Set a Purpose

Read on to see if the narrator’s perspective about her high school changes.

That evening at dinner, when I told my mother about my day, she said, “Cristina, I thought you came to learn English.”

The spaghetti I’d rolled around the fork fell off and I didn’t want to talk about my English.

“Vine para estar contigo,” I reminded her.

“It is nice that you came to be with me,” my mother said. “I love having you here but you also came to become fluent in English, or at least that’s what you told me before you came. Have you changed your mind?”

I shook my head.

My mother continued. “I’m glad you found somebody to talk to but don’t talk just to people who speak Spanish. If that girl from algebra class invites you again, you should join her!”

“Se van a reír de mi inglés.”

“So what if they laugh at your English? If I’d worried about Puerto Ricans laughing at my Spanish, would I have learned the language?”

This was easy for her to say. Everybody thought she sounded cute when speaking Spanish but she didn’t have to go to a high school where students might have teased her.

The next morning, I prepared myself for the cold. I put on three pairs of socks so that my shoes hardly fit with so many socks. I put on my heavy coat, hat, gloves, and scarf and headed to school. The sun had fooled me the day before, but it wouldn’t fool me again.

I was almost at the school entrance when I heard a girl behind me saying, “Johnny, isn’t it hot today?”

She and the guy she was with walked by me. He turned and fanned himself. “It sure is,” he said.

He was wearing short pants and she had on a short skirt. Other students were wearing tank tops and sandals. I guess I was the only one who was cold.

I went in, opened my locker and threw in my hat, scarf, and gloves and with tears in my eyes, I told Minerva what had happened.

“This is what we call Indian Summer,” she explained in Spanish. “It lasts a week or two and then it gets really cold.”