Comunión

       It's the weekend and Antonio leaves to visit his first host family in Puebla to celebrate their daughter's first communion (or confirmation--I always get them mixed up but the girl was about twelve) with a big party.

            At breakfast, Antonio gives me only polite answers, so I hit him with the real reporter questions as soon as we leave the language school for our walk home. "Was there a live band?" I ask.

            "No, I think that's too expensive. I think that's only for weddings," he says. "But let me tell you what happened: In the middle of the party, a big storm struck and the wind knocked down the canopy above us and downed an iron pole that hit the little communion girl right in the head and her little twelve-year-old boyfriend tried to rescue her, but her eight-year-old brother just ran away and everyone made fun of him for that later. The whole party fell apart and the family went to the hospital and all the guests went home and the next day the girl showed up with a neck brace on and all she wanted to do was open her presents finally but she had trouble seeing the presents with that neck brace on so she had to hold them up to her face and her parents got upset with her because it looked like all she cared about was her presents instead of talking with any of her visitors because she was holding all of the gifts up to her face like that."

            As we walked, he told me about the whole trip, how the family talked him out of buying a bus ticket in advance and insisted on taking him out to breakfast in a nearby town known for its Italian immigrants and great Italian food, and how he then had to pay a bunch of extra money for a first class ticket to avoid traveling in the "madrugada," which is how I learn the term for "middle of the night," and as he tells me this, our Oaxaca host family's house comes into view, and I feel this surge of happiness. Instead of feeling sorry for the little girl in the neck brace, I feel elated because I have understood this whole story, a sustained tale in Spanish for a nearly twenty-minute walk. Poor kid... but lucky me.