The doorbell buzzed, and a group of kids jostled in, laughing and yelling together. Ten seconds later another girl burst into the room, holding a massive iced coffee from Dunkin. “Yo, don’t be starting without me!” She raised her cup in the air and rattled the ice cubes. Her nose ring glinted.
Miss Amber took a seat at the head of one of the tables. There were about twelve of us altogether. Then she beamed at me. “I’m glad you made it.”
“You heard me, Miss Amber?” the girl with the iced coffee yelled, hustling over.
“I heard you, Keisha. We would never dream of starting without you.”
“That’s whatsup.” Keisha and her entourage sat down.
Miss Amber had us fill out name tags, then go around the room and introduce ourselves—all girls except one Black dude with a Mohawk and earring—and tell where we went to school. Mostly the kids went to Boston Public, a couple of charter schools, all in high school. When it was my turn, I said, “I’m in the METCO program at this fancy-ass high school like an hour away, but it’s not so bad.” We also had to name what our favorite cereal was… an icebreaker or whatever. A couple of people gave me the chin up when I said Froot Loops.
After Mohawk-guy said Shredded Wheat—whaaaa?—Miss Amber said “All right. Let’s start with a warm-up exercise.” My first thought was, Ugh, exercise. Just what Mrs. Grew would say. Dang. I hoped this writing prompt would be better than the ones at school. Then Miss Amber said, “We’re going to write a six-word autobiography.”
A six-word what?
“Here’s an example!” she said, cheery as all get-out. Supposedly Ernest Hemingway had written a six-word story, like a thousand years before. Miss Amber had memorized it: For sale: baby shoes, never worn. Then she explained what the words meant. The baby hadn’t survived, and so that’s why the parents had to sell the baby shoes. Get it? Never worn. I know.
We started to write. Well, by “we” I mean everyone but me. I guess thinking about the baby shoes made me think about the baby’s parents, all sad, like deflated or something. Then I pictured Dad, which led me down a whole other trail of thoughts. Miss Amber roamed from person to person, then paused at me. Or at my empty paper. But she didn’t do the squat-by-my-side thing, or the try-your-best teacher thing. To my surprise, she said, “Sometimes, staring into space helps.” Huh? “Don’t think about it too much. Stare. Daydream. Wonder.” Double huh? “Okay. Maybe instead of objects, your six words can be emotions, hobbies, or even words in another language, or in the form of a question. What questions do you have about the world? Remember: no more than six words. You got this.”
So I did what she said—stared, dreamed, wondered. I thought of the question Steve asked me that day at the fire drill: Where are you from-from? Truth, when I think about where I’m from, I feel proud, like yeah, I’m from Boston. But then, well, I’m Latina, and my parents were born in Central America, and I’m from “JP” or “the city.” What people like Steve were really doing was not asking a question but making a statement: You must not be from here. So for my six-word autobiography, I wrote: Don’t ask me where I’m from. Yeah. And when Miss Amber asked us to share, for once I didn’t hesitate. I read it aloud: “Don’t ask me where I’m from.”
Silence. Head nods. Me, exhaling. I felt lighter just having said it.
“Liliana, thanks for getting us started. Can you tell us more about why you chose those particular six words?” Miss Amber encouraged.
“Well…” I refocused. “I’m sick of people asking me where I am from. No—where I am ‘from-from.’ I am sick of people assuming I wasn’t born in this country or that I don’t speak English or that I eat rice and beans every night for dinner.”
Two girls laughed. But in an I got you way.
I felt lighter and lighter. And I couldn’t stop. I told them about the meme of Rayshawn with a noose made of basketball net, and how there was like, no diversity at my school.
“What town is your school in?” Miss Amber asked.
“Westburg.”
Her eyes went all bright. “Wait! Do you know Mrs. Grew?”
Whaaaaa? “Um, yeah. She’s one of my teachers.”
“Get out! I know her from graduate school. She was a mentor teacher in my program. She gave a presentation once on how she’d organized a GoFundMe page where her class actually raised enough money to go to Washington, DC, on April vacation that year. I was so impressed.”
My mind = berserk. “For real? You actually know Mrs. Grew?”
“Yeah. She’s a really fabulous teacher.”
Mrs. Grew?
“All right,” Miss Amber was saying. “I didn’t mean to get us off track. That’s a fantastic six-word autobiography, Liliana. So telling. Okay, who wants to go next?”
A girl named Gabriela read hers aloud: “No, I do not eat dogs.” We were dying! Another girl, named Christina, read: “Write poems, eat, sleep, then repeat.” Yeah, this 826 place… it was different.… Different was good. Though I could not believe that Miss Amber and Mrs. Grew knew each other.
29
For homework in Mr. Phelps’s class we’d read an article on the subject of intersecting languages in the modern world. Now he was asking what we thought about a multilingual society, what the benefits and drawbacks of it were for any nation. As usual, he glanced meaningfully at me. As usual, my heart was beating fast. But this time it wasn’t because I didn’t want to share; it was because I did. But… I didn’t raise my hand just yet. One girl, Erin—also the class president—did, though. “Mr. Phelps, seriously.”
“Is that a comment, Erin?”
“I’m just saying, this is America and all, and we speak English. So anyone who comes to this country should learn English. I mean, it’s not a crazy idea. That’s our language. Like, if I went to Russia, I’d be expected to speak Russian, right? I wouldn’t expect Russians to all learn English because I was there.”
I kicked at my chair leg. Here we freakin’ go again.
Erin adjusted her hair band. She must have really loved those things; she wore a different color, like, every day. Today’s was lavender. And she still had a tan left over from wherever her family had gone for Thanksgiving. Who goes away for Thanksgiving? Isn’t the whole point to stuff yourself with turkey and mashed potatoes and pie and wear sweaters and watch movies with your cousins? That’s what we did every year—this year without Dad. No one even mentioned him the entire day. Mom worked that morning, helping a family in Brookline cook and clean for their guests, then came home super exhausted, and we ate stuffing and mashed potatoes and pie (which the boys made)—and waited for the turkey to finish roasting till midnight because, yeah, we’d forgotten to put it in the oven early enough.
Now Erin squared her shoulders, not done. “I’m just saying that it’s one thing if you want to speak more than one language, but shouldn’t everyone be expected to speak English in the US?”
A guy named Andrew called out, “You’re just pissed because you probably suck at foreign languages. Take Spanish with Señorita Kim. She’s so easy. She plays movies and soap operas or whatever, like every day.”