Free Facts of Life by Gary Soto

Crayolas.
    When she asked her teacher about the word
yodeling,
Mrs. Moore lent her a CD of
The Sound of Music.
Laurita was smitten by the sound of yodeling. She played the song over and over, and then she, too, began to yodel. She yodeled before dinner, yodeled after dinner, and yodeled during dinner until her parents told her politely to knock it off. In the shower, away from the commotion of her family, she yodeled. It was the happiest sound in the world.
    On Sunday after church, her father blew the dust off an old 45 record, set it on a phonograph as old as time, and lowered the needle on the first song, "
Canción de Mi Vida.
" Laurita was stirred by the yodeling female singer.
How is it possible,
she thought,
this yodeling in a song in Spanish?
Her father, his hands on his belly, basked in the sounds of the song.
    "But,
Papi,
it sounds like it's from Switzerland," she explained to him. She played the song again and, yes, the yodeling was there. Her father explained the German influence on Mexican music. He tapped his toe to the beat.
    Laurita yodeled to that Mexican song and yodeled to the flip side. She didn't care when the dog next door began to howl, or that her little brothers, the jokers, also began to howl.
    But who was she—really?

    "What's happening to the world?" her father remarked sadly. It was a regular Wednesday evening when nothing important had occurred, except that her brothers Miguel Dos and Kirby had gotten bee stings on their toes within seconds of each other.
    After work, it was her father's habit to read the local Spanish-language newspaper in the yard. He read about a raid that had deported a family of six. His mustache jumped at the news of the government cracking down on so-called illegals. You could go out to buy milk and find yourself picked up in a van and heading for Tijuana. You could go to return a video and
la migra,
the immigration police, would be outside waiting for you.
    "
Viejo,
what will happen if they catch all the people?" Laurita's mother asked as she walked onto the back porch with a pitcher of iced tea.
    "
Nada,
" he answered sagely. "We're citizens of the world." He accepted the glass of iced tea with a "
Gracias, vieja.
"
    Citizens of the world
, Laurita pondered. She liked that phrase. She had felt that way for a long time, ever since she got her own library card with her name on it. And wasn't it true that she had a license plate that read LAURA attached to the back of her bike seat? She could roll up one side of their driveway and down the other side as long as she pleased. And couldn't she yodel just like singers in Mexico
and
Switzerland?

    One day when their parents were working, Laurita's two little brothers rifled through the desk where bills, prescriptions, hand-scrawled recipes, old sepia-colored photographs of relatives in Mexico, pens and pencils bundled in rubber bands, and important documents were kept.
    "This is mine!" Miguel Dos exclaimed when he held up his birth certificate.
    "This is mine!" Kirby screamed, even prouder. "Look how little my foot was."
    Laurita searched that desk, but couldn't locate her birth certificate. This stopped her yodeling, the bird inside her suddenly quieted. Later at the playground, she froze when she saw an official-looking car parked outside the fence. Was it
la migra
? Was it there to round up kids screaming on the monkey bars? Shoo them out from under bushes where they lurked, playing hide-and-seek?
    Laurita thought her family might have a better chance with
la migra
if they practiced English. That evening, when the dinner dishes had been removed to the sink to soak, Laurita ordered everyone to stay put. She had a game she wanted them to play, and dashed off to get her dictionary.
    The parents looked nervously at each other, not unlike when people spoke to them in English and they could almost understand, yet not quite.
    "I'll look up a word and you'll have to say the word," Laurita said excitedly.
    "I can spell
lamp,
"