I Lived on Butterfly Hill Read online

  I imagine I am Miss Scarlett gazing out at the red earth of Tara. “After all”—I drawl with an elegant curtsy to the ants, still clamoring over one another in a race to carry home crumbs twice their size—“tomorrow is another day!”

  Year of the Tiger

  Tía Graciela was serious about me doing chores. “Unlike your grandmother, I want to see dirt underneath your fingernails!” she says, laughing. In the garden I plant fuchsias to fill the vase on the table, rosemary for fragrance and seasoning, and tomatoes and mint to make what I have named Celeste’s Super Summer Salad. I also borrow a book about herbs from the library and read about growing parsley and basil. But before I learn to cook sauce, I teach myself to boil pasta. I try all different kinds: penne, fettucine, linguine, orecchiette. Tía Graciela tells me, “Celeste, one day you will wake up and find you have turned into an enormous noodle. Eat something else.” But I will never get tired of pasta.

  With something to do each day, my first summer on Juliette Cove passes quicker than I ever thought it would. The evening before the first day of school, Tía Graciela takes me out for hamburger-and-onion pizza at Sal’s. When I place an order, in English, for the two of us, Tía Graciela beams. “Celeste, just look at you! You’ve grown up so much this summer! How much more confidence you have! What would everyone on Butterfly Hill say now if they could hear you speaking English? If they could see you in the kitchen—cooking pasta, washing dishes, and sweeping the kitchen floor all at once? I think you have some of Nana Delfina’s magic! And you learned to do laundry—”

  “Sort of,” I interrupt my aunt, raising my eyebrows in amusement.

  “You did!” she insists. “I like pink shirts and socks better than white any day!”

  “Gracias, Tía.” I smile. It’s true that I’ve grown taller and stronger, and as of yet I have not turned into a noodle. And digging in the garden all summer will sure make me better at shoveling snow this winter. Suddenly the thought of another winter here makes me miss Abuela Frida. I close my eyes and see her shoveling snow outside her house in Vienna. She is about my age, but she looks like an angel.

  On the first day of seventh grade I am surprised to find that I understand a lot of what people are saying. I feel less afraid of speaking English, and less afraid of my classmates. Plus, I like my new teacher, Miss Rose, with her curly blond hair and gentle smile and her hands that are always moving. And how her name reminds me of the yellow rose that Nana Delfina wore in her hair when she arrived at our house under a black umbrella.

  Miss Rose often comes to the back corner of the classroom to help me and Kim. She is patient and explains things in a way that I understand. Miss Rose looks so happy when I finally begin to pronounce the TH and W sounds correctly that I find myself starting to like English.

  One Friday afternoon Miss Rose calls me up to her desk and tells me that she speaks a little Spanish. “¡Un poco!” she says, smiling. “Celeste, how about we set aside an hour every Friday so that your classmates can learn some Spanish, too?”

  “Yes . . . ummm . . . thank you?” I nervously stumble over my words. I don’t know what to say. I’m not sure I want to teach the class Spanish.

  But Miss Rose continues on excitedly. “You are the teacher now, Celeste,” Miss Rose says as she sits in my seat. “Why don’t you sit on my desk so that everyone can see you?”

  I look at her, surprised and hesitant. But already some hands are raised, and Charlie shouts from the back of the room: “Celeste, how do you say ‘basketball’ and ‘recess’?”

  “Celeste, how do you say ‘to have a crush on somebody’?” Charlie’s twin sister, Meg, asks with a sly grin. My brain does somersaults as I try to write all the answers on the blackboard. I help them pronounce difficult words like “amarillo”—“yellow”—and “ferrocarril”—“train”—and tell them how important accent marks are. I teach them the alphabet in Spanish, and how to roll the tongue to pronounce the letter Rrrrrrr. That is especially hard, and all sorts of strange gurgling sounds can be heard coming from classroom number 44.

  I tell them to practice by repeating the English word “kettle” and feeling the way their tongues tickle the roofs of their mouths. They laugh, but it starts to work!

  Miss Rose also asks me to tell the class about Chile. I tell them about geography. “Chile got its name because of how our birds sing. The Spanish heard them say ‘chile, chile.’ Chile has the sea, mountains, grass, and a desert called Atacama. Flowers—purple and yellow—grow there in the sand.” I realize how much I love talking to the class about my country. Suddenly I feel a big smile stretch across my cheeks. And then, amazingly, I see that same smile beam back at me from some of the desks!

  Miss Rose always tells the class how wonderful it is that Kim and I are able to speak in two languages. I know she is trying to make us feel better, but it makes me squirm and slide down lower in my seat because I can see the popular girls rolling their eyes behind their books, whispering, “What goody-goodies! What babies!” I want to shout out that I actually was raised to speak two languages perfectly—Spanish and German—and I even know some Hebrew and a few words in Mapudungún! But what good would it do? This isn’t Valparaíso, where it seems like everyone has at least one grandparent who came as an exile from somewhere else, where I’ve listened to the magician at Café Iris read palms in Russian and even Arabic! They would just think I am even stranger than they do now, and have one more thing to tease me about.

  Today Miss Rose asks Kim to share some words in Korean about New Year’s, because she saw the Chinese New Year celebrations in New York City on Good Morning America . At first Kim looks confused, and I raise my hand to correct Miss Rose: “Korea is not China!”

  But before I can, Kim says softly but firmly, “We celebrate New Year at this time in Korea, too, but we call it Seollal.” This year is the Year of the Tiger. A good year to try something new . . . maybe . . . try something that scares us. I look at Kim. At this moment she reminds me of Delfina. Kim never seems to boil up with frustration the way I do inside. She has that same simple dignity as the elderly Mapuche woman so far away whom I miss so much. Miss Rose smiles her beaming smile, and Kim shyly returns her smile and bows her head.

  “Thanks to you, Kim, and to Celeste, the whole class can become bilingual, and that,” Miss Rose says with a flourish of her chalk-covered hands, “is the future.”

  Kim’s House

  On a cloudy Friday in March when the snow finally has begun to melt and everything is all gray and slushy, I leave early for school so that I can walk instead of taking the bus, which tends to make me dizzy. I enter the coatroom, and there I find Kim, slouched in the corner, her head on her knees. She is sobbing without making a sound. “Kim?” I approach her and put my hand on her head. She looks up, and I know that I shouldn’t leave her alone.

  “Kim, I am coming over to your house after school today.”

  Kim nods. “Yes.”

  That is the only word she speaks all day. Kim holds her head down and won’t respond to anyone, not even to Miss Rose, who thinks she is ill and sends her to the nurse.

  I am distracted in school. I worry about Kim and suddenly realize that none of my classmates have ever invited me to their homes. None of the girls have invited me to the pajama parties I always hear them talking about. And Charlie might give me a piece of gum now and then, but he never talks to me at recess or asks if I want to do something after school.

  I sigh and peek at the clock over the classroom door. Ten thirty a.m. The morning drags on and on. Is sadness so heavy, it slows down the clocks?

  Kim stays in the nurse’s office all day, but when the dismissal bell rings, I run to find her waiting for me outside. She gives me a shy smile and walks toward the road, motioning for me to follow alongside her. We walk in silence. Every time a car speeds around a corner, we jump into the slush and wait for it to pass. Finally at the end of the road I see a small grocery store. In its nearly empty parking lot is an old run-down taxi. Its windo
ws are grimy with dust and dirt, but I see a slight figure in the backseat. Then the door opens, and a small woman with hair as black and shiny as onyx and a tired but gentle smile emerges. She reminds me of the jade goddess Kim wears. It is her mother.

  We get into the taxi, which Kim takes to and from school when the weather is bad. She speaks a few soft words to her mother in Korean. Her mother reaches her hand out for mine. Her palm is rough but warm. She smiles, and her brow furrows in concentration before she speaks. “Hello, daughter friend.”

  “Hello. My name is Celeste.”

  “Pretty. Me, Sae Jin.”

  I like the sound of her name, like something electric. “It means ‘jewel.’ ” Kim speaks to me again for the first time all day. “Jewel of everything.” Kim struggles to explain to me. “Of land, of sky, of sun, of trees, of people, of stars in black sky, planets far away. Especially faraway stars.”

  “The whole universe?” I ask.

  “Yes!” Kim actually smiles a bit. “Sae Jin. ‘Jewel of the Universe.’ My mother.”

  I remember Delfina’s nickname for my mother. Joya.

  “My mother is a jewel too,” I say as I reach my hand out to Kim’s mother, who takes it in her own hand with a kind but confused look on her face.

  Kim speaks again to her mother in Korean. It is amazing to hear Kim speak so naturally in her own language, when English is still such an effort for both of us. Jewel of the Universe. Sae Jin wears jeans that are too big for her, and a threadbare pink sweater so tattered at the elbows that I wish my Abuela Frida could knit her a new one. At her feet is a big yellow bucket with strong-smelling cleaning products, a toilet brush, and rubber gloves inside. I feel carsick. I want to say something that makes Kim and her mother laugh until they shine like emeralds, but my insides are sad and silent. I watch the scenery—thick trees interrupted by the occasional house, pub, or convenience store—as the taxi rumbles down a bumpy road that seems to go on forever.

  Finally we turn down a small dirt road that leads to a clearing in the woods. It is a parking lot filled with trailers. We get out of the taxi and zigzag our way through the rows of trailers until we stop in front of a small brown one, and Kim’s mother takes a key from her purse. “Welcome,” she says as she opens the door. The trailer is small, but it fits two cots and a little table with a photograph of a man with a serious face. Kim sees me looking at it. “My father.”

  “Does he live here with you?”

  “No. He was.” Once again, tears fall down Kim’s face. Her mother puts her arms around her daughter and looks over at me.

  “He left to Korea,” her mother says. “Yesterday. My son now is man of the family.”

  My throat goes dry, and I feel my own eyes begin to burn with tears. “I am sorry,” I say, wincing. I don’t ask why because I am afraid the answer will mean Kim will leave next.

  Kim motions to me to sit with her on one of the cots. “I sleep here with my mom, and Tom—that’s my brother; he’s working now—he sleeps over there.” I sit cross-legged on the thin mattress, my back against a pillow Kim has propped against the wall. We sit in silence. The trailer has only a few small windows. It is dark and the walls are bare. In Chile I saw poverty, but I never felt its grief like I do now. Maybe because the poor families were all together to share what little they had? I can’t imagine suffering from hunger, but I do know what it is like to suffer from loneliness. Both together would be unbearable. I look at the small burner where Kim’s mother has begun to stir something in a pot.

  “I make dinner. You like rice?”

  I nod and say, “Yes, thank you,” and wonder if Kim always has enough to eat.

  Kim’s mother serves us tea and steaming bowls of white rice. The three of us eat quietly, but just being there helps me understand Kim and her shy ways more. Once we have finished our meal and are sipping our second cups of tea, Kim’s mother points out the tiny window. “Sky darker. Your mother worry.”

  I think of my mother in hiding somewhere at the bottom tip of the world. “Mamá, don’t worry,” I want to call to the southern winds.

  Kim shakes her head at her mother and says a few quick words. Sae Jin puts her arm around my shoulders. “Oh, your aunt waiting. But you come again. Visit my daughter?” I reach up and give her a kiss on the cheek.

  “Yes, señora. Thank you.”

  The same taxi brings me home. I watch the darkening sky and the bare branches that line the road for less than half an hour until finally we pull up to my driveway. I walk toward the door, where Tía Graciela waits for me in her bathrobe. She takes my face in her hands and kisses my forehead. She doesn’t ask any questions. Maybe she sees the reflection of a lonely mother and daughter in my eyes and understands.

  I climb the stairs to my bedroom and stand in front of the map of Chile before throwing myself onto my bed. Once again, I count the days and anticipate my return, until I fall asleep. I dream that I am trapped alone in a trailer in the middle of a snowstorm. Ice has frozen all the doors and windows shut. “I can count my way out!” I scream, and begin, “Uno, dos, tres, cuatro, cinco,” until a low voice interrupts me: “Celeste, how can you number the unknown?”

  * * *

  Kim and I have gone from being the two girls who smiled at each other shyly to being good friends. Miss Rose always says, “Kim and Celeste, you are two little peas in a pod!” And she tells us what a peapod is, and all of a sudden I am in the kitchen shelling peas with Delfina. Magically the scent of parsley fills the back of the classroom where Kim and I sit while the rest of the class learns something called phonics that seems very boring.

  It’s true we are like little peas. Kim is just as small as me, and sometimes when we see each other in the morning, we trade something we are wearing for the day. She loves the forest-green shawl Nana Delfina gave me, and I love the red ribbon she always ties around her neck. It has a beautiful jade stone in the shape of a goddess dangling from it.

  I show Kim the advantages of being tinier than the tall kids with their long legs who always run fast and tag us out in baseball. We both dread gym class, and sometimes we hide under the teacher’s desk while the rest of the class goes to the gymnasium. We sit back-to-back so we can lean on each other and take a nap.

  Other times we feel like having some fun, so we tiptoe to the empty locker room and swing back and forth on the doors of the bathroom stalls. Creak, creak, creeeeeak! Their rusty old hinges threaten to give us away! We fly, our legs dangling in the air, until we can’t contain our giggles or our arms give out. Then we hide in a shower until the class comes back from gym to change. We get strange looks and snickers from the girls, especially the popular girl Meg, but we get that anyway. “They maybe think we are too stupid to understand gym,” Kim whispers to me. So we just play along and join them as they march back to classroom number 44.

  I think that Miss Rose never notices. But Kim shakes her head at me. “She knows. She just doesn’t say.” That makes me love Miss Rose even more.

  We are both learning English much faster this year, and Kim’s face lights up with happiness when she learns a new word. I hear her laugh when she reads that funny-sounding word with a surprising and beautiful meaning. “Butter fly . . . ? Butter . . . but it flies? Wait! Oh! I know! Butterfly!”

  I say, “Kim, you are like a comet.”

  “Butterflies are my favorite.”

  “Me too. That is the name of the hill where my house is in Chile. What is the name of the place where your house is?” But Kim just shakes her head and turns her eyes down to the list of vocabulary on her desk.

  When Miss Rose lets us out for a recess that always seems too short, our teeth chatter as our four feet in tall boots kick through the frozen leaves covering the playground. “My fingers feel like they might fall off!” I say, and watch a big poof of white smoke escape from my lips.

  “Do you think our hearts can freeze too?” Kim asks me with fear in her eyes.

  “Let’s run to the top of the hill and lie under t
hat pile of leaves and pretend it’s a blanket!” I answer, and pull her by the hand because I don’t know what to say about our hearts.

  But Kim is smiling again as we crunch, crunch, crunch up the hill. Something Kim especially loves to do is find leaves that resemble letters. One day Kim makes a beautiful shape by placing leaf stems on the pavement. Her name in Korean. Then she teaches me how to do mine. “That is the name for sky. That is where she lives”—Kim points to her necklace—“at the gate of the sky, watching us. Her name is Kuan Yin.”

  Kim’s language sounds so strange. I ask her to teach me the word “friend” in Korean. Kim tells me, “Celeste, you are my chingu. Friend.” Then she says, “Young won hee!” Her bird eyes sparkle. “That means ‘forever.’ ”

  Watching the Sky

  I wake up this morning the way I often do, imagining that Tía Graciela’s alarm clock is the doorbell, and that I hear my parents’ voices saying, “Where is our little star? Where is the celestial Celeste?”

  But more and more, there are good things to look forward to when the morning comes. Now that spring is almost here, Kim and I like to lie in the grass just to look at the sky. Sometimes her older brother, Tom, comes along. The ground is still cold, but the air around us is warm. We watch the clouds drift by in comfortable silence, and once in a while blurt out the shapes we see.

  “You always see an angel, Celeste,” Kim says, laughing. “I think what you see is you . My mother says the sky is my mirror.”

  “And a messenger,” adds Tom. I think about that and wonder if Abuela Frida is thinking of me right now. I almost see her looking out the window from her old chair, with her knitting on her lap, watching for my reflection in the sky.