The little veins on the side of Dad’s neck bulged, but he did not argue. Instead, he nodded and murmured, “Mm, mm.”
Auntie said, “Her head is filled with those angel stories. Tell her about the bad things, too. So many bad things!”
“Terrible, terrible,” Uncle Pasta agreed.
“Our neighbor in New York, that woman, you know, I told you last time? That woman with the dogs? Shot! Outside her own apartment!”
“Shot!” Uncle Pasta echoed.
“And my cousin Guadalupe? You remember her? The one with the big nose? Cancer! From eating canned soup.”
One morning, when Auntie Pasta spotted Antonio’s grandmother outside, she dragged Dad to the window.
“See there? Who is that woman?”
“A grandmother. She’s new here.”
Auntie marched outside and spoke to the grandmother, while Dad and I stayed at the window watching. Antonio’s grandmother stood very still, listening to Auntie Pasta, whose arms waved in the air, occasionally pointing toward our house.
Auntie returned triumphant. “I fix it!” she said.
“Fix what?” Dad asked.
“I told her about you and povera Gina, with her mother working so much and you needing some help.”
Dad was not amused. “You what?”
“I will fix. You’ll see.”
They tried so hard, Auntie and Uncle Pasta, and I knew they meant well, but when they left, I stood on the front steps waving at the back end of their car, relieved.
Mångata
One morning at school Renaldo raced into class waving a blue notecard. “I have a great word! Wait till you see!”
He showed Miss Lightstone the card. “Really?” she said.
“Really. My grandpa is Swedish.”
“Okay, then, go ahead.”
Renaldo tacked the card next to the word lunar and the picture of the moon’s reflection in the water. Reading from the card, he said, “Mångata, a Swedish word meaning the path-like reflection of the moon over water.” He touched the photo of the moon already on the board. “See? That light path that the moon makes in the water? That reflection? That’s mångata.”
I rolled the word around in my mouth: man-gotta, MAN-gotta. It amazed me that there was a single word to describe the way the moon’s light reflects on a body of water, creating a path, as if inviting you to follow it back to the moon.
Miss Lightstone ran her hands through her hair. “Words!”
Others chimed in:
“Mångata!”
“Mooooon!”
“Lunar!”
“Re-flec-tion!”
“Stupid!”
That last one was Freddy, pouring cold water on our enthusiasm. Was there a word for doing just that, spoiling the mood with one word? Maybe it would be floshenslosh or splattenmatt.
Audrey and Ruby hovered beside Antonio’s desk.
“Ooh, mångata! Isn’t that funny, Antonio?”
“Isn’t it so—so—unusual and—and—”
“Particular? Specific?” he added.
“Oh, yes! That’s it, Antonio! It’s so—so—particular and specific!”
I caught his eye for a moment and must have blinked my annoyance, for he turned his palms up as if to say it wasn’t his fault. What was he to do, poor, innocent, Antonio?
Ugh.
When I got home that day, Dad was already there, standing in the kitchen.
“Toast,” I said. “I need toast, with buckets of butter and cinnamon and sugar.”
“That makes two of us. Take a look at this.” On the counter were several serving bowls covered with foil. “You’ll never guess who stopped by.”
“Who?”
Dad nodded toward Antonio’s house. “Her. That lady. That grandmother.”
“No.”
“Yes. She brought us food. Auntie Pasta told her about povera you, without someone to make—”
“No, no. Don’t tell me. No. Is it—I bet it’s—”
He nodded sadly, a defeated man, and lifted the foil. “Pasta: Ravioli! Spaghetti and meatballs! Cavatelli!”
Sheep Talk and Family Trees
One time after school, when I had nearly reached my house, Antonio called out to me. He had hopped off the bus as usual with a posse of kids and had stood there chatting with them while I kept walking. Now, he caught up to me.
“I saw the sheep today,” he said.
“What sheep?”
“Two sheep, gray and dirty. They were having a conversation. I tried to tell Arif and Renaldo about them, but they didn’t believe me.”
“What were the sheep talking about?”
“Family trees.”
“Really? Odd subject for sheep, don’t you think?”
He stuffed his hands in his pockets. “No. Why shouldn’t they talk about family trees?”
“Sticky subject,” I said.
Later, I told my parents about Antonio seeing the two sheep, gray and dirty, having a conversation. “He told some other kids about the sheep, but they didn’t believe him.”
My mother said, “The sheep were having a conversation?”
“Yes, and you know what they were talking about? Family trees.”
My parents exchanged a glance. Dad said, “Uh-oh. Sticky subject, Gina.”
“That’s exactly what I said.”
One time the previous year’s pointy teacher said we were going to create family trees, and using her own family as an example, she created her family tree on the board. She wrote the names of each of her great-grandparents, grandparents and parents, along with her siblings and with her own name at the bottom. Her name looked so important there, with all those people merging to create her.
For homework she gave us a printout with blank spaces on branches so we could fill in the names of our own family members and ancestors.
From the start, it did not go well. We had questions.
“What if you have two mothers?”
“Or two fathers?”
“How can you have two mothers or two fathers?”
“Or if one is dead?”
“Or both, what if they’re both dead?”
“Or if they’re divorced?”
“Or no father?”
“How can you have no father?”
The pointy teacher said, “Ask your parents. They’ll know what you should write.”
But many of the parents did not know what to write. It was surprising how many versions of trees there could be.
Some parents were angry and complained.
“This is no business of the school’s.”
“We refuse to submit this.”
“My husband was very upset by this.”
“Some of us might be adopted, you know. Which parents and grandparents do you want on this form?”
The following evening, a previously scheduled parent meeting to review policies and upcoming events erupted into a loud, messy complaint session when several parents raised the issue of the family trees.
Mom was working that night, but Dad, who dreaded going to such meetings, went because he felt obligated. On that evening, he came home and said, “Toast! I need toast. People are so angry and crazy!”