Juanita shakes her head. Of course, she wishes her parents hadn’t divorced. But Juanita hasn’t been worried about it or anything else until right now, when her mami won’t tell her what’s in her teacher’s letter.
“Well, then, let’s not start worrying about a silly note.” Mami laughs a phony laugh that doesn’t convince Juanita at all.
“So is it about arguing with Ofie?” Juanita persists. After Tía Lola’s visit, Juanita and Ofie had a disagreement about who spoke the best Spanish, Mexicans or Dominicans.
Mami shakes her head again. At this rate, Mami is going to find out all of Juanita’s secrets before Juanita ever learns what is in Ms. Sweeney’s letter.
Juanita finds Tía Lola in her attic room, hunched over her Spanish books. Every night after supper, Tía Lola has been excusing herself and going upstairs to study. She has to learn lots more before she can begin teaching. It used to be that Tía Lola would think up such fun things to do, like putting on Dominican music and teaching Juanita and her mami some hip-swirling dance steps. Or she’d tell one of her wonderful stories that were as good as opening up a favorite chapter book and reading about some adventure. Or, if Rudy came over, they’d make piñatas to hang in his restaurant in the shape of every animal imaginable.
Now all Tía Lola wants to do is cram her head full of information so she’ll be smart enough to teach in school.
But the minute Tía Lola spots her niece at the door, she closes her books. “¿Qué hay, Juanita?” she asks. No matter how busy she is, Tía Lola always has time to ask how her little niece is doing.
Juanita explains that her teacher sent a letter home. “I think Ms. Sweeney is upset with me. But Mami won’t tell me exactly why. Maybe Mami’ll tell you?” Juanita looks up hopefully.
“She might. But then she might not. Or she might tell me but then make me promise not to tell.” Tía Lola is half talking to Juanita and half talking to herself. She narrows her eyes as if the answer to this problem is so far away, she has to look hard to spot it. Finally, she does. “I think the only solution is for me to start my Spanish classes. That way, if there is a problema in your class, I will help la señorita Sweeney solve it.”
With her aunt there, Juanita will surely climb back into Ms. Sweeney’s good graces. Besides, Juanita is going to make an extra-special effort not to be distracted by the stories in her head. It’s the least she can do to show Tía Lola how grateful she is for coming to her aid like a medieval knight in one of Juanita’s favorite books.
Tía Lola is welcomed back with clapping and cheers. Her colorful clothes brighten up the gray winter day. Her smile is contagious. And she has come up with the best lesson plan ever: a Spanish treasure hunt!
First, they’ll spend several weeks learning all the words and phrases that will appear as clues. Then, on the day of the hunt, during their morning recess, Tía Lola and Ms. Sweeney will hide clues all over the room. Whichever team finds the card that says “tesoro” will be the winner of a special surprise Tía Lola will bring to class.
Milton’s hand goes up, but Tía Lola has a way of figuring out his questions before he even asks them. “Tesoro,” she says, writing the word on the board.
Ofie calls out, “It means ‘treasure.’ ”
“But what is the treasure going to be?” Milton wants to know.
“¡Una sorpresa!” Tía Lola answers.
“It’s going to be a surprise,” Ofie translates.
A surprise treasure for the winning team. Wow! The whole class breaks out again in spontaneous clapping.
“Why can’t school always be this fun?” Milton asks. He has not raised his hand, but then, this is not really a question.
Ms. Sweeney’s forehead does not wrinkle up at this complaint. She has been so relaxed since Tía Lola started coming to her class. In fact, the two teachers huddle together in the front of the room, planning and plotting. Amazingly, each one seems to understand what the other is saying without a whole lot of translating.
For weeks on end, Tía Lola goes over Spanish vocabulary and sayings, mostly without Juanita’s help. Oh, sometimes Juanita will pitch in when she’s not too busy daydreaming.
Every night after supper, Tía Lola locks herself in her bedroom in order to work on the surprise treasure. It’s okay, because Juanita has a lot of reading to do before Mami makes her turn off the lights.
Finally, the day of the hunt arrives.
“So remember,” Ms. Sweeney reminds the class. “You’ll be divided into two teams. The second-grade team will be led by Ofie, the third-grade team by Juanita.” Much cheering and clapping.
Juanita is pulled back to the classroom. What just happened? She’d better not ask or Ms. Sweeney will know that Juanita has not been paying attention. How could she, when she has been standing in a huge crowd, watching the emperor parade by without any clothes and wondering if she should speak out?
“Since they both know Spanish, they can help their teams with the clues and rules,” Ms. Sweeney concludes.
Juanita is supposed to be the leader of her team and she isn’t even sure how the game works! She’ll be a blind queen in the land of the one-eyed! When Milton’s hand goes up, Juanita secretly hopes that her classmate has a question about the rules so that Ms. Sweeney will have to go over them one more time.
But Milton has been listening carefully for weeks. In fact, every day he greets Juanita with “Hola, Juanita. ¿Cómo estás?” instead of “Hello! How are you?” Yesterday, he actually hollered, “¡Hola, camarón!” Juanita didn’t have a clue what a camarón was. She had meant to ask Tía Lola when they got home, but she forgot.
“What is it, Milton?” Ms. Sweeney asks.
“When can we empezar?” Milton grins.
Ms. Sweeney grins back. “We can start right after recess!”
After recess, the treasure hunt starts. Ofie and her team of second graders zip around the room, unearthing one clue after another.
Juanita’s team lags behind. When they stumble over words, their leader, Juanita, can’t help them out. Tía Lola has been reviewing words and sayings for weeks with her class, but Juanita hasn’t been paying attention. She thought she didn’t have to because she already knew tons of Spanish. Instead, she has been living in a boxcar and wondering what on earth she and her sister and brothers will have for dinner.
And so it is no surprise that Ofie’s team is the first to reach the last clue: Camarón que se duerme se lo lleva la corriente. “The shrimp who falls asleep is carried away by the current,” Ofie translates. People who don’t pay attention lose out on real-life adventures.
Right off, Ofie’s team figures out where the treasure card is hidden: in Juanita’s desk! It seems everyone knows Juanita has not been paying attention in class.
No wonder Milton has been calling her camarón. Juanita has been carried away by the current of her daydreaming.
But now she is wide awake, listening to the other team’s triumphant shouts. Juanita wishes a strong current would carry her away so she doesn’t have to face the disappointment of her teammates. Especially when Tía Lola unveils the winners’ prize: a big donkey piñata filled with candies and stickers and dollar-store trinkets, which Ofie’s team will break open in the art room after lunch.
For the rest of the school day, Juanita feels miserable. There is no thought of princesses or emperors or dragons. No magic tree houses, boxcars, dinosaur rides, swans laying golden eggs, princesses in towers. The only scene playing over and over in her head is that moment of losing the treasure hunt.
Juanita can’t wait to get home so she can have a good cry with all her dolls and stuffed animals and books to comfort her. Except she knows that nothing can take away her bitter disappointment with herself. She has let down her teammates, Ms. Sweeney, and most of all, Tía Lola, who actually put aside her fear of teaching to come help Juanita get back into her teacher’s good graces.
“I’m sorry, Tía Lola,” Juanita apologizes to her aunt as they walk down the driveway onc
e the bus has dropped them off. “I didn’t mean to ignore everyone. It’s just that I love reading. And I keep thinking about the stories once I put the books away.”
Even though Tía Lola didn’t get much schooling, she loves stories, so she understands. “If you keep loving books and stories so much, Juanita, maybe one day you can write your own stories.”
Thinking about such a possibility takes away a tiny bit of Juanita’s disappointment. Someday, if she writes wonderful books, maybe her teammates will forgive her.
“But remember, you have to have adventures in order to have stories to tell,” Tía Lola says wisely. “So you have to pay attention to all the wonderful things happening in your own life.”
This is just the boost Juanita needs. Tomorrow, she will apologize to her whole class and tell them she is ready for some real-life adventures with them as her companions and Ms. Sweeney and Tía Lola as their guides.
“I just wish I could make it up to my team,” Juanita confesses to Tía Lola, who comes up with a wonderful idea. Why not make a losers’ piñata? Juanita can pick whatever animal she wants it to be.
All weekend long, Tía Lola and Juanita work on the losers’ piñata. On Monday, Mami drives them both to school, as Tía Lola wants to be there for the surprise. From the trunk, Juanita pulls out the fat pink shrimp piñata for her losing team.
“Hola …,” Milton calls across the parking lot to Juanita. But before he can say “camarón” his mouth drops open. “What in the world is that?”
“It’s a camarón,” Juanita says, already feeling a lot better. “It was carried away by the current, but we caught it and are bringing it back.”
lesson four
Con paciencia y con calma,
se subió un burro en una palma
With patience and calm,
even a donkey can climb a palm
Miguel is in a big hurry.
He wants to race through fifth and sixth grade and be in middle school, away from his annoying little sister at Bridgeport Elementary.
He wants to be in the major leagues, old enough so he doesn’t have to ask his parents’ permission to sign on with the Yankees.
He is impatient with how short he is. Okay, so he’s not the shortest boy in his class (which includes fourth graders, after all). But of all the fifth graders, only Oliver and Lily are shorter, and there are three fourth graders who are actually taller than Miguel—and one of them, Anna, is even a girl. Miguel’s mother keeps telling him that one day he will probably be as tall as his papi, but Miguel doesn’t want to have to get there in inches. That could take years!
When they first moved to Vermont, Miguel wanted to have instant friends, instant good feelings about the place. He was impatient for everything to be great right away! But instead, for months on end, he was horribly homesick. He missed the city. He missed the Yankees. He missed his best friend, José, and his old school. But most of all, he missed Papi.
Now, a year later, Miguel has made new friends. His classmates have stopped teasing him about his name, Guzmán (“Gooseman”), and asking silly questions about being Hispanic. Besides, they can now ask Tía Lola. Everybody loves Spanish class and looks forward to the two days a week, Tuesday and Thursday—that is, martes y jueves—when Tía Lola officially comes to school. But many other days, by popular demand, Tía Lola drops in to help with other projects. Miguel has to admit that his aunt is fun to have around.
But one thing that has never, ever gotten easier is the separation from his papi. While he’s in New York, Miguel is impatient to get back to Vermont. He misses his new friends, his big rented house in the country, and especially his mami. But every time Miguel comes back from a visit with his father, he is impatient for the next time.
More immediately, Miguel is impatient with his reading problem. Wouldn’t you know it—just as his little sister is becoming what she calls a voracious reader, Miguel is lagging behind in English class. It’s so hard to get through a sentence with so many little stumbling blocks: words he doesn’t know (like “voracious”), meanings he doesn’t get (“In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king”). Miguel wishes he could be really good in English class right away.
“Maybe having two languages has confused him?” Mrs. Prouty suggests to Mami during parent-teacher conferences.
“Nonsense!” Mami says later, on the ride home. “Juanita has two languages, most of Europe speaks two or three languages.…”
Great. Now Miguel is not just dumber than his little sister, but dumber than a whole continent!
While Tía Lola and Mami and Juanita chatter away, Miguel looks out his window. Snowy fields spread out on either side of the road. There’s nothing to take his mind off his remedial status at school. He feels impatient to get home, but once there, what next? Homework, and nagging from his mother, and pestering from his little sister …
It’s going to be a long night. Miguel sighs impatiently.
Later that night, as Miguel sits down to do his homework, the phone rings. It’s Papi. He has something he wants to discuss with Miguel and his little sister, but he wants to do it in person.
Oh no. Miguel’s heart fills with dread. The last few times Miguel and Juanita have visited Papi, Carmen, Papi’s girlfriend, has always hung out with them. Not that there’s anything wrong with Carmen, who is perfectly nice and friendly and sort of pretty. It’s just that Miguel doesn’t want anybody to be married to his papi except his mami.
“Car and I, we’re thinking of heading up this next weekend to see you. It’s too long to wait till you come down for winter recess in February,” Papi is explaining. Miguel loves hearing that Papi wants to visit. But why does he have to spoil it by saying “we”? Lots of times, after he finishes talking to Miguel, Papi says, “Car wants to say hi,” and Miguel is stuck answering a bunch of stupid questions about how school is going and when practice is starting up for his Little League team. But today, instead of putting Car on, his papi says, “Let me talk to your mother, mi’jo.” When Papi calls Miguel mi’jo, meaning “my son,” it’s usually because he’s got something serious and parental on his mind.
After a few cool hellos and how-are-yous, Mami’s face gets an alert, private look. “Hold on,” she says, and with her hand over the speaker, she asks Miguel if he wouldn’t mind giving her some space. The last words Miguel can make out as the kitchen door is closing are “Yes, I can talk now.” And then something-something-something, which just by Mami’s tone Miguel can tell is not the good kind of something he should be looking forward to.
Miguel heads upstairs to alert his little sister about the upcoming visit. She’s not in her room, but he finds her up in the attic, in Tía Lola’s bedroom. They are designing a piñata as a gift for Rudy’s birthday. Oh no! The surprise party is this Saturday! Miguel considers racing downstairs to remind Mami. But then Papi will have to reschedule his visit, and Miguel will have to wait a whole other week or two, or maybe even till winter recess, to find out the something-something-something that his papi has to tell him in person. If it’s bad news, Miguel is impatient to get his heartache over and done with.
The very next day, at dinner, Tía Lola mentions Rudy’s birthday party on Saturday.
“Ay, no!” Mami wails. “I’d completely forgotten!” She hurries to the phone even though they’re in the middle of eating. “I better call your father and tell him not to come.”
Nobody answers at the apartment. Mami leaves a message, but she is almost one hundred percent sure Papi has already set out. “He talked about taking off for a long weekend.” She looks over at Miguel and Juanita, as if they are on a sinking ship and she is trying to figure out how to save them. “I guess it won’t be the end of the world,” she says glumly.
I hope not, Miguel feels like saying. But then, his mother knows a lot more than he does about why his father is coming this weekend. What could be so bad that his mother should even think of comparing it to the end of the world?
“I know!” Juanita’s face
lights up. “Papi can come to Rudy’s party!”
“I’m sure Rudy wouldn’t mind if we invited Daniel,” Tía Lola agrees.
“That would be so great!” Juanita is pumping her body up and down in her seat like a piston in a car engine. “He’ll get to see my piñata, Tía Lola!”
Miguel is almost sure that his little sister hasn’t a clue what Papi might be planning. But even if she does, Juanita has never questioned Carmen’s presence in Papi’s life. As far as Juanita is concerned, she’s got her New York City best friend, Ming, just as Miguel has José, and so why shouldn’t Papi have Carmen? That way, they can each have somebody special to hold hands with when they go to the zoo or to a ball game or to Brooklyn, to their abuelitos’ apartment.
“Daniel’s not coming alone,” Mami says in a tight voice, looking over at Tía Lola. Miguel watches his aunt’s face. It’s like a sunrise, the slow dawning of a new day—or in this case, of the realization that Papi’s new life is about to land on their doorstep.
Rudy’s surprise party at his own restaurant is, of course, Tía Lola’s idea. This will be his sixtieth birthday, but he refuses to take the day off. “Why should I?” Rudy protests. “This is the funnest place to be on my birthday!”
“So we’ll just have his party at the restaurante,” Tía Lola decides. The only problem is trying to keep it a secret from Rudy.
All week long, anyone who has called for a reservation on Saturday has been invited to a party instead. Since it’s usually Shauna or Dawn answering calls, Rudy has no idea that this Saturday there’s going to be a big surprise fiesta at his restaurant. Juanita is making a donkey piñata with Tía Lola’s help. That is the best animal for a piñata, Juanita informs Miguel in her know-it-all voice.
“Donkey piñatas are totally boring,” Miguel informs her back in his know-it-all voice.