Sylvia and Aki

Sylvia Mendez imagined her first day of third grade at Westminster School. She would use her freshly sharpened yellow pencils to write her name in cursive at the top of her worksheets. Her just-out-of-the-shoe- box black Mary Janes would glide across the polished linoleum of the hallway. At the end of the day, she would come home and her father would hug her and ask, “What did you learn today?” Then she would tell him about her teacher and her classmates and every- thing else.
Sylvia never imagined the one thing that actually happened even before her first day of school: she was turned away.

Summer vacation was nearly over. It was the morn- ing Sylvia was to register for school. She rode with her aunt Soledad, her two brothers, and her cousins in the backseat of her family’s blue Pontiac sedan, watching orange groves and fields of lima beans, sugar beets, and asparagus rush by. The flat southern California landscape stretched to the mountains, one farm after another, each a distinct pattern of green stripes.
    We have a farm, Sylvia thought. For the first time, our very own farm.
Sylvia’s father had worked as a field hand on other people’s farms most of his life, but now things were different. Now her father was the boss. That day her parents had stayed at home because the irrigation system on the farm needed fixing.
She knew it wouldn’t last forever. Sylvia’s family had leased the asparagus farm from a Japanese fam- ily, who would someday return.
“The school is right up here,” Aunt Soledad announced, jolting Sylvia back into the present. They had entered downtown Westminster: a dozen or so small businesses clustered along a couple of main streets. No churches, no movie theaters, no depart-ment stores. It was utterly different from busy Santa Ana, where Sylvia had lived before.
The car turned onto Seventeenth Street, and they passed a large cream-colored stucco building with fancy arches over the doorways and pretty flowerbeds in front. The word auditorium was spelled out along the side. She imagined going to assemblies or watching the older kids play sports.
    Wow, Sylvia thought.
Her aunt slowed the car and pulled into the parking lot.
“Is that it?” Sylvia whispered to her cousin Virginia.
“That’s our new school?”
“I guess so,” Virginia whispered back.