Muy Bonita

I grew up as one of the only "gringas" in my neighbor hood from age 5-13. Translation- "white girl".
I went to Spanish catholic mass with my amigas and then we would go back to Jeanette Corderos house and make the after mass meal which consisted of:
cutting the head off a chicken in the back yard (it was sooo much fun running after this clucking chicken and seeing who could catch it first),
plucking the feathers
turning it upside down in the back yard to drain the blood,
and then gathering in the kitchen to help Mrs. Cordero make an incredile Adobo chicken dinner with rice and beans.
i could speak fluent Spanish (or at least hold my own). This was the case because my parents worked numerous jobs and I was with the neighbors 24/7 . While the chicken was cooking the adults would be conversing on the plastic covered couches, drinking Sangrai and Milwaukees Best while Jeanette, Lissette, Hector and I would be singing into deoderant conainers and hairbrushes pretending to be the new and improved version of Menudo.
We eventually moved, as my parents got it together (they started to worry when I began to speak with a puerto rican accent and mumble things like "bendajo" under my breath, translation "asshole").
I took 6 years of Spanish after that, in high school and college. I never did well, but it was what was comfortable, I had to take a language.
15 years later ( okay closer to 20) I haven't touched the language (other than when my brother and I get together and we reminise and make our parents crazy, we sit and curse during every holiday!),
until today.
Many of you know I am a vice-principal/special education-student services/athletic director by day, basically i run an elementary school, outside of Camden, Nj. Not the best area, not terribly the worst, very blue coller.
I was paged to the nurse.
We have a new preschooler, age 4, Griselda Flores. Beautiful child, dark eyes, dark hair, a peanut of a thing.
Throwing up and crying.
It is her first day in preschool, parents speak no english, she was dropped off at school and is throwing up because she is crying so hard. Nurse and teacher are looking at me helpless. She has beeen crying and trying to run out the main entrance for an hour, screaming "Mama!" They are fresh off the plane/boat from Puerto Rico. She is terrrified, (what are these concrete walls, with people speaking this crazy language, expecting me to sit in a circle and sing?)
At that moment the Cordero family comes backto me , and i immediately get on one knee, open my arms and tell her to come to me, "ven aca" she runs to me and i tell her she is "muy bonita", very pretty.
She calms iimmediately. The familiar language soothes her.
As I hold her I remember Mrs. Cordero, 25 years ago, in her kitchen, as I cry, missing my mom (because she is working her third shift), "Es muy bonita mi Kelly, es muy bonita."