Notebooks Full of Spanish

Elena Rodriguez signed up for Spanish classes the year her abuela moved from San Salvador to the apartment downstairs. For eighteen months, she filled three spiral notebooks with verb conjugations, vocabulary lists, and grammar rules. She could diagram sentences. She aced every written exam. Her instructor called her the most dedicated student in the class.

But Elena never spoke a word of Spanish to her grandmother.

She meant to. Every Sunday dinner, she sat across from Abuela Carmen, rehearsing phrases in her head while her cousin translated between them. "Next week," she told herself. "When my accent is better." She kept studying. She bought flashcard apps. She listened to podcasts on her morning commute.

Then one February morning, the apartment downstairs went quiet.