Sarai and the Meaning of Awesome

When the school bus drops Luca and me off in front of our house on Carmen Street, our Tata is waiting on the porch. We’re really lucky because he comes over
to watch us every day after school. Today, he’s listening to music on an old radio and talking to his cell phone in Spanish.
“¡¿Cómo estás, Siri?” Tata asks the phone.
“Lo siento como pez en el agua,” the phone answers back. Who ever heard of a phone feeling like a fish in the water? Tata showed me how he changed the phone settings to Spanish. It turns out Siri knows lots of languages and has a sense of humor.

“Tata!” I say. “Ever since you got a smartphone, you never get off of it!”
He looks up and smiles. My Tata loves gadgets. He just retired from being an electrician. When he was young, he worked as a helicopter mechanic in the
navy. Tata is always fiddling with radios and cameras and fans and anything he can get his hands on. He has lots of old phones and radios and appliances. He especially loves his phone.

“¡Hola, nietas!” Tata says. “How are my beautiful granddaughters? Come inside. We’ll listen to music while I heat you up some food.” Another song comes on- “The Twist.” It’s one of Tata’s favorites.

“This song is by Chubby Checker!” Tata says, standing up and showing us how to do this crazy
dance move called the twist. We try to move and shake like him, but end up just breaking out in laughter.

Tata loves to dance just as much as we do. “Tata! Watch me!” Lucía says, twisting from left to right. “I’ve got a new move,” I say, and spin my head so that my braids fly around like a pinwheel.

Finally, Tata says, “You girls have tired me out. Who’s hungry?” When Tata babysits, he always brings us Peruvian food from my grandma Mama Rosi. It’s the best.
“I am! What did Mama Rosi make us today?” I ask.
“Chaufa!” he says.
“Yay!” I say. That’s one of my favorites.
Chaufa sounds like CHOW-FA in English, and it is yummy Peruvian-Chinese fried rice. It has onions, vegetables, soy sauce, oil, and little pieces of cut-up hot dogs. Tata brings us enough food to have leftovers. Mama Rosi is teaching me how to make Peruvian food too. Someday I want to go to Peru and visit the place where my mom and family were born.

I’m happy because a lot of my family lives here now, including my aunt and uncle who I call Tía and Tío. They have three kids. We call them the Js, because all
my cousins’ names start with J: Juju, which is short for
Juliana, and the twins, Javier and Jade.