“Anything that takes this long,” she’d say, “is made with love.” I remember thinking, Anything that takes this long is not worth making.

Everyone raved about my mother’s golai hagun sune. “So sweet!”

“So smooth!”

Golai hagun sune was Frank’s favorite dish. He’d rather eat it than pizza.

The other women in our family stopped making golai hagun sune for fiestas, rosaries, or even for their husbands. “We can’t compete with Erlinda’s,” they’d say. “She’s the gifted one.” I believe they were the clever ones, finding a way to stop making it.

Every day, Auntie Bernadette reminds me, “Fiesta will be here soon. You better learn now. It’s not an easy dish.”

Mary Kelly

The new girl at school is blond, blue-eyed, with skin as pale as coconut meat—a real haole. She stands in front of the class, holding her fat mother’s hand like a little girl who doesn’t want to be left alone in a room full of darkies like us.

Sister Luke smiles and puts her arm around the girl’s shoulders. “Class, this is Mary Kelly Johnson. She’s a new student here at St. Cletus. Let’s welcome her.”

“Hafa adai, Mary Kelly,” we say together on key. The boys begin their eyebrow talk. They really want to welcome her—show her the island ways.

Her mother leaves and Mary Kelly looks like she’s going to cry, standing there in front of our class. Big haole crybaby. Why doesn’t she go to her own school on the navy base?

Eyebrow talk

The men and boys on Guam have a language all their own—no words are spoken. It’s the eyebrow talk.

When a guy likes a girl, he moves his eyebrows up and down two or three times. That says, You’re pretty, you’re sexy, I like you.

When a mother asks her son if he put out the garbage yet and he raises his eyebrows once, it means, Yes or, Maybe.

And if a guy lowers his eyebrows at another guy—malagu hao mumu?

Watch out. Fists are about to fly.

New Girl Day

At lunch, I don’t hear Tonya’s jokes or Delia’s new gossip about what Lola did with Carlos when her parents went to visit her sick nana. I’m too busy watching Mary Kelly. She’s sitting next to the girls who make straight As, read required books, and wear their socks cuffed. Not like Delia, Tonya, and me. We skid by with Cs, skim Cliffs Notes for assigned books, and roll down our socks until the sisters catch us. Mary Kelly settles next to the Brains, but it’s like she’s alone, curled over the table, eating her peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

At recess, she sits with her back pressed against the outside wall, watching Olivia and the other little girls dance. Can’t she figure out that’s the kiddy side of the school yard? The part of the playground with hopscotch squares, swings, and slides? Stupid girl. That’s no way to make friends.

An Admirer

“He likes you, girl,” Teresita tells me.