IONLY GOT LOST a few more times over the next week.
One teacher, Mrs. Savarin, gave me a warning for being late, but I think she realized that I wasn’t like those kids Derek and Trevor who messed around in the hallways and ended up being late for class, so she held off from giving me a detention, which was a huge relief. The thought of having to explain to my parents that I was late coming home from school because of a detention filled me with terror.
Still, it was a pretty lonely existence I led at Twin Lakes High. I hadn’t made many friends, except for Rosalia and Jon. Jon sat with me at lunch most days, because we’d walk down to the cafeteria together right after Language Arts.
There was something different about him. He rarely looked me in the eye when he spoke to me, and he walked awkwardly, his shoulders hunched over as if he were permanently tense. But he was incredibly smart. And he had a phenomenal memory for facts; having a discussion with him was like talking to a living encyclopedia. Jon seemed to know some fact about every subject I ever discussed with him, whether it was sports, geography, the environment, art, or even current events topics like the War on Terror.
But it was strange the way he had problems with phrases, the same way I did, even though English was his native language. Like the time we were having lunch and I accidentally knocked over my milk carton. Jon handed me a napkin and said, “No use crying over spilled milk,” and then he started laughing and laughing. I stared at him, confused, because I wasn’t crying. Not even close.
I mopped up my spill, and then asked, “Jon—I don’t understand. What’s so funny?”
He told me that “No use crying over spilled milk” was an expression, meaning that you shouldn’t get upset or angry after something has gone wrong because it can’t be changed. Maybe I should teach that one to Papá, I thought.
Jon told me when he was younger he had a hard time understanding idioms, too. His parents, his teachers, and even his sister, Evil Jessica, had to explain the meanings to him.
“I remember the first time my mom told us we couldn’t go to the park because it was ‘raining cats and dogs,’” Jon said. “I ran to the window expecting to see Labradors and Siamese cats falling from the skies. I was so disappointed when it was just boring old rain.”
The thought of Jon standing by the window waiting for dogs and cats to rain down from the heavens made me burst out laughing.
“You think that’s funny…Once Mom was talking to Dad about our aunt Marilyn and how she always ‘wears her heart on her sleeve’…”
“What?!”
“Well, yeah, that’s what I thought. I was only six at the time, and the next time Aunt Marilyn came over I was standing next to her staring at her arm. Eventually, she asked me what I was doing, and I told her I was looking for her heart because Mom said she wore it on her sleeve. You can imagine how embarrassed Mom was—Dad was trying really hard not to laugh, but Aunt Marilyn got mad. Dad told me later that it wasn’t my fault, and that what Mom meant is that Aunt Marilyn tends to be open about how she’s feeling.”
In the Bensimon household one did not “wear one’s heart on one’s sleeve,” that was for sure.
“I’m going to have to write these down,” I told Jon. “You have to teach me expressions like this, so I sound like a proper American.”
“A real American. A real American wouldn’t say ‘proper.’”
“Okay, a real American.”
The Evil Jessica and two of her followers came over just as we were clearing away our lunch debris. “Hey, Jon-boy, don’t forget, we’re taking the bus home today, okay? I’ll meet you out front by the flagpole.”
“Sure, okay. See you there.”
They completely ignored my existence.
I wondered how the same family could produce someone as nice as Jon and as horrible as his sister. Well, Lucrezia Borgia probably had at least one nice brother, too.
Jon was never without the notebook he was drawing in the first day I met him, and he was always scribbling in it. To use an idiom he taught me, he was always “buried in a book”—that particular book, to be precise. I wanted so much to know what he was writing in there, but didn’t feel like I could ask him. Maybe one day, when I knew him better. Until then, I’d just have to wonder.
Brian, my personal GPS, talked to me every day in History, and then walked me to my next class. He was always asking me questions about life in Argentina. I got the impression that he went home and did research every night so he could ask me more questions the following day. Like, one day, he asked me about why we ended up moving to the United States and I told him a little bit about the Crisis (leaving out everything about Papá losing his business and becoming…well, the way he was), and the next day we were walking down the hallway and Brian suddenly asked me about the cacerolazos. I laughed at his pronunciation, but couldn’t imagine that he’d heard about that on the news all the way in Twin Lakes, New York, so he must have been looking stuff up online since we spoke the day before. I told him how people took to the streets, banging on pots and pans in protest because they couldn’t take their own money out of the bank. Not that it did any good.
I didn’t tell Brian that any of this happened to my family. But from the look he gave me with his deep brown eyes, and the way he touched my arm and said, “That must have been awful, Dani,” I think he knew.
One day, I was walking down the hall with Rosalia after ESL, speaking in Spanish. I knew I should have been practicing my English with her, but it was just so hard to be constantly thinking in another language—to be able to be myself in my own mother tongue felt…I don’t know…restful. When I had to speak English it was like I had to think on two levels—what we were speaking about in the conversation, and the actual language of how I was going to say it. In Spanish, the language part was second nature, so I could just say what I meant without worrying that it would come out meaning something else.
Anyway, we were chatting away when I heard someone behind us say very loudly, “These foreigners—if they’re going to come to our country, the least they can do is make the effort to learn our language.”
I didn’t want to turn around, but Rosalia spun angrily to face the speaker. It was Trevor, the perpetually late guy from my science class. Standing next to him, smirking, was his friend Derek.
“I speak two languages better than you speak one, imbécil,” Rosalia said.
“Oh, go back to where you came from, bitch,” Trevor said. “I bet you’re here illegally anyway.”
“Yeah, it’s people like you who caused 9/11,” Derek chimed in. “They should just build a wall high enough to keep all of you guys out.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Did these boys seriously think people like Rosalia and me were capable of doing the awful things that happened on September 11? That we could kill all those innocent people?
My heart was thumping against the wall of my chest, so loudly I could hear it in my ears, and I realized my hands were clenched into fists.
“How DARE you say that! My aunt was killed by terrorists in Argentina. If you think I could inflict that kind of suffering on anyone else, you are…well, you are just…”
I was so upset I couldn’t think of anything bad enough to call him.
“Whoa,” Trevor said. “I didn’t know that.”
How could he not know? It was such a major part of my life, looming like a dark cloud over my family ever since it happened. It was hard for me to believe that there were people in the world who didn’t know what happened on July 18, 1994.
“I could write a book about all the things you don’t know,” sniffed Rosalia.
“Was it Al-Qaeda?” Derek asked.
“No, it wasn’t Al-Qaeda,” I told him. Why did Americans assume that every act of terrorism was Al-Qaeda, just because that was who was behind the attacks on September 11? “They never proved for sure who did it. They think it was Hezbollah, with the help of the Iranians.”
“Far out,” Trevor said.
Far out? It wasn’t far out. It was close to my heart, deeply personal.
“And for your information, both of us are here legally, so from now on you can keep your big traps shut!” Rosalia said, and grabbing my arm, she dragged me down the hall.
“I can’t believe those idiotas,” she fumed. “Where do they get the right to tell us to go home? We have our papers. We have every right to be here. What about ‘Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free’? It’s engraved on the Statue of Liberty. That’s supposed to be what America is about, isn’t it?”
“Maybe not anymore. Maybe not after what happened.”
“What, just because some terrorist fanatics did something evil, now we are all suspect? Where is the fairness in that?”
I stopped and looked at her. “Rosalia, chica, where is the fairness in anything?”
She sighed. “I suppose you’re right, Dani, though I hate to admit it.”
“So, Rosalia, I have a question.”
“Yes, chica?”
“When you told Trevor and Derek, ‘Keep your big traps shut,’ what exactly did you mean?”
Rosalia laughed.
“‘Trap’ is slang for mouth. So it means they should keep their big mouths shut. To shut up, in other words.”
“‘Keep your big trap shut.’ I’ll have to remember that one. I’m sure it will become useful.”
Little did I realize just how soon that would be true.
Two days later I was waiting to pay with my coupons in the lunch line when, to my dismay, Evil Jessica and her gang joined the line behind me. Even Trevor and Derek would be preferable to the Evil J, because the clothes I was wearing were from the JFS bag, so they were probably hers. The last thing that I needed was another run down of my hand-me-down wardrobe. For her to see me paying with lunch vouchers was just added humiliation.
“Oh look, Jess, it’s that girl again and she’s wearing your old Seven jeans and that T-shirt I always liked. I wish your mom had given it to me instead of charity. Maybe I should tell her I’m poor or something.”
Loud giggles from the Gang. I felt my face starting to flush bright red, but I just stared down at the tuna sandwich and yogurt on my lunch tray and tried very hard to ignore them.
“Oh right, as if, Cindy! Your father drives a Porsche for heaven’s sake! I hardly think that qualifies you for handouts from Goodwill,” said one of the girls.
“Yes, Coty, but it’s a two-year-old Porsche. I should at least get food stamps or something, don’t you think?”
More giggles.
I wanted so much to ignore them, to pretend that I didn’t hear the things they were saying. But it made me angry that they could joke about poverty when it had changed my family’s existence so completely over the last two years, so angry that I felt like I would explode if I didn’t open my lips and say something. I kept staring down at my tray, but everything was becoming blurry.
“Why don’t we ask this girl here about qualifying for food stamps?” came Jessica’s bored voice. “After all, it’s obvious from the lunch vouchers in her hand that she knows about them.”
I didn’t know if that overwhelming rage was what Papá felt when he exploded at us at home, but whatever it was, I could no longer contain it.
“Just shut your big trap!” I shouted, turning to Jessica and for once, looking her in the eye. “Shut up! Keep your big trap shut and leave me alone!”
People stared at me, but I was beyond caring.
Jessica met my gaze for a second, then shrugged and looked away.
“Whatever. Keep your hair on.”
I was afraid to touch my hair to make sure it was still there in front of her, but I wondered if the force of my rage had caused it to shoot from the top of my head or burst into spontaneous flames. I was so angry that nothing would have surprised me.
I turned my back on Jessica and her friends, but made a mental note to ask Jon what “keep your hair on” meant.
Brian Harrison caught up to me as I walked to the bus that afternoon.
“Hey, Evita, what’s the matter? You look like you have the weight of the world on your shoulders.”
The weight of the world on your shoulders. I hadn’t heard that expression before, but unlike a lot of things in English, it made perfect sense. It was how Mamá looked when she came home from work in the evenings. It described exactly how I was feeling as I walked to the bus, recalling the incident with Jessica and her friends in the cafeteria, and my reaction. How the rage and humiliation welled up inside me until I saw red behind the whites of my eyes and I wanted to throw my lunch tray in their smirking faces. How I was scared that maybe I was more like Papá than I knew, that even though I despised him for his moods and angry rages, maybe I was just the same as him.
“I’ve…I guess you could say that I’ve had a bad day.”
“Don’t tell me you’re still getting lost. I’ll be offended if you got a detention for being late because you didn’t utilize the services of your Personal GPS.”
He actually managed to extract a tight smile from me.
“No, you’ve trained me well, Mr. GPS. It was just a…how do I say it? An unpleasant incident.”
Brian was serious, suddenly.
“Who was it? Tell me, and I’ll beat the crap out of him.”
It cheered me slightly, knowing that Brian was willing to stick up for me.
“Actually, it was a ‘her.’ Several girls, if you want to know the truth.”
Brian lifted up his hands in a gesture of surrender.
“Sorry, honey, you’re on your own there. I’m an equal rights kinda guy, but it doesn’t extend to punching out girls.”
“I’m happy to hear that.”
“So what was it about?” he asked.
I felt my face flushing as the humiliation of the lunch line came back to haunt me. Brian seemed to like me as I was, Dani the Girl from Argentina. I didn’t want him to think of me as Poor Girl Dani.
Brian bent down and started to untie his shoelaces.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
He looked up at me with that grin of his.
“Well, it looks like I might have just put my foot in my mouth again, so I’m just getting prepared.”
That made me laugh for real. He retied his laces and stood up, smiling.
“That’s more like it,” Brian said. Then he touched my arm and was serious again. “Look, I don’t know what all of this was about, but I know some of the girls in this school can be mean. In fact, some of them can be downright bitches if you’ll excuse the language. But try not to let them get you down. You’re worth twenty of them.”
I felt myself blushing.
“Thanks, but…”
“Seriously, Dani. Don’t listen to them. Keep your chin up, as they say.”
“What?”
“It means keep your head held high when people are trying to make you feel bad or the going gets tough.”
What happens when you are tired of having to keep your chin up? I wondered. What happens when you just want to rest your chin on someone’s shoulder, to feel their arms around you and hear them say, Dani, don’t worry, everything is going to turn out okay?
“Keep my chin up,” I repeated. “Yes, sir.”
I looked at my watch and realized that I was going to be late for my bus.
“I have to go—I’m going to miss the bus.”
“Okay, well, don’t forget, chin up and smile! Because you’re exceptionally pretty when you smile.” He grinned. “See you tomorrow.”
He walked off toward the student parking lot, and I stood there frozen for the few seconds it took me to absorb that Brian Harrison had just told me I was exceptionally pretty when I smiled. Then I ran to the bus, and arrived there breathless.