The door opened right into the small kitchen. There was a preparation table and a small sink beside it at the center. The appliances looked old and used, and the floor was covered in a dull, light brown, scuffed linoleum. We brought in the groceries and set them on the table. As he took things out of the bags, I had to identity them in English again. If I missed one, he put it back into the bag. He went on to another item and returned to the one I missed until I recalled it and pronounced it adequately. He said until I did, he wouldn’t take it out, and if I didn’t, he would never take it out. I thought he was being silly, but he looked very serious, so I concentrated hard until I got it right.
Once everything was put away, he went through the kitchen, identifying everything in English and having me repeat the words. He also made me put some words together, such as “I am putting the dishes in the sink.” Then he would ask me, “Where did you put the dishes?” and I would reply. My confidence grew. Maybe this was a very good idea, I continued to tell myself.
We walked through the living room. The gray rug looked tired and worn and in need of a good vacuuming. The furniture didn’t look much better. The arms of chairs and the sofa were scratched, and the pillows looked as if they needed a good airing. Gazing about at the coffee-colored walls, I saw there were no pictures anywhere, but there were nails where pictures had been hung.
As in the kitchen, he reviewed the English words for everything in the living room and again put them into s
entences and questions. “Where will you sit?” “Sofa.” “What’s on the floor by the sofa?” “A rug.” He looked very pleased with how I was doing.
“Your aunt is going to be amazed,” he told me, and explained what he meant by amazed. “It’s good to know a few words that mean almost the same thing,” he explained. “We call those words synonyms. Words that mean the opposite are antonyms. Let’s try it. What’s a word for the opposite of warm?”
I told him, “Cold.”
“Great!” he said. It was more like a game now. I smiled. I’m going to be all right, I thought. This will be fine.
He tried the television set. It received only a few local stations. The pictures came in cloudy and powdery, which upset him.
“No damn cable hookup,” he muttered, and then turned to me and explained what that meant.
I told him we had a much smaller television set with even worse reception in Mexico, but there were places we went to watch television, and one place had a satellite receiver.
“At least we have an old video player here,” he said, pointing to something under the set, and again explained what that meant. Of course, I had heard of it and seen them.
“I’m going to pick up some movies for you to watch repeatedly, because you could learn a lot more English that way,” he said. He said he knew someone who learned Spanish that way.
“He watched one movie three hundred times if he watched it once,” he said.
That was how I had learned most of the English I knew. This would be more fun than just reading an English textbook.
We continued through the small house, pausing at the one bathroom. Although it was bigger than the one I shared back at mi tía Isabela’s estate, it didn’t look all that much nicer. There was no shower stall, just a tub and a shower with a plastic curtain. The bathroom did have a large window, however, which made it brighter but also clearly showed the stains in the floors, walls, sink, and toilet.
“You’ll have to do some cleaning here,” he said. He described the words wash, rinse, scrub, polish, and mop. I didn’t think it would take much work, because it was nowhere as large a bathroom as Sophia’s.
I told him that, and I told him what a mess her bathroom and her suite were.
“I know,” he said. “She’s as spoiled a brat as you could find anywhere in the world. I heard what she did to you in her shower, but don’t worry. I can tell already. You’re much smarter than she is,” he said.
His compliment made me blush.
“Such a sweet, innocent face,” he said, touching my cheek. “You’re a fresh breeze, believe me. I love innocence,” he added. “It’s pure.”
He looked at me more intensely now, and my heart seemed to trip over itself. Then he quickly smiled again and continued our tour of the house.
We inspected the two bedrooms, one with a king-size bed and one with two double beds. He checked the closets in the room and the one in the hallway.
“Damn. Your aunt forgot about some other basic things,” he said.
I shook my head, not understanding, and he explained that mi tía Isabela had sent us up here without telling him that we needed towels, washcloths, sheets, pillows, and pillow cases. At the supermarket, we had bought what I would need to start cleaning the small house.
“Now I’ll have to return to the shopping center,” he told me. “We’ll bring in our suitcases first. You unpack your things and start cleaning up the house. Start with the kitchen, because we’re going to have our first dinner here.”
He looked around and nodded.
“The place will work for us. We’ll be fine here,” he told me, his voice insistent. Then he suddenly smiled the smile of someone who had just had a lightbulb go on in his head.
“This is called setting up a home. Newlyweds do it,” he told me. “You and I are like newlyweds. That will help you learn faster, and it will be more fun pretending to be newlyweds.”
The word threw me. I knew wedding, but new wedding? How could there be a wedding here? I asked him.