How Tía Lola Came to (Visit) Stay (2 page)

“I’ll help you,” Miguel offers.

“Miguel,
amor
, how can you help me? You don’t have a license. The cops’ll take you in if they catch you driving,” his mother teases.

As nervous as Miguel is feeling about his aunt’s visit and his new school and their move to Vermont, he thinks he wouldn’t mind spending the next year all by himself in jail.

“Por favor
‘, honey, would you go inside with your sister and look for Tía Lola?” His mother’s sweetened-up voice is like a handful of chocolate chips from the package in the closet. Impossible to resist.

“Los quiero mucho!”
she calls out to both children as they clamber out of the car.

“Love you, too,” Juanita calls back.

The crowd swarms around them in the small but busy terminal.

Juanita slips her hand into Miguel’s, She looks scared, as if all that Spanish she has been showing off to their mother has just left on a plane to South America. “You think we’ll recognize her?” she asks.

“We’ll wait until somebody who looks like
she’s
looking for
us
comes out of the plane,” Miguel says. He sure wishes his mother would hurry up and find a parking spot.

Several businessmen rush by, checking their watches, as if they are already late for whatever they have come for. Behind them, a grandma puts down her shopping bag full of presents, and two little boys run forward and throw their arms around her, A young guy turns in a slow circle as if he has gotten off at the wrong stop, A girl hugs her boyfriend, who kisses her on the lips, Miguel looks away.

Where is this aunt of theirs?

The crowd disperses, and still their aunt is nowhere in sight, Miguel and Juanita go up to the counter and ask the lady working there to please page their aunt, “She doesn’t know any English,” Miguel explains, “only Spanish,”

The woman in the blue suit has so many freckles, it looks as if someone has spilled a whole bag of them on her face. “I’m sorry, kids. I took a little Spanish back in high school, but that was ages ago. Ill tell you what. I’ll let you page your aunt yourself.”

“Shell do it.” Miguel nudges his sister forward. Even though he is older, Juanita is the one who is always showing off her Spanish to their father and mother.

Juanita shakes her head. She looks scared. She looks about to cry.

“There’s nothing to be scared of,” Miguel encourages, as if he himself has paged his aunt every day of his life.

“That’s right, sweetie,” the woman agrees, nodding at Juanita. But Juanita won’t budge. Then, turning to Miguel, the woman suggests, “Seeing as she’s scared, why don’t you do it instead?”

“I don’t speak Spanish.” It isn’t technically a lie because he doesn’t know enough to speak Spanish in public to a whole airport terminal.

“You do, too,” Juanita sniffles. “He knows but he doesn’t like to talk it,” she explains to the airline lady.

“Just give it a try,” the freckled lady says, opening a little gate so they can come behind the counter to an office on the other side-A man with a bald head and a tired face and earphones sits at a desk turning dials on a machine. The lady explains that the children need to page a lost aunt who does not speak any English.

“Come here, son,” The man beckons to Miguel-“Speak right into this microphone-Testing, testing-” He tries it out-The man adjusts some knobs and pushes his chair over so Miguel can stand beside him.

Miguel looks down at the microphone-He can feel his stomach getting queasy and his mind going blank-All he can remember of his Spanish is Tia Lola’s name and the word for “hello-”

“Hola Tía Lola,”
Miguel says into the microphone-Then, suddenly, the corny words his mother says every night when she tucks him into bed, the ones she has just called out when he and Juanita climbed out of the car, pop out-“Te
quiero mucho.”

Juanita is looking at him, surprised-Miguel scowls back-“It’s the only thing I remember,” he mutters-With all the stuff popping out these days, he’s going to have to get a brake for his mouth.

“I remember more!” Juanita boasts. She steps forward, her fears forgotten, and speaks into the microphone.
“Hold, Tía Lola,”
she says in a bright voice as if she is on TV announcing sunny weather tomorrow.
“Te esperamos por el mostrador”
She and Miguel will be waiting by the counter. “Te
quiero mucho”
she closes, just as Miguel has done. I love you lots.

As Miguel and his sister walk out of the office, they hear a tremendous shout. It isn’t a shout in Spanish, and it isn’t a shout in English. It’s a shout anyone anywhere would understand.

Someone is mighty pleased to see them.

On the other side of the counter stands their aunt Lola. You can’t miss her! Her skin is the same soft brown color as theirs. Her black hair is piled up in a bun on her head with a pink hibiscus on top. She wears bright red lipstick and above her lips she has a big black beauty mark. On her colorful summer dress, parrots fly toward palm trees, and flowers look ready to burst from the fabric if they can only figure out how.

Behind their aunt, their mother is approaching in her hiking boots and navy-blue parka, her red hat and mittens. “Tía Lola!” she cries out. They hug and kiss and hug again. When Tía Lola
pulls away, the beauty mark above her upper lip is gone!

“Those two,” Tía Lola is saying in Spanish to Miguel’s mother as she points to him and Juanita, “those two gave me my first welcome to this country. !Ay,
Juanita! jAy, Miguel!”
She spreads her arms for her niece and nephew,
“Los quiero mucho”

It is a voice impossible to resist-Like three handfuls of chocolate chips from the package in the closet, a can of Pringles, and his favorite SpaghettiOs, all to himself For the moment, Miguel forgets the recent move, his papi and friends left behind in New York-When Tía Lola wraps her arms around him, he hugs back, just as hard as he can.

Bienveniàa
, Tía Lola

Miguel cannot believe how much luggage his aunt has brought from the Dominican Republic!

Two big suitcases, covered in plastic wrap.
“Para mâs seguridad,”
Tía Lola explains. For more security. She raises her eyebrows as if the crown jewels are packed inside.

A box with a pinata, which Tía Lola says they should save for a special occasion.

A duffel bag full of gifts from their cousins, aunts, and uncles.

A tube with a rolled-up Dominican flag inside.

A flowered carpetbag with Tía Lola’s
cositas
, her thises and thats.

Miguel looks at the pile of luggage, which he
has helped unload from the car. “How long did you say you were staying, Tía Lola?” he asks.

“¿Qué dice?”
Tía Lola wants to know what Miguel has asked.

Miguel shakes his head and picks up a bag. He starts the long trek up the stairs to the room they have fixed up for his aunt.

The next day, Tía Lola is still unpacking.

“No sabia que traer, “
she explains. She didn’t know what to bring, so she brought a little of everything.

First, Tía Lola unpacks a small case she has carried by hand. It is full of makeup and rollers, earrings and several jars with odd ingredients, which Mami says are probably potions. Tucked at the bottom is a bottle of
Agua de Florida
, which Tía Lola sprinkles around the room.

“Why’d she do that?” Miguel asks his mother.

“It’s good-luck water,” Mami explains. Tía Lola is something of a
sautera.
“It’s like a doctor who works with magic instead of medicine.”

“Can I tell the kids in school?” Juanita asks. Her face is full of excitement as if she has just
learned she has a relative who came over on the
Mayflower.

“Please, Mami, tell her not to,” Miguel pleads. All he needs is for his new classmates to find out he has a nut case for a relative.

Tía Lola unpacks her bright summer dresses and her black hat with a veil. She unpacks a half-dozen pairs of high heels to match all the different colors of her outfits, and a dozen bright
panuelos
to wrap around her head like a turban when she is working her magic. Her closet looks like a midsummer flower garden.

She unpacks her maracas and
tambor
to make music in case there is a fiesta. She puts on her castanets and clacks around the room, stomping her feet as if she is throwing a tantrum. Their mother and Juanita join in, acting goofy. “Isn’t she fun?” his mother keeps asking Miguel.

Tía Lola unpacks bags of
café
and brown sugar, which go up on the kitchen shelves-Her spices—
hierbabuena, orégano, anís, hojas de guanábana, ajíes—
hang from the rafters-She also brings along her
guayo
to grate
yuca
and her
burén
to shape it into flat, round
casave
loaves-The
guayo
looks like an oversized grater and the
burén
like a large, smooth stone. Tía Lola’s
verdura
seeds are put in a pot to germinate.

“!Ay,
qué bueno!”
Miguel’s mother claps her hands. “Well have real Dominican cooking in Vermont! Well have to invite Rudy over”

She is helping Tía Lola drape her mantilla across a window. It looks like a beautiful black spiderweb with a bright red rose pinned at the center. As they work, they dance to one of Tía Lola’s merengues on the stereo. Juanita follows along, moving her hips, one-two, one-two, one-two.

“Isn’t she fun?” their mother keeps asking.

“I guess,” Miguel mutters, and then, because his mother is looking straight at him, he adds, “She’s
lots
of fun, Mami.”

Miguel has to admit there is one totally fun thing about Tía Lola.

She tells great stories.

None of Tía Lola’s stories sound exactly true, but Miguel doesn’t care. While he listens, he feels as if he isn’t in Vermont at all, but in a magical world where anything can happen. In fact,
what is most magical is how, even though in his daily conversations with Tía Lola, Miguel sometimes doesn’t understand Tía Lola’s Spanish, still, when she tells stories, Miguel seems to understand every word.

“Había una vez.
…,” Tía Lola begins. Once upon a time…And Miguel feels a secret self, different from his normal everyday self, rising up like steam from a boiling kettle into the air and disappearing inside Tía Lola’s stories.

Every night, Tía Lola gathers Miguel and Juanita in her bedroom. While their mother takes some time to herself or makes phone calls or continues unpacking boxes still stacked in the attic, Tía Lola tells them all about their large and exciting Dominican family.

She tells about their uncle with six fingers who can do anything with his hands, and about their great-grandmother who could read the future from looking at the stains in a coffee cup, and about their cousin who once befriended a
aguapa
with
pastelitoSy
little fritters filled with ground meat. As for
aguapas
, they are beautiful, mysterious creatures who come out at night, but no one can ever
catch them. They have a special secret. The
aguapas’
feet are on backward, so they leave footprints in the opposite direction of where they are going!

The next weekend, since he has no friends here and nothing better to do, Miguel tries out that trick in the snow. The footprints look haywire and messy, like someone stumbling around. But they do not look like
ciguapa
footprints.

One afternoon, two of Miguel’s classmates show up at the front door. In the car, the mother of one of the boys waits, peering up at the old, gabled house. The boys are collecting money for the town’s Little League team. Come spring, they will need equipment and uniforms.

“Wow!” Miguel says, “I’d really like to be on that team,”

“You should try out,” one of the boys says. The taller one’s name is Dean, He has bright blue eyes that Miguel’s father would call ultramarine and a wide grin his mother would call trouble with a capital T.

As the boys stand in the mudroom talking, Tía Lola walks by in her spiked heels and white turban, holding up a plate of smoking embers.
She has already cleansed the basement and is on her way upstairs. She wants to cast out any bad spirits and attract good spirits and magical
aguapas
from the island. The boys’ mouths drop open.

“Wlvwh-who’s that?” the smaller boy, Sam, asks. His fine blond hair stands on end naturally from electricity. But now he looks as if he has just had a terrible fright.

Miguel turns his head and looks, then shrugs as if no one is there. As the boys hurry down the front steps, Miguel hears Dean say, “I bet it was a ghost. My mom says this old house is haunted.”

Miguel shuts the door and leans against it, his face pale as if he
has
seen a ghost. When he looks up, Tía Lola is looking back at him.

That night, a snowstorm blows in. When Miguel glances out the window the next morning, flakes are still falling in the light by the front porch. Downstairs, Tía Lola is not at breakfast.

“Good news,” Juanita says as Miguel sits down. “No school today!”