I Lived on Butterfly Hill by Marjorie Agosín

Author:Marjorie Agosín
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Atheneum Books for Young Readers

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 your 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.

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