I Lived on Butterfly Hill Page 14

  Tía Graciela puts her arm over my shoulders and leads me to the car. “But they did, Celeste—they left traces of themselves in our hearts.”

  “Is this what it means to be an exile? To become invisible to this world, to become just a memory?”

  Tía Graciela starts the car, sighs, and turns in the direction of our house. “Exile, Celeste, is a complicated topic. Our planet is full of exiles, refugees and immigrants—all of them find themselves where they are for different reasons.”

  “And what about us, Tía Graciela? Are we exiles?”

  “Celeste, we are a bit of everything. But above all, we are two women from Chile. A country like a rose petal—remember the poet Neruda said that? And to Chile we will someday return.”

  We drive in silence. In my mind I see the empty trailer. I see Kim’s dark eyes and feel Tom’s warm hand. I taste Sae Jin’s tea. I hope they are somewhere where people are kind to them. A place like my home, like Butterfly Hill. I imagine them walking up the path that leads to my house. The garden is in full bloom. Nana Delfina opens the door with a smile. “We’ve been expecting you,” she says, and she reaches her arms out to gather them into her green shawl.

  Somewhere to Keep Her Sorrow

  When we arrive home, I run upstairs and lie on my bed. I listen to Tía Graciela walking this way and that all over the house, and dropping things and picking them up again. She does that when she is thinking too much.

  Then she bursts in. “I’ve ordered hamburger-and-onion pizza for us tonight, Querida,” she says. “I feel too clumsy to cook.”

  “Okay, that sounds safe to me.”

  Tía Graciela sits down on my bed. I notice a bunch of letters overflowing from the pockets of her purple skirt. “I’ve been thinking more about exile. What it is.”

  I drape Nana Delfina’s shawl over my aunt’s shoulders. “I am listening,” I tell her.

  “Mmmmm, I can smell my old nana’s parsley and rose water.” She tucks the edges of the shawl tighter around her thin waist.

  “You know, Celeste, I still miss the light, the aromas, the familiar words, and above all, our family. But”—she looks at me with eyes like sunlit lakes—“I’ve grown accustomed to living this way, each day waiting for the mailman to arrive with a letter. Over time I’ve adjusted to my loneliness, like the Andes root themselves deeper into the stilled earth after a tremor has rocked them off balance.”

  “But why—” I take a deep breath as I prepare to ask something I’ve always wondered but was afraid to mention for fear of upsetting her. “Why didn’t you go back to Chile when . . . I mean, after . . .”

  “After Guillermo and I broke up?” my aunt finishes my question.

  I nod, biting my lip. It’s the first time I’ve heard her say his name.

  “I’m not sure I know exactly.” Tía Graciela looks down at her hands for a long while. “I guess I stayed because I liked the freedom of being in a place where nobody knew me—”

  “Anywhere but Valparaíso?” I interrupt her.

  She nods. “I think I wanted to be anonymous.”

  “It’s hard to understand, Tía,” I tell her. “Maybe because right now I miss my friends and neighbors on Butterfly Hill so much. I can’t imagine not wanting to be surrounded by people who know me and care about me.”

  “That’s because you have always been so sure of who you are, Celeste,” Tía Graciela says. “It’s taken me longer to know who I am.” I want to tell her that I feel confused and scared nearly every day, but Tía Graciela continues. “At the university, Celeste, I studied to be a lawyer. I wanted to help the poor by fighting for their rights to food, to medicine, to an education. I had all these big ideas—your mother and I even dreamed of building a community center where people could come for medical checkups and legal advice. But when I graduated, I found that thinking about something and actually doing it are very different. All the poverty and injustice in the country was just too much for me. I knew that as much as I worked, there would still be more to do. I felt like I was drowning.”

  “I think I understand, Tía,” I say, remembering how overwhelmed I felt when I went with my parents to the outskirts of Valparaíso after the big rainstorm.

  “So I tried different things—I acted in community theater, I worked as a receptionist for your parents, but most of all, I wanted to travel. I wanted to live in exotic places. I wanted to feel free. So I followed Guillermo on his dance tours for a while, all over Chile, Argentina, Brazil. And when he was invited to join a dance troupe in Montreal, I was thrilled by the chance to move to Canada. But soon after, we broke up.” Tía Graciela grows quiet, and I wish I could think of something to say. Instead I reach for her hand. She squeezes my own hand and smiles gratefully.

  “Then what happened, Tía?”

  “I moved to Juliette Cove because I needed some place, any place, to be alone and recover from my heartbreak. I picked this spot because the name reminds me of my favorite Shakespeare play, the one about a love that lasts forever. And I did recover . . . slowly . . . and I think I grew to like being in a place where I can be just as eccentric as I please . . . even though the price of freedom is loneliness.”

  “But can’t you be yourself in Valparaíso?” I feel sorry for my aunt, thinking that it’s either one or the other. It doesn’t make sense to me. It’s been hard for sure on Juliette Cove, but I’ve been myself here as much as I have been at home in Valparaíso. Because there’s nothing else I can be.

  “I can,” she concedes. “But it’s very hard for me. I find I am braver here, among strangers. Isn’t that strange? It should be the opposite. You see, my dear, there are always challenges we need to overcome. We never stop growing. . . . In fact, I’ve learned a lot from watching you.”

  Tía Graciela’s voice quiets to a whisper. She looks very tired as she leans over to kiss my cheek. “Now get some sleep, Querida. Buenas noches.”

  “Buenas noches, Tía. Thank you for sharing with me. And I won’t forget to root myself like the mountains when I am lonely.”

  As Tía Graciela slips from my bedroom, I open my journal and write: Now I know why Tía Graciela collects conch shells. She needs somewhere to keep her sorrow.

  Maybe They’re Smiling Together

  I wake just after dawn, my notebook beside me. I stand at the window and see the pale crescent moon. It is a slight, fading sliver, waiting for the sun to completely erase it from the sky. I look for a long time at the crescent shape, until in it I see my mother’s smile. Or is it my father’s? It has been so long since I have seen either of them. . . . Could it be both of them smiling together . . . wherever they are?

  I turn from the window and crawl back into bed, pulling the sheets up over my head. I think about Mamá and Papá, Abuela Frida and Nana Delfina, about Lucila and Ana, about Marisol and Cristóbal . . . about Kim and Tom. I think about the people I love who I can’t be near, and soon my head throbs and my heart feels sore.

  I must have fallen asleep again, for I wake to Tía Graciela placing her hand on my forehead. “Celeste, you’ve been asleep all morning! It’s nearly one in the afternoon! Are you ill, Querida?” Her hand is cool and soothing, like Delfina when she checks for a fever. . . .

  And then the tears come.

  “Oh, Tía,” I sob. “I miss Kim! I am so worried about her and, and . . .” My voice falters. “And her whole family!” I cry and cry—and finally I draw a ragged breath and ask, “Tía Graciela, what does the word ‘love’ mean to you?”

  She smiles. “Love for one’s parents? For brothers and sisters? For friends? For a puppy? A favorite book?”

  I know she understands perfectly well what I asked. She is trying to get me to smile, and somehow it works and I feel a bit better. “No, Tía Graciela! The love you have for someone like your boyfriend Guillermo.”

  She sighs. “Well, to love another so much that you build a life, a home, and a family together is something so beautiful, but that—that is almost impossible for me to describe like y
our parents could.” She turns her face toward the window for a moment. “For Guillermo and me it didn’t work out like that.”

  I squeeze her hand. “I am sorry, Tía, if I . . .”

  But she quickly turns back to me. Her eyes are sad, but her voice is light as she teases me, “Hmmmm. I don’t need the tarot cards to know that my little niece isn’t so little anymore. And that you are maybe asking more about a first love.” She pauses dramatically, and her eyes turn from sad to sparkly. “About Tom, maybe?”

  My heart leaps and crashes when I hear his name. I whisper, “Sí.”

  “Oh, my first love. So long ago, but I see him so clearly. I remember how I felt that my entire skin seemed to breathe in and out. I laughed and sang all the time without knowing why. Oh, Celeste, whenever I saw Daniel Lombardi, I would blush as red as those baby tomatoes we used to see in the markets of Valparaíso. Remember?”

  I find myself smiling. Tía Graciela sounds so much like how I felt after that day Tom and I held hands beneath the sky.

  “But you must also know that love can mean letting someone go, too. The person you love must be free, and if he returns to you, it’s a gift from heaven. And if he doesn’t return, you are still happy to have had the chance to know and love him.”

  So that’s the only thing I can do about Tom. Let go. I fear I am getting good at missing the people I love most. Not that it hurts any less. Tom. I will think of him when I see the clouds in the sky and hope that maybe someday I will see him again on Juliette Cove. Or even on Butterfly Hill.

  At the Lighthouse

  The summer seems like a string of multicolored pearls. White, black, blue, pink—different lights, different shades mingle to form one long necklace. I never know quite what day it is, especially because Tía Graciela never uses a calendar. For the past few weeks all I have wanted to do is eat my breakfast as quickly as possible, run to the oak tree in the yard, and open the book Miss Rose gave me at the end of the school year. “Here, Celeste,” she said as she handed me a thick book with a picture of four girls in old-fashioned dresses on the hardcover. “This was my favorite when I was your age. I think it will be a challenge for you, but your English has improved so much that I want you to try.” The book is called Little Women, and I can’t put it down. Of course, I imagine myself as Jo, who wants to be a writer and is always saying things that people think are strange, and always getting into mischief.

  “Celeste Marconi! I do believe that the roots of this tree are going to wrap around you and keep you for their own. Which I suppose you think is fine now, as long as you have a book to read, but you’re going to be awful cold there buried in the snow in the winter!” I laugh and drag my eyes away from the page.

  “Hola, Tía.”

  My aunt reaches her hand out to me.

  “Help me get out and have some fun! Let’s go to the beach and have a picnic!”

  I snap the book shut and hop up. “By the lighthouse! Let’s bring lemonade and cheese puffs!”

  My aunt rolls her eyes. “Ay, Celeste, cheese puffs? They don’t even taste like cheese! Nana Delfina is going to have some harsh words for me if I send you home with a taste for American junk food!”

  * * *

  The lighthouse stands at the edge of the rocky harbor. We stretch on the sands beside it and gobble our lunch of lemonade, tuna sandwiches, cheese puffs, and chocolate pudding. Between bright orange mouthfuls I tell my aunt, “I love lighthouses—they’re always there—giving us light and keeping us safe.” I pause, then add, “And I imagine all the ports in the world and their lighthouses lit up like a welcome, and I see myself sailing to so many places someday. I want to find the earth’s heartbeat in the middle of the sea.”

  “Ay, Celeste. I hope you are writing all these beautiful thoughts down in a book. I want to read them all!”

  My cheeks turn pink. I don’t tell her that I’ve already started.

  As Tía Graciela and I walk on the beach, it grows misty. I look back at our footprints in the sand. Sometimes they go in straight lines, sometimes they curve, and sometimes they circle around each other and form knots. But Tía Graciela likes to look ahead at the sand before she steps.

  “See these cracks and holes?” She falls to her knees and peers down one excitedly. “There must be some creature like a clam or a crab underneath, and that’s its airhole. Did your mother ever tell you how when we were little girls, we would sit by these holes for hours and hours, waiting for a pearl to pop up? We would both keep our hands very near and ready, each trying to be the first to catch one!” Tía Graciela laughs. It is a sound that’s contagious. I laugh and scoop some seaweed up and drape it over her head.

  “Now you can dance with the mermaids, Tía!” I shout, and begin to twirl around in circles right where the seafoam meets the shore. I close my eyes and spin faster. Then I hear a voice, not Tía’s—younger, American.

  I open my eyes and see Valerie from my class, the girl who is always tagging along with Charlie’s sister, Meg. Valerie always seemed snobby to me but not nearly as scary as Meg. “Oh, hi!” I say. I’m instantly embarrassed.

  But Valerie smiles. “Do you take dance lessons?”

  “Ummm, n-no,” I stutter. After a summer alone with Tía Graciela, English drops like clumsy stones from my mouth. Valerie smiles again and steps closer.

  “I take ballet lessons. I want to dance in The Nutcracker ballet in Boston someday. My mother used to take me and my sister every Christmastime before she got sick.”

  Her smile fades, and I don’t know what to say. I reach out my hand and touch her wrist. “I didn’t know that, um, that . . .”

  “My mother has cancer,” Valerie completes the sentence. “I didn’t want everyone in our class to know. I was . . . afraid . . . they would look at me . . . differently.” Her blue eyes lower to the ground. “But maybe . . . maybe you know how that feels a little bit too. I am sorry, Celeste.”

  “I am too,” says a voice approaching from the mist behind Valerie. It is Meg, the queen bee of the class herself, with her twin brother, Charlie, a few steps behind, a sheepish half smile on his face.

  I take a deep breath and glance over at Tía Graciela, who tells me, “I’m ready for a rest. I’ll go sit on that big rock for a while, Celeste. You go with your friends.” I take another deep breath. My stomach is doing somersaults. Friends. Are they my friends? Or will they laugh at me? Find a way to remind me I’m not one of them?

  Instead Meg shouts, “Let’s play hide-and-go-seek tag! Boys against the girls! Too bad, Charlie, you are all alone and you’re IT!” We all laugh as we scatter through the mist and hide behind rowboats and the huge berry bushes that grow high on the dunes. We play until we are huffing and puffing and tumble onto the cold sand to catch our breaths.

  “Macaroni, I have been telling these girls for a while,” Charlie says, “you might be a bit strange, but you sure aren’t boring.”

  “Thanks, Charlie. I think.”

  Charlie smiles a real smile, and then he gives my braid a tug before bounding up from the sand, yelling, “Catch me if you can!”

  “Oh, I am too tired to chase him!” Valerie yawns.

  “He can be such a pain,” Meg says to me with a roll of her eyes. We laugh, and suddenly Tía Graciela is approaching us.

  “Girls, would you like to come to the house for empanadas?” she asks with a warm smile. “Celeste made them herself.” I blush, embarrassed, pretending to be absorbed in turning a seashell over with my big toe.

  Valerie and Meg exchange quizzical glances.

  “Empanadas—they’re like little pies filled with meat and onions and raisins and all sorts of yummy spices,” I tell them. “We eat them in Chile like you eat peanut butter sandwiches here. And I am so tired of peanut butter, by the way!”

  They laugh. Again, a friendly laugh. “Okay, why not?” says Meg.

  And Valerie nods and shouts, “Charlie, come on. It’s time to eat!”

  “That should have him back in a flash,” s
he adds. “I call him the trash compactor.”

  That afternoon I watch as my new friends each tentatively try an empanada. I hold my breath. The empanadas are, as always, a little too dark along the edges. Oh, why can I never take anything out of the oven on time? But I watch, amazed, as they eat another and another, licking their fingers and asking for more. Tía Graciela peeks into the kitchen with a Mona Lisa smile on her face, and I can tell she is just as pleased as I am.

  Dinner Party

  That night I find Tía Graciela in bed early, reading her worn copy of Neruda’s love sonnets.

  “Tía?”

  “Hmmmm?” She lifts her eyes from the page reluctantly, propping her pink reading glasses atop her wavy red hair.

  “Tía, I want to have Valerie, Meg, and Charlie over to the house again. I want to make them dinner. May I?”

  Her smile is so bright, and she looks so pleased, that I have to grin back at her.

  “I think that is a wonderful idea, Celeste! What will you make?”

  “Spaghetti de verdad, Tía. True, authentic pesto the way we make at home. They will love it! They hardly ever get homemade food. Did you know that? Their parents all work, and they almost never sit around the table with the whole family. Charlie and Meg usually eat frozen pizza watching TV.”

  “So, this will be a real treat for them, Querida.” Tía Graciela seems to have borrowed some of my energy. “How about Friday? You can pick some flowers from the garden. And I will try to find a pretty tablecloth when I am in town so everything can be elegant!”

  “Gracias, Tía.” I give her a hug. “And velas, too?”

  “Oh, yes. What is an elegant dinner without candles?”

  All week I am absorbed in preparations—trying to remember Delfina’s recipes, looking up the words for ingredients in English to make a shopping list in my notebook, scouring the aisles of the grocery store with Tía Graciela, and watering the blue hydrangeas in the front yard every evening so that they bloom into the perfect table centerpiece. It feels good to have something to look forward to, and to be so busy. Working with my hands seems to quiet the ever-present question in my mind—where are my parents?—at least for a little while. I look for more and more to do, and think of Abuela Frida and her constant knitting of scarves. I can’t learn to knit overnight, but maybe there is something I could make . . . ? On Thursday I walk the beach and find that, once again, Nana Delfina is right: “Nature always provides the answers.”