How Tia Lola Came to (Visit) Stay How Tia Lola Came to (Visit) Stay

by Julia Alvarez

  Tía Lola nods. “Yo sé.”

  Of course she knows! She is a santera, Miguel reminds himself She works magic.

  At lunch the next day, Miguel finds a half-dozen chewy fritters in a plastic container. Mort has four and Miguel two. Tía Lola says the chewy treats are called empanaditas de queso, and they are made of cheese and dough fried in peanut oil.

  The following morning, Mort reports a piece of luck to MigueL His pop just found out he’d won five hundred dollars on his weekly lottery ticket! Since Mort helped pick out the winning number, his father is going to buy him his very own heifer to show at the county fair that August.

  “Awesome,” Miguel says, trying to make his voice sound as if he thinks that is an exciting purchase. Meanwhile, his own lucky surprise arrives in the mail. A Sammy Sosa Louisville Slugger his father has sent up from New York for good luck in the upcoming tryouts.

  Every day when he wakes up, Miguel takes imaginary swings at an imaginary ball with his new bat. He flexes his arms, but the muscles are still pretty soft. Still, he definitely feels stronger. Tía Lola’s special magic rations in his lunchbox are working.

  He asks her about the jars she brought from the island. She explains that they are potions made from hierbabuena and guayuyo and yema de huevos to put on sores and cuts.

  “Magic potions?” he wants to know.

  She smiles and pushes the hair back from his eyes. “Todo es mágico si se hace con amor, Miguel.”

  That is too corny for words—in English or Spanish. Everything is magic if made with love? Oh, please, and por favor.

  But, of course, it is just like a santera to be secretive, Miguel thinks. He winks back, pretending to go along with Tía Lola. After all, in this country, she can probably be arrested for working magic so her nephew can make the local baseball team.

  That night on the phone, Miguel confesses to his father that Tía Lola is putting magic foods in his lunchbox to help him make the team.

  “It means a lot to you to make that team, doesn’t it, tigueritol” his father observes.

  It does mean a lot. After all, his only two friends are already on the team, “Ah, Miguel, come on, you’re a shoo-in,” Sam keeps saying to him.

  Dean agrees, “Yeah, you’re Dominican, I mean, baseball’s, like, natural for you,”

  When Miguel tells his father what Dean has said, his father gets annoyed, “You’ll make the team because you’ve been practicing hard, that’s why,” Papi often says that the worst thing you can do to people is make assumptions about them. Stereotyping, he calls it.

  Perhaps he, Miguel, is making assumptions about Tía Lola. Maybe she isn’t working magic on him. After all, she tells him the name of everything she cooks and exactly what she puts in it. Besides, she also fixes the same things in Juanita’s lunchbox, and Miguel hasn’t noticed any improvements in the little-sister department.

  What Miguel doesn’t tell his father is that Tía Lola isn’t the only one who is trying to work a little magic. Often, when he is driving to town with Mami to get groceries or do some Saturday errand, Miguel will think to himself: If the traffic light changes to green before we reach the corner, I’ll make the team.

  Sometimes just before they reach the corner, the light changes to green, Miguel feels a rush of relief and joy-But just as many times, the light is still red. Miguel sits in the front seat beside his mother, scowling, and thinking, Í mean, the very next light, not this one.

  He worries that he is letting himself get too jumpy and superstitious. But he keeps hoping his wishes will come true:

  If the phone rings in the next minute, I’ll get an A on my math exam.

  If we pass seven red cars before we get home, I’ll make a lot of new friends.

  If I see a falling star…a double rainbow…a unicorn…a space alien—

  This wish requires higher and higher stakes—

  My parents will get back together again.

  The weekend of the tryouts a most magical thing does happen. His father comes up from New York to give Miguel “moral support.”

  “Kind of like Tía Lola’s magic,” his father explains.

  Saturday morning, they all drive over to the school playground—Papi and Mami and Juanita and Tía Lola, just like a real family. The field is already full of players who made the team last year. Miguel spots Dean in the outfield and Sam manning first base. Rudy, in gray sweatpants and sporting a Red Sox cap, is calling instructions to the rookies who have come to try out.

  Miguel joins the lineup of boys waiting to bat. Suddenly, he wishes stereotypes were true, and he could automatically make the team because his parents come from the Dominican Republic.

  He glances over at the bleachers, where his family is sitting, and one of his superstitious wishing-thoughts pops into his head. If Tía Lola gives me a sign, I’ll make the team.

  He closes his eyes tight, shutting out such silly thoughts. This is no time to spook himself with superstitions. Miguel Guzman, he tells himself, you re going to make this team because youve practiced hard and you deserve to win!

  At that moment, just as he opens his eyes, Tía Lola waves her yellow scarf.

  He swings and the ball goes flying up, high and far, all the power of her Dominican cooking behind it and all the magic of her love behind that.

  Chapter Five

  The Spanish Word War

  Their father is having a private talk with their mother in the kitchen. Now that the weather is nice, he drives up every other weekend to see Miguel and Juanita. Once school is out, he wants them to come down and visit him in the city. But their mother is obviously not in agreement. Voices are rising in the kitchen.

  Juanita hurries to her brother’s side. Miguel can tell she is about to cry. He is not going to get upset. When things get bad, he just daydreams about baseball.

  But now his sister’s tearful face is getting between him and a fly ball.

  In order to catch it, he pushes her aside. She stumbles, falls, then bursts into tears and runs upstairs.

  Miguel crouches, catches the imaginary ball, and throws it to the catcher. The crowd stands and roars. His buddies on the team slap him on the back.

  But somehow he doesn’t feel as good as he thought he would.

  He knocks on his sister’s door.

  “Se puede.” Tía Lola calls out permission for him to enter.

  Their aunt is sitting on the bed with a tearful Juanita, “Tienes que cuidar a tu Inermanita” Tía Lola begins when she sees her nephew.

  “I know I have to take care of mi hermanita, Tía Lola,” Miguel agrees. He speaks to his aunt in Spanglish, Spanglish is what his mother and father call the English with a sprinkling of Spanish that Miguel and Juanita speak when they think they are speaking Spanish, “It’s just que sometimes Juanita es una baby—”

  “I am not a baby!” Juanita howls.

  Tía Lola puts an arm around each one, “!Ya, y a!” she pretends to scold them. They are brother and sister. They must not fight. They need to do something together so they will learn to get along.

  “Maybe she can learn to throw a baseball?” Miguel suggests-He smirks at his sister, who sticks her tongue out at him.

  Tía Lola’s face suddenly lights up. She has a great idea: her niece and her nephew can give her English classes together!

  Miguel’s face falls. He doesn’t want to spend the upcoming summer doing anything that resembles schoolwork. “But you don’t want to speak English,” Miguel reminds her.

  “English is too hard, Tía Lola, really,” Juanita adds.

  For the first time all day, brother and sister agree on something.

  Already, Tía Lola’s idea is working.

  Miguel definitely owes his aunt a favor or two. He is still convinced that back in early spring, she worked some magic to help him make the team. But why does his aunt suddenly want to learn English after months of refusing to do so? “¿Por qué, Tía Lola?”

  Their aunt looks rather shy, which is hard for Tía L
ola to do with her lively face and bright eyes. She has an admission to make. Their mother has asked her to turn her visit into a stay. She can be of more help to everyone if she knows more English. And to repay her niece and nephew for teaching her English, Tía Lola is going to teach them more Spanish.

  “Yo sé mucho español,” Miguel protests. He knows a lot of Spanish.

  “I know more Spanish than you-” Juanita smirks.

  It is Miguel’s turn to stick his tongue out at her.

  While Mami and Papi continue their discussion in the kitchen, Miguel begins the first lesson. “Tía Lola, we’re going to learn names” He speaks slowly as if he were talking to an old person with a hearing problem. “What is your name?”

  Tía Lola repeats, “What is your name?”

  “No, no.” Juanita shakes her head. “You have to say, ‘My name is Lola.’”

  “No, no,” Tía Lola says, pronouncing every word carefully. “You have to say—”

  “It’s no use,” Miguel tells his sister. “She doesn’t really understand what she is saying.”

  “She doesn’t really understand what she is saying,” Tía Lola rattles on.

  Their mother comes to the door, their father behind her. “What’s going on here?” she asks. Miguel cannot tell from looking at their faces what agreement they have come to.

  “We’re teaching Tía Lola English,” Miguel explains. And then, remembering that one of the main reasons their mother has given for not letting them visit their father is that they are too young to travel alone, he adds, “Maybe Tía Lola can go down to New York with us if she knows a little English.”

  “She can take care of us,” Juanita adds.

  “Well see,” their mother says. It is what she always says when she hasn’t made up her mind whether to say yes or no to something they ask her for.

  Every opportunity they have, Miguel and Juanita give their aunt an English lesson.

  On the walk to town, Miguel stops at the sign beside the covered bridge. “Load limit: one ton.”

  “Load-limit-one-ton,” Tía Lola repeats.

  In town, Miguel points to the signs with the names of the streets they are waiting to cross. Hardscrabble, Main, College, and his favorite, Painter, because it reminds him of his father. Then the traffic signs. “One way,” he calls off. “Caution.”

  The crossing guard holds up her stop sign to the traffic. “Have a nice day,” she says when they have crossed safely to the other side.

  “One-way-caution-you’re-welcome-thanks-for-asking,” Tía Lola chatters on. That is the problem with Tía Lola’s English. Whenever she begins speaking it, she speaks all of it, all together.

  The crossing guard looks worried. “Have-a-nice-day,” Tía Lola concludes. Sometimes, by chance, she says just the right phrase.

  Down the street, walking toward them, comes Mrs. Prouty, accompanied by her chubby twin daughters. Miguel tries to steer Tía Lola into Scents and Spirits, Stargazer’s candle and card shop, but Mrs. Prouty has caught sight of them. “How nice to see you, Miguel. This must be the aunt your mother was telling me about.”

  Miguel is so flustered, he mixes up everybody’s name. Mrs. Prouty’s daughters giggle and reach out to shake Tía Lola’s hand. But that is not Tía Lola’s way to greet a person.

  “Load-limit-one-ton,” Tía Lola coos, hugging the girls, whose round faces turn pink. “Slippery-when-wet-proceed-with-caution.” Mrs. Prouty looks perplexed. Especially when Tía Lola throws her arms around her, too.

  “Awesome-get-a4ife-chilLout,” Tía Lola chants. Miguel cringes. He has been teaching Tía Lola some slang expressions in order to make her sound a little more cool in English.

  “It is a bit chilly for June, isn’t it?” Mrs. Prouty is saying, her jaw even stiffer than usual as she ushers her girls past the demented woman.

  Miguel is eager to get Tía Lola home before she embarrasses them any further.

  As they are walking past the post office, their mailman comes down the steps.

  “Where-is-the-ladies’-room?” Tía Lola greets him.

  The young man scratches his head and hurries away.

  “Mi inglés no funciona,” Tía Lola finally admits. Her English isn’t working. She makes friends easier when she just speaks Spanish to everyone. Her magic doesn’t seem to work in a second language.

  “You have to practice, Tía Lola,” Miguel reminds her. “You have to know what to say when.”

  But every day Tía Lola cannot wait for her English lesson to be over. Then it is Miguel’s and Juanita’s turn to try to get along in their second language, Spanish.

  * * *

  Actually, Miguel and Juanita are not getting along any better in Spanish than in English. They are fighting more now that they have two languages to do it in. The fights get worse when they learn from their aunt that in Spanish, words have gender.

  “What does that mean?” Juanita wants to know. Are some words pretty and feminine and some—she looks over at her brother—ugly and mean?

  Tía Lola tries to explain. In Spanish, words have to be masculine or feminine. She doesn’t know exactly why that is. The male words usually end in o, and the female words in a. Like the word for sky, cielo, is masculine, while the word for earth, tierra, is feminine.

  “We get the sky! We get the sky!” Miguel can’t help gloating at his sister. It’s as if they are playing Monopoly and he has just bought Boardwalk.

  “Well, we own the earth! It ends in a. La tierra!“ It is Juanita’s turn to gloat. “And everything in the sky: la luna, la lluvia, las estrellas!”

  Tía Lola is shaking her head. That’s not the way it works. Boys don’t own the sky. Girls don’t own the earth, the moon, the rain, and the stars-But neither Miguel nor Juanita is listening anymore.

  Summer is here! On the way home from the last day of class, Miguel thinks of all the things he has to look forward to. Team practice will soon start up. Hopefully, he will get to visit his father and friends in New York. Meanwhile, Tía Lola is full of ideas for fun things for Miguel and Juanita to do.

  The first day of vacation, they begin planting a garden in the backyard. Tía Lola slips on her highest of heels as if she were going out to a nightclub instead of to the backyard. Then, as she walks and zigzags and swerves up and down, making rows, Juanita and Miguel follow behind her, dropping seeds in the holes she makes with her heels.

  They plant lettuce and verduras, tomaticos, and black beans from packets Tía Lola brought from the island. They clean the raspberry canes, which are already studded with bright crimson fruit. “I love these,” Miguel says, picking mouth-fuls as he works away.

  Unfortunately, the blue jays and redwing blackbirds love them, too. But Tía Lola thinks of a solution. She brings out all her mantillas and drapes them over the raspberry bushes. Now when the birds swoop down, all they get is a few threads in their beaks. Miguel even feels a little sorry for them. He puts out a handful of berries in a dish so the birds can have a treat, too.

  Soon green shoots are coming out of the ground in fanciful, zigzaggy rows. It turns out Tía Lola has laid out the garden in the shape of the island! Where her hometown would be on the map, she has planted berenjenas, her favorite vegetable, eggplants. For the border between the Dominican Republic and its neighbor, Haiti, she orders a special kind of rosebush without thorns. “For a rosier future between the two countries,” she explains in Spanish. She reserves her hot chili peppers for the spot where the capital would be. “Para los políticos por las mentiras que dicen” Miguel does not understand. For the politicians because of the lies they tell? Tía Lola laughs. It is a kind of adult joke you have to keep up with the news to understand.

  At the center of the garden, Tía Lola posts her beloved Dominican flag. Then she puts her hand on her heart and sings the national anthem, which she is trying to teach her niece and nephew to sing. It is the first time Miguel has seen his aunt teary-eyed. Mami explains that Tía Lola is understandably homesick from time to time. Having
these reminders and rituals from home makes her feel a little less far away from her country and the rest of the family.

  Of course, the raccoons don’t care a hoot about Tía Lola’s map. They start eating up the little shoots of lettuce and eggplant and shred the rosebushes to bits. But Tía Lola figures out a way to outsmart them as well. She ties her maracas to a pair of broomsticks and sticks the broomsticks in the ground by the garden. All day and all night, as the breeze blows on them, they clackety-clack, scaring away the raccoons.

  But the most fun for Miguel is when they go out with garden shears and prune the bushes in the shapes of parrots and palm trees, monkeys and huge butterflies. Everyone who drives by stops to marvel at the transformed property.

  “Keep-out-no-trespassing,” Tía Lola greets them, and quickly they get back in their cars and drive away.

  * * *

  If Miguel thinks Tía Lola is having a hard time catching on to plain English, using expressions around her proves downright dangerous.

  “Becky has a green thumb,” Mami remarks one day as she comes in the door with a bunch of basil their neighbor has given her.

  “!Emergencia!” Tía Lola cries out. The thumb could be gangrenous! She reaches for the phone. Mami has taught her to dial 911 if there is ever an emergency.

  “!No, no, Tía Lola!” Mami stops her. The phrase is an expression in English that means that Becky is good with plants.

  Then why didn’t she say so? Tía Lola asks, very reasonably for once.

  The afternoon of the first big thunderstorm, Juanita and Miguel are playing outside. They come running in the house, soaking wet. “It’s raining cats and dogs!” Miguel remarks as he throws off his jacket.

  “!No me diga!” Tía Lola says, running out with a broom to chase the stray cats and dogs away from the front lawn. She slips on the wet steps and goes tumbling down, head over heels. Thank goodness only the broom snaps in two, though the next morning Tía Lola’s whole right side is black and blue.