An Overstayed Welcome: Finding Home

Chapter 8

After several weeks of staying home alone for the most part of the day and just waiting for the week to be over so that mom and dad could be with us, Julia and I began school. Waking up early was not as hard as I thought it would be. I was up before mom had to wake me up. It could have been because I was looking forward for school or because I knew I had to be up early for school. For whatever reason, I was up before mom and getting dressed.

As always, I welcomed the new change. I dressed into the clothes my mother had picked and laid out for me. Once I was dressed, my mom took a hair brush and brushed my hair into a frizzy ponytail. It bothered me that my hair was not straight and that it would just be frizzy. I did not care for it but knew there was nothing I could do about it. It was useless to make it look good. Mom usually put it up on a side pony tail or braids.

Mom walked us out to the corner of the trailer parking lot, and we waited for the school bus until it appeared before us. Julia and I stepped up the stairs and walked to the first open seats and sat down and spoke little while the bus made frequent stops to pick up other kids. The older students were dropped off first. The bus dropped us off in what looked like the back of the school. It was big and grand. I was not used to that. The schools I attended in Mexico were small and did not have huge parking lots.

Julia and I walked into the school together and ate breakfast. I did not recognize any of the types of food except the eggs. I took my fork and grabbed the egg, but the eggs were mushy and not what I was used to. I forced myself to eat it and a round piece of meat looking patty with the a fluffy looking piece of bread. When Julia and I finished eating quietly, we got up and she walked me to my classroom and then went to hers. The classroom had carpet and all kinds of things that I had never seen in a classroom in Mexico.

There were books, pictures, posters, and a sink inside the classroom. I saw two teachers with puffy white hair each sitting at their perspective desks. I had a desk to myself instead of sharing a table with others. The desk had a place to put my belongings, so I started to put my books inside of it until one of the teachers said, "No".

Startled, I looked up and saw the teacher that sat at the front of the classroom said something I could not understand. I stared at her blankly. She proceeded to tell me something else I could not understand and took the school supplies my parents got me out of the desk and kept most of them except a notebook which she gave me to keep.

I did not know whether to put it in the empty space under my wooden desk, or whether I should hold on to it. So, I sat there at my desk with the notebook on the desk and decided to see what everyone else did with their notebooks. No one had the notebook on their desk, and I wondered where they had it until I spied another student putting it inside her backpack. I proceeded to put the notebook inside my backpack when I saw a girl coming in to sit in front of me.

I smiled but did not say hi. She smiled back and then sat down on her desk. I wanted to speak to people, but I could not. I was quiet and stayed on my own for the rest of the day. We could not talk during class. When we went to the play ground for recess and everyone was playing with others, I was by myself on the swing. When we went to physical education and we stood around waiting for our turn, I stood by myself and imagined all sorts of things in my head. As soon as my turn came, others had to tap me on the shoulder and used their arms and hands to tell me that it was my turn.

I did not mind not talking to anyone or playing by myself even and that was probably why some of them stared at me, but I did not let that bother me. Mostly because I could only think about it for a little while until another thought came to my mind that entertained me until I was thinking of something else.

Towards the end of the school day, the teacher said something to the class that I did not understand. It was not until I saw everyone else gathering their things that I realized that we were getting ready to go home. When we had all our things ready to go, the teacher turned on the television. It was a marvelous wonder to have a television at school. I had never seen that in Mexico. After a few minutes of some commercials, a cartoon butterfly flying around was spreading a rainbow across the screen that jumped into books and displayed the worlds inside them on the screen.

My imagination reveled at the sight. The soulful voice that sung a song immediately grabbed my attention, and I found myself wanting to sing to the song without knowing it. Something I did often and while I didn't not know the words I would follow the tune.

I watched it intently trying to understand what was going on. I inferred some things and attempted to understand others. The bell rung all of a sudden and the teachers guided us to our buses. The sudden sound of the bell and not knowing where to find my bus made me uneasy, but my teacher took me to my bus and I walked up the stairs. Julia soon loaded the bus as well and sat beside me.

We tried to talk on our way home, but it was too loud and I could not hear her. When we arrived at home, there was no one there yet. We went inside and shut the door. We made some ham sandwiches and went into our parents' bedroom to watch television. I told her about the show that I watched at school and she nodded her head in silence and turned her head back to the television.

I turned my head back to the characters on the screen and watched on with her, but I kept thinking of the other show with the rainbow, the butterfly, and the books. I wanted to finish watching it. Eventually mom, dad, and the girls came home. I did not go out. I was tired. Julia went out for a while. I stayed inside in the living room playing with some second- hand wind up toys from the flea markets that we went to on Saturdays. I did not play for too long.

I took a shower, brushed my hair, and went to sleep right away. Neither Julia nor I had the energy to stay up and talk and it went on like that for the rest of the week. Aside from the times I had to speak to my peers such as saying thank you, I did not speak much to anyone. I attempted to complete the tasks they gave me without truly knowing whether I was completing them correctly.

****

It must have been three months or so into the school year when my parents decided to move because the light of the morning when we woke up had gone from bright to dark. One morning, as we all walked out to  the school bus stop, the lack of sunlight and the dim light of the moon that  barely lit the neighborhood, hovered over Julia, mom and I and created a solemn and still moment that soothed me.

Summer was not completely gone. The morning was warm and the morning dew hovered in the air. It was around this time that we moved to an apartment complex that had stairs. Though I had fallen off a flight of stairs from which I was swinging after school one day in Mexico, the thought of living in a home with stairs inside was exciting.

I found the apartment building quite curious. I had never seen brick homes so close together with window shutters that looked so quaint. Most of the homes in Mexico were close together but were made of block and were rather plain. These had the ability to make the home feel more homey and inviting. I liked them but something about them made me miss the homes I was used to seeing in Mexico. It was as though the new made me feel nostalgic for the things I had once known.

We did not have much to put in the home. Yet, shortly after moving we had a couch and a chaise in the living room of the apartment with a coffee table in the middle that they bought from the flea markets. In the kitchen, they put a dining room table and the bed he had bought for the first mobile home was put in their room. Julia and I did not have a bed in our room and slept on the floor, but it was a home.