Delicioso
by Linda Strange
The maples were orange; the oaks were turning brown. The morning roar of the interstate highway rose up out of the valley, and Gee’s fifth-grade cousin, Nelida, stood in front of the burnt-out house, putting on her make-up.
Nelida looked up as Gee drew closer. “I didn’t expect you. After what happened, I thought for sure Aunt Amalia would let you stay home.”
Gee gazed at her elder cousin, who frightened her, and then at the blackened walls of the house, which one of the local gangs had set on fire. She had wanted to stay home today, but her mother insisted that no matter how disappointed Gee might feel, she couldn’t skip school.
Nelida’s mirror flashed in the sun as she applied the final strokes of orange to her lips. “Too bad about your party today. I’d rather die than not be able to eat pizza.”
Gee hadn’t wanted to die yesterday, when she found out that she was lactose-intolerant. She had wanted to die a few weeks ago when she almost lost control of her bowels in school.
“Are you okay?” her fourth-grade teacher, Mrs. Pirelli, had asked, as Gee, face contorted, raised her hand for the first time all year.
“Bafoom,” she managed to say, knowing she’d mangled the pronunciation.
“Of course.” Mrs. Pirelli pointed to the metallic rectangles stuck to her door. “Take one of the passes and go.” Or at least that was what Gee assumed she said as Gee got up and, with one hand on her stomach, tried to walk to the door as if there was nothing the matter.
It happened again a week later, the day the cafeteria served pizza for lunch: the sudden cramping, the pressure, Gee’s body turning liquid inside her.
“But why?” Gee had heard her mother ask the doctor. “My daughter never had problems like this at home.”
“She’s eating different foods here.” Dr. Amado’s braided hair was wrapped so high around her head it looked as if she were wearing a crown. “Back in Cape Verde things were cooked from scratch, yes? It was the same where I grew up, in Angola. Our mothers and grandmothers cooked meat and vegetables and grains. We ate fresh fruit. The food was much healthier.”
Gee had overheard Nelida’s mother, Aunt Julinda, say something similar. “They all eat out of boxes and cans here.” Aunt Julinda sniffed to her sister. “None of them knows how to cook.”
Gee’s mother and aunt did know how to cook, and Gee loved their cachupa and pastel, cuzco and pudim, but it wasn’t what they ate in America. Here, it was pizza and spaghetti. It was chocolate milk and ice cream. Gee liked these foods, too, and didn’t want to give any of them up, but she didn’t want to have accidents either. She couldn’t have accidents. If she started having accidents, she’d become a reject before she even managed to fit in.
“Back home you wouldn’t eat,” Nelida said, “and now here you can’t.”
“Yes, I can.” Gee was determined that today Nelida wasn’t going to bully her. “I just can’t manage dairy.”
Gee looked down the street of gray three-story wooden houses so different from the low pastel-colored homes of her island. Now, in late October, some of the houses had pictures of ghouls and goblins in their windows, tombstones on their front lawns and giant spider webs hanging from the tree branches.
“What did you decide to be for Halloween?” Gee asked Nelida as they turned toward the school.
“A witch.” Nelida raised her arms and walked fast, pretending she was flying through the air.
They found Joely standing with a crowd of children in front of the bodega. Joely was Gee’s seatmate in Mrs. Pirelli’s class and her best friend in America. Joely was Puerto Rican, the oldest of seven, three brothers and four sisters, and was good at taking care of people. She’d been taking care of Gee since her first day of school.
The morning was chilly and most of the children, including Gee and Joely, were wearing cardigans over long-sleeved shirts and pants. Gee loved the cold. She loved the sweaters that added another layer of protection between herself and the world.
“Are you okay?” Joely asked. “You look sad.”
“Not with you.” Gee gave Joely a hug.
The guard went out into the street and stopped the traffic, motioning for the students to cross. Nelida left Gee and pushed to the front with her two friends, Waleska and Iris. The cardigans their mothers had given them were tied around their waists or stuffed into book bags. They were the only girls still wearing the same short skirts and short-sleeved shirts that they had been wearing in late August. Gee noticed goosebumps now on Nelida’s arms on cold mornings, but she never once shivered or complained.
“I can’t wait for the party this afternoon,” Joely said as they started to ascend the hill on the other side of the road. “Mrs. Pirelli said she was going to order enough pizza for each of us to have two slices.”
At the word “pizza,” Gee felt her stomach contract.
“Don’t call Aunt Julinda,” Gee had begged her mother after they came back from the doctor. “Don’t tell her what the doctor said.”
Her mother held the phone high in surprise. “Of course I’m going to tell her. I tell your aunt everything.”
Normally this didn’t bother Gee. She was pleased that here in America her mother could once again confide in her sister, but sometimes Gee wished she would hold a few things back. Because whatever Aunt Julinda knew, Nelida knew as well.
When Gee and Joely entered the classroom, “Pizza Friday” was written on the board, and despite the fact Gee thought she was prepared to see it, she couldn’t keep from flinching. The other children were chattering to one another, and Gee heard the word “pizza” again and again.
Over on the table under the window, where they kept the bean plants they were growing, Mrs. Pirelli had assembled neat piles of paper plates, napkins, plastic bowls, spoons, and towers of plastic cups. There was an empty space for the pizza boxes and then a row of large liter bottles of Sprite and Coca Cola. Neither the pizza nor the ice cream was there yet. The ice cream was in the freezer in the teacher’s room and the pizza would be delivered in time for lunch. Mr. Markus, the custodian, would carry up the large flat boxes, already grease-stained and wafting the delicious smell of freshly-baked crust, cheese, and tomatoes.
It was all so unfair. When she was a small child, Gee had needed an inhaler. And now she got cramps. Sometimes Gee wished she didn’t have a body at all, or at least not one that gave her so many problems. She dreamed of being made of air, like the spirits that flew high through the Sâo Nicolau mountains or skimmed over the surface of the ocean waves.
She followed Joely to their table and began to take her notebooks and pencils out of her book bag. Her fingers touched the lump of her packed lunch in the bottom, a lump that seemed to match the one in her throat.
“A lot of people are lactose-intolerant,” the doctor had told Gee and her mother. “It’s particularly common in the African-American community.”
Which meant that mostly Black people got it. So why had Gee developed it and not Nelida? Nelida’s father was Black, from Sâo Tiago. But Cape Verdeans from their island, Sâo Nicolau, were light-brown.
Yet if Gee wasn’t Black, why did she have a disease that mostly Black people got? Did light-skinned Brown people get it too? What about White people?
In the inside pocket of her bag was the note she was to give to Mrs. Pirelli, the note that Aunt Julinda had dictated to Gee’s mother over the phone.
“Yes?” Mrs. Pirelli smiled as Gee raised her hand. “Do you have something for me?”
As Gee got up and walked over to Mrs. Pirelli’s desk, her legs felt rubbery, like she’d just finished climbing the steepest part of the hill to her grandmother’s mountain home.
“What’s this?” Mrs. Pirelli took the note Gee held out to her.
Plese excuse Germana form eating the piza and ice creem. She canot have anything dairy. Today doctor tell us.
Gee stared at the floor. What would Mrs. Pirelli say? She would be nice. But how would she be nice? Would she be nice in a way that embarrassed Gee in front of the class? Or would she manage to hide Gee’s humiliation?
“I’m sorry to hear this.” Mrs. Pirelli leaned in and lowered her voice. “But you know... I have an uncle with the same condition. He avoids certain foods and he’s usually fine.”
After only two months in America, Gee was still largely guessing what people said to her. Had Mrs. Pirelli just said that her uncle was lactose-intolerant? If so, the news that White people also got the disease didn’t make Gee feel any better.
“I have food,” Gee whispered.
“Good, that’s good.” Mrs. Pirelli smiled. “Does it need to go into the refrigerator? No? Well, that’s fine, then. You can take your lunch out when the pizza gets here.”
Gee returned to her table with an enormous sense of relief.
Until she saw the look on Joely’s face.
She hadn’t told her. She hadn’t told the person who meant the most to her in America. Using a mix of Spanish and Portuguese, she and Joely usually told each other everything. Joely told Gee how hard it was to get all her younger brothers and sisters out of bed on school mornings, braid her sisters’ hair, and make sure they all brushed their teeth. Gee told Joely what it was like to have her father leave for another country, stop sending money, and never come back.
Gee sat down quickly, ripped a blank page out of her math notebook and drew a stick figure of herself holding two hands over her stomach.
“No pizza.” She was determined to try to do this in English. “No dairy.”
“What’s dairy?” Joely asked.
“Milk food.” Gee’s head whirled. It felt strange to know a word that Joely didn’t.
The school loudspeaker crackled to life, and at a sign from Mrs. Pirelli, they all rose for the morning pledge. Gee didn’t understand any of it, although she always put her hand over her heart like everyone else. After the pledge and a moment of silence, Mr. Macaroni, the school principal, read the morning announcements. Gee heard the word “Halloween” and knew he was talking about the school parade.
José gave a disgruntled snort. He was older than everyone else and probably felt that a parade was too childish for him. Gee, however, was looking forward to it. The parade would be something she could enjoy even if she was lactose-intolerant and couldn’t speak English.
After the announcements, the class settled down to math. Math was Gee’s best subject. In Cape Verde, it hadn’t been, but here it was her best, because she didn’t need much English to get it right. Except for the word problems. Even when Gee read these problems several times, she never understood what they were asking.
“It’s still too much language.” Mrs. K., her ESL teacher, patted Gee on the shoulder. “Don’t worry if you don’t understand these yet.”
But Gee did worry. She worried that she would fail all her subjects. She worried that she was no longer any good at school.
As she worked through the multiplication problems, she suddenly felt someone watching her. She looked up and was startled to find José, who usually ignored her, grinning at her from across the room.
Like Nelida, José was tall and strong and beautiful. He was also just as bad. Gee didn’t want to smile at him, but she didn’t want to not smile either. José had light-brown skin with curly hair and large brown eyes, and on the days he wasn’t angry, he liked to flirt and tease. Like Joely, he was Puerto Rican, but unlike Joely, he was Puerto Rican from the Bronx.
Gee settled for giving José a shy smile before going back to work, but as she solved her equations, she continued to think about him, about his jokes, his anger and something Joely had told her: José’s father was in jail.
Gee couldn’t imagine what it was like to have a father who had done something so bad he had to go to jail, but she felt sorry for José because she knew what it was like to have a father who was missing.
“He’s going to work in Portugal,” Gee’s mother had explained. “There aren’t any good jobs here.”
Gee knew that there weren’t any good jobs on Sâo Nicolau. The adults complained about it all the time, but her father had a job working for a shipping company in the port of Tarrafal. Maybe he didn’t make a lot of money, but he made more money than either of her two uncles made in farming or teaching.
In the beginning, her father had sent money from Portugal but, after a year, this money had stopped. That’s when Gee’s mother started crying, and Gee stopped eating. But no matter how much her mother cried or Gee didn’t eat, Gee’s father hadn’t written or returned. After another year of waiting, a year of tears and hunger, Gee’s mother decided to follow her younger sister, Julinda, to America.
The subjects of the morning crept past: math, language arts, science. Finally, Mrs. Pirelli gave the order for them to close their books and clear their desks.
Now what do I do? Gee wondered. Do I take my food out or do I wait until the pizza comes? No matter what I do, everyone’s going to stare at me because I’ll be the only one doing it.
Gee had thought that giving the note to Mrs. Pirelli would be the most difficult thing she had to do today. But taking the food her mother had prepared and setting it out in front of her would be worse. It would be like the first day of school when every movement she made, every sound that crossed her lips, had been wrong.
Then a strange thing happened. José raised his hand.
“Yes?” Mrs. Pirelli said, looking surprised.
“Can I heat up some food in your microwave?” José pulled a plastic container out of his book bag. “I’m allergic to tomatoes.” José didn’t seem embarrassed when he said this. He looked as if having a tomato allergy was the most natural thing in the world.
“Oh,” Mrs. Pirelli’s expression softened. “I didn’t know that, José. You can heat up your food when the pizza gets here. Gee will be eating her own food as well.”
As she heard their names linked aloud, Gee’s cheeks began to burn. She bent down, extracted several wrapped packages from her book bag and placed them carefully on the table in front of her.
José said something in Spanish.
“He wants to know what you’ve got,” Joely translated. She was tapping her foot under their table.
Gee, heart thumping, peeled back the foil to show two of the dozen moon-shaped tuna pockets her mother had fried the night before. She held them up so José could see them from where he was sitting on the other side of the room.
Then Gee heard Joely’s sharp intake of breath.
“José!” Mrs. Pirelli called out. “Get back to your seat!”
“Empañadas?” He was already leaning over them.
“Pastel.” Something deep down inside Gee began to shudder. Like the day back home when the boy who didn’t go to school threw a pebble at her and called her pretty.
“José, I need you to sit down.” Mrs. Pirelli’s voice sharpened.
Gee had been in America long enough to know that everyone, including Mrs. Pirelli, understood that José would not do this.
“What about that one?” He pointed at Gee’s second package.
Gee peeled back the foil around the second package and held it up. “Cornmeal cake.” She didn’t have the courage to look at Mrs. Pirelli.
Mrs. Pirelli pressed the black button on the wall next to the door.
“Can I have some?” José said.
Gee broke off a generous piece and held it out to him.
José took a bite. “Pan de maíz!” He turned to the class, holding his cuzco high. “Delicioso!”
Some of the boys hooted. Everyone laughed. “Pan de maíz!” several Spanish-speaking boys repeated.
“Yes, Mrs. Pirelli?” The office secretary’s voice crackled over the loudspeaker.
“I was wondering if our pizza has been delivered yet?”
“The van just parked out in front, Mrs. Pirelli. I’ll send Mr. Markus up as soon as they bring the boxes in.”
“I’m actually sending someone down.” Mrs. Pirelli motioned to José. “Go and help Mr. Markus, José. You can heat up your food when you get back.”
José looked briefly confused, but after only a moment’s hesitation, he popped the uneaten piece of cuzco into his mouth and disappeared out the door. He would run. All the boys did when they were allowed in the halls by themselves.
As soon as José was gone, Gee divided the remaining cuzco equally between herself and Joely.
“We’re not eating yet, girls.” Now that José was out of the room, Gee knew that Mrs. Pirelli expected to be obeyed.
“It looks good,” Joely whispered to Gee as she and Gee put their cuzco down on the open foil.
“Sí,” Gee said, giggling. “Delicioso.”
Copyright © 2025 by Linda Strange
