Rogelia's House of Magic Read Online Free PDF Page A

on the walls of the kitchen, china and crystal gleamed inside polished teak cabinetry with designer cutouts, and an ornate glass lamp hung above the large butcher-block island. Fern almost laughed each time she saw another example of professional decorating in the Peralta house. It was as if having a polished look straight out of
Martha Stewart Living
magazine meant you were a person of value. It was surreal in an emotionless, mechanical sort of way.
    Fern’s home was a chaotic celebration of life. Plants grew wildly everywhere. Each room was painted a different color and splattered with pictures or artifacts of the places they had visited. Fern lived with her older sister, Pilar, when their parents traveled. Sometimes they took her with them. Fern had been to Spain, the mother country; Colombia (of course); Mexico, because it’s a neighboring Latin country; and Greece, due to her mother’s obsession with Greek mythology. Fern loved to travel and considered it quite the bonus to speak two languages.
    “So you quit Spanish because the teacher smoked?” Fern asked as she looked around at the spotless stainless-steel appliances, without a single smudge. Not a dish lay out on the counter, not a thing was out of place.
    Marina turned on her heel, coming almost nose to nose with Fern, who backed away. “Well, the truth is, I didn’t like having to ask questions with everybody else,” she said. “My mom or Grandpy should’ve taught me Spanish at home.”
    “You need to get over that someday.” Fern put her hand on Marina’s shoulder.
    “It was embarrassing.” Marina turned away. She bent down to a drawer and pulled out a few spools of yarn, scissors, a fistful of Popsicle sticks, and glue. “I mean, obviously I can get by without speaking Spanish, but still, it wouldn’t suck to be able to tell the gardener I need a little space when I’m lying out at the pool.”
    Fern thought she should bop Marina for her arrogance, but she decided to drop it for now. “Why don’t you let me teach you?”
    Marina paused for a fraction of a second. However, when she spoke there was an edge to her voice, “You know, I don’t even get how to conjugate verbs. And what makes a noun male or female?” Marina yanked open the fridge and grabbed a bowl of orange slices, which she handed to Fern. “And what’s up with the
usted
? Why should there be a whole verb family for your elders?”
    Marina strode across the kitchen and flipped on the pantry light. The shelves were lined with food. She grabbed caramel popcorn with macadamia nuts (Fern’s and her favorite snack) and two cans of Hansen’s cherry vanilla creme soda. “I don’t see why I have to show respect to someone like my mom if she doesn’t respect me.”
    Fern didn’t reply. What could she say? Respect for her elders had been drilled into Fern every day since her birth, like the importance of breathing. It wasn’t something she could explain. Besides, something had caught Fern’s eye: a Mexican
talavera
tile stuck to one of the shelves with a picture of the earth and the saying LOVE YOUR MOTHER .
    Fern sighed pensively. “I wish everyone loved Mother Earth the way I do.” Fern couldn’t wait to register as part of the Green Party. She attended every local rally, supporting causes like stopping deforestation in South America, protesting illegal exhumation of local Indian skeletons, and planting indigenous herbs as a steward on the Bolsa Chica wetlands. It was her dream to be arrested for forming a human chain around a beached whale or for handcuffing herself to a bulldozer threatening to turn up the remains of an ancient civilization.
    “That’s not what the tile means,” Marina said, pushing aside cans of soup in a desperate attempt to find something. “She’s not so much into me loving Mother Earth as she is into drilling the idea into my head: love your mother. No matter what she does. No matter what she says. Love your mother. Let me repeat: love your