I longed for acceptance, and I suspect this was age-appropriate. I understood, even at the time, that fitting in, for me, would involve a special effort. My peers belonged by way of birthright. For them, belonging was a given.

It all starts with language, doesn’t it? Mine betrayed me at the first word. The Spanish I’d grown up speaking was unlike the version spoken around me. Mine was tight and breathy, all in the tip of the tongue and narrowed lips and entirely distinct from the easy, generous cantor of my peers, with their unconstrained consonants and enduring vowels. I grew to understand that I spoke “Chilean,” which was neither mocked nor embraced, but different without a doubt. This difference was occasionally inconvenient. There was that day I lost recess privileges when I let out a small shriek, identifying the spider on my desk as bicho. This caused my classmates to cackle at the new, prissy girl who inexplicably cried dick. This did little to support my cause.

This was one of the many things I just couldn’t know until I had. I discovered, for example, that Puerto Rico had 78 municipalities. They had names like Aguadilla and Aibonito and Naranjito, which gave me the distinct impression they were places distant, exotic and inaccessible. I learned that parcha was a fruit, and better yet, an ice cream flavor. The bells ringing outside the school’s front gate at dismissal signaled the arrival of the ice cream man, who walked the streets of San Juan with an itinerant cooler for the frozen treats. From him we bought parcha scooped onto small cones, which we devoured in the afternoon heat.

I was happy about the discoveries to make in my new home, which brought with them a daily thrill. At recess, the thing to do was chase lizards that ran across the courtyard and cafeteria room. I wasn’t very good at this game, and secretly was not that motivated to catch lizards in the first place. But I was happy to partake in the game and watch the brave few dangle captured lizards from their ears like jewelry. We also played boys catch girls, or girls catch boys, and this was much more fun.

First grade became infinitely better after meeting my first and best friend, Nicole. Nicole had many friends, at age 7 already a queen bee, but of the benevolent variety. It was as if there was a bright light surrounding her, in which we all wanted to bask.  She shared it liberally in her entirely un-self conscious way of walking through life, with humor-colored glasses and remarkable impersonation skills. At lunch, the girls of the first grade sat elbow-to-elbow on long cafeteria tables with built-in benches, with Nicole at the center of any and all fun.

Nicole had grandparents who lived in Aguadilla, and I was invited to join the Gonzalez clan for a family visit. I sat in the last row of their white Suburban, as naturally as if I were the family’s fifth child.  I was right about Aguadilla, it was a place both far away and exotic. Here, we ate Mati’s tostones, which I learned were fried plantains, and hers the best in Puerto Rico. We spent the afternoon playing in my Puerto Rican grandparents’ pool, coordinating aquatic dance routines to Michael Jackson’s “Black or White.”

I don’t remember many sunsets from childhood, but I do remember the Aguadilla senset. We had just come back from the beach, where we’d bought piraguas, frozen treats of shaved ice that came in paper cones and were topped with fruit-flavored sugar syrup. The sun setting in Aguadilla over the Caribbean Sea was blood-orange and dramatic, also the color of my piragua that day, which had turned my lips a deep shade of raspberry.

Back in school, Nicole and I were inseparable, and lunch time was where the party continued.

Most kids had “Nitza” for lunch. Nitza was the lady who ran the cafeteria kiosk at Saint John’s. To our knowledge, Nitza had no last name. Nitza was also synonymous with the standard cafeteria lunch at Saint Johns. Nitza served traditional fare like mofongo and lechón in a dish that was advertised as “the Daily Special.” The Daily Special was different each day, but you could count on the meal being hot and requiring a fork and knife. It was disguised as healthy but I suspect it was not. There were rampant rumors of cockroaches found in the thick of her rice and beans, which I was not keen to confirm directly.

Generally, I was grateful for my packed lunches, but it was a mistake sending me to school with lentejas in a thermos. In fact, I found lentejas to be a mistake always. It’s now 25 years later and today they offend me less, but as a child, they topped my list of detestable foods I wished would be eviscerated from the face of this earth. Lentejas were lentils, made the Chilean way, resulting in a thick, pungent off-grey stew that did not look entirely edible, at least not after having been reheated. They looked decidedly like dog food.

“Foooooo, what is that?” A classmate – who? – expressed disgust.

My face became hot, and I grew self-conscious.

I returned the lid to my thermos and looked down. I wondered if anyone had an extra bag of Doritos. I bit into the apple that had been packed into my lunchbox for dessert.

Nicole, in her benevolence, was also perceptive. “When I grow up, I want to be on Saturday Night Live or in HR, because I love people,” she’d say. She was indeed a people person.  Nicole was across from me that fateful lentil day, with a tray of Nitza before her.  “Toma, I’ll trade you,” she said, and graciously slid her tray in front of me. “I love this soup. Oh my gosh, just like the soups in Europe, so thick and delicious. Amazing with croutons.”

Nicole and her family had just come back from a vacation that featured places I had difficulty imagining, with names like Rome and Paris. Based on the way in which I’d heard the Chilean side of my family speak about Europe – by which they really meant Spain, but I of course had no concept of where Madrid and Barcelona were in relation to Rome and Paris – I had the impression Europe was somehow a superior place. My lentils went from being dog food to Nicole’s European sophistication. I happily chomped on my first Daily Special, after thoroughly combing the food to confirm it cockroach-free. Daily Special was not so bad. I told you Nicole was a benevolent queen bee.