How Tía Lola Learned to Teach (12 page)

“Thank you,” Miguel finally says after several minutes of silence. “You were awesome. I’m sorry.”

Instead of lecturing him, she squeezes his arm. “If anything should happen to you, Miguel Ángel, I just …” She falls silent again, as if the worst thing that could happen to her would be if something happened to him.

She hasn’t even asked, but Miguel knows he owes her an explanation. So he tells her: how much he really appreciated the tickets she’d gotten; how he didn’t want to miss the game; how he wanted to see his best friend, José; how he did leave a note. Even so, he knows he made a wrong decision and was being totally selfish. Papi and Tía Lola and Juanita would have been worried to death about him.

“And Carmen, too,” she reminds him.

“I’ll never do something stupid like that again, promise.”

“Or at least tell me first, so I can run away with you next time!” Carmen is grinning when Miguel looks up at her.

“Come on,” she says. “I’m going to call your
mami
and talk to her. She’s probably just worried because she’s far away. If she agrees, we’ll tear up your note and write a new one, telling your
papi
and Tía Lola and Juanita to meet us at Madison Square Garden. I’ll call José’s dad so he knows not to scalp our tickets. It’s worth trying, don’t you think?”

Miguel can’t help but grin back. The way he’s feeling right now, even if they end up watching the game on TV, he’ll have a good time. Carmen will think of some way to make it fun. And if they do go, Miguel will be relieved of having to ask directions, because Carmen probably knows how to get to Madison Square Garden, as well as Rome, on her very own.

lesson eight

Nunca es tarde cuando la dicha es buena
It’s never too late when you’re in luck
(or something like that)

Back in Vermont, winter drags on. The one bright spot is Miguel’s eleventh birthday at the end of March, but in twenty-four hours it’s gone!

Then April begins, with one small step toward spring, four giant steps back into cold weather. The town grows grayer, the people paler. The few out on the streets move with slow steps so as not to slip on the icy sidewalks. The pace is so sluggish, the whole state could be in hibernation.

But Rudy’s Amigos Café is rocking, the one lively, tropical spot for miles around. Every Wednesday it’s Spanish night, with the whole menu printed
en español
. Tía Lola helps with the cooking. She comes out of the kitchen with her big pot of tasty food, piling on seconds (for free). Afterward, the tables are pushed back and Tía Lola offers dancing lessons—salsa and merengue and
cha-cha-cha
—to work off all those extra servings nobody can resist.

Between her school lessons and her restaurant lessons, Tía Lola is being kept
muy, muy ocupada
. Anyone in town can tell you what that means: very, very busy. In fact, the whole county is slowly becoming bilingual.

“Tía Lola, not only did you learn to teach in school, you’ve learned to teach everywhere!” Juanita exclaims as she and her aunt ride to the bus to Bridgeport Elementary on a wintry morning—too cold for April, for heaven’s sake.

Tía Lola smiles happily. “I have been so lucky,” she admits, shaking her head in disbelief. “I thought I would come to Vermont and be so lonely and sick for home. Instead, I am having the most fun I ever had in my whole life. I’ve seen
Nueva
York, and a ballet, and even a Kicky game!”

“Knicks, Tía Lola,” Miguel calls from the back of the bus, where he’s sitting with Dean and Sam. His friends have heard all about his adventures in New York City, including his near-mugging in the subway. Of course,
Miguel has used the imagination fifth graders are known for and touched up the incident, so it’s him jumping the turnstile, pulling out the pepper spray, with Rafi’s girlfriend pleading at his feet, “Please spare my boyfriend, please!”

But one part of the story that Miguel hasn’t had to improve is how Carmen managed to convince Mami to let him go to the Knicks game. Not only that, Carmen and Mami have had several conversations since then. Miguel can tell that his
mami
now really and truly wants him and Juanita to get along with Carmen. In fact, Mami has admitted that the children’s father is lucky to have found a woman like Carmen to keep his feet on the ground. “Better her than me,” she has added, less generously.

Tía Lola tries again. “Okay, okay, a Kee-nee-kee game!” But no matter how much you coach her, Tía Lola just can’t pronounce certain words in English. “I have been so lucky coming to Vermont, learning to teach at your school, making so many new
amigos: el
Rudy,
la señora
Stevens,
la
Mrs. Prouty,
la jovencita
Sweeney …” Tía Lola starts to count them, but suddenly, she stops. Nervously, she touches her forehead, her chest, her left shoulder, then her right, finally kissing her thumb.

“What in the world are you doing, Tía Lola?” Juanita asks, mystified.

“Just making the sign of the cross. To protect myself. It’s bad luck to boast about being lucky.”

“But why?” Juanita is looking at Tía Lola like she just dropped in from outer space, not the Dominican Republic.

“It’s one of our
costumbres
, you know—a custom from the old country, like our sayings,” Tía Lola explains.

Juanita starts thinking back to when she might have boasted recently. But nothing bad happened after she came back from winter recess bragging about going to see the New York City Ballet with Ming and Carmen and Tía Lola. In fact, except for winter dragging on, her life is wonderful! At school, she has a really nice teacher and so many friends. And now that she pays attention in class, every day is an adventure.

“But there have been many, many, many unlucky things, too,” Tía Lola says loudly, as if she wants to make sure that whoever might be in charge of punishing people for bragging about good luck hears about her bad luck, too.
“¡Muchas cosas desagradables!”
Many unpleasant things!

Juanita knows she should be helping Tía Lola ward off bad luck, but she’s too curious. “I thought you were really happy here, Tía Lola. Like what bad things have happened?”

Her aunt’s forehead furrows as she tries desperately to think of something to complain about. “
Bueno
, well … it has been cold for a long time.” Just then, a burst of sunlight splashes through the window, flooding the bus with summery warmth. Tía Lola sighs, giving up. There is no denying it. She has had a very lucky life lately.

From the back of the bus comes the sound of Miguel’s voice reporting on some play by the Knicks at the Madison Square Garden game.

“¡Ya, ya!”
Tía Lola cries out. “I know what very unlucky thing has been happening:
el inglés!
Learning English is too hard. In the
restaurante
, the eggplant has no egg. The hamburger no ham. We serve dessert, but no one can desert the table to go to a desert because there are none in Vermont. More than one goose is ‘geese,’ but more than one moose is not ‘meese.’ No, no, no!
Es muy difícil
. It’s too hard to learn.
¡Me voy a volver loca aprendiendo inglés!
”

Is Tía Lola really going to go crazy learning English, or is she just saying so to ward off bad luck for bragging about her good luck? Just when Juanita is starting to worry about her aunt, Tía Lola winks. Her beauty mark, usually painted on the right side of her upper lip, dots her left cheek today. It makes Juanita smile to see it there. If Tía Lola were not in her life, Juanita would be a very unhappy, very unlucky girl, that’s for sure. Juanita squeezes her eyes shut and concentrates real hard. It’s her
costumbre
—instead of doing Tía Lola’s sign of the cross—to close her eyes and make a wish when she really needs good luck.

That night, bad luck moves in like yet another cold front. Mami goes through the mail and finds a letter from the
United States Department of Immigration saying that the visitor’s visa of María Dolores Milagros Santos is about to expire. She must report to her local immigration office and be prepared to leave the country immediately. Mami’s face gets as pale as a brown person’s face can get.

“¿Qué pasa, Mami?”
Juanita wants to know what’s wrong. Already her heart is beating hard, remembering the bad-luck conversation this morning on the bus.

But Mami is too preoccupied to explain. “What do they mean, she has to leave immediately? But we applied … The lawyer said … How can they separate a family this way?”

“Mami, who are you talking about?” Juanita asks desperately. It’s horrible when you see your parents in a panic but you don’t know what is upsetting them!

“María Dolores Milagros Santos,” Mami explains unhelpfully. Then she must realize Juanita and Miguel have no idea who this person is. “Your
tía
Lola. That’s her real name.”

No wonder Tía Lola is having bad luck, with a name like that! After all,
dolores
is the word for “sufferings” in Spanish. Imagine being named Sufferings! Of course,
milagros
means “miracles,” so maybe that cancels out the suffering? Juanita certainly hopes so.

“No hay que ahogarse en un vaso de agua,”
Tía Lola counsels calmly. Let’s not drown in a glass of water. This is what she always says when anyone gets too worked up about a small matter.

But if Tía Lola has to leave them, that is a very big deal. “She’s like our grandmother,” Juanita says weepily.

“Perhaps I can go and come back. You know, like I did last Christmas.”

Mami shakes her head. “Remember what the lawyer told us? The visa was for sixteen months, no extensions. But he was going to apply for your residency card so you could stay. He said it shouldn’t be a problem when I explained you were like my mother. After we paid him all that money …” Mami’s voice trails away. She sinks down in her chair, defeated.

Miguel has been sitting by, racking his brains about how to help his family. He has told the mugging story so many times that he has come to think of himself as a superhero. In fact, he has been awaiting the opportunity to truly rescue somebody. Here it is. But what to do? He hasn’t a clue.

The mugging story, of course, makes him think of Carmen. And then it dawns on him. “Why don’t we call Carmen? She’s a lawyer.” The minute Miguel makes his suggestion, he worries that his
mami
will be upset. But instead of annoyance, a wave of relief sweeps over his mother’s face.

“She isn’t actually an immigration lawyer, but still …” Mami is thinking out loud. “She does work in a big firm. She’s bound to know someone who knows about visas. Maybe she can help us.”

Mami calls Papi to get Carmen’s number. Soon the
two women are having a long conversation. Juanita and Miguel and Tía Lola sit around the table, watching Mami’s every expression. Before Mami hangs up, Carmen promises to call back after she speaks to some of her colleagues at work. Maybe something will work out.

Please, please!
Juanita closes her eyes for the second time today and makes her wish:
Let Tía Lola stay with my family!