How Tía Lola Ended Up Starting Over (5 page)

Dinner at Amigos Café is not only delicious, but homey, like a meal at a friend’s house, including as many helpings as you want at no extra charge.

Everyone lingers over dessert, even Abuelito and Abuelita, who are usually in bed by now.

As the talk starts winding down, Tía Lola slips out of
the restaurant and walks down the street to the colonel’s house. She wants to be sure to turn on the outdoor lights so her guests don’t trip on the cracks in the sidewalk or crash into the prickly holly bush on their way back. She’ll also pull down the shades in each bedroom and fold back the blankets, just like in fancy hotels. On each pillow, she will place a little surprise: a candied guinea pig she made earlier today—an inside joke the children will appreciate.

To Tía Lola’s astonishment, the front door and—when she checks—the back door are locked! All the windows are secure. What is going on? Tía Lola is sure she left the front door unlocked, as they were just going down the block to Amigos Café. Nobody in Bridgeport ever locks up their house, unless they are going to be away for a long time, like the snowbirds who head for Florida before the first snowfall.

In just a few minutes, Tía Lola’s B&B guests are going to be coming down the sidewalk, exhausted after a long drive and a big dinner. The last thing they need is to be locked out of their B&B and have to find alternative accommodations until a locksmith can come in the morning. What to do?

After trying a few windows again, without luck, Tía Lola recalls one window that she is sure is open. The only problem is that it is three stories up in her attic bedroom! Just as she’s wondering what to do, Tía Lola hears the rustling of leaves as the wind blows through the maple tree. Tía Lola speaks Spanish and a little English, but until this moment, she had no idea she could understand trees.

Tía Lola, climb me!
the maple is saying.

Tía Lola gazes up and up at the tall tree. It has been a good forty-five years since she was a girl and climbed any kind of a tree.
Con paciencia y con calma, se subió un burro en una palma
, she reminds herself, a favorite saying of hers. With patience and calm, even a burro can climb a palm tree.

Tía Lola isn’t sure that she can climb a maple tree, no matter how calm or patient she is. But she must try. Mami will no doubt view any fiasco as proof that this B&B is a foolish idea. Tía Lola must save this guinea-pig weekend from disaster! She lifts the hem of her flowered skirt and tucks it into her waistband. Then for good luck, she kisses the yellow scarf tied around her neck.

“One, two, three!” she whispers. But Tía Lola is still standing on the ground at the count of three, looking up at the tall tree. Maybe she needs to count in Spanish instead?
“¡Uno, dos, tres!”
she starts over. At the count of
tres
, Tía Lola is still standing in front of Colonel Charlebois’s house, her two feet firmly on the ground.

But that lucky scarf works wonders. It just so happens that when Tía Lola stepped out of Amigos Café, one person noticed her departure. This person happens to be a pro at climbing trees. In fact, if there were a tree-climbing category in the Olympics, this person would stand a good chance of winning the gold.

As Miguel hurries down the street after his aunt, a car turns the corner and lights up a figure in front of Colonel Charlebois’s house. Tía Lola! She looks like she just took a flying leap off the ground and caught hold of a low branch on the maple tree. Now she is dangling there with
a surprised look on her face. “Tía Lola,” Miguel calls out. “What on earth are you doing?”

“I’m not
on
earth,” Tía Lola calls back. That’s the problem. She’s three feet above the ground, holding on for dear life, too dizzy to look down and too frightened to climb up on the next branch.

Miguel runs over to where his aunt is hanging like a Christmas ornament. A terrified Christmas ornament. “Get down, Tía Lola,” Miguel calls up to his aunt.

“But I don’t want to get down. I want to get up!” Tía Lola explains. And then, very briefly, since it’s hard to go into details when you are hanging from a tree and slowly losing your grip, Tía Lola tells her nephew the problem. The house is locked. They have to get inside to turn on the lights so their guests can find their way safely back. The only open window is the one in her attic bedroom, which looks out onto the maple tree.

“I’ll get it, Tía Lola. You just get down, okay?”

Before Tía Lola has landed on the ground, Miguel is halfway up the maple tree. Soon Tía Lola can hear him scrambling through the window. Her attic-room light comes on. Seconds later, the hallway on the second floor lights up, then the first-floor entry light. The front door opens and her nephew is running out to check on her.

“Come on in, Tía Lola,” Miguel says, helping his aunt to her feet.

As she stands up, Tía Lola wipes her sweaty brow with her yellow scarf. Off comes the beauty mark on her forehead, along with her perspiration. “Thank you so much, Miguel. You have saved the situation.”

“No problem, Tía Lola. But I’m just curious. Why’d you lock the house? Are you afraid there’s more burglars in town or something?” It doesn’t seem like Tía Lola to expect the worst of anybody.

But right now Tía Lola is thinking the worst of a certain person who may very well want her new B&B to fail. But again, Tía Lola does not want to upset her nephew or ruin this weekend for anybody. And in the scheme of things, this really is a harmless prank. What else can go wrong, anyway?

Besides, now’s not the time to try to solve the B&B lockdown mystery. They’d better hurry inside and get the bedrooms ready. Just this moment, a group of happy people are coming down the street toward the house. Leading the way is Colonel Charlebois, arm in arm with Mami and Víctor. Abuelita and Abuelito follow, hand in hand. The girls and Tía Carmen and Papi bring up the rear.

They are all tired, but their hearts are warm and their bellies are full. Up ahead is the lovely Victorian house where some of them will be sleeping. Beside it stands a majestic maple, like the ones in posters advertising New England vacations. The front walk is nicely lit, and inside, their sparkling rooms await them with beds turned down, shades pulled, and an adorable Vermont critter propped on each pillow, wishing them sweet dreams and a restful night.

Ahead stretch two happy days of fun and friendship, a dazzling success of a guinea-pig weekend. In fact, every guest will leave a tip on their bedside table and a little smiley face or thank-you or
gracias
penned on their guest
notepads. And in the suggestion box, which an insecure Victoria and her worrywart father set up by the front door, they will find raves about how Tía Lola’s B&B
has to
continue! Only two people know how close they came to disaster, and of those two, only one suspects who might be responsible.

Juanita is feeling glum. Don’t get her wrong, her birthday party was a blast. But now she has to wait a whole year before having another one.

From being
the
birthday girl, Juanita is back to being just another girl in a crowd. Even though her mother and Víctor aren’t married, the two families are constantly together. Miguel still gets to be the only boy, but Juanita is now one of four girls. She’s not spunky like Essie, or cute like Cari, or responsible like Victoria, so nobody notices Juanita-what’s-her-name. In fact, Víctor can’t seem to keep her straight: “Victoria, oops, Cari, I mean Essie, so sorry, Juanita.”

Only with Papi does Juanita still get to be the one and only daughter. That, too, might change when Papi and Carmen get married. What if they have a baby? What
if it’s a boy? From all reports, little brothers are a pain in the butt. But what if it’s a girl: a cute, spunky, responsible little sister who hogs all the attention away from Juanita?

Juanita wishes she could go back to being a little kid herself! Really little, like when she lived in New York City, and her parents were together, and she was in preschool with her best friend, Ming, who actually called yesterday in the middle of Juanita’s birthday party. Juanita couldn’t talk then, but she promised to call her friend back.

Sunday afternoon, after Papi and Carmen and her grandparents leave, Juanita asks Mami if she can call Ming.

“Have you finished your homework?”

“Not yet.”

“You’re a big girl now, Nita, honey. I shouldn’t have to be reminding you to do your homework.” Mami sighs, as if Juanita’s being ten is tiring her out already.

As Juanita heads upstairs to tackle her homework, Mami has another reminder. “Don’t forget to fold your clothes neatly in your drawers when you unpack your weekend bag. I shouldn’t have to be picking up after you.”

Had Juanita known that being ten would come with this laundry list of responsibilities, she would have given up having a birthday altogether.

“Remember, lights out promptly tonight. Now that you’re a big girl, you’re going to have to be a little better about getting yourself out to the bus on time.”

The hard work of being a double-digit tween has begun.

Just as Juanita is finishing her homework, the phone rings. She’s already halfway down the stairs when she hears her mother saying, “Let me see if she’s available.” It’s as if Juanita is the president of a company who needs a secretary to schedule her phone conversations.

Mami has walked the phone out of the kitchen, covering the mouthpiece. “It’s Ming,” she says, and then unbelievably mouths, “Are you done with your homework?”

“Wow, that’s horrible!” Ming commiserates when Juanita catches her up on what’s been happening since she turned ten. “It sounds like a prison up there.” Ming is nothing if not sympathetic. But sometimes her friend’s sympathy makes Juanita feel even worse. “If my parents treated me like that, I’d—I don’t know—I’d run away from home.”

That is a great idea! Juanita will run away from home. That’ll make Mami realize she can’t be so hard on a new ten-year-old. “But where can I go?”

“You can come to our apartment. I’ll hide you in my room. I’ll bring you food from the table. When my parents go to work, you can come out and meet me at school.”

As improbable as the plan sounds at first, it starts seeming possible the more Ming talks. All together, Juanita got just over a hundred dollars in cash for her birthday. That should cover a one-way bus ticket to New York City. Of course, once Juanita is on that bus, roaring away down the highways of her imagination, the plan becomes a little fuzzier and worrisome. How will Juanita get from the bus station to Ming’s apartment? How will Ming let her in without her parents knowing?

After she hangs up, and Ming is no longer cheering
her on, Juanita begins to get cold feet. She can’t help remembering how her brother got mugged last spring when they were visiting Papi, and Miguel took off on his own to Madison Square Garden.

That night, as Tía Lola is tucking her in, Juanita pours out her heart to her aunt. Tía Lola doesn’t lecture Juanita about how, now that she is ten, she shouldn’t entertain such juvenile ideas. In fact, Tía Lola totally understands. “I think everybody should run away at least once in their lives, preferably when they are young and have a lot of energy. Running away takes a lot of energy, you know?”

Juanita wouldn’t know, but she nods.

“You can get very homesick, too.” Tía Lola scrunches up her face, thinking really hard. “Hmmm. Let’s see. How can we have the best parts of running away—the freedom, the adventures, the excitement—without the bad parts: the danger, the homesickness, no one to get our meals or tuck us in at night?”

Juanita is sure glad she confided in her aunt. Running away sounds a lot more complicated than Juanita first thought. “Maybe I can run away somewhere close by, so I can come home whenever I want. What do you think, Tía Lola?”

Tía Lola thinks this is a brilliant solution. “And I have just the place for you to run away to.”

“You do?”

“Tía Lola’s B&B!” Her aunt enumerates all the pluses of this plan: the B&B is empty during the week; Juanita already knows the colonel and the Swords, so she won’t have to break important rules, like not talking to strangers;
meals will be provided; she won’t have to miss school and end up flunking fourth grade.