Mani Semilla Finds Her Quetzal Voice by Anna Lapera

Author:Anna Lapera
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Levine Querido

SIXTEEN

Forty-three more jokes about how horrible my Spanish will be in Guatemala just ’cause I can’t roll my r’s

I SPEND ALL WEEKEND THINKING about ways to help Genesis and in general regain control over the information women and girls get about our bodies. (I heard C.C. say that last part once.) By Sunday, I haven’t come up with anything brilliant.

“Ouch!” I yell when Mami hands me a steaming chunk of pollo that she just pulled out of boiling water with her bare hands. No sé, but I think you have to be real Guatemalan to hold hot things in the kitchen like that, not a half Guatemalan like me who can’t roll her r’s.

I drop it on the plate in front of me.

“Niña, you couldn’t have worked the first job I had when we first got here,” says Tía Gladys.

That’s easy for her to say, sitting at the table peeling the papas.

Apparently, Tía worked some job where she stood all day and pulled raw chicken on a moving conveyer belt, and if she did it too slow, her bosses would yell at her. I think that’s why she uses the brace on her arm and wrist. And she almost never got to use the bathroom. And when she did, she was timed and if she went over some really short time frame, they’d take it out of her pay. Once, she stood for seven hours straight and fainted. She had to stay in the hospital a couple of days, and when she came back, she didn’t have her job anymore.

I kind of feel bad, but not as bad as they make me feel for not being Guatemalan enough, or not coming from Mami. (She still hasn’t really apologized.) But, for one, this chicken is burning hot—hot enough to melt the uñas off my fingers. And for two, they moved here for a better life and blah blah blah so why are they insulting me for not being able to do the things they had to do as new immigrants? What do I have to do with that?

Whatever. At least they never had to worry about cell phones and someone filming their bras getting ripped off their backs and the video being on the internet for all eternity. (Well, till the end of internet.) For days behind closed doors when she thinks I can’t hear her, Mami’s been going on and on with Dad about how girls don’t go to school to get boys’ attention. But she’s also been leaving papers with parts of new song lyrics in my lunch box. Maybe that’s her way of apologizing? I just want her to be there for me, the way I’m trying to be there for Genesis. Dad tried to talk to me about everything a while back, but I was too embarrassed to tell him what happened, even though I know he’d listen. Just not ready to say “lace,” “bra,” “boobs,” and “rip” in the same sentence, you know? Plus, ever since C.

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