How Tía Lola Came to (Visit) Stay Read Free

garden.
    She unpacks her maracas and
tambor
to make music in case there is a fiesta. She puts on her castanets and clacks around the room, stomping her feet as if she is throwing a tantrum. Their mother and Juanita join in, acting goofy. “Isn’t she fun?” his mother keeps asking Miguel.
    Tía Lola unpacks bags of
café
and brown sugar, which go up on the kitchen shelves-Her spices—
hierbabuena, orégano, anís, hojas de guanábana, ajíes—
hang from the rafters-She also brings along her
guayo
to grate
yuca
and her
burén
to shape it into flat, round
casave
loaves-The
guayo
looks like an oversized grater and the
burén
like a large, smooth stone. Tía Lola’s
verdura
seeds are put in a pot to germinate.
    “!Ay,
qué bueno!”
Miguel’s mother claps her hands. “Well have real Dominican cooking in Vermont! Well have to invite Rudy over”
    She is helping Tía Lola drape her mantilla across a window. It looks like a beautiful black spiderweb with a bright red rose pinned at the center. As they work, they dance to one of Tía Lola’s merengues on the stereo. Juanita follows along, moving her hips, one-two, one-two, one-two.
    “Isn’t she fun?” their mother keeps asking.
    “I guess,” Miguel mutters, and then, because his mother is looking straight at him, he adds, “She’s
lots
of fun, Mami.”
    Miguel has to admit there is one totally fun thing about Tía Lola.
    She tells great stories.
    None of Tía Lola’s stories sound exactly true, but Miguel doesn’t care. While he listens, he feels as if he isn’t in Vermont at all, but in a magical world where anything can happen. In fact,what is most magical is how, even though in his daily conversations with Tía Lola, Miguel sometimes doesn’t understand Tía Lola’s Spanish, still, when she tells stories, Miguel seems to understand every word.
    “Había una vez.
…,” Tía Lola begins. Once upon a time…And Miguel feels a secret self, different from his normal everyday self, rising up like steam from a boiling kettle into the air and disappearing inside Tía Lola’s stories.
    Every night, Tía Lola gathers Miguel and Juanita in her bedroom. While their mother takes some time to herself or makes phone calls or continues unpacking boxes still stacked in the attic, Tía Lola tells them all about their large and exciting Dominican family.
    She tells about their uncle with six fingers who can do anything with his hands, and about their great-grandmother who could read the future from looking at the stains in a coffee cup, and about their cousin who once befriended a
aguapa
with
pastelitoSy
little fritters filled with ground meat. As for
aguapas
, they are beautiful, mysterious creatures who come out at night, but no one can evercatch them. They have a special secret. The
aguapas’
feet are on backward, so they leave footprints in the opposite direction of where they are going!
    The next weekend, since he has no friends here and nothing better to do, Miguel tries out that trick in the snow. The footprints look haywire and messy, like someone stumbling around. But they do not look like
ciguapa
footprints.
    One afternoon, two of Miguel’s classmates show up at the front door. In the car, the mother of one of the boys waits, peering up at the old, gabled house. The boys are collecting money for the town’s Little League team. Come spring, they will need equipment and uniforms.
    “Wow!” Miguel says, “I’d really like to be on that team,”
    “You should try out,” one of the boys says. The taller one’s name is Dean, He has bright blue eyes that Miguel’s father would call ultramarine and a wide grin his mother would call trouble with a capital T.
    As the boys stand in the mudroom talking, Tía Lola walks by in her spiked heels and white turban, holding up a plate of smoking embers.She has already cleansed the basement and is on her way upstairs. She wants to cast out any bad spirits and attract good spirits and magical
aguapas
from the island. The