Introduction

So, I found the original first draft of the first two pages, made it into a second draft, and am happy to present you with a working title (Querido, Querida, Queride), a birth-assigned name for our protagonist (Leandra) a timeframe (college) and some actual original writing.

Introducción

Jimena, mi mejor amiga, and I have talked together in Spanish all our lives.

Jimena is Latina. Her parents are Puerto Rican, and the language has been part of her heritage. She has grown up bilingual.

I am white mixed-European of who knows how many generations ago, and I speak Spanish because Jimena does. We met in kindergarten. Jimena, being very young and not quite knowing the difference between English and Spanish, talked to me in both at once, the way her parents do to her.

“Ay, niña, eat your almuerzo!”

“Son mis blocks! No play con ellos!”

I, of course, didn’t understand a word, and did not give her back her blocks. Jimena set up an almighty fuss, I set up a moderate fuss in protest, both our parents were called, and by the end of the day, my mother decided that I was not too young to start learning another language, and began teaching me basic Spanish words in the evenings. She found a Spanish tutor for me when I was six, and I learned Spanish amongst a handful of other small children whose parents had high aspirations for them. I practiced my new words on Jimena, who gave me new ones to ask about. Así, we began our own strange way of teaching each other both languages and developing our own mezcla.

We stayed best friends throughout elementary school, middle school, and then high school. I took Spanish in high school to perfect the use of the language, even though the intro classes were so easy I slept through them. Jimena thought she knew it well enough not to bother, and took French. She got tired of French in our sophomore year, though, and we took intensive Spanish together our last two years, which is where we both really cultivated a love of the nuances of Spanish.

Did you know, for example, that to speak of time passing, one literally says, “It makes however long since I did this” instead of “It’s been however many years since I did this”? Or that to express romantic love, one says, “I want you”?

Sorry. Language major. I digress.

Jimena’s family love that I can speak it with them. Jimena loves that, at five years old, she already had enough influence over me to get me to learn a whole new language. We both love that it’s nuestra lengua, our language, what we use when we’re trying to speak privately in public, what we use to tell a secret, emphasize a point, express emotion. The only thing I don’t love about the Spanish language, and other Latin-based languages, is gender.

Every noun in Spanish has a gender, masculine or feminine. Every adjective has to match. Una muchacha es guapa. Un muchacho es guapo. This is easy enough for me to do without thinking, that isn’t the problem.

The problem is that I flinch a little every time Jimena uses a feminine adjective for me.

The problem is that I flinch a lot every time I have to use a feminine adjective for myself.

I don’t understand why. And it’s getting worse.