Grandma's Letters

Last October, Clara spent a week at her grandmother's old house in Vermont. Her grandmother, Rosa, died in the spring, and now the family had to sell the house. Clara's job was simple: open every box and decide what to keep.

On the third day, in the attic, she found a wooden box under an old coat. Inside there were about a hundred letters, tied with a blue ribbon. Half of them were in Spanish, in her grandmother's small round handwriting. The other half were in English, from a young man called Frank: her grandfather.

Clara sat on the floor and read all afternoon. The story was there, letter by letter. Rosa came to New York from Puerto Rico in 1965, at nineteen. She worked in a shoe factory and knew very little English. One Saturday, a friend took her to a dance in Brooklyn.

At the dance she met a tall, shy young man from Vermont. He didn't speak Spanish, and she didn't speak much English, but they danced all night. The next week, Frank went home to his family's farm. And then the letters began.

They wrote to each other every week for two years. Rosa learned English from his letters, and Frank learned Spanish from hers. In one letter he wrote: "I bought a Spanish dictionary. It is very big. You are worth it." In another, she sent him a dried flower from her mother's garden.

In the last letter, from 1967, Frank asked a question. Clara didn't need to read the answer. She knew it. Her grandmother said yes, took a train to Vermont and never left.

That evening Clara called her mother. "Did you know about the letters?" she asked. "No," her mother said. "Grandma never told us." Clara looked at the blue ribbon. "Mom," she said, "I don't want to sell this house."