Chapter 4
Jade
If I thought Manny was going to let me slack off in my own home during our Wednesday evening Spanish lessons I was sorely mistaken.
When he arrives at my apartment he immediately sits at my dining room table, plopping down a container of food, and opens his phone to the timer. We usually meet in a café, but it’s raining out and Manny was already nearby, so now he’s getting to see my apartment for the first time.
At least he brought a bottle of wine.
I’ve been working with him since October, when my first few months in Madrid made it embarrassingly clear that high school Spanish and living-in-Spain Spanish are two entirely different languages.
Growing up in Texas had given me a false sense of confidence.
Greeting someone in Spanish slips out without thinking—hola, gracias, lo siento—common enough back home that I’d convinced myself I had a head start.
What I hadn’t accounted for was that the Spanish I’d absorbed growing up in San Antonio sounded, as I was informed repeatedly during my first weeks in Madrid, like a Mexican.
Not an insult. Just a fact that apparently required repeating.
Manny had been endlessly entertained by this when I first told him.
He still brings it up occasionally when my vowels slide into something too flat and Texan, but then he gentles it by telling me stories about his time in college in the US and his own version of Spain-Spanish/Latin-Spanish kerfluffles.
Manny sets a timer for twenty minutes. I eye the food container, my stomach already grumbling.
I bet whatever it is it’s going to be great with the wine later.
My tutor leans back in his chair and looks around my apartment. He points over my shoulder and says in Spanish, “Tell me about this.”
I glance behind me. It’s the corkboard I bought when I moved in.
I didn’t bring many decorative or sentimental things across the Atlantic with me, but I did bring a stack of pictures and my beloved instant camera.
They’re my favorite shots from decades of travel, the most important people captured and displayed.
The camera sits nearby, a white retro-looking Polaroid, the third one I’ve owned since I got my first instant camera in China, a Fujifilm Instax.
I take the corkboard off the wall and walk through it with Manny, speaking in Spanish the whole time.
“This is my friend Brenda, who I met in a hostel in Sri Lanka. She lives in DC now, I think. I haven’t spoken to her in a while.
And this is an ex—maybe . . . how do you say—” I switch to English. “Fuckboy?”
“Fuckboy,” Manny repeats back to me with laughter.
Manny lets me keep speaking in English. “What, there’s no other word?” Of course, I’m familiar enough to know that there are tons of English words that Spanish people use—and other languages too; most of my coworkers say ciao when saying goodbye—but it’s fun to learn slang from Manny.
Manny thinks for a moment, and then grins and wiggles his eyebrows. “Picaflor.”
“Picaflor,” I repeat.
“Literally, it means hummingbird. Going from flower to flower . . .” Manny pinches his fingers together and imitates a bird looking for nectar.
Manny continues, “And what you had with him was just ‘un rollo.’”
“A roll? What the hell is that?” I ask.
“Just a brief, meaningless relationship with a picaflor, bonita.”
I laugh and smack his shoulder. “Manny! You’re terrible.”
He chuckles and sets his gaze back on the board. Then he switches back to Spanish. “Are any of your coworkers on here? Like that tío bueno.”
“Tío bueno?” I echo. Then in English. “Uncle good—I mean, good uncle?”
“Hottie,” he says, teasing me. “Carlos, no?”
“Ugh,” I say, thumping my head on the tabletop. “I don’t want to talk about Carlos.”
“En espanol,” he reminds me. “Cuéntame.”
I tell Manny about the presentation schedule. I get through most of it in Spanish—at least the basics, anyway—and I’m pleased with myself.
“It sounds like a good opportunity for you,” Manny observes.
“Cómo se dice ‘patient advocacy groups’?” I ask. “Grupos de defensa de los pacientes?”
He waggles his head. “Asociaciones de pacientes, quizás.” Maybe. “What does that have to do with your job?”
I struggle through the Spanish, explaining to Manny that these groups connect patients with resources and support.
They help build a support network and then—the part that’s really relevant to my job—they lobby for research funding and political support.
“But mostly it means that there will be patients at these presentations, people who really need these shampoos that I’ve been trialing. ”
“Ah,” he says. “This is important.” He reaches across the table and squeezes my hand.
We stay like that for a moment and then Manny releases me and checks the clock. “Two minutes—quick, tell me about your weekend plans.”
“Oh, do you remember that friend in Amsterdam that I spent New Year’s Eve with? She’s getting married and this weekend I’m going to her big hen party.”
Manny grins, and then covers his mouth with his hand, clearly trying not to laugh.
“What?” I ask.
He tries to contain himself. “Fiesta de la gran polla”—he switches to English—“means party of the big dick.”
I gasp. “Noooo. Manny. I said that at work.”
He covers his laughter with both hands now.
“A LOT.”
He throws his head back and cackles.
“Oh my god.” I put my head in my hands. There are several stages to this kind of mortification and I intend to work through all of them. “Manny.” I look up at him with the full weight of my suffering. “I told my boss.”
He loses it completely.
“This is not funny,” I tell him, which is a lie. “I am a professional scientist. I have a PhD.” I press my hands to my cheeks. “I have a PhD, Manny, and I spent a week accidentally telling everyone I work with that I enjoy a big—”
“Okay, okay.” He wipes his eyes. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
He is not sorry.
“They probably knew what you meant in context. It’s an easy mistake to make.”
By now my embarrassment has tipped more into amusement. It is funny. “I have so many questions. Why is pollo chicken and polla dick? How do you say bachelorette—or hen do—in Spanish?”
Manny sticks with English, thankfully. “Well, if you picture a hen sitting on two eggs, it might look like a . . .” He gesticulates to get the message across.
“So then you just use context to know when you mean an actual bird?”
“No, the word we use is gallina. From Latin, I think.”
“Stupid Latin,” I mutter, and Manny chuckles. The timer goes off on his phone and Manny gives me a sly grin as he pulls a bottle of wine out of his bag. “Oh thank god.”
He opens the food container and the smell of cured meats wafts toward me—embutido, Spanish charcuterie. I dig some toothpicks out of the drawer in the kitchen and then stab a piece—salchichón, I think. I’m still learning to identify all the ways the Spanish cure pork.
I hum in delight, and then return to the kitchen for wineglasses. “So what about bachelorette party?”
“Despedida de soltera.”
“Despedida de soltera,” I whisper to myself. Then I speak up so Manny can hear while I reach into my cabinets. “Literally?”
A cork pops. “Goodbye to the maiden. And de soltera is maiden name.”
I bring the wineglasses over and pour generously before holding my wine glass up. “Por las despedidas de soltera!”
Manny clicks his wineglass with mine. “Y a gran pollas!”