Káterin: An Angela´s Ashes Attempt

Everyone from the States, particularly those with Irish ancestry, should read Angela´s Ashes.

Now then. I have started making frenemies (somedays she hugs me, somedays she doesn´t want to talk to me and sticks her nose up in my direction) with a very expressive, very smart ten-year-old who always comes to the library alone, first to do homework in a hurry, then to read stories. Though I shouldn´t say I have favourites, she´s one of them, because she´s one of the only Nicaraguan kids I know who reads for fun.
I also know a little bit about her family, home and reality. I recently finished reading Angela´s Ashes and have composed this little blurb about her life, through her eyes, in the manner of Frank McCourt´s memoirs.

Me llamo Káterin. I am ten years old. I have brown eyes, short, straight brown hair, and pig lips, dice mamá. I think I am prettier than some of my friends but I can´t ever get all the dirt off my face and arms and my shirts are all too small so my stomach shows and I think if I were clean and had clothes that fit I would be prettier.

I live across el cause (the channel) from the library. There used to be water but now it´s full of trash, so mama laughs that even though we don´t have a water river, we have a trash river. My house is made of tin and cardboard. When I pass the adobe houses with two floors on the way to school I wonder if the kids in them get their own rooms and have toilets and kitchens.

I go to school most days. Some days the teacher has a mandato to do or she´s sick so she doesn´t come and I go home. Some days papá is at the house and says I need to stay home to watch Miguelito and when I say I have to go to school he hits me and I already have too many marks on my body so I listen to him and stay home. But I go back to school when he leaves and he can´t do anything about it because he is barely ever home anyway.

My favourite place to go, other than the beach where we only go on Easter and it´s always full of people and the sun almost melts my skin so sometimes I don´t like the beach, is the library. It is colourful and full of pictures of kids from around the world and books I want to read someday.

I like reading most when I am not hungry or worried about Miguelito and when my head doesn´t hurt, because then I am not distracted and can read forever, at least until the library closes. I also like going to the library because they listen to me no matter what I am saying. I sometimes laugh because Heather says all the time that she doesn´t understand me, and then I say, ¨So why are you listening?¨ And then she laughs too. Clara, the one who always wears pretty skirts, touches my hair like mamá used to. And Eliezer and Damaris are always arguing and it makes me laugh. I like to laugh.

My favourite thing about the library is that they have a cabinet that Heather, the new librarian, says has 2,000 stories inside. When she opens the door to show me I feel like my mamá just put a big tray of dulces on my bed and I can eat all I want. Except books are better than dulces because they don´t disappear and you can stay reading a book longer than it takes to eat a dulce. And a dulce goes inside you, but you go inside a book. What I mean is, when I read I like to imagine the castles and green and smells of bread around me. They make the dust and heat go away.

It´s late and I´ve been at the library for two hours. Mamá will be mad but I don´t care because I can always come back tomorrow and the cabinet will always be there.