A Casa de Nunes

[Aura]

A little after 6 PM on Friday at the Nunes household.  Guilherme and Grandma Agata were hard at work getting dinner ready in the kitchen.  Yukiko reclined in the living area, recuperating from a hard day at work.  The television was set to an old comedy special, chuckles echoing through the room with each good zinger.  And at a table in the corner, Yumi and Grandpa Esteban were entrenched in an enthralling game of Go Fish.

Yumi examined her hand carefully, plotting out her next move based on what knowledge she had.  Peeking over her cards, she made her call.  “Do you have any nines?”

Esteban looked at his own hand, pulling two cards and placing them on the table.  “Good call.”  He said with a nod.  She smiled and pulled a pair of nines from her own hand, moving all four to the side on her half of the table.  Her grandfather noted her progress.  “Four books already?  Looks like I’m dealing with a pro here.”

“Come on, Grandpa.”  She replied lightly.  “We play all th-the time, and you uh… you almost always win, remember?”

The old man smiled and waved his finger in the air.  “I don’t know about that.  You’ve been catching up lately, haven’t you?  Either you’re getting better, or I’m losing my touch.”  He shuffled the cards in his hand.  “By the way, did I ever tell you about my friend Dan?  The man seriously loved playing poker.  I remember this one time we were playing a few hands for fun, and he said that one day he would take all our friends to Vegas and make us rich at the high-roller’s table.”

“Wow.”  Yumi was impressed by such a bold statement.  “What did you say?”

“I told him that he’d had enough to drink for one night!”  He laughed what Yumi could only describe as a grandpa laugh, warm, cheerful, and good-natured.  “The guy was pretty good, but he was nowhere near a pro level, know what I’m saying?”  He shook his head with the remainder of a chuckle.  “He could never keep it a secret when he drew an amazing hand.  Happened more than you’d think, too.”

Yumi sat transfixed as she listened to her grandfather’s stories about his wily card-loving friend, their own game of Go Fish having fallen to the wayside, the cards in their hands the only reminder that they were technically still playing.  She couldn't hide her smile as the stories got more humorously absurd as time went on.  She had a suspicion that some of them were embellished, but didn't care to inquire into that idea.  The tales continued for ten more minutes before the emergence of Agata from the kitchen drew the room’s attention.

“Jantar está pronto!”  The grandmother declared proudly.  “Come come, don’t let the food get cold!”  She directed her family to the kitchen table, where the fruits of her and her son’s labor awaited them.

The spread was still piping hot, with no time wasted between finishing the cooking process and bringing it to the table.  A plate of chicken sat at the center of the table as the main attraction, flanked by a bowl of mashed potatoes on one end and a smaller bowl of gravy on the other.  The family took their places at the table and began to serve themselves, passing the dishes around clockwise as each took their interpretation of a portion.

Once everyone had their food in front of them, it was time for typical family dinner conversation to begin.  Yukiko opened by directing a question at Yumi.  “So how was school today?”

The youngest of the household looked up from stirring gravy into her potatoes.  “Oh, um… it was okay.”

“Just okay?”  Her mother gave her a quizzical look.  “Are you sure there’s nothing that you want to mention?”

The fork in Yumi’s hand tapped the plate as she fidgeted.  She couldn’t keep anything under wraps, even under a tiny bit of pressure.  “We s-started a group project in history class today.”

“I see.”  Guilherme stated with a nod.  His daughter’s social anxiety was no secret to any of them , so he could sympathize with her situation.  “Are you working with any of your friends?”

“No.”  She shook her head briskly.  “Random groups.”

Yukiko felt a pang of discomfort from her daughter’s reaction, and leaned forward with a serious glare in her eyes.  “These other kinds in your group.  They aren’t trying to push you around, are they?”

“No no…”  Yumi shook he head more forcefully.  “It’s f-fine.  Really.”  She didn’t raise her voice, but her alert eyes and arced frown were a clear indicator of stress.  She loved her family, but the near-daily grillings about school were not something that she enjoyed going through, even though she knew that her parents meant well.  Sensing the young writer’s desire to end this string of questioning, they relented and stopped pressing her.

Yukiko remained skeptical, however.  Yumi’s meekness had been something that they had all become very familiar with over the years, but she still couldn’t help worrying about her whenever she talked about school.  She was so fragile and non-confrontational that the fear of her being taken advantage of by her peers was a constant fixture in her mother’s mind.  Because of that, Yukiko couldn’t help but try to protect her, even if she felt like there was little she could do.  “I’m sure you’ll do fine.”  She assured her.  “You’re doing really well in this class, so there’s no reason that you can’t take care of this.  Just don’t let your group intimidate you.”  Yumi nodded obediently, signifying the end of that conversation.

With the conversation shifting away from school, Yumi tuned out a bit.  It wasn’t that she wasn’t interested in what the rest of her family had to say, but she had her own issues on her mind at the moment, and there was only one way that she knew of to drown them out.  But in order to get there, she needed to finish dinner first.  She quietly ate her food, picking up bits and pieces of conversation as well as a second helping of potatoes and gravy.  When her plate was polished off aside from a few smears of food, she picked it off the table and raised her hand.  “Can I be excused, please?”

“Yes Yumi, you may go.”  Her father decreed, half-eaten chicken wing in hand.  She brought her plate to the sink and washed it, wiping away the remaining stains and leaving it to dry on the counter.  Her obligations in the kitchen were now complete, and she had the rest of her night completely to herself.

Yumi rushed to her room, sat on her bed, and opened her laptop.  Her homework was already done, so from now until she went to sleep, she had all the time she wanted to write.  She opened the document she had been using and reviewed her work from the previous night.  She grimaced at a few pieces of dialogue that didn’t flow quite right, deleting them and writing up some replacement lines that conveyed the same idea, but better.  She groaned at some extraneous details that contradicted something that she had written earlier, and did away with them in short order.  Her work needed to be as perfect as she could possibly make it, and she was embarrassed to have found so many errors in it.

Once the proofreading and revising process was completed, she could start writing some new material.  She had already planned out a good portion of the next chapter in her mind, so for the most part all she had to do was transition it from her mind to the screen.  The hard part was coming up with further details and a way to string everything together to make sure that it all made sense.  But she had managed it for every chapter so far, so she could definitely keep it up.  Her fingers tapped at the keyboard like an insect skittering across the floor.  The document continued to grow as she pushed the story forward, constructing each new sentence with precision.

It was hard work, but this was how she relaxed.  When she was writing her stories, she didn’t have to worry about anything else.  She didn’t have to think about school, or other people, or the problems of the world.  All that she needed to pay attention to at that point in time was her imagination, her fingers, and her computer.  In the outside world she was anonymous and fearful, but with her computer at hand, she could create entire worlds.  It gave her a sense of purpose that she didn’t feel anywhere else.  She wasn’t really good at much else, so as far as she was concerned, this was her only real opportunity to excel at something.

She continued to write long into the night.  She started to feel like nodding off, but she shrugged it off.  She had already made so much progress on her latest chapter, but she felt like she could still push forward just a little more.  She yawned loudly and felt a bit lightheaded.  She would need to turn in for the night soon, but for the time being, she still had enough time to churn out a few more paragraphs…

---

Early the following morning, Guilherme came into Yumi’s room to check up on her before he left for work.  He found her lying in bed, half-under the covers with her laptop still opened and sitting on her bed near her legs.  It was a good thing that she was a very peaceful sleeper, otherwise an unfortunate nighttime thrash could have given it a fairly nasty knock.  He closed it, placed it on her desk, and hooked it up to its charger.He paused for a moment to make sure that it was in a stable position before stepping away from it.

He took another few moments to give Yumi a bit more coverage from her blankets and tuck her in before leaving.  He mentally reminded himself that he needed to have another talk with her about taking better care of her electronics.  That could wait, though.  For now, she needed her sleep.