Finally, after Lela, Tía, and Mami hugged for the longest time, Lela squeezed me one more time.

  “Let’s go,” Papi called, and held out his hand to me. I hitched my backpack on my shoulder. No matter how I folded my favorite clothes and how I arranged my books and old figurines in my one suitcase, I’d had to leave a lot of things behind. Still, my backpack was so heavy I concentrated on not tottering backward like my little brothers.