How The Garcia Girls Lost Their
Accents

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"Tender, charming... the sharp humor and snappy
perceptions of an outsider... the writing is charged
with a poetic intensity that is truly original."
-
The Miami Herald
"Alvarez treats the subjects of immigration,
exile, Hispanic culture and the American
Dream with a sensitive and often irreverent touch."
-
Washington Post
"Like Amy Tan, Julia Alvarez uses her
rich storytellingskills to convey a disturbing
message about the ever-widening gap between native and
ethnic cultures inour country."-
Albany Metroland
"A TUMULTUOUS FAMILY GET-TOGETHER,
full of warmth, laughter and bickering."
-St.
Petersburg Times
JULIA ALVAREZ was raised in the Dominican
Republic and emigrated to the United States in
1960. After receiving undergraduate and graduate
degrees in literature and writing, she taught
poetry for many years and published her first
collection of poems,
Homecoming,
in 1984. Alvarez has received grants from the
National Endowment for the Arts and The Ingram
Merrill Foundation.
How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents
was the winner of the 1991 PEN Oakland/josephine
Miles Book Award for works which present a
multicultural viewpoint. Alvarez is
currently professor of English at
Middlebury College.
"A LYRICAL RENDITION OF A FAMILIAR
STORY- the American immigrant's search for
identity... told in vivid, poetic
language." -
Philadelphia Inquirer
"DEFT AND MAGICAL... brings
to attention manyof the issues-serious and light-that
immigrantfamilies face, portraying them with
sensitivity and anenjoyable, mischievous sense."-
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"ALVAREZ MAKES MAGIC AND ART OF
THE HUMAN ODYSSEY... A PLEASURE
TO READ."
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"ROLLICKING, HIGHLY ORIGINAL ...
Alvarez is a gifted, evocative storyteller
of promise."
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"A spicy, zestful novel of distinctive
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spinning a web of wonder."
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"Wonderfully fresh... experiences ranging from
wildly funny to genuinely poignant...
irresistible."
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"A DELIGHTFUL BOOK."
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"A remarkable climb up a family tree...
written with the conviction and unique perspective of
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"New spice in the melting pot... Alvarez's
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"Vulnerable characters... capricious, daring andclever."-
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"In a subtle but powerful way it reveals the
intricacies of family, the impact of culture
and place, and the profound power of language."
-San
Diego Tribune
"COMPELLING!"
-Mirabella
xooa
vijnj[Aq
AT AT AT AT AT AT AT AT
AT AT AT AT AT AT AT AT
Alll AT AT A
SXNH3OV HI3HX XSO1
VIOID*RIGHT-BRACE
HHX MOH
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Books USA Inc., 375 Hudson
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Published by Plume, an imprint of Dutton
Signet, a division of Penguin Books USA
Inc. This is an authorized reprint of a hardcover
edition published by Algonquin Books of Chapel
Hill.
First Plume Printing, June, 1992 16 15
14 13 12 11
Copyright [*copygg'Julia Alvarez, 1991
All rights reserved. For information address
Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, a
division of VK-NKMAN Publishing Company,
Inc., 708 Broadway, New York, New
York 10003.
Some of these stories have appeared, in slightly
different versions, in
The Caribbean Writes The Greensboro
Review, Third Woman, The Syracuse
Scholar, Outlooks and Insights
(st. Martin's Press, 1983),
Unholy Alliances
(cleis Press, 1989),
The Writer's Craft
(scott, rbresman Co. 1986, 1989),
Heresies, the newrenaissasnce, An American
Christmas
(peachtree, 1986), AfSS.
(f right-brace Just
REGISTERED TRADEMARK-MAHCA RECISTRADA
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
CATALOCINC-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Alvarez, Julia.
How the Carcia girls lost their accents still
by Julia Alvarez.
people. cm.
ISBN 0-452-26806-0 I. Title.
(Pr3551.l845H66 1992]
813-.54-dc2091-45863
CIP
Printed in the United States of America
Original hardcover design by Molly Renda
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publisher's note
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters,
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For
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and, of course,
the sisters
9@ddment
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6@lr
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Srz
Jipog uvum
S6i
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891

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sotoiuy I
AT AT AT AT AT AT AT AT
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Special thanks to
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Shannon Ravenel
Susan Bergholz
Judy Liskin-Gasparro
TATIIITAT
The National Endowment for the Arts
Research Board at the University of
Illinois
Ingram Merrill Foundation
Altos de Chavon
Bill
companeio
through all these pages in
I I
The Garcf a Family
Yolanda
, Yoyo, or, in
the States, Joe)
Sofia
(fift)
The
de la Tone
Family
The great-great-grandfather who married a Swedish girl
Papito and Mamita
TioArturo more. Tia Flor
TiaMimi more. finally
Tio Mundo more. Tfa Carmen
Tia Isa more. and do. an American
Luanda,
Mundin,
Carmencita
The hait-and-nails cousins
AT AT AT AT AT AT AT AT
AT AT AT AT AT AT AT AT
Alll AT AT A
I
Antojos
VAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYIIIYA
yay
Yolanda
T
he old aunts lounge in the white wicker
armchairs, flipping open their fans, snapping them
shut. Except that more of them are dressed in the
greys and blacks of widowhood, the aunts seem
little changed since five years ago when Yolanda was
last on the Island.
Sitting among the aunts in the less comfortable dining
chairs, the cousins are flashes of color in
turquoise jumpsuits and tight jersey
dresses.
The cake is on its own table, the little cousins
clustered around it, arguing over who will get what
slice. When their squabbles reach a certain
mother-annoying level, they are called away by their
nursemaids, who sit on stools at the far end
of the patio, a phalanx of starched white uniforms.
Before anyone has turned to greet her in the
entryway, Yolanda sees herself as they will, shabby in
a black cotton skirt and jersey top,
sandals on her feet, her wild black hair
held back with a hairband. Like a missionary, her
cousins will say,
like one of those Peace Corps girls who have let
themselves go so as to do dubious good in the world.
A maid peeks out of the pantry into the hall.
She is a skinny brown woman in the black
uniform of the kitchen help. Her head is covered with
tiny braids coiled into rounds and pinned down with
bobby pins. "Dona Carmen," she calls
to Yolanda's hostess aunt, "there are no matches.
Justo went to Dona Lucinda's to get some."
"For Dios,
Iluminada," Tia Carmen scolds, "you've had
all day."
The maid stares down at the interlaced hands she
holds before her, a gesture that Yolanda remembers
seeing illustrated in a book for Renaissance
actors. These clasped hands were on a page of
classic gestures.
The gesture of pleading,
the caption had read. Held against the breast, next
to the heart, the same interlaced hands were those of
a lover who pleadeth for mercy from his beloved.
The gathering spots Yolanda. Her cousin
Lucinda leads a song of greeting with an off-key
chorus of little cousins. "Here she comes, Miss
America!" Yolanda clasps her brow and groans
melodramatically as expected. The chorus
labors through the first phrase and then rushes forward with
hugs, kisses, and- from a couple of the boys-fake
karate kicks.
"You look terrible," Lucinda says. "Too
thin, and the hair needs a cut. Nothing personal."
She is the cousin who has never minced her words. In
her designer pantsuit and frosted, blown-
out hair, Lucinda looks like a Dominican
magazine model, a look that has always made
Yolanda think of call girls.
"Light the candles, light the candles!" the little
cousins say, taking up a chant.
Tfa Carmen lifts her open hands to heaven, a
gesture she no doubt picked up from one of her
priest friends. "The girl forgot the matches."
"The help! Every day worse," Tfa Flor
confides to Yolanda, flashing her famous smile. The
cousins refer to their Tia Flor as "the
politician." She is capable of that smile no
matter the circumstances. Once, the story goes,
during who-kndws-which revolution, a
radical young uncle and his wife showed up at Tia
Flor's in the middle of the night wanting asylum.
Tia Flor greeted them at the door with the smile
and "How delightful of you to stop by!"
"Let me tell you about the latest at
my
house," Tfa Flor goes on. "The chauffeur was
driving me to my novena yesterday. Suddenly the car
jerks forward and dies, right there on the street. I'm
alarmed, you know, the way things are, a big car
stalled in the middle of the university
barrio. 1
say,
Cesar, what can it be right-brace
He scratches his head. still
don't know, Dona Flor.
A nice man stops to help, checks it all-and
says,
Why, senora, you're out of gas.
Out of gas! Can you imagine?" Tfa Flor shakes
her head at Yolanda. "A chauffeur who can't
keep a car in gasoline! Welcome home to your
little Island!" Grinning, she flips open her fan.
Beautiful wild birds unfold their silver wings.
At a proprietary yank from one of the little
cousins, Yolanda
lets herself be led to the cake table, festive with a
lacy white tablecloth and starched party napkins. She
dumb-shows surprise at the cake in the shape of the
Island. "Mami thought of it," Luanda's little girl
explains, beaming.
"We're going to light candles all overst"
another little cousin adds. Her face has a ghostly
resemblance to one of Yolanda's generation. This one
has to be Carmencita's daughter.
"Not all over," an older brother says,
correcting her. "The candles are just for the big
cities."
"All over!" Carmencita's reincarnation
insists. "Right, Mami, all over?" She
addresses a woman whose aging face is less
familiar to Yolanda than the child's facsimile.
"Carmencita!" Yolanda cries out. "I
wasn't recognizing you before."
"Older, not wiser." Carmencita's quip in
English is the product of her two or three
years away in boarding school in the States.
Only the boys stay for college. Carmencita
continues in Spanish: "We thought we'd welcome
you back with an Island cake!"
"Five candles," Lucinda counts. "One for
each year you've been away!"
"Five major cities," the little know-it-all
cousin calls out.
"No!" his sister contradicts. Their mother bends
down to negotiate.
Yolanda and her cousins and aunts sit down
to await the matches. The late sun sifts through the
bougainvillea trained to climb the walls of the
patio, to thread across the trellis roof, to pour down
magenta and purple blossoms. Tia Car-
men's patio is the gathering place for the compound. She
is the widow of the head of the clan and so hers is the
largest house. Through well-tended gardens beyond her
patio, narrow stone paths diverge. After cake and
cafecitos,
the cousins will disperse down these paths to their several
compound houses. There they will supervise their cooks in
preparing supper for the husbands, who will troop home
after Happy Hour. Once a male cousin bragged
that this pre-dinner hour should be called Whore Hour.
He was not reluctant to explain to Yolanda that this is
the hour during which a Dominican male of a certain
class stops in on his mistress on his way home
to his wife.
"Five years," Tia Carmen says, sighing.
"We're going to have to really spoil her this time"-Tia
cocks her head to imply collaboration with the other
aunts and cousins-"so she doesn't stay away so
long again."
"It's not good," Tia Flor says. "You four
girls get lost up there." Smiling, she
indicates the sky with her chin.
"So how are
you four girls!"
Lucinda asks, a wink in her eyes. Back in
their adolescent days during summer visits, the
four girls used to shock their Island cousins with
stories of their escapades in the States.
In halting Spanish, Yolanda reports on her
sisters. When she reverts to English, she is
scolded,
"jEnough espanoll"
The more she practices, the sooner she'll be back
into her native tongue, the aunts insist. Yes, and
when she returns to the States, she'll find herself
suddenly going blank over some word in English or,
like her mother, mixing up some common phrase. This time,
however, Yolanda is not so sure she'll be going
back. But that is a secret.
"Tell us now exactly what you want to do while
you're herest" says Gabriela, the beautiful young
wife of Mundin, the prince of the family. With the
pale skin and dramatic dark eyes of a romantic
heroine, Gabriela's face reminds Yolanda of the
lover's clutch of hands over the breast. But,
Gabriela herself is refreshingly straightforward.
"If you don't have plans, believe me, you'll end
up with a lot of invitations you can't turn down."
"Any little
antojo,
you must tell us!" Tfa Carmen agrees.
"What's an
antojo!"
Yolanda asks.
See! Her aunts are right. After so many years
away, she is losing her Spanish.
"Actually it's not an easy word to explain."
Tia Carmen exchanges a quizzical look with the
other aunts. How to put it? "Ar
antojo
is like a craving for something you have to eat."
Gabriela blows out her cheeks.
"Calories."
An
antojo,
one of the older aunts continues, is a very old
Spanish word "from before your United States was even
thought of," she adds tartly. "In fact, in the
countryside, you'll still find some
campesinos
using the word in the old sense. Altagracia!" she
calls to one of the maids sitting at the other end of the
patio. A tiny, old woman, her hair pulled
back tightly in a white bun, approaches the
group of women. She is asked to tell Yolanda
what an
antojo
is. She puts her brown hands away in her uniform
pockets.
"U't6 que sabe,"
Altagracia says in a small voice. You're
the one to know.
"Come now, Altagracia," her mistress
scolds.
The maid obeys. "In my
campo
we say a person has an
antojo
when they are taken over by
un santo
who wants something."
Altagracia backs away, and when not recalled,
turns and heads back to her stool.
"I'll tell you what my
santo
wants after five years," Yolanda says. "I
can't wait to eat some guavas. Maybe I can
pick some when I go north in a few days."
"By yourself?" Tia Carmen shakes her head at the
mere thought.
"This is not the Statesst" Tia Flor says,
with a knowing smile. "A woman just doesn't travel
alone in this country. Especially these days."
"She'll be fine." Gabriela speaks with calm
authority. "Mun-dm will be gone if you want
to borrow one of our cars."
"Gabi!" Lucinda rolls her eyes. "Have you
lost your mind? A Volvo in the interior with the way
things are!"
Gabriela holds up her hands. "All right!
All right! There's also the Datsun."
"I don't want to put anyone out," Yolanda
says. She has sat back quietly, hoping she
has learned, at last, to let the mighty
wave of tradition roll on through her life and break
on some other female shore. She plans to bob up
again after the many
don'ts
to do what she wants. From the corner of her eye she
sees Iluminada enter with a box of matches on a
small silver tray. "I'll take a bus."
"A bus!" The whole group bursts out laughing.
The little cousins, come forward to join the laughter, eager
to be a part of the adult merriment. "Yolanda,
mi amor,
you
have
been gone long," Lucinda teases. "Can't you see
it!?" She laughs. "Yoyo climbing into an old
camioneta
with all the
campesinos
and their fighting cocks and their goats and their pigs!"
IO
Giggles and head shakings.
"I can take care of myself," Yolanda
reassures them. "But what's this other trouble you
keep mentioning?"
"Don't listen to them." Gabriela
waves her hand as if scaring off an annoying fly.
Her fingers are long and tapered,- her wedding and
engagement rings have been welded together into one thick
band. "It's easier this way," she once explained,
handing the ring over to Yolanda to try on.
"There
have
been some incidents lately," Tia Carmen says
in a quiet voice that does not brook
contradiction. She, after all, is the reigning head
of the family.
Almost as if to prove her point, a private
guard, his weapons clicking, passes by on the side
of the patio open to the back gardens. He wears an
army-type khaki uniform, a gun swung over his
shoulder. A tall wall has surrounded the compound for
as far back as Yolanda can remember, a wall she
believed as a child was there to keep the sea back in
case during a hurricane it rose up to the
hillside the family houses were built on.
"Things
are
looking ugly." Tia Flor again smiles brightly.
In the Renaissance book of acting, this grimace of a
smile might be captioned,
The lady is
caught in
a smile she cannot escape.
"There's talk, you know, of guerrillas in the
mountains."
Gabriela crinkles her nose. "Mundfn
says that talk is only talk."
Iluminada has now crept forward to the edge of the
circle to offer the matches to her mistress. In the
fading light of the patio, Yolanda cannot make out the
expression on the dark face.
Tfa Carmen rises to approach the cake. She
begins lighting
n
candles and laying the spent matches on the tray
fluminada holds out to her. One light for Santo
Domingo, one for Santiago, one for Puerto
Plata. The children plead to be allowed to light the
remaining cities, but no, Tia Carmen tells
them, they may blow out the candles and, of course, eat
the cake. Lighting is grownup business. Once the
candles are all ablaze, the cousins and aunts and
children gather around and sing a rousing
"Bienvenida a ti,"
to the tune of "Happy Birthday."
Yolanda gazes at the cake. Below her blazes
the route she has worked out on the map for herself, north
of the city through the mountains to the coast. As the singing
draws to a close, the cousins urge her to make a
wish. She leans forward and shuts her eyes. There
is so much she wants, it is hard to single out one
wish. There have been too many stops on the road of the
last twenty-nine years since her family left this
island behind. She and her sisters have led such turbulent
lives-so many husbands, homes, jobs, wrong
turns among them. But look at her cousins, women
with households and authority in their voices. Let
this turn out to be my home, Yolanda wishes. She
pictures the maids in their quiet, mysterious
cluster at the end of the patio, Altagracia with her
hands in her lap.
By the time she opens her eyes, ready, a half
dozen little substitute puffs have blown out all the
candles. There is a burst of clapping. Small
arguments erupt over dividing the cake's cities:
Lucinda's two boys both want Santiago
since they went gliding there last weekend;
Lucinda's girl and Carmencita's girl both
insist on the capital because that's where they were born, but
one agrees to cede the capital if she can have
La Romana, where the family has a beach house.
But, of course, La Romana has
already been spoken for by Tia Flor's little
goddaughter, who suffers from asthma and shouldn't be
contradicted. Lucinda, whose voice is hoarse with
disciplining the rowdy crew, hands Yolanda the knife.
"It's your cake, Yoyo. You decide."
The road up through the foothills is just wide enough
for two small cars, and so at each curve, as she
has been instructed, Yolanda slows and taps her
horn. Just past one bad curve, a small shrine
has been erected, La Virgen surrounded by three
concrete crosses recently whitewashed.
She pulls the Datsun over and enjoys her first
solitary moment since her arrival. Every compound outing
has been hosted by one gracious aunt or another,
presenting the landscape as if it were a floor show
mounted for her niece's appreciation.
All around her are the foothills, a dark
enormous green, the sky more a brightness than a
color. A breeze blows through the palms below,
rustling their branches, so they whisper like voices.
Here and there a braid of smoke rises up from a
hillside-a
campesino
and his family living out their solitary life. This is
what she has been missing all these years without
really knowing that she has been missing it. Standing here in
the quiet, she believes she has never felt at
home in the States, never.
When she first hears it, she thinks it is her own
motor she has forgotten to turn off, but the sound
grows into a pained roar, as if the engine were falling
apart. Yolanda makes out an undertow of men's
voices. Quickly, she gets into the car, locks the
door, and pulls back onto the road, hugging her
right side.
A bus comes lurching around the curve, obscuring
her view.
Belching exhaust, the driver saluting or warning
with a series of blasts on his horn, it is an old
army bus, the official name brushed over with paint that
doesn't quite match. The passengers see her only
at the last moment, and all up and down her side of the
bus, men poke out of the windows, hooting and yelling,
holding out bottles and beckoning to her. She speeds
up and leaves them behind, the quiet, well-oiled
Datsun climbing easily up the snaky highway.
The radio is all static-like the sound of the
crunching metal of a car; the faint, blurry
voice on the airwaves her own, trapped inside
a wreck, calling for help. In English or
Spanish? she wonders. That poet she met at
Luanda's party the night before argued that no matter how
much of it one lost, in the midst of some profound
emotion, one would revert to one's mother tongue. He
put Yolanda through a series of situations. What
language, he asked, looking pointedly into her
eyes, did she love in?
The hills begin to plane out into a high plateau,
and the road widens. Left and right, roadside stands
begin appearing. Yolanda keeps an eye out for
guavas. Piled high on wooden stands are fruits
Yolanda hasn't seen in years: pinkish-yellow
mangoes, and tamarind pods oozing their rich sap,
and small cashew fruits strung on a rope
to keep them from bruising each other. Strips of meat,
buzzing with flies, hang from the windows of butcher
stalls. It is hard to believe the poverty the
radio commentators keep talking about. There seems
to be plenty here to eat-except for guavas.
The fruit stands behind her now, Yolanda
approaches a com-
pound very like her family's in the capital. A high
concrete wall continues for about a quarter of a
mile. A guard rises to his post beyond an iron
grillwork gate. He seems-glimpsed through the
flowering bars-a man locked in a strangely
gorgeous prison. Beyond him up the shady
driveway is a three-story country house, a
wide verandah all the way around it. Parked at the
door is a chocolate brown Mercedes. Perhaps the
owners have come up to their country home to avoid the
troubles in the capital. They are probably
relatives. The dozen rich families have
intermarried so many times that family trees are
tangles of roots. In fact, her aunts have
given her a list of names of uncles and aunts and
cousins she might call on along her way. By each
name is a capsule description of what Yolanda
might remember of that relative:
the one with the kidney bean swimming pool, the fat
one, the one who was an ambassador.
Before she even left the compound, Yolanda put the list
away in the glove compartment. She is going to be just
fine on her own.
A small village spreads out before
her-altamira, say the rippling letters on the
corrugated tin roof of the first house. A little cluster
of houses on either side of the road,
Altamira is just the place to stretch her legs before
what she has heard is a steep and slightly (her
aunts warned "v") dangerous descent to the coast.
Yolanda pulls up at a cantina, its thatched
roof held up by several posts, its floor poured
cement, and in its very center, a lone picnic table
over which a swarm of flies hover.
Tacked to one of the central posts is a yellowing
poster for Palmolive soap. A creamy, blond
woman luxuriates under a re-
freshing shower, her head thrown back in seeming
ecstasy, her mouth opened in a wordless cry.
"stBuenos!"
Yolanda calls out.
An old woman emerges from a shack behind the
cantina, buttoning up a torn housedress. She
is followed closely by a little boy, who keeps
ducking behind her whenever Yolanda smiles at him.
Asking his name drives him further into the folds of the
old woman's skirt.
"You must excuse him, dona," the woman
apologizes. "He's not used to being among people." People
with money who drive through Altamira to the beach
resorts on the north coast, she means. "Your
name," the old woman repeats, as if
Yolanda hasn't asked him in Spanish. The little
boy mumbles at the ground. "Speak up!" the old
woman scolds, but her voice betrays pride when
she speaks up for him. "This little know-nothing is
Jose Duarte, Sanchez y Mella."
Yolanda laughs. A lot of names for such a little
boy-the surnames of the country's three liberators!
"Can I serve the dona in any way?" the old
woman asks.
"fUn refrescol fUna Coca Cola!"
By the pride in her voice, Yolanda understands the old
woman wants to treat her to the best on her menu.
"I'll tell you what I would like." Yolanda
gives the tree line beyond the old woman's shack a
glance. "Are there any guavas around?"
The old woman's face scrunches up.
"fGuayabas!"
she murmurs, and thinks to herself a second. "Why,
they grow all around, dona. But I can't say as
I've seen any lately."
"With your permission-was Jose Duarte has joined
a group
of little boys who have come out of nowhere and are milling
around the car, boasting how many automobiles they have
ridden in. At Yolanda's mention of
guavas, he springs forward, pointing across the road
towards the summit of the western hills. "I know where
there's a whole grove of ripe ones." Behind him, his
little companions nod.
"Go on, then!" His grandmother stamps her foot as
if she were scatting an animal. "Get the dona
some."
A few boys dash across the road and disappear up
a steep path on the hillside, but before Jos6 can
follow, Yolanda calls
him
back. She wants to go along too. The little boy
looks towards his grandmother, unsure of what to think.
The old woman shakes her head. The dona will get
hot, her nice clothes will get all dirty.
Jose will bring the dona as many guavas as she is
wanting.
"But they taste so much better when you've picked
them yourself." Yolanda hears the edge in her voice.
The old woman has turned into the long arm of her
family.
The few boys who have stayed behind with Jose have again
congregated around the car. Each one claims to be
guarding it for the dona. It occurs to Yolanda that there
is a way to make this a treat all the way
around. "What do you say we take the car?" The little
boys cheer.
Now that is not a bad idea, the old woman
agrees. If the dona insists on going, she can
take that dirt road up ahead and then cross over
onto the road that is paved all the way to the coffee
barns. The old woman points south in the direction
of the big house. Many workers take that shortcut
to work.
They pile into the car, half a dozen little boys in
the back, and Jose as co-pilot in the passenger
seat beside Yolanda. They
turn onto a bumpy road off the highway, which
grows bumpier and bumpier as it climbs up
into wilder, more desolate country. Branches
scrape the sides and pebbles pelt the underside of the
car. Yolanda wants to turn back, but there is no
room. Finally, with a great snapping of twigs and
thrashing of branches across the windshield, as if the
countryside is loath to release them, the car bursts
forth onto smooth pavement and the light of day. On
either side of the road are groves of guava trees.
The boys who have gone ahead on foot are already
pulling down branches and shaking loose a rain of
guavas.
Yolanda eats several right on the spot, relishing
the slightly bumpy feel of the skin in her hand,
devouring the crunchy, sweet white meat. The boys
watch her.
The group scatters to harvest the guavas.
Yolanda and Jose", partners, wander far from the path that
cuts through the grove. Soon they are bent almost double
to avoid getting entangled in the thick canopy of
branches overhead. Each addition to Yolanda's beach
basket causes a spill from the stash already piled
high above the brim.
The way back seems much longer than the way
there. Yolanda begins to worry that they are lost, and
then, the way worry sprouts worry, it strikes
her that they haven't heard or seen the other boys in
quite a while. The latticework of branches reveals
glimmers of a fading sky. The image of the guard in
his elaborate flowering prison flashes through her
head. The rustling leaves of the guava trees echo the
warnings of her old aunts: you will get lost, you will
get kidnapped, you will get raped, you will get
killed.
Just ahead, the thicket of guava branches
clears, and there is
the footpath, and beyond, the gratifying sight
of the car still on the side of the road. It is a
pleasure to stand upright again. Jos6 rests his burden
on the ground and straightens his back to full
measure. Yolanda looks up at the sky. The sun
is low on the western horizon.
"The others must have gone to gather kindling,"
Jos@lobserves.
Yolanda glances at her watch-it is past six
o'clock. At this rate, she will never make the north
coast by nightfall. She hurries Jos@lback
to the car, where they find a heap of guavas the other
boys left behind on the shoulder of the road. Enough
guavas to appease even the greediest Island
santo
for life!
They pack the trunk quickly, and climb in, but the
car has not gone a foot before it lurches forward with a
horrible hobble. Yolanda closes her eyes and
lays her head down on the wheel, then glances over
at Jos@l. His eyes are searching the inside of the
car for a clue as to what could have happened. This child
won't know how to change a flat tire either.
Soon the sun will set and night will fall
swiftly, no lingering dusk as in the States. She
explains to Jos@lt they have a flat tire
and mst* go back down the road to the big house.
Whoever tends to the brown Mercedes will surely know
how to change a tire.
"With your permissionst" Jos6 offers. The dona
can just wait in the car, and he will be back in no time with
someone from the Miranda place.
Miranda, Miranda.... Yolanda leans over and
gets her aunt's list out of the glove compartment, and
sure enough, there they are.
Tia Marina y Ho Alejandio Miranda-Altos
de Altamira.
A note elaborates that Tio Alejandro was the
one
who used to own English saddle horses and taught you
four girls to ride.
"All right," she says to the boy. "I'll tell you
what." She points to her watch. "If you're back
by the time this hand is over here, I'll give you"-she
holds up one finger-"a dollar." The boy's mouth
falls open. In no time, he has shot out of his
side of the car and is headed at a run toward the
Miranda place. Yolanda climbs out as well and
walks down a pace, until the boy has
disappeared in one of the turnings of the road.
From the footpath that cuts through the grove
on the opposite side of the road, she hears the
sound of branches being thrust aside, twigs
snapping underfoot. Two men, one short and dark,
and the other slender and light-skinned, emerge. They
wear ragged work clothes stained with patches of sweat;
their faces are drawn. Machetes hang from their
belts.
The men's faces snap awake at the sight of
her. Then they look beyond her at the car. The darker
man speaks first. "Yours?"
"Is there some problem?" he speaks up again. The
taller one is looking her up and down with interest.
They are now both in front of her on the road,
blocking any escape. Both-she has sized them
up as well-are strong and quite capable of catching her
if she makes a run for it. Not that she can move, for
her legs seem suddenly to have been hammered into the
ground beneath her. She considers explaining that she is just
out for a drive before dinner at the big house, so that these
men will think someone knows where she is, someone will come
looking for her if they try to carry her off. But her
tongue feels as if
it has been stuffed in her mouth like a rag to keep her
quiet.
The two men exchange a look-it seems
to Yolanda-of collusion.
Then the shorter, darker one speaks up again.
"Senorita, are you all right?" He peers at her.
He is a short man, no taller than Yolanda,
but he gives the impression of being quite large, for he
is broad and solid, like something not yet completely
carved out of a piece of wood. His companion is
slim and tall andofa rich honey-brown color that
matches his honey-brown eyes. Anywhere else,
Yolanda would find him extremely attractive, but
here on a lonely road, with the sky growing darker
by seconds, his good looks seem dangerous, a
lure to catch her off her guard.
"Can we help you?" the shorter man repeats.
The handsome one smiles knowingly. Two long,
deep dimples appear like gashes on either side of
his mouth.
"Americana,"
he says to the darker man, pointing to the car. "No
comprende."
The darker man narrows his eyes and studies Yolanda
a moment,
"iAmericana right-brace was
he asks her, as if not quite sure what to make of
her.
She has been too frightened to carry out any
strategy, but now a road is opening before her. She
clasps her hands on her chest-she can feel her
pounding heart-and nods. Then, as if the admission itself
loosens her tongue, she begins to speak, English,
a few words, of apology at first, then a great
flood of explanation: how it happens that she is on
a back road by herself, her craving for guavas,
having never learned to change a flat. The two men
stare at her, uncomprehending, rendered docile
ai
by her gibberish. Only when she mentions the name
Miranda do their eyes light up with respect. She
is saved!
Yolanda makes the motions of pumping. The darker
man looks at his companion, who shrugs, baffled
as well. Yolanda waves for them to follow her. And
as if after dragging up roots, she has finally
managed to yank them free of the soil they have clung
to, she finds she can move her own feet toward the
car.
The small group stands staring at the sagging tire a
moment, the two men kicking at it as if punishing it
for having failed the senorita. They squat by the
passenger's side, conversing in low tones.
Yolanda leads the men to the rear of the car, where they
lift the spare out of its sunken nest-then set to work
fitting the interlocking pieces of the jack, unpacking
the tools from the deeper hollows of the trunk. They
lay their machetes down on the side of the road, out
of the way. Above them, the sky is purple with
twilight. The sun breaks on the hilltops,
spilling its crimson yolk.
Once the flat has been replaced with the spare,
the two men lift the deflated tire into the trunk and
put away the tools. They hand Yolanda her keys.
"I'd like to give you something," she begins, but the
English words are hollow on her tongue. She
rummages in her purse and draws out a sheaf of
bills, rolls them up and offers them to the men.
The shorter man holds up his hand. Yolanda can
see where he has scraped his hand on the pavement and
blood has dried dark streaks on his palm.
"No,
no, senorita. Nuestro placer."
Yolanda turns to the taller one. "Please," she
says, urging the bills on him. But he too
looks down at the ground-Ilumi-
nada's gesture, Jos6's gesture. Quickly,
she stuffs the bills in his pocket.
The two men pick up their machetes and raise them
to their shoulders like soldiers their guns. The tall
man motions towards the big house.
"Directo,
Mirandas." He enunciates the words carefully.
Yolanda looks in the direction of his hand. In the
faint light of what is left of day, she can barely
make out the road ahead. It is as if the guava
grove has grown into the road and woven its matt of
branches tightly in all directions.
She reaches for each man's hand to shake. The shorter
man holds his back at first, as if not wanting
to dirty her hand, but finally, after wiping it on the
side of his pants, he gives it to Yolanda. The
skin feels rough and dry like the bark of trees.
Yolanda climbs into the car while the two men wait
a moment on the shoulder to see if the tire will hold.
She eases out onto the pavement and makes her way
slowly down the road. When she looks for them in her
rearview mirror, they have disappeared into the darkness
of the guava grove.
Ahead, her lights catch the figure of a small
boy. Yolanda leans over and opens the door for him.
The overhead light comes on; the boy's face is
working back tears. He is cradling an
arm. "The
guardia
hit me. He said I was telling stories. No
dominicana
with a car would be out at this hour getting
guayabas."
"Don't you worry, Jose." Yolanda pats the
boy. She can feel the bony shoulder through the thin
fabric of his shirt. "You can still have your dollar. You
did your part."
But his shame seems to obscure any pleasure he
might feel
in her offer. Yolanda tries to distract him
by asking what he will buy with his money, what he most
craves, thinking that on a subsequent visit, she
might bring him his own little
an-
tosto. But Jose Duarte, Sanchez y Mella
says nothing, except a mumbled
gracias
when she lets him off at the cantina with several more
than his promised dollar.
In the glow of the headlights, Yolanda makes out the
figure of the old woman in the black square of her
doorway, waving goodbye. And above the
picnic table on a near post, the Palmolive
woman's skin gleams a rich white; her head is
still thrown back, her mouth still opened as if she is
calling someone over a great distance.
The Kiss
TAYAYATATATATATATAYAYATATATATATATIIITA
yat
Sofia
E
ven after they'd been married and had their own families
and often couldn't make it for other occasions, the four
daughters always came home for their father's birthday.
They would gather together, without husbands, would-be
husbands, or bring-home work. For this too was part of the
tradition: the daughters came home alone. The
apartment was too small for everyone, the father argued.
Surely their husbands could spare them for one
overnight?
The husbands would just as soon have not gone to their
in-laws, but they felt annoyed at the father's
strutting. "When's he going to realize you've grown
up? You sleep with us!"
"He's almost seventy, for God's sake!" the
daughters said, defending the father. They were passionate
women, but their devotions were like roots; they were
sunk into the past towards the old man.
So for one night every November the daughters
turned back into their father's girls. In the cramped
living room, surrounded by the dark oversized
furniture from the old house they grew
up in, they were children again in a smaller, simpler
version of the world. There was the prodigal scene at the
door. The father opened his arms wide and welcomed them
in his broken English: "This is your homeland never you
should forget it." Inside, the mother fussed at them-their
sloppy clothes; their long, loose hair; their
looking tired, too skinny, too made up, and so
on.
After a few glasses of wine, the father started in
on what should be done if he did not live to see his
next birthday. "Come on, Papi," his daughters
coaxed him, as if it were a modesty of his,
to perish, and they had to talk
him
into staying alive. After his cake and candles, the father
distributed bulky envelopes that felt as if they were
padded, and they were, no less than several
hundreds in bills, tens and twenties and fives,
all arranged to face the same way, the top one
signed with the father's name, branding them his. Why
not checks? the daughters would wonder later,
gossiping together in the bedroom, counting their money
to make sure the father wasn't playing favorites.
Was there some illegality that the father stashed such sums
away? Was he-none of the daughters really believed
this, but to contemplate it was a wonderful little explosion
in their heads- was he maybe dealing drugs or doing
abortions in bis office?
At the table there was always the pretense of trying
to give the envelopes back. "No, no, Papi,
it's your birthday, after all."
The father told them there was plenty more where that had come
from. The revolution in the old country had failed.
Most of his comrades had been killed or bought off.
He had escaped to this country. And now it was every man
for himself, so what he made was for his girls. The father
never gave his daughters
money when their husbands were around. "They might receive the
wrong idea," the father once said, and although none of the
daughters knew specifically what the father meant,
they all understood what he was saying to them: Don't
bring the men home for my birthday.
But this year, for his seventieth birthday, the youngest
daughter, Sofia, wanted the celebration at her
house. Her son had been born that summer,
and she did not want to be traveling in November
with a four-month-old and her little girl. And yet,
she, of all the daughters, did not want to be the
absent one because for the first time since she'd run off with
her husband six years ago, she and her father were on
speaking terms. In fact, the old man had been out
to see her-or really to see his grandson-twice. It
was a big deal that Sofia had had a son. He was the
first male bom into the family in two generations. In
fact, the baby was to be named for the grandfather-Carlos-
and his middle name was to be Sofia's maiden name, and
so, what the old man had never hoped forwith his "harem
of four girls," as he liked to joke, his own name was
to be kept going in this new country!
During his two visits, the grandfather had stood
guard by the crib all day, speaking to little Carlos.
"Charles the Fifth; Charles Dickens; Prince
Charles." He enumerated the names of famous
Charleses in order to stir up genetic ambition in
the boy. "Charlemagne," he cooed at him also,
for the baby was large and big-boned with blond fuzz
on his pale pink skin, and blue eyes just like his
German father's. All the grandfather's Caribbean
fondness for a male heir and for fair Nordic
looks
had surfaced. There was now good blood in the
family against a future bad choice by one of its
women.
"You can be president, you were born here," the
grandfather crooned. "You can go to the moon, maybe even
to Mars by the time you are of my age."
His macho babytalk brought back Sofia's old
antagonism towards her father. How obnoxious for
him to go on and on like that while beside him stood his little
granddaughter, wide-eyed and sad at all the things
her baby brother, no bigger than one of her
dolls, was going to be able to do just because he was a boy.
"Make him stop, pleasest" Sofia asked her
husband. Otto was considered the jolly, good-natured
one among the brothers-in-law. "The camp
counselor," his sisters-in-law teased. Otto
approached the grandfather. Both men looked fondly
down at the new Viking.
"You can be as great a man as your father," the grandfather
said. This was the fust compliment the father-in-law had ever
paid any son-in-law in the family. There was no
way Otto was going to mess with the old man now.
"He is a good boy, is he not, Papi?"
Otto's German accent thickened with affection. He
clapped his hand on his father-in-law's
shoulders. They were friends now.
But though the father had made up with his son-in-law,
there was still a strain with his own daughter. When he had
come to visit, she embraced him at the door, but he
stiffened and politely shrugged her off. "Let me
put down these heavy bags, Sofia." He had never
called her by her family pet name, Fifi, even
when she lived at home. He had always had problems
with his maverick youngest, and her running off hadn't
helped. "I don't want loose women in my
family," he had cautioned all his daughters.
Warnings were delivered communally, for even though there was
usually the offending daughter of the moment, every woman's
character could use extra scolding.
His daughters had had to put up with this kind of
attitude in an unsympathetic era. They grew
up in the late sixties. Those were the days when wearing
jeans and hoop earrings, smoking a little dope, and
sleeping with their classmates were considered
political acts against the military-industrial
complex. But standing up to their father was a different matter
altogether. Even as grown women, they lowered their voices
in their father's earshot when alluding to their bodies'
pleasure. Professional women, too, all three
of them, with degrees on the wall!
Sofia was the one without the degrees. She had always
gone her own way, though she downplayed her
choices, calling them accidents. Among the four
sisters, she was considered the plain one, with her tall,
big-boned body and large-featured face. And
yet, she was the one with "non-stop boyfriends," her
sisters joked, not without wonder and a little envy. They
admired her and were always asking her advice about men.
The third daughter had shared a room with Sofia
growing up. She liked to watch her sister move about
their room, getting ready for bed, brushing and arranging
her hair in a clip before easing herself under the sheets
as if someone were waiting for her there. In the dark,
Fifi gave off a fresh, wholesome smell of
clean flesh. It gave solace to the third
daughter, who was always so tentative and terrified and
had such troubles with men. Her sister's
breathing in the dark room was like having a powerful,
tamed animal at the foot of her bed ready
to protect her.
The youngest daughter had been the first to leave home.
She had dropped out of college, in love. She
had taken a job as a secretary and was living at
home because her father had threatened to disown her if she
moved out on her own. On her vacation she
went to Colombia because her current boyfriend was going,
and since she couldn't spend an overnight with him in
New York, she had to travel thousands of miles
to sleep with him. In Bogota, they discovered that
once they could enjoy the forbidden fruit, they lost their
appetite. They broke up. She met a tourist
on the street, some guy from Germany, just like that. The
woman had not been without a boyfriend for more than a few
days of her adult life. They fell in love.
On her way home, she tossed her diaphragm in
the first bin at Kennedy Airport. She was taking
no chances. But the father could tell. For months, he
kept an eye out. First chance he got, he Went
through her drawers "looking for my nail clippers,"
and there he found her packet of love letters. The
German man's small, correct handwriting
mentioned unmentionable things-bed conversations were recreated
on the thin blue sheets of aerogramme letters.
"What is the meaning of this?" The father shook the letters in
her face. They had been sitting around the table, the
four sisters, gabbing, and the father had come in, beating the
packet against his leg like a whip, the satin hair
ribbon unraveling where he had untied it, and then
wrapped it round and round in a mad effort to contain his
youngest daughter's misbehavior.
"Give me those!" she cried, lunging at him.
The father raised his hand with the letters above both their heads
like the Statue of Liberty with her freedom torch,
but he had forgotten this was the daughter who was as tall
as he was. She clawed his arm down and clutched the
letters to herself as if they were her baby he'd plucked from
her breast. It seemed a biological rather than a
romantic fury.
After his initial shock, the father regained his own
fury. "Has he deflowered you? That's what I
want to know. Have you gone behind the palm trees? Are
you dragging my good name through the dirt, that is what I
would like to know!" The father was screaming crazily in the
youngest daughter's face, question after question, not giving the
daughter a chance to answer. His face grew red with
fury, but hers was more terrible in its impassivity, a
pale ivory moon, pulling and pulling at the tide
of his anger, until it seemed he might drown in his
own outpouring of fury.
Her worried sisters stood up, one at each arm,
coaxing him like nurses, another touching the small of
his back as if he were a feverish boy. "Come on,
Papi, simmer down now. Take it easy.
Let's talk. We're a family, after all."
"Are you a whore?" the father interrogated his
daughter. There was spit on the daughter's cheeks from
the closeness of his mouth to her face.
"It's none of your fucking business!" she said in a
low, ugly-sounding voice like the snarl of an animal
who could hurt him. "You have no right, no right at
all, to go through my stuff or read my mail!"
Tears spurted out of her eyes, her nostrils
flared.
The father's mouth opened in a little zero of shock.
Quietly, Sofia drew herself up and left the
room. Usually, in her growing-
up tantrums, this daughter would storm out of the
house and come back hours later, placated, the
sweetness in her nature reasserted, bearing silly
gifts for everyone in the family, refrigerator
magnets, little stuffed hairballs with roll-around
eyeballs.
But this time they could hear her upstairs, opening and
closing her drawers, moving back and forth from the bed
to the closet. Downstairs, the father prowled up and
down the length of the rooms, his three daughters caging
him while the other great power in the house, tidily-as
if she had all the time in the world-buttoned and folded
all her clothes, packed all her bags, and left
the house forever. She got herself to Germany
somehow and got the man to marry her. To throw in the
face of the father who was so ambitious for presidents and
geniuses in the family, the German nobody
turned out to be a world-class chemist. But the
daughter's was not a petty nature. What did she
care what Otto did for a living when she had shown
up at his door and offered herself to him.
"I can love you as much as anybody else," she
said. "If you can do the same for me, let's get
married."
"Come on in and let's talk," Otto had said,
or so the story went.
"Yes or no," Sofia answered. Just like that on
a snowy night someone at his door and a cold draft
coming in. "I couldn't let her freeze," Otto
boasted later.
"Like hell you couldn't!" Sofia planted a large
hand on his shoulder, and anyone could see how it must be
between them in the darkness of their love-making. On their
honeymoon, they traveled to Greece, and Sofia
sent her mother and father
and sisters postcards like any newlywed. "We're
having a great time. Wish you were here."
But the father kept to his revenge. For months no one
could mention the daughter's name in his presence,
though he kept calling them all "Sofia" and quickly
correcting himself. When the daughter's baby girl was
born, his wife put her foot down. Let him
carry his grudge to the grave,
she
was going out to Michigan (where Otto had relocated)
to see her first grandchild!
Last minute, the father relented and went along, but he
might as well have stayed away. He was grim and
silent the whole visit, no matter how hard
Sofia and her sisters tried to engage
him
in conversation. Banishment was better than this cold
shoulder. But Sofia tried again. On the old man's
next birthday, she appeared at the apartment with her
little girl. "Surprise!" There was a
reconciliation of sorts. The father first tried to shake
hands with her. Thwarted, he then embraced her stiffly
before taking the baby in his arms under the watchful eye of
his wife. Every year after that, the daughter came for her
father's birthday, and in the way of women, soothed and
stitched and patched over the hurt feelings. But there it
was under the social fabric, the raw wound. The father
refused to set foot in his daughter's house. They
rarely spoke; the father said public things
to her in the same tone of voice he used with his
sons-in-law.
But how his seventieth birthday was coming up, and he had
agreed to have the celebration at Sofia's house. The
christening for little Carlos was scheduled for the morning, so
the big event would be Papi Carlos's party that
night. It was a coup for the youngest daughter to have gathered
the scattered family in
the Midwest for a weekend. But the real coup was how
Sofia had managed to have the husbands included this
year. The husbands are coming, the husbands are coming, the
sisters joked. Sofia passed the compliment off on
little Carlos. The boy had opened the door for the other
men in the family.
But the coup the youngest daughter most wanted was
to reconcile with her father in a big way. She would
throw the old man a party he wouldn't forget. For
weeks she planned what they would eat, where they would
all sleep, the entertainment. She kept calling up
her sisters with every little thing to see what they thought.
Mostly, they agreed with her: a band, paper hats,
balloons, buttons that broadcast the world's
greatest dad. Everything overdone and silly and
devoted the way they knew the father would like it. Sofia
briefly considered a belly dancer or a
girl who'd pop out of a cake. But the third
daughter, who had become a feminist in the wake of
her divorce, said she considered such locker-room
entertainments offensive. A band with music was what
she'd pitch in on,- her married sisters could split
it three ways if they wanted to be sexists. With
great patience, Sofia created a weekend that would
offend no one. They were going to have a good time in her
house for the old man's seventieth, if it killed
her!
The night of the party, the family ate an early
dinner before the band and the guests arrived. Each daughter
toasted both Carloses. The sons-in-law called
big Carlos, "Papi." Little Carlos, looking very
much like a little girl in his long, white christening gown,
bawled the whole time, and his poor mother had not a
moment's peace between serving the dinner she'd prepared
for the family and giving him his. The phone kept
ring-
ing, relatives from the old country calling with
congratulations for the old man. The toasts the
daughters had prepared kept getting interrupted.
Even so, their father's eyes glazed with tears more than
once as the four girls went through their paces.
He looked old tonight, every single one of his
seventy years was showing. Perhaps it was that top much wine
had darkened his complexion, and his white hair and
brows and mustache stood out unnaturally white. He
perked up a little for his gifts, though, gadgets and
books and desk trophies from his daughters, and
cards with long notes penned inside "to the best,
dearest Papi in the world," each one of which the old
man wanted to read out loud. "No you don't,
Papi, they're private!" his daughters chimed
in, crowding around him, wanting to spare each other the
embarrassment of having their gushing made public.
His wife gave him a gold watch. The third
daughter teased that that's how companies retired their
employees, but when her mother made angry eyes at
her, she stopped. Then there were the men gifts-belts
and credit card wallets from the sons-in-law.
"Things I really need." The father was gracious.
He stacked up the gift cards and put them away in
his pocket to pore over later. The sons-in-law
all knew that the father was watching them, jealously, for
signs of indifference or self-interest. As for his
girls, even after their toasts were given, the gifts
opened, and the father had borne them out of the way with the help
of his little granddaughter, even then, the daughters felt
that there was something else he had been waiting for
which they had not yet given him.
But there was still plenty of party left to make sure
he got
whatever it was he needed for the long, lonely year
ahead. The band arrived, three middle-aged men,
each with a silver wave slicked back with too much
hair cream. danny and his boys set up a
placard with their name against the fireplace. There was one
on an accordion, another on a fiddle, and a
third was miscellaneous on maracas and triangle
and drums when needed. They played movie themes,
polkas, anything familiar you could hum along to;
the corny songs were all dedicated to "Poppy"
or "his lovely lady." The father liked the band.
"Nice choice," he congratulated Otto. The
youngest daughter's temper flared easily with all
she'd had to drink and eat. She narrowed her eyes
at her smiling husband and put a hand on her hip.
As if Otto had lifted a finger during her long
months of planning!
The guests began to arrive, many with tales of how
they'd gotten lost on the way; the suburbs were dark
and intricate like mazes with their courts and
cul-de-sacs. Otto's unmarried colleagues
looked around the room, trying to single out the
recently divorced sister they'd heard so much about.
But there was no one as beautiful and funny and talented
as Sofia had boasted the third oldest would be.
Most of these friends were half in love with Sofia
anyway, and it was she they sought out in the crowded
room.
There was a big chocolate cake in the shape of a
heart set out on the long buffet with seventy-one
candles-one for good luck. The granddaughter and her
aunts had counted them and planted them diagonally
across the heart, joke candles that wouldn't blow out.
Later, they burned a flaming arrow that would not quit.
The bar was next to the heart and by midnight
when the band broke out again with "Happy Birthday,
Poppy," everyone had had too much to eat and drink.
They'd been playing party games on and off all
night. The band obliged with musical chairs, but after
two of the dining room chairs were broken, they left
off playing. The third daughter, especially, had
gotten out of hand, making musical chairs of every
man's lap. The father sat without speaking. He gazed
upon the scene disapprovingly.
In fact, the older the evening got, the more withdrawn
the father had become. Surrounded by his daughters and
their husbands and fancy, intelligent,
high-talking friends, he seemed to be realizing that he
was just an old man sitting in their houses, eating up
their roast lamb, impinging upon their lives. The
daughters could almost hear his thoughts inside their own
heads. He, who had paid to straighten their teeth and
smooth the accent out of their English in expensive
schools, he was nothing to them now. Everyone in this
room would survive him, even the silly men in the
band who seemed like boys- imagine making a living out
of playing birthday songs! How could they ever earn enough
money to give their daughters pretty clothes and send
them to Europe during the summers so they wouldn't get
bored? Where were the world's men anymore? Every last one
of his sons-in-law was a kid; he could see that
clearly. Even Otto, the famous scientist, was a
schoolboy with a pencil, doing his long division. The
new son-in-law he even felt sorry for-he could
see this husband would give out on his strong-willed
second daughter. Already she had him giving her
backrubs and going for cigarettes in the middle of the
night. But he needn't worry about his girls. Or
his wife, for
that matter. There she sat, pretty and slim as a
girl, smiling coyly at everyone when a song was
dedicated to her. Eight, maybe nine,
months he gave her of widowhood, and then she'd
find someone to grow old with on his life insurance.
The third daughter thought of a party game to draw
her father out. She took one of the baby's soft receiving
blankets, blindfolded her father, and led him to a chair
at the center of the room. The women clapped. The men
sat down. The father pretended he didn't understand
what all his daughters were up to. "How does one
play this game, Mami?"
"You're on your own, Dad," the mother said,
laughing. She was the only one in the family who
called him by his American name.
"Are you ready, Papi?" the oldest asked.
"I am perfect ready," he replied in his
heavy accent.
"Okay, now, guess who this is," the oldest
said. She always took charge. This is how they worked
things among the daughters.
The father nodded, his eyebrows shot up. He held
on to his chair, excited, a little scared, like a boy
about to be asked a hard question he knows the answer to.
The oldest daughter motioned to the third daughter,
who tiptoed into the circle the women had made around
the old man. She gave him a daughterly peck
on the cheek.
"Who was that, Papi?" the oldest asked.
He was giggling with pleasure and could not get the words
out at first. He had had too much to drink. "That was
Mami," he said in a coy little voice.
"No! Wrong!" all the women cried out.
"Carla?" he guessed the oldest. He was going
down the line. "Wrong!" More shouts.
"Sandi? Yoyo?"
"You guessed it," his third oldest said.
The women clapped; some bent over in hilarious
laughter. Everyone had had too much to drink. And the
old man was having his good time too.
"Okay, here's another coming at you." The eldest
took up the game again. She put her index finger
to her lips, gave everyone a meaningful glance,
quietly circled the old man, and kissed him from
behind on top of his head. Then she tiptoed back
to where she had been standing when she had first spoken.
"Who was that, Papi?" she asked, extra innocent.
"Mami?" His voice rode up, exposed and
vulnerable. Then it sank back into its certainties.
"That was Mami."
"Count me out," his wife said from the couch where she'd
finally given in to exhaustion.
The father never guessed any of the other women
in the room. That would have been disrespectful. Besides,
their strange-sounding American names were hard
to remember and difficult to pronounce. Still he got
the benefit of their kisses under cover of his
daughters. Down the line, the father went each time:
"Carla?" "Sandi?" "Yoyo?" Sometimes, he
altered the order, put the third daughter first or the
oldest one second.
Sofia had been in the bedroom, tending to her son,
who was wild with all the noise in the house tonight. She
came back into the living room, buttoning her
dress front, and happened upon the game. "Ooh."
She rolled her eyes. "It's getting raunchy in
here, ha!" She worked her hips in a mock rotation,
and the men
all laughed. She thrust her girlfriends into the
circle and whispered to her little girl to plant the
next kiss on her grandfather's nose. The women
all pecked and puckered at the old man's face.
The second daughter sat briefly on his lap and
clucked
him
tmder the chin. Every time the father took a wrong guess,
the youngest daughter laughed loudly. But soon, she
noticed that he never guessed her name. After
all her hard work, she was not to be included in his
daughter count. Damn him! She'd take her turn
and make him know it was her!
Quickly, she swooped into the circle and gave the
old man a wet, open-mouthed kiss in his ear. She
ran her tongue in the whorls of his ear and nibbled the
tip. Then she moved back.
"Oh la la," the oldest said, laughing. "Who was
that, Papi?"
The old man did not answer. The smile that had
played on his lips throughout the game was gone. He
sat up, alert. There was a long pause; everyone
leaned forward, waiting for the father to begin with his usual,
"Mami?"
But the father did not guess his wife's name. He
tore at his blindfold as if it were a contagious body
whose disease he might catch. The receiving blanket
fell in a soft heap beside his chair. His face had
darkened with shame at having his pleasure aroused in
public by one of his daughters. He looked from one
to the other. His gaze faltered. On the face of his
youngest was the brilliant, impassive look he
remembered from when she had snatched her love letters out
of his hands.
"That's enough of that," he commanded in a low,
furious voice. And sure enough, his party was over.
The Four Girls
ATAYATAVATATJ
Carlo, Yolanda, Sandra, Sofia
T
he mother still calls them
the four girls
even though the youngest is twenty-six and the oldest will be
thirty-one next month. She has always called them
the four girls
for as long as they can remember, and the oldest
remembers all the way back to the day the fourth
girl was born. Before that, the mother must have called them
the three girls,
and before that
the two girls,
but not even the oldest, who was once the only girl,
remembers the mother calling them anything but
the four girls.
The mother dressed them all alike in
diminishing-sized, different color versions of what
she wore, so that the husband sometimes joked, calling
them
the five girls.
No one really knew if he was secretly
displeased in his heart of hearts that he had never had a
son, for the father always bragged, "Good bulls sire
cows," and the mother patted his arm, and the four girls
tumbled and skipped and giggled and raced by in yellow
and baby blue and pastel pink and white, and
strangers counted them, "One, two, three, four
girls! No sons?"
Carlo, Yolanda, Sandra, Sofia

"No," the mother said, apologetically. "Just the
four girls."
Each of the four girls had the same party dress,
school clothes, underwear, toothbrush, bedspread,
nightgown, plastic cup, towel, brush and comb set
as the other three, but the first girl brushed in yellow,
the second one boarded the school bus in blue, the
third one slept in pink, and the baby did everything
she pleased in white. As the baby grew older, she
cast an envying look at pink. The mother tried
to convince the third daughter that white was the best
color, and the little one wanted pink because she was a baby
and didn't know any better, but the third girl was
clever and would not be persuaded. She had always believed
that she had gotten the best deal since pink was the
color for girls. "You girls are going
to drive me crazy!" the mother said, but the girls had
gotten used to the mother's rhetorical threats.
The mother had devised the color code to save time.
With four girls so close in age, she couldn't
indulge identities and hunt down a red cowboy
shirt when the third daughter turned tomboy or a
Mexican peasant blouse when the oldest discovered
her Hispanic roots. As women, the four girls
criticized the mother's efficiency. The little one
claimed that the whole color system smacked of an
assembly-line mentality. The eldest, a child
psychologist, admonished the mother in an
autobiographical paper, "I Was There Too,"
by saying that the color system had weakened the four
girls' identity differentiation abilities and made
them forever unclear about personality boundaries. The
eldest also intimated that the mother was

mild anal retentive personality.
The mother did not understand all that psychology talk,
but
she knew when she was being criticized. The next time
the four girls were all together, she took the
opportunity of crying a little and saying that she had
done the best she could by the four girls. All
four girls praised the good job the mother had done in
raising four girls so close in age, and they poured
more wine into the mother's glass and into the father's glass,
and the father patted the mother's arm and said thickly, "Good
cows breed cowsst" and the mother told the story she
liked to tell about the oldest, Carla.
For although the mother confused their names or called them
all by the generic pet name, "Cuquita," and
switched their birthdates and their careers, and sometimes
forgot which husband or boyfriend went with which daughter, she
had a favorite story she liked to tell about each
one as a way of celebrating that daughter on
special occasions. The last time she told the story
she liked to tell about the eldest was when Carla got
married. The mother, tipsy on champagne, seized the
mike during the band's break and recounted the story of the
red sneakers to the wedding guests. After her good cry
at the dinner table, the mother repeated the story.
Carla, of course, knew the story well, and had
analyzed it for unresolved childhood issues with
her analyst husband. But she never tired of hearing it
because it was her story, and whenever the mother told it,
Carla knew she was the favorite of the moment.
"You know, of course, the story of the red sneakers?"
the mother asked the table in general.
"Oh no," the second daughter groaned. "Not
again."
Carla glared at her. "Listen to that
negativity." She nodded at her husband as if
to confirm something they had talked about.
Carlo, Yolanda, Sandia, Sofia

"Listen to that jargon," the second one countered,
rolling her eyes.
"Listen to my story." The mother sipped from her wine
glass and set it down a little too heavily. Wine
spilled on her hand. She looked up at the ceiling
as if she had moved back in time to when they were living
on the Island. Those downpours! Leaks, leaks-no
roof could keep them out during rainy season. "You
all know that when we were first married, we were really
really poor?" The father nodded, he remembered. "And
your sister"-the stories were always told as if the
daughter in question were not present-"your sister wanted some
new sneakers. She drove me crazy, night and
day, she wanted sneakers, she wanted sneakers.
Anyhow, we couldn't afford to make any ends, no
less start in with sneakers! If you girls only
knew what we went through in those days. Words can't
describe it. Four-no, three of you,
back then-three girls, and no money coming in."
"Well," the father interrupted. "I was working."
"Your father was working." The mother frowned. Once she
got started on a story, she did not acknowledge
interruptions. "But that measly little paycheck barely
covered the rent." The father frowned. "And my father," the
mother confided, "was helping us out-"
"It was only a loan," the father explained to his
son-in-law. "Paid every penny back."
"It was only a loan," the mother continued.
"Anyhow-the point is to make the story short-we
did not have money for one little frill like sneakers.
Well, she drove me crazy, night and day, I
want sneakers, I want sneakers." The mother was
a good mimic, and everybody laughed and sipped their
wine. Carla's husband rubbed the back of her neck
in slow, arousing circles.
"But the good Lord always provides." Although she was
not particularly religious, the mother liked to make her
plots providential. "It just so happened that a very
nice lady who lived down the block with a little girl
who was a little older than Carla and much bigger-was
"Much bigger." The father blew out his cheeks and
made a monkey face to show how much bigger.
"This little girl's grandmother had sent her some
sneakers for her birthday from New York, not knowing
she had gotten so much bigger, and the little sneakers
wouldn't fit her."
The father kept his cheeks puffed out because the third
oldest burst into giggles every time she looked over at
him. She never held her liquor well.
The mother waited for her to control herself and gave the
father a sobering stare. "So the nice lady offers me
the sneakers because she knows how much that Carla has been
pestering me that she wants some. And you know what?" The
table waited for the mother to enjoy answering her own question.
"They were just her size. Always provides," the mother
said, nodding.
"But Senorita Miss Carla could not be bothered
with white sneakers. She wanted red sneakers, she
wanted red sneakers." The mother rolled her eyes the
same way that the second daughter had rolled her
eyes at her older sister. "Can you believe it?"
"Uh-huh," the second daughter said. "I can
believe it."
"Hostile, aren't we?" Carla said. Her
husband whispered something in her ear. They laughed.
Carlo, Yolanda, Sandra, Sofia
"Let me finishst" the mother said, sensing
dissension.
The youngest got up and poured everyone some more wine. The
third oldest turned her glass, stem up, and
giggled without much enthusiasm when the father puffed out his
cheeks again for her benefit. Her own cheeks had
gone pale,- her lids drooped over her eyes;
she held her head up in her hand. But the mother was too
absorbed in her story to scold the elbow off the
table.
"I told your sister,
It's white sneakers or no sneakers!
And she had some temper, that Carla. She threw them
across the room and yelled,
Red sneakers, red sneakers."
The four girls shifted in their chairs, anxious
to get to the end of the story. Carla's husband fondled
her shoulder as if it were a breast.
The mother hurried her story. "So your father, who
spoiled you all rotten"-the father grinned from his place
at the head of the table-"comes and rescues the sneakers
and, behind my back, whispers to Carlita that she's
going to have red sneakers just like she wants them. I find
them, the both of them on the floor in the bathroom with
my nail polish painting those sneakers red!"
"To Mami," the father said sheepishly, lifting
his glass in a toast. "And to the red sneakers," he
added.
The room rang with laughter. The daughters raised
their glasses. "To the red sneakers."
"That's classic," the analyst said, winking at his
wife.
"Red sneakers at that." Carla shook her head,
stressing the word
red.
"Jesus!" the second oldest groaned.
"Always provides," the mother added.
"Red sneakers," the father said, trying to get one more
laugh
from the table. But everyone was tired, and the third oldest
said she was afraid she was going to throw up.
Yolanda, the third of the four girls, became a
schoolteacher but not on purpose. For years after
graduate school, she wrote down
poet
under profession in questionnaires disand income tax forms,
and later amended it to
writer-slash-teacher.
Finally, acknowledging that she had not written much of
anything in years, she announced to her family that she
was not a poet anymore.
Secretly, the mother was disappointed because she had
always meant for her Yo to be the famous one. The
story she told about her third daughter no longer
had the charm of a prophetic ending: "And, of course,
she became a poet." But the mother tried to convince her
daughter that it was better to be a happy nobody
than a sad somebody. Yolanda, who was still as clever
as when the mother had tried to persuade her that white was a
better color than pink, was not convinced.
The mother used to go to all the poetry readings her
daughter gave in town and sit in the front row
applauding each poem and giving standing ovations.
Yolanda was so embarrassed that she tried to keep her
readings a secret from her mother, but somehow the mother always
found out about them and appeared, first row, center. Even
when she behaved herself, the mother threw her daughter off
just by her presence. Yolanda often read poems
addressed to lovers, sonnets set in bedrooms, and
she knew her mother did not believe in sex for
girls. But the mother seemed not to notice the subject
of the poems, or if she did, to ascribe the love
scenes to her Yoyo's great imagination.
Carla, Yolanda, Sandra, Sofia

"That one has always had a great imagination,"
the mother confided to whoever sat next to her. At a
recent reading the daughter gave after her long
silence, the mother's neighbor was the daughter's lover.
The mother did not know that the handsome, greying professor
at her side knew her daughter at all; she thought
he was just someone interested in her poetry. "Of all
the four girls," the mother told the lover, "that Yo
has always loved poetry."
"That's her nickname, Yo, Yoyo," the mother
explained. "She complains she wants her name, but you
have to take shortcuts when there's four of them. Four
girls, imagine!"
"Really?" the lover said, although Yolanda had already
filled him in on her family and her bastardized
name-Yo, Joe, Yoyo. He knew better than
to take shortcuts. Jo-laahn-dah, she had
drilled him. Supposedly, the parents were
heavy-duty Old World, but the four daughters sounded
pretty wild for all that. There had been several
divorces among them, including Yolanda's. The
oldest, a child psychologist, had married the analyst
she'd been seeing when her first marriage broke up,
something of the sort. The second one was doing a lot of
drugs to keep her weight down. The youngest had just
gone off with a German man when they discovered
she was pregnant.
"But that Yo," the mother continued, pointing to her
daughter where she sat with the other readers waiting for the
sound system to work properly so the program could
begin, "that Yo has always had a great imagination."
The buzz of talk was punctuated now and then by a
crackling, amplified "testing" spoken too close
to the microphone. Yolanda watched the absorbed
conversation of her mother and lover with growing uneasiness.
"Yes, Yoyo has always loved poetry. Why,
I remember the time we went on a trip to New
York. She couldn't have been more than three." The
mother was warming to her story. The lover noticed that the
mother's eyes were those that looked at
him
softly at night from the daughter's face.
"Testing," a voice exploded into the room.
The mother looked up, thinking the poetry reading had
begun. The lover waved the voice away. He
wanted to hear the story.
"We went up to New York, Lolo and I.
He had a convention there, and we decided to make a
vacation of it. We hadn't had a vacation since the
first baby was bom. We were very poor." The mother lowered
her voice. "Words can't describe how
poor we were. But we were starting to see better
days."
"Really?" the lover said. He had fixed on that
word as one that gave the appropriate amount of
encouragement but did not interrupt the flow of the mother's
story.
"We left the girls back home, but that one"-the
mother pointed again to the daughter, who widened her eyes
at her lover-"that one was losing all her hair. We
took her with us so she could see a specialist.
Turned out to be just nerves."
The lover knew Yolanda would not have wanted him
to know about this indelicacy of her body. She did not
even like to pluck her eyebrows in his presence. An
immediate bathrobe after her bath. Lights out when they
made love. Other times, she carried on about the
Great Mother and the holiness of the body and sexual energy
being eternal delight. Sometimes, he complained he
felt caught between the woman's libber and the Catholic
senorita. "You sound like my ex," she accused him.
"We got on this crowded bus one afternoon." The mother
Carlo, Yolanda, Sandra, Sofia

shook her head remembering how crowded the bus had
been. "I couldn't begin to tell you how
crowded it was. It was more sardines in a can than you
could shake sticks at."
"Really?"
"You don't believe me?" the mother accused him. The
lover nodded his head to show he was convinced. "But let
me tell you, that bus was so crowded, Lolo and I
got our wires totally mixed up. I was sure
Lolo had her, and Lolo was sure she was with me.
Anyhow, to make it a short story, we got off
at our stop, and we looked at each other.
Where's Yot
we asked at the same time. Meanwhile, that bus was
roaring away from us.
"Well, I'll tell you, we broke into a run like
two crazy people! It was rush hour. Everyone was
turning around to look at us like we were running from the
police or something." The mother's voice was breathless
remembering that run. The lover waited for her to catch
up with the bus in her memory.
"Testing?" a garbled voice asked without much
conviction.
"After about two blocks, we flagged the driver down
and climbed aboard. And you won't believe what we
found?"
The lover knew better than to take a
guess.
"We found that one surrounded by a crowd like Jesus
and the elders."
"Really?" The lover smiled, admiring the daughter
from a distance. Yolanda was one of the more popular
instructors at the college where he chaired the Comp
Lit Department.
"She hadn't even realized we were gone. She had a
circle of people around her, listening to her reciting a
poem! As a matter of fact, it was a poem I'd
taught her. Maybe you've heard of it? It's by that
guy who wrote that poem about the blackbird."
"Stevens?" the lover guessed.
SO
The mother cocked her head. "I'm not sure.
Anyhow," she
continued, "imagine! Three years old and already
drawing
crowds. Of course, she became a poet." "You
don't mean Poe, do you? Edgar Allan Poe?"
"Yes, that's him! That's him!" the mother cried out.
"The
poem was about a princess who lived by the sea or
something.
Let's see." She began to recite:
Many many years ago, something... something,
In a ... something by the sea...
A princess there lived whom you may remember
By the name of Annabel Lee...
The mother looked up and realized that the hushed
audience was staring at her. She blushed. The lover
chuckled and squeezed her arm. At the podium, the
poet had been introduced and was waiting for the
white-haired woman hi the first row to finish talking.
"For Clive," Yolanda said, introducing her first
poem, was "Bedroom Sestina."" Clive
smiled sheepishly at the mother, who smiled proudly
at her daughter.
The mother does not tell a favorite story about
Sandra anymore. She says she would like to forget the
past, but it is really only a small part of the
recent past she would like to forget. However, the mother knows
people listen to absolute statements, so she says in a
tired voice, "I want to forget the past."
The last story the mother told about her second
oldest was not in celebration but in explanation to Dr.
Tandlemann, senior staff psychiatrist at Mount
Hope. The mother explained why she and her husband were
committing their daughter to a private mental
hospital.
Carlo, Yolanda, Sandra, Sofia

"It started with that crazy diet," the mother began. She
folded and refolded her Kleenex into smaller and
smaller squares. Dr. Tandlemann watched her and
took notes. The father sat by the window quietly and
followed the movements of a gardener, who was mowing first
one, then another, darkening swath across the lawn.
"Can you imagine starving herself to death?" The mother
pinched little bits off her Kleenex. "No wonder
she went
crazy."
"She's had a breakdown." Dr. Tandlemann
looked at the father. "Your daughter is not clinically
crazy."
"What does that mean, clinically crazy?" The
mother scowled. "I don't understand all that psychology
talk."
"It means that," Dr. Tandlemann began,
looking down at his folder to check the name, "it means
that Sandra is not psychotic or schizophrenic,
she's just had a small breakdown."
"A small breakdown," the father murmured to himself.
In the middle of a row, the gardener stopped, machine
roaring. He spat and shrugged his shoulder across
his lips, wiping his mouth, then he continued his
progress across the lawn. Grass bits spewed
into a white sack ballooning behind the motor. The father
felt he should say something pleasant. "Nice
place you got here, beautiful grounds."
"Ay,
Lolo," the mother said sadly. She made a fist of
what was left of her Kleenex.
Dr. Tandlemann waited for a moment in case the
husband wanted to respond to his wife. Then he
asked the mother, "You say it started with that diet she
went on?"
"It started with that crazy diet," the mother said again as
if she had just found her place in a book she had
been reading. "Sandi wanted to look like those twiggy
models. She was a
looker, that one, and I guess it went to her head.
There are four girls, you know."
Dr. Tandlemann wrote down
four girls
although the father had already told him this when he asked,
"No sons?" Out loud, he noted,
noncommittally, "Four girls."
The mother hesitated, then glanced over at her
husband as if unsure how much they should
disclose to this stranger. "We've had trouble with all
of them-was She rolled her eyes to indicate the kind
of trouble she meant.
"You mean other daughters have also had breakdowns?"
"Bad men is what they've had!" The mother scowled
at the doctor as if he were one of her ex
sons-in-law. "Anyhow, that makes sense,
heartbreak, breakdown. This is different, this is
crazy." The doctor's hand lifted in protest.
But the mother ignored the gesture and went on with her
story.
"The others aren't bad looking, don't get me
wrong. But Sandi, Sandi got the fine looks,
blue eyes, peaches and ice cream skin, everything
going for her!" The mother spread her arms in all
directions to show how pretty and pale and blue-eyed
the girl was. Bits of her Kleenex fell to the
floor, and she picked off the specks from the carpet.
"My great-grandfather married a Swedish girl, you
know? So the family has light-colored blood, and
that Sandi got it all. But imagine, spirit of
contradiction, she wanted to be darker complected like
her sisters."
"That's understandable," Dr. Tandlemann said.
"It's crazy, that's what it is," the mother
said angrily. "Anyhow, this diet took over.
When her sister got married, Sandi wouldn't even
taste the wedding cake, taste!"
Carlo, Yolanda, Sandia, Sofia

"Did they get along?" Dr. Tandlemann glanced
up
right-brace
his hand had a life of its own and kept writing.
"Who?" The mother blinked in disapproval. The man
asked too many questions.
"The siblings," Dr. Tandlemann said. "Were they
close? Was there a lot of rivalry between them?"
"Siblings?" The mother frowned at all this crazy
psychology talk. "They're sisters," she said
by way of explanation.
"Sometimes they fought," the father added. Although he was
looking out the window, he did not miss a word the
doctor and his wife were saying.
"Sometimes they fought," the mother raced on. She wanted
to get to the end of this story. "So Sandi kept losing
weight. At first, she looked good. She had let
herself get a little plump, and with her fine bones Sandi
can't carry extra weight. So losing a few pounds
was okay. Then, she went away to a
graduate program, so we didn't see her for
awhile. Every time we talked to her over the phone, her
voice seemed further and further away. And it
wasn't because it was long distance either. I can't explain
it," the mother said. "A mother just knows.
"So one day we get this call. The dean. She
says she doesn't want to alarm us, but could we come
down immediately. Our daughter is in the hospital,
too weak to do anything. All she does is read."
The father was timing the gardener's treks across the rolling
lawns. When the man did not stop to spit or wipe
his forehead, each row took him approximately
two minutes.
The mother tried to open the Kleenex in her lap, but it
was too ragged to spread out. "We took the next
plane, and when
we got there, I didn't recognize my own
daughter." The mother held up her little finger. "Sandi
was a toothpick. And that's not the least of it, she
wouldn't put a book down, read, read, read.
That's all she did."
At the window the father's view of the lawn was
blurring.
The mother looked over at her husband and wondered
what he was thinking about. "She had lists and
lists of books to read. We found them in her
journal. After she finished one, she crossed it off
the list. Finally, she told us why she couldn't stop
reading. She didn't have much time left. She had
to read all the great works of man because soon"-the mother
got up her courage to say it-"soon she wouldn't be
human."
In the ensuing silence the mother heard the drone of a
distant lawnmower.
"She told us that she was being turned out of the human
race. She was becoming a monkey." The mother's
voice broke. "A monkey, my baby!
"Already the other organs inside her body were a
monkey's. Only her brain was left, and she could
feel it going."
Dr. Tandlemann stopped writing. He weighed
his pen in his hand. "I understood you committed her only
because of the weight loss. This is news to me."
"Small breakdown," the father murmured quietly
so Dr. Tandlemann wouldn't hear him.
The mother was in control of her voice again. "If she
read all the great books, maybe she'd remember
something important from having been human. So she
read and read. But she was afraid she'd go before she
got to some of the big thinkers."
Carlo, Yolanda, Sandra, Sofia

"Freud," the doctor said, listing names on his
pad. "Darwin, Nietsche, Erikson."
"Dante," the father mused. "Homer,
Cervantes, Calder6n de la Barca."
"I told her to stop reading and start eating. I
told her those books were driving her crazy. I
made her everything she liked: rice and beans,
lasagna, chicken and la king. I made her
favorite red snapper with tomato sauce. She
said she didn't want to eat animals. In her own
time, she said, she would be that chicken. She would be that
red snapper. Evolution had reached its peak and was
going backwards. Something like that." The mother waved the very
idea away. "It was crazy talk, I tell you.
"One morning, I go in her room to wake her
up, and I find her lying in bed and looking up at
her hands." The mother held up her hands and re-enacted
the scene. "I call her name, Sandi!, and she
keeps turning her hands, this way, that, and staring at
them. I scream at her to answer me, and she
doesn't even look at me. Nothing. And she's
making these awful sounds like she's a zoo." The mother
clucked and grunted to show the doctor what the
animals had sounded like.
Suddenly, the father leaned forward. He had caught
sight of something important.
"And my Sandi holds up her hands to me," the mother
continued. She turned her hands towards Dr.
Tandlemann and then towards her husband, whose face was
pressed up to the window. "And she screams,
Monkey hands, monkey hands."
The father shot up from his chair. Outside, a fair,
willowy girl and a heavy-set woman in white were
walking across the
lawn. The woman was pointing out the flowers and the
leaves of the bushes in order to cajole the girl
forward towards the building. At one end of the lawn,
the gardener wiped his forehead, turned the mower around and
began a new row. A dark wake spread behind him.
The girl looked up, wildly searching the empty
sky for the airplane she was hearing. The nurse
followed her distracted movements with alarm. Finally,
the girl saw a man coming at her with a roaring animal
on a leash, its baglike stomach swelling up as it
devoured the grasses between them. The girl screamed and
broke into a panicked run towards the building where
her father, whom she could not see, stood at the window,
waving.
At the hospital, the mother leans on the glass with
one hand and taps with the other. She makes a monkey
face. The cradle has been turned towards her,
but the tiny, wrinkled baby is not looking at the
grandmother. Instead the baby's eyes roll about as if
she hasn't quite figured out how to work them yet. Her
lips pucker and stretch, pucker and stretch. The
grandmother is sure the baby is smiling at her.
"Look at that," the grandmother says to the young man
at her side, who is looking at the baby in the
neighboring cradle.
The young man looks at the stranger's baby.
"She's smiling already," the grandmother brags.
The young man nods and smiles.
"Yours is asleepst" the grandmother says in a
slightly critical voice.
"Babies sleep a lot," the young man
explains.
Carlo, Yolanda, Sandra, Sofia

"Some do," the grandmother says. "I had four girls,
and they never slept."
"Four girls, no boys?"
The mother shakes her head. "I guess it's in the
blood. This one is a girl too. Aren't
you, Cuquita?" the grandmother asks her granddaughter.
The young man smiles at his daughter. "Mine is
a girl too."
The grandmother congratulates him. "Good bulls
sire cows, you know."
"Huh?"
"It's a saying my husband used to tell me after
I had one of the girls.
Good bulls sire cows.
I remember the night Fifi was bom." The grandmother
looks down at her granddaughter and explains,
"Your mother."
The young man studies his baby daughter as he
listens to the old woman's story.
"That girl gave me more trouble getting born than
any of the others. And the funny thing was she was the last and
smallest of the four. Twenty-four hours in
labor." The grandmother's eyebrows lift for
punctuation.
The young man whistles. "Twenty-four hours is
a long labor for a small fourth child. Any
complications?"
The mother studies the young man a moment. Is he a
doctor, she wonders, to know so much about babies?
"Twenty-four hours..." The young man
is shaking his head, musing. "Ours lasted only
three and a half."
The grandmother stares up at the young man.
Ours!
Men! Now they're going to claim having the babies
too.
"But I'll tell you, that Fifi, we didn't name
her wrong! Sofia, that's her real name. My
daughter, the poet, says Sofia was the goddess in
charge of wisdom long ago. We Catholics
don't believe in that stuff. But still, she's the smart
one, all right. And I don't mean books either! I
mean smart." The grandmother taps her temple, and then
repeats the gesture on the glass. "Smart,
smart," the grandmother tells the baby. She shakes
her head, musing to herself. "That Fifi, she might
look like she's headed for trouble, but it always turns out
to be her luck.
"That night she was finally born, her father came
in, and I knew he was a little disappointed,
especially after such a long wait. And I said,
I can't help it, Lolo, they come out girls,
and all he said was,
Good bulls sire cows,
like it was a credit to him. He was almost falling
over with exhaustion. So I sent
him
home to bed."
The young man yawns and laughs.
"He was so dead tired, he didn't hear the
burglars when they broke in. They stole us blind.
They even stole my shoes and my under-was The grandmother
remembers it is indelicate to say so. "Every last
article of clothing," she adds coyly.
The young man pretends to be alarmed.
"But this is what I mean about luck-they caught the
burglars, and we got every last stitch back." The
grandmother taps the glass. "Cuquita," she coos
at the baby.
"Lucky," she says to the young man. "That Fifi
has always been the lucky one. Not to mention her luck
with"-the grandmother lowers her voice-"with Otto."
The young man looks over his shoulder. Otto?
Who would name a poor kid Otto?
Carlo, Yolanda, Sandia, Sofia

"Imagine," the grandmother continues. "Fifi
drops out of college and goes off on a church
trip to Peru, chaperoned, of course, otherwise we
wouldn't have let her go. We don't believe
in all this freedom." The grandmother frowns as she
looks out over the nursery. Beyond the glass, between the
slender white bars of their cribs, half a dozen
babies are fast asleep.
"Anyhow she meets this German man Otto in
a Peruvian market, who can't speak a word of
Spanish but is trying to buy a poncho. She
bargains for him, and he gets his poncho for
practically nothing. Well, just like that, they fell for
each other, corresponded, and here they are, parents!
Tell me that isn't lucky?"
"That's lucky," the young man says.
"And you're going to be a lucky one too, aren't
you?" The grandmother clucks at her granddaughter, then
confides to the young man, "She's going to look just like
an angel, pink and blond."
"You never can tell when they're this young," the father
says, smiling at his daughter.
"I
can," the grandmother claims. "I had four of them."
"Mami picks up like these really gorgeous men,"
Sandi laughs. She is sitting cross-legged on
Fifi's living room floor. The new mother sits
in Otto's recliner, the baby asleep on her
shoulder. Carla is sprawled on the sofa.
At her feet, Yolanda is knitting furiously
at a tiny blanket, pink and baby blue and
pastel yellow squares with a white border. It is
early morning. The family has gathered at
Fifi's house for Christinas, which falls a week
after the baby's birth. Husbands and grandparents
are still asleep in the bedrooms. The four girls
lounge in their nightgowns and tell each other the
true story of how their lives are going.
Sandi explains that she and the mother were in the waiting
room, and the mother disappeared. "I find her at the
nursery window talking to this piece of beefcake-was
"That's offensive," Yolanda says. "Just call
him a man."
"Lay off me, will you?" Sandi is close
to tears. Since her release from Mt. Hope a
month ago, she cries so easily she has to carry
Kleenex with her anti-depressants in her
purse. She , looks around the room for her bag.
"Miz Poet is so goddamn sensitive
to language."
"I don't write poetry anymore,"
Yolanda says in a wounded voice.
"Goddamn it, you guys," Carla says,
refereeing this one. "It's Christmas."
The new mother turns to the second oldest sister and
runs her fingers through her hair. This is the first time the
family has gathered together in a year, and she wants
them all to get along. She changes the subject.
"That was really nice of you to come see me at the
hospital. I know how you just love hospitals,"
she adds.
Sandi looks down at the rug and picks at it.
"I just want to forget the past, you know?"
"That's understandable," Carla says.
Vblanda lays aside the baby blanket. She
has the same scowl on her face her sister wore
a moment ago, a family sign of approaching
tears. "I'm sorry," she says to Sandi. "It's
been the worst week."
Cada, Yolanda, Sandra, Sofia
Sandi touches her hand. She looks at her other
sisters. Clive, they all know, has gone back
to his wife again. "He's such a turd. How many
times has he done this now, Yo?"
"Yolanda," Carla corrects her. "She
wants to be called Yolandanow."
"What do you mean,
wants to be called Yolanda now right-brace
That's my name, you know?"
"Why are you so angry?" Carla's calmness is
professional.
Yolanda rolls her eyes. "Spare me the
nickel and dime therapy, thank you."
Trouble brewing again, Fifi changes the
subject. She touches the evolving blanket.
"It's really beautiful. And the poem you wrote the
baby made me cry."
"So you
are
writing!" Carla says. "I know, I know, you
don't want to hear about it." Carla makes a
peace offering of compliments. "You're so good,
Yolanda, really. I've saved all your poems.
Every time I read something in a magazine, I think,
God, Yo's so much better than this! Give yourself
credit. You're so hard on yourself."
Yolanda keeps her mouth shut. She is working on
a thought about her bossy older sister: Carla has a
tendency to lace all her compliments with calls
to self-improvement.
Give yourself credit, Believe in yourself, Be good
to yourself.
Somehow this makes her praise sound like their mother's
old "constructive" criticism.
Carla turns to Sandi. "Mami says you're
seeing someone." The eldest weighs her words
carefully. "Is it true?"
"What of it?" Sandi looks up defensively,
and then, realizing her sister means a man, not a
therapist, she adds, "He's a nice
guy, but, I don't know-was She shrugs. "He was
in at the same time I was."
What was
he
in for? hangs in the air-a question that none of her sisters
would dare ask.
"So, tell us about this cute guy at the
nursery," Fifi pleads. Each time her sisters
seem on the verge of loaded talk, the new mother
changes the subject to her favorite topic, her
newborn daughter. Every little detail of the baby's
being-what she eats, what she poops-seems an
evolutionary leap. Surely, not all newboms
smile at their mothers? "You met this guy at the
nursery?"
"Me?" Sandi laughs. "You mean Mami. She
picks this guy up and invites him for lunch at the
hospital coffee shop."
"Mami is so fresh," Yolanda says.
She notices she has made a mistake and begins
unraveling a lopsided yellow row.
Fifi pats her baby's back. "And she
complains about us!"
"So we all have lunch together," Sandi continues,
"and Mami can't shut up about how God brought you and
Otto together from opposite ends of the earth in Peru."
"God?" Carla screws up her face.
"Peru?" Fifi's face mirrors her sister's
scowl. "I've never been to Peru. We met in
Colombia."
"In Mami's version of the story, you met in
Peru," Sandi says. "And you fell in love at
first sight."
"And made love the first night," Carla teases.
The four girls laugh. "Except that part isn't in
Mami's version."
"I've heard so many versions of that story," Sandi
says, "I don't know which one is true
anymore."
"Neither do I," Fifi says, laughing. "Otto
says we probably
Carlo, Yolanda, Sandra, Sofia

met in a New Jersey Greyhound
Station, but we've heard all these exciting stories
about how we met in Brazil or Colombia or
Peru that we got to believing them."
"So was it the first night?" Yolanda asks, her
needles poised midair.
"I heard the first night," Carla says.
Sandi narrows her eyes. "I heard it was a
week or so after you guys met."
The baby burps. The four girls look at
each other and laugh. "Actually"-Fifi
calculates by lifting her fingers one by one from the
baby's back, then patting them down-"it was the fourth
night. But I knew the minute I saw him."
"That you loved him?" Yolanda asks. Fifi
nods. Since Clive left, Yolanda is
addicted to love stories with happy endings, as if
there were a stitch she missed, a mistake she made
way back when she fell in love with her first man,
and if only she could find it, maybe she could undo
it, unravel John, Brad, Steven, Rudy, and
start over.
In the pause before someone picks up the thread of
conversation, they all listen to the baby's soft breathing.
"Anyhow, Mami tells this guy about your long
correspondence." Sandi helps Yolanda
wind the unraveled yam into a ball, stopping now and
then to enjoy her story of the mother.
"For months and months after they met in Pew, they were
separated, months and months."
Sandi rolls her eyes like her mother. She is a
remarkably good mimic. Her three sisters laugh.
"Otto was doing his research in Germany, but he
wrote to her every day."
"Every day!" Fifi laughs. "I wish it had been every
day. Some-
times I had to wait weeks between letters."
"But then," Yolanda says in the ominous voice
of a radio melodrama, "then Papi found the
letters."
"Mami didn't mention the letters," Sandi says.
"The story was short and sweet:
He wrote to her every day. Then she
went
to see him last Christmas, then be proposed, and they
married this spring, and here they are, parents!"
"One, two, three, four," Carla says, beginning
a countdown.
Fifi grins. "Stop it," she says. "The
baby was born exactly nine months and ten days
after the wedding."
"Thank God for the ten days," Carla says.
"I like Mami's version of the story," Fifi
laughs. "So she didn't bring up the letters?"
Sandi shakes her head. "Maybe she forgot. You
know how she keeps saying she wants to forget the
past."
"Mami remembers everything," Carla disagrees.
"Well, Papi had no business going through my
personal mail." Fifi's voice grows testy.
The baby stirs on her shoulder. "He claims he
was looking for his nailclippers, or something. In my
drawers, right?"
Yolanda mimics their father opening an envelope.
Her eyes widen in burlesque horror. She
clutches her throat. She even puts on a Count
Dracula accent to make the moment more dramatic.
She is not a good mimic.
"What does this man mean, 'Have you gotten your
period yett""
Sandi choruses:
"What business is it of Otto's if you've
gotten your period or not"
The baby begins to cry. "Oh honey, it's just a
story." Fifi rocks her.
"We disown you!"
Sandi mimics their father. "You
have dis-
Carlo, Yolaada, Sandza, Sofia

graced the family name. Out of this house!"
"Out of ouz sight!"
Yolanda points to the door. Sandi ducks the
flailing needles. A ball of white yam rolls
across the floor. The two sisters bend over, trying
to contain their hilarity.
"You guys are really getting into this." Fifi stands
to walk her wailing baby to sleep. "Nothing like a
story to take the sting out of things," she adds cooly.
"It's not like things are any better between us, you know."
Her three sisters lift their eyebrows at each
other. Their father has not uttered a word since he
arrived two days ago. He still has not forgiven
Fifi for "going behind the palm trees." When they were
younger, the sisters used to joke that they would likelier be
virgins than find a palm tree in their neck of the
woods.
"It's hard, I know." As the therapist in the
family, Carla likes to be the one who understands.
"But really, give yourself credit. You've won them
over, Fifi, you have. Mami's eating out of
your hand with this baby, and Papi's going to come around in
time, you'll see. Look, he came, didn't
he?"
"You mean, Mami dragged him here." Fifi
looks down fondly at her baby and recovers her
good mood. "Well, the baby is beautiful and
well, and that's what counts."
Beautiful and well, Yolanda muses, that's what
she had wanted with Clive, all things beautiful and
well, instead of their obsessive, consuming passion that
left her-each time Clive left her-exhausted and
distraught. "I don't understand why he does it,"
she tells her sisters out loud.
"Old world stuff," Carla says. "You know he
got a heavier dose than Mami."
Sandi looks at Yolanda; she understood whom
Yolanda
meant. She tries to lighten her sister's dark
mood. "Look, if beefcake's not your thing,
there's a lot of fish out there," she says. "I just
wish that cute guy hadn't been married."
"What cute guy?" Carla asks her.
"What guy?" the mother asks. She is standing at the
entrance to the living room, buttoning down a
multicolored, flowered houserobe. It
is a habit of hers from their childhood to buy
rainbow clothes for herself so none of the girls can accuse
her of playing favorites.
"The guy you picked up at the hospital,"
Sandi teases.
"What do you mean,
picked up right-brace
He was a nice young man, and it just so happens that he
had a baby daughter born the same time as my little
Cuquita." The mother puts out her arms. "Come here,
Cuca," she croons, taking the baby from Fifi's
hands. She clucks into the blanket.
Sandi shakes her head. "God! You sound like a
goddamn zoo."
"Your language," the mother scolds absently, and
then, as if the words were an endearment, she coos them
at her granddaughter, "your language."
The men trail in slowly for breakfast. First, the
father, who nods grimly at all the well-wishing.
He is followed by Otto, who wishes everyone a
merry Christmas. With his white-gold eyebrows and
whiskers and beard, and plump, good-natured, reddish
face, Otto looks very much like a young Santa
Claus. The analyst shuffles in last. "Look
at all those women," he whistles.
The mother is walking her granddaughter up and down the
length of the room.
Caila, Yolanda, Sandra, Sofia

"Just look at them." Otto grins. "A vision!
What the three kings saw!"
"Four girls," the father murmurs.
"Five," the analyst corrects, winking at the
mother.
"Six," the mother corrects him, nodding towards the
bundle in her arms. "Six of us," she says to the
baby. "And I was sure of it! Why, a week before
you were born, I had the strangest dream. We were
all living on a farm, and a bull..."
The room is hushed with sleepiness. Everyone listens
to the mother.
Joe
VAVAVAVAVAVATATAVATAVATATATATAYATIIIYA
tay
Yolanda
y
olanda, nicknamed Yo in Spanish, misunderstood
foe
in English, doubled and pronounced like the toy, Yoyo
comor when forced to select from a rack of
personalized key chains,
Joey-
stands at the third-story window watching less-than i
man walk across the lawn with a tennis racket. He
touches the border of the shrubbery with the rim of his
racket and sets one or two wild irises
nodding.
"Don't," Yo mumbles to herself at the window,
outlining her hairline with a contemplative index
finger. It is her secret pride: Her hair
grows to a point on her forehead, arches up,
semicircling her face, a perfect heart.
"Don't disturb the flowers, Doc." She wags
her finger at his thumb-sized back.
The man stops. He throws an imaginary ball
in the air and serves it to the horizon. The horizon
misses. He walks on towards it and the tennis
courts.
He is dressed in white shorts and a white
shirt, an outfit which makes
him
look like a boy... a good boy... the only
son of monied, unloving tycoons. Both of them
are tycoons, Yo posits. Daddy Coon is a
Fruit of the Loom tycoon. The band on
her underwear squeezes gently.
Mama Coon is-Yo looks around the room-
scarf, mirror, soap, umbrella-
an umbrella tycoon. A dark cloud rolls
lazily towards her in the sky. The ghost of the tennis
ball is coming to haunt the man. Yo smiles,
appreciating her charms.
An umbrella tycoon will never do. One more
turn around the room:
typewriter, red satchel-
nice sound to that. But he isn't a red satchel
tycoon. A breeze blows the white curtains in
on either side of her, two ghostly arms embracing
her. A room tycoon....
The world is sweetly new and just created. The first
man walks in the garden on his way to a tennis
date. Yo stands at the third-story window and
kisses her fingers and blows him the kiss. "Kiss,
kiss," she hisses from the window. She wishes:
Let him rip off his white shirt, push back the
two halves of his chest like Superman prying open a
door and let the first woman out.
Eve is lovely, a valentine hairline,
white gossamer panties.
"In the beginning," Yo begins, inspired
by perspective. Four floors down, her doctor,
shrunk to child size, sits on the lawn. "In the
beginning, Doc, I loved John."
She recognizes the unmistakable signs of a
flashback: a woman at a window, a woman with a
past, with memory and desire and wreckage in her
heart. She will let herself have them today. She can't:
help herself anyway.
In the beginning, we were in love. Yo smiles.
That was a good beginning. He came to my door. I
opened it. My eyes asked,
Would you like to come in out of the rest of the world!
He answered,
Thank you very much, just what I had on the tip of my
tongue.
It was at the beginning of time, and a river ran outside
Yo's window, bordered by cypresses, willows,
great sweating ferns, thick stalks and palms.
Huge creatures of the imagination scuttled across the
muddy bottom of the river. At night as the lovers
lay in bed and connected the stars into rams and crabs and
twins, they heard the barks and howls of the happy
mating beasts.
"I love you," John said, rejoicing, tricked by the
barks and the howls.
But Yolanda was afraid. Once they got started
on words, there was no telling what they could say.
"I love you," John repeated, so she would
follow suit.
Yolanda kissed each eye closed, hoping that would
do.
"Do you love me, Joe? Do you?" he pleaded.
He wanted words back; nothing else would do.
Yo complied. "I love you too."
"I'll always love you!" he said, splurging.
"Marry me, marry me."
A beast howled from the river. The ram galloped
away from the sky, startled by human sound.
"One." John bowed Yolanda's thumb towards
him. "Two." He folded up the index finger.
"Three." He kissed the nail. "All you need
is love," the radio wailed, as if it were
hungry.
"Four," she joined in, bending her fourth finger.
"Five," they chimed in unison.
His hand met hers, palm to palm, as if they were sharing
a prayer.
"Love," the song snarled, starved. "Love...
love..."
"John, John, you're a pond!"
Yolanda teased, straddling him by Merritt Pond.
John was lying on his back; he had just said that when you
look up at the sky, you realize nothing that you ever do
really matters.
"John's a hon, lying by the pond, having lots of
fun," Yolanda punned, nuzzling the hollow of his
shoulder.
He stroked her back. "And you're a little
squirrel! You know that?"
Yolanda sat up. "Squirrel doesn't
rhyme," she explained. "The point's to rhyme with
my name."
"Joe-lan-dah?" He quibbled, "What rhymes
with Joe-lan-dah?"
"So use Joe.
Doe, roe, buffalo,"
she rhymed. "Okay, now, you try it." She
spoke in the voice she had learned from her mother when
she wanted a second helping of the good things in
life.
"My dear Joe," John began, but put on the
spot, he was blocked for a rhyme. He hemmed,
he hawed, he guffawed. Finally, he blahhed:
"My dear, sweet little squirrel, you mean more to me
than all the gold in the world." He grinned
at his inadvertent rhyme.
Yo sat up again. "C minus!" She rolled
away from him onto the grass. "Where'd you learn
to talk Hallmark?"
Hurt, John stood and brushed off his pants as
if the grass spears were little annoying bits of Yo.
"Not everyone can be as goddam poetic as you!"
She nibbled all up his leg in playful
apology.
John pulled her up by the shoulders.
"Squirrel." He forgave her.
She winced. Anything but a squirrel. Her
shoulders felt furry. "Can I be something else?"
"Sure!" He swept his hand across the earth as if
he owned it all: "What do you want to be?"
She turned away from him and scanned the
horizon:
trees, rocks, lake, grass, weeds, flowers,
birds, sky.
...
His hand came from behind her; it owned her shoulder.
"Sky," she tried. Then, the saying of it made
it right: "Sky, I want to be the sky."
"That's not allowed." He turned her around to face
him. His eyes, she noticed for the first time,
were the same shade of blue as the sky. "Your own
rules: you've got to rhyme with your name."
"still"-she pointed to herself-"rhymes with the
sky!"
"But not with
Joe!"
John wagged his finger at her. His eyes softened with
desire. He placed his mouth over her mouth and
ohhed her lips open.
"Yo rhymes with
cielo
in Spanish." Yo's words fell into the dark, mute
cavern of John's mouth.
Cielo, cielo,
the word echoed. And Yo was running, like the mad, into the
safety of her first tongue, where the proudly
monolingual John could not catch her, even if he
tried.
"What you need is a goddam shrink!" John's
words threw themselves off the tip of his tongue like
suicides.
She said what if she did, he didn't have to call
them
shrinks.
"Shrink," he said. "Shrink, shrink."
She said that just because they were different, that was no reason
to make her feel crazy for being her own person.
He was just as crazy as she was if push came
to shove. My God! she thought. I'm starting to talk
like him! Push comes to shove! She laughed, still half
in love with him. "Okay, okay," she conceded.
"We're both crazy. So, let's both go see a
shrink." She winced, taking on his language only
to convince him.
He shoved her peacemaking hand away. She was the one
who was crazy, remember? No way he was going to go
be shrunk.
She kissed him in silent persuasion, but she could
tell he wasn't convinced.
"I love you. Isn't that enough?" he resisted.
"I love you more than it's good for me."
"See! You're the one who's crazy!" she teased.
Already she had begun to mistrust him.
Because his pencils were always sharpened, his clothes always
folded before lovemaking. Because he put his knife between
the tines of his caret fork between mouthfuls of the dishes
she made that were always just this side of tasting like they were
supposed to-the lasagna like fried eggs, the pudding
like frosting. Because he accused her of eating her own
head by thinking so much about what people said. Because
he believed in the Real World, more than words, more than
he believed in her.
But this time it was because he made for-and-against lists before
doing anything, and she had discovered the
for-and-against-slash-Joe-slash-wife
list. Number one
for
was
intelligent right-brace
number one
against
was
too much for her own good.
Number two stor was
exciting-,
number two against was crazy, question mark.
"What does this mean?" She met him at the
door with the sheet of his calculations in her hand.
"What's that, Violet?" He had named her
Violet after
shrinking
violet when she had started seeing Dr. Payne.
John balked the first time Yo told him the
doctor's name and fees. "A pain in the bloody
pocket all right!" His name became a
joke between them. But secretly for luck, Yo
called Payne, Doc.
"What the hell you have to make a list of the pros and
cons of marrying me for?" Yo followed John
into their bedroom, where he began to undress.
"Come on, Violet-was
"Stop violeting me! I hate it when you do that."
"Roses are red, violets are blue," he
recited, instead of counting to ten so as not to have two lost
tempers in one room.
"You really had to
decide
you loved me?" She read the pro and then the con list
out loud, shaking her head as she did so, ducking
whenever John grabbed for his list. "Looks to me like
the cons have it. Why'd you marry me?"
"My way is to make lists. I could say the
same thing to you about words-was
"Words?" She swatted him with his paper. "Words?
Wasn't I the one always saying, Don't
say it. Don't say itf
I was the one who tried to keep words out of it."
"I made a list because I was confused. Yes,
me, confused!"
John reached for her arm, more as a test of
her temper than a touch of desire. She could tell
the difference and pushed the hand away.
"Ah, come on, Joe," he said, his voice
softening; he folded his tie ruler-size; he
dressed the chair-back with his jacket.
She said no as sweetly as if it were
yes.
"Nooooh," the word opening her mouth, soft and ripe
and ready for him to bite into it.
"Come on, sweetie, tell us what's for
supper?" he coaxed. He took her hands and led
her towards him.
"Sugared spaghetti with glazed meatballs and
honeydew spinach. Sweetie," she taunted,
tugging away in play.
He drew her towards him, in play, and pressed
his lips on her lips.
Her lips tightened. She set her teeth, top
on bottom row, a calcium fortress.
He pulled her forward. She opened her mouth
to yell,
No, no!
He pried his tongue between her lips, pushing her words
back in her throat.
She swallowed them: No, no.
They beat against her stomach: No, no. They
pecked at her ribs: No, no.
"No!" she cried.
"It's just a kiss, Joe. A kiss, for
Christ's sake!" John shook her. "Control
yourself!"
"Nooooooo!" she screamed, pushing him off
everything she knew.
He let her go.
John and Yo were lying in bed with the lights off because it
was too hot to have them on or to be afoot. John's
hand slipped down to her hips, beating a beat.
"It's too hotst" Yo said, silencing it.
He tried to humor her, playing on a new
nickname. "Not tonight, Josephine?" He turned on
his side to face her and outlined her features in the
dark. He traced the heart line from her chin to her
forehead and down again. He kissed her chin to seal the
valentine. "Beautiful. Do you know your face is a
perfect

heart?" He discovered this every time he wanted to make
love to her.
The valentine was too hot. "I'm sweating," it
moaned. "Don't."
The hand wouldn't listen. The middle finger traced a
heart on her lips. The pinkie shaped a heart on
the fleshiness above her right breast.
"Please, John!" His fingertips felt like
rolling beads of sweat.
"John, please," he echoed. He printed
J-o-h-n on her right breast with a sticky finger
as if he were branding her his.
"John! It's too hot." She appealed to his
common sense.
"John, it's too hot," he whined. The combination
of heat and thwarted desire made him nasty.
She stoppered his mouth with her hand. He ignored the
violence in the gesture and kissed her moist palm.
His eyes lidded with hopefulness, he rolled towards
her, his body making a sucking sound as it unglued
itself from the bare mattress. The sheets had drooped
from their hospital corners; they wilted onto the
floor.
John's right hand played piano on her ribs,
and his mouth blew a piccolo on her breasts.
"Shit!" she yelled at him, leaping out of bed.
"Fuck!" He had forced her to say her least
favorite word in the world. She would never ever forgive
him for that.
"Ever?" he said, angrily grabbing for her arm in
the dark. "Ever?"
Her heart folded, flattened, folded again. The
halves fluttered, blinked and opened. Her heart
lifted up to the cloud-flowers in the sky.
"Ever!" She slapped him with the sound. "Ever!
Ever!" She wished she had her clothes on. It was
strange to make absolute statements in the nude.
He came home with a bouquet of flowers that she
knew he had paid too much for. They were blue, and she
guessed they were irises.
Irises
was her favorite name for flowers, so they had to be
irises.
But as he handed them to her, she could not make out his
words.
They were clean, bright sounds, but they meant nothing
to her.
"What are you trying to say?" she kept asking.
He spoke kindly, but in a language she had
never heard before.
She pretended she understood. She took a big
smell of the flowers. "Thank you, love." At the
word
love,
her hands itched so fiercely that she was afraid she
would drop the flowers.
He said something happily, again in sounds she could not
ascribe meanings to.
"Come on, love," she asked his eyes
be
she spoke precisely as if she were talking to a
foreigner or a willful child. "John, can you understand
me?" She nodded her head to let him know that he
should answer her by nodding his head if words failed him.
He shook his head, No.
She held him steady with both hands as if she were
trying to nail him down into her world. "John!" she
pleaded. "Please, love!"
He pointed to his ears and nodded. Volume
wasn't the problem. He could hear her. "Babble
babble." His lips were slow motion on each syllable.
He is saying
Hove you,
she thought! "Babble," she mimicked him. "Babble
babble babble babble." Maybe that meant, still
love you too,
in whatever tongue he was speaking.
He pointed to her, to himself. "Babble?"
She nodded wildly. Her valentine
hairline, the heart in her ribs and all the ones on
her sleeves twinkled like the pinchers of the crab in the
sky. Maybe now they could start over, in silence.
When she left her husband, Yo wrote a
note,
I'm going to my folks till my head-slash-heart
clear.
She revised the note:
I'm needing some space, some time, until my
head-slash-heart-slash-soul-
No, no, no, she didn't want to divide herself
anymore, three persons in one Yo.
John,
she began, then she jotted a little triangle before
John. Dear,
she wrote on a slant. She had read in a
handwriting analysis book that this was the style of the
self-assured.
Dear John, listen, we both know it's not working.
"It'st"
he would ask.
"It's,
meaning what?"
Yo crossed the vague pronoun out.
We are not working.
You
know it, I know it, we both know it, oh John,
John, John.
Her hand kept writing, automatically, until the
page was filled with the dark ink of his name. She tore
the note up and confettied it over her head, a
rainfall of John's. She wrote
him
a short memo,
Gone-
then added-
to my folks.
She thought of signing it, Yolanda, but her real name
no longer sounded like her own, so instead she scribbled
his name for her,
Joe.
Her parents were worried. She talked too much,
yakked all the time. She talked in her sleep, she
talked when she ate despite twenty-seven years
of teaching her to keep her mouth shut when she chewed.
She talked in comparisons, she spoke in riddles.
She ranted, her mother said to her father. Her father
coughed, upset. She quoted famous lines of
poetry and the opening sentences of the classics. How
could anyone remember so much? her mother asked
her sullen father. She was carried away with the sound of
her voice, her mother diagnosed.
She quoted Frost; she misquoted Stevens,-
she paraphrased Rilke's description of love.
"Can you hear me!" Doctor Payne held his
hands up to his mouth like a megaphone and made
believe he was yelling over a great distance. "Can you
hear me?"
She quoted to him from Rumi; she sang what she
knew of "Mary Had a Little Lamb," mixing it up
with "Baa Baa, Black Sheep."
The doctor thought it best if she checked into a
small, private facility where he could keep an
eye on her. For her own good:
So
round-the-clock care; nice grounds; arts and
crafts classes; tennis courts; a friendly,
unintimidating staff, no one in a uniform. Her
parents signed the papers-"For your own good," they
quoted the nice doctor to her. Her mother held her
while a nurse camouflaged in street clothes
filled a syringe. Yo quoted from
Don Quijote
in the original; she translated the passage on
prisoners into instantaneous English.
The nurse stung her with an injection of tears.
Yo went quiet for the first time in months, then burst
into tears. The nurse rubbed a tiny cloud on her
arm. "Please, honey, don't cry," her mother
pleaded with her.
"Let her cry," the doctor advised. "It's
a good sign, a very good sign."
"Tears, tears,"
Joe said, reciting again,
"tears from the depths of some profound despair."
"Don't worry," the doctor said, coaching the
alarmed parents. "It's just a poem."
"But
men die daily for lack of what is found there,"
Yo quoted and misquoted, drowning in the flooded
streams of her consciousness.
The signs got better. Yo fantasized about
Doc. He would save her
body-slash-mind-slash-soul by taking all the
slashes out, making her one whole Yolanda. She
talked to him about growth and fear and the self in
transition and women's spiritual quest. She told
him everything except that she was falling in love with
him.
Was she ready for her parents? he asked.
Ready for her parents, she echoed.
Her parents stepped into the room, staging
happiness. They tested her with questions about the food, the
doctor, the weather, and the tile ashtray she had
made in arts and crafts therapy.
She offered it to her mother.
Her mother cried. "I shouldn't cry."
"It's a good sign," Yo said, quoting Doc,
then caught herself. Quoting others again, a bad
sign.
Her father moved to the window and checked the sky.
""When are you coming home?" the back asked Yo.
"Whenever she's ready to!" Her mother parted the
hair from Yo's forehead.
And the valentine appeared again on the earth.
"I love you guys," Yo improvised. So
what if her first original words in months were the most
hackneyed. They were her own truth. "I do, I
do," she singsong. Her mother looked a little worried as
if she had bitten into something sour she had thought would be
sweet.
"What happened, Yo?" her mother asked the hand she
was patting a little later. "We thought you and John were
so happy."
"We just didn't speak the same
language," Yo said, simplifying.
"Ay,
Yolanda." Her mother pronounced her name in
Spanish, her pure, mouth-filling, full-blooded
name, Yolanda. But then, it was inevitable, like
gravity, like night and day, little apple-bites when
God's back is turned, her name fell,
bastardized, breaking into a half dozen nicknames-
"pobrecita
Yosita"- another nickname. "We love you."
Her mother said it loud enough for two people's worth.
"Don't we, Papi?"
"Don't we what, Mami?" Yo's father turned.
"Love her," his wife snapped.
"There's no question at all." Papi came towards
Mami, or Yo.
"What is love?" Yo asks Dr. Payne;
the skin on her neck prickles and reddens. She
has developed a random allergy to certain words.
She does not know which ones, until they are on the
tip of her tongue and it is too late, her lips
swell, her skin itches, her eyes water with
allergic reaction tears.
The doctor studies her and smells the backs of
his fingers. "What do you think it is, Joe?
Love."
"I don't know." She tries to look him in the
eyes, but she is afraid if she does, he will
know, he will know.
"Oh, Joe," he consoles, "we constantly have
to redefine the things that are important to us. It's
okay not to know. When you find yourself in love again,
you'll know what it is."
"Love," Yo murmurs, testing. Sure enough,
the skin on her arm erupts into an ugly rash. "I
guess you're right." She itches. "It's just scary
not to know what the most important word in my
vocabulary means!"
"Don't you think that's the challenge of being
alive?"
"Alive," she echoes, as if she were relapsing
to her old quoting days. Her lips burn.
Alive, love,
words she can use now only at a cost.
Yo's finger traces Doc's body on the
metallic screen of the window as if she were making him
up. Maybe she will try writing again, nothing too
ambitious, a fun poem in the limerick
mode. She'll call it, "Dennis"
Racket," playing on the double meaning of the
word
racket
as well as on his last name, Payne.
Deep within her, something stirs, an itch she can't
get to.
"Indigestion," she murmurs, patting her
belly. Perhaps not, she thinks, perhaps it is a
personality phenomenon: the real Yolanda
resurrecting on an August afternoon above the kempt
green lawns of this private facility.
Her stomach hurts. She strokes wide
I-am-hungry circles on her hospital
smock. But the beating inside her is more desperate
than hunger, a moth wild inside a lampshade.
It rises, a thrashing of wings, up through her
trachea-until Yo retches. How tragic! At
her age to die of a broken-heart attack. She
tries to laugh, but instead of laughter, she feels
ticklish wings unfolding like a fan at the base of
her throat. They spread her mouth open as if she were
screaming a name out over a great distance. A huge,
black bird springs out; it perches on her bureau,
looking just like the etching of the raven in Yo's first
English poetry book.
She holds out her hand to befriend the dark
bird.
It ignores her, and looks philosophically out
the window at the darkening sky. Slowly its wings
lift and fall, huge arcs rise and collapse,
rise and collapse, up and down, up and down. Her
hair is blown about her face. Dust hurries
to comers. Curtains set sail from their windows.
It flies towards the window. "Oh my God!
The screen!" Yo remembers in a moment of
suspension of belief. "Have a little faith," she
coaches herself, as the dark shape floats easily
through the screen like smoke or clouds or figments of
any


sort. Out it flies, delighting in its new-found
freedom, its dark hooded beak and tiny head
drooping like its sex between arching wings.
Suddenly-it stops-midair. Delight and
surprise are written all over its wing grin. It
plummets down towards the sunning man on the
lawn. Beak first, a dark and secret complex, a
personality disorder let loose on the world, it
plunges!
"Oh no," Yo wails. "No, not
him!" She had thought that alone at her window on an
August afternoon she would be far from where she could do any
harm. And now, down it dives towards the one man
she most wants immune to her words.
Yo screams as the hooked beak rips at the
man's shirt and chest,- the white figure on the
lawn is a red sop.
Satiated, the dark bird rises and joins a
rolling cluster of rain clouds in the northern sky.
Yo bangs on the screen. The man looks up,
trying to guess a window. "Who is that?"
"Are you all right?" she cries out, liking her
role as unidentified voice from the heavens.
"Who is that?" He stands, grabs the beach towel.
The blood congeals into a long, red terrycloth
rectangle. "Who is it?" He is annoyed at
the prolonged guessing game.
"A secret admirer," she trills. "God."
"Heather?" he guesses.
"Yolanda," she murmurs to herself. "Yo," she
shouts down at him. Who the hell is Heather, she
wonders.
"Oh, Joe!" He laughs, waving his racket.
Her lips prickle and pucker. Oh no, she
thinks, recognizing the first signs of her
allergy-not my own name!
in
The lawn is green and clean and quiet.
"Love,"
Yo enunciates, letting the full force of the word
loose in her mouth. She is determined to get over
this allergy. She will build immunity to the offending
words. She braces herself for a double dose:
"Love, love,"
she says the words quickly. Her face is one itchy
valentine.
"Amor."
Even in Spanish, the word makes a rash erupt
on the backs of her hands.
Inside her ribs, her heart is an empty
nest.
"Love."
She rounds the sound of the word as if it were an egg
to put into it.
"Yolanda."
She puts in another one.
She looks up at the thunderclouds. His tennis
game is going to be rainchecked, all right. There
isn't a sample of blue up there to remind her of the
sky. So she says,
"Blue."
She searches for the right word to follow the blue of
blue. "Cry... why... sky
..." She gains faith as she says each word, and
dares further:
"World . .. squirrel. .
. rough . . . tough . ..
love . . . enough..."
The words tumble out, making a sound like the rumble of
distant thunder, taking shape, depth, and substance.
Yo continues:
"Doc, rock, smock, luck,"
so many words. There is no end to what can be said about the
world.
The Rudy Elmenhurst Story
YATAYATATATATAYAYATAYAYATATA-YATAYII
itatat
Yolanda
W
e took turns being the wildest. First one, then
another, of us would confess our sins on vacation
nights after the parents went to bed, and we had
double-checked the hall to make sure there were "no
Moors on the coast," an Island expression for the
coast being clear. Baby Sister Fifi
held that title the longest, though Sandi, with her good
looks and many opportunities, gave her some
competition. Several times Carla, the responsible
eldest, did something crazy. But she always claimed
she had done whatever it was she'd done to gain ground for
us all. So her reigns of error smacked of good
intentions and were never as juicy as Fifi's. To our
"Wow, Fifi, how could you?!" Fifi gave us
bad-girl grins and the catchphrase from the
Alka-Seltzer commercial, "Try it, you'll like
it!"
For a brief few giddy years, I was the one with the
reputation among my sisters of being the wild one. I
suppose it all started at boarding school when I
began getting lots of callers, and though none of these
beaus lasted long enough to even
be called relationships, my sisters mistook
volume for vamp-ishness. Back in those days I had
what one teacher called "a vivacious
personality." I had to look up the word in the
dictionary and was relieved to find out it didn't mean
I had problems. English was then still a party favor
for me-crack open the dictionary, find out if I'd
just been insulted, praised, admonished,
criticized. Those shy prep school guys
at mixers with their endearing long hands and blushing
complexions, I could make them laugh. I could
make them believe they had really engaged a girl in
conversation. There wasn't a Saturday afternoon or
Sunday after morning service that I didn't have
callers. A bunch of guys from our brother school
would come down the hill and hang out in our parlor
to get away from their dormitories, maybe sneaking
a cigarette or a swig from a flask on the walk
over. At our front desk, they had to give a
girl's name, and quite a few gave mine. This had
nothing to do with my being attractive in any remarkable
way. This was vivaciousness through and through.
When I went away to college, my
vivaciousness ultimately worked against me. I'd
meet someone, conversation would flow, they'd come calling,
but pretty soon afterwards, just as my heart was beginning
to throw out little tendrils of attachment, they'd leave.
I couldn't keep them interested. Why I couldn't
keep them interested was pretty simple: I wouldn't
sleep with them. By the time I went to college, it was
the late sixties, and everyone was sleeping around as a
matter of principle. By then, I was a lapsed
Catholic,- my sisters and I had been pretty
well Americanized since our arrival in
this country a decade before, so really, I didn't have
a good excuse. Why I didn't just sleep
with someone
as
persistent as Rudy Elmenhurst is a mystery
I'm exploring here by picking it apart the way we
learned to do to each other's poems and stories in the
English class where I met Rudolf
Brodermann Elmenhurst, the third.
Rudolf Brodermann Elmenhurst, the third,
didn't show up until ten minutes or so into the
class. I, on the other hand, had been the first
to arrive, selecting a place around the seminar table
close to the door, but unfortunately since the table
was round, equally exposed. Others strolled in, the
English jocks at the school. I knew they were
special from their jeans and T-shirts, their knowing,
ironic looks when obscure works of literature
were referred to. The girls didn't all knit
during class like education and socio majors. I'd
already been writing on my own for a while, but this was my
first English class since I'd talked my parents
into letting me transfer to this co-ed college last
fall.
At my place around the seminar table I
unpacked my notebook and every one of the required and
recommended texts which I had already bought, stacking
them in front of me like my credentials. Most of the
other students were too cool to have done anything hasty
like purchase the books for the course. The professor
walked in, a young guy in a turtleneck and
jacket, the uniform of the
with it
professors of the day; he had that edge of the
untenured, too eager, too many handouts, too many
please feel frees
on his syllabus, a home number as well as an
office number. He called roll, acknowledging
most of the other students with nicknames and jokes and
remarks, stumbling over my name and smiling falsely
at me, a smile I had identified as one flashed
on "foreign students" to
show them the natives were friendly. I felt profoundly
out of place. The only person I seemed to have
anything in common with was the absent Rudolf
Brodermann Elmenhurst, the third, who also had
an odd name and who was out of it because he wasn't there.
We were into the logistics of how to make copies for
workshops when a young man walked in, late. He was
one of those guys who has just come through a bout
of adolescent acne into a scarred, masculine,
bad-boy face. A guy to be passed over by the
beauties in our class looking for sweethearts.
He had an ironic smile on his lips, and-a
phrase I haven't heard in a while-bedroom
eyes. A guy who would break your heart. But you
wouldn't know all this if you went by the sound of his name-which
I did, an immigrant's failing, literalism.
I assumed he was late because he'd just whizzed in from
his small barony somewhere in Austria.
The professor stopped the class. "Rudolf
Brodermann Elmen-hurst, the third, I
presume?" Everybody laughed, this guy too. I
admired that from the start, to be able to make such an
entrance without blushing and stumbling and arraying the floor
with your books and the contents of your pocketbook. He
could take a joke, and put on such an ironic
self-assured face no one felt bad laughing.
The guy looked around and there was a space next to the
territory I'd carved out for myself on the table with my
pile of books. He came and sat down. I could
tell he was looking me over, probably wondering
who the hell I was, this intruder upon the sanctuary
of English majors.
Class resumed. The professor
started explaining again about what all he expected from
us in the course. Later, he asked us
to write down a response to a little poem he
passed around. This guy with a name like a title leaned
over and asked if I could lend him a piece of
paper and a pen. I felt honored to be the one
asked. I tore some pages out of my notebook,
then rummaged in my pocketbook for another pen.
I looked up with a sorry-eyed expression. "I
don't have an extra pen," I whispered, complete
sentences for whispers, that's what tells you I was still
a greenhorn in this culture. This guy looked at
me as if he didn't give a damn about a pen, and
I was a fool to think so. It was such an intense
look, I felt myself coloring. "That's okay,"
he mouthed, without really using his voice so I had
to lip-read, his full lips puckering as if he were
throwing little kisses at me. If I'd known what
sexy feelings felt like I would have identified the
shiver going down my spine and into my legs. He
turned to his other neighbor, who didn't have a pen
either. The word went round. Anyone have an extra pen?
No one. There was a dearth of pens that day in class.
I sunk my hand back into my pocketbook. I
was the proverbially overprepared student; I
had to have a standby writing utensil. I felt something
promising at the bottom of my purse and pulled it
out: it was a teensy pencil from a monogrammed set
my mother had given me for Christmas: a box of
pencils "my color," red, and inscribed with my
so-called name in gold letters:
Jolinda.
(my mother had tried for my own name Yolanda, but the
company had substituted the Americanized,
southernized
Jolinda. right-brace Jolinda,
that's what this pencil used to say. In fact, it was so
worn down, only the hook of the still was left. We
didn't throw things away in my family. I used
both sides of a piece of paper. I handed my find
over to this guy. He
took it and held it up as if to say, "What have we
here?" His buddies around us chuckled. I felt
shabby for having saved a pencil through so many sharpenings.
At the end of class, I fled before he could turn
around and give it back to me.
That night there was a knock on my door. I was
in my nightgown already, doing our assignment, a
love poem in the form of a sonnet. I'd been
reading it out loud pretty dramatically,
trying to get the accents right, so I felt
embarrassed to be caught. I asked who it was.
I didn't recognize the name. Rudy? "The guy
who borrowed your pencil," the voice said through the
closed door. Strange, I thought, ten-thirty at
night. I hadn't caught on yet to some of the
strategies. "Did I wake you up?" he wanted
to know when I opened the door. "No, no," I said,
laughing apologetically. This guy I had sworn
never to talk to after he had embarrassed me in
class, but my politeness-training ran on
automatic. I excused myself for not asking him in.
"I'm doing my homework." That wasn't an
excuse in the circles he ran in. We stood
at the door a long moment, he looking over my
shoulder into my room for an invitation. "I just came
to return your pencil." He held it out, a small
red stub in his palm. "Just to return that?" I said,
calling his bluff. He grinned, dimples making
parenthesis at the corners of his lips as if his
smile were a secret between us. "Yeah," he said, and
again he had that intent look in his eye, and again he
looked over my shoulder. I picked the pencil out of
his palm and was glad it had been sharpened to a stub so
he couldn't see my name in gold letters
inscribed on the side. "Thank you," I said,
shifting my weight on my feet and touching the door
knob, little moves, polite preliminaries
to closing the door.
He spoke up. "Can we have lunch sometime?"
"Sure, we can have lunch, sometime." The way I
emphasized
sometime
it was hopeless. I didn't trust this guy, I
didn't know how to read him. I had nothing in my
vocabulary of human behavior to explain him.
Ten minutes late to the first meeting of a class. I
knock myself out to get him a pencil and he makes
fun. Ten-thirty, he shows up at my door
to return it, and asks me to have lunch with him.
"How about tomorrow before class," Rudy said.
"We don't have class tomorrow."
"That gives us time for a long lunch," he
answered, real quick on his feet. I couldn't help
being impressed. "Okay," I said, shaking my
head. "Tomorrow, lunch."
We had lunch the next day, talked until
supper, and then had supper. That's the way I
remember relationships starting in college-those
obsessive marathon beginnings. It was hard
to go back to your little dorm room and do your homework
after having been so absorbed in someone else. But
that's just what I did, I went back and worked on
my sonnet. It was a fourteen-line treatise on
the nature of love, but the whole time I was writing
down my abstractions, I was thinking about how Rudy
listened, looking at my mouth, so that it was hard for me
to pay attention to what I was saying. How he
puckered his lips as if he were kissing each word
goodbye. How his hand had touched the small of my
back to steer me through a crowd of rowdy frat guys
in the dining room. If we admire some people for their
originality with words, others for their quirky interesting
minds, then Rudy had to be admired for his sexy,
instinctive way with his body. He was the kind of guy
who could
kiss you behind your ear and make you feel like you'd just had
kinky sex.
The next day Rudy didn't turn in his sonnet.
After class, while I packed up my luggage of
schoolbooks, I heard him talking to the
professor how he'd gotten stuck and couldn't think
of anything. The professor was likable, it was the
sixties, not having your creative juices flowing was
understandable. Rudy could have until Monday
to turn in his sonnet. We spent most of the weekend
together, writing it, actually me writing down lines and
crossing them off when they didn't scan or rhyme,
and Rudy coming up with the ideas. It was the first
pornographic poem I'd ever co-written; of
course I didn't know it was pornographic
until Rudy explained to me all the word plays and
double meanings. "The coming of the spring upon the boughs," was
the last line. That meant spring was ejaculating green
leaves on the trees,- the new crocuses were standing
stiff on the lawn on account of they were turned on.
I was shocked by all of this. I was a virgin; I
wasn't one hundred per cent sure how sex worked.
That anyone should put all of this into a poem, a
place I'd reserved for deep feelings and lofty
sentiments! I wonder now how much of Rudy's
gutsiness was a veiled flirtation with me, who was
obviously much taken with words and their meanings. I
can't say; like I said, I hadn't learned yet some
of the strategies one went through. But I was catching
on.
I remember the close of each of those weekend
nights as a prolonged farewell. It would start by my
noting the time, midnight, one, one-thirty, and
saying, "Well, I'm going to bed."
Rudy would concur, "Me too," but then, he wouldn't
move
from his place at the foot of my bed next to my
desk where I sat writing. It was a teensy dorm
room. If you stood up to open the closet, you'd have
to negotiate the desk so you wouldn't end up piled
on the bed. "Me too." He smiled that ironic
smile of his that always made me feel so foolish.
Finally, I would just blurt out, "You've got to go,
Rudy." He wouldn't say yes or no, or
sorry to have stayed too long. He would just look at
me with those bedroom eyes, and stand, as if he
wasn't going out the door but coming-in both the old
sense of the word and the new I had just learned-coming in from
the cold outside for a night of lovemaking with his
lady-lay. We stood at the door. Then he
leaned over and kissed me behind the ear for goodbye.
It was that weekend too at one of our lingering
departure scenes that I learned where he'd gotten his
odd, ornate name. He'd had this crusty old
grandfather he'd never met, from Germany, who'd left his
unborn grandchild a trust fund with the proviso that
he be named after the old man. "What if you'd been
a girl?" I wondered.
"I wouldn't be having so much fun,"
Rudy said. By this time the kisses had migrated from
behind my ear to my neck. I shivered when he put a
necklace of them around me before departing.
Our next workshop, no one understood what my
sublimated love sonnet was all about, but
Rudy's brought down the house. Suddenly, it
seemed to me, not only that the world was full of English
majors, but of people with a lot more experience than I
had. For the hundredth time, I cursed my
immigrant origins. If only I too had been
born in Connecticut or Virginia, I too would
understand the jokes everyone was making on the
last two digits of the year, 1969; I too would
be having sex and smoking dope; I too would have
suntanned parents who took me skiing in
Colorado over Christmas break, and I would say
things like "no shit," without feeling like I was imitating
someone else.
Rudy and I began seeing each other regularly
that spring. Besides class, we ate all our meals
together, and on weekends, he'd asked me over to his
dormitory for parties in his hall. His dorm was
next to mine, the two buildings connected by an
underground lounge which would fill weekends with
good-natured, clean parties, much
monitored by security. The real parties went on in
the men's dorms. Mostly guys migrated from one
room to another, smoking a little dope, drinking a
lot. There were the heavy rooms for dropping acid or
taking mushrooms. Candles flickered, incense
burned in an unsuccessful attempt to cover the
pungent smell of marijuana. The Beatles or
Bob Dylan or The Mamas and the Papas blasted
from stereos. It was a decadent atmosphere for me
whose previous experience of dating had been mixers and
parlor calls from boys at prep school. I'd go
over to Rudy's, but I would drink only a sip or
two of the Dixie cup he offered, and I wouldn't
dare touch the drugs. I was less afraid of what
they would do to my mind than I was of what Rudy
might do to my body while I was under the influence.
He pooh-poohed my fears. For one thing, he
said, without my consent, he couldn't do anything. "What
about rape?" I asked,. I wasn't a total
bumpkin. "Jesus Christ," he said, shaking his
head, disbelieving what he'd let himself in forwith me.
"I'm not going to fucking rape you!" I was hurt.
I'd never been
spoken to that way. If my father had heard a man
use such obscenities before his daughters,
he would have asked him to step outside where he would have
defended my honor. Of course, I would have had to do
a lot of explaining afterwards about what I was up to at
midnight on a Saturday night in a man's
dormitory with a cigarette in one hand and a Dixie
cup of cheap wine in the other.
After some time in his buddies' rooms sitting in
clusters, guys and their dates, Rudy and I
migrated to his room. His bed was a mattress on
the floor, the American flag draped over it for a
coverlet, which even as a non-native, I thought
most disrespectful. We would lie down under it,
side by side, cuddling and kissing, Rudy's hand
exploring down my blouse. But if he wandered any
lower, I'd pull away. "No," I'd say,
"don't." "Why not?" he'd challenge, or
ironically or seductively or exasperat-edly,
depending on how much he'd imbibed, smoked,
dropped. My own answers varied, depending on my
current hangups, that's what Rudy called my
refusals, hangups. Mostly I was afraid
I'd get pregnant. "From getting felt up?"
Rudy said with sarcasm.
"Ay,
Rudy," I'd plead, "don't say it that
way."
"What do you mean, don't say it that way? A
spade's a spade. This isn't a goddamn
poetry class." .
Perhaps if Rudy had acted a little more as if
lovemaking were a workshop of sorts, things might have
moved more swiftly toward his desired conclusion. But
the guy had no sense of connotation in bed. His
vocabulary turned me off even as I was beginning
to acknowledge my body's pleasure. If Rudy
had said,
Sweet lady, lay across my big, soft bed and
let me touch your dear, exquisite body,
I might have felt up to being felt up.
But I didn't want to just be in the sack, screwed,
balled, laid, and fucked my first time around with a
man.
Rudy did have a honeymoon of patience with me at
the start. He must have realized from his having had
to explain to me so many references in his sonnet that I
didn't know, as he put it, worth shit. To me,
vagina, cervix, ovary were synonyms. Via
diagrams he introduced me to my anatomy; he
drew the little egg going down its hour glass into the
sticky pocket of the uterus. He
calculated when I'd last had my period, when
I'd probably ovulated, whether a certain night
was a safe time of the month. "You're not going to get
pregnant"-all his lessons ended with the same
point. But still I didn't want to sleep with him.
"Why? What's wrong with you, are you frigid or
something?"
Now there was a worry. I'd just gotten over
worrying I'd get pregnant from proximity, or
damned by God should I die at that moment, and now I
started wondering if maybe my upbringing had
disconnected some vital nerves. "I just don't
think it's right yet," I said.
"Jesus, we've been going out a month," Rudy
said. "When's it going to be all right?"
"Soon," I promised, as if I knew.
But soon didn't happen soon enough. We had
progressed to where I stayed the night, waking up
early in the morning, not daring to move for fear I'd
wake Rudy up in an amorous mood and end up in
an early morning discussion of why not now. I
scanned the room, as small as mine. Beside his bed
I could see the pad with the hourglass shapes. I
touched my belly to make sure I was still intact.
On the cinderblock wall opposite

the bed, Rudy had put up a bulletin board.
There were pennants from his ski teams and photos of his
family, all lined up on skis on top of a
mountain. His parents looked so young and casual-like
classmates. My own old world parents diswere still
an embarrassment at parents' weekend, my father with
his thick mustache and three-piece suit and fedora
hat, my mother in one of her outfits she bought
especially to visit us at school, everything overly
matched, patent leather purse and pumps that would go
back, once she was home, to plastic storage
bags in her closet. I marveled at his youthful
parents. No wonder Rudy didn't have hangups,
no wonder his high school acne hadn't left him
riddled with self-doubt, his name hadn't cowed him.
They encouraged him, his parents, to have experiences with
girls but to be careful. He had told them he was
seeing "a Spanish girl," and he reported they
said that should be interesting for him to find out about people from other
cultures. It bothered me that they should treat me like
a geography lesson for their son. But I
didn't have the vocabulary back then to explain even
to myself what annoyed me about their remark. I met
them only once right before spring break and
ironically at the very close of my relationship with
Rudy. What happened was the night before break
started, Rudy and I had another one of our showdowns
in his bed. Rudy turned on the light and sat up
on his mattress, his back against the wall. He was
nude-I, in my old long-sleeved flannel
nightgown Rudy called a
nungown.
From the moonlight and streetlight coming in through the
window, I saw his body beautifully sculpted
by light and shadows. I did yearn for him, but I
yearned for so much more along with that body, which I must have
sensed
Rudy would never give me. He was worn down with
frustration, he said. I was cruel. I didn't
understand that unlike a girl, it was physically painful
for guys not to have sex. He thought it was time to call it
quits. I was tearful and pleading: I wanted
to feel we were serious about each other before we made
love. "'Serious!" He made a face. "How
about fun? Fun, you know?" What did that have to do with this
momentous rending of the veil, I wondered. "You mean
you don't think sex is fun?" Rudy faced me as
if he were finally seeing the root of the problem.
"Sure," I lied. "It's fun if it's
right." But he shook his head. He had seen through me.
"You know," he said, "I thought you'd be
hot-blooded, being Spanish and all, and that under all
the Catholic bullshit, you'd be really free,
instead of all hung up like these cotillion chicks
from prep schools. But Jesus, you're worse than
a fucking Puritan." I felt stung to the quick.
I got up and threw my coat over my nightgown,
packed up my clothes, and left the room, half
hoping he'd come after me and say he really did
love me, he'd wait as long as I needed to after
all.
But he didn't slip into my room and under my
sheets and hold me tight against the empty, endless
night. I hardly slept. I saw what a cold,
lonely life awaited me in this country. I would
never find someone who would understand my peculiar mix of
Catholicism and agnosticism, Hispanic and
American styles. Had I been raised with the
tradition of stuffed
animals,
I would have hugged my bear or stuffed dog or
rabbit, salting the ragged fur with my tears all
night. Instead, I did something that even as a lapsed
Catholic I still did for good luck on
nights before exams. I opened my drawer and took
out the crucifix I kept hidden under my clothes, and
I put it under my
pillow for the night. This large crucifix had been a
"security blanket" I took to bed with me for
years after coming to this country. I had slept with it so
many nights that finally Jesus had come unglued, and
I had to fasten him back on his cross with a rubber
band.
Rudy did not come calling the next day. I
bumped into him as he was leaving with his parents and I was
exiting my dorm to take the taxi to the bus to my
parents" in New York. I was sleepy and
weepy and did not look back when I felt
Rudy's eyes on me. His parents did most of the
chatting, talking too slowly to me as if I wouldn't
understand native speakers; they complimented me on my
"accentless" English and observed that my parents must be
so proud of me. When we said goodbye, I did
glance up at Rudy, and though I was out in the cold,
he was still in the bedroom with the look in his eyes.
After break, I didn't see much of Rudy.
He didn't sit by me in class; his workshop
poems became unaccountably straightforward and
affectionate, out and out love poems. Was
he trying to say he really had fallen in love with
me? Then why didn't he stop by my room
anymore? I started making excuses for him in my
head. He had been there, but I wasn't in, and then
he was too afraid to leave a note. He was too
shy to come sit by me in class. Afraid, shy!
Rudolf Brodermann Elmenhurst, the third!
How we lie to ourselves when we've fallen in love
with the wrong man.
Of course, I could have sought him out and told him
how I felt about him. How I was frightened of sex
with a man who called it
getting laid.
But I was still in the mode where the guy did all the
courting and seeking out. I kept aloof, I waited,
I
fantasized, misleading myself. The copies of my
poems Rudy handed back had on them brief,
inane remarks I read and reread for double meaning.
"Good," or "I don't get this line" or "Nice
details." My copies of his poems went back
to him with long, complimentary comments. I became more and more
of a recluse, avoiding our old haunts for fear of
running into him. But we rarely bumped into each other,
and when we did, he always flashed me his
cool, ironic smile and greeted me with an
offhand, "How you doing?" I, on the other hand, was
bristling with so much feeling, I pretended not to have seen
him.
Spring dance approached. I don't know why I
still thought Rudy would certainly end up going with me.
This was the culminating romantic event of the school
year on campus, and it seemed to me in my
fantasy mode to be the perfect vehicle for our
reconciliation. I played it out in my head. We
would dance all night. We would talk and confess how
much we had missed each other. I would go back
to his dorm room with him. We would make love,
my first time, and then, almost as if they were the different
positions Rudy had told me about, we would screw
and fuck and ball and get laid-all the synonyms
Rudy preferred for referring to his sex.
In real life, the day approached, and then the
night, and I was still hoping. The dance was in the lounge
between the two dorms, and so, when I heard the band start
up, I wandered down the stairs to a landing where I could
watch, unobserved, the partiers. They were a motley
group: the conservative frat guy types in
tuxedos and their dates in fancy prom dresses,
the new hippies in Indian paisleys,
jeans and sneakers, and maybe for flare, an
incongruous bow tie. I saw the figures dancing
luridly,
the lights flashing, the band going. They all seemed so
caught up in a rhythm I didn't feel a part
of. Then I saw Rudy come into the room, a glass
in one hand, no doubt full of something spiked with
alcohol or acid. My heart would have fluttered
if there had been any time between the initial glimpse
of his familiar figure and the sight of another
figure clinging to him. I could hardly tell what she
looked like, who she was, but by the way they were holding
on to each other, leaning into each other's bodies, I
knew, first off that she was the beloved of his poems, and
second of all the beloved of his bed. Within weeks of
breaking up with me! I was crushed. For the second time
in our relationship, as a kind of closing frame to our
first meeting which had ended in my flight out of the
classroom, I fled up the stairs.
There's more to the story. There always is to a true
story. About five years later, I was in grad
school in upstate New York. I was a poet,
a Bohemian, et cetera. I'd had a couple of
lovers. I was on birth control. I guessed
I'd resolved the soul and sin thing by lapsing
from my heavy-duty Catholic background, giving
up my immortal soul for a blues kind of soul.
Funky and low-down, the kind inspired by reading too
much Carlos Castaneda and Rilke and Robert
Bly and dropping acid with a guy who claimed to be
my cosmic mate from a past life. I got this
call one night from Rudy. His parents lived just
down the road, and he had read that I was at the
neighboring university in the Alumni Bulletin.
Could he come over to see me? Sure, I said.
When? Tonight, he said. Tonight was already about nine-thirty.
Up to his same old tricks. But I was taken
with the guy's persistence. Sure, I said, come on
over.
He came on over. Brought an expensive
bottle of wine. At
the door, I gave him a friendly hug, but he held
on for longer. I got nervous and gabby. His bad
boy always drove me to my vivacious good girl.
I sat him down in my one chair and started to quiz
him on his five years since graduation. He sighed
a lot, stretched his legs, cracked his knuckles.
Finally, he cut me off, said, Hey, Jesus
Christ, I've waited five years, and you look like
you've gotten past all your hang-ups.
Let's just fuck. I threw him out. It still offended
me that he didn't want to do anything but screw me,
get that over with. Catholic or not, I still thought it a
sin for a guy to just barge in five years later with a
bottle of expensive wine and assume you'd drink
out of his hand. A guy who had ditched me, who had
haunted my sexual awakening with a nightmare of
self-doubt. For a moment as I watched him get in
his car and drive away, I felt a flash of that
old self-doubt.
On the counter, he had left behind the bottle of
wine. I had one of those unserious, cheap, grad
school corkscrews. Those days we bought gallon
jugs of Gallo with pull-out corks or
screwed-on lids. I worked the corkscrew in as
far as it would go. I wasn't very good at this. Each
time I yanked the screw out, I got a spurt of
cork, but the stiKnowledge remained snug in the
bottleneck. Finally, I worked it in so I could
see the sharp point of the spiral through the glass neck
at the bottom of the cork. I put the bottle between
my legs and pulled so hard that not only did I
jerk the crumbled cork out but I sprayed myself with
expensive Bordeaux. "Shit," I thought, "this is
not going to wash out." I held the bottle
up to my mouth and drew a long messy swallow, as
if I were some decadent wild woman who had just
dismissed an unsatisfactory lover.
0961-0/61
ATATATATATATATATATATATATATATATATAIIIAT
ata
II
A Regular Revolution
VATAYATATAYATAYAYATATAYAYATAYAYAYIIIVA
tav
Carlo, Sandi, Yoyo, Fifi
F
or three-going-on-four years Mami and Papi were
on green cards, and the four of us shifted from foot
to foot, waiting to go home. Then Papi went down
for a trial visit, and a revolution broke out, a
minor one, but still.
He came back to New York reciting the
Pledge of Allegiance, and saying, "I am given
up, Mami! It is no hope for the Island. I will
become
un dominican-york."
So, Papi raised his right hand and swore to defend the
Constitution of the United States, and we were here
to stay.
You can believe we sisters wailed and paled, whining
to go home. We didn't feel we had the best the
United States had to offer. We had only
second-hand stuff, rental houses in one redneck
Catholic neighborhood after another, clothes at
Round Robin, a black and white TV afflicted
with wavy lines. Cooped up in those little suburban
houses, the rules were as strict as for Island
girls, but there was no island to make up the difference.
Then a few weird things happened. Carla met a
pervert. At school, epithets ("spic,"
"greaseballs") were hurled our way.
Some girlfriend of Sandi's got her to try a
Tampax, and Mami found out. Stuff like that, and
soon she was writing away to preparatory schools
(all-girls ones) where we would meet and mix with the
"right kind" of Americans.
We ended up at school with the cream of the
American crop, the Hoover girl and the Hanes
twins and the Scott girls and the Reese kid who
got incredible care packages once a week. You
wouldn't be as gauche as to ask, "Hey, are you
related to the guy who makes vacuum cleaners?"
(you could see all those attachments just by the way
Madeline Hoover turned her nose up
at you.) Anyhow, we met the right kind of
Americans all right, but they didn't exactly
mix with us.
We had our own kind of fame, based mostly on
the rich girls' supposition and our own silence.
Garcia de la Torre didn't mean a thing to them,
but those brand-named beauties simply assumed that, like
all third world foreign students in boarding schools,
we were filthy rich and related to some dictator or
other. Our privilege smacked of evil and mystery
whereas theirs came in recognizable panty hose
packages and candy wrappers and vacuum cleaner
bags and Kleenex boxes.
But hey, we might be fish out of water, but at
least we had escaped the horns of our dilemma to a
silver lining, as Mami might say. It was a long
train ride up to our prep school in Boston, and
there
were
guys on that train. We learned to forge Mami's
signature and went just about everywhere, to dance weekends
and football weekends and snow sculpture
weekends. We could kiss and not get pregnant.
We could smoke and no great aunt would smell us and
croak. We began to develop a taste
for the American teenage good life, and soon,
Island was old hat, man. Island was the
haix-and-nails crowd, chaperones,
and icky boys with all their macho strutting and
unbuttoned shirts and hairy chests with gold chains
and teensy gold crucifixes. By the end of a couple
of years away from home, we had
more
than adjusted.
And of course, as soon as we had, Mami and Papi
got all worried they were going to lose their girls
to America. Things had calmed down on the Island and
Papi had started making real money in his office up
in the Bronx. The next decision was obvious: we
four girls would be sent summers to the Island so we
wouldn't lose touch with
la familia.
The hidden agenda was marriage to homeland boys,
since everyone knew that once a girl married an
American, those grandbabies came out jabbering in
English and thinking of the Island as a place to go get
a suntan.
The summer plan met with annual resistance from all
four of us. We didn't mind a couple of weeks,
but a
whole
summer? "Have you got anything better to do?" Mami
questioned. Like yes, like
yes
we did, if she and Papi would only let us do it.
But working was off-limits. (a boss hiring a young
girl was after one thing only. Never mind if his name was
Hoover.) Summer time was family time. Big time
family time, a whole island of family, here a
cousin, there a cousin, everywhere we turned a kissing
cousin was puckering up at us.
Winters whenever one of us got out of line, Mami and
Papi would march out the old "Maybe what you need
right now
is some time back home to help set you straight."
We'd shape up pretty quick, or pretend to.
Sometimes the parents upped the ante. It wouldn't be just
the bad daughter who'd be shipped back, but
all four girls.
By "the time the three oldest were in college-we
all started
no
out at the same all-girls one, of course-we had
devised as sophisticated and complicated a code and
underground system as Papi had when he and his
group plotted against the dictator. The parents"
habit was to call us on Friday or Saturday
nights around ten right before the switchboard closed.
We took turns "on duty" to catch those calls.
But Mami and Papi were like
psychic.
They
always
directed the first call to the missing daughter, and when
she wasn't in, they'd asked to talk to another
missing daughter. The third, on-duty daughter would
get the third call, in which the first question would be, "Where
are your sisters?" At the library studying or in
so-and-so's room getting tutored on her
calculus. We kept most things from the old people, but
sometimes they caught on and then we rotated the hot
seat.
Fifi was on for smoking in the bathroom. (she always
ran the shower, as if smoking were a noisy activity
whose hullabaloo she had to drown out.)
Carla was on for experimenting with hair removal
cream. (mami threw a fit, saying that once you
got started on that road, there was no stopping-the
hairs would grow back thicker, uglier each time.
She made it sound like drinking or drugs.)
Yoyo was on for bringing a book into the house, Our
Bodies,
Our
Selves.
(mami couldn't quite put her finger on what it was that
bothered her about the book. I mean, there were no men in
it. The pictures all celebrated women and their
bodies, so it wasn't technically about sex as she
had understood it up to then. But there were women exploring
"what their bodies were all about" and a whole chapter
on lesbians. Things, Mami said, examining the
pictures, to be ashamed of.)
in
Sandi was on when a visiting aunt and uncle
dropped in for a visit at college early Sunday
morning. (she wasn't back yet from her
Saturday night calculus tutorial.)
It was a regular revolution: constant
skirmishes. Until the time we took open aim and
won, and our summers-if not our lives-became our
own.
That last summer we were shipped home began like
all the others. The night before the trip, we sisters
stayed up late packing and gabbing. Sandi called her
boyfriend long distance and, with her back turned
to us, whispered things like "Me too." We got
pretty punchy, imitating aunts and uncles and
cousins we would be seeing the next day. Maybe it was
a way of getting even with people who would have power over us
all summer. We played with their names, translating
them into literal English so they sounded ridiculous.
Tia Concha became Aunt Conchshell, and Tia
Asunci6n, Aunt Ascension; Tio Mundo
was Uncle World; Paloma, our model cousin,
turned into Pigeon, and for spite we surnamed her,
accurately, Toed.
Around midnight, Mami came fussing down the
hall to our bedrooms in those fuzzy slippers of
hers with the bobby-socks and a roller cap on her
head. "That's enough, girls," she said. "You have all
morning tomorrow. You need your beauty dreams."
We turned our faces glum to reaffirm the forced
nature of this trip.
And she gave us the little pep talk on family and
how important roots were. Finally she went
back to bed, and to sleep,
or so we thought. We turned the volume down but
stayed up talking.
Fifi held up a Baggy with dregs of greenish
brown weed inside. "Okay, vote time,"
she said. "Do I or don't I take it."
"Don't do it," Carla said. Her nightwear was
the antithesis of Mami's: in fact, Carla
looked almost dressed up in her prim cotton
nightgown. A yellow ribbon held her hair
back from her face. "If we're caught at
Customs-we're in a shitload of trouble. And
remember, now that Uncle World's in government, it
would be all over the newspapers."
"Carla, you're such a prissst" Sandi taunted
her. "For one thing, now that Tio is a V.i.p.,
we won't have to go through Customs. Security will
whisk us off, the Misses Garcias de la
Torres." She waved her hand with a flourish as if
she were introducing us to King Arthur's court.
"You could try the Kotex trick," Yoyo
suggested,
thinking
it would be nice to have a little pot to smoke when things on
the Island got dull. Pile a layer of Kotex
above whatever you were trying to hide, the Island cousins
once advised her, and the officers would shy from probing.
"Who uses Kotex anymore?" Fifi asked.
"Would Tampax work?"
"Those guys probably wouldn't know what
it was." Sandi slid one out of the box she was taking.
She pantomined an investigation, ripping off the
paper envelope and trying to bite off the end like our
uncles did their cigars.
We burst out in the loud laughter we'd kept at
bay since Mami exited. Soon enough, there were
footsteps down the hall. Just before the door swung
open, Fifi, who was still holding
the Baggy of grass, tossed it behind a bookcase,
where it lay forgotten in the haste of our final packing
next morning before our noon plane.
Not three weeks on the Island had gone by when
Mami called. Tf a Carmen came padding out to the
pool to tell us our mother was on her way from New
York and that she intended to have a
long
talk with us. Tia admitted that yes, something was
amiss, but she had promised our mother not to say what.
Tia was superreligious, and we knew we wouldn't
get it out of her if she'd given her word. By way of
consolation, she counseled us to "examine your
consciences."
We reviewed our recent sins with our girl
cousins until late that night.
"All I can think of," Yoyo offered,
"was they opened our mail."
"Or maybe our grades came?" Fifi
suggested.
"Or the phone bill," Sandi added. Her boyfriend
lived in Palo Alto.
"I think it's really unfair to leave us
hanging." Carla's head was fretted with clips and
bobbypins as if she were wired up for an experiment.
Her hair turned frizzy on the Island, and every
night she ironed it, then rolled it in a "tubie,"
using her head as large roller.
"Examine your consciences," Sandi said in a
boogeyman voice.
"I have, I have," Fifi joked, "and the problem
isn't I can't find anything to worry about but that I
find so much." We spent the rest of the evening confessing
to our giggly, over-chaperoned
girl cousins the naughtinesses we had committed up
in the home of the brave and the land of the free.
That almost-empty Baggy of grass behind the bureau
never crossed our minds. Mami had a maid from the
Island who lived with us in the States. She,
Primitiva, had found the stash. Primi herself used
Baggies in her practice of layman's
sante-ria,
concocting powders and potions to make this ache or that
rival woman go away. But why the girls would have a
Baggy of oregano in their room was
un misterio
she deferred to her mistress to solve.
As we later reconstructed it from what Primi
said, Mami's first reaction was anger that we had
broken her rule against eating in our bedrooms.
(oregano qualified as food?) But when she
opened the Baggy and took a sniff and poked her
finger in and tasted a pinch and had Primitiva do the
same, they were flabbergasted. The dreaded and illegal
marijuana that was lately so much in the news! Mami
was sure of it. And here she'd been, worried sick
about protecting our virginity since we'd hit
puberty in this land of wild and loose Americans,
and vice had entered through an unguarded orifice at
the other end.
Immediately, she contacted Tf o Pedro, a
psychiatrist "uncle by affection" with a practice in
Jackson Heights. Tio Pedro was always
consulted when one or the other of us daughters got
into trouble. He identified the oregano most
surely as grass, and got Mami
free-associating about what else we
might be up to. By the time she touched down on the
Island forty-eight hours after finding the Baggy, we
were all addicts, fallen women with married lovers and
illegitimate babies on the way. One teensy
Yoyo,
Fifi
hope she held on to was that a workman or a house
guest had left the pot there. She had come to find out
the truth, shielding Papi from the news and the heart
attack he would surely die of if he knew.
Since we were caught by surprise, we didn't
have a plan. At first, Carla made a vague
attempt to discredit Tio Pedro by revealing how he
always ended our sessions with long hugs and a pat on the
butt. "He's a lech," she accused. "And besides,
what does Saint Peter know of grass?"
"Grass?" Mami scowled. "This is
marijuana."
Carla held her tongue.
Before we could come up with a better approach,
Fifi surprised us by admitting that the Baggy was
hers. Instantly, we all rallied to her guilty
side. "It's mine too," Yoyo claimed. "And
mine," Carla and Sandi chimed in.
Mami's eyes shifted from one to the other,
each cry of
Mine!
confirming another bad daughter. She wore her
tragic look of the Madonna with delinquent children.
"All of you?" she asked in a low, shocked voice.
Fifi stepped forward. "I tell you it was me who
put it there, I did it, and they"-she pointed
to us-"they had nothing to do with it."
Technically, she was right. It was her Baggy. The
rest of us had had dope only when our boyfriends
rolled a joint or when, in a party of friends, a
cigarette made its rounds, everyone drawing a
toke. Still, there was something untoward about Fifi taking
all the blame since our habit had been to share the
good
and
the bad that came our way. She gave Mami an
impassioned apology and argument-her sisters should not be
punished along with her. Oddly enough, Mami
consented. She asked us, though, not to tell Papi
unless we wanted wholesale Island confinement.
It's possible that Mami had her own little revolution
brewing, and she didn't want to blow the whistle on
her girls and thus call attention to herself.
Recently, she had begun spreading her
wings, taking adult courses in real estate and
international economics and business management,
dreaming of a bigger-than-family-size life for
herself. She still did lip service to the old ways,
while herself nibbling away at forbidden fruit.
Anyhow, she agreed that the three oldest of us could
go back to our school at the end of the summer. Fifl
was given the choice of either staying on the Island for a
year at Tia Carmen's or going back to the
States, but not to her boarding school. She would have
to live at home with Mami and Papi and attend the
local Catholic school.
Fifl opted to stay. Better one of a dozen
chaperoned cousins, she figured, than home alone
with Mami and Papi breathing down her neck and
Peter Pan with his hand on her ass. "Besides, I
wanna try it out here. Maybe I'll like it,"
Fifi said, defending her choice to us. As the youngest
of the four, she had had the least chance to bond to the
Island before our abrupt exile almost a decade
before. "And besides, the States aren't making me
happy."
"You're in the middle of your adolescence, for
God's sake!" Carla had decided to major in
psych and had been giving all of us
frequent free analysis. "You're supposed
to be unhappy and confused. It means you're
normal, well adjusted. This is just going to make it
worse, I guarantee it!"
"Maybe it won't, maybe I'll surprise
you," said Fifi.
Yoyo,
Fifi
"You'll be climbing these walls before the year is out,"
Carla warned.
We looked beyond the pool at the high stone wall.
Down a ways one of the maids had draped her
underclothes on the wall. In the cup of a brassiere,
his little head hardly visible, a lizard was blowing out his
throat as if he had just taken a toke and were holding
it in until the small dazed cells of his brain
zinged a hit.
By Christmas, we are wild for news of
Fifl's exile. From Mami we hear that our sister
is beautifully acclimated to life on the Island and
taking classes in shorthand and typing at the Ford
Foundation trade school. She's also seeing someone
nice.
This, of course, is dangerous for the rest of us. With
one successfully repatriated daughter,
Papi might yank us all out of college and send
us back. Not to mention that it's out and out creepy that
Fifi, the maverick, is so changed. Carla, in
fact, says it's a borderline schizoid
response to traumatic cultural displacement.
The minute we step off the plane, we see
Mami has not exaggerated. Fifi, there to meet us
at the airport, is a jangle of bangles and a
cascade of beauty parlor curls held back on
one side very smartly by a big gold barrette.
She has darkened her lashes with black mascara so
that her eyes stand out as if she were slightly startled
at her good luck. Fifi-who used to wear her hair
in her trademark, two Indian braids that she
pinned up in the heat like an Austrian milkmaid.
Fifi-who always made a point of not wearing makeup
or fixing herself up. Now she looks like the
after
person in one of those
before-after
make-overs.in magazines.
"Elegante,"
Mami has said of Fifi's new
style, but on our lips are other epithets. "She's
turned into a S.a.p.," Yoyo
mutters. A Spanish-American princess.
"My God, Fifl," we say in greeting,
looking her over.
"Where's the party?" Sandi teases.
"If you can't say something nice-was Fifi begins,
defensively. Her little patent leather pocketbook
plaintively matches her pumps.
"Hey, hey!" We give her one of our huddle
hugs. "Don't lose your sense of humor on us,
come on! You look great!"
"Don't muss my hair," Fifl fusses,
patting it down as if it were a hat. But she
smiles. "Guess what, you guys?" She looks
from one to the other of us.
"You're seeing someone nice," we chorus.
Fifi is taken aback, then laughs. "Ye
Olde Grapevine, huh?" We nod. She goes
on to explain that her someone nice is a cousin,
Manuel Gustavo. "A
nice
cousin," she is quick to add.
"A cousin?" We know most of our cousins, and
Manuel Gustavo is a new one on us.
"A closet cousin," Fifi says, searching her
purse for a photo. "One of the
illegitimates."
Right on! We sisters give each other the V for
victory sign. It's still a guerrilla revolution
after all! We were afraid that Fifi was caving in
to family pressure and regressing into some nice
third-world girl. But no way. She's still Ye
Olde Fifi.
Fifi tells us the full story of Manuel
Gustavo. His father is our father's brother, Tio
Orlando, who has a half dozen children from
una mujer del campo,
a woman from the countryside around one of his ranches.
Of course, Tia Fidelina, our uncle's
wife, who is sweet and dedicated to
La Viigen,
"knows noth-
Sandi, Yoyo, Fift
ing" about Tio Orlando's infidelities. But now
that Manuel Gustavo is at the manger door, so
to speak, his father has to come up with some explanation just
short of immaculate conception. Who is this young
man who is seeing her niece? Tfa Fidelina
wants to know. Where does he come from? What's his
family name? Another uncle, Ignacio, offers
to take Manuel Gustavo on as his own
illegitimate son. He's never married and is
always getting ragged about being homosexual. So two
men are off the hook with one bastard. According to Fifi,
the
alta sociedad,
the high-class ladies of the oligarchy who form a
kind of club, not unlike a country club, are
delighted by this juicy bit of gossip.
"They have nothing better to do," she concludes,
drawing up her chin, above it all.
We take Manuel on as our own favorite
cousin.
He looks like a handsome young double for Papi, and a
lot like us, the family eyebrows, the same high
cheekbones, the full, generous mouth. In short, he
could be the brother we never had. When he roars into the
compound in his pickup, all four of us run down the
driveway to greet him with kisses and hugs.
"Girls," Tfa Carmen says, frowning, "that's
no way to greet a man."
"Yeah, you guys," Fifi agrees. "Get off
him, he's mine!"
We laugh, but we keep fussing over him,
waiting on him as if we've never been to the States
or read Simone de Beauvoir or
planned lives of our own.
But, as the days go by, Fifi grows withdrawn and
watchful.
Daily, there are little standoffs and pouts and cold
shoulders because one of us has put her arm around
Manuel or has gotten involved in a
too-lengthy conversation with him about the production of
sugar cane.
To reassure her, we tone ourselves down and become
more reserved with Manuel. From this new distance, we
begin to get the long view, and it's not so pretty.
Lovable Manuel is quite the tyrant, a mini
Papi and Mami rolled into one. Fifi can't wear
pants in public. Fifi can't talk to another
man. Fifi can't leave the house without his
permission. And what's most disturbing is that Fifi,
feisty, lively Fifi, is letting this man tell
her what she can and cannot do.
One day Fifi, who rarely reads anymore,
becomes absorbed in one of the novels we brought
along, and not a trashy one for once. Manuel
Gustavo arrives, and when no one answers the
door, comes in the back way. In the patio, all
four of us are draped over lawn chairs reading.
Fifi sees him and her face lights up.
She is about to put aside her book, when Manuel
Gustavo reaches down and lifts it out of her hands.
"This," Manuel Gustavo says, holding the
book up like a dirty diaper, "is junk in your
head. You have better things to do." He tosses the
book on the coffee table.
Fifi pales, though her two blushed-on cheeks
blush on. She stands quickly, hands on her hips,
eyes narrowing, the Fifi we know and love. "You have
no right to tell me what I can and can't do!"
"iQue no!"
Manuel challenges.
"No! "Fifi asserts.
One by one we three sisters exit, cheering Fifi
on under our
Yoyo,
Fifi
breaths. A few minutes later we hear the
pickup roar down the driveway, and Fifi comes
sobbing into the bedroom.
"Fifi, he asked for it," we say. "Don't
let him push you around. You're a free spirit," we
remind her.
But within the hour, Fifi is on the phone with
Manuelito, pleading for forgiveness.
We nickname him M.g., a make of car we
consider slightly sleazy, a car one of our older
cousins might get his Papi to buy him to impress
the Island girls. We rev up imaginary motors
at the mention of his name. He's such a tyrant!
Rrrrmm. He's breaking Fifi's spirit!
Rrrrmm-rrrmm.
A few days after the book episode, Manuel
Gustavo arrives for the noon meal, and since Fifi
is still at her Spanish class, we decide to have a
little talk with him.
Yoyo begins by asking him if he's ever heard of
Mary Woll-stonecraft. How about Susan B.
Anthony? Or Virginia Woolf? "Friends of
yours?" he asks.
For the benefit of an invisible sisterhood, since
our aunts and girl cousins consider it very unfeminine
for a woman to go around demonstrating for her rights,
Yoyo sighs and all of us roll our eyes. We
don't even try anymore to raise consciousness
here. It'd be like trying for cathedral ceilings in a
tunnel, or something. Once, we did take on
Tia Flor, who indicated her large house, the
well-kept grounds, the stone Cupid who had been
re-routed so it was his mouth that spouted water.
"Look at me, I'm a queen," she argued.
"My husband has to go to work every day. I can sleep
until noon, if I want. I'm going to protest
for my
rights!"
Yoyo turns Manual's interview over
to Carla, who's good at befriending with small talk.
Yoyo calls it her therapist
"softening-them-up-for-the-spill" mode. "Manuel,
why do you feel so upset when Fifi is on her
own?" Carla's manner is straight out of her
Psych 101 textbook.
"Women don't do that here." Manuel
Gustavo's foot, posed on his knee, shakes up
and down. "Maybe you do things different in your
United States of America." His tone is somewhere
between a tease and a taunt. "But where does it get those
grin-gas? Most of them divorce or stay
jamona,
with nothing better to do than take drugs and sleep
around."
Sandi revs, "Rrrmm, rrrmm."
"Manuel," Carla pleads. "Women do have rights
here too, you know. Even Dominican law grants
that."
"Yes, women have rights," Manuel Gustavo
agrees. A wry smile spreads on his face:
he is about to say something clever. "But men wear the
pants."
The revolution is on. We have one week left
to win the fight for our Fifi's heart and mind.
Nights on the Island we go out, the gang of
cousins, to the Avenida. It's the main drag,
happily crowded with cars and horse-drawn buggies
for tourists who want to ride in moonlight by the
seashore. Hotels and night spots flood the sky
with so much light, you can make out people's faces as you
cruise by. The gossip mill turns.
Marianela was out on Utcho with Claudio.
Margarita looks too pregnant for only two
months since the wedding. Get a load of Pilar's
miniskirt with those huge legs of hers, you'd think
some people would check their mirrors, geez.
We distribute ourselves in several cars, driven
by boy cousins. We don't want stool pigeon
chauffeurs along. We're off to the movies or
to Capri's for an ice cream and just hanging out, the
boys much exhorted to take care of the ladies. As
the oldest, Carla must ride with Fifi in
Manuel's pickup,
la chapezona,
at least until we're off compound grounds. Then she
is dropped off at Capri's to join the rest of us.
Fifi and Manuel steal off for some private time from
the watchful eyes of the extended family. On these
drives, they usually end up parking somewhere, only
to neck and stuff, according to Fifi. She has admitted
that the stuff is getting more and more to the point, and the
problem is that she has no contraception. Anyone
on the Island she might go to for pills or a
diaphragm would know who she is and would surely rat
on her to the family. And Manuel won't wear a
rubber.
"He thinks it might cause impotence," Fifi
says, smiling sweetly, cherishing his cute male
ignorance.
"Jesus, Fifi!" Sandi sighs. "Tell him
that
not
using one most surely can cause pregnancy." A
pregnant Fifi would have to do what is always done in
such cases on the Island-marry immediately and brace
herself for the gossip when her "premature baby" comes
out fat and fully grown.
We keep warning her and worrying over
her until she promises us-on pain of our
betrayal: "We'll tell on you, we will!"- that she
won't have sex with Manuel unless she gets some
contraception first. Which is highly unlikely. Where
can she go for it on this fishbowl island?
But her word doesn't count for much after what
happens one night.
We're sitting around at Capri's that night,
bored. Fifi and Manuel have already taken off, and
we've got a couple of hours to kill before they get
back and we can return to the compound. We start
brainstorming what to do: we can drive to Embassy
Beach and go skinny-dipping. We can try to find pur
cousin of a cousin, Jorge, who often has a couple
of jqints and knows a voodoo priest who will tell us
our futures after performing a scary animal
sacrifice.
Our official escort Mundin vetoes both
ideas. He's got a better one. We pile
into his car, his three American cousins and his sister
Lucinda, nagging him about what he's got in mind.
He grins wickedly and drives us a little ways out
of town to Motel Los Encantos, "motel" being
the Island euphemism for a whore house. He
pulls right in like he knows the place,
honks the horn, asks the gatekeeper for a cabin,
then heads for the one he's assigned. The garage
door is opened by a waiting yard-boy. Once we
are out of the car, the yardboy pulls the garage door
down and hands Mundin the key to the connected cabin.
"That way no one can tell who's here," Mundin
explains in English. "This is the high-class
motel,
la czeme de la atone,
not to get too gross. Everyone would know everyone
else's cars here." Mundin unlocks the door to the
cabin and stands aside to let the ladies in. An
unabashed king-size bed made up with a flowered
bedspread stands in the dead center of the room. There are
a couple of rolled pillows with tassels at the
head of the bed. Covered with the same wishy-washy
flowered material as the spread, the pillows evoke
an Arab engineer more than a lord and master of the harem.
"Is this all?" we say, disappointed.
"What'd ya expect?" Mundin is
nonplussed at our lack of proper titillation.
After all, he has risked getting into a lot of
trouble to show us the naughty face of the Island. Nice
girls at a whore house! His mother would kill him!
Sandi puts her arm around Mundin and
bumps hips. She is doing her Mae West
imitation just as the yardboy comes in with a tray of rum
and Cokes. He keeps his eyes on the tile
floor as he goes from one to the other, proffering
refreshments, as if to reassure us there will be no
witnesses. As soon as he exits, we laugh.
"I wonder what he thinks?" Carla shakes her
head, just imagining it. Mundin wiggles his
eyebrows. "How many taboos can we break here?
Let's see." He enumerates: incest, group
sex, lesbian sex, virgin sex-
"Virgin sex? Who're you talking about?" his
sister Lucinda challenges with a hand on her hip.
"Yeah," we concur, hands on our hips, facing
him, a line-up of feminists.
Mundin's eyes do a double blink. For all his
liberal education in the States, and all his sleeping
around there and here, and all his eager laughter when his
Americanized cousins recount their misadventures,
his own sister has to be pure. "Let's go." He
hurries us after we finish our rum and Cokes. As
we're backing out of our garage, a pickup
passes behind us on the motel drive.
"Hey!" Yoyo cries out. "Is that Fifi and
Manuel?"
Mundin chuckles. "Hey, hey! Way to go."
"Way to go, way to schmo," Sandi snaps.
"That's our baby sister going in there with a guy who
thinks condoms cause impotence."
"Go back in there after them!" Carla orders
Mundin.
"She's got her rights too." Mundin laughs
pointedly as he drives through the gate, which the boy
is already closing on our taillights.
"This isn't funny," Carla warns as we
consult in the bathroom back at Capri's.
"She's not going to come back home on her own,
she's brainwashed."
Sandi concurs. "I mean, they wouldn't need a
motel room if they weren't sleeping together."
"After she promised," Carla says, nodding,
aggrieved.
There, among the pink vanities with baskets of
little towels and talcum powder and brushes, we come
up with our plot. We reach out our hands and seal our
pact. Yoyo rallies us with
"iQue viva la revolucidn!"
On top of our motel rum and Cokes, we've
had a few of Capri's famous frozen
daiquiris. The young maid who has been
listening to our English gibberish offers us a pink
perfumed hand towel, which Sandi accepts and waves like
the flag for our side.
Our last Saturday night on the Island, the
compound folks sit on Tia Carmen's patio,
reminiscing. Periodically, family stops by to say
goodbye to our parents and deliver the packets of letters
and bills they want mailed in the States. Now that
Tio Mundo is in government, there are always other
cabinet members and old friends coming over to shoptalk
politics and ask for favors. The patio is sex
segregated-the men sit to one side, smoking their
cigars and tinkling their rum drinks. The women
lounge on wicker armchairs by the wall lamps,
Yoyo,
Fifi
exclaiming over whatever there is to be exclaimed
about.
The young people take off for the Avenida, promising
to be home early. Tonight, it's the regulars,
Lucinda, Mundin, and Fifi and Manuel, of
course, and the three of us. Carla does the usual
chaperone duty in the pickup and then gets dropped
off at Capri's. "They're having some big
fight," she confesses when she joins us.
"What now?" Sandi asks.
"Same old thing," Carla sighs. "Fifi
spent too much time talking to Jorge and her skirt
is too short and her jersey too tight, blah,
blah, blah."
"Rmm, rmm," Sandi and Yoyo rev.
Mundin laughs. "Serves you girls right."
We narrow our eyes at
him.
When he's in the States, where he went to prep
school and is now in college, he's one of us, our
buddy. But back on the Island, he struts and
turns macho, needling us with the unfair advantage
being male here gives him.
As usual, we're to wait for the lovers at
Capri's. Twenty minutes before our curfew,
they'll pick up Carla, and we'll all head
home again like one big happy group of virgin
cousins. But tonight, as we've agreed, we're staging
a coup on the same Avenida where a decade ago
the dictator was cornered and wounded on his way to a
tryst with his mistress. It was a plot our father
helped devise but did not carry through, since by then
we had fled to the States. Tonight, we are blowing the
lovers" cover. First step is to get
Mundin to drive us home. Male loyalty is
what keeps the macho system going, so Mundin will
want to protect Manuel.
Lucinda works a version of her Kotex custom
officer trick.
She complains to her brother that she's just gotten her
period and needs to go home. "I've got terrible
cramps," Lucinda moans.
"Can't you take something for it?" Mundin asks,
inconvenienced and awed by the mysteries of the female
body.
Lucinda nods. "It's at home, though."
Mundin shakes his head at his sister. Nevertheless,
he is her protector. Ever since her quip at
the motel, he's been watching her closely.
"Okay, okay, I'll take you." He turns
to us, his cousins. "You guys have to stay here and cover for
Manuel."
"We can't stay here without you," we remind him.
Rule
nu-meio uno:
Girls are not left unescorted in public.
"We'll get in trouble, Mundin."
Mundin scowls. This is unexpected prissiness
from us. "Well, I'll tell them I
left you here with some cousins who showed. Then, I'll
come back for you. By then Fifi and Manuel should be
done."
Should be done.
A cannon shot across the bow. No time for further
delay. We smile three churlish Che Guevara
smiles. "We're going with you."
"But what about Fifi and Manuel?" Mundin is
flabbergasted. If everyone except Fifi and
Manuel shows up at the compound, the lovers will be in
deep trouble. Rule
numeio dos:
Girls are not to be left unchaperoned with their
novios.
"We came with you, we stay with you.
We
don't want to get into trouble." Our good-girl
voices don't quite convince, our cousin.
"I won't do it!" Mundin folds his hands on
the table.
We remind him of last night's outing to the
motel. Should we
mention that to his father? We know what sword of
Damocles hangs over his head-an electric
razor for the military school crewcut
Mundin would have to get. For just as we, his American
cousins, are threatened with Island confinement, military
school is what's in store for Mundin should he step
out of line. He looks us straight in the eyes.
"What are you girls up to?" he fires at us.
We meet his look with bulletproof smiles, stone
faces on which, with his myopic macho vision, he can't
make out the writing on the walls.
The compound driveway looks like a Mercedes Benz
car lot. A Jeep and two Japanese cars say
some of the younger generation are also here. Lucinda spots
Tia Fidelina and Tio Orlando's pale
salmon Mercedes. "This is going to be
muy
interesting," she whispers.
The patio is packed with relatives. Mundin
hurries over to the men's side, knowing the first bomb
will explode among the women. We sisters go on our
rounds, kissing all the aunts. Tia Fidelina's
milky dark eyes are almost totally sightless. "And
which one is the no via?" she asks, squinting at her
nieces.
"Yes," Mami agrees. "Where is Fifi?"
"With Manuel," Sandi offers smoothly. Her tone
implies we have no problem with that.
"Where
are they?" Mami asks more emphatically.
Carla shrugs. "How should we know?"
There is an embarrassed silence in which the words
her reputation
are as palpable as if someone had hung a wedding
dress in the air. Tia Carmen sighs. Tia
Fidelina unfolds her fan of overly-gorgeous
roses. Tia Flor smiles wildly at the rest
of us
and asks us if we had a nice time. Mami looks
past the crowd at Papi, over there happily
exchanging dictatorship stories with the other men.
Steely-faced, she stands up and nods for us
to follow her. The three of us single-file behind
Mami into Tfa Carmen's bedroom again, the scene of
Mami's courtroom. Tia comes along, counseling
patience.
Once the door is closed, Mami loses her
temper. First, she berates Carla, who as the
oldest was in charge and had orders to stick with
Manuel and Fifi as their in-car chaperone. Then,
we get chapter and verse on being bad daughters.
Finally, she swears, in front of our aunt, that
Fifi is going back with us. "If your father
should find out!" Our mother shakes her head, reviewing
the consequences. Rather anticlimactically, she adds,
"A disgrace to the family."
"Ya, ya."
Tia Carmen lifts her hand for her sister-in-law
to stop. "These girls have lived so long away, they have
gotten American ways."
"American ways!" Mami cries. "Fifi's
been living here for six months. That's no
excuse."
"There must be an explanation." Tia Carmen
changes course. "Let's not anticipate where the
coconut will fall when the hurricane hasn't hit
yet," she advises.
Mami shakes her head conclusively. "If she
can't behave herself here, she goes back with us,
period! I'm not going to send them anymore to cause
trouble!"
Tia Carmen puts her arms around us. "Don't
forget, these are my girls, too. And they're good
girls, no trouble at all. What
Yoyo,
Fift
would I do"-she looks up at us-"if I
didn't get to have them with me every year?"
"We look at each other, and then, drop our
gaze to hide our confusion. We are free at last,
but here, just at the moment the gate swings open, and we
can fly the coop, Tfa Carmen's love revives
our old homesickness. It's like this monkey
experiment Carla read about in her clinical psych
class. These baby monkeys were kept in a cage
so long, they wouldn't come out when the doors were finally
left open. Instead, they stayed inside and poked their
arms through the bars for their food, just out of reach.
It is close to midnight when we hear the
pickup laboring up the driveway. Out on the
patio, the visiting relatives have left, and only
the compound folks remain, talking in low,
preoccupied voices. In our bedroom, we have been
defending ourselves to each other. We all know Fifi was
headed for trouble with M.g. "She's only
sixteen," we keep exclaiming. She thought she could
be all Island. We know better.
But still, we feel rotten when a pale Fifi
marches into our bedroom awhile later after a grueling
interrogation in Tia Carmen's bedroom.
She says nothing to us but opens the closet and
begins packing all her clothes. For a moment we
panic. Is she going to elope with
Manuel?
"What are you doing, Fifi?" Yoyo asks.
Fifi continues to pack from a pile of clothes she
has emptied out of her drawers onto the floor.
Silence.
"FiHave?" Carla touches her shoulder. "What
happened?" She means, of course, out in the patio
or even-since the dull, absent look on
Fifi's face implies more-before.
Fifl turns to us, her eyes are red and weepy.
"Traitors," she says. The sound of her
suitcase latching closed gives the accusation an
eerie finality. At the door, she raises her chin
proudly, and then we hear her steps echoing down the
hall to our cousin Carmencita's room.
We look at each other as if to say, "She'll
get over it." Meaning Manuel, meaning her fury
at us, meaning her fear of her own life. Like ours,
it lies ahead of her like a wilderness just before the fust
explorer sets foot on the virgin sand.
Daughter of Invention
YAYAYATATAYATAVATAYATAYATAYATATATIIITA
yat
Mcani, Papi,
Yoyo
F
or a period after they arrived in this country, Laura
Garcia tried to invent something. Her ideas always
came after the sightseeing visits she took with her
daughters to department stores to see the wonders of this
new country. On his free Sundays, Carlos
carted the girls off to the Statue of Liberty or the
Brooklyn Bridge or Rockefeller Center,
but as far as Laura was concerned, these were men's
wonders. Down in housewares were the true
treasures women were after.
Laura and her daughters would take the
escalator, marveling at the moving staircase, she
teasing them that this might be the ladder Jacob saw with
angels moving up and down to heaven. The moment they
lingered by a display, a perky saleslady
approached, no doubt thinking a young mother with four
girls in tow fit the perfect profile for the new
refrigerator with automatic defrost or the heavy
duty washing machine with the prewash soak cycle.
Laura paid close attention during the
demonstrations, asking intelligent questions, but at the
last minute
saying she would talk it over with her husband. On the
drive home, try as they might, her
daughters could not engage their mother in conversation, for
inspired by what she had just seen, Laura had begun
inventing.
She never put anything actual on paper until
she had settled her house down at night. On his
side of the bed her husband would be conked out for an
hour already, his Spanish newspapers draped over his
chest, his glasses propped up on his bedside
table, looking out eerily at the darkened room like a
disembodied bodyguard. In her lighted corner,
pillows propped behind her, Laura sat up
inventing. On her lap lay one of those innumerable
pads of paper her husband brought home from his
office, compliments of some pharmaceutical company,
advertising tranquilizers or antibiotics or
skin cream. She would be working on a sketch of something
familiar but drawn at such close range so she
could attach a special nozzle or handier handle,
the thing looked peculiar. Her daughters would giggle
over the odd doodles they found in kitchen drawers
or on the back shelf of the downstairs toilet.
Once Yoyo was sure her mother had drawn a
picture of a man's you-know-what; she showed her
sisters her find, and with coy, posed faces they
inquired of their mother what she was up to.
Ay,
that was one of her failures, she explained to them, a
child's double-. compartment drinking glass with an outsized,
built-in straw.
Her daughters would seek her out at night when she
seemed to have a moment to talk to them: they were having
trouble at school or they wanted her to persuade their
father to give them permission to go into the city or to a
shopping mall or a movie-in broad daylight,
Mami! Laura would wave them out
of her room. "The problem with you girls .. ." The
problem boiled down to the fact that they wanted
to become Americans and their father-and their mother, too,
at first-would have none of it.
"You girls are going to drive me crazy!" she
threatened, if they kept nagging. "When I end up in
Bellevue, you'll be safely sorry!"
She spoke in English when she argued with them. And
her English was a mishmash of mixed-up idioms and
sayings that showed she was "green behind the ears," as she
called it.
If her husband insisted she speak in Spanish
to the girls so they wouldn't forget their native
tonguest she'd snap, "When in Rome, do unto the
Romans."
Yoyo, the Big Mouth, had become the
spokesman for her sisters, and she stood her ground
in that bedroom. "We're not going to that school
anymore, Mami!"
"You have to." Her eyes would widen with worry.
"In this country, it is against the law not to go
to school. You want us to get thrown out?"
"You want us to get killed? Those kids were throwing
stones today!"
"Sticks and stones don't break bones," she
chanted. Yoyo could tell, though, by the look on her
face, it was as if one of those stones the kids had
aimed at her daughters had hit her. But she always
pretended they were at fault. "What did you do
to provoke them? It takes two to tangle, you
know."
"Thanks, thanks a lot, Mom!" Yoyo
stormed out of that room and into her own. Her daughters
never called her
Mom
except when they wanted her to feel how much she had
failed
I
6
them in this country. She was a good enough Mami, fussing
and scolding and giving advice, hut a terrible
girlfriend parent, a real failure of a Mom.
Back she went to her pencil and pad, scribbling
and taking and tearing off sheets, finally giving up, and
taking up her
New York Times.
Some nights, though, if she got a good idea, she
rushed into Yoyo's room, a flushed look on her
face, her tablet of paper in her hand, a cursory
knock on the door she'd just thrown open. "Do I
have something to show you, Cuquita!"
This was Yoyo's time to herself, after she finished her
homework, while her sisters were still downstairs watching
TV in the basement. Hunched over her small
desk, the overhead light turned off, her desk
lamp poignantly lighting only her paper, the
rest of the room in warm, soft, uncreated darkness,
she wrote her secret poems in her new
language.
"You're going to ruin your eyes!" Laura began,
snapping on the overly bright overhead light, scaring
off whatever shy passion Yoyo, with the blue thread of
her writing, had just begun coaxing out of a labyrinth of
feelings.
"Oh, Mami!" Yoyo cried out, her eyes
blinking up at her mother. "I'm writing."
"Ay,
Cuquita." That was her communal pet name for whoever
was in her favor. "Cuquita, when I make a
million, I'll buy you your very own typewriter."
(yoyo had been nagging her mother for one just like the one
her father had bought to do his order forms at home.)
"Gravy on the turkey" was what she called it when
someone was buttering her up. She buttered and poured.
"I'll hire you your very own typist."
Down she plopped on the bed and held out her
pad. "Take
a guess, Cuquita?" Yoyo studied the rough
sketch a moment. Soap sprayed from the nozzle
head of a shower when you turned the knob a certain
way? Instant coffee with creamer already mixed in?
Time-released water capsules for your potted
plants when you were away? A keychain with a timer that
would go off when your parking meter was about to expire?
(the ticking would help you find your keys easily
if you mislaid them.) The famous one, famous
only in hindsight, was the stick person dragging a
square by a rope-a suitcase with wheels? "Oh,
of course," Yoyo said, humoring her.
"What every household needs: a shower like a car wash,
keys ticking like a bomb, luggage on a leash!"
By now, it had become something of a family joke, their
Thomas Edison Mami, their Benjamin Franklin
Mom.
Her face fell. "Come on now! Use your
head." One more wrong guess, and she'd show Yoyo,
pointing with her pencil to the different highlights of this
incredible new wonder. "Remember that time we took
the car to Bear Mountain, and we re-ah-lized that we
had forgotten to pack an opener with our
pick-a-nick?" (her daughters kept correcting
her, but she insisted this was how it should be said.) "When
we were ready to eat we didn't have any way to open
the refreshments cans?" (this before fliptop lids,
which she claimed had crossed her mind.) "You know
what this is now?" Yoyo shook her head. "Is a
car bumper, but see this part is a removable can
opener. So simple and yet so necessary, eh?"
"Yeah, Mami. You should patent it." Yoyo
shrugged as her mother tore off the scratch paper and
folded it, carefully, corner to comer, as if she were
going to save it. But then, she tossed
it in the wastebasket on her way out of the room and
gave a little laugh like a disclaimer. "It's
half of one or two dozen of another."
None of her daughters was very encouraging. They
resented her spending time on those dumb inventions.
Here they were trying to fit in America among
Americans; they needed help figuring out who they
were, why the Irish kids whose grandparents had been
micks were calling them spies. Why had they come to this
country in the first place? Important, crucial,
final things, and here was their own mother, who didn't have a
second to help them puzzle any of this out, inventing
gadgets to make life easier for the American
Moms.
Sometimes Yoyo challenged her. "Why, Mami?
Why do it? You're never going to make money. The
Americans have already thought of everything, you know that."
"Maybe not. Maybe, just maybe, there's something
they've missed that's important. With patience and
calm, even a burro can climb a palm." This
last was one of her many Dominican sayings she had
imported into her scrambled English.
"But what's the point?" Yoyo persisted.
"Point, point, does everything need a point?
Why do you write poems?"
Yoyo had to admit it was her mother who had the point
there. Still, in the hierarchy of things, a poem
seemed much more important than a potty that played
music when a toilet-training toddler went in its
bowl.
They talked about it among themselves, the four girls,
as they often did now about the many puzzling things in this
new country.
"Better she reinvents the wheel than be on our
cases all the time," the oldest, Carla, observed.
In the close quarters of an American nuclear
family, their mother's prodigious energy was becoming a
real drain on their self-determination. Let her have
a project. What harm could she do, and besides, she
needed that acknowledgement. It had come to her
automatically in the old country from being a de la
Torre. "Garcia de la Torre," Laura would
enunciate carefully, giving her maiden as well
as married name when they first arrived. But the blank
smiles had never heard of her name. She would show
them. She would prove to these Americans what a
smart woman could do with a pencil and pad.
She had a near miss once. Every night, she
liked to read
The New York Times
in bed before turning off her light, to see what the
Americans were up to. One night, she
let out a yelp to wake up her husband beside her.
He sat bolt upright, reaching for his glasses which in
his haste, he knocked across the room.
"iQue pasa! jQue pasal"
What is wrong? There was terror in his voice, the
same fear she'd heard in the Dominican
Republic before they left. They had been watched
there,- he was followed. They could not talk, of
course, though they had whispered to each other in fear
at night in the dark bed. Now in America, he was
safe, a success even; his Centre de Medicina
in the Bronx was thronged with the sick and the homesick
yearning to go home again. But in dreams, he went
back to those awful days and long nights, and his
wife's screams confirmed his secret fear: they had
not gotten away after all; the SIM had come for them
at last.
"Ay,
Cuco! Remember how I showed you that suitcase with
little wheels so we should not have to carry those heavy hags
when we traveled? Someone stole my idea and made
a million!" She shook the paper in his face.
"See, see! This man was no
bobo!
He didn't put all his pokers on a
back burner. I kept telling you, one of these days
my ship would pass me by in the night!" She wagged
her finger at her husband and daughters, laughing all
the while, one of those eerie laughs crazy people in
movies laugh. The four girls had congregated in
her room. They eyed their mother and each other. Perhaps
they were all thinking the same thing, wouldn't it be weird
and sad if Mami did end up in Bellevue?
"jallya, ya!"
She waved them out of her room at last. "There is
no use trying to drink spilt milk, that's for
sure."
It was the suitcase rollers that stopped
Laura's hand; she had weathervaned a minor
brainstorm. And yet, this plagiarist had gotten
all the credit, and the money. What use was it trying
to compete with the Americans: they would always have the head
start. It was their country, after all. Best stick
close to home. She cast her sights about-her
daughters ducked-and found her husband's office in
need. Several days a week, dressed
professionally in a white smock with a little name tag
pinned on the lapel, a shopping bag full of
cleaning materials and rags, she rode with her
husband in his car to the Bronx. On the
way, she organized the glove compartment or took
off the address stickers from the magazines for the waiting
room because she had read somewhere how by means of these
stickers drug addict patients found out where
doctors lived and burglarized their homes looking
for syringes. At night, she did the books,
filling in columns with how much money they had made
that day. Who had time to be inventing silly things!
She did take up her pencil and pad one last
time. But it was to help one of her daughters out. In
ninth grade, Yoyo was chosen by her English teacher,
Sister Mary Joseph, to deliver the Teacher's
Day address at the school assembly. Back in
the Dominican Republic growing up, Yoyo had
been a terrible student. No one could ever get her
to sit down to a book. But in New York, she
needed to settle somewhere, and since the natives were
unfriendly, and the country inhospitable, she took root
in the language. By high school, the nuns were reading
her stories and compositions out loud in English
class.
But the spectre of delivering a speech brown-nosing
the teachers jammed her imagination. At first she
didn't want to and then she couldn't seem to write that
speech. She should have thought of it as "a great
honor," as her father called it. But she was
mortified. She still had a slight accent, and she
did not like to speak in public, subjecting herself to her
classmates" ridicule. It also took no great
figuring to see that to deliver a eulogy for a convent
full of crazy, old, overweight nuns was no
way to endear herself to her peers.
But she didn't know how to get out of it. Night after
night, she sat at her desk, hoping to polish off
some quick, noncommittal little speech. But she
couldn't get anything down.
The weekend before the assembly Monday morning
Yoyo went into a panic. Her mother would just have to call
in tomorrow and say Yoyo was in the hospital, in a coma.
Laura tried to calm her down. "Just remember how
Mister Lincoln couldn't think of anything to say at
the Gettysburg, but then, bang!
Four score and once upon a time ago,"
she began reciting. "Something is going to come if you just
relax. You'll see, like the Americans say,
Necessity is the daughter of invention.
I'll help you."
That weekend, her mother turned all her energy
towards helping Yoyo write her speech.
"Please, Mami, just leave me alone,
please," Yoyo pleaded with her. But Yoyo would
get rid of the goose only to have to contend with the gander.
Her father kept poking his head in the door just to see
if Yoyo had "fulfilled your obligations," a
phrase he had used when the girls were younger and he'd
check to see whether they had gone to the bathroom before a
car trip. Several times that weekend around the supper
table, he recited his own high school
valedictorian speech. He gave Yoyo
pointers on delivery, notes on the great
orators and their tricks. (humbleness and praise and
falling silent with great emotion were his favorites.)
Laura sat across the table, the only one who
seemed to be listening to him. Yoyo and her sisters were
forgetting a lot of their Spanish, and their father's
formal, florid diction was hard to understand. But
Laura smiled softly to herself, and turned the lazy
Susan at the center of the table around and around as if it
were the prime mover, the first gear of her attention.
That Sunday evening, Yoyo was reading some poetry
to get herself inspired: Whitman's poems in an
old book with an engraved cover her father had picked
up in a thrift shop next to his office. still
celebrate myself and sing myself. ...He most
honors my style who learns under it
to destroy the teacher.
The
poet's words shocked and thrilled her. She had
gotten used to the nuns, a literature of
appropriate sentiments, poems with a message,
expurgated texts. But here was a flesh and blood
man, belching and laughing and sweating in poems.
Who touches this book touches a man.
That night, at last, she started to write,
recklessly, three, five pages, looking up
once only to see her father passing by the hall on
tiptoe. When Yoyo was done, she read over her
words, and her eyes filled. She finally sounded like
herself in English!
As soon as she had finished that first draft, she
called her mother to her room. Laura listened
attentively while Yoyo read the speech out loud,
and in the end, her eyes were glistening too. Her face
was soft and warm and proud.
"Ay,
Yoyo, you are going to be the one to bring our name to the
headlights in this country! That is a beautiful,
beautiful speech I want for your father to hear it before
he goes to sleep. Then I will type it for you, all
right?"
Down the hall they went, mother and daughter, faces
flushed with accomplishment. Into the master bedroom where
Carlos was propped up on his pillows, still awake,
reading the Dominican papers, already days old. Now
that the dictatorship had been toppled, he had
become interested in his country's fate again. The
interim government was going to hold the first free
elections in thirty years. History was in the
making, freedom and hope were in the air again! There was
still some question in his mind whether or not he might move his
family back. But Laura had gotten used to the
life here. She did not want to go back to the old
country where, de la Torre or not, she was only a
wife and a mother (and a failed one at that, since she
had never provided the required son). Better an
independent nobody than a high-class
houseslave. She did not come straight out and
disagree with her husband's plans. Instead, she
fussed with him about reading the papers in bed, soiling
their sheets with those poorly printed, foreign
tabloids.
"The Times
is not that bad!" she'd claim if her husband tried
to humor her by saying they shared the same dirty
habit.
The minute Carlos saw bis wife and daughter
filing in, he put his paper down, and his face
brightened as if at long last his wife had delivered
the son, and that was the news she was bringing him. His
teeth were already grinning from the glass of water next
to his bedside lamp, so he lisped when he said,
"Eh-speech, eh-speech!"
"It is so beautiful, Cuco," Laura coached
him, turning the sound on his TV off. She sat
down at the foot of the bed. Yoyo stood before both of
them, blocking their view of the soldiers in
helicopters landing amid silenced gun reports and
explosions. A few weeks ago it had been the
shores of the Dominican Republic. Now it was the
jungles of Southeast Asia they were saving. Her
mother gave her the nod to begin reading.
Yoyo didn't need much encouragement. She put
her nose to the fire, as her mother would have said, and read
from start to finish without looking up. When she concluded,
she was a little embarrassed at the pride she took in
her own words. She pretended to quibble with a phrase
or two, then looked ques-tioningly to her mother.
Laura's face was radiant. Yoyo turned
to share her pride with her father.
The expression on his face shocked both
mother and daughter. Carlos's toothless mouth had
collapsed into a dark zero.
His eyes bored into Yoyo, then shifted
to Laura. In barely audible Spanish, as if
secret microphones or informers were all about, he
whispered to his wife, "You will permit her to read
that!"
Laura's eyebrows shot up, her mouth fell
open. In the old country, any whisper of a
challenge to authority could bring the secret police
in their black V.w.8s. But this was America. People
could say what they thought. "What is wrong with her
speech?" Laura questioned him.
"What ees wrrrong with her en-speech?"
Carlos wagged his head at her. His anger was always more
frightening in his broken English. As if he had
mutilated the language in his fury- and now there was
nothing to stand between them and his raw, dumb anger. "What
is wrong? I will tell you what is wrong. It show
no gratitude. It is boastful. still
celebrate myself
:
his
The best student learns to destroy the teacher!"
He mocked Yoyo's plagiarized words.
"That is insubordinate. It is improper. It is
disrespecting of her teachers-was In his anger he had
forgotten his fear of lurking spies: each wrong he
voiced was a decibel higher than the last outrage.
Finally, he shouted at Yoyo, "As your father, I
forbid you to make that eh-speech!"
Laura leapt to her feet, a sign that
she
was. about to deliver her own speech. She was a
small woman, and she spoke all her
pronouncements standing up, either for more projection or as
a carry-over from her girlhood in convent schools
where one asked for, and literally, took the floor in
order to speak. She stood by Yoyo's side,
shoulder to shoulder. They looked down at Carlos.
"That is no tone of voice-was she began.
But now, Carlos was truly furious. It was bad
enough that
his daughter was rebelling, but here was his own wife
joining forces with her. Soon he would be surrounded by a
houseful of independent American women. He too
leapt from the bed, throwing off his covers. The Spanish
newspapers flew across the room. He snatched the
speech out of Yoyo's hands, held it before the
girl's wide eyes, a vengeful, mad
look in his own, and then once, twice, three,
four, countless times, he tore the speech into shreds.
"Are you crazy?" Laura lunged at him. "Have
you gone mad? That is her speech for tomorrow you have torn
up!"
"Have
you
gone mad?" He shook her away. "You were going
to let her read that... that insult to her teachers?"
"Insult to her teachers!" Laura's face had
crumpled up like a piece of paper. On it was
written a love note to her husband, an
unhappy, haunted man. "This is America,
Papi, America! You are not in a savage country
anymore!"
Meanwhile, Yoyo was on her knees, weeping
wildly, collecting all the little pieces of her
speech, hoping that she could put it back together before the
assembly tomorrow morning. Butt not even a sibyl
could have made sense of those tiny scraps of paper.
All hope was lost. "He broke it, he broke
it," Yoyo moaned as she picked up a handful of
pieces.
Probably, if she had thought a moment about it,
she would not have done what she did next.
She would have realized her father had lost brothers and
friends to the dictator Trujillo. For the rest of his
life, he would be haunted by blood in the streets and
late night disappearances. Even after all these
years, he cringed if a black Volkswagen
passed him on the street. He feared anyone in
uniform: the meter maid giving out parking
tickets, a museum guard approaching to tell him
not to get too close to his favorite Goya.
On her knees, Yoyo thought of the worst thing she
could say to her father. She gathered a handful of
scraps, stood up, and hurled them in his face. In
a low, ugly whisper, she pronounced
Trujillo's hated nickname: "Chapita! You're
just another Cha-pita!"
It took Yoyo's father only a moment to register
the loathsome nickname before he came after her. Down the
halls they raced, but Yoyo was quicker than he and
made it into her room just in time to lock the door as
her father threw his weight against it. He called down
curses on her head, ordered her on his authority
as her father to open that door! He throttled that
doorknob, but all to no avail. Her mother's love
of gadgets saved Yoyo's hide that night.
Laura had hired a locksmith to install
good locks on all the bedroom doors after the house
had been broken into once while they were away. Now
if burglars broke in again, and the family were at
home, there would be a second round of locks for the
thieves to contend with.
"Lolo," she said, trying to calm him down.
"Don't you ruin my new locks."
Finally he did calm down, his anger spent.
Yoyo heard their footsteps retreating down the
hall. Their door clicked shut. Then, muffled
voices, her mother's rising in anger, in persuasion,
her father's deeper murmurs of explanation and
self-defense. The house fell silent a moment,
before Yoyo heard, far off, the gun blasts and
explosions, the serious, self-important voices
of newscasters reporting their TV war.
A little while later, there was a quiet knock at
Yoyo's door,
followed by a tentative attempt at the door
knob. "Cuquita?" her mother whispered. "Open
up, Cuquita."
"Go away," Yoyo wailed, but they both knew
she was glad her mother was there, and needed only a
moment's protest to save face.
Together they concocted a speech: two
brief pages of stale compliments and the polite
commonplaces on teachers, a speech wrought
by necessity and without much invention by mother and daughter
late into the night on one of the pads of paper
Laura had once used for her own inventions. After it
was drafted, Laura typed it up while Yoyo
stood by, correcting her mother's misnomers and
mis-sayings.
Yoyo came home the next day with the success
story of the assembly. The nuns had been
flattered, the audience had stood up and given "our
devoted teachers a standing ovation," what Laura had
suggested they do at the end of the speech.
She clapped her hands together as Yoyo recreated
the moment. "I stole that from your father's speech,
remember? Remember how he put that in at the
end?" She quoted him in Spanish, then
translated for Yoyo into English.
That night, Yoyo watched him from the upstairs
hall window, where she'd retreated the minute she
heard his car pull up in front of the house.
Slowly, her father came up the driveway, a grim
expression on his face as he grappled with a large,
heavy cardboard box. At the front door, he
set the package down carefully and patted
all his pockets for his house keys. (if only
he'd had Laura's ticking key chain!) Yoyo
heard the snapping open of locks downstairs. She
listened as he struggled to maneu-
ver the box through the narrow doorway. He called
her name several times, but she did not answer him.
"My daughter, your father, he love you very much,"
he explained from the bottom of the stairs. "He just
want to protect you." Finally, her mother came up and
pleaded with Yoyo to go down and reconcile with him.
"Your father did not mean to harm. You must pardon him.
Always it is better to let bygones be forgotten,
no?"
Downstairs, Yoyo found her father setting up a
brand new electric typewriter on the kitchen
table. It was even better than her mother's. He had
outdone himself with all the extra features: a
plastic carrying case with Yoyo's initials
decaled below the handle, a brace to lift the paper
upright while she typed, an erase cartridge, an
automatic margin tab, a plastic hood like a
toaster cover to keep the dust away. Not even her
mother could have invented such a machine!
But Laura's inventing days were over just as
Yoyo's were starting up with her school-wide
success. Rather than the rolling suitcase everyone
else in the family remembers, Yoyo thinks of the
speech her mother wrote as her last invention. It was as
if, after that, her mother had passed on to Yoyo her
pencil and pad and said, "Okay, Cuquita, here's
the buck. You give it a shot."
Trespass
YATATATATATAYAYATATATATAYATATAYATIIITA
vat
Carlo
T
he day the Garcias were one American year old,
they had a celebration at dinner. Mami had baked
a nice flan and stuck a candle in the center.
"Guess what day it is today?" She looked around the
table at her daughters" baffled faces. "One
year ago today," Papi began orating, "we came
to the shores of this great country." When he was done
misquoting the poem on the Statue of Liberty, the
youngest, Fifi, asked if she could blow out the candle,
and Mami said only after everyone had made a wish.
What do you wish for on the first celebration of the day
you lost everything? Carla wondered. Everyone else
around the table had their eyes closed as if they had no
trouble deciding. Carla closed her eyes
too. She should make an effort and not wish for what
she always wished for in her homesickness. But just this
last time, she would let herself. "Dear God," she
began. She could not get used to this American
wish-making without bringing God into it. "Let us
please go back home, please," she half prayed
and half wished. It seemed a less and
less likely prospect. In fact, her
parents were sinking roots here. Only a month ago,
they had moved out of the city to a neighborhood oh
Long Island so that the girls could have a yard to play
in, so Mami said. The little green squares around
each look-alike house seemed more like carpeting that
had to be kept clean than yards to play in. The
trees were no taller than little Fifi. Carla thought
yearningly of the lush grasses and thick-limbed,
vine-ladened trees around the compound back home.
Under the
amapola
tree her best-friend cousin, Lucinda, and she had
told each other what each knew about how babies were
made. What is Lucinda doing right this moment?
Carla wondered.
Down the block the neighborhood dead-ended in
abandoned farmland that Mami read in the
local paper the developers were negotiating to buy.
Grasses and real trees and real bushes still grew
beyond the barbed-wire fence posted with a big sign:
private, no trespassing. The sign had
surprised Carla since "forgive us our
trespasses" was the only other context in which she had
heard the word. She pointed the sign out to Mami on
one of their first walks to the bus stop. "Isn't that
funny, Mami? A sign that you have to be good." Her
mother did not understand at first until Carla explained
about the Lord's Prayer. Mami laughed. Words
sometimes meant two things in English too. This
trespass meant that no one must go inside the
property because it was not public like a park, but
private. Carla nodded, disappointed. She would
never get the hang of this new country.
Mami walked her to the bus stop for her first month
at her new school over in the next parish. The first
week, Mami even
rode the buses with her, transferring, going and coming,
twice a day, until Carla learned the way. Her
sisters had all been enrolled at the neighborhood
Catholic school only one block away from the
house the Garcias had rented at the end of the summer.
But by then, Carla's seventh grade was
full. The nun who was the principal had suggested that
Carla stay back a year in sixth grade, where they
still had two spaces left. At twelve, though,
Carla was at least a year older than most sixth
graders, and she felt mortified at the thought of
having to repeat yet another year. All four
girls had been put back a year when they arrived
in the country. Sure, Carla could use the
practice with her English, but that also meant she would
be in the same grade as her younger sister, Sandi. That
she could not bear. "Please," she pleaded with her mother,
"let me go to the other school!" The public school
was a mere two blocks beyond the Catholic school,
but Laura Garcia would not hear of it. Public
schools, she had learned from other Catholic
parents, were where juvenile delinquents went and where
teachers taught those new crazy ideas about how we
all came from monkeys. No child of hers was going
to forget her family name and think she was nothing but a
kissing cousin to an orangutan.
Carla soon knew her school route
by heart,
an expression she used for weeks after she learned
it. First, she walked down the block by heart, noting
the infinitesimal differences between the
look-alike houses: different color drapes,
an azalea bush on the left side of the door
instead of on the right, a mailbox or door with a
doodad of some kind. Then by heart, she walked the
long mile by the deserted farmland lot with the funny
sign. Finally, a sharp right down the service road
into the main
thoroughfare, where by heart she boarded the bus. "A
young lady senorita," her mother pronounced the first
morning Carla set out by herself, her heart drumming in
her chest. It was a long and scary trek, but she was
too grateful to have escaped the embarrassment of being
put back a year to complain.
And as the months went by, she neglected
to complain about an even scarier development. Every day
on the playground and in the halls of her new
school, a gang of boys chased after her, calling
her names, some of which she had heard before from the old
lady neighbor in the apartment they had rented in the
city. Out of sight of the nuns, the boys pelted
Carla with stones, aiming them at her feet so there would
be no bruises. "Go back to where you came from, you
dirty spic!" One of them, standing behind her in line,
pulled her blouse out of her skirt where it was tucked
in and lifted it high. "No titties,"
he snickered. Another yanked down her socks,
displaying her legs, which had begun growing soft, dark
hairs. "Monkey legs!" he yelled to his
pals.
"Stop!" Carla cried. "Please stop."
"Eh-stop!" they mimicked her. "Flees
eh-stop." They were disclosing her secret shame: her
body was changing. The girl she had been back
home in Spanish was being shed. In her place-almost
as if the boys' ugly words and taunts had the power
of spells-was a hairy, breast-budding grownup
no one would ever love.
Every day, Carla set out on her long journey
to school with a host of confused feelings. First of all,
there was this body whose daily changes she noted behind the
closed bathroom door until one of her sisters
knocked that Carla's turn was over. How she
I
wished she could wrap her body up the way she'd
heard Chinese girls had their feet bound so they
wouldn't grow big. She would stay herself, a quick,
skinny girl with brown eyes and a braid down her
back, a girl she had just begun to feel could get
things in this world.
But then, too, Carla felt relieved
to be setting out towards her very own school in her
proper grade away from the crowding that was her family
of four girls too close in age. She could come
home with stories of what had happened that day and not have
a chorus of three naysayers to correct her. But
she also felt dread. There, in the playground, they
would be waiting for her-the gang of four or five
boys, blond, snotty-nosed, freckled-faced.
They looked bland and unknowable, the way all
Americans did. Their faces betrayed no sign
of human warmth. Their eyes were too clear for
cleaving, intimate looks. Their pale bodies
did not seem real but were like costumes they were wearing as
they played the part of her persecutors.
She watched them. In the classroom, they bent
over workbooks or wore scared faces when Sister
Beatrice, their beefy, no-nonsense teacher,
scolded them for missing their homework. Sometimes
Carla spied them in the playground, looking through the
chain link fence and talking about the cars parked on the
sidewalk. To Carla's bafflement, those cars had
names beyond the names of their color or size. All she
knew of their family car, for instance, was that it was a
big black car where all four sisters could ride in
the back, though Fifi always made a fuss
and was allowed up front. Carla could also identify
Volks-wagens because that had been the car (in black)
of the secret police back home; every time Mami
saw one she made the sign
of the cross and said a prayer for Tio Mundo, who
had not been allowed to leave the Island. Beyond
Volkswagens and medium blue cars or big
black cars, Carla could not tell one car from the
other.
But the boys at the fence talked excitedly about
Fords and Falcons and Corvairs and Plymouth
Valiants. They argued over how fast each car could
go and what models were better than others. Carla
sometimes imagined herself being driven to school in a
flashy red car the boys would admire. Except there
was no one to drive her. Her immigrant father with his
thick mustache and accent and three-piece suit would
only bring her more ridicule. Her mother did not yet
know how to drive. Even though Carla could imagine
owning a very expensive car, she could not imagine her
parents as different from what they were. They were, like
this new body she was growing into, givens.
One day when she had been attending Sacred
Heart about a month, she was followed by a car on her
mile walk home from the bus stop. It was
a lime green car, sort of medium sized, andwitha
kind of long snout, so had it been a person,
Carla would have described it as having a long nose.
A long-nosed, lime-green car. It drove
slowly, trailing her. Carla figured the driver was
looking for an address, just as Papi drove slowly
and got honked at when he was reading the signs of
shops before stopping at a particular one.
A blat from the horn made Carla jump and
turn to the car, now fully stopped just a little ahead of
her. She could see the driver clearly, from the
shoulders up, a man in a red shirt about the age of
her parents-though it was hard for Carla to tell
with Americans how old they were. They were like cars
to her, identifiable by the color of their clothes and a
general age group-a little kid younger than herself, a
kid her same age, a teenager in high school, and
then the vast indistinguishable group of American
grownups.
This grownup American man about her parents'
age beckoned for her to come up to the window. Carla
dreaded being asked directions since she had just moved
into this area right before school started, and all she knew
for sure was the route home from the bus stop. Besides,
her English was still just classroom English,
a foreign language. She knew the neutral bland
things: how to ask for a glass of water, how to say good
morning and good afternoon and good night. How to thank someone
and say they were welcomed. But if a grownup
American of indeterminable age asked her for
directions, invariably speaking too quickly, she
merely shrugged and smiled an inane smile. "I
don't speak very much English," she would say in a
small voice by way of apology. She hated
having to admit this since such an admission proved,
no doubt, the boy gang's point that she didn't
belong here.
As Carla drew closer, the driver leaned over
and rolled down the passenger door window. Carla
bent down as if she were about to speak to a little kid and
peeked in. The man smiled a friendly smile, but
there was something wrong with it that Carla couldn't put her
finger on: this smile had a bruised, sorry
quality as if the man were someone who'd been picked
on all his life, and so his smiles were appeasing, not
friendly. He was wearing his red shirt unbuttoned, which
seemed normal given the warm Indian-summer day.
In fact, if Carla's legs hadn't be-
gun to grow hairs, she would have taken off her
school-green knee socks and walked
home bare-legged.
The man spoke up. "Whereyagoin?" he asked,
running all his words together the way the Americans
always did. Carla was, as usual, not quite sure if
she had heard right.
"Excuse me?" she asked politely, leaning into the
car to hear the man's whispery voice better.
Something caught her eye. She looked down and stared,
aghast.
The man had tied his two shirtends just above his waist
and was naked from there on down. String encircled his
waist, the loose ends knotted in front and then
looped around his penis. As Carla watched, his big
blunt-headed thing grew so that it filled and strained
at the lasso it was caught in.
"Where ya' going?" His voice had slowed down when
he spoke this time, so that Carla definitely
understood him. Her eyes snapped back up to his
eyes.
"Excuse me?" she said again dumbly.
He leaned towards the passenger door and clicked it
open. "C'moninere." He nodded towards the seat
beside him. "C'm'on," he moaned. He cupped his
hand over his thing as if it were a flame that might blow
out.
Carla clutched her bookbag tighter in her hand.
Her mouth hung open. Not one word, English or
Spanish, occurred to her. She backed away from the
big green car, all the while keeping her eyes on
the man. A pained, urgent expression was deepening
on his face like a plea that Carla did not know how
to answer. His arm pumped at something Carla could not
see, and then after much agitation, he was still. The face
relaxed into something like peacefulness. The man bowed his
head as
I


if in prayer. Carla turned and fled down the
street, her book-bag banging against her leg like a
whip she was using to make herself go faster, faster.
Her mother called the police after piecing together the
breathless, frantic story Carla told. The
enormity of what she had seen was now topped by the
further enormity of involving the police. Carla and
her sisters feared the American police almost as much
as the SIM back home. Their father, too, seemed
uneasy around policemen; whenever a cop car was behind
them in traffic, he kept looking at the rearview
mirror and insisting on silence in the car so
he could think. If officers stood on the sidewalk
as he walked by, he bowed ingratiatingly at them.
Back home, he had been tailed by the secret
police for months and the family had only narrowly
escaped capture their last day on the Island. Of
course, Carla knew American policemen were
"nice guys," but still she felt uneasy around them.
The doorbell rang only minutes after
Carla's mother had called the station. This was a
law-abiding family neighborhood, and no one
wanted a creep like this on the loose among so many
children, least of all the police. As her mother answered
the door, Carla stayed behind in the kitchen, listening
with a racing heart to her mother's explanation. Mami's
voice was high and hesitant and slightly
apologetic-a small, accented woman's voice
among the booming, impersonal American male
voices that interrogated her.
"My daughter, she was walking home-was
"Where exactly?" a male voice demanded.
"That street, you know?" Carla's mother must have pointed.
"The one that comes up the avenue, I don't know the
name of it."
"Must be the service road," a nicer male
voice offered.
"Yes, yes, the service road." Her mother's
jubilant voice seemed to conclude whatever had
been the problem.
"Please go on, ma'am."
"Well, my daughter, she said this, this crazy
man in this car-was Her voice lowered. Carla heard
snatches: something, something histo come in the car-was
"Where's your daughter, ma'am?" the male voice
with authority asked.
Carla cringed behind the kitchen door. Her mother had
promised that she would not involve Carla with the police
but would do all the talking herself.
"She is just a young girl," her mother excused
Carla.
"Well, ma'am, if you want to file charges,
we have to talk to her."
"File charges? What does that mean, file
charges?"
There was a sigh of exasperation. A too-patient
voice with dividers between each word explained the
legal procedures as if repeating a history
lesson Carla's mother should have learned long before she
had troubled the police or moved into this
neighborhood.
"I don't want any trouble," her mother
protested. "I just think this is a crazy man who
should not be allowed on the streets."
"You're absolutely right, ma'am, but our hands
are tied unless you, as a responsible citizen,
help us out."
i6o
Oh no, Carla groaned, now she was in for it. The
magic words had been uttered. The Garcias were
only legal residents, not citizens, but for the
police to mistake Mami for a citizen was a
compliment too great to spare a child discomfort "Carla!"
her mother called from the door.
"What's the girl's name?" the officer with the voice
in charge asked.
Her mother repeated Carla's full name and spelled
it for the officer, then called out again in her voice of
authority, "Carla Antonia!"
Slowly, sullenly, Carla wrapped herself around
the kitchen door, only her head poking out and into the
hallway.
"right-brace S1, Mami*"
she answered in a polite, law-abiding voice
to impress the cops.
"Come here," her mother said, motioning. "These very nice
officers need for you to explain what you
saw." There was an apologetic look on her
face. "Come on, Cuca, don't be afraid."
"There's nothing to be afraid of," the policeman
said in his gruff, scary voice.
Carla kept her head down as she approached the
front door, glancing up briefly when the two
officers introduced themselves. One was an
embarrassingly young man with a face no older than the
boys' faces at school on top of a large,
muscular man's body. The other man, also big and
fair-skinned, looked older because of his meaner,
sharp-featured face like an animal's in a beast
fable a child knows by looking at the picture not to trust.
Belts were slung around both their hips, guns
poking out of the holsters. Their very masculinity offended
and threatened. They were so big, so strong, so male, so
American.
After a few facts about her had been established,
the mean-faced cop with the big voice and the pad asked
her if she would answer a few questions. Not knowing she
could refuse, Carla nodded meekly, on the verge
of tears.
"Could you describe the vehicle the suspect was
driving?"
She wasn't sure what a vehicle was
or a suspect, for that matter. Her mother
translated into simpler English, "What car was the
man driving, Carla?"
"A big green car," Carla mumbled.
As if she hadn't answered in English, her mother
repeated for the officers, "A big green car."
"What make?" the officer wanted to know.
"Make?" Carla asked.
"You know, Ford, Chrysler, Plymouth." The man
ended his catalogue with a sigh. Carla and her mother were
wasting his time.
"jQue close de carrot"
her mother asked in Spanish, but of course she knew
Carla wouldn't know the make of a car. Carla shook
her head, and her mother explained to the officer, helping
her save face, "She doesn't remember."
"Can't she talk?" the gruff cop snapped. The
boyish-looking one now asked Carla a question.
"Carla," he began, pronouncing her name so that
Carla felt herself coated all over with something warm
and too sweet. "Carla," he coaxed, "can you
please describe the man you saw?"
All memory of the man's face fled. She
remembered only the bruised smile and a few strands
of dirty blond hair laid carefully
over a bald pate. But she could not remember the word
for bald and so she said, "He had almost nothing on his
head."
"You mean no hat?" the gentle cop suggested.
"Almost no hair," Carla explained, looking
up as if she had taken a guess and wanted to know
if she was wrong or right.
"Bald?" The gruff cop pointed first to a
hairy stretch of wrist beyond his uniform's cuff, then
to his pink, hairless palm.
"Bald, yes." Carla nodded. The sight of the
man's few dark hairs had disgusted her. She thought
of her own legs sprouting dark hairs, of the changes
going on in secret in her body, turning her into one
of these grownup persons. No wonder the
high-voiced boys with smooth, hairless cheeks
hated her. They could see that her body was already
betraying her.
The interrogation proceeded through a description of the
man's appearance, and then the dreaded question came.
"What did you see?" the boy-faced cop asked.
Carla looked down at the cops' feet. The
black tips of their shoes poked out from under their cuffs
like the snouts of wily animals. "The man was naked
all down here." She gestured with her hand.
"And he had a string around his waist."
"A string?" The man's voice was like a hand trying
to lift her chin to make her look up, which is
precisely what her mother did when the man repeated,
"A string?"
Carla was forced to confront the cop's face. It was
indeed an adult version of the sickly white faces
of the boys in the playground. This is what they would
look like once they grew up. There was no meanness in
this face, no kindness either. No recognition of the
difficulty she was having in trying to describe what
she had seen with her tiny English vocabulary. It
was the face of someone in a movie Carla was watching
ask her, "What was he doing with the string?"
She shrugged, tears peeping at the corners of her
eyes.
Her mother intervened. "The string was holding up this
man's-was
"Please, ma'am," the cop who was writing said.
"Let your daughter describe what she saw."
Carla thought hard for what could be the name of a man's
genitals. They had come to this country before she had
reached puberty in Spanish, so a lot of the key
words she would have been picking up in the last year, she
had missed. Now, she was learning English
in a Catholic classroom, where no nun had ever
mentioned the words she was needing. "He had a string around
his waist," Carla explained. By the ease with which the
man was writing, she could tell she was now making
perfect sense.
"And it came up to the front"-she showed on
herself-"and here it was tied in a-was She held up her
fingers and made the sign for zero.
"A noose?" the gentle cop offered.
"A noose, and his thing-was Carla pointed to the
policeman's crotch. The cop writing scowled.
"His thing was inside that noose and it got bigger and
bigger," she blurted, her voice wobbling.
The friendly cop lifted his eyebrows and pushed his
cap back on his head. His big hand wiped the
small beads of sweat that had accumulated on his
brow.
Carla prayed without prayer that this interview would
stop now. What she had begun fearing was that her
picture-but who was there to take a picture?-would
appear in the paper the next day and the gang of mean
boys would torment her
with what she had seen. She wondered if she
could report them now to these young officers. "By the
way," she could say, and the gruff one would begin
to take notes. She would have the words to describe
them: their mean, snickering faces she knew by heart.
Their pale look-alike sickly bodies. Their
high voices squealing with delight when Carla
mispronounced some word they coaxed her to repeat.
But soon after her description of the incident, the
interview ended. The cop snapped his pad closed,
and each officer gave Carla and her mother a salute
of farewell. They drove off in their squad car, and
all down the block, drapes fell back to rest,
half-opened shades closed like eyes that saw no
evil.
For the next two months before Carla's mother moved
her to the public school close to home for the second
half of her seventh grade, she took Carla on
the bus to school and was there at the end of the day to pick
her up. The tauntings and chasings stopped. The boys
must have thought Carla had complained, and so her mother was
along to defend her. Even during class times, when
her mother was not around, they now ignored her, their sharp,
clear eyes roaming the classroom for another
victim, someone too fat, too ugly, too
poor, too different. Carla had faded
into the walls.
But their faces did not fade as fast from Carla's
life. They trespassed in her dreams and in her
waking moments. Sometimes when she woke in the dark,
they were perched at the foot of her bed, a grim
chorus of urchin faces, boys without bodies,
chanting without words, "Go back! Go back!"
So as not to see them, Carla would close her eyes
and wish them gone. In that dark she created by keeping
her eyes shut,
Carlo

she would pray, beginning with the names of her own
sisters, for all those she wanted God to especially
care for, here and back home. The seemingly endless
list of familiar names would coax her back to sleep
with a feeling of safety, of a world still peopled by those who
loved her.
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nists. At school, we had air-raid
drills: an ominous bell would go off and we'd
file into the hall, fall to the floor, cover our
heads with our coats, and imagine our hair falling
out, the bones in our arms going soft. At home,
Mami and my sisters and I said a rosary for world
peace. I heard new vocabulary:
nuclear bomb, radioactive fallout, bomb
shelter.
Sister Zoe explained how it would happen. She
drew a picture of a mushroom on the blackboard
and dotted a flurry of chalkmarks for the dusty
fallout that would kill us all.
The months grew cold, November,
December. It was dark when I got up in
the morning, frosty when I followed my breath
to school. One morning as I sat at my desk
daydreaming out the window, I saw dots in the air like
the ones Sister Zoe had drawn-random at first, then
lots and lots. I shrieked, "Bomb! Bomb!"
Sister Zoe jerked around, her full black skirt
ballooning as she hurried to my side. A few
girls began to cry.
But then Sister Zoe's shocked look faded.
"Why, Yolanda dear, that's snow!" She laughed.
"Snow."
"Snow," I repeated. I looked out the window
warily. All my life I had heard about the white
crystals that fell out of American skies in the
winter. From my desk I watched the fine powder dust
the sidewalk and parked cars below. Each flake was
different, Sister Zoe had said, like a person,
irreplaceable and beautiful.
Floor Show
TATAVAYAVAYATATATAYATATATATAYATAYIIIYA
comyAT
Sandi
o elbows, no Cokes, only milk or-was
Mami paused. Which of her four girls could fill in
the blank of how they were to behave at the
restaurant with the Fannings?
"No elbows on the table," Sandi guessed.
"She already said that," Carla accused.
"No fighting, girls!" Mami scolded them
all and continued The Epistle. "Only milk or
ice water. And I make your orders. Is that
clear?"
The four braided and beribboned heads nodded. At
moments like this when they all seemed one organism-
the four girls-
Sandi would get that yearning to wander off into the United
States of America by herself and never come back as the
second of four girls so close in age.
This time, though, she nodded. Mami's tone of
voice did not invite contradiction. The
procedures of this dinner out with the important
Fannings had been explained to the girls so many times
in the last few days and particularly today that there
really was no point in clowning around to get their mother
to be more lenient.
"Mami, just please don't order anything I
don't like, please?" Sandi pleaded. She had always
been a fussy eater, and now that they had come to the
States, it seemed as if there were twice as many
inedible foods that could be piled high on her
plate.
"No fish, Mami," Carla reminded her. "I
get sick to my stomach."
"And nothing with mayonnaise," Yoyo added. "I
can't eat-was
"Girls!" Their mother lifted up her hands like an
Island traffic policeman, halting their
requests. On her face was the panicked look she
had worn ever since they had arrived in New York
three months ago after a narrow escape from the
secret police. At the least provocation, she would
burst out crying, lose her temper, or threaten to end
up in Bellevue, the place, she had learned, where
crazy people were sent in this country.
"Can't you make a little effort tonight?" Her mother's
voice was so sad that the youngest, Fifi, began
to cry. "I don't want to go," she moaned. "I
don't want to go."
"But why on earth not?" Mami asked, her face
brightening. She seemed genuinely mystified, as if
she hadn't terrorized them for days into thinking of this
outing as equivalent to going to the doctor for their
booster shots. "It's going to be such fun. The
Farmings are taking us to a special Spanish
restaurant that was written up in a
magazine. You girls will like it, I'm sure. And
there's going to be a floor show-was
"What's that?" Sandi, who had lost interest in
pleading for a reasonable menu and had been fiddling with the
ribbon in her hair, looked up. "Floor show?"
A playful expression came on their mother's face.
She lifted her shoulders, curled her arms over
head and clapped her hands, then stamped her feet,
fast, fast, fast on the floor as if she were putting
out a fire. "Flamenco dancing!
stOle!
Remember the dancers?" Sandi nodded. They had all
been enthralled by the folk dancers from Madrid at the
Dominican World's Fair last year. As Mami
began to explain that this restaurant had shows of
Spanish dancers as well as yummy Spanish
food, a series of thumps sounded on the floor from
below.
The girls glanced at each other and looked
towards their mother, who rolled her eyes. "La
Bruja," she explained. "I forgot." The old
woman in the apartment below, who had a helmet of
beauty parlor blue hair, had been complaining to the
super since the day the family moved in a few
months ago. The Garcias should be
evicted. Their food smelled. They spoke too
loudly and not in English. The kids sounded like a herd
of wild burros. The Puerto Rican super,
Alfredo, came to their door almost daily. Could
Mrs. Garcia turn the radio down? Could Mrs.
Garcia maybe keep the girls more in line? The
neighbor downstairs had been awakened by the clatter
of their shoes on the floor.
"If I keep them any more in line," their mother
began-and then Sandi heard her mother's voice breaking.
"We have to walk around. We have to breathe."
Alfredo surveyed the fourth floor lobby behind his
back, then murmured under his breath. "I understand, I
understand." He shrugged his shoulders, helpless. "It
is a difficult place, this country, before you get
used to it. You have to not take things personal." He
brightened his voice at the end, but Sandi's mother merely
nodded quietly.
"And how are my little senoritas?" Alfredo
called over Mrs. Garcia's shoulders. The
girls forced smiles as they had been taught, but
Sandi, in revenge, also crossed her eyes. She
did not like Alfredo; something about the man's
overfriendliness and his speaking to them in English even though
they all knew Spanish made her feel
uneasy. La Bruja downstairs she thought of as the
devil-her being below them made sense. When Sandi
played Toro, bullfighting Yoyo with a towel, she
would shout after each successful scrape with death,
stOLEI
and stamp her feet in triumph, lifting her right hand
to the crowd. She always had a bad conscience afterwards, but
she couldn't help herself. One day soon after they had
moved in, La Bruja had stopped her mother and the
girls in the lobby and spat out that ugly word the kids
at school sometimes used: "Spies! Go back to where
you came from!"
As soon as Papi came home from his shift at
the hospital, he showered, singing a favorite
Island song that made the girls giggle as they
slipped on their party dresses. They were already in a
giddy mood from an inspired discovery that the
Farmings" name sure sounded like the word for a person's
bottom they had recently learned in the playground
at school. "We're going to eat with the fannies,"
one sister would say to make the others laugh. Papi
emerged from the bathroom combing his dark wet curls
flat. He looked at the girls and winked. "Your
Papi is a dashing man, eh?" He posed in
front of the hall mirror, turning this way
and that. "A handsome man, your Papi."
The girls indulged him with cries of
"Ay,
Papi." This was the first time in New York that they
had seen their father in a lighthearted mood. Mostly
he worried about
la situacida
back home. Some uncles were in trouble. Tio
Mundo had been jailed, and Tio Fidelio was
maybe dead. Papi had not been able to get an
American doctor's license-some hitch about his
foreign education-and the money was running out. Dr.
Fanning was trying to help out by lining up jobs, but first
Papi needed to pass his licensing exam. It had
been Dr. Fanning who had arranged the fellowship
that had allowed them all to get out of the old country.
And now, the good doctor and his wife had invited the
whole family out to an expensive restaurant in the
city as a treat. The Farmings knew the Garcias
could not afford such a luxury these days. They were such
nice people, that was the truth, Mami said, they gave you
hope that maybe at the bottom Americans were kind
souls.
"But you must behavest" Mami said, going back
to the same old Epistle. "You must show them
what a nice family you come from."
As Mami and Papi finished dressing, the girls
watched, fussing at their tights, an uncomfortable
new article of clothing. These things bunched at the
ankles and sagged at the crotch so you always felt as
if your pants might be falling down. They made you
feel like those bandaged mummies in the museum. If
you unwrapped them, Sandi had pondered, misting the
glass case with her breath, would they still be dark
Egyptians or would their skin have turned pale after
such long bondage- like American skin under all these
heavy clothes for the winter that was just starting?
Sandi leaned her elbows on the vanity and watched
her mother comb her dark hair in the mirror. Tonight
Mami was turning back into the beauty she had been
back home. Her
face was pale and tragic in the lamplight; her
bright eyes shone like amber held up to the light. She
wore a black dress with a scoop back and wide
shoulders so her long neck had the appearance of a
swan gliding on a lake. Around her neck
sparkled her good necklace that had real diamonds.
"If things get really bad," Mami sometimes joked
grimly, 'Til sell the necklace and earrings
Papito gave me." Papi always scowled
and told her not to speak such nonsense.
If things ever get that bad, Sandi thought, she would
sell her charm bracelet with the windmill that always
got caught on her clothing. She would even cut her
hair and sell it-a maid back home had told
her that girls with good hair could always do that. She had
no idea who would buy it. She had not seen hair for
sale in the big department stores Mami sometimes
took them through on outings "to see this new country."
But Sandi would make the needed sacrifices. Tonight,
she thought, with the rich Fannings, she would present herself
as the daughter willing to make these sacrifices.
Maybe they would adopt her, and give her an
allowance like other American girls got, which Sandi
would then pass on to her real family. Provided
she could see them periodically, that would not be a bad
life, being an only child in a fine, rich, childless
American family.
Downstairs, the doorman, Ralph, who had
himself come from a country called Ireland as a boy,
stood by the opened door and gave each young lady a
sweeping bow as she passed by. He always flirted
with the girls, calling them the Misses Garcias as
if they were rich people's children. Mami often quipped that
Ralph probably made more money than
Papi on bis fellowship. Thank God their
grandfather was helping them out. "Without
Papito," Mami confided in her girls, swearing
them never to repeat this to their father, "without Papito, we
would have to go on welfare." Welfare, they knew, was
what people in this country got so they wouldn't turn
into beggars like those outside La Catedral back
home. It was Papito who paid the rent and bought them
their winter clothes and spoiled them once with an outing
to Lincoln Center to see the doll-like ballerinas
dancing on their toes.
"Will you be needing a taxi tonight, Doc?" Ralph
asked their father as he did every time the family came out
all dressed up. Usually, Papi said, "No,
thank you, Ralph," and the family turned the comer and
took a bus. Tonight, though, to Sandi's surprise,
her father splurged. "Yes, please, Ralph, a
Checker for all my girls." Sandi could not get
over how happy her father seemed. She slipped her
hand into his, and he gave it a squeeze before he
released it. He was not a man to show public
affection on foreign soil.
As the taxi sped along, Mami had to repeat the
address for the driver because the man could not understand
Papi's accent. Sandi realized with a pang
one of the things that had been missing in the last few
months. It was precisely this kind of special
attention paid to them. At home there had always been a
chauffeur opening a car door or a gardener tipping
his hat and a half dozen maids and nursemaids
acting as if the health and well-being of the de la
Torre-Garcia children were of wide public concern.
Of course, it was usually the de la Torre boys,
not the girls, who came in for special consideration.
Still, as bearers of the de la Torre name, the girls
were made to feel important.
The restaurant had a white awning with its name el
flamenco in brilliant red letters. A doorman,
dressed up as a dignitary with a flaming red band
across his white ruffled shirt, opened the car door for
them. A carpet on the sidewalk led into the
reception foyer, from which they could see into a large
room of tables dressed up with white tablecloths and
napkins folded to look like bishops" hats.
Silverware and glasses gleamed like ornaments.
Around the occupied tables handsome waiters gathered, their
black hair slicked back into bullfighters' little
ponytails. They wore cummerbunds and white
shirts with ruffles on the chest-beautiful men like the
one Sandi would someday marry. Best of all
were the rich, familiar smells of garlic and onion
and the lilting cadence of Spanish spoken by the
dark-eyed waiters, who reminded Sandi of her
uncles.
At the entrance to the dining room, the maitre do'
explained that Mrs. Fanning had called to say she
and her husband were on their way, to go ahead and sit
down and order some drinks. He led them, a
procession of six, to a table right next to a
platform. He pulled out all their chairs, handed them
each an opened menu, then bowed and backed away.
Three waiters descended on the table, filling
water glasses, adjusting silverware and plates.
Sandi sat very still and watched their beautiful long fingers
fast at work.
"Something to drink, senor?" one of them said,
addressing Papi.
"Can I have a Coke?" Fifi piped up, but then
backed down when her mother and her sisters eyed her.
"I'll have chocolate milk."
Their father laughed good-naturedly, aware of the waiting
waiter. "I don't think they have chocolate milk.
Cokes is fine for tonight. Right, Mami?"
Mami rolled her eyes in mock exasperation. She
was too beautiful tonight to be their mother and
to impose the old rules. "Have you noticedst" she
whispered to Papi when the waiter had left with the drink
orders. The girls drew in to hear. Mami was the
leader now that they lived in the States.
She
had gone to school in the States.
She
spoke English without a heavy accent. "Look at
the menu. Notice how there aren't any prices? I
bet a Coke here is a couple of dollars."
Sandi's mouth dropped open. "A couple of
dollars!"
Her mother hushed her with an angry look. "Don't
embarrass us, please, Sandi!" she said, and then
laughed when Papi reminded her that Spanish was not a
secret language in this place.
"Ay,
Mami." He covered her hand briefly with his.
"This is a special night. I want us to have a good
time. We need a celebration."
"I suppose," Mami said, sighing. "And the
Fannings are paying."
Papi's face tightened.
"There's nothing to be ashamed of," Mami reminded
him. "When they were our guests back home,
we treated them like royalty."
That was true. Sandi remembered when the famous
Doctor Fanning and his wife had come down
to instruct the country's leading doctors on new
procedures for heart surgery. The tall, slender
man and his goofy wife had been guests in the
family
compound. There had been many barbecues with the driveway
lined with cars and a troop of chauffeurs under the palm
trees exchanging news and gossip.
When the drinks arrived, Papi made a funny
toast, in Spanish and loud enough for the waiters"
benefit, but they were all too professional, and if
they did overhear, no one chuckled. Just as they all
lifted their glasses, Mami leaned into the table.
"They're here." Sandi turned to see the maitre do'
heading in their direction with a tall, dressed-up
woman, and behind her, a towering, preoccupied-looking
man. It took a moment to register that these were the
same human beings who had loitered around the pool
back on the Island, looking silly in
sunglasses and sunhats, noses smeared with
suntan cream, and speaking a grossly inadequate
Spanish to the maids.
A flutter of hellos and apologies
ensued. Papi stood up, and Sandi, not knowing what
manners were called for, stood up too, and was eyed
by her mother to sit back down. The doctor and his wife
lingered over each girl, "trying to get them
straight," and remembering how each one had been
only this tall when last they had seen them. "What
little beauties!" Dr. Fanning teased. "Carlos,
you've got quite a harem here!" The four girls
watched their father's naughty smile tilt on his
face.
For the first few minutes the adults exchanged
news. Dr. Fanning told how he had spoken with a
friend who was the manager of an important hotel that
needed a house doctor. The job was a piece of
cake, Dr. Fanning explained, mostly keeping
rich widows in Valium, but heck, the pay was good.
Sandi's father looked down at his plate, grateful,
but also embarrassed to be in such straits and to be so
beholden.
The Farmings' drinks arrived. Mrs. Fanning
drank hers down in several greedy swallows, then
ordered another. She had been quiet during the
flurry of arrival, but now she gushed questions, raising
her eyebrows and pulling long faces when Mrs.
Garcia explained that they had not been able
to get any news from the family ever since the news
blackout two weeks back.
Sandi studied the woman carefully. Why had
Dr. Fanning, who was tall and somewhat handsome,
married this plain, bucktoothed woman? Maybe she
came from a good family, which back home was the
reason men married plain, buck-toothed women.
Maybe Mrs. Fanning came with all the jewelry
she had on, and Dr. Fanning had been attracted
by its glittering the way little fishes are if you wrap
tinfoil on a string and dangle it in the shallows.
Dr. Fanning opened his menu. "What would everyone
like? Girls?" This was the moment they had been so
carefully prepared for. Mami would order for them-they
were not to be so rude or forward as to volunteer a
special like or dislike. Besides, as Sandi tried
reading the menu, with the help of her index finger, sounding
out syllables, she did not recognize the names of
dishes listed.
Her mother explained to Dr. Fanning that she would
order two
pastelones
for the girls to share.
"Oh, but the seafood here is so good," the doctor
pleaded, looking at her from above his
glasses, which had slipped down on his nose like a
schoolteacher's. "How about some paella, girls,
or
camaiones a la vinagietal"
"They don't eat shrimpst" their mother said, and Sandi
was grateful to her for defending them from this dreaded,
wormy
food. On the other hand, Sandi would have been glad
to order something different and all to herself. But she
remembered her mother's warnings.
"Mami," Fifl whispered, "what's
pastolonel"
"Pasteldn,
Cuca." Mami explained it was a casserole like
Chucha used to make back home with rice and ground
beef. "It's very good. I know you girls will like it."
Then she gave them a pointed look they understood
to mean, they must like it.
"Yes," they said nicely when Dr. Fanning
asked if
pasteldn
was indeed what they wanted.
"Yes, what?" Mami coached.
"Yes, thank you," they chorused. The doctor
laughed, then winked knowingly at them.
Their orders in and fresh drinks on the table, the
grown-ups fell into the steady drone of adult
conversation. Now and again the changed cadence of a story
coming through made Sandi lean forward and listen.
Otherwise, she sat quietly, playing with sugar
packets until her mother made her stop. She
watched the different tables around theirs. All the other
guests were white and spoke in low, unexcited
voices. Americans, for sure. They could have eaten
anywhere, Sandi thought, and yet they had come to a
Spanish
place for dinner. La Bruja was wrong. Spanish
was something other people paid to be around.
Her eye fell on a young waiter whose job
seemed to be to pour water into the goblets at each table
when they ran low. Every time she caught his eye, she
would glance away embarrassed, but with boredom she
grew bolder. She commenced a little flirtation; he
smiled, and each time she smiled back, he
approached with his silver pitcher to refill her water
glass. Her mother noticed and said in coded scolding,
"Their well is going to run dry."
In fact, Sandi had drunk so much water that, she
explained quietly to Mami, she was going to have to go
to the toilet. Her mother cast her another of
her angry looks. They had been cautioned against
making any demands tonight during dinner. Sandi
squirmed at her seat, unwilling to go, unless she
could be granted a smiling permission.
Papi offered to accompany her. "I could use the
men's room myself." Mrs. Fanning also stood up
and said she could stand to leave behind a little something. Dr.
Fanning gave her a warning look, not too different
from the one Sandi's mother had given her.
The three of them trooped to the back of the restaurant
where the maitre d" had directed, and down a
narrow flight of stairs, lit gloomily by little
lamps hung in archways. In the poorly lit
basement Mrs. Fanning squinted at the writing on
the two doors.
"Damasl CabaUewsVery
Sandi checked an impulse to correct the
American lady's pronunciation. "Hey there,
Carlos, you're going to have to translate for me so I
don't end up in the wrong room with you!" Mrs.
Fanning rolled her hips in a droll way like
someone trying to keep up a Hula-Hoop.
Papi looked down at his feet. Sandi had
noticed before that around American women he was not
himself. He rounded his shoulders and was stiffly
well-mannered, like a servant. "Sandi will show you,"
he said, putting his daughter between himself and Mrs.
Fanning, who laughed at his discomfort. "Go ahead
then, sugar pie." Sandi held open the door marked
damas
for the American lady. As Mrs. Fanning
turned to follow, she leaned towards Sandi's father and
brushed her lips on his.
Sandi didn't know whether to stand there foolishly or
dash in and let the door fall on this uncomfortable
moment. Like her father, she looked down at her feet,
and waited for the giggling lady to sweep by her. Even in
the dimly lit room, Sandi could see her father's
face darken with color.
Sandi and Mrs. Fanning found themselves in a
pretty little parlor with a couch and lamps and a stack of
perfumed towels. Sandi spied the stalls in an
adjoining room and hurried into one, releasing her
bladder. Relieved, she now felt the full and
shocking weight of what she had just witnessed. A
married American woman kissing her father!
As she let herself out of her stall, she heard
Mrs. Fanning still active in hers. Quickly, she
finished hitching up her silly lights, then swished
her hands under the faucet, beginning to dry them
on her dress, but remembering after an initial
swipe, the towels. She took one from the stack,
wiped her hands and tapped at her face as she had
seen Mami do with the powder puff. Looking at herself
in the mirror, she was surprised to find a pretty
girl looking back at her. It was a girl who could
pass as American, with soft blue eyes and fair
skin, looks that were traced back to a great-great
grandmother from Sweden at every family gathering. She
lifted her bangs-her face was delicate like a
ballerina's. It struck her impersonally as if it
were a judgment someone else was delivering, someone
American and important, like Dr. Fanning: she
was pretty. She had heard it said before, of course,
but the compliment was always a group compliment to all the
sisters, so Sandi thought this was a politeness
friends of her parents said about daughters just as they tended
to say "They're so big" or "They're so smart"
about sons. Being pretty, she would not have to go back
to where she came from. Pretty spoke both
languages. Pretty belonged in this country
to spite La Bruja. As she studied herself, the
stall door behind her opened in the mirror. Sandi
let her bangs fall and rushed out of the room.
Her father was waiting in the anteroom,
pacing nervously, his hands worrying the change in his
pocket. "Where is she?" he whispered.
Sandi pointed back in the room with her chin.
"That woman is drunk," he whispered, crouching
down beside Sandi. "But I can't insult her,
imagine, our one chance in this country." He spoke
in the serious, hushed voice he had used with Mami
those last few days in the old country.
"Pot favor,
Sandi, you're a big girl now. Not a word of this
to your mother. You know how she is these days."
Sandi eyed him. This was the first time her father had ever
asked her to do something sneaky. Before she had time
to respond, the bathroom door swung open. Her
father stood up. Mrs. Fanning called out, "Why,
here you are, sugar!"
"Yes, here we are!" her father said in a too
cheerful voice. "And we must better get back to the
table before they send the marines!" He smiled archly,
as if he had just thought up this quip he had been
making for weeks.
Mrs. Fanning threw her head back and laughed.
"Oh, Carlos!"
Her father joined the American lady's phony
laughter, then stopped abruptly when he
noticed Sandi's eyes on him. "What are you
waiting for?" He spoke in a stern voice, nodding
to-
wards the stairs. Sandi glanced away, hurt.
Mrs. Fanning laughed again and led the way up the
narrow winding stairs. It was like coming up out of a
dungeon, Sandi decided. She would tell her
sisters this and make them wish they had gone to the
bathroom as well, though truly, Sandi wished she
had herself never strayed from the table. She wouldn't have
seen what she could not now hope to forget.
At the table, the young waiter tucked the chair in for
her. He was still lovely, his skin so smooth andofa
rich olive color, his hands long and slender like those
of angels in illustrations, holding their choir
books. But this man could very well lean forward fust as
Mrs. Fanning had done downstairs. He could try
to kiss
her,
Sandi, on the lips. She did not let her glance
fall in his direction again.
Instead, she studied the Fannings intently for
clues as to their mysterious behavior. One thing she
noticed was that Mrs. Fanning drank a lot of
wine, and each time she nodded to the waiter
to fill her glass, Dr. Fanning said something to her
out of the comer of his mouth. At one point when the waiter
leaned toward her empty glass, Dr. Fanning
covered it with his hand. "That's enough," he snapped, and
quickly the waiter leaned away again.
"What a party fart," Mrs. Fanning observed,
loud enough for the table to hear, though "fart" was not a word the
girls recognized. Mami instantly began
to fuss at Sandi and her sisters, pretending that the
exchange of angry whispering between the Fannings was not
taking place. But little Fifi could not be distracted from
the scene at the end of the table: she stared wide-eyed
at the bickering Fannings, and then over at Mami with


a serious look of oncoming tears. Mami winked
at her, and smiled a high-watt smile
to reassure the little girl that these Americans need not
be taken seriously.
Blessedly, their platters of food appeared, borne
by a cortege of waiters, directed by the busybody
maitre do'. The tension dispelled as the two couples
took small, pensive bites of their different
servings. Compliments and evaluations erupted all
around the table. Sandi found most of the things on
her plate inedible. But there was a generous
decorative lettuce leaf under which much of the goopy
meat and greasy rice could be tucked away.
Tonight she felt beyond either of her parents: she could tell
that they were small people compared to these Fannings. She had
herself witnessed a scene whose disclosure could cause
trouble. What did she care if her parents demanded
that she eat all of her
pasteldn.
She would say, just as an American girl might,
"I don't wanna. You can't make me. This is a
free country."
"Sandi, look!" It was her father, trying to befriend her.
He was pointing towards the stage where the lights were
dimming. Six senoritas in long, fitted
dresses with flaring skirts and castanets in their
hands flounced onto the stage. The guitarist came
on and strummed a summoning tune. Beautiful men
in toreador outfits joined their ladies. They
stamped their feet for hello, and the ladies stamped
back, Hello! Six and six,
damas
and
caballeros,
they went through a complicated series of
steps, the women's maracas clacking a teasing beat,
the men echoing their partners' moves with sultry
struts, and foot stomps. These were not the dainty and
chaste twirls and curt-
seys of the ballerinas at Lincoln Center. These
women looked, well-Sandi knew no other way
to put it-they looked as if they wanted to take their
clothes off in front of the men.
Yoyo and Fifi were closest to the stage, but Mami
let Carla and Sandi pull their chairs around in a
cluster and join their sisters. The dancers clapped and
strutted, tossing their heads boldly like horses.
Sandi's heart soared. This wild and beautiful dance
came from people like her, Spanish people, who danced the
strange, disquieting joy that sometimes made Sandi
squeeze Fifi's hand hard until she cried or
bullfight Yoyo with a towel until both girls
fell in a giggling, exhausted heap on the floor that
made La Bruja beat her ceiling with a broom
handle.
"The girls are having such fun," she heard her mother
confide to Mrs. Fanning.
"Me too," the American lady observed. "These
guys are something else. Hey, Lori, watch that
one's tight tights."
"Very nice," Sandi's mother said a little stiffly.
Dr. Fanning hissed at his wife. "That's enough,
Sylvia."
As the show progressed, Sandi pould see that the
dancers' faces were becoming beaded with sweat. Wet
patches spread under their arms, and their smiles were
strained. Still they were beautiful as first one couple then
another came forward in solo dances. Then the men
withdrew, and from somewhere they acquired roses, which they
presented to their partners. The women began a dance in
which the roses were held in their mouths, and their
castanets clacked a merciless thank you to the men.
Behind Sandi, a chair scraped the floor, another
fell over, and two figures hurled by. It was
Mrs. Fanning with Dr. Fanning
giving chase! She scrambled up onto the platform,
clapping her hands over her head, Dr. Fanning
lunging at but missing her as she escaped onto
center stage. The dancers good-naturedly made
way. Dr. Fanning did not follow, but with an
angry shrug of his shoulders, headed back to their
table.
"Let her enjoy herself," Sandi's mother said. Her
voice was full of phony good cheer. "She is just
having a good time."
"She's had too much to drink is what she's
had," the doctor snapped.
The restaurant came alive with the American
lady's clowning. She was a good ham, bumping her
hips up against the male dancers and rolling her
eyes. The diners laughed and clapped. The
management, sensing a good moment, gave her a
spotlight, and the guitarist came forward, strumming a
popular American tune with a Spanish flair.
One of the male dancers partnered Mrs. Fanning-who
advanced as the dancer withdrew in a pantomine of a
cartoon chase. The diners roared their approval.
All but Sandi. Mrs. Fanning had broken the
spell of the wild and beautiful dancers. Sandi could not
bear to watch her. She turned her chair around
to face the table and occupied herself with her water
glass, twisting the stem around, making damp links
on the white cloth.
To a round of applause, Mrs. Fanning was
escorted back to the table by her partner. Sandi's father
stood up and pulled her chair out for her.
"Let's go." Dr. Fanning turned, looking
for the waiter to ask for the check.
"Ah, come on, sugar, loosen up, will ya?" his
wife coaxed
him. One of the dancers had given the American
lady her rose, and Mrs. Fanning now tried
to stick it in her husband's lapel. Dr. Fanning
narrowed his eyes at her, hut before he could speak, the
table was presented with a complimentary bottle of
champagne from the management. As the cork popped,
a few of the customers in adjoining tables applauded
and lifted their glasses up in a toast to Mrs.
Fanning.
"A toast to all of us!" Mrs. Fanning held up
her glass. "Come on, girls," she urged them.
Sandi's sisters lifted their water glasses and
clinked the American lady's.
"Sandi!" her mother said. "You too."
Reluctantly, Sandi lifted her glass.
Dr. Fanning held up his glass and tried
to inject a pointed seriousness into the moment: "To you, the
Garcias. Welcome to this country." Now her
parents lifted their glasses, and in her father's
eyes, Sandi noted gratitude and in her mother's
eyes a moistness that meant barely checked tears.
As Dr. Fanning spoke to one of the waiters, a
dancer approached the table, carrying a large straw
basket with a strap that went around her neck. She
tipped the basket towards the girls and
smiled a wide, warm smile at the two men.
Inside the basket were a dozen dark-haired
Barbie dolls dressed like Spanish senoritas.
The dancer held up a doll and puffed out the skirt
of its dress so that it opened prettily like a fully
blown flower.
"Would you like one?" she asked little Fifi. The woman
spoke hi English, but her voice was heavily
accented like Dr. Garcia's.
Fifi nodded eagerly, then looked over at her
mother, who was
eyeing the little girl. Slowly Fifi shook her
head. "No?" the dancer said in a surprised
voice, lifting up her eyebrows. She looked at
the other girls, her eye falling on Sandi. "You
would like one?"
Sandi, of course, remembered the much-repeated
caution to the girls that they should not ask for any
special dishes or treats of any sort. The
Garcias could not afford extras, and they did not
want to put their hosts in the embarrassing position of
having to spend money out of largesse. Sandi stared at
the small doll. She was a perfect replica of the
beautiful dancers, dressed in a long, glittery
gown with a pretty tortoise shell comb in
her hair, from which cascaded a tiny, lacy
mantilla. On her feet were strapped tiny black
heels such as the dancers had worn. Sandi ignored
her mother's fierce look and reached out for the doll.
With the tip of her painted fingernail, the dancer
salesgirl showed the miniature castanets the doll
was holding. Sandi felt such tenderness as when a new
mother uncurls the tiny fists of a newborn. She
turned to her father, ignoring her mother's glare.
"Papi, can I have her?" Her father looked up at the
pretty salesgirl and smiled. Sandi could tell
he wanted to make an impression. "Sure," he
nodded, adding, "Anything for my girl." The
salesgirl smiled.
Instantly the cry from the other three: "Me too,
Papi! Me too!"
Her mother reached over and took the doll from Sandi's
hands. "Absolutely not, girls." She shook her
head at the dancer, who had since reached in her
basket and extracted three more dolls.
Meanwhile the check had been brought, and Dr.
Fanning was reviewing the items, stacking bills on
a little tray. As he did so, Papi gazed down
at the tablecloth. Back in the old country, everyone
fought for the honor of paying. But what could he
do in this new country where he did not even know if he
had enough cash in his pocket to make good on buying the
four dolls that he was now committed to provide for his
girls.
"You know the rules!" Mami hissed at them.
"Please, Mami, please," Fifi begged, not
understanding that the woman's offer of a doll did not mean
they were free.
"No!" Mami said sharply. "And no more
discussion, girls." The edge on her voice made
Mrs. Fanning, who had been absently collecting
her things, look up. "What's going on?" she
asked the girls' mother. "Nothing," Mami said, and
smiled tensely.
Sandi was not going to miss her chance. This woman had
kissed her father. This woman had ruined the act of the
beautiful dancers. The way Sandi saw it, this
woman owed her something. "We want one of those
dolls." Sandi pointed to the basket in which the dancer
was rearranging the rejected dolls.
"Sandi!" her mother cried.
"Why, I think that's a swell idea! A
souvenir!" Mrs. Fanning motioned the dancer back,
who approached the table with her full cargo. "Give
each of these girls a doll and put it on
the bill. Sugar"-she turned to her husband, who had
finished clapping the small folder closed-"hold
your horses."
"I will not permit-was Papi sat forward, reaching in
his back pocket for his wallet.
"Nonsense!" Mrs. Fanning hushed him. She
touched his
hand to prevent him from opening his wallet.
Papi flinched and then tried to disguise his reaction
by pretending to shake her hand away. "I pay this."
"Don't take his money," Mrs. Fanning
ordered the dancer, who smiled noncommittedly.
"Hey," Dr. Fanning said, agreeing with his
wife. "We wanted to get the girls something, but
heck, we didn't know what. This is perfect."
He peeled four more tens from his wad. Papi
exchanged a helpless look with Mami.
While her sisters fussed over which of the dolls
to choose, Sandi grabbed the one dressed exactly like
the dancers in the floor show. She stood the Barbie
on the table and raised one of the doll's arms and
pulled the other out so that the doll was frozen in the
pose of the Spanish dancers.
"You are much too kind," her mother said to Mrs.
Fanning, and then in a hard voice with the
promise of later punishment, she addressed the four
girls, "What do you say?"
"Thank you," Sandi's sisters chorused.
"Sandi?" her mother said.
Sandi looked up. Her mother's eyes were dark and
"beautiful like those of the little dancer before her. "Yes,
Mami?" she asked politely, as if she hadn't
heard the order.
"What do you say to Mrs. Fanning?"
Sandi turned to the woman whose blurry,
alcoholic eyes and ironic smile intimated the
things Sandi was just beginning to learn, things that the dancers
knew all about, which was why they danced with such
vehemence, such passion. She hopped her dancer right
up to the American lady and gave her a bow.
Mrs. Fanning giggled and returned an answering
nod.
Sandi did not stop. She pushed her doll
closer, so that Mrs. Fanning aped a surprised,
cross-eyed look. Holding her new doll right up
to the American woman's face and tipping it so that
its little head touched the woman's flushed cheek,
Sandi made a smacking sound.
"Gracias,"
Sandi said, as if the Barbie doll had
to be true to her Spanish costume.
TATATIIITATATATATATATATATATATATATATATA
tat
I96O-I956
T AT A T AT A T AT AT
AT AT AT AT AT AT AT AT
AT ATIIIT AT AT
Mami, Papi, the
Four
Girls
C
arlos is in the pantry, getting himself a glass of
water from the filtered spout when he sees the two men
walking up the driveway. They are dressed in
starched khaki. Each wears reflector
sunglasses, and the gleam off the frames matches the
gleam off the buckles on their holsters. Except
for the guns, they could be foremen coming to collect on a
bill or to supervise a job that other men will sweat
over. But the guns give them away.
Beside him, the old cook Chucha is fussing with a
coaster for his glass. The gesture of his head towards
the window alerts her. She looks up and sees the
two men. Very slowly, so that in their approach they will
not catch a movement at the window, Carlos
lifts his finger to his lips. Chucha nods. Step
by careful step, he backs out of the room, and once
he is in the hall where there are no windows to the
driveway, he makes a mad dash towards the
bedroom. He passes the patio, where the four
girls are playing Statues with their cousins.
They are too intent on their game to notice the
blur of his body running by. But Yoyo, just
frozen in a spin, happens to look up and see him.
Again, he puts his finger to his lips. Yoyo
cocks her head, intrigued.
"Yoyo!" one of the cousin cries. "Yoyo
moved!"
The argument erupts just as he reaches the bedroom
door. He hopes Yoyo will keep her mouth shut.
Surely the men will question her when they go through the house.
Children and servants are two groups they always
interrogate.
In the bedroom, he opens the large walk-in
closet and the inside light comes on. When he shuts
the door, it goes off. He reaches for the flashlight
and beams it on. Far off, he hears the children arguing,
then the chiming of the doorbell. His heart is going so
fast that he feels as if something, not his heart, is
trapped inside. Easy now, easy.
He pushes to the back of the closet behind a row of
Laura's dresses. He is comforted by the talc
smell of her housedresses mixed with the sunbaked
smell of her skin, the perfumy smell of her party
dresses. He makes sure he does not disturb
the arrangement of her shoes on the floor, but steps
over them and disengages the back panel. Inside is
a cubicle with a vent that opens out above the shower in the
bathroom. Air and a little light. A couple of
towels, a throw pillow, a sheet, a chamber pot,
a container of filter water, aspirin, sleeping
pills, even a San Judas, patron of
impossible causes, that Laura has tacked to the
inside wall. The small revolver Vie has
smuggled in for him-just in case-is wrapped snugly
in an extra shin, a dark colored shirt, and a dark
colored pair of pants for escaping at
night. He steps inside, sets the flashlight on
the floor, and snaps the panel back, closing himself
in.
When she sees her father dash by, Yoyo thinks he
is playing one of his games that nobody likes, and
that Mami says are in poor taste. Like when he
says, "You want to hear God speak?" and you have
to press his nose, and he farts. Or when
he asks over and over even after you say
white,
"What color was Napoleon's white horse?"
Or when he gives you the test of whether or not you
inherited the blood of the Conquistadores, and he
holds you upside down by your feet until all the
blood goes to your head, and he keeps asking, "Do
you have the blood of the Conquistadores?" Yoyo always
says no, until she can't stand it anymore because her
head feels as if it's going to crack open, and she
says yes. Then he puts her right side up and
laughs a great big Conquistador laugh that comes
all the way from the green, motherland hills of Spain.
But Papi is not playing a game now because soon after
he runs by in hide-and-seek, the doorbell rings,
and Chucha lets in those two creepy-looking men.
They are coffee-with-milk color and the khaki they
wear is the same color as their skin, so they look
all beige, which no one would ever pick as a
favorite color. They wear dark mirror
glasses. What catches Yoyo's eye are their
holster belts and the shiny black bulge of their guns
poking through.
Now she knows guns are illegal. Only
guardias
in uniform can carry them, so either these men are
criminals or some kind of secret police in
plain clothes Mami has told her about who could be
anywhere at anytime like guardian angels, except
they
don't keep you from doing bad but wait to catch you
doing it. Mami has joked with Yoyo that she better
behave because if these secret police see her doing
something wrong, they will take her away to a prison for
children where the menu is a list of everything Yoyo
doesn't like to eat.
Chucha talks very loud and repeats what the men
say as if she were deaf. She must be wanting Papi
to hear from wherever he is hiding. This must be serious like
the time Yoyo told their neighbor, the old general,
a made-up story about Papi having a gun, a
story which turned out to be true because Papi did
really have a hidden gun for some reason. The
nursemaid Milagros told on Yoyo telling
the general that story, and her parents hit her very hard
with a belt in the bathroom, with the shower on so no one
could hear her screams. Then Mami had to meet
Tio Vie in the middle of the night with the gun hidden
under her raincoat so it wouldn't be on the premises
in case the police came. That was very
serious. That was the time Mami still talks about when "you
almost got your father killed, Yoyo."
Once the men are seated in the living room off the
inside patio, they try to lure the children into conversation.
Yoyo does not say a word. She is sure these men
have come on account of that gun story she told when she
was only five and before anyone told her guns were
illegal.
The taller man with the gold tooth asks Mundin,
the only boy here, where his father is. Mundin
explains his comfather is probably still at the office,
and so the man asks him where his mother is, and Mundin
says he thinks she is home.
"The maid said she was not at home," the short one
with a broad face says in a testy voice. It is
delicious to watch him
Papi, the Four Giik
realize a moment later that he is in the wrong when
Mundin says, "You mean Tia Laura. But
see, I live next door."
"Ahhh," the short one says, stretching the word
out, his mouth round like the barrel of the revolver he has
emptied and is passing around so the children can all hold
it. Yoyo takes it in her hand and looks straight
into the barrel hole, shuddering. Maybe it
is loaded, maybe if she shot her head off,
everyone would forgive her for having made up the story
of the gun.
"So which of you girls live here?" the tall one
asks. Carla raises her hand as if she were at
school. Sandi also raises her hand like a copycat
and tells Yoyo and Fifi to raise their hands too.
"Four girls," the fat one says, rolling his
eyes. "No boys?" They shake their heads. "Your
father better get good locks on the door."
A worried look flashes across Fifi's
face. A few days ago she turned the small
rod on her bedroom doorknob by mistake and then
couldn't figure out how to pop it hack and unlock the
door. A workman from Papito's factory had
to come and take out the whole lock, making a hole in
the door, and letting the hysterical Fifi out. "Why
locks?" she asks, her bottom lip quivering.
"Why?!" The chubby one laughs. The roll of
fat around his waist jiggles. "Why?!" he keeps
repeating and breaking out in fresh chuckles. "Come
here,
cielito Undo,
and let me show you why your Papi has to put locks
on the door." He beckons to Fifi with
his index finger crooked. Fifi shakes her head
no, and begins to cry.
Yoyo wants to cry, too, but she is sure if
she does, the men
will get suspicious and take her father away and
maybe the whole family. Yoyo imagines herself in
a jail cell. It would be like Felicidad,
Mamita's little canary, in her birdcage. The
guards would poke in rifles the way Yoyo sometimes
pokes Felicidad with sticks when no one in the
big house is looking. She gets herself so scared that
she is on the brink of tears when she hears the car in
the drive, and knows it must be, it must be.
"Mami's here!" she cries out, hoping this good news
will stop her little sister's tears.
The two men exchange a look and put their
revolvers back into their holsters.
Chucha, grim-faced as always, comes in and
announces loudly, "Dona Laura is home."
As she exits, she lets drop a fine powder.
Her lips move the whole time as if she were doing her
usual sullen, under-her-breath grumbling, but Yoyo
knows she is casting a spell that will leave the men
powerless, becalmed.
As Laura nears her driveway, she
honks the horn twice to alert the guard to open the
gate, but surprisingly, it is already open. Chino
is standing outside the little gatehouse talking to a man
in khaki. Up ahead, Laura sees the black
V.w., and her heart plummets right down to her
toes. Next to her in the passenger seat it has
taken her months to convince the young country girl
to ride in, Imaculada says,
"Dona, hay visita."
Laura plays along, controlling the tremor of her
voice. "Yes, company." She stops and motions for
Chino to come to the car.
"iQuehay.cbino!"
"They are looking for Don Carlos," Chino says
tensely. He
Four
Girls
lowers his voice and looks over at Imaculada,
who looks down at her hands. "They have been here for
awhile. There are two more waiting in the house."
"I'll talk to them," Laura says to Chino,
whose slightly slanted eyes have earned him his
nickname. "And you go over to Dona Carmen's and
tell her to call Don Victor and tell him to come
right over and pick up his tennis shoes.
Tennis shoes, you hear?" Chino nods. He can be
trusted to put two and two together. Chino has been
with the family forever-well, only a little less than
Chucha, who came when Laura's mother was pregnant
with Laura. Chino calls to the man in khaki, who
flicks his cigarette onto the lawn behind him, and
approaches the car. As Laura greets him, she
sees Chino cutting across the lawn towards Don
Mundo's house.
"Dona, excuse our dropping in on you," the
man is saying with false politeness that seems as
if it is being wastefully squeezed from a tube.
"We need to ask Doctor Garcia a few questions,
and at the
clinica,
they told us he was home. Your boy"-Boy! Chino
is over fifty-"he says
el doctor
is not home yet, so we will wait until he shows
up. Surely, he is on his way-was The guard
looks up at the sky, shielding his eyes: the sun
is dead center above him, noon, time for dinner, time
for every man to sit down at his table and break bread and
say grace to God and Trujillo for the plenty the
country is enjoying.
"By all means, wait for him, but please not under this
hot sun." Laura switches into her grand manner.
The grand manner will usually disarm these poor lackeys
from the countryside, who have joined the SIM, most of
them, in order to put money
in their pockets, food and rum in their stomachs, and
guns at their hips. But deep down, they are still
boys in rags bringing down coconuts for
el patron
when he visits his
fincas
with his family on Sundays.
"You must come in and have something cold to drink." The
man bows his head, grateful. But no, he must stay
put, orders. Laura promises to send him down
a cold beer and drives up to the house. She
wonders if Carmen has been able to get hold of
Victor. At the first sign of trouble, Victor
said, get in touch, code phrase is
tennis shoes.
He is good for his word. It wasn't his fault the
State Department chickened out of the plot they had him
organize. And he has promised to get the men out
safely. All but Fernando, of course.
Pobrecito
ending up the way he did, hanging himself by his belt
in his cell to keep from giving out the others" names under
the tortures Tru-jillo's henchmen were
administering. Fernando, a month in his grave, San
Judas protect us all.
At the door she directs Imaculada
to unload the groceries and be sure to take the man
down at the gate a Presidente, the common beer
they all like. Then she crosses herself and enters the
house. In the living room, the two men rise
to greet her; Fifi runs to her in tears; Yoyo
is right behind, all eyes, looking frightened. Laura
is raising her girls American style, reading
all the new literature, so she knows she shouldn't have
beaten Yoyo that time the girl gave them such a
scare. But you lose your head in this crazy
hellhole, you do, and different rules apply.
Now, for instance, she is thinking of doing something wild
and mad, sinking down in a swoon the way women used
to in old movies when they wanted to distract
attention from
some trouble spot, unbuttoning her blouse and offering
the men pleasure if they'll let her husband and
babies escape.
"Gentlemen, please," Laura says,
urging them to sit down, and then she eyeballs the
kids to leave the room. They all do, except
Yoyo and Fifi, who hold on to either side of her,
not saying a word.
"Is there some problem?" Laura begins.
"We just have a few questions to ask Don Carlos. Are
you expecting him for the noon meal?"
At this moment, a way to delay these men comes to her.
Vie is on his way, she hopes, and he'll know
how to handle this mess.
"My husband had a tennis game today with Victor
Hubbard." She says the name slowly so that it will
register. "The game probably ran a little late.
Make yourselves at home, please. My house, your
house," she says, reciting the traditional
Dominican welcome.
She excuses herself a moment to prepare a tray of
little snacks they urge her not to trouble herself
to prepare. In the pantry, Chucha is alone since
Imaculada has gone off to serve the guard his
beer. The old black woman and the young mistress
exchange looks. "Don Carlos," Chucha
mouths, "in the bedroom." Laura nods. She
knows now where he is, and although it spooks her that he
is within a few feet of these men, sealed in
the secret compartment, she is also grateful that he is
so close by she could almost reach out and touch him.
Back in the living room/she serves the men a tray
of fried plantain chips and peanuts and
casabe
and pours each one a Presidente in the cheap
glasses she keeps for servants. Seeing
the men eye the plates, she remembers the story that
Trujillo forces his cooks to taste his food before
he eats. Laura breaks off a piece of
casabe
for Fifi on one side of her, and another for
Yoyo. Then she herself takes a handful of peanuts
and puts them, like a schoolgirl, one by one in her
mouth. The men reach out their hands and eat.
When the phone rings at Dona Tatica's, she
feels the sound deep inside her sore belly.
Bad news, she thinks. Candelario, be at my
side. She picks the phone up as if it had
claws, and announces in a small voice, so
unlike hers,
"Buenos dias, El Paraiso, para servirle."
The voice on the other end is the American's
secretary, a no-nonsense,
too-much-schooling-in-her-voice woman
who does not return Tatica's
buenos dias.
Embassy business, the voice snaps, "Please
call Don Vie to the phone." Tatica echoes the
secretary's snippiness: "I cannot disturb him."
But the voice gloats back,
"Urgente,"
and Tatica must obey.
She heads across the courtyard towards
casita
6. Large enough already inside her broad,
caramel-colored body, Tatica renders herself
dramatically larger by always dressing in red, a
promesa
she has made to her
santo,
Candelario, so he will cure her of the horrible burning
in her gut. The doctor went in and cut out some of
her stomach and all of her woman machinery, but
Candelario stayed, filling that empty space with spirit.
Now whenever trouble is coming, Tatica feels a
glimmer of the old burning in the centipede trail on
her belly. Something pretty bad is on its way
because with each step Tatica takes, the pain roils
in her gut, trouble coming to full term.
Four
Girls
Under the
amapola
tree, the yardboy is lounging with the American's
chauffeur. When he sees her, quick he busies
himself clipping a sorry-looking hedge. The
chauffeur calls out,
Buenos dias, dona Tatica,
and tips his cap at Tatica who lifts her head
high above his riffraff.
Casita 6,
Don Victor's regular cabin, is straight
ahead. The air conditioner is going. Tatica will have
to pound hard with strength she does not have so her knock
will be heard.
At the door she pauses. Candelaho, she
pleads as she lifts her hand to knock, for the burning
has spread.
"Uigente,"
she calls out, meaning her own condition now, for her
whole body feels bathed in a burning pain as if
her flame-colored dress were itself on fire.
A goddamn bang comes at the goddamn door.
"Telefono, uigente, senor
Hubbard."
Vie does not lose a beat, but calls out,
"Un minuto,"
and finishes first. He shakes his head at the sweet
giggling thing and says,
"Excusez, por favor."
Half the time he doesn't know whether he's using his
CIA crash course in Spanish or his prep
school Latin or his college French. But dicks
and dollars are what talk in l1 Parafso
anyway.
When he first got to this little hot spot, Vie
didn't know how hot it would be. Immediately, he
looked up his old classmate Mundo, who comes
from one of those old wealthy families who send their
kids to the States to prep school, and the boys on
to college. Old buddy introduced him around till
he knew every firebrand among the upper-class
fellas the State Department wanted him to groom for
revolution. Fellas got him fixed up with
Tatica, who has kept him in the little girls he
likes, hot
little numbers, dark and sweet like the little cups of
cafecito
so full of goddam caffeine and Island
sugar you're shaking half the day.
Vie dresses quickly, and as soon as his clothes
are on, he is all business.
"Hasta luego,"
he says, waving to the little girl sitting up and pouting
prettily. "Behave yourself," he jokes.
Naughtily, she lifts her little chin. Really, they
are so cute.
He opens the door unto a crumbling
Tatica, two hundred pounds going limp in his
arms. He looks up and sees over her shoulder his
chauffeur and the yardboy rushing to his aid. Behind him,
above the air conditioner's roar, he can hear the little
girl shout Dona Tatica's name, and as if
summoned back from the hellhole of her pain,
Tatica's eyes roll up, her mouth parts.
"Tel6fono, urgente, Embajada,"
she whispers to Don Vie, and he takes off,
leaving her to collapse into the arms of her own
riffraff.
Vie goes first to Mundo's house, since the
call came from Carmen, and finds her in the patio with
endless kiddies having their noon meal at the big
table. Carmen rushes towards him.
"Giacias a Dios, Vie,"
she says for hello. A sweetheart, this little
lady, not bad legs either. Unfortunately, the
nuns got to her young, and Vie has nodded himself
silly several times to catechism lessons disguised
as dinner conversations. He wonders if it shows all
over him where he's been, and grins, thinking back on
the sweet little number not much older than some of the little
sirens sitting around the table now. "Tfo Vie,
Tfo Vie," they call out. Honestly, lash me
to a lamppost, he thinks.
Quick look around the table. No sign of Mundo.
Maybe he's had to take refuge in the temporary
holding closet Vie advised
him and the others to construct? He smiles comfortingly
at Carmen, whose smile back is a grimace of
fear. "In the study," she directs him.
The kids keep calling for Tio Vie to come over
to the lunch table they are not allowed to leave. He
waves at them and says, "Carry on, troops,"
as he goes by. Over his shoulder, he hears
Carmen call after him, "Have you eaten, Victor?"
These Latin women, even when the bullets are flying
and the bombs are falling, they want to make sure you
have a full stomach, your shirt is ironed, your
handkerchief is fresh. It's what makes
the nice girls from polite society great
hostesses, and the girls at Tatica's such
obliging lovers.
He taps on the door, says his name, waits,
says it again, a little louder this time since the air
conditioner is going. The door opens eerily as if
by itself since no one admits him. He enters, the
door closes behind him, a gun's safety clicks
off. "Whoa, fellas," he calls out, lifting his
hands to show he's their unarmed, honest-to-god buddy.
The jalousies have all been closed, and the men are
spread around the room as if assuming lookout
posts. Mundo comes out from behind the door, and
Fidelio, the nervous one, stands by the bookshelves,
pulling books in and out as if they were levers that might
work their safe escape out of this frightening moment.
Mated squats, as if lighting a fire. Standing
by different windows are the rest of the guys. Jesus,
they look like a bunch of scared rabbits.
"Thought you might be SIM," Mundo says,
explaining his withdrawn gun. He pulls a chair out
for his buddy. The chairs in his study bear the logo from
their alma mater, Yale, which Vie notes the
family mispronounces as
jail.
"What's up?" Vie asks in his heavily accented
Spanish.
"Trouble," says Mundo. "With a capital T."
Vie nods. "We're on," he says to the
group.
"Operation Zapa-tos Tenis."
Then he does what he has always done ever since
back in Indiana as a boy the shit first began
hitting fan: he cracks his knuckles and grins.
Carla and Sandi are having their lunch at Tia
Carmen's house, which is not breaking the rules because,
number one, Mami told them to SCRAM with her
widened eyes, and number two, the rule is that
unless you're grounded, you can eat at any aunt's
house if you let Mami know first, which goes back
to number one, that Mami told them to SCRAM, and it
is already almost an hour since they should have eaten back
home.
Something is fishy like when Mami walks in on them
and they quick hide what they don't want her to see,
and she clips her nose together with her fingers and says,
"I smell a rat." Fishy is Tf o Mundo
arriving for lunch, then not even sitting down but going
straight to his study, and then
all
the uncles coming like there's going to be a party or a
big family decision about Mamita's drinking or
about Papito's businesses while he's away.
Tia Carmen jumps up each time the doorbell
rings, and when she returns, she asks them the same
question she's just asked them-"So you were playing Statues
and the two men came?" Mundin is jabbering away about
the gun he got to hold. Every time he mentions it,
Carla can see a shiver go through Tia's body like when
there's a draft up at the house in the mountains and
all the aunts wear pretty shawls. Today, though,
it's so hot, the kids got to go in the pool in the
morning right before Statues, and Tia says if
they're very good, they
might be able to go in again after their digestion is
completed. Twice in the pool in one day and Tia
has the shivers in this heat. Something very fishy is going
on.
Tf a rings the little silver bell, and Adela
comes out and clears all the plates, and brings
dessert, which always includes the Russell Stover
box with the painted-on bow. When the box goes around,
you have to figure out by eyesight alone which one you think will
have the nut inside or caramel or coconut, hoping
that you won't be surprised when you bite in
by some squishy center you want to spit out.
The Russell Stover box is pretty low because
no one has been to the United States lately
to buy chocolates. Papito and Mamita left
right after Christmas as usual but haven't come back.
And it's August already. Mami says that's because of
Mamita's health, and having to see specialists,
but Carla has heard whispers that Papito has
resigned his United Nations post and so is not very
well liked by the government right now. Every once in a
while
guardias
roar in on their jeeps, jump out, and surround
Papito's house, and then Chino always comes running
and tells Mami, who calls Tio Vie to tell
him to come pick up his tennis shoes. Carla has
never seen Tio Vie bring any kind of shoes to the
house but the pockmarked ones he wears. He always
comes in one of those limousines Carla's only seen
at weddings and when Trujillo goes by in a
motorcade. Tio Vie talks to the head
guardia
and gives him some money, and they all climb back
in their jeeps and roar away. It's really kind of
neat, like a movie. But Mami says
they're not to tell their friends about it. "No flies
fly into a closed mouth," she explains when Carla
asks, "Why can't we tell?"
The Russell Stover box has gone all the way
around back to Tia, who takes out one of the little
papery molds, and sighs when the kids argue about who
will get it. Tio Vie comes out, grinning, and
ruffles Mundin's hair, puts his hand on
Tfa's shoulder and asks the whole table, "So who
wants to go to New York? Who wants to see the
Empire State Building?" Tio Vie always
talks to them in English so that they get practice.
"How about the Statue of Liberty?"
At first, the cousins look around at each other, not
wanting to embarrass themselves by calling out, "Me!
Me!" and then having Tio Vie cry, "April
Fool!" But tentatively Carla, and then Sandi,
and then Lucinda raise their hands. Like disa chain
reaction, hand after hand goes up, some still holding
Russell Stover chocolates. "Me, me, I
want to go, I want to go!" Tio Vie lifts up
his hands, palms out, to keep their voices down. When
they are all quiet, waiting for him to pick the
winners, he looks down at Tia Carmen beside him
and says, "How about it, Carmen? Wanna
go?" And the kids all chant, "Yes, Tfa,
yes!" Carla, too, until she notes that her
aunt's hands are shaking as she fits the lid on the
empty Russell Stover box.
Laura is terrified she is going to say something
she mustn't. These two thugs have been quizzing her for
half an hour. Thank God for Yoyo and Fifi
hanging on her, whining. She makes a big deal of
asking them what they want, of getting them to recite
for the company, and trying to get sullen little Fifi
to smile for the obnoxious fat man.
Finally-what a relief! There's Vie crossing
the lawn with Carla and Sandi on each hand. The two
men turn and, almost
reflexively, their hands travel to their holsters.
Their gesture reminds her of a man fondling his
genitals. It might be this vague sexuality behind the
violence around her that has turned Laura off
lovemaking all these months.
"Victor!" she calls out, and then in a quieter
voice she cues the men as if she does not want
them to embarrass themselves by not knowing who this important
personage is. "Victor Hub-bard, consul at
the Embaj.a Americana. Excuse me,
senores." She comes down the patio and
gives Vie a little peck on the cheek, whispering as
she does, "I've told them he's been playing
tennis with you." Vie gives her the slightest nod,
all the while grinning as if his teeth were on
review.
Effusively, Laura greets Carla and
Sandi. "My darlings, my sweet Cuquitas, have
you eaten?" They nod, watching her closely, and she
sees with a twinge of pain that they are quickly picking up
the national language of a police state: every word, every
gesture, a possible mine field, watch what you
say, look where you go.
With the men, Victor is jovial and
back-patting, asking twice for their names, as if he
means to pass on a compliment or a complaint. The
men shift hams, nervous for the first time, Laura
notes gleefully. "The doctor, we have come to ask
him a few questions, but he seems to have disappeared."
"Not at allst" Vie corrects them. "We were
just playing tennis. He'll be home any minute."
The men sit up, alert. Vie goes on to say that
if there is some problem, perhaps he can straighten things
out. After all, the doctor is a personal friend.
Laura watches their reactions as Vie tells them
news that is news to her. The doctor has
been granted a fellowship at a hospital in
the United States, and he, Victor, has just
heard the family's papers have received clearence from the
head of Immigration. So, why would the good doctor
get into any trouble.
So, Laura thinks. So the papers have cleared and
we are leaving. Now everything she sees sharpens as if
through the lens of loss-the orchids in their hanging straw
baskets, the row of apothecary jars Carlos has
found for her in old druggists" throughout the
countryside, the rich light shafts swarming with a
golden pollen. She will miss this glorious light
warming the inside of her skin and jeweling the trees,
the grass, the lily pond beyond the hedge. She thinks
of her ancestors, those fair-skinned
Conquistadores arriving in this new world, not knowing that the
gold they sought was this blazing light. And look at
what they started, Laura thinks, looking up and
seeing gold flash in the mouth of one of the
gaazdias
as it spreads open in a scared smile.
This morning when the fag at the comer sold them their
lotena
tickets, he said, "Watch yourselves, the flames of
your
santos
burn just above your heads. The hand of God descends
and some are lifted up, but some"-he looked from Pupo
to Checo-"some are cast away." Pupo took heed
and crossed himself, but Checo twisted the fag's arm
behind his back and threatened to give his manhood the hand
of God. It scares Pupo the meanness that comes out of
Checo's mouth, as if they weren't both
campesino
cousins, ear-twisted to church on Sundays by mothers who
raised them on faith and whatever grew in their little
plot of dirt.
But the fag
loteria
guy was right. The day began to surprise
them. First, Don Fabio calls them in.
Special assignment: they are to report on this
Garcfa doctor's comings and goings. Next thing
Pupo knows Checo is driving the jeep right up to the
Garcfa house and doing this whole search number that is
not following orders. Point is, though, that if something
comes out of the search, their enterprise will be praised and
they will be decorated and promoted. If nothing
turns up and the family has connections, then back
they go to the prison beat, clean-
left-brace
ng interrogation rooms and watering down the cells the
poor, scared bastards dirty with their loss of
self-control.
From the minute they enter the house Pupo can tell
by the way the old Haitian woman acts that this is
a stronghold of something, call it arms, call it
spirits, call it money. When the woman arrives, she
is nervous and grasshoppery, smiling falsely,
dropping names like a trail of crumbs to the powerful.
Mostly, she mentions the red-haired gringo at the
embassy. At first Pupo thinks she's just bluffing
and he's already congratulating Checo and himself for
uncovering something hot. But then, sure enough, the
red-haired gringo appears before them, two more
doll-girls in either hand.
"Who is your supervisor?" The gringo's voice
has an edge. When Checo informs him, the
American throws back his head, "Oh, Fabio,
of course!" Pupo sees Checo's mouth stretch in
a rubberband smile that seems as if it may snap.
They have detained a lady from an important
family. They have maybe barked up the wrong tree.
All Pupo knows is Don Fabio is going to have
a heyday on their already scarred backs.
"I'll tell you what," the American consul
offers them. "Why don't I just give old Fabio
a call right now." Pupo lifts his shoul-
ders and ducks his head as if just the mention of his
superior's name could cause his head to roll. Checo
nods,
"A sus ordenes."
The American calls from the phone in the hall where
Pupo can hear him talking his marbles-in-his-mouth
Spanish. There is a silence in which he must be
waiting to be connected, but then his voice warms up.
"Fabio, about this little misunderstanding. Tell you what,
I'll talk to Immigration myself, and I'll have the
doctor out of the country in forty-eight hours." On
the other end Don Fabio must have made a joke because
the American breaks out in laughter, then calls
Checo to the phone so his supervisor can speak with him.
Pupo hears his comrade's rare apologetic tone.
"Si, sf, couldmo no, don Fabio,
inmediatamente."
Pupo sits among these strange white people, ashamed
and cornered. Already he is feeling the whip coming down
like judgment on his bared back. They are all
strangely quiet, listening to Checo's voice
full of disclaimer, and when he falls
silent, only to their own breathing as the hand of God
draws closer. Whether it will pick up the saved or
cast out the lost is unclear yet to Pupo, who
picks up his empty glass and, for comfort, tinkles
the ice.
While the men were saying their goodbyes at the door,
Sandi stayed on the couch sitting on her hands.
Fifl and Yoyo clustered around Mami, balling up
her skirt with holding on, Fifi wailing every time the
big fat guard bent down for a goodbye kiss from her.
Carla, knowing better as the oldest, disgave her hand
to the men and curtsied the way they'd been taught to do
for guests. Then, everyone came back to the living
room, and
Mami rolled her eyes at Tio Vie the way
she did when she was on the phone with someone she
didn't want to talk to. Soon, she had everyone
in motion: the girls were to go to their bedrooms and make
a stack of their best clothes and pick one toy they
wanted to take on this trip to the United States.
Nivea and Milagros and Mami would later pack
it for them. Then, Mami disappeared with Tio Vie
into her bedroom.
Sandi followed her sisters into their side-by-side
bedrooms. They stood in a scared little
huddle, feeling strangely careful with each other.
Yoyo turned to her. "What are you taking?" Fifl
had already decided on her baby doll and Carla was
going through her private box of jewelry and
mementos. Yoyo fondled her revolver.
It was strange how when held up to the absolute
phrase-
the one toy I really want-
nothing quite filled the hole that was opening wide inside
Sandi. Not the doll whose long hair you could roll and
comb into hairdos, not the loom for making pot holders
that Mami was so thankful for, not the glass dome that you
turned over and pretty flakes fell on a little
red house in the woods. Nothing would quite fill that
need, even years after, not the pretty woman she would
surprise herself by becoming, not the prizes for her
schoolwork and scholarships to study now this and now that she
couldn't decide to stay with, not the men that held her
close and almost convinced her when their mouths came down
hard on her lips that this, this was what Sandi had been
missing.
From the dark of the closet Carlos has heard
tones, not content; known presences, not
personalities. He wonders if this
might be what he felt as a small child before
the impressions and tones and presences were overlaid
by memories, memories which are mostly others'
stories about his past. He is the youngest of his father's
thirty-five children, twenty-five legitimate,
fifteen from his own mother, the second wife; he has
no past of his own. It is not just a legacy, a
future, you don't get as the youngest.
Primogeniture is also the clean slate of the
oldest making the past out of nothing but faint whispers,
presences, and tones. Those tenuous, tentative first
life-impressions have scattered like reflections in a
pond under the swirling hand of an older brother or
sister saying, I remember the day you ate the rat
poison, Carlos, or, I remember the day you
fell down the stairs....
He has heard Laura in the living room
speaking with two men, one of them with a ripply,
tricky voice, the other with a coarser voice, a
thicker laugh, a big man, no doubt. Fifi is
there and Yoyo as well. The two other girls
disappeared in a jabber of cousins earlier. Fifi
whines periodically, and Yoyo has recited something
for the men, he can tell from the singsong in her voice.
Laura's voice is tense and bright like a newly
sharpened knife that every time she speaks cuts
a little sliver from her self-control. Carlos thinks,
She will break, she will break, San Judas, let
her not break.
Then, in that suffocating darkness, having to go but not
daring to pee in the chamber pot for fear the men might
hear a drip in the walls-though God knows, he and
Mundo soundproofed this room enough so that there is no
ventilation at all-in that growing claustrophobia,
he hears her say distinctly, "Victor!" Sure
enough, momentarily the monotone, garbled
Four
Girls
voice of the American consul nears the living
room. By now, of course, they all know his consulship
is only a front-Vie is, in fact, a CIA
agent whose orders changed midstream from
organize the underground and get that SOB out
to
hold your horses, let's take a second look
around to see what's best for us.
When he hears the bedroom door open, Carlos
puts his ear up against the front panel. Steps go
into the bathroom, the shower is turned on, and then the
fan to block out any noise of talk. The immediate
effect is that fresh air begins
to circulate in the tiny compartment. The closet door
opens, and then Carlos hears her breathing close
by on the other side of the wall.
II
I'm the one who doesn't remember anything from that
last day on the Island because I'm the youngest and so the
other three are alw'telling me what happened that
last day. They say I almost got Papi killed
on account of I was so mean to one of the secret
police who came looking for him. Some weirdo who
was going to sit me on his hard-on and pretend we were
playing Ride the Cock Horse to Banbury
Cross. But then whenever we start talking
last-day-on-the-Island memories, and someone says,
"fin,
you almost got Papi killed for being so rude to that
gestapo guy," Yoyo starts in on how it was she
who almost got Papi killed when she told that story
about the gun years before our last day on the Island.
Like we're all competing, right? for the most haunted
past.
I can tell you one thing I do remember from right before
we left. There was this old lady, Chucha, who had
worked in Mami's family forever and who had this face
like someone had wrung it out after washing it
to try to get some of the black out. I mean, Chucha was
super wrinkled and Haitian blue-black, not
Dominican
cafe-con-leche
black. She was real Haitian too and that's why
she couldn't say certain words like the word for parsley
or anyone's name that had a still in it, which meant the
family was like camp, everyone with nicknames Chucha
could pronounce. She was always in a bad mood-not
exactly a bad mood, but you couldn't get her
to crack a smile or cry or anything. It was like
all her emotions were spent, on account of everything she
went through in her young years. Way back before Mami
was even bom, Chucha had just appeared at my
grandfather's doorstep one night, begging to be taken
in. Turns out it was the night of the massacre when
Trujillo had decreed that all black
Haitians on our side of the island would be
executed by dawn. There's a river the bodies were
finally thrown into that supposedly still runs red to this day,
fifty years later. Chucha had escaped from some
canepickers' camp and was asking for asylum.
Papito took her in, poor skinny little thing, and
I guess Mamita taught her to cook and iron and
clean. Chucha was like a nun who had joined
the convent of the de la Torre clan. She never
married or went anywhere even on her days off.
Instead, she'd close herself up in her room and
pray for any de la Torre souls stuck up in
purgatory.
Anyhow, that last day on the Island, we were in our
side-by-side bedrooms, the four girls, setting
out our clothes for going to the United States. The
two creepy spies had left, and Mami and Tio
Vie were in the bedroom. They were telling Papi, who
Four
Girls
was hidden in this secret closet, about how we would
all be leaving in Tio Vic's limo for the airport
for a flight he was going to get us. I know, I know,
it sounds like something you saw on "Miami Vice," but
all I'm doing is repeating what I've heard from
the family.
But here's what I do remember of
my
last day on the Island. Chucha came into our
bedrooms with this bundle in her hands, and Nivea,
who was helping us pack, said to her in a gruff
voice, "What do you want, old woman?" None
of the maids liked Chucha because they all thought
she was kind of below them, being so black and Haitian
and all. Chucha, though, just gave Nivea one of her
spelling looks, and all of sudden, Nivea
remembered that she had to iron our outfits for wearing
on the airplane.
Chucha started to unravel her bundle, and we
all guessed she was about to do a little farewell
voodoo on us. Chucha always had a voodoo job
going, some spell she was casting or spirit she was courting
or enemy she was punishing. I mean, you'd open a
closet door, and there, in the corner behind your shoes,
would sit a jar of something wicked that you weren't
supposed to touch. Or you'd find a candle burning in
her room right in front of someone's picture and a
little dish with a cigar on it and red and white crepe
streamers on certain days crisscrossing her room.
Mami finally had to give her a room to herself because
none of the other maids wanted to sleep with her. I can
see why they were afraid. The maids said she got
mounted by spirits. They said she cast spells on them.
And besides, she slept in her coffin. No kidding.
We were forbidden to go into her room to see it, but we were
always sneaking back there
to take a peek. She had her mosquito net
rigged up over it, so it didn't look that
strange like a real uncovered coffin with a dead person
inside.
At first, Mami wouldn't let her do it, sleep
in her coffin, I mean. She told Chucha
civilized people had to sleep on beds, coffins were for
corpses. But Chucha said she wanted to prepare
herself for dying and couldn't one of the carpenters at
Papito's factory measure her and build her a
wooden box that would serve as her bed for now and her
coffin later. Mami kept saying, Nonsense,
Chucha, don't get tragic.
The thing was, you couldn't stand in Chucha's way
even if you were Mami. Soon there were jars in
Mami's closet, and her picture from when she was a
baby being held by Chucha was out on Chucha's altar
with mints on a little tin dish, and a constant votary
candle going. Inside of a week, Mami relented.
She said poor Chucha never asked for a blessed thing from
the family, and had always been so loyal and good, and
so, heavens to Betsy, if sleeping in her coffin would
make the old woman happy, Mami would have a
nice box built for her, and she did. It was plain
pine, like Chucha wanted it, but inside, Mami had
it lined in purple cushiony fabric, which was
Chucha's favorite color, and bordered
with white eyelet.
So here's the part I remember about that last day.
Once Nivea left the room, Chucha stood us
all up in front of her. "Chachas-was she always
called us that, from
muchachas,
girls, which is how come we had ended up nicknaming
her a play echo of her name for us, Chucha.
"You are going to a strange land." Something like that,
I mean, I don't remember the exact words. But
I do remember the piercing look she gave me as
if she were actually going inside
my head. "When I was a girl, I left my
country too and never went back. Never saw father or
mother or sisters or brothers. I brought only this
along." She held the bundle up and finished
unwrapping it from its white sheet. It was a statue
carved out of wood like the kind I saw years later in
the anthro textbooks I used to pore over, as if
staring at those little talismanic wooden carvings would
somehow be my madeleine, bringing back my past to me
like they say tasting that cookie did for Proust. But the
textbook gods never triggered any four-volume
memory in my head. Just this little moment I'm
recalling here.
Chucha stood this brown figure up on Cork's
vanity. He had a grimacing expression on his
face, deep grooves by his eyes and his nose and
lips, as if he were trying to go but was real constipated.
On top of his head was a little platform, and on it,
Chucha placed a small cup of water. Soon,
on account of the heat, I guess, that water started
evaporating and drops ran down the grooves carved
in that wooden face so that the statue looked as if it
were crying. Chucha held each of our heads in her
hands and wailed a prayer'over us. We were used to some
of this strange stuff from daily contact with her, but
maybe it was because today we could feel an ending in the
air, anyhow, we all started to cry as if Chucha
had finally released her own tears in each of us.
They are gone, left in cars that came for them,
driven by pale Americans in white uniforms with
gold braids on their shoulders and on their caps.
Too pale to be the living. The color of
zombies, a nation of zombies. I worry about
them, the girls, Dona Laura, moving among men
the color of the living dead.
The girls all cried, especially the little one,
clutching onto
my skirts, Dona Laura weeping so
hard into her handkerchief that I insisted on going back
to her bureau and getting her a fresh one. I did not
want her to enter her new country with a spent
handkerchief because I know, I know what tears await
her there. But let her be spared the knowledge that will come in time.
That one's nerves have never been strong.
They have left-and only the silence remains, the
deep and empty silence in which I can hear the voices
of my
santos
settling into the rooms, of my
loa
telling me stories of what is to come.
After the girls and Dona Laura left with the
American zombie whites, I heard a door
click in the master bedroom, and I went out to the
corridor to check for intruders. All in black,
I saw the
loa
of Don Carlos putting his finger to his lips in
mockery of the last gesture I had seen him make
to me that morning. I answered with a sign and fell
to my knees and watched him leave through the back door
out through the guava orchard. Soon afterwards, I heard
a car start up. And then the deep and empty
silence of the deserted house.
I am to close up the house, and help over at
Dona Carmen's until they go too, and then at
Don Arturo's, who also is to go. Mostly, I
am to tend to this house. Dust, give the rooms an
airing. The others except for Chino have been
dismissed, and I have been entrusted with the keys. From time
to time, Don Victor, when he can get away from his
young girls, will stop by to see to things and give me my
monthly wages.
Now I hear the voices telling me how the
grass will grow tall on the unkempt lawns; how
Dona Laura's hanging orchids will burst their
wire baskets, their frail blossoms eaten
by bugs;
how the birdcages will stand empty, the poor having
poached the
tortolas
and
guineas
that Don Carlos took so much trouble' to raise,-
how the swimming pools will fill with trash and leaves
and dead things. Chino and I will be left behind in these
decaying houses until that day I can see now-when
I shut my eyes-that day the place will be
overrun by
guardias,
smashing windows and carting off the silver and plates,
the pictures and the mirror with the winged babies shooting
arrows, and the chairs with medallions painted on
back, the box that makes music, and the magic one that
gives pictures. They will strip the girls'
shelves of the toys their grandmother brought them back from that
place they were always telling me about with the talcum
powder flowers falling out of the clouds and the buildings that
touch Damballah's sky, a bewitched and unsafe
place where they must now make their lives.
I have said prayers to all the
santos,
to the
loa,
and to the Gran Poder de Dios, visiting each
room, swinging the can of cleaning smoke, driving away
the bad spirits that filled the house this day, and fixing in
my head the different objects and where they belong so that
if any workman sneaks in and steals something I will know
what is gone. In the girls' rooms I remember
each one as a certain heaviness, now in my heart,
now in my shoulders, now in my head or feet; I
feel their losses pile up like dirt
thrown on a box after it has been lowered into the earth.
I see their future, the troublesome life ahead.
They will be haunted by what they do and don't
remember. But they have spirit in them. They will invent what
they need to survive.
They have left, and the house is closed and the air is
blessed. I lock the back door and pass the
maid's room, where I see
Imaculada and Nivea and Milagros packing
to leave at dawn. They do not need my goodbyes. I
go in my own room, the one Dona Laura had
special made for me so I could be with my
san-tos
at peace and not have to bear the insolence and annoyance of
young girls with no faith in the spirits. I clean the
air with incense and light the six candles-one for each
of the girls, and one for Dona Laura, whose diapers
I changed, and one for Don Carlos. And then, I
do what I always do after a hard day, I wash my
face and arms in
agua florida.
I throw out the water, saying the prayer to the
loa
of the night who watch with bright eyes from the darkened
sky. I part the mosquito netting and
climb into my box, arranging myself so that I am
facing up, my hands folded on my waist.
Before sleep, for a few minutes, I try
to accustom my flesh to the burial that is coming. I
reach up for the lid and I pull it down, closing myself
in. In that hot and tight darkness before I lift the
lid back up for air, I shut my eyes and lie
so still that the blood I hear pounding and the heart I hear
knocking could be something that I have forgotten to turn off
in the deserted house.
The Human Body
AVA
Yoyo
B
ack then, we all lived side by side in adjoining
houses on a piece of property which belonged to my
grandparents. Every kid in the family was paired up
with a best-friend cousin. My older sister, Carla, and
my cousin Lucinda, the two oldest cousins, had a
giggly, gossipy girlfrship that made everyone
else feel left put. Sandi had Gisela, whose
pretty ballerina name we all envied. Baby
sister Fifi and my sweet-natured cousin
Carmencita were everyone's favorites, a helpful
little pair, good for errands, turning jump
ropes, and being captured when the large communal yard
we played in was transformed into the old West
by cowboy Mundin and cowgirl me. We were the only
boy-girl pair, and as we grew older, Mami and
Mundfn's mother, Tfa Carmen, encouraged a
separation between us.
But that was hard to effect. In our family compound, there
was no keeping anyone from anyone else. When one
cousin caught the measles or mumps, we were all
quarantined together so as to get that childhood illness
over and done with.
We lived in each other's houses, staying for meals
at whatever table we were closest to when dinner was put
out, heading home only to take our baths and go to bed
(or to get punished, like the time the report reached our
mothers' ears that Yoyo and Mundin had shattered Tia
Mimi's crystal-ball garden decoration with their
slingshots. "That's a lie," we defended ourselves.
"We broke it with the rake, trying to knock down some
guavas!" Or the time that Yoyo and Mundin had
used Lucinda's and Carla's nail polish to paint
blood on their wounds. Or that time Yoyo and
Mundin tied up Fifi and tiny Carmencita to the
water tower near the back of the property and forgot them
there).
Beyond that tower, through a guava orchard Tia Mimi
had planted, lived my grandparents, in a great big
house we went to for Sunday dinners whenever they were
home. Mostly, they were far away in New York
City, where my grandfather had some position in the
United Nations. A kindly, educated old man
with a big white Panama hat who worried mostly
about his digestion, my grandfather entertained no
political ambitions. But the tyrant who had
seized power was jealous of anyone with education and
money, and so Papito was often sent out of the country
on a bogus diplomatic post. When Papito
returned home, the property would be overrun by the
guardia
in "routine searches for your own protection." Always
after those searches, the family would miss silverware,
cigarettes, small change, cuff links, and
earrings left lying about. "Better that than our
lives," my grandfather would console my grandmother, who
wanted to leave the country again immediately.
But what did we kids know of all that back in
those days? The height of violence for us was on the
weekly television Western imported from
Hollywood and dubbed clumsily in Spanish.
Rin Tin Tin barked in sync, but the
cowboys kept talking long after their mouths were
closed. When the gun reports sounded, the villains
already lay in a puddle of blood. Mundin and I
craned our necks forward, wanting to make sure that
the bad guys were really dead. As for the violence around
us, the guards' periodic raids, the uncles whose
faces no longer appeared at the yearly holiday
gatherings, we believed the slogan at station
identification-"God and Trujillo are taking care
of you."
When the UN. post was first conferred on him, my
grandfather balked: he wanted no part of the corrupt
regime. But, my grandmother's tyrannical
constitution brought its own kind of pressure to bear
on him; as she grew older, she was always ill:
aches, migraines, moodiness that only expensive
specialists in the States would know how to cure. The
illnesses-so the underground family gossip went-were
caused by the fact that Mamita had been a very
beautiful young woman, and she had never fully
recovered from losing her looks. My grandfather, whom
everyone called a saint, pampered her in everything and
tolerated her willfulness, so that the saying among the
family was that Papito was so good, "he pees holy
water." Mamita, furious at hearing her
husband canonized at her expense, took her
revenge. She brought home a large jar of holy
water from the cathedral. One Sunday during the
weekly family dinner, my mother caught her
preparing my grandfather's whiskey-
and-water with holy water from the jar. "Damn it!" my
grandmother gloated. "You all say he pees holy
water, well he's been peeing it all right!"
In New York, my grandfather developed stomach
ailments, and from then on all the foods in the world were
divided into those that agreed and those that did not agree with
Papito. My grandmother supervised his menu
religiously, feeling guilty perhaps about earlier
things she had run through his system.
When they did return from their New York City
trips, Mamita brought back duffle bags full
of toys for her grandchildren. Once she brought me a
noisy drum and once a watercolor set and
paintbrushes of different thicknesses for expressing
the grand and fine things in the world. My American
cowgirl outfit was an exact duplicate-except
for the skirt-of Mundin's cowboy one.
My mother disapproved. The outfit would only
encourage my playing with Mundin and the boy cousins.
It was high time I got over my tomboy
phase and started acting like a young lady senorita.
"But it is for girls," I pointed out. "Boys
don't wear skirts." Mamita threw her head
back and laughed. "This one is no fool. She's as
smart as Mimi even if she doesn't get it from
books."
On her latest trip to New York City, my
grandmother had taken her unmarried daughter, Mimi,
along. Mimi was known as "the genius in the family"
because she read books and knew Latin and had attended
an American college for two years before my
grandparents pulled her out because too much education might
spoil her for marriage. The two years seemed to
have done sufficient harm, for at twenty-eight,
Mimi was an "old maid."
"The day Tia Mimi marries, cows will fly,"
we cousins teased. I did not think any less of
my aunt for being single. In fact, as a tomboy,
I had every intention of following in her footsteps. But
Tia Mimi used her free time so poorly, she
might as well have been married. She read and read,
and for breaks, she tended an incredible Eden of a garden,
then read some more.
"She reads tons and tons of books!" My mother
rolled her eyes, for her sister's
accomplishments could only be measured by weight, not
specifics. Poor old maid Tia Mimi. I
hoped soon she'd be able to rope someone into marrying
her. I was not in the least bit interested in acquiring
a new uncle or in wearing a dress for the occasion,
but it would be worth putting up with both inconveniences
to see a cow fly.
As we cousins feared, Mamita came back from
this latest trip with Tia Mimi's idea of fun.
Instead of the usual oversized, cheap, gaudy,
noise-making, spoiling-your-clothes, wasting-your-mind
toys, that duffle bag was lined with school supplies
and flashcards and workbooks and puzzle-size boxes
whose covers announced: mastering arabic numerals, the
wonders OF NATURE, A B C OF
READING, MORE SOUNDS TO SAY.
Mundfn and I exchanged a grim
biting-the-bullet look as our gifts were handed to us.
I got a book of stories in English I could
barely read but with interesting pictures of a girl in
a bra and long slip with a little cap on her head that
had a tassel dangling down. Mundin fared much
better, I thought, with a see-through doll whose top
half
lifted off. Inside were blue and pink and
light brown tubes and coils and odd-shaped
pellets which all fit together like a puzzle. Tfa
Mimi explained the toy was called The Human
Body. She had picked it out for Mundin because
recently, in one of those after-dinner sessions in which
aunts and uncles polled the children on what they were
planning to do with themselves when they grew up, Mundin
had expressed an interest in the medical
profession. Everyone thought that was very good of him and
proved he had a good heart after all, but Mundin
had confided in me later that he was mostly interested in
giving needles and cutting people open on the operating
table.
We examined The Human Body doll while
Tfa Mimi read out loud from a little booklet that
came with it about the different organs and what each was
good for. After we'd learned to put them together so the
heart wasn't tangled in the intestines and the lungs
didn't face the spine, Mundin commenced
grumbling. "A doll, why'd she get me a
stupid doll?"
I disliked them too, but this doll was better than
a reading book, and you could own it with self-respect,
seeing as it was a boy with guts. But I was
surprised that along with his other organs, this
boy didn't have what in those days I called "a
pee-er." I'd seen them on little naked beggar boys
at the market and once on my grandfather, who peed
holy water, when I walked in on him in the
bathroom ministering to his need. But this doll was as
smooth between his legs as a baby girl.
Mamita, who yearned for her youth again, must have
remembered what it was like to be young and dumb and
fun-loving. She had snuck back for us-when
Mimi's back was turned- little nonsense
presents. I got a paddle with a little ball at-
tached on an elastic string, which I whacked and
whammed as if it were my reading book, and Mundin
got a big packet of bright pink modeling clay.
At first, neither of us knew what the packet was.
My cousin's eyes flashed like bright coins. "Bubble
gum!" he cried out. But my grandmother explained that
no, this was a new kind of modeling clay that was easy
to work with. She demonstrated. Pulling off a handful,
she molded a ball, bunched little ears side
by side, dotted two eyes with a bobby pin she took
out of her hair and finished it off with a tiny ball of a
tail. She held her hand out to me.
"Ah," I cried, for in her palm was the likeness
of a tiny rabbit. But Mundin was not
impressed. Bunny or not, he still could not blow
bubbles with it.
All morning, I tagged behind Mundin, begging him
to trade me that packet of clay. But he was not in the
least bit tempted by my reading book, though he did
linger a moment over the pictures of the girl in her
underwear before handing the book back. My paddle ball
was no good to him either. He was liable to ruin his batting
swing by striking at a little jacks ball. "A
girl's ball," he called it.
At that, I drew myself up with wounded pride and
strode off to "our" side of the property. Mundin
followed me through a path in the hedges and then lingered
by my side as I sat on a patio lawn chair
pretending great interest in my book. He paced
by me several times, tossing his big ball of clay from
hand to hand like a baseball. "What nice clay,"
he observed. "Very nice clay." I kept my
eyes on my book.
A strange thing began to happen. I actually
became inter-
ested in those dark, dense paragraphs of print. The
story was not half bad: Once upon a time a
sultan was killing all the girls in his kingdom,
decapitating them, running swords through
them, hanging them. But then, the girl pictured in
bra and slip, the girl with a name that looked like a
misprint-Sche-hera-zade, I sounded it out-th
girl and her sister were captured by the sultan. They
figured out a way to trick him. Just as he was about
to cut off their heads, the sister asked him if they
couldn't just hear one more of Scheherazade's wonderful
stories before they died. The sultan agreed and gave
Scheherazade until dawn. But when the sun
rose, Scheherazade hadn't yet finished her
fascinating story. "I guess it's time to die,"
she interrupted herself. "Too bad. The ending is
really good."
"By Allah," the sultan swore. "You're not
dying until I hear the rest of the story."
A shadow fell across the page I was reading. I
glanced up, keeping my place in the text with an
index finger. I would have given my cousin a dirty
look and gone on with my reading if it hadn't been
for the magnificent creature he had created. He
must have rolled all of the clay into one long pink coil
and looped it once, twice around his shoulders like a
circus performer's boa. Raising his chin, he
passed within inches of me, through the hedges to his side
of the yard. I knew he was ready
to negotiate. I set my book face down on the
chair and followed after him.
But beyond the hedge, Mundin had run into a
captive audience. Fifi and Carmencita watched
while Mundin unwrapped the snake from around his
neck and poked one end at his little sister.
Carmencita screamed and fled indoors. In a
minute, we
could hear Mundin's mother calling out in a punishment
voice, "Edmundo Alejandro de la Tone
Rodriguez!"
Now, Fifi, who could not be long without her other
half, headed towards the house. "I'm telling,"
she announced. Mun-dfn blocked her path. He
tried to bribe her with a handful of his clay.
"No fair!" I hurried towards him, pushing
little Fifi aside. He wouldn't even trade with
me, his best buddy, and here ht was giving it away to a
little sister for nothing.
"Okay, okay." He motioned for me to lower my
voice. He held the snake out to me. "Trade
you."
My heart soared. Here was my desire, within
reach. I made a desperate offer. "I'll give
you whatever you want."
Mundfn considered for a moment. A sly little
smile spread across his lips. It was like a liquid
spilling and staining something it mustn't. He lowered his
voice. "Show me you're a girl."
Stalling, I looked around. My eyes fell on
Fifi, who was following the transaction closely.
"Here?"
He jerked his head, indicating the old coal shed
at the back of the property where Mamita's gardener,
Florentine, kept his tools. Since this part of our
property adjoined the
palacio
of the dictator's daughter and son-in-law, my
grandfather had been reluctant to erect a high wall
lest it be considered a snub. Tfa Mimi's hedge
of bright red ginger shielded us somewhat from the sight of the
eyesore palace and of the dictator strolling of a
Sunday afternoon with his three-year-old grandson in a
minuscule general's uniform. We children were forbidden
to wander this coal shed area ever since the time Mundin and
I had set off a firecracker just as the miniature
general paraded by with his
nursemaids. Papito had to spend the night down
at the SIM headquarters explaining that his
seven-year-old grandson had meant no
harm. Perhaps because it was out of bounds, the coal shed was
Mundin's and my favorite place to scout for
Indians. Behind a sack of fertilizer, we once
discovered a magazine with pictures of naked women
with sly looks on their faces, as if they had just
been caught stealing nail polish or tying people up
to water towers.
I followed Mundin into the shed, turning every so often
and glowering at Fifl, who trailed behind us. At the
door I gave her a little push to go away.
"Let her in," Mundin argued, "or she'll go
tell."
Til tell," Fifi agreed.
It was dark and damp inside. A faint light
fell through the dirty wire-mesh windows. The air
smelled of the black soil brought down from the mountains
to make Tia Mimi's giant ferns grow tall.
In a corner, hoses lay coiled like a family of
dormant snakes.
Fifi and I lined up against a far wall.
Mundin faced us, his hands nervously working the snake
into a rounder and rounder ball. "Go on," he said.
"Take them down."
Immediately, Fifi pulled down her pants and
panties in one wad to her hips, revealing
what she thought was in question, her bellybutton.
But I was older and knew better. In religious
instruction classes, Sor Juana had told how
God clothed Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden
after they had sinned. "Your body is a temple of the
Holy Ghost." At home, the aunts had drawn
the older girls aside and warned us that soon we would
be
Tfayo
senoritas who must guard our bodies like hidden
treasure and not let anyone take advantage. It
was around this time that strong pressure was put on me
to stop playing with Mundin and to join the other young-lady
cousins in their grownup beautician games and boy
gossip inside the house.
"Go on," Mundin ordered impatiently. Fifl
had caught on and lowered her pants and panties
to her ankles. I gave my cousin a defiant
look as I lifted up my cowboy skirt, tucked
it under my chin, and yanked my panties down. I
steeled myself against his intrusive glances. But all
Mundin did was shrug his shoulders with disappointment.
"You're just like dolls," he observed, and divided his
ball of clay equally between Fifi and me.
I was dressed in seconds and lighting
into him. "You promised me the clay!" I cried.
"You let her come along, but you didn't say she'd
be part of the deal."
"Edmundo Alejandro de la Tone
Rodriguez!" We heard Mundin's mother calling
from the back patio of the house. Mundin tried hushing
my angry yelling. He reached over to take back
Fifi's half, but she too started bawling.
"Mundo Alejandro!" The voice had grown louder
and was definitely heading in our direction. Now it was
Mundin's face that was naked with worry. "Come on,
please," he pleaded with me. "Please. I'll
let you have my Human Body doll, okay?"
I tortured him with a long slow moment of consideration,
then nodded. He fled out of the shed in search of his toy.
Fifi sniffled as she patted her half into a
small clay ball. She looked over at the half
in my hands and asked, "How much you got?"
I was beyond fury at this little creature, who had
spoiled my
chances at amassing a fortune of pink clay. I
glared at her. She was still standing in a puddle of
fabric at her ankles. She had a smear of
breakfast egg on her chin and the blurry eyes of
someone who has just stopped crying. I reached
over and pulled her pants back up. She swayed
with the force of my lifting. "How much you got?" she
persisted. In her eyes was a gleam of material
interest I hadn't noticed before.
I held up my half to hers. "Same as you,
silly."
When the door creaked open, we were sure it was
Mundin coming back with The Human Body. But two
adult-sized bodies loomed before us: the gardener's
lean, boney figure, his dusky face topped by a
busted sombrero, and beside him, Mundin's mother, a
short, broad-shouldered woman, peering into the darkness
of the shed.
"I thought I heard them here, Dona,"
Florentino, the gardener, was saying. "I've told
them to stay out. They could hurt themselves. But they won't
listen to me!" Liar, I thought. Mundin and I had
shown him the magazine we'd found, and he'd sworn
us to secrecy and said he would dispose of "that trash"
himself. But it was always an uneasy look he gave us
whenever he was summoned by an adult in the family.
My aunt stepped towards us
be
her broad shoulders gave her an official
appearance, as if she were wearing
epaulettes, and representing all our parents.
"Fifi?" she called in a shocked voice at the
sight of one of the family darlings. Then, with more
conviction, she pronounced my name. She was the
favorite of our auntSj I'd never seen her this
annoyed. "What in heaven's name are you girls doing
here?"
Instantly, Fifi began to cry, so that right
away, my aunt's sus-
picions were confirmed: I had dragged my little
sister against her will to this dirty place. My aunt's
scolding was now addressed solely to me. "What are
you-was
Just then, the door swung open, and my cousin
popped in, the doll held aloft as if it were a
trophy he'd won. It was painful to watch the
transformation on my cousin's face-from his usual
cocky leer to a scared, crumpled, helpless look.
"Edmundo Alejandro!" Tia Carmen reached out
and gave his arm a shake. The Human Body
dropped from his hands, snapped open, and the innards
scattered all over the dirt floor. My aunt
teetered on the pieces as she dragged Mundin by the
arm towards the door. "What are you doing here, young
man?" she yelled.
"We were hidingst" I piped up in his defense,
having had moments to collect my thoughts. Mundm's
eyes blinked with surprise and hope that there might still
be a way out of our fix. "The
guardia-was
I began. I knew that in our family the least
mention of the
guaidia
got instant, unmitigated attention. I must have
sensed the timing was right, for my grandparents had just
returned from their trip, and the dictator's raids
would begin.
My aunt dropped my cousin's arm.
"fGuaidial"
she asked in a little voice. "The
guardia
were here?"
I nodded. "That's why we hid."
My aunt looked over at Florentine. The
gardener was on his knees, picking up the little pieces
of The Human Body. He looked up at me, his
eyes boring a hole in my face as if he were
trying to figure out what I was up to. Maybe he
remembered the magazine, for he cast his lot on our
side. "Those
guaidias,"
he said, then cursed them, "they've tramped through the
ginger hedge so many times, Senorita Mimi has
given up on it."
Smiling feebly, Mundin stood silent just when
I needed him to bring in the cavalry and rescue my
besieged story. His mother knew him well and sensed
we were up to no good, but the
guardia
on the property meant no diddling with minor
infractions: it was everybody to their houses, bureau
tops cleaned off, portable objects battened
down. My aunt ushered us out of that coal shed towards
the big house.
We walked back in a quick single-file, my
cousin leading, his mother right behind him so she "could keep a
close eye" on him, then Fifi, then me, and
finally, Florentine bringing up the rear. In each of
his big worn hands, he carried the transparent
halves of the cracked-open Human Body. We
couldn't spare the time now, my aunt said, to find all
the little pieces in the dark. Later, when Florentine
brought what he had retrieved to the big house in the
hollow of his hat, most of the organs had been chewed
out of shape by the dogs or bent by my
aunt's stepping on them. We couldn't tell the
blue kidneys from bits of lung or the heart from a
pink lobe of brain, and though Mundin and I tried
using the diagram, there was no puzzling the whole
back inside the little man.
Still Lives
TAT AT AT AT AT AT ATAT
AT AT AT AT AT AT AT
ATIIIT AT AT
Sandi
D
ona Charito took the lot of us native children in hand
Saturday mornings nine to twelve to put Art into us
like Jesus into the heathen. She was an Islander only
by her marriage to Don Josd. She herself was
cultured and from some place over in Germany and had
been to the grand museums of Europe to look An in
the face. She had touched with the hand she held up to us
the cool limbs of the marble boys, and those short
blunt fingers had been shot through with artistic talent.
There was no arguing with Dona Charito over the color
of the vermilion coral in the umber depths of the
aquamarine oceans. She grappled the brush from your
hand and showed you how, all the while barking instructions
in her guttural Spanish, which made you
feel that you were mispronouncing your native tongue
because you did not speak it with her heavy German accent.
She had met Don Jos@lin Madrid during a
tour of the Prado. The young man was abroad on a
medical school scholarship, although he had no
intention of becoming a doctor. Every year,
the government awarded European scholarships, each
one earmarked for a certain needed profession, and if you
won one and were poor, you accepted for the chance to eat
three meals a day, one of them hot. Between meals,
Don Jos@lsketched rather than dissected the cadavers
and caught up on his sleep on a bench below a
Gauguin and alongside several Van Goghs in the
Prado. His lodging stipend Don Jose spent
on art supplies.
Three years of sleeping with sunflowers and
starbursts and Tahitian maidens had done what a
decade of Academy training could not do. Don
Jose came into his own: "a high
rococo-primitivist church-sculpture style,"
our Island art critic later proclaimed it.
Great brown angels with halos of hibiscus
blossoms descended from heaven, pulled down by their
enormous gourd breasts and ripe honeydew
bottoms. Don Jose also came upon
Dona Charito one late afternoon in the Prado as she
was copying the garment folds on a Grunewald
martyour. He was impressed with her big white slab
of a body like an unfinished sculpture. She with his
quick sketch of her as Madonna ascending in folds
upon modest folds of garments. They married and
returned to his island home where there wasn't
anything to do-Dona Charito griped in her
gutturals-but get one's work done.
On the outskirts of the capital they built a
storybook cottage, two stories, fretted with
eaves and little porches and window boxes, an
incongruous Alpine look in the tropics. There
they lived for over twenty years out of the swing of
Island social life. They would have been totally
ignored, in fact, had it not been for their strange
house, which parents took their children to see on Sunday
afternoon drives in the countryside. "There's the
Hansel and Gretel house." If the curtains were
drawn back
and a figure peered out of one of the innumerable little
windows like an eyeball trying to find a fitting
socket, the children wailed, "The witch, the witch, there
she is!"
You can imagine my amazement, then, when
one Saturday morning of my eighth year, I was
deposited on the doorstep of that house in the
company, fortunately, of thirteen of my cousins for
our first art lesson. It was really my doing, or rather
my drawings, that had brought us to this brink. Up to this
point, I had been an anonymous de la Torre
child, second daughter to a second daughter of my
grandparents, Don Edmundo Antonio de la
Torre and Dona Yolanda Laura Maria
Rochet de la Torre. I was born to die one
of the innumerable, handsome de la Torre girls,
singled out only when some aunt or other would take
hold of my face in her hand and look intently at
it, exclaiming that my eyes were those of my great-aunt
Graciela, that my mouth was Mamita's exactly!
So, you see, even these minor distinctions felt like
petty theft. Whatever I, Sandra Isabel
Garcia de la Tone, was, personally, was as a
dolly on wheels to roll that illustrious de la
Torre name from social gathering to social gathering.
But then, one Epiphany, boxes of crayons and
tablets of paper were distributed among the children, and it was
discovered that some small, anonymous hand was capable of
capturing likenesses, dotting vision into eyes and
curling hair upon a head so you ached to touch
it.
"Who drew that baby? Whose cat is that?" they
marveled. The artist was discovered at the bottom of the
yard drawing the nursemaid Milagros's boy with a
brown and a gold and a purple crayon. "Gifted"
descended upon my hitherto unremarkable shoulders like
a coat of many colors.
A few days after my gift was discovered,
Milagros cast me
a worried look at dinner. She made a
pretext of cutting up my meat, and as she cut,
she whispered in bite-sized phrases: "Please
... Senorita ... Sandi... you must''' come to
... my house." After the meal, I snuck out to the
forbidden part of the property where the servants"
families lived in their little shanty shacks. Her
boy lay moaning on a cot. Holy candles
flickered on a shelf. Milagros had soaked the
child in holy water after taking him to high mass at the
Cathedral, but still he was feverish and wailed, as if
he were mourning his own death before going.
"Please, please, Senorita Sandi, you must
release him," Milagros pleaded, taking my
drawing off the wall where she'd hung it beside a
crucifix.
I stared at the little brown crayon face in my
hand, then crumpled it up. The baby tossed. I
put the scrap in her little cooking-stove, and then
Milagros and I watched it catch and curl
into yellow flames that looked like orange
pencil-shavings.
"Ashes to ashes, dust to dust," she murmured and
thumped her breasts. The smoke made Baby cough.
He looked up at me with glazed spirit eyes.
By breakfast the next morning, Milagros gave
me the nod. Her baby was cured.
I had less luck with my cats. I drew them
on the front wall of our white house and was put
to scrubbing the stucco for hours, then fed punishment
supper-a small waterbread, the cleavage
unbuttered, and a tall glass of warm milk, green
from the vegetables pureed and blended in it. Afterwards,
I was sent to bed early to contemplate my bad character.
That night, the pantry and supply closet were
overrun with rats. That settled it. The family
decided they had to get me trained in art.
Phone calls were made. Did anyone know of
someone who gave art lessons? Dona Chahto's
name came up. The German lady, who lived in the
two-story chalet at the edge of town.
Don Jos6's wife, that poor woman. No one
had seen or heard of him for a while now. Several
years back, he had been commissioned to sculpt the
statues for the new National Cathedral, but the
dedication had taken place in an empty church.
There were rumors. Don Jose had gone crazy and
been unable to finish this colossal project. His
wife was having to take in students in order to pay the
bills.
As I understand it, at first Dona Charito was
insulted at the de la Tone request: she was an
artiste right-brace
she took on apprentices, not children. But paid in
advance in American dollars, she made an
exception in our case, our case in the plural because
the great female democracy of our blue blood
dictated that all the de la Tone girls be given
equal decorative skills. So, whichever of the
girl cousins could control their bladders for several
hours and would not try to drink the turpentine were
enrolled in Saturday an lessons.
We were fourteen all told that first Saturday when
we approached that house, nervously plucking at the
gravel in the driveway, trying to tear off the door
knob to see if it wasn't a chocolate
almond. But we ended up with nothing but the taste of
real things on our tongues. Then, Milagros
discovered a rope dangling down, she gave it a
tug, and a little cowbell jingled above our heads. We
all gave it a try.
The bell had rung over a dozen times, and I was
going up on my toes for a second turn when the
door flew open with such force, the bell jangled
all by itself. Before us stood a moun-
tain of a woman who looked even more imposing because of the
brightly colored Hawaiian shift she wore.
Exotic crimson flowers and birds poked their
pistils and stamens and bills every which way up and down
her torso. Her face was a pile of white cloud
afire with red hair. She looked like something a child who
had not taken art lessons might draw.
"Roodness, roodness." She growled the words out.
"You!" She pointed at me. "You are the culpable
one!"
I nodded and curtsied. We all curtsied. But
it was more like genuflecting in her presence. Quickly,
Milagros introduced us, handed Dona Charito a
note, and fled back to one of the three black cars
idling in the driveway like great, nervous, snorting
horses. With a pelting of pebbles, they
disappeared down the drive, and we children were left alone
with Dona Charito to learn "the roodiments of art."
She opened the note in her hand, sighing with great
impatience at its folds. We waited quietly
while she read, and our intake of breath when she at
last lifted her head made her gag with laughter.
There were spaces between all her teeth; nothing dared
block that woman's way even when she was smiling.
"Ya, ya,"
she said in a soothing voice. "I am good-hearted for
all this." She waved a hand over our heads,
indicating the world, it seemed like to me.
"Now which of you is the little talent?" She
pronounced a name. She repeated it several times before
I raised my hand warily. "Ha! I might have
guessed so." She smiled, or rather her mouth hooked
up slightly at the corners. It was more as if she were
casting for a smile than that she had caught one.
"Enter, enter," she said, suddenly out of sorts,
"after remov-
ing the shoes, of course." Of course, we
removed and entered. I hoped it was the crust of mud
on my shoes which made her glare at me as I
passed by her.
Our visit began with a tour of the house,
which was more like a museum than a house. Dona
Charito's collected works hung on the walls:
mostly pitchers and bowls of fruit, and violins or
guitars, I couldn't tell the difference, for we
hadn't had music lessons yet. There were two or
three stampeding stallions, manes flaring, next
to stormy seashores in her bedroom. But that was that, no
tarantulas, no mangos, no lizards, no spirits,
no flesh-and-blood people.
When we had finally gone through the whole house, the
older cousins, who were more experienced in lying, said how
much they'd enjoyed the paintings. The rest of us nodded.
"Goot! Coot!" Again, she laughed. I ached
for the lesson to begin so I could draw and color in those
ivory teeth with the purple muscle of the tongue showing
between like some fat beast caged inside her mouth. But
instead, she shepherded us out to an open patio at the
center of the house. We were invited to sit down, but there
were only two chairs, and none of us dared presume
a seat.
A very old woman, whose face was so wrinkled it
looked as if it'd been used as a scratch pad,
came around with a tray of warm, sour lemonade, no
ice, and all the sugar at the bottom, and no
spoons to stir it with. We drank and winced
and waited for the lesson to begin. But Dona Charito
had disappeared into her kitchen, where we could hear her
barking orders to the old woman-about how best
to prepare us, I was sure. We girls eyed each
other, suddenly aware we were frail flesh, fourteen
mouthfuls crowding Dona Charito's patio and
drinking up her lemonade.
Finally, Dona Charito marched us into her studio.
It was a big, light room in a wing of the house,
all the windows thrown open to air out the heavy oil and
turpentine smells. Cane chairs had been
arranged in rows, drawing boards on each seat, a
crate between every two chairs with a big jar of clear
water and several ripped-up pieces of old toweling
on top. (this must have been the "some supplies
included" of the agreement.)
"Find yourself an accommodation," Dona Charito
ordered. There was a scramble for chairs in the back
rows, but I was not one of the lucky ones. I had
hung back at the entrance, cagily I thought,
waiting to see what would happen to the others before I
followed. I ended up the one in the front seat right
under Dona Charito's cavernous cobalt-blue
nostrils.
The lesson began with physical
exercise.
"Mens sana in corpore sano,"
Dona Charito proclaimed. "Amen," we girls
chanted, for the sound of Latin cued us for liturgical
response. Dona Charito scowled.
"One, two. One, two. One, two," she
commanded. We executed jumping jacks. We touched
toes. We flexed our fingers "for the circulation" and
worked ourselves into quite a state of calisthenic frenzy.
At last, the actual art lesson began.
Dona Charito demonstrated with her brush. "The
first step, one must check the bristles for the correct
alignment." Dona Charito dipped her brush into a
jar of water and made all manner of finicky,
tidying up, tapping noises on the brim, like a
nursemaid spooning mouthfuls for a difficult
baby.
Obediently, we did likewise.
She went on in her garbled Spanish we could
barely understand. "The second step is the proper
manner of holding the implement. Not in this way, neither
in this fashion . .." She inspected, chair
by chair. She mocked us all.
It seemed with so much protocol, I would never
get to draw the brilliant and lush and
wild world brimming over inside me. I tried
to keep my mind on the demonstration, but something began
to paw the inside of my drawing arm. It clawed at
the doors of my will, and I had to let it out. I
took my soaking brush in hand, stroked my gold
cake, and a cat streaked out on my paper in one
lightning stroke, whiskers, tail, meow and all!
I breathed a little easier, having gained a
cat-sized space inside myself. Dona Charito's
back was to me. The hummingbird on her Hawaiian
shift plunged its swordlike beak between the mounds of
her bottom. There would be time.
I jiggled my brush in the water jar. The
liquid turned the color of my first urine in the
morning. I stroked my purple cake, and a
bruise-colored cat and then a brown stick cat
darted out.
I was so much to myself as I worked that I did not hear
her warning shout or the slapping of her Island thongs
on the linoleum as she swooped down upon me. Her
crimson nails clawed my sheet off its board and
crumpled it into a ball. "You, you defy me!" she
cried out. Her face had turned the muddy red of my
water jar. She lifted me by the forearm, hurried me
across the room through a door into a dark
parlor, and plunked me down on a stiff
cane-back chair.
Her green eyes glared at me like a cat's.
They were speckled
with brown as if something alive had gotten caught and
fossilized in the irises. "You are not to move
until I have given you leave. Is that
comprehensible?" I bowed my head in submission. From
the corner of my eye, I saw my frightened cousins
obediently practicing their first brush strokes.
Dona Charito filled the doorway a moment with her
large body, then she pulled the door to with a great
slam.
I sat as still as one of her still lives that hung on
the walls around me. I felt her presence in the
dark, hushed, airless room. Her brush was poised
above my head. She could paint over my hair,
blank out my features, make my face no more
than a plate for apples, grapes, plums,
pears, lemons. I dared not move.
But soon, I began to grow restless. I could see
these an lessons were not going to be any fun. It
seemed like everything I enjoyed in the world was turning out
to be wrong. I had recently begun catechism
classes in preparation for my first
communion. The Catholic sisters at Our Lady
Of Perpetual Sorrows Convent School were teaching
me to sort the world like laundry into what was wrong and
right, what was venial, what, if you died in the middle
of enjoying, would send you straight to hell. Before I
could ever get to my life, conscience was arranging it
all like a still life or tableau. But that morning in
Dona Charito's house, I was not ready yet
to pose as one of the model children of the world.
I lifted myself out of that uncomfortable chair and
made my way out into the foyer, where our shoes had
been lined up in a tidy row as if they were about to be
shot for having mud on their soles. Just as I had
found the pair that was mine, I heard a man's
voice, shouting and crying curses from the back of the
house. Normally, I would have run in the
opposite direction, but the curses he was yelling
were ones I was muttering under my breath against Dona
Charito. I was drawn to investigate.
Hie patio was deserted. The sky hung low, a
cloudy canvas with swirls of dark purple and
stormy greys. I crossed a high hibiscus
hedge through an unlatched gate and came upon a muddy
backyard, strewn with logs and stumps like a
carpenter's yard. Ahead stood an
unpainted shed with one high window and one door
clamped shut with a great padlock. The man's shouts
had come from inside, but what drew me now was another
sound, a tap-tap-tapping like us girl cousins
dancing for company. I wanted to find out something
secret about Dona Charito. At my age, that is
what I knew of revenge. What someone kept in a
bedside drawer. What color was someone's underwear.
What did someone look like squatting awkwardly on
a small chamber pot. Then, when that someone fell
upon me with violent discipline, I could undo with a
gaze: I know you, I know you.
The one window was a head above my head. I
rolled a small stump over beneath the glass,
climbed on top, and peered inside. At first, I
could see only my own face reflected back. I
cupped my hands around my eyes and felt the glass
hum with hammering as if it were alive.
Slowly, I made out the objects inside the
shed. Giant, half-formed creatures were coming out of
logs like the ones strewn in the yard behind me. Some
logs had hoofs or claws, tails or horns;
some had the beginnings of a face, a mouth or an eye;
some had hands with fingernails. A sheep's fleece
curled from the bare nutty back of a pale
stump, but the poor thing couldn't
baa without nostrils or a mouth. I put my hand
on my own face to make sure I was intact.
In the middle of the floor, a woman's figure
reclined on two sawhorses, one at her feet,
another at her neck, like my grandmother hanging from the
rafters in her sling when she'd broken her back.
Sharp points came out of her head, the rays of the
Virgin's halo, though they could just as well have been
the horns of a demon woman. Her hair coiled in
complex curls over her shoulders like snakes. Her
head was fully formed, but her face was still a blank.
Tap-tap-tap, the sound came from underneath her.
Shavings of wood and sawdust were falling on the
floor, where just this moment she was being given feet.
Before my very eyes, the pale blond stumps
distinguished themselves into heel and toe; the high arches
made S's of the bottoms of her feet. She could
have stood upon those soles and walked all the way
to Bethlehem.
When his brown head emerged from between her legs, I
believed him at first to be one of his own creations.
He was the same shiny mahogany color as his
half-formed creatures. Around his neck was a
halter, trailing a chain to an iron ring
by the door. -And that was all he wore! He was a
tiny man, my size standing on a log, perfectly
proportioned, except for one thing. I had seen the
stud bulls on my grandfather's ranch during breeding
season and witnessed their spectacles among the cows.
Once, a saucy nursemaid had informed me that, in
embroidered linens with the lights off and the fans going,
my fine de la Torre mother had gotten me no
differently. The little man grew big like those bulls
on the ranch as he worked on the Virgin's feet.
When he was done with that end, he climbed on
top, straddling her, his rattling chain settling behind
him like a great tail. He touched the blank of the
face, tenderly it seemed! planted his chisel at
the forehead and was about to come down on her. I cried out
to warn the woman beneath him.
But it was his elf face which shot up. He looked
about the room, bull's-eyed on my face against the
window, then lunged in my direction. His chain grew
taut. But before he could reach the window, open it up,
and yank me inside, I threw myself off my perch and
landed hard on the ground. I was too terrified
to feel pain, but I heard the little bone in my arm
crack as I hit the ground.
His face appeared at the window. He
studied me, and an inane grin spread across his lips
like a stain. Tap-tap-tap, his hand beat on the
glass as if to hold my attention so he could study
me a little longer, tap-tap-tap. There was no need
for that; my eyes were riveted to his face, and my
mouth opened in a voiceless scream. At last, sound
came to my terror. I screamed and screamed even
after his face had disappeared from the window.
Soon the Art Lesson came running from the
house, Dona Charito leading, cousins on stockinged
feet, the old woman in tow, towards the muddy heap
in the yard. I did not think there would ever come the day
when I would be so pleased to see her.
"What has transpired?" she cried, but her
voice betrayed genuine concern. "Why were you not
supervisioning her?" she said, accusing the old woman,
then turning to me, she accused me: "What have you
committed upon yourself?" She shot a worried glance
down to the bottom of the yard. Tap-tap-tap came
the sounds from inside the shed.
I lifted up my throbbing arm, an offering of broken
bone. She could have my face smeared with tears, my
body soiled with mud like a creature's, the small
wet sobs coming out of my mouth. "I broke it," I
wailed. But I knew it was best not
to confess what I had seen inside her garden shed.
One could not say her face softened, for softness was
not in her repertoire of expressions. She knelt
beside me and reached for my arm. But even her lightest
touch made me wince with pain. "Brrroke?" She
gazed down at me. I now saw that the speckles in
her eyes were splinters of bones, shards of things she
had broken over the years.
Meanwhile, without supervision, my little cousins had
begun balancing on logs, patting mudcakes,
enjoying the holiday of smearing their dresses and
darkening their white socks. A pair of explorer
cousins marched towards the shed with sticks. Dona
Charito stood up and sounded the alarm. "Attention!
Back in the studio this instant, every one!" They
scurried back. The rain began to fall, big
sloppy drops as if someone were shaking out a paint
brush.
She lifted me in her arms. I clung to her as
if I were her own child. I laid my head above where
her heart should be and thought I could hear, as if inside
a conch shell, the dark Atlantic, the waves
thrashing in high winds, the vast plains of central
Europe. She knew the world was a wild place.
She carried a great big brush. She
made pinwheels of the whirling stars that had driven many
a man mad. She could save me from the crazyman in
the shed. I hung on.
But that was the last I ever saw of Dona Charito.
The cars came screeching to a stop in the driveway;
my mother hurried
into the house,-1 began to cry to convince her of the
seriousness of my condition. And as the shock wore off,
I did feel a piercing pain in my arm as if
someone were driving a chisel through the bone. At the
hospital everyone's suspicions were confirmed: my
arm was fractured in three places.
I wore a cast for months, and when it was sawed
off at last, the arm was discovered to have healed
crookedly. There was no help for it but to break the
bone again and reset it. This was considered a major enough
operation that I was given gifts and a little overnight
case to take to the hospital with a lock, the combination
of which was the month, day, and year of my birth. A
mass was said at the Cathedral for my quick recovery,
and I was allowed to have dishes of ice cream between meals
to make me brave and-it was explained to my envious
cousins- "to give her added calcium." I was sure
that I was about to die and that's why everyone was being so kind
to me.
I did not die. And the bone did finally heal,
almost perfectly. But for a year on and off, I
carried my arm in a sling. The cast was signed
by several dozen cousins and aunts and uncles, so I
seemed a composite creation of the de la Torre
family: Gisela de la Tone, Mundin de la
Torre, Carmencita de la Torre, Lucinda
Maria de la Torre. There were notes arid
rhymes. Some of the messages were smart-aleck
remarks and skull-and-bones by cousins who resented
me for getting out of lessons inflicted on them because
of me. For though my own art career had come to a
crashing halt, my girl cousins had to spend their
Saturday mornings drawing circles, then on
to ovals, before finally these ovals were allowed to ripen
into apples. Months later, they graduated
to utensils-a pitcher, a basket, a knife.
The final project was a still life with all these
objects in it as well as a small hunk of
plastic ham. Bitterly, they complained: they hated
art; they did not want to take lessons. But
American dollars, they were informed, did not grow on
Island trees. Art lessons it would be for the next
year.
By Christmas, the lessons were over.
My cast was off. But I was a changed child. Months
of pampering and the ridicule of my cousins had turned
me inward. But now when the world filled me, I could
no longer draw it out. I was sullen and dependent
on my mother's sole attention, tender-hearted, and
whiney: the classic temperament of the artist but without
anything to show for my bad character. I could no longer
draw. My hand had lost its art.
I did have one moment of triumph during that year
of art lessons. Christmas Eve, along with the rest
of the de la Tone children, I was taken to the National
Cathedral for the nativity pageant where the new
creche was to be unveiled. We marched up the aisle
to the altar, which was decked with poinsettias and candles
and curtained off with red and green draperies.
At the stroke of midnight, the bells began
to peal. The side doors of the Cathedral burst open
and out came a procession of priests and nuns and
acolytes, clacking their censers, sending up the
fragrance of myrrh and frankincense the three kings
had brought over with them from the Orient. Two of the
altar boys drew back the curtains-
Before me were the giants I'd seen in Don
Jose's workshed! But these were sacred figures in
rich velvet capes and glittery robes
and shepherds' cloaks beautifully stitched to look
ragged with patches by the Carmelite nuns. Kings and
sheep and
whinnying horses and serving maids and beggar boys
gathered together in the frosty imagined night. God was
going through all the trouble of self-creation to show us how.
The wind was up. Rain splattered on the Cathedral
roof. Far away, a dog barked.
When the altar gate was thrown open, the congregation
surged forward to touch the infant Jesus for good luck
in the coming year. But my eyes were drawn to the face
of the Virgin beside him. I put my hand to my own
face to make sure it was mine. My cheek had the
curve of her cheek; my brows arched like her brows
be
my eyes had been as wide as hers, staring up at the
little man as he knocked on the window of his work-shed.
I reached out my crooked arm and touched the hem of her
royal blue robe and her matching cloth slippers.
Then I too broke into glad tidings and joy to the
world with the crowds of believers around me.
An American Surprise
T AT AT AT AT AT AT AT
AT AT AT AT A TAT AT AT
ATIIIT AT AT
Caila
A
ll morning my sisters and I had waited around the
house, so when our father finally walked in the door, we
raced to him, crying, "Papi! Papi!" Mami
held a finger to her lips. "The baby," she
reminded us, but Papi forgot himself and picked each
one of us up with a shout and gave us a twirl. The
chauffeur waited patiently at the door, a bag
in each hand. "In the study, Mario," Papi
directed. Then he rubbed his hands together and said, "Do
I have a wonderful surprise for my girls!"
"What is it?" we all cried, and I took a
guess because last night at prayers Mami had
promised that one day I would see such a thing.
"Snow?"
"Now, girls, remember," Mami said, and though
I thought she meant Baby Fifi again, she added,
"let Papi relax first." Then Mami whispered
something to Papi in English, and he nodded his head.
"After dinner then," he said. "We'll see who
leaves her plate clean." But when our faces
fell, he rallied us: "stAy,
ay, ay!
What a surprise!"
Sandi and Yoyo exchanged triumphant looks and
skipped off, hand in hand, to tell our cousins next
door that Papi was back with a wonderful surprise
from New York City, where it was winter and the snow
fell from heaven to earth like the Bible's little pieces of
manna bread.
But I was not about to wander off, for supposing, just
supposing, Papi finished his drink and decided
to open his bags right then. As the only one there, I'd
get first pick of whatever the surprise was. If
only he would give me a tiny clue!
But my father was no good for clues. He was
sprawled beside my mother, his arms spread out across the
back of the couch as if he were about to embrace everything
that was his. They were talking in those preoccupied
voices that grownups use when something has gone
wrong.
"Prices have skyrocketed," he was saying. My
mother ran her hand through his hair and said, "My poor
dear," and off they went to their bedroom for a nap before
dinner.
The house grew quiet and lonesome. I lingered by the
coffee table, taking sips from what was left in the
glasses until the ice cubes rattled down to my
mouth, tattletales, and I had
to squeeze my eyes shut with the burn of Papi's
highball. From down the hall came the sound of
tinkling silverware and the scrape of a chair being
settled in its place. Then Gladys, the new
pantry maid, began to sing:
Yo tiro
la cuchara, Yo tiro el tenedor Yo tizo
to'lo'plato' Yme voypa' Nueva Yor'.
I loved to hear Gladys's high, sweet voice
imitating her favorite singers on the radio.
Someday, she was going to be a famous actress,
Gladys said. But my mother said Gladys was only a
country girl who didn't know any better than
to sing popular tunes in the house and wear her kinky
hair in rollers all week long, then comb it out for
Sunday mass in hairdos copied from American
magazines my mother had thrown out.
Gladys's singing stopped abruptly when I
entered the dining room.
"Ay,
Carla, what a scare you gave me, girl!" She
laughed. She was setting the table for dinner, taking
spoons from a bouquet of silverware in her left
hand, executing fancy dance steps before stopping at
each placement and reminding herself, "Spoon
on the right, wife to the knife." In the absence of
sisters or best-friend cousins, Gladys was fun to be
around.
She stood back from the table and cocked her head
critically, then tucked a chair in, gave a
knife a little nudge like someone straightening a
straight picture on the wall. She nodded towards
the back of the house. I followed her through the
pantry, where everything was in readiness for dinner: the
empty platters were out, waiting to be filled; the
serving spoons were lined up like a family, tall
ones first, then littler and littler ones.
In the passageway that connected the maids' room
with the rest of the house, Gladys stopped and held open
the door. "So! Your father is back from New
York!"
I bowed my head with pleasure and entered past
Gladys. The maids' room was dark and hot.
Most of the windows had been shut against the fierce,
midaftemoon Caribbean sun. A hazy, muted
light fell from a high, half-opened window. On a
cane stool, a humming fan turned this way and that.
Slowly, as my eyes adjusted to the dimmer light
of the room, I made out the plastic statuettes and
holy pictures of saints which cluttered the
bureau top. An old mayonnaise jar with a slit
in the bottle cap glinted with the coppery dregs of a
few pennies. As the fan blew upon it, the flame
of the votary candle swayed and flickered. Two of the
three cots were occupied. On one, the old cook,
Chucha, lay, fast asleep, her fat black
face looking pleased at the occasional cool
breeze. On another sat Nivea in her slip,
head bowed, murmuring over a rosary as if she were
finding fault with the beads that dangled between her knees.
As the door clicked shut, Chucha opened one
eye, then closed it. I hoped she had fallen
back to sleep, since the old cook liked
to scold. In fact, old Chucha was growing so
difficult that Mami had decided to build a room
just for her. "You know your mother doesn't like you back
here," Chucha started in. I looked to Gladys
to defend me.
"No harm, Cook," Gladys said cheerfully.
She led me to her cot and patted a spot beside her.
"Dona Laura won't mind today, seeing as Don
Carlos just got in."
"Tell me the hen doesn't peck when the rooster
crows," said Chucha with heavy sarcasm. She let out
a grumpy sigh and turned herself over
to face the wall. Softly, the fan tickled the pink
bottoms of her feet. "I was changing Dona
Laura's diapers before you were born!" she
quarreled. "I should know how the dog bites, how the
bee stings!"
Gladys rolled her eyes at me as if to say,
"Don't mind Cook." Then she said in an
appeasing voice, "You certainly have put your time
in."
"Thirty-two years." Chucha let out a dry
laugh.
"I wonder where I'll be in thirty-two years,"
Gladys mused. A glazed look came across her
face; she smiled. "New York," she said
dreamily and began to sing the refrain from the popular
New York merengue that was on the radio night and
day.
"Dream on," Chucha said. And now she was laughing.
The fat under her uniform jiggled. Her body rocked
back and forth. "Your head is in the clouds, girl.
Watch out for the thunderbolt!"
"Ay,
Cook." Gladys reached over and gently patted the
old woman's feet. She seemed as unfazed
by Chucha's merriment as her bad temper.
"Every night I pray," she said, nodding towards the
makeshift altar. Gladys had once explained
to me how each saint on her bureau had a
specialty. Santa Clara was good for eyesight.
San Martin was a jackpot, good for money. Our
Blessed Mother was good for anything. Now she picked out a
postcard my mother had thrown out a few days before. It
was a photo of a robed woman with a sharp star for a
halo and a torch in her upraised hand. Behind her was a
fairytale city twinkling with Christmas lights.
"This one is a powerful American Virgin."
Gladys handed me the card. "She'll get me
to New York, you'll see."
"Speaking of New York," Nivea began. She
hurried her sign of the cross and kissed the
crucifix on her rosary. Nivea, the latest of
our laundry maids, was "black-black": my mother
always said it twice to darken the color to full,
matching strength. She'd been nicknamed Nivea after
an American face cream her mother used to rub on
her, hoping the milky white applications would lighten
her baby's black skin. The whites of the eyes she
now trained on me were the only place where
the cream magic seemed to have worked. "Show us what
your father brought you."
"'Lucky, lucky," Nivea continued before I
could explain. "These girls are so lucky. What a
father! He doesn't go on a trip that he doesn't
bring back a treasure for them." She enumerated for
Gladys, who had been working for us only a month,
all the treasures
el doctor
had brought his girls. "You know those dancing dolls from
the last time?"
I nodded. One thing you never did was correct
Nivea and risk being called a young
miss-know-it-all. But the dancing dolls were from two
trips back. From the very last trip, the gift had
been tie shoes that were good for our feet, a very bad
choice, but that's what came of my mother's being in
charge of what the surprise would be. Before he left
on each trip, my father always asked, "Mami, what
do the girls need?" Sometimes, as with this trip,
Mami replied, "Not a thing. They're all set for
school." And then, oh then, the surprises were bound
to be wonderful, because as Papi explained to Mami,
"I didn't have the faintest idea what to get them.
So I went to Schwarz, and die salesgirl
suggested..." And off would come the wrappers from three
suggested dancing dolls or three suggested
pairs of roller skates or this very night, three
wonderful surprises!
Gladys took the postcard back and smiled at
it. "What did your father bring you?" she asked.
"Not yet." I let out a sigh, disappointed that
I couldn't oblige their curiosity, for even Chucha
had given half a roll over to hear what the
surprise had been. "We have to eat our supper
first."
"Speaking of supperst" Nivea said, reminding the
two others,
"our work is never done." Then she added, "Night and
day, and what surprise do we get!" She grumbled
on as she braided her kinky black hair
into dozens of tiny braids. Her complaints were
different from Chucha's. They were bitter and snuck up
on you even during the nicest conversations. Chucha's were
a daily litany, sometimes cried out at the dog,
sometimes scolded at the rice kettle she had
to scrub, sometimes mumbled under her breath at Dona
Laura, whose diapers she had changed and whose
actions, therefore, she had a right to criticize.
Supper that night was spaghetti and meatballs,
thank goodness, so it wasn't difficult to clean
one's plate. I spooled the strands on
my fork and rolled my two meatballs around until
I got tired of that, and ate them both. Mami was in
a good mood, letting the baby go off with the
nursemaid, Milagros. Usually Mami insisted
the baby stay, bawling in her high chair, so the
family could have one official meal together like
"civilized people." Tonight the family were spared the
torments of civilization, and of vegetables, for Mami
allowed us to serve ourselves, which I did, just enough peas to go
around my neck in a necklace, had they been
strung together. My sisters and I ate quietly,
listening with wonder to our father's stories about taxis and
bad snowstorms (how could a snowstorm be bad?!)
and the Christmas decorations on the streets. We
felt the blessedness of the weeks ahead: this very night, a
wonderful surprise, and in less than twenty
days, according to the little calendar with doors we opened with
Mami every night at prayers, Christmas. And more
surprises then! We were lucky girls, Nivea
was right, oh so lucky.
Finally, Papi turned to Gladys, who was pushing
the rollaway
cart around the table, clearing off the plates.
"Eh-was
"Gladys," Mami reminded him; after
all, she was the new girl and Papi had not had much
occasion to use her name.
"Gladys," Papi asked. "Would you bring me
my briefcase?"
"In the study," Mami directed. "On the
desk next to the smoking table."
Away Gladys hurried, her slippers
frantically clacking, delighted to be sent on such
an important errand; then she was back, his leather
briefcase cradled like the baby in her arms.
"Good girl!" Papi gave Gladys a bright,
approving smile and snapped open the locks. The
lid flew up like a jack-in-the-box. Inside were
three packages, wrapped up in white tissue
paper, and clustered together in a tender, intimate way
like eggs in a nest. Papi handed one to each of us and
then lifted a tiny box from the side pocket of the
case and smiled at my mother.
"You dear." Mami patted his hand. She opened the
box, pulled out a doll-size perfume bottle,
undid the stopper and smelled. "This is the one all
right! You know, I never did find the old bottle.
But you remembered, even without the name!" She leaned
over and kissed Papi's cheek.
There was the sound of ripping paper and
Papi cheering us on:
"backslash Ay, ay, ay!"
Gladys lingered by her cart, organizing the dirty
dishes, slowly, into neat stacks before rolling them
away to the kitchen where Nivea and Chucha would wash
them. But once we'd torn open the boxes, my
sisters and I gave each other baffled looks.
Mami leaned over and lifted a small cast-iron
statue from Yoyo's box: an old man sat in a
boat looking down at a menacing whale, its jaws
hinged open. Sandi set hers on the table and tried
to look pleased: it also was an iron statue of a
little girl with her jump rope frozen midair. I
didn't even bother to unpack mine. I stared down
at a girl in a blue-and-white nightgown who stared
up at a puffy canopy of clouds. What could the
Schwarz salesgirl have been thinking of this time?
"What on earth are they, Papi?" Mami
asked, picking up Sandi's little jump-roper and
looking into the dotted eyes.
"Guess ..." Papi smiled coyly, then
added, "They're all the craze now. The girl at
Schwarz said she'd sold half a dozen already that
day."
Mami turned the statue over and read out
loud from the underside: "Made in the U.s.a."
Then she noted a keyhole for a tiny key.
"Why"-she looked up at Papi-"it's a bank,
isn't it?"
My father beamed. He took the jump-rope girl
and set her down on the table before him. She stood
poised on her stand) an arc of wire rose over her
head and looped through two needle-holes in her
fists. The polka dots on her dress and the yellow
in her hair had been painted on the iron. "Watch
this," he said, picking a penny from the pile of change
he had rattled on the table. The coin fit in a
groove on a fencepost beside the girl. Papi
pulled a lever at the base of the stand, the lever popped
back in, the coin dropped with a tinkle and tap, and
then all of us-my sisters and Mami and Gladys and
I-blinked, for the girl took a skip and the jump
rope turned a turn.
A sigh of wonder passed around the room.
"Mechanical banks." Papi grinned and
picked another penny from the pile. "So that my
girls start saving their money to take care of us,
Mami"-he gave her a wink-"when we're old and
grey."
"Do mine," Yoyo begged, and Papi
placed a penny in the old
Caila
2,65
man's slotted hands so that the coin looked like the
wheel of a boat. When he pulled the lever, the
sailor turned and the coin rolled into the whale's
mouth.
My sisters and I burst out laughing. "Jonah's
Bank," Marni said, reading the name on the side of the
boat, and then with a look of mischief in her eye,
she said,
"Ay,
Lolo, I wonder what the sisters would say to that?"
Papi's eyebrows rose up. "Wait till you
see this one." He laughed, lifting my bank out of
its box. "Actually, these Jonah and Mary banks
are supposed to encourage the children to save for their
offerings at church. Surely the sisters can't
object to that?" He stood a penny in a slot on
the canopy of cloud and pulled the lever at the base.
The coin disappeared; the young woman, her halo
painted on her hair, rose up towards the clouds,
her arms lifted at the joints of the shoulders. As the
lever popped back in, she descended to the ground.
"Blessed Mother!" Gladys whispered.
Then everyone, including my mother, laughed because we had
forgotten Gladys was still in the room, and there she
was, neck craned forward, her eyes as round and
coppery as those very pennies that had worked such wonders.
Papi held up a coin to her. "Here,
Gladys, give her a spin." But Gladys
backed off and looked shyly at her slippers. "Go
on," my mother encouraged her, and this time she came
forward, wiping her hands on her apron, and took the
coin from my father, who directed her to stand it on the
cloud. Again the coin rattled down, and Mary
ascended for a moment, then fell back to earth until
the next penny saved. Gladys's face was
radiant. She made a slow, dazed sign of the
cross.
"They're like children," my father said tenderly when
Gladys left the room. "Did you see her
face? It's as if she had seen the real thing."
After dinner as my parents gossiped over their
expresses and cigarettes, my sisters and I shared
a disappointed look. I tried giving my Mary a
shake to see if I couldn't get the pennies out and
buy myself a box of Chiclets.
"No, no, no, Carlita! They stay in there
saved." My father patted his pocket.
"Papi keeps the keys."
The banks turned out not to be such a disappointment
after all. They were far better than tie shoes, that was
certain. At school they created a stir among the
other children. The most popular girls in my class
elbowed each other in line to stand next to me. They
invited me to help myself to my favorite red
Lifesaver when it was the next one unwound from its
wrapper in the roll, and even when it wasn't the
next one, several were collapsed to get to it. Sister
read Dona Laura's note explaining that this was an
offertory bank, and everyone got to work a penny in the
cloud and watch the little figure rise. Then Sister,
whose job it was to make a lesson out of everything fun,
told our class how Our Blessed Virgin did not
die but got to take her body to heaven, she was so
good. The class gazed dreamily at the bank,
half-expecting it to shoot up to the ceiling in a
puff of smoke.
I took my bank back home heavy with coins.
My father unlocked the bottom and out came a few
less than a hundred pennies, and he kindly
made up the difference and gave me a big silver
dollar that looked more like jewelry than money. Then
business slowed. Once in a while, my
mother's canasta
friends, who declared they hated pennies in their
purses, disposed of them gladly in the whale's mouth
or the canopy of cloud. Of course, the
jump-rope girl was the favorite, lucky Sandi.
But Gladys protested that the best one of all was the
Mary bank, and she used up all the pennies in her
mayonnaise jar to work the miracle. The pity was it
didn't take quarters.
Eventually, the banks found their way to the toy
shelf along with all our other neglected toys.
Christmas was coming! My mother complained that she would die
of exhaustion-there was so much to be done. Our pageant
costumes had to be sewn. Next door Tia
Isa needed help getting the garden and house ready
for the big Christmas-night bash to be held there this
year on account of this was her first divorced
Christmas, and she should be kept busy. Then the
grape tree had to be cut down at the seashore,
painted white, and hung with silver and gold balls
and showered with tinsel. What a sight! Especially
at night when Mami turned off all the lamps and the
tree blazed with lights, blinking on, off; little
vials like the stoppers of nose drops filled first with
colored water and then drained out.
As the day approached, with fewer and fewer windows
to open on the Advent calendar, my sisters and I were
unruly with excitement, but the grownups seemed too
busy to care. The house was fixed up as for a party.
The giant poinsettias in the courtyard looked like
flaming torches. Nuts and fruits filled the
silver platters at the centerpieces of tables and
sideboard. An elegant soldier took an
almond in his mouth and cracked it open for you, and every
time he did so, my mother sighed and said, "It's a
pity there's no national ballet for the girls."
Gladys was busier than ever, polishing silver,
preparing canapes, fol-
lowing her mistress through the house with vases of calk
lilies and bougainvillea. Instead of the radio
merengues, Gladys now sang an endless
repertoire of Christmas carols:
Glo-oh-oh-oh-oh-ohh-
Oh-oh-oh-oh-ohh-
Ria!
Best of all, Mami seemed not to mind the singing
anymore and once or twice broke out into song
herself in a delicate, quavery soprano:
A Santa Clous le gusta el vino, A
Santa Claus le gusta el ion.,.
And, of course, at the Christmas Eve pageant,
all the children sang:
Adestes fideles
Laetes triumphantes...
I, costumed in a nightgown with a tinsel crown on
my head, was to announce to the poor shepherds tending
their flocks by night:
Do not be afraid .for behold I bring you
Tidings of great joy: The baby Jesus is
born!
But I was so flustered by the lights in my eyes and the
sea of faces in the packed auditorium that I
stumbled over my lines and said, "The baby doll is
born!" instead of "the baby Jesus."
Mami said no one but she, who knew I wanted
a baby doll from the baby Jesus, had caught the
slip.
The next morning the baby doll was under the tree,
a ribbon in her gold hair, and a bottle tied
to her wrist. She cried out "Mama" when I laid
her down and wet her diaper after she drank a
bottle through a little hole in her mouth. And that was not
all! The room was a treasure cave of
gift-wrapped boxes. "Something for everyone,"
Papi said, laughing. And a lot for his
darlings! Each one of us sat at the center of a pile
of ripped paper and empty boxes and gaily
colored toys. Even the baby had her sizable
pile, though she preferred crawling about, ripping up
paper, and putting the shreds in her mouth while poor
Milagros scrambled after, scolding that no charge of
hers was going to choke and die on the very day our
Savior had been born. All the servants were
there, Mario and Chucha and Nivea and Gladys,
opening their gifts carefully so as not to tear the bright
tissue paper. Their faces lit up: a wallet
with a pretty lip of green in the billfold!
That night, although I had got to bed much later than
usual, I couldn't sleep. Even when I shut my
eyes tightly in an honest effort, I saw now my
new doll, now my puzzle or coloring book
loom larger than life in my vision, and I had
to turn on my light and look at my gifts
to make sure they were real. Mami came by briefly
from the noisy party next door in a long, silvery
gown, her pale arms bare, one arm linked to Tio
Mundo's arm. She wagged her finger at me for
having my light on, but she didn't seem to mind
really, and she laughed a lot when my uncle shot
himself dead several times with Yoyo's new
revolver. Much later, Gladys stopped in on her
way back
from helping out next door. "It's past midnight,
young lady!" But instead of turning out the light, she
sat herself down on my bed, took off her
slippers, and began massaging her tired feet.
We could hear the uncles and aunts and Mami and
Papi singing carols in the distance. "It's a gay
old time next door," Gladys said. Dona
Laura had danced a bolero with Don Carlos that was
as good as in the movies. Don Mundo had taken
off his shirt and done a workman's jig on top of the
dining room table. Crazy Dona Isa had been
thrown or threw herself into the swimming pool, you
couldn't be sure.
Gladys's gaze wandered around the room, taking in
the clutter of new toys before alighting fondly on
the shelf. A hopeful look came on her face.
From her pocket she brought out her new wallet,
opened it and withdrew the ten pesos from the fold.
"I'll buy the bank from you," she said in a
hesitant voice.
The bank! Why that old thing was certainly not worth
ten brand new pesos. Not since the gadget had
gotten rusty from its being left out in the
patio overnight. Half the time the spring didn't
work at all. "Why, Gladys, no," I advised
her.
Gladys' gaze faltered. She put the bill
back in the fold and held the wallet out. "I'll
throw in the wallet too."
For a moment, I didn't know how being good worked.
Most times, Mami was around, telling me the rules:
you weren't supposed to give away gifts you received.
Gladys should keep her wallet. But that meant I
should keep that old bank, which to give away would be a
generous deed. Muddled, I looked up at the
shelf.
"You can have it for nothing," I said. Gladys's
mouth dropped
open. The surprised look in the young maid's eyes
confirmed my suspicion that I had done something I
would get punished for if caught, so I added,
"Don't tell, Gladys, okay?" The maid
nodded eagerly as she left the room, the bank
bundled in her apron and tucked under her arm.
But Mami was one to always notice the stain on
one's place-mat at the table or the bruise
accidentally punched on a little cousin's arm or the
empty space on the bedroom toy shelf.
"That reminds me," my mother said a few weeks after
New Year's when the whole household had been
mobilized to look for her reading glasses on top
of her head. was Where's your Mary bank, Carla?"
Just then, as Gladys and I exchanged a guilty
look, Mami found her glasses on her head and
slipped them down on her nose. She looked
curiously from me to Gladys.
"My bank?" I asked, as if I'd never
heard of such a thing.
"Come, come," my mother said, and again she looked at
me and again she looked at Gladys.
"Ah,
that
bank," I answered, and explained that it was "around."
Mami was very patient and said nicely, "Well,
let's find it, shall we?" And when we didn't, of
course, find it anywhere in my room-although I gave
a very credible, thoroughgoing search, looking even
inside my tie shoes-Mami did not persist but
let the matter drop.
That Sunday after the maids went off to early
mass, my mother inspected their quarters while my father
kept watch by a window. Later, I heard my
parents' concerned voices behind the closed
door of the study. Then the door flew open,
and my father came down the hall, followed by my
scowling mother, and just in time, I ducked behind the wicker
chair as they went by. Then they were back again in a
somber single file, my father, a grumbling Chucha,
and my mother bringing up the rear. The same procession
went back and forth with Nivea, then Milagros, and
last of all, with Gladys, her eyes small and
round. The door shut. Voices were raised in the
study. I watched a powderpuff of dust turn
cartwheels in a cross-breeze, hi the comer, a
shred of tinsel glimmered with leftover holiday
cheer. Finally, the door flew open, and Gladys,
sobbing into her upraised skirt, scurried down the
hall.
My heart sank. Trouble was brewing in the big
house. It had already landed on Gladys, and there was
no use hiding, for sooner or later, it would fall
on me too. I rose and lay the doll on the
cushion of the chair caret ignoring its cry of
"Mama."
At the door of the study I paused, overcome as
always by the high shelves packed with books like a
library and the dark wood of the walls and jalousies.
My mother was pacing up and down the room, as
if neither direction would do, and smoking steadily. My
father sat at the edge of his recliner, his hands drooped
over the armrests, his head bowed. On the small
smoking table beside the stand of pipes, I caught sight
of the mechanical bank, swaddled in an apron. I
took a step into the room. But no one noticed me.
"It was a present," I blurted out. My mother
stopped in her tracks and looked at me absently.
"I gave it to her," I confessed.
My father looked up at me, then exchanged a
glance with my mother.
"Next time your father brings you a gift-was my mother
began to scold, but Papi cut her off.
"We're just going to have to get better presents,
Mami," he said, winking at me. "I don't see
the dancing dolls being left out in the rain or given
away to the maid!"
My heart soared at the thought of a better
surprise than any that had come before. What could it
be? I looked about the room expansively for
ideas, anything, anything. My gaze fell on the
bank.
My mother put out her cigarette with little, nervous
jabs. "I guess I better go explain to the
others." She sighed and brushed past me.
The door slammed shut behind her. A rack of
pipes jiggled and rattled. A whole wall of
jalousies collapsed open.
Out in the driveway Mario had pulled the car up
to the entrance. He went inside the house and a little
later came out carrying a cardboard box and several
sacks he placed in the back seat. Gladys
followed, a kerchief on her head to keep her church
hairdo in place, dabbing at her eyes with another
kerchief. She climbed in beside her bags, andwitha
blinding flash from the chrome Mario polished all day
long, the car disappeared down the driveway, past the
guard at the gate, to the world.
"Papi," I cried, turning around. "Don't
make Gladys go away, please."
My father reached out and pulled me towards his lap.
His eyes were dull as if they'd been colored in
brown and smudged. "We can't trust her-was he
began, but then he seemed to think better of explaining
it that way. "It was Gladys who asked to leave, you
know.... She'll get a job in no time. Maybe
even
3.74
end up in New York." But the glum look on his
face did not convince me. He gazed past
me, out the window. The distant sound of a car engine
died into a hum.
His glance fell on the little bank. He smiled and
reached in his pocket, withdrawing pennies. "Give
her a spin," he said.
I was not in the mood for play. But my father seemed
sad too, and it was up to me to cheer him up. I
picked up a penny from his hand, stood it in its slot
and pulled the knob as far as it would go. The coin
dropped with a clink to the bank below. The lever jammed
and would not slide back in its groove. The little
figure rose, her arms swiveled. Then she
stopped, stuck, halfway up, halfway down.
The Drum
V AT AT AT AT AT AT AT
AT AT AT AT AT AT AT AT
ATIIIT AT AT
Yoyo
I
t was a drum Mamita brought back from a trip
to New York, a magnificent drum, its sides
bright red, crisscrossed by gold wire held down
by gold button heads, its top and bottom white.
It had a broad blue strap with a pad for putting
around your neck, the flat top facing up,
for it was a drumroller's drum. Mamita
presented me with it, slipping the strap over my
head, lifting the top up. "Ah," I sighed, for in
the hollow at the center, two drumsticks were stored.
She took them out, tapped the top down, and handed me
the drumsticks. Though her palm had given the first
tap, she would not rob me of the thunder of the first wicked
drumstick drumroll.
Barra-bam, barra-bam, barra-barra-barra
BAM!
"Ah"-my grandmother rolled her eyes-"another
Beethoven!"
"What do you say to your grandmother?" Mami asked
proudly.
"Barrabarrabarrabarrabarrabarra BOOM!
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!"
"Yoyo!" my mother cried out, and I stopped drumming
abruptly so that she yelled out into the suddenly silent
room, "THAT'S QUITE ENOUGH!"
"Laura!" my grandmother said, scowling at her
daughter. "Why are you yelling at the child?"
"Mamita," I said nicely, "thank you."
"Thank you is bare, put butter on my
bread," my mother snapped.
"Thank you very much," I buttered. And
then, I brought down an apocalyptic,
apoplectic, joy-to-the-great-world drum-roll that
made Mamita throw her head back and laugh her
loud, girlish laugh. My mother plugged a finger in
each ear like Hans at the dike, a great flood of
scolding about to come out of her mouth, which I held back
by drumroll until she snatched the sticks out of my
hands and said she would keep them until I was
responsible enough to play my drum like an adult. I
forgot all the promises I had made-before being
given the drum- to improve my character and wailed. I
wanted them back. I wanted them back. Mamita
intervened, and the sticks were put back into the hollow of the
drum, and another promise extracted from me that I
would not play the drum inside the house but only out in
the yard.
My grandmother pulled me towards her. She had
once been, so Mami said, the most beautiful
woman in the country. We called her Mamita,
"little mother," because she was smaller than Mami, with the
delicate face of a girl, brown doe eyes and
white wavy hair in a bun that sometimes fell down
her back in a braid. She looked like a girl who
had had a terrible fright that had turned her hair
white.
Yoyo
a87
"That drum is from a magic store," she said,
consoling me.
"Oh?" my mother said casually, wanting to rejoin the
conversation. "Where did you get it?"
"Schwarz," Manilla said. "F.a.o.
Schwarz." And she promised that one day soon, very
soon, if I behaved myself and didn't drive my
mother insane with my drum and drank my milk down
to the bottom of the glass and brushed up and down instead
of across and didn't get into things like lipsticks and
perfumes and then pretended as I walked through the
house reeking of Paris with a
je-ne-sais-pas
look on my face that I did not know what could have
happened to the little bottle with a bow tie, she, my
favorite grandmother, would take me from the Island to the
United States on an airplane to see Schwarz
and the snow. And at this, I could not help myself, but
having tipped the lid up and kidnapped the
drumsticks, I gave a modest, tippy-tap,
well-behaved drumroll that made Mamita wink and
Mami smile and both agree that in the last five
minutes I had indeed grown up
to responsible drumming.
Ba-bam, ba-bam, I tapped about the yard all
day. That was just like my mother to let me have a drum and then
forbid me to drum it, ba-bam, ba-bam, in any
significantly inspired way. And how could I
judge significance in a drum unless at least one
grownup clapped her hands over her ears? And how
could I judge inspiration unless there was noise in it,
drumming from my ten flexed toes, from my skinny
legs that would someday improve themselves, drumming from the
hips I swayed when I was womanish, and up, up
the rib cage, where the heart sat like a crimson
drum itself among ivory drumsticks, and then the
drumming rose like wings, making my shoulders shrug,
my arms lift, my wrists flick, and down came
the drumsticks, BOOM, BOOM, Barra-ba,
BOOM!
was Yolanda Altagracia, you forget yourself,"
came my mother's curtsy-when-you-say-hello
voice, her puree-of-peas voice. "We have a
fine yard that lots of other children would give their right
arms to play in."
And so it was that for a whole day, I marched in front
of the hibiscus and saluted the bougainvillea and
drummed until the mockingbirds were ready
to fly off to the United States of America in the
middle of December. All that week and the next and the
next and the next, I drummed up and down, up and
down, up and down the yard. Then, with the terrible luck
of such toys, I lost one drumstick. And then, our
crazy aunt, Tia Isa, who was unhappily
married to an American and always on the point of
divorcing and who, therefore, never looked where she was
going, plopped herself down on my second
drumstick and snapped it in two and glued it with
glue that would, she promised, hold a house together.
But I never believed glue could hold drumsticks
together, however good it was on china cups and porcelain
shepherdesses and all such grownup truck that was
always finding its shattering way to the floor in my
presence. And so it was that in less than a month's
time, I had a drum but no drumsticks. Mamita
and Mami and Tia Isa, not understanding that drumsticks
are the only kind of drumsticks that will do on a
drum, suggested pencils or the handles of wooden
spoons used for making cake batter. I tried them
all, but the sound was not the same, and the joy went out of
drumming. I took to wearing the strap across my chest,
the drum riding my hips like a desperado's
revolver.
In those days we had a fine yard that lots of other
children
would
have given their right arms to play in. Beyond the laundry
room at the back of the house, the lawns rolled
away, so smooth and closely mown, the ground itself
seemed green rather than planted with grass. At the
back of the property was a shed where the coal bins were
kept for the laundry fires for boiling the white
clothes, a shed known to be haunted. In those days it
was an adventure to go into the coal shed and stare down the
big barrels of coal bricks and breathe in coal
dust; to then pluck up your courage and turn an
empty barrel over, spilling the Devil out;
to race all the way to the back of the house; to scramble
up the back steps to the laundry room where one-eyed
Pila would cock her head and say, "What? Is the
Devil after you, child?"
That old laundry maid, Pila, was the
strangest maid we had ever had, for it seemed
everything that could go wrong with her had gone wrong. She
had lost an eye, her left, let's see, or was
it her right? You never knew. The two eyes took
turns staring fixedly at the sky. But what's an
eye? A little bit of jelly with a
duplicate beside it. Who'd notice a missing eye
in the face of her incredible skin. She had splashes
of pinkish white all up and down her dark brown
arms and legs. The face itself had been spared: it was
uniformly brown, the brown skin so smooth that it
looked as if it'd been ironed with a hot iron.
Only around the eyes where the tip of the iron couldn't
get to were there wrinkles-from smiles. She was
Haitian, though obviously, only half. The
light-skinned Dominican maids feared her, for
Haiti was synonymous with voodoo. She was a
curiosity and I, a curious child, I, with the
promise of snow in my
heart and the wonder of the world seizing me with such fury
at times that I had to touch forbidden china cups or
throttle a little cousin or pet a dog's head so
strenously that he looked as if he were coming out of the
birth canal, I wanted nothing more then to get a
temporary injunction from politeness and have a good long
stare at her speckled arms.
As I was saying, the coal shed was haunted. And it
was Pila's doing. There was a time-before Pila-when the
coal shed was just a coal shed. But then Pila came,
and in addition to five paper sacks of her things, she
brought her story devils and story ghosts and
her trances and her being mounted by spirits and her "I see
a nimbus about your head, beware of water today!"
All these spirits, she claimed, lived in the coal
shed. And so it was that by the time of my drum, the coal
shed was haunted. By the time of the drum, I should also
add, Pila was gone. She had lasted a couple of
months at the compound before disappearing one Sunday. The
house was thrown into mathematical turmoil. The
linens were counted. The clothes inventoried. The other
maids and Mami put two and two together, and the sum
was that now for almost two months we had been living with a
thief!
"Pity for her," my mother said, "she won't get
far with that skin."
Sure enough, the next day she was picked up by the
police. By then, having consulted her American
education, my mother decided it would be cruel to press
charges. The poor woman didn't know any
better. Let her and her ten shopping bags go. And
she was gone, leaving behind a whole coal shed of
devils and goblins, so that by the time of my missing
drumsticks, to dare enter the coal shed was quite literally
to be a daredevil.
The day I wandered into the coal shed looking for trouble
I had the drum on my hip and two little
dowels for drumsticks. Pila had been gone
several weeks. In I went, pushing the door back
so the hinges cried out, devils, their thumbs crushed,
their pointed noses tweezed. I stood a moment in
the doorway, blinded by the shaft of light that struck
like a knife blade into the darkness. Slowly, I
made out the barrels, eight or nine standing, a
couple tipped over. I crunched coal bricks
underfoot. I dared further. I stood at the end of the
shaft of light, and then one toe braved the darkness.
My heart was pounding. I leaned over the first upright
barrel and peered in, half expecting to look down
a long well into the Devil's eye. Nothing but
coal bricks at the half mark. In the next
barrel, coal bricks at the quarter mark, then
dregs of coal bricks. The new laundry
maid, Nivea, was using them up inefficiently,
without a system.
The last barrel was tucked behind the others. I
looked down at a full barrel. Suddenly, there was
a little stirring, a whimper, a little pink mouth opened in
a yawn; so pink and moist was that mouth it seemed
impossible in a coal barrel. The mouth closed,
another one opened, a cry came out of it, "Meow."
Two or three mouths wailed in chorus,
"Meow, meow." Immediately, I singled out one who had
four little white paws and a white spot between its ears,
fully dressed, so it looked, as opposed to the
others who were careless and had lost their shoes and their
caps. This one, a curiosity, was the one I intended
for me.
But I did not touch her or pet her or touch or
pet any of the brothers and sisters. At that time, my
natural lore was comprised of a few rules, all
of which I confused so that when the
situation presented itself, I knew there was something to be
done, but I did not quite know what exactly. If it
was lightning, I was either to stand under a tree or in an
open field so the tree wouldn't fall on me. If
I found a nest of nightingale eggs or chicks,
I was not to disturb it or the mother would abandon her roost
and the chicks would die. But was it chickens or
kittens? I wasn't sure. Vaguely, too,
I remembered a horror story about a mother cat being
vicious and scratching out the eyes of someone who had
threatened her babies. I did not want to find out the
hard way the
dos
and
don'ts
of kittens. I needed, therefore, to question an adult who
might know everything, and between lightning and chickens, I
could slip in a question on kittens. But whom could I
ask who would know about kittens? And whom could I ask
who would be sure to know about kittens but would not
suspect my secret? Mami in the house was bad
on both counts,- Mamita wouldn't know anything about
the outdoors, which she was allergic to, she claimed,
which was why she had to go on shopping trips to New
York, where, she said, the outdoors wasn't really
out doors, a riddle I promised myself someday
to solve; Tia Isa was no good to ask either: she'd
laugh her whooping laugh and scurry around and peep and
meow, pretending to be a chicken and nightingale and
kitten, all in one, until the whole extended
family would guess what I was up to; and Pila,
who knew about everything on this earth and out of it, Pila
was, of course, gone.
Unsure of what to do but knowing if I stayed there
debating my options, the mother cat might well come and
blind me, I left the coal shack and lingered about the
yard. In my exasperation, I lifted the lid of my
drum and was about to take my
dowels out and drum a racket louder than I had
ever drummed, when I saw a man I had
never seen, crossing our yard towards the orchard of
wild orange trees that stretched beyond our fence. A
dog accompanied him, or rather, the dog ran ahead,
slowed, sniffed the ground, gave a bark, chased a
butterfly, and in a dozen other ways, made the world
safe for the man. The man was a dashing, handsome,
storybook kind of man, dressed in jodhpurs and
riding boots. He had a goatee and a mustache, which
made me wonder if he weren't the Devil, and a
way of addressing the dog with affection and humor, which
convinced me he wasn't. He had not seen me and was
passing not more than ten yards away when the dog
twisted about, raised his nose, and curled one paw
up. The man stopped and looked up at the sky. It
was then I noticed he was carrying a gun on a
shoulder strap, the barrel pointed up. The dog
began to bark.
"There, there," the man said, addressing the dog.
"Where are your manners?" Then he turned to me. The
ends of his mustache lifted in a smile. "Good day,
little miss. I hope Kashtanka did not frighten
you?"
I eyed the man, his gun, the dog now poking his
nose where dogs always poke their noses on a
person. With a child's instinct, I knew the
man was safe, for occasionally, strangers my grandfather
had met on his travels came for a visit and wandered
over to our property. But I was uneasy that a dog
was loose and there were kittens, seven mouthfuls,
nearby in the shed.
The dog sniffed my drum. "I say," the man
said, "what have you got there?"
"It's a drum," I said, bringing it round from my
hip to in front
of me, "but I've lost the drumsticks." And I
lifted the top and tilted the drum so he could look
in at the two dowels. "I've got to use those, and the
sound is not the same."
"It never is," the man agreed, to his great
credit. He crouched down beside his dog. His riding
boots creaked.
"About drumsticks," I said. And then, because I was
sure I had found my man, I hurried my questions:
"Can you play with a brand-new kitten or will the mother
abandon it or blind you if she catches you and by when can you
take a kitten from its mother to keep as a pet?"
"Well!" the man said, looking at me closely
but with friendliness in his eyes. "About drumsticks, eh?
Well, just as your drumsticks belong inside your
drum, and dowels will not do, so a kitten
belongs with its mother, and no one else will do."
"But pets," I protested, glancing at
Kashtanka.
The man's hand fell fondly on his dog's
head. "Pets are a different matter, to be sure.
But the little creature must be old enough to survive without
its mother," he concluded, rising.
Just as he was rising, Kashtanka made a dash
forward. The man snatched his collar and pulled the
dog back so his front paws were still treading the air.
"Drumsticks, eh?" The man laughed at something
over my shoulder. I turned around and saw a large
black mother cat, her teats pink and sagging, slinking
into the coal shed. Kashtanka barked excitedly. The
cat scurried in.
"Your manners, Kashtanka!" the man said,
giving the collar a jerk. The dog heeled, whining
quietly to show that his feelings were hurt. "About
drumsticks," the man said, winking one eye so long
I wondered if, like Pila's, his wasn't real
either. "While a kitten is still a suckling, it
cannot, now can it, be taken from its mother to be a pet?"
I had to agree.
"To take it away Would be ..." The man
considered his words. "To take it away would be
a violation of its natural right to live." The man
saw I did not understand him. "It would die," he said
plainly. "So you must wait," he added, petting my
hair so that Kashtanka gave me a jealous look,
"you must wait until that kitten can make it on its
own. Don't you agree?"
I looked over my shoulder at the coal shed.
The man went on. "I would say in a week, and
that's one, two, three is Sunday, seven is
Thursday, by Thursday I should think a kitten, even
if born this very day, a kitten might be ready
to belong to a fine young lady with a drum."
I drummed my fingers on my drum, one,
three, five, seven is Thursday.
"That's a fine drum," the man observed, "and a
good, sturdy strap."
Just then, a flock of birds flew overhead. The
dog looked up and let out an excited yelp.
"We're off," the man announced. And off they
were, before I could count to seven, down the lawn to a
creaky wicker gate, through which they entered the orchard and
disappeared among the trees.
One, two, ba-bam, three is Sunday. The
mother cat had gone into the coal shed to feed her
kittens. Ba-bam. Mine was the best
dressed one. I would name her Schwarz. Seven is
less than the fingers of two hands, but seven was seven
more than now, and as if to confirm my addition, I
heard the thunderous report of the man's gun in the
distance. There was a clatter from the
coal shed and, moments later, the mother cat dashed
across the yard, flushed out by the noise of the gun.
While the coast was clear, I decided to re-enter
the coal shed and tell Schwarz of our plan for next
Thursday. I walked in, looked over the brim
of the coal barrel. Schwarz was meowing in terror.
"There, there," I comforted her. But there, there would not do.
I picked her up and whispered in the sweet little
seashell ears, "There, there." I brought her down
to my shoulder and burped her and put her in the crook
of my arm and tickled her belly and poked my fingers
under her arms, and she meowed that that was fun, that I should
do it again. And there, there, I did.
It was Friday and it would not be Thursday for another
seven days. I had every intention of putting her back.
But then, call it coincidence, call it plot, the
man's gun went off again in the distance, and I
realized he was in the orange grove hunting.
Hunting! Some of the birds he was aiming at this very
moment were mothers with worms for their babies.
I did not know at the time the word for saying one thing and
doing another, but I did know plenty of practicing
adults, and I was not going to be gypped of a
well-dressed kitten by a moral imperative
given to me by an exception to the rule!
Out of the shed I strode with Schwarz clapped on
my shoulder. She meowed out goodbyes to her brothers and
sisters as we crossed the yard. Suddenly, I
stopped. Up ahead sat the fat black mother cat
enjoying the warm sun on her fat black back,
licking a paw as if there were cake batter on it.
She had not seen me, but I knew it was a matter of
moments before Schwarz's meowing reached her. In that
instant the vague memory sharp-
ened. I saw a cat slinking forward. I saw it
crouch to spring. I saw it leap and land on a
woman's face. I saw its claws rip out an
eye. I saw that jelly spill-and I remembered
suddenly with shocking clarity Pila recounting how she
had lost her eye!
Slowly, my left hand patting Schwarz
to encourage a hiatus in her meowing, I worked the
top off my drum with my right hand. Schwarz's mother
put down one paw, lifted another, and began
to lick it. I picked Schwarz up, and in
one deft movement, plunked her down into the hollow
of my drum, grabbing up my drumsticks in
exchange, slapping the lid down, shifting the drum
in front of me, and then as the mother cat jerked around and
caught sight of me and then of my drum, which was meowing
furiously, I brought down a loud, distracting
drum-roll:
BARRA BARRA BARRA BOOM BOOM!
(meow!)
barra boom! (meow! Meow!) BOOM BOOM
BOOM (meow!)
I marched straight towards the house, lifting my
knees high like a majorette. The baffled mother cat
looked at me uncertainly and followed at a
cautious distance, meowing. The drum meowed back.
I drummed madly. My heart was drumming. And
then, as the cat gained on me, I broke into a mad
run, scrambled up the back steps, slammed shut
the back door that led through the laundry room to the
house. A deep sink full of soaking whites
told that the new washerwoman had stepped out only
for a moment. Backed against the wall, I spied out
the window. The mother cat prowled in front of the door.
She stopped, smelled the ground.
"Schwarz!" she meowed.
Schwarz meowed feverishly from inside the drum.
The mother glanced all about her, at the door, at the
sky, but she could not find where the sound was coming from.
"Schwarz! Where are you?" she meowed.
"THUNDER, THUNDER!" The gun thundered. The mother cat
bolted away.
I picked the meowing kitten out of my drum. Its
little human face winced with meows. I detested the
accusing sound of meow. I wanted to dunk it into the
sink and make its meowing stop. Instead, I lifted
the screen and threw the meowing ball out the window. I
heard it land with a thud, saw it moments later,
wobbling out from under the shadow of the house, meowing and
stumbling forward. There was no sign of the mother cat.
I must have gone to that window about a dozen times that
morning and watched the wounded kitten make a broken
progress across the lawn. I was tempted to go and
deposit it at the door of the coal shed, but there was
no leaving the house, my mother's orders. Some crazy
fellow was shooting illegally in the orange grove.
The police had been called. Sometime before lunch the
shooting stopped. I looked out the window of the
laundry room. The kitten was gone.
That night I woke with a start in the claws of a
bad dream I could not remember. In those
days we slept with mosquito nets strung from four
poles at each comer of the bed. Everything in the dark
assumed a spectral appearance through white netting:
a ghostly bureau, a ghostly toybox, ghostly
curtains.
That night, sitting at the foot of my bed, poking
her face in so that the gauzy net was molded to her
features like an awful death mask, was the black mother
cat. I froze with terror. She glared at me with
fluorescent eyes. She let out soft, moaning
meows. I closed my eyes and opened them again. She
sat there, wailing until dawn. Then I saw her
rise, leap, and land with a thud on the floor and trot
down the hall and down the stairs. The next morning
in tears I told my mother of the cat that haunted my
bedside all night. "Impossible," she said and
to prove it, we went through the house, inspecting
latches and windows. "Possible," Mami said when
we found a window left opened in the laundry
room. That new washerwoman, Nivea, was almost as
bad as the old one, Mami complained.
Impossibly the next night-for the windows were
locked and the house secure as an arsenal-the cat
appeared again at my bedside. And night after night
after that. Sometimes she meowed. Sometimes she just
stared. Sometimes I cried out and woke the house up.
"A phase," Mami said, comworried. "A
perfectly normal nightmare phase." The phase
lasted. I gave the drum away to a little cousin,
throwing the ghost cat into the bargain. But the cat came
back, on and off, for years.
Then we moved to the United States. The cat
disappeared altogether. I saw snow. I solved the
riddle of an outdoors made mostly of concrete in
New York. My grandmother grew so old she could not
remember who she was. I went away to school.
I read books. You understand I am collapsing all
time now so that it fits in what's left in the hollow
of my story? I began to write, the story of
Pila, the story of my grandmother. I never saw
Schwarz again. The man with the goatee and Kashtanka
29dg
vanished from the face of creation. I grew up, a
curious woman, a woman of story ghosts and story
devils, a woman prone to bad dreams and bad
insomnia. There are still times I wake up at three
o'clock in the morning and peer into the darkness. At that hour
and in that loneliness, I hear her, a black furred
thing lurking in the corners of my life, her magenta
mouth opening, wailing over some violation that
lies at the center of my art.