I Lived on Butterfly Hill Read online

  I miss waking up in the morning and saying hello to the pelicans. Have they come back to Butterfly Hill, or are they in hiding too? I hope they’re all right. I wonder if they know I’m gone.

  I wish I could send a letter, or even better, receive one. ¡Sí! A letter from my parents, and another with news of my friends, and another wrapped with blue yarn from Abuela Frida’s scarves. Can’t somebody, anybody, tell me anything?! Not knowing drives me crazy. But Tía Graciela says it is too dangerous to send mail to Chile, and even more dangerous to send it here, because the police in Chile read everything.

  I rummage through my dresser. Inside the bottom drawer I find a map of Chile I brought from home. I pin it on the wall, next to the calendar I use to count the days since I have seen my parents: sixty-five.

  Juliette Cove Middle School

  On Sunday evening Tía Graciela takes me out for dinner at Sal’s Pizza. Not since the plane landed in Boston have I been surrounded by so many strange sounds. Hearing people at other tables speak English without being able to understand it is a scary feeling. It’s like being a baby again, not being able to express myself in a way that everyone will understand. It makes me feel trapped.

  “Celeste. Earth to Celeste!” Tía Graciela smiles at me between mouthfuls of a hamburger-and-onion slice. “Querida, I want to talk to you about something important. It is time for you to go to school.”

  School! I don’t want to think about going to school here. I don’t want to go to school anywhere else but Juana Ross in Valparaíso. It makes everything seem too real. It makes being here real. Not just a visit. Not a vacation, like I told the airport security people. I wish that I could keep pretending, but Tía Graciela insists on school. And she insists that my parents would insist.

  So the next day I wake up early on Juliette Cove and eat a bowl of cold cornflakes that make my stomach ache. I walk to the end of River Road wearing Nana Delfina’s green shawl over an orange winter coat Tía Graciela found at a secondhand shop. It is way too big for me, but I don’t care. With my ears and face wrapped in my long blue scarf, I pretend no one can see me. Maybe the bus driver will just keep going, and I won’t have to go to school? But soon a bus the color of a sunflower pulls to the corner where I stand. A young blond woman opens the door for me. I climb on board without looking at anyone, sit in the empty front seat, and pray for a happy day.

  Every time the bus stops, the kids get in and run all the way to the back. I am afraid to turn around, but I can hear a lot of laughing and shouting back there. And a lot of English I don’t understand. Finally we arrive, and I run off the bus and toward the school with my head down before anyone can notice me.

  Juliette Cove Middle School is too dark, as dark as the gray day that seems to be the color of Juliette Cove and the color of Maine. Gray houses, gray umbrellas, gray smiles.

  The first thing I notice is that no one wears uniforms, and they chew gum all the time. I tell myself, this is America. One girl offers me gum, and so I start chewing. Her name is Kim. Like me, she is from a faraway place. She is from Korea, and when she speaks, I think she must have swallowed a bird. I like her a lot, and even though we hardly speak the same language, we become friends.

  I spend all day trying to understand the English and watching the mouths of students who seem to never stop chewing gum. They look at me and don’t talk to me. When I pass through the school yard at the end of the day, I hear a group of girls making fun of me. I don’t understand everything they say, but I feel how mean their words are.

  Words like “Latina” and “ugly coat.”

  Their peals of nasty laughter sting my eyes. I take a deep breath and tell myself, No llores! Don’t let them see you cry! I pass by them pretending not to hear. They shout after me, “Does she wear that stupid apron with her name on it all the time? Are they sure she belongs in sixth grade?”

  Before I turn down the street, I look for Kim, but she seemed to disappear as soon as the bell rang. My feet feel so heavy. The last eight hours—the first day of school—flash through my mind. During math, which I thought might be easier because I am good at math and I don’t need to speak English to solve an equation, a loud boy named Charlie kept making fun of my name and imitating my accent every time the teacher turned his back to write on the blackboard. And all those nasty girls exploded into their nasty laughter behind their hands with shiny pink nails.

  The teacher is named Mr. Turner. The school is so small that he teaches all the sixth-grade subjects, not like at Juana Ross, where I saw a different teacher each time the bell rang. I liked that, because if I was caught daydreaming or passing notes to Marisol in one class, I could always start fresh in the next. Mr. Turner seems kind, but he speaks in a low drone and seems to make the entire class either sleepy or fidgety. But for half the day I join Kim for special English lessons at the back of the classroom. The English teacher is named Mr. Kendall. He is very old and doesn’t seem to like children or teaching at all. He is impatient and doesn’t wait to let Kim and me sound out words until we get them right, the way Abuela Frida taught me to speak German. He snaps the answer to us as if he is angry. I’ve never felt stupid before, and I keep reminding myself what my father once told me: “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent, Celeste.”

  I wish I could tell Kim this, but I don’t know how yet. She shakes like a leaf when Mr. Kendall asks her a question or makes her read out loud. At the end of class I see inky smudges on Kim’s worksheets where tears have fallen.

  Soaps

  Since Mr. Kendall is not much help, I mostly learn to speak English after school by watching the television. I watch it a lot, although I never liked to in Chile. We watch what Tía Graciela calls “my program” when I get home from school. It fills the pit that is always in my stomach, at least for a little while. “This is how I learned to speak English,” Tía Graciela tells me. She is addicted to General Hospital. It is a type of show with a funny name: soap opera. But I know what they are; we have lots of these telenovelas in Chile. I listen to the way all those blond, glamorous-looking Americans speak, and try to make the same gestures. I am good at moving my hands, but my voice sounds like a stranger to me. “But your accent is getting better, Querida!” Tía Graciela encourages me every day.

  “Here it is just English, everywhere you turn. But in Valparaíso you heard so many foreign words and voices all mixed together. Remember Madame Lamoreux, who would always speak to us in French?” Tía Graciela smiles. “It was your mother and I who gave her the nickname Madame Roquefort, like the cheese!”

  “And now the whole neighborhood thinks that is her name!” I almost choke on my spaghetti because suddenly I am laughing a real, deep laugh, something I haven’t done since I left Chile. “Why did you and Mamá call her after such a smelly cheese, Tía?”

  “It wasn’t because she smelled. Actually, she always smelled like Chanel perfume. But it was because she thought she was so much more elegant than everyone else on Butterfly Hill. She put on too many airs.”

  “When I was little, I thought she was called Roquefort because when she came on Tuesdays to have coffee with Abuela Frida, she always brought cheeses wrapped in purple cellophane and tied with a pink ribbon. On Abuela Frida’s birthday last year she brought Austrian cheese, and Abuela ate it all in one day!”

  Tía Graciela smiles again as I continue, “Madame Roquefort was always telling Abuela Frida that I should learn English. Señora Atkinson, too. Now it seems they were right. But I wanted to learn German.”

  “I am glad your grandmother taught you, fräulein.” Tía sounds funny calling me “little miss” in German. Her accent is terrible! It makes me feel better about my accent in English.

  “Everyone is always learning something new,” my father would remind me when he checked to see if I was doing my homework and found me gazing out the window at the stars. “If not, why be alive?”

  A Winter Birthday

  Winter lasts too, too long on Juliette Cove! I am tired o
f what feels like months upon endless months of snow blanketing the ground. The yard is like a blank sheet of paper, but instead of imagining stories to write on it, the only words I find are the names of everybody and everything I long for. The snowflakes that fall from the sky remind me of Abuela Frida’s hair. How I would love to brush it for her again! My hands, always cold, search for sunlight as warm and bright as Nana Delfina’s gap-toothed smile. The cold makes me miss the warm smells of Sunday empanadas and fresh-picked cilantro from the herb garden.

  In winter it feels sadder that I have no one at school to talk to. On my hands I draw map after map of the long and thin land whose name reminds me of a bird, and rock myself to sleep saying, “Chile, Chile, Chile.”

  On February 28th I wake up to frost on the windowpane. The crystals remind me of the stars over Valparaíso Harbor and the hours I would spend on the roof, looking out over Butterfly Hill. I bury myself deeper beneath my comforter. It’s cold, and part of me doesn’t want to get up because I know what day it is. At home many people would gather around our table to celebrate my birthday, but today I am guessing that only one person will knock on our door—the mailman, Mr. Carter.

  How strange to have a birthday in the wintertime! When I was born, it was summertime in the Southern Hemisphere. “All the flowers were blooming that morning,” Mamá always told me. February 28th was one of the only days of the year when my parents wouldn’t go to the clinic. Nana Delfina would always fill her hair with orchids and copihues, the national flower of Chile. They are like delicate pink bells with yellow clappers inside them, and they looked like earrings hanging from her ears.

  Delfina would proudly walk through the entire neighborhood with the enormous birthday cake she stayed up late into the night baking, enticing everyone to our home. All of our neighbors would come to drink té and café con leche and eat that beautiful cake with endless caramel layers, that cake called mil hojas . . . a thousand leaves. That was the one day I could have a mug entirely full with strong coffee, with as much sugar as I wanted. Friends brought me presents like fresh cheese, chocolates, flowers, and hard-boiled eggs. And Abuela Frida would sing “Happy Birthday” to me in German with a shy, girlish smile on her face. I was always so happy that day, and maybe every day, and yet I didn’t realize just how much until now. And here I am so far away, and I can’t even call my mother because I don’t know where she is. But I know that she is thinking of me, and my father, too. I know that.

  I hear the old springs of Tía Graciela’s bed creak as she rolls to one side and then the other. That’s the sound of her waking up. Will she remember what day it is? I must have dozed off for a moment because the next thing I hear is Tía Graciela knocking on my bedroom door, and then I see her walking toward me wearing Abuela Frida’s smile and carrying a little white cake with a blue candle on top. “¡Feliz Cumpleaños! Happy birthday, Celeste! Make twelve wishes, one for each year!” I close my eyes for a long time, and then I blow out the candle.

  “I can tell they were good wishes.” Tía Graciela pulls a fork from her bathrobe pocket. “Breakfast in bed, señorita. Have a taste—it’s something new for you.” I take a big forkful and sigh as the tastes and textures of cinnamon, carrots, and cream cheese dance in my mouth. “Carrot cake,” she tells me. This cake doesn’t have the heavenly vanilla scent of Nana Delfina’s, but it tastes just as delicious. Maybe even better, though I would never tell Delfina that.

  I Search for Myself in Spanish

  My English must be getting better, because Mr. Turner asks me to write about my family in Chile and to read my essay aloud. My classmates don’t even know where my country is located, and they say “Chilly” instead of Chile. They don’t know the capital cities of South American countries either.

  I search for myself in Spanish and always repeat in my mind some of my favorite words like “libélula,” “luciérnaga,” “lluvia,” “euforia” or “dragonfly,” “firefly,” “rain,” “euphoria.” Sometimes when I repeat the word “euphoria,” I feel great sadness, which is the very opposite of the meaning of the word. But I can’t imagine feeling euphoria until I am back in Chile with my family and friends.

  Charlie, who seems to bully everyone, asks me if my family lives in a hut and if we have refrigerators.

  “Charlie”—I struggle to get the words right—“my country has highways, airplanes, and refrigerators. But more important, Chile has poets, and people fill entire stadiums to hear them.” Suddenly I feel brave, and I toss my head. “I know poems by heart. Do you?”

  He looks at me, surprised, then shrugs and pretends like he didn’t hear me. I walk home with a huge smile on my face. On the side of the road I notice the tip of a daffodil bulb emerging from the ground. I search for myself in Spanish. But today I took a stand, and found myself in English.

  A Basket of Blueberries

  I try to make the time pass by learning at least ten new English words, and writing them in my notebook, every day. And somehow the time does pass, and when I count the days on my calendar, I see that it soon will be winter in Valparaíso. Summer has come to this half of the world, and Juliette Cove Middle School let out yesterday. I am glad! I didn’t have anyone to say good-bye to but Kim, who surprised me by giving me a little hug at the back of our classroom before running out the door.

  Today, to celebrate the summer, Tía Graciela takes me blueberry picking at a farm down the road from the lighthouse in a town called York. I’ve never seen—or tasted—blueberries before! They look like sapphires all wet with morning dew and glistening in the sunshine. And the taste! Yum! I can’t seem to stop stuffing handfuls of the tiny, tangy sweet jewels into my mouth.

  “Celeste, you are eating more blueberries than you put in your basket! How will you ever make a pie?” Tía Graciela teases me as she pops some berries into her own mouth.

  “Do you really want to make a pie, Tía?” I ask, anticipating yet another visit from the fire department.

  “No, personally I don’t want to make a pie. I want you to make it!”

  “Me?! But Nana Delfina doesn’t even let me near the stove! I have never baked anything in my life!”

  “Until today, Querida. Until today. There is always a time to start.”

  I look at her skeptically. She must be joking.

  “Celeste.” Tía Graciela’s voice is suddenly very serious. “I want you to get busy. I have decided to give you chores like American kids have. You spend way too much time upstairs in your room. I have left you with too much empty space to fill with sad thoughts. It’s a bad habit of my own, and I don’t want to teach it to you. Working with your hands will be good for you.”

  “But . . . so . . . what . . . ?” Flustered, I don’t know what I want to say.

  Tía Graciela smiles. “Didn’t you have your imaginary dolls’ garden on Butterfly Hill?” I nod. “Well, here I have a real garden that needs tending, and meals that need to be cooked.”

  I nod and feel my mouth gaping open. Part of me doesn’t believe she will make me follow through with it, and the other part of me hopes she does.

  I hesitate, then ask, “Can I plant parsley and basil so I can learn to make spaghetti sauce like Nana Delfina’s?”

  “Of course! I will take you to the library to find books about gardening, and then you can plant whatever you like.” Suddenly I feel so excited. “Provided,” Tía Graciela continues, “it will grow here in this crazy northern climate.”

  “It will, Tía! I promise it will!”

  Tía Graciela nods. “That’s my girl. Come on now. I will race you to see who can fill their basket first! Someone’s got a pie to bake!”

  * * *

  “¡Ay! I wish Nana Delfina were here to help us!” One stop at the lighthouse, two cones at the ice cream stand, and three long, flour-covered hours later, I am in the kitchen, Tía Graciela peering over my shoulder. I wave my hand at the smoke pouring from the oven and take out the pie.

  “Your pie that you made, all by yourself!” Tía Graciela
says proudly, squeezing her nose shut with her fingers.

  I poke a fork inside the pie, wave it around to cool it, and tentatively take a bite. The insides are still sweet and yummy!

  “Here, taste!” I hand my aunt a fork heaped with warm blueberries. “I’ll just cut off the crust and leave it on the porch for the wild turkeys.”

  Tía Graciela shakes her head. “Oh no—they are much too refined for burned leftovers! I bet you they turn their wobbly beaks up at it.”

  Then she takes me by the hand. “Come on. Let’s have pie in the living room for dinner tonight. I have a treat—your Abuela Frida’s favorite movie. It was the first movie she saw in the theaters after arriving in Valparaíso. And I found it on sale in the drugstore, of all places!”

  “Only in America!” I imitate my aunt, who pokes me in the ribs. She says that a lot, especially when we are in the long, wide aisles of the grocery store trying to choose a breakfast cereal or watching hour-long TV commercials for frying pans with spatulas that flip pancakes automatically.

  Mesmerized, we curl up on the couch and watch all three hours of Gone with the Wind while our mouths turn blueberry-blue. Then I crawl up the stairs to my room and hope I have a dream about Rhett Butler as I remind myself that, like Miss Scarlett said, “Tomorrow is another day.”

  When I open the front door the next morning, I find that my aunt was right about turkeys and their snobby palates. An army of ants, however, was not so picky and is piled atop the crust. Pretending I can hear my own red petticoats rustle, I quickly run to get the broom and scatter the feast into the grass before Tía Graciela sees!