Mother Tongue Read online

  an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

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  New York, New York 10014

  Copyright © 2016 by Christine Gilbert

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  eBook ISBN 9780698193925

  Version_1

  To Cole and Stella—this is what we did when you were babies.

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Introduction

  PART 1

  CHINA

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  PART 2

  LEBANON

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  PART 3

  MEXICO

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Notes

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  INTRODUCTION

  Halfway down the street, I stop walking. The crowd of Barcelona holiday shoppers flows past me, and I let them, the weight of my shopping bags cutting into my hands. Christmas lights twinkling overhead light the path through the looming architecture of the Gothic quarter as I stand gripped in a wave of déjà vu. I’ve been here before. I feel like I am seeing a lithograph of my past, the paper-thin memory of a place laid carefully over the scene that lies before me.

  I have been here before, of course, I know that. I am constantly seeing buildings and streets that jog some buried half memory. But this feeling is different. Somehow I have brushed up against a sense memory of that time. For a moment I remember my last visit, years ago, and how it felt to live in my skin then and how different it feels now to be just another city dweller out buying Christmas gifts on a chilly December evening. The city hasn’t changed—I have.

  A decade ago, my husband, Drew, and I honeymooned in Barcelona. It was our first time in Europe—our first time abroad, really, unless you count a few trips to Canada. We stayed in a hotel that cost way too much, cuddling in a tiny room with a double bed, peering out at the world over a wrought-iron balcony, just north of La Rambla. The whole city seemed black and white to me then. It was a rainy week in October, the gray stones slick and gloomy. But we were desperately in love, both with each other and with Spain, and nothing could dampen our spirits. We walked around this same Gothic quarter like the stunned Americans we were, holding hands, admiring the architecture, swooning over quaint cafés and stylish Catalan men and women with their dedication to trim cuts and knotted scarves. Later we collapsed in Café Zurich, ordered strong coffees, and marveled at our lives. Could there be anything more romantic than Europe?

  The kinetic sensation of being young and newly married came back to me all at once. I wish I could travel through time and whisper into my ten-years-younger ear, You will live here one day. Maybe in some way I knew, because no matter what we did in the years after, no matter where we went, the magnetic pull of Barcelona was irresistible. Ten years later, via the most indirect path possible, we would return to the romantic land of our first days as newlyweds, this time to rent an apartment, buy groceries, and settle into domestic life. We are still in love, with each other and the city, but it is oh so different. We’re older. We have two kids now. We have seen the world.

  On that first trip to Barcelona, my most vivid memories were of the wild curves Gaudí created, sculpting buildings like they were made of melting candle wax. Now, I see the people. It’s the “bon dia” to my neighbor as we briskly left our apartment this afternoon, the half smile to the woman wheeling her grocery tote behind her, the familiar road leading up to the bakery where the young woman with the severe bun gives us baguettes each morning. There’s the fruit stand with a display of mandarinas on the sidewalk next to the meat shop with a full Iberian leg of ham in the store window, then the wine shop where they refill one-liter jugs with tinto. I barely look up anymore at the imposing architecture. My focus is all street level, straight ahead, walking quickly toward the bus stop, la parada, so we could swipe our metro cards, squeeze past the bundled masses, and slide into our seats.

  Today we were going shopping.

  • • •

  “¡AY, GUAPA!” THE WOMAN CALLED to my daughter from across the bus, waving her hand. She was wearing a scarf tied artfully around her neck, a kind of quadruple knot that I had not yet mastered, with a fitted trench coat and an oversized leather purse. When her waving failed to attract Stella’s interest, she quickly closed the distance between us, shuffling down the aisle, the movement of the bus propelling her forward. “¡Muñeca!”

  My daughter sat on my lap, unfazed by the compliments. Beautiful. Doll. Blondie. Stella’s legs poked out from beneath her pink peacoat, her tiny hands rested on her lap, and she stared straight ahead, eyes fixed on some point in front of her and slowly losing focus. The gentle shaking of the bus was lulling her to sleep.

  The people here call Stella bien seria, “very serious,” because she is so stoic and self-contained. Until recently, I hadn’t taught her to smile and engage with strangers—I would just hold her, talk to her, point things out, make her engage with the world. But make her interact with strangers? Pass her around? Let everyone smile and coo at her? I grew up American, and that was reflected in my parenting. I was focused more on her than on her relationship with others. But I was learning that socially adept children were highly prized in Spain. I was finding out that, like so many other things, raising kids varied wildly by culture. What I always thought was an innate quality of the Spanish—that they were warmer, friendlier, and more social than Americans—was actually a cultivated quality. They valued it and made it a point to shape their children in this way. It would influence their social landscape for life.

  This emphasis on friendliness was also part of why I had fallen so in love with Spain. That natural warmth was so inviting.

  “Hola, joven,” I said to the woman, imitating something cheeky I had heard in the market. Hello, youngster. I was becoming a more friendly version of myself in Spain, more likely to break the ice and start conversations.

  “¡Ay, tu hija es tan hermoooossssaa!” she cooed, leaning over Drew and our son, Cole, to get a better look at Stella. Your daughter is so beautiful!

 
“¡Gracias!”

  She smelled like rose soap—like jabón de rosa, I thought to myself, the Spanish translation bubbling up unbidden. We had been here for about a month, but it wasn’t my first brush with Spanish. I noticed over time that the more I used the language, the more it stayed with me. By now it was a constant passenger in my head, a never-ending closed-captioning en español that ran like an internal dubbing of my thoughts. I live here now, I thought. Ya vivo aquí.

  “A ella le gusta sentarse con su mamá,” the woman said. She likes to sit with her mama.

  “¡Síííí, por supuesto!”—yes, of course!—I said, dragging out the sí emphatically, the same way I had seen Spanish women talk to one another. Always imitating, always watching for the response. Nearly identical to how my children were learning.

  Rose Soap Woman smiled at me, and I felt like I had passed some unspoken social test. When we first came to Spain, we had hoped that we would find a new family, starting with a Spanish mamacita who would lavish affection on our children. Little had we known we were getting a city full of them. Drew and I grinned at each other with knowing looks: Our daughter was an abuela magnet.

  Stella finally looked up at the woman and allowed her head to be patted. I tried to get her to say hello:

  “Dile ‘hola,’ Stella,” I said, waving her little hand at the woman.

  “Hola,” my daughter offered meekly.

  “¿Cuál es su nombre?” the woman asked. What is her name?

  “Stella.”

  “Hmm?”

  “Stella.” The woman still looked puzzled.

  Drew jumped in. “Estella.”

  She broke into a smile. “Ah, Estella.”

  “Sí.” I smiled, too.

  “Y tu hijo?” she asked, running her hand over our son’s blond head. He shook his head impatiently.

  “Cole,” I replied.

  “Col?” she asked, again looking puzzled.

  “Sí.”

  Everyone wanted to call Stella “Estella,” and sometimes she’d get mistaken for chela, the Mexican slang for beer. Cole, on the other hand, is a Spanish word, at least how it’s pronounced. It’s Catalan as well, which is the second language in Barcelona (or first, depending on who you ask). Cole is pronounced like the Spanish word col and means “cabbage.” We accidentally named our son after the slightly smelly vegetable they put in cocidos and ensaladas.

  Meet our children: Beer and Cabbage.

  Apparently it didn’t matter, as the abuelita quickly launched into a story about her three children and eight grandchildren (who all lived outside the city, sadly) and her hand injury that had only recently healed.

  I nodded and Drew offered, “Sí, sí, vale, vale,” the usual Spanish murmurs of agreement.

  The bus stopped and we said our good-byes as she departed. After the bus had started rolling again, I leaned over to Drew and whispered, “If we have another baby, we are naming her Alejandra—or Javier if it’s a boy—something so Spanish no one ever asks us twice.”

  He grinned. “Agreed.”

  • • •

  WE GOT OFF THE BUS at Plaza Cataluyna, where the Generalitat had turned the main plaza into an ice skating rink and the emblematic retail store El Corte Inglés broadcast holiday cheer across a city block with a multistory light display on its stone walls. Around the corner, toward La Catedral, an oversized Christmas tree flashed holiday messages in three languages:

  Merry Christmas

  Bon Nadal

  Feliz Navidad

  The holiday crowd swarmed around it, snapping photos and making their way toward the real attraction: La Feria Artesanal Santa Lucía. It was Barcelona’s most popular Christmas market and our best bet for finding Catalan holiday accessories.

  My daughter wanted to walk, so we hung back with her as she wobbled along, releasing Cole to dash off and explore while Drew kept an eye on him.

  “Look, lights,” Stella said, pointing to the strings of white Christmas lights hung throughout the market, making a post-rain halo around each stall.

  “Sí, luces,” I replied.

  “Moon!” she said, pointing to the patch of sky above us, framed by the looming church in the distance.

  “Sí, muy bien, Stella, la luna,” I said, taking her hand.

  “La luna,” she repeated to herself.

  Cole, trotting around ahead of us, sprinted to see the caga tiós. This was his first Christmas in Barcelona, and Cole was especially delighted by the scatological twist Father Christmas took in these parts.

  “Mama, come here!” Cole said to me excitedly, pointing to a display full of Christmas logs. Each one had two little legs that propped it up at a forty-five-degree angle. On its head was a red hat, the traditional Catalan barretina, with a face drawn on the cut end and black eyes affixed to the wood. This was Caga Tió, giver of nougat, hazelnuts, and candy.

  If we had lived in the countryside, we would have ventured into the woods to find the perfect round log and immediately covered it in a blanket to keep our new friend warm. Back home, I would have applied some googly eyes and a red hat. However, since we lived in la Zona Franca, on the fourth floor of an apartment building, where there were no moss-covered forests to hunt for gift-giving wood, we were left to purchase one. Once we’d found our caga tió and brought it home, we would follow tradition and tell the story of the original caga tió. Then throughout the month of December, the kids would tend to the log, making sure it was cozy in its blanket and hat, feeding it orange peels and giving it water to drink.

  Drew leaned in to the stall to talk to the owner, who was sitting on a stool arranging wreaths. They conferred for a long while, until Drew nodded and turned around to us.

  “I got him down to twenty euros,” Drew told me.

  “What is that?” Cole asked, pointing to the one closest to his eye level.

  “That’s a caga tió, Cole.”

  “Why?”

  “That’s what it’s called.”

  “Why?”

  “It means ‘pooping log’ in Spanish.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, we take him home and feed him and keep him warm, and then on Christmas Eve, we sing a song and ask him for presents. Then we hit him with a stick until he poops out candy.”

  Cole looked at me blankly. After a pause, I asked him, “Do you want to get one?”

  “Yeah!”

  Drew and I laughed. He turned to Stella. “What do you think, Stella? Yes?”

  “Ya!” She clapped her hands in excitement.

  It seemed insane to spend twenty euros on what was essentially a piece of wood with a face painted on it, but we were embracing the tradition wholeheartedly.

  “Okay, let’s do it.” I nodded at Drew and he paid for our caga tió, then stuffed it in his backpack.

  “Come on, kids, let’s keep looking,” I said, and took Drew’s hand. My husband now had a massive piece of wood in his backpack, the cartoonish little face and red hat poking out of the top.

  “How’s it look?” Drew asked me, turning away from me so I could see.

  “Good, he looks snug. Very Catalan.”

  “I want a sword! And an ax!” Cole said to Drew, and ran ahead to another stall.

  “Oh, cool. Una espada. Maybe for Christmas,” Drew said.

  “Espada,” Cole repeated, and lightly touched the wooden blade.

  “Come on, Cole, the caganer!” I said, pointing to a stand with a large statue of a Catalan man squatting on the top. High above the market traffic, he perched, wearing the same red barretina as our caga tió, plus a white shirt, red belt, and black pants. He had his pants pulled down to his thighs, his round bottom was bare, and he was taking a massive poo.

  Cole stood in awe for a full minute.

  “Mama . . .”

  “Qué hace el hombre?” I
asked him. What is that man doing?

  He looked at me wide-eyed, a hint of a giggle tugging at his dimples.

  “He’s pooping!” I said.

  “Why is he pooping?”

  “He’s the caganer. He poops to make us laugh.”

  Cole laughed and covered his mouth. Stella copied him, covering her mouth and issuing a loud, fake guffaw. Then she turned to Cole and clumsily tried to hug him.

  “Aw . . .” I said, and Stella repeated me. “Awww.”

  “Look, Mama, I’m hugging Stella,” Cole said, leaning down to embrace his sister. He hugged her so tight, she leaned back with one foot off the ground, like that iconic photo of the sailor kissing the nurse on V-J Day.

  “Drew, look,” I said.

  “I know,” he said. “They are killing me with cuteness today.”

  “Okay, guys, let’s go get something to eat,” I said, clapping my hands. “Say good-bye to the caganer.”

  “Bye, caganer!” Cole shouted.

  As we walked away, Cole kept looking over his shoulder at the larger-than-life shrine to silliness. From this angle we could see the soft-serve swirl of poop that lay just below his bum, a graphic and entirely ludicrous sight in the middle of a Christmas market.

  We should have headed to the official pessebre next, the nativity scene, where the caganer is most commonly found. He’s usually placed somewhere in the back, quietly doing his business while Mary takes care of baby Jesus. Sometimes he’s dressed as a celebrity or noted politician. It’s a reminder of our human frailty and to not take ourselves too seriously, even during the holidays. It’s also completely hilarious to Catalan children.

  Instead we made a beeline to a nearby plaza that had a small playground with a gate next to a café with outdoor seats. It was nearly ten p.m., but people were just starting to come out for the night. We led the kids into the playground, closed the gate, and found our seats.

  A waiter came by, and Drew ordered: “Quiero una caña y patatas bravas.”

  “Y una caña para mí,” I added.

  They delivered our beers and spicy potatoes and while the kids played, Drew and I considered what to order for the kids.