photo by 🇸🇮 Janko Ferlič on Unsplash
Every day after dinner, Mama sat with me at the dining room table to teach me Spanish. I didn’t like it. I didn’t want to say “hola” instead of “hello,” “adios?” instead of “goodbye” or “Me llamo Patrice. Tengo ocho años.”
“Why do I have to learn Spanish?” I asked Mama.
“Grandpa lives in Guadalajara, Mexico, and we’re going to visit him this winter. You can speak Spanish with Grandpa when you see him.
Reading English was hard enough. Learning Spanish words only confused me more. Besides, it was silly to learn words that meant the same thing as the words I already knew. I wanted to play jump rope, not learn Spanish.
Mama taught me more Spanish words every day. She taught me how to say the colors of the rainbow. She told me that, in Mexico, children went to una escuela instead of a school, and they counted uno, dos, tres instead of one, two, three.
One day, Mama said she had a surprise. “Today, I’m going to teach you Spanish words for your favorite games,” she said. “‘¿Quieres saltar la comba?” means ‘Do you want to jump rope?'”
I loved jumping rope. If I had to learn Spanish, at least I could think about something I liked to do. Later, as I jumped rope outside, I made a song of the new words: “¿Quieres saltar la comba? ¿Quieres saltar la comba?”
When Grandpa met Mama and me at the Guadalajara airport, he gave us big hugs. “Hola,” he said. “Como estan?”
“Hola!” said Mama. “I missed you.” I just smiled and said nothing.
“I thought you were learning Spanish, chica,” said Grandpa.
“I don’t need Spanish. You speak English, Grandpa. I can talk to you in English.”
“I like speaking Spanish, Patrice,” said Grandpa. “That’s what people speak in Mexico.”
“It’s silly, Grandpa, and I feel silly doing it,” I said. I took Grandpa’s hand and told him all about the airplane trip on the way to the car.
Grandpa’s house was beautiful. It was surrounded by high walls, but inside, all the rooms opened onto a central courtyard filled with brightly, colored flowers. A yellow-tiled water fountain made into a fish and seashells trickled into a blue-tiled basin.
I stood with Grandpa on the steps to the garden. “I’ve never seen a house so pretty,” I said, looking at all the pots of flowers.
“In Mexico, you’ll see and learn many new things,” said Grandpa. “Come, let me show you your bedroom before my friends arrive for dinner.”
Soon, Grandpa’s friends arrived. In the dining room, Grandpa introduced Mama to the grownups, Ricardo and Mari. Beside Mari stood a girl with a long black braid and big brown eyes. “Patrice, this is Anana. She is eight years old, too,” said Grandpa.
Anana took a few steps away and leaned into her mother’s skirt. Her dark eyes opened wide as she looked at me. Grandpa smiled, said something in Spanish, and the grownups walked into the kitchen.
I felt small standing in the middle of the room with Anana and her big eyes. “Do you want to play hide and seek?” I asked nervously. Anana just opened her brown eyes wider.
“Do you want to play with puppets?” I asked. “I brought some with me from my home.” Anana inched around the other side of a pillar and hid one eye against its plaster.
This isn’t any fun, I thought. Grandpa invites friends over for me to play with and they don’t even talk to me. I looked at Anana hiding behind the pillar, then ran to my bedroom.
My jump rope was lying on top of the bedspread. I crawled onto the bed, wound the rope around my hands, and thought about Anana. What big eyes she had, so dark compared to my blue ones. Anana’s black hair was longer than mine, too. I wished my hair was long enough to braid like hers.
Things in Mexico were different than at home. Anana wore a fancy dress with ruffles and ribbons. I looked down at my shorts and Tshirt. Why did she get so dressed up to play, I wondered.
There was no one to play with and strange things to get used to. All my friends were far away.
I crawled off the bed with the jump rope in my hand. The brown tiled floor was perfect for jumping, so I swung the rope over my head and began to sing, “¿Quieres saltar la comba? ¿Quieres saltar la comba?” like Mama taught me. On the third jump, I stopped singing and slowly lowered the rope in front of me.
“¿Quieres saltar la comba?” I repeated slowly, over and over again. I opened the bedroom door just enough to peek through the crack. Anana was still out in the courtyard, leaning on the pillar. I inched my body through the door and slowly walked out to her.
When she turned toward me, I held out the jump rope and asked, “¿Quieres saltar la comba?”
The brown eyes smiled. “Si, si, yo quiero saltar la comba!” She reached out, took the rope from my hand, walked out to the patio, and started jumping. I followed her into the sun and sat down on a step to wait my turn.
The sun felt good on my face. Remembering the Spanish numbers Mama taught me, I began counting out loud in rhythm with Anana’s skips, “Uno, dos, tres . . .”
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