“Morning,” my mom says as I pull out a stool next to my sister.
“Morning,” I answer.
Clarí stands from her stool and walks to the other side of the kitchen, like the two words that Mom and I uttered are disrupting her enthralling conversation.
Mom slides a plate of cinnamon pancakes in front of me, swimming in butter. It’s a tradition my mom has insisted on since my last day of kindergarten, when she accidentally knocked the cinnamon over and it went flying into the batter. We deemed it meant-to-be and carried on the tradition ever since. “You know,” I say. “I’m almost seventeen. You don’t need to make me special last-day-of-school pancakes anymore.”
“I’ll be making you last-day-of-school pancakes all the way through grad school, kid. Deal with it.”
I pop the top off the syrup bottle and pour it all over the pancakes. “So, you’re going to travel to wherever I’m attending college and make pancakes on a hot plate in my dorm room?”
Mom raises an eyebrow. “FedEx,” she says, dropping the pan into the sink. “Or you can always go to school close enough to come home for pancakes, like your sister.”
I laugh as I cut into my pancakes, letting the syrup run down through the layers. “Moms be crazy.”
“You laugh at me now,” she says, wiping down the countertop with a kitchen rag, “but you’re going to miss this when you’re all grown up and I’m too old to trust around an open flame anymore.”
“Nah.” I pop a bite into my mouth, savoring the butter and cinnamon and maple syrup on my tongue. “I’ll put you in an old folks home way before that.”
“Valentina. Have a little respect for your mother.” Mom swats at me with the kitchen towel. “At least make it a nice one—a retirement community for active seniors. With a pool for water aerobics.”
I laugh. “Deal.”
Mom does that mom thing where she watches me like I’m going to grow up and leave the house if she dares to look away.
“I still have senior year, Mom. There will be more pancakes ahead of us.”
“I know.” She purses her lips and nods.
“Oh, God, are those tears?”
“No!” She hisses and turns away to start washing the dishes.
I cram another bite in my mouth and chew around my smile while Clarísa paces the length of the kitchen with the phone pressed to her ear. Her mouth moves a mile a minute in perfect Spanish.
Even though Spanish was my first language, now I have trouble piecing together even the most basic conversations. I can understand bits and pieces when someone speaks slow enough. But I can barely find a response with two hands and a flashlight unless it’s sí, no, or gracias. It happened without even realizing it. One day it was just...gone. I can’t even tell you when.
Dad shuffles into the kitchen and puts an arm around me, giving me a good squeeze along with a loud kiss to the top of my head. “You ready for junior year to be over?”
I nod and swallow, my mouth full of pancakes. “So ready.”
“History final today?” He sits on the stool next to me.
“And I have to turn in my final art project,” I say, nodding to the canvas on the kitchen table, a landscape of Texas bluebonnets and an old hill country barn to showcase perspective. I brought it home last night to work on the last few details.
“You’ll nail that one, no problem. And I call dibs once it’s graded. I want to hang it in my office.”
“Deal,” I say, smiling into my pancakes.
“Dad, Ita wants to talk to you.” My sister holds the phone out to him. Ita and Ito became my grandparents’ names when Clarí was little and couldn’t say Abuelita or Abuelito. Everyone thought it was adorable, so of course it stuck.
Dad’s smile falters as he grabs the phone. “Hola, Mamá,” he says, but he walks toward his office before we can hear anything else.
“Is everything okay?” I push my plate toward my sister, and she takes my fork.
Clarí shoves a huge bite into her mouth. “So good,” she mumbles to herself. “I don’t know,” she finally says when she’s done chewing. “I tried to ask how things were going, but she wouldn’t tell me much other than the weather.”
I try to ignore the tightness in my chest. Clarísa’s managed to stay close with our grandparents, but when you don’t speak the same language anymore, staying close isn’t so easy.
Clarísa sighs and runs a hand through her thick hair. She takes after Dad, with darker skin and hair. I try not to be jealous of that, too. My mom is beautiful, but Dad definitely has the good hair.
Dad’s words float down the hallway, and we lean back on our stools, trying to hear more. He talks way too fast for me to pick up any of the words, but I can tell by his tone that something’s up.
We both turn our heads to Mom, who starts tinkering around the kitchen, cleaning surfaces that are already clean.
“Mom, what’s going on?” Clarísa asks.
Mom just shakes her head. “Let your father tell you, okay?”
My sister and I look at each other as all sorts of scenarios run through my head. I search her eyes, wondering if I’ll find the answers there, but it’s clear that, whatever this is, Mom and Dad are shielding it from Clarí, too.
We both know the situation in Venezuela has been getting worse. We’ve all held our breath, waiting for tiny crumbs of updates from American news outlets. Over the past year I’ve followed some of the protests on Twitter—what I can make sense of with Google Translate, anyway. The worse the situation has gotten, the more the mainstream news has reported about it. Every time another update comes about the violence, the lack of food and medicine, the millions of people leaving the country daily, the strain it’s putting on Colombia and Brazil, I can feel
