Halfway through my shower, there’s a bang on the door.
“I have to peeeeee!” My sister’s voice rings out over the running water.
“What did I tell you?” I yell back. “Go use Mom and Dad’s!”
Sharing a bathroom is going to be so much fun.
The squeal out of my grandmother’s mouth when we open the front door is so loud, I’m surprised the neighborhood dogs don’t all start barking. She beckons to me and I can’t help but run to her. She grabs my face with both her hands and searches my eyes. I smile as she talks to me; some I can understand, some I can’t. Something about how I’m beautiful, and my guess is how grown-up I look. She hasn’t laid eyes on me since I was little, so I’m sure it’s as strange to her as it is to me. She squishes my cheeks again before crushing me to her chest, and I can’t help but let out a laugh. I sink into her hug and breathe her in. She smells like peppermint and the stale cabin air of an airplane. And she’s so thin that I worry my hug might crush her.
I get one more cheek squish and a kiss before she wipes her lipstick off of me. She turns to Clarí and does the same thing—sweet words and kisses until all her lipstick is on Clarí’s cheeks instead of Ita’s lips.
I turn to Ito to say hi and he gives me a shy smile. He looks so much older than the photos we have of him. His hair is whiter, and the skin around his eyes and mouth is more wrinkled and weathered. I lean in to give him a hug and he puts his long arms around me. He kisses the top of my head the way Dad always does and holds on just a little longer without saying anything. Ito is a man of few words. Right now that suits me just fine.
Dad tells us all to grab a suitcase—in Spanish, but with his gestures it’s easy to understand what he’s asking—as Mom leads my grandparents inside the house. I watch as Ita walks inside, keeping a hand on the underside of Ito’s elbow, like he needs the stability. Dad says something I don’t understand and points down at the threshold, and I realize he’s telling them to watch their step.
After I set the last suitcase down in their closet, conversation in Spanish floats down the hallway from the kitchen and I follow the sound. When I walk in, Clarí is showing Ita around the kitchen, which Mom and Dad just updated a bit last year when all the nineties-era appliances started dying one by one. Ita runs her hand along the stove, saying something complimentary. She looks up at Dad and says something else, and everyone else laughs. I get from the way Dad looks half amused and half affronted that it must be a joke about him—his cooking I guess? But it’s hard to know for sure.
My stomach growls as I walk into the kitchen, surveying a mess of flour and dishes.
“Your dad decided to help your grandmother make empanadas, so it’s taking a while,” Mom says. “Of course, it doesn’t help that he’s spent most of the time telling your abuela that she’s doing everything wrong.”
I laugh. “Isn’t she the one who taught him how to make them?”
“Yes, but of course, he says he’s perfected them over the years and so she should do it his way now. I swear, that man.” She says that every time Dad is being stubborn, which is at least once a day.
We finally sit down to eat in the dining room with a huge spread in front of us. There are empanadas as far as the eye can see. Dad informs me that the ones on the white platter are his and the ones on the platter with the flowers are Ita’s and I’m to eat some of each and compare.
Mom bites her lip, visibly resisting the urge to say something. I catch her eye and she shakes her head, mouthing I swear.
They’re both delicious, but the table erupts into arguments about which one they prefer. Or at least, I think that’s what they’re talking about. The conversation flies back and forth so fast that I barely catch a word.
Clarí jumps up and puts a napkin ring on Ita’s head and she laughs. When I hear her say “La reina,” I finally get the joke and laugh along with everyone else. Clarí has crowned her the queen of empanadas.
But it only gets harder to keep up after that. The conversation flows easily between everyone at the table, with laughter and raucous interruptions and gestures. Ito says something to Dad, then looks at me with a smirk on his face. Dad throws his head back and laughs right from his belly.
I look from Ito to Dad to try to figure out what they’re saying about me. Clearly it’s amusing. When I don’t get a clue from them, I look to Mom, but she’s laughing too.
Dad finally catches his breath and looks to me with tears in his eye from laughter. “¿Recuerdas ese viaje?” he asks me.
I blink and try to decode what he’s asking me. If I remember something. But what?
“Of course you don’t, you were so little,” he says, switching back to English for a second at my confused look. But then he switches right back, turning to Ito, and I’m back to not knowing what in the world anyone is talking about.
I grab another empanada off the tray—one of Ita’s, because they are better by a slim margin—and pick at the braided edge of the pastry as the conversation goes on around me.
I sleep in the next morning, because it’s summer and I can. But when I go to get some cereal around noon, Ita and Clarí are in the kitchen.
