Julinda and Amalia sat across from each other in two of the four plastic chairs they had pulled off the street together the summer before. It was the end of a hot day in June, when the Connecticut light started to slant eastwards and made the cracked streets and crumbling homes of their neighborhood look almost peaceful. 

Amalia’s daughter, Gee, sat in a slice of sun next to her, slender from her struggles with lactose intolerance, her face swollen from crying. She had brought the retention letter home from school yesterday. When her mother told her what was in it, Gee at first hadn’t believed her.

Nelida, Amalia’s niece and Gee’s eleven-year-old-going-on-fifteen cousin, sat at the top of the stairs on the other side of the balcony. Her legs, gleaming with moisturizer, were propped up against one stair post and her back was against the other. This pose reminded Amalia of how back home the kids used to wedge themselves among the river rocks when the water ran dry. 

Had Nelida also gotten a retention letter? Amalia had meant to ask her sister, but with everything that had gone on the night before, she’d forgotten to raise it.

“I thought I could trust Waleska’s grandfather,” Julinda addressed her daughter. “To get you back from the dance in one piece.”

“I got myself back from the dance in one piece,” Nelida spoke with her usual surliness.

“Did you? Did you really?” her mother replied, her voice crackling with sarcasm. “Do you want to tell your aunt what your dress looked like when you got home, the one she went to the trouble of sewing for you?”

Amalia had repurposed a gown for her niece from a larger dress that a customer at the dry cleaner’s had never picked up. She had made it as elegant as she could, hoping it would inspire her niece to behave in a more lady-like fashion.

“I rubbed up against a car,” Nelida offered glumly. 

The word “rubbed” made Amalia nervous, but she didn’t want to go there. She did want to warn Nelida that her position was precarious. If she were to tilt outwards from the step she was perched on, the air would not hold her.

On the opposite hill, an enormous cross rose up into the sky. The city lit it at night, sometimes lavender, sometimes pink. The first thing Amalia’s sister, Julinda, had done when she got here was send a picture of this cross to her family on Sȃo Nicolau.

“A godly place,” their mother had said. “They must believe in the old ways.”

Two years later, Amalia had come anyway.   

She watched her daughter stare at Nelida and wondered what Gee was thinking. That despite all her efforts, she was going to be retained along with her cousin?

“That car you got in.” Julinda’s voice was raw from cigarettes and lack of sleep. “Mrs. Jameson said there was a crowd of older men clustered around it. Holding bottles.”

Nelida didn’t comment on the neighbor’s observation.

Gee made a small whooshing sound, like a bird flying past up in the mountains.

“You had no business getting into a car like that,” Julinda continued angrily, pulling a crushed pack of Marlboro Golds from her bag. 

“I’d have gotten into our car if we had one,” Nelida snarled, tapping her pink fingernails against her stomach. “And if you’d come to pick me up like you promised, we could have walked home together like Waleska did with her grandfather.”

The old Julinda would have jumped up, leapt across the balcony, and given her daughter a good slap for this insolence, but the Julinda who had worked double shifts in America for three years shook out another cigarette instead.

Amalia knew she should reprimand her niece for speaking to her mother that way, to remind her why they couldn’t afford a car and why her mother had been too exhausted to come and get her, but she didn’t have the courage to tell Nelida anything. Afraid of an eleven-year-old. America could do that to you, too.

“She hates me,” Gee had recently complained to Amalia. “Nelida hates me because I’m always sick.” 

Amalia didn’t believe Nelida hated Gee because Gee suffered from calcium deficiency, asthma, and now, lactose intolerance. She did think Nelida resented her cousin because she was a pale shade of brown. This was hardly Gee’s fault, but neither was it Nelida’s that back home in Cape Verde, she had been taunted about her dark color from the time she was small. 

After pointing out her mother’s broken promise, Nelida stared below her at the backyard three stories down. Birds swooped from tree to tree, and in the street in front of the house, Amalia could hear basketballs hitting the plastic hoop the kids pulled into the road. 

Her daughter had finally stopped crying. 

Had Gee resigned herself to repeating fourth grade? Amalia didn’t know, but she did know that she was not yet resigned to this. During the long hours she spent hunched over her sewing machine at the dry cleaners, she had always comforted herself with the fact that though this country might be hard for her, her daughter would finish school and go to college. How was it possible that Gee couldn’t get past her first year?

The teachers were worried about Gee’s grasp of English sounds. Not her pronunciation. She could say the words alright, but when she saw them written on the page, she still continued to read them as if they were Portuguese.

That didn’t sound so bad to Amalia, but Gee’s ESL teacher, Mrs. Kennedy, insisted it was a problem. Especially when Gee was trying so hard to get it right.

Amalia liked Mrs. K. She spoke broken Portuguese and never made Amalia feel stupid. Gee adored her and said that in school the only place she felt comfortable was in Mrs. K’s class. If Mrs. K thought it would help Gee to do another year in fourth, then maybe it would, but Amalia still didn’t know how this had happened. Gee had been the perfect student in Cape Verde, the opposite of her cousin Nelida even then.

When Amalia and her sister were girls, they had also been opposites. Julinda had been a constant recipient of the palmatoria. Amalia had never given anyone a reason to beat her. She had especially excelled in school. If she’d been allowed to take the exam for the Lyceum in Mindelo, she knew she’d have passed it, but their family had only had enough money to send one child to Sâo Vicente and it was her brother who had gone and then continued on with a scholarship to the university in Lisbon.

And what good had it done him? A year after graduation, he returned to the islands, claiming the Portuguese wouldn’t hire him except for jobs he didn’t want. Now he taught in the Lyceum Amalia wished she had attended. He was disappointed that this was what he had made of his life, and when he came home to Ribeira Brava, all he did was complain and drink grog.

A sudden cascade of revs and a blast of exhaust rose up from the driveway below. The Dominican man who lived in the first-floor apartment with his parents had been working on his car every evening for the last two weeks. The smell of oil and exhaust didn’t usually bother Amalia, but in this humid heat, mingled with the smoke of the neighbor’s barbecue and the coconut from Nelida’s moisturizer, the odor was nauseating.

“I forgot to ask you last night,” Amalia said, changing the subject. “Did Nelida get her retention letter yesterday?” 

“Uh, no.” Her sister looked startled. “No, she didn’t.” 

“Mrs. K. said they all went out together.”

Julinda stubbed out her cigarette and reached for another. Her face looked peculiar, like she was both sorry and proud. “Mrs. Kennedy told Nelida at the dance last night that she’s not getting a letter.”

“What do you mean she’s not getting a letter?”

 Julinda lowered her voice, “I mean she’s not being retained.”

“Mrs. Kennedy said that even though I’m failing, I’ll just continue the process of learning English next year in sixth.” Nelida’s voice rang out loud and smug from across the balcony.

Amalia felt her heart sink. There was no way Nelida could have come up with “the process of learning English” on her own.

“But that makes no sense.” She fought to keep her voice calm. “Why can’t Gee continue her ‘process of learning English’ next year in fifth?”

“I’m just telling you what Mrs. K said.”

For a brief moment, Amalia willed Nelida to lose her balance and topple down the stairs. She had no right to sound so pleased with herself when her cousin was grieving.

A woman started laughing in the apartment below, then abruptly began to curse. The clop of basketballs stopped and Amalia could hear the kids starting to argue.

“Did Mrs. Kennedy talk about any ‘process’ with you?” she said, turning to her daughter. 

Gee’s voice wavered. “No, she only said that I need more time to learn English.”

“I want to know how they can pass Nelida and not you,” Amalia demanded though she knew it was not a fair question to ask her daughter. It was her fault anyway. In Cape Verde, Amalia had always helped Gee with her schoolwork, but here her English was too poor. 

“You don’t need to talk about Nelida like that.”  Julinda’s voice was no longer low.

“Talk about her like what?”

“Like she couldn’t pass. Like she’s stupid or something.”

“I didn’t say Nelida was stupid.”

 “You made it sound like she is. You made it sound like she couldn’t possibly pass on her own.”

“Her grades are terrible,” Amalia said gently, staring at the cigarette smoke that hung in clouds above her sister’s head. “You tell me that, Jul, every time we speak.”

“I know what I tell you, but that’s not what I meant.” Julinda’s face grew dark. “You’ve always thought Gee was better. Admit it.”

Amalia didn’t think it was unreasonable to think that Gee was better. She never got in trouble. She did what she was told. But she also didn’t want to offend her sister. 

“They’re passing me because they’re tired of me,” Nelida interrupted her aunt and her mother. Her voice wasn’t quite as loud as it had been before and her smugness was gone.

Silence descended over the balcony, the kind of silence that occurs when people suddenly hear the truth.

Her mother coughed. “Mrs. Kennedy said that?”

“She didn’t have to.” Nelida looked impatient. “Like you said, Mom, I’m not stupid.” 

“They’re retaining you,” she turned to her cousin, “because they know you can do better.”

Gee looked confused. Nelida wasn’t usually nice to her. “You really think so?” 

“I know so.” Nelida’s face broke into a grin. “Just like I know how cool it’s gonna be for me next year in sixth.”

It suddenly occurred to Amalia how dangerous it was going to be for Nelida to leave the relative safety of the neighborhood school for an establishment of over a thousand mostly older students on the other side of town. Though Nelida might be intelligent enough to understand why she was being sent on, she was not mature enough to be wary. 

 “Thank you, Nelida.” Gee’s voice sounded stronger than it had all day. “It means a lot to me that you think that.”

“Of course, I think that,” Nelida laughed. “I wouldn’t lie… to you.”