Almost a Woman : A Memoir (9780306821110) Read Free Page A

supper. Mami never left me alone with him.
    Tata’s two sisters lived within a few blocks of our apartment. Tía Chia and her daughters—Margot, Gury, and La Muda—were close to my mother. They came dragging bags full of clothes and shoes they no longer wore. Gury, the youngest, was slender and soft-spoken. Her clothes fit me, although Mami said that the straight skirts, sheer blouses, and high heels Gury favored were not appropriate for a girl my age.
    Her sister La Muda was deaf and mute. According to Mami, La Muda had been born with perfect hearing but as a toddler she got sick, and when she recovered, she was deaf.
    â€œThen why don’t they call her La Sorda ...” I began, and Mami warned I was disrespectful.
    La Muda read lips. If we spoke with our faces away from her, she shook our shoulders and made us repeat what we’d said while her eyes focused on our mouths. We quickly learned to interpret her language, a dance of gestures enhanced with hums, gurgles, and grunts that didn’t seem to come from her throat but from a deeper source, inside her belly. Her hands were large, well manicured,
bedecked with numerous gold and stone rings that shimmered as her fingers flew here and there.
    La Muda liked us to read the paper to her. That is, Mami or Don Julio read it aloud, while we kids acted out the news. La Muda’s eyes darted from Mami’s lips to our portrayals of that day’s murders, car crashes, and results at the track, enacted race by race around the kitchen table. Her laugh, frequent and contagious, was deep but flat, as if, unable to hear herself laugh, she couldn’t get the tone.
    Her boyfriend was someone we’d known in Puerto Rico. He was a thin, laconic, dark-haired man who dressed in a beige suit. When we first met him, my six sisters and brothers and I were afraid of him, but he took a deck of cards from his pocket, performed some tricks, and after that we called him Luigi, which sounded like the perfect name for a magician.
    Tata’s other sister, Titi Ana, had two daughters who were closer to my age than La Muda, Margot, or Gury. Alma was a year older, and Corazón a year younger. They spoke English to each other, and when they talked to us or to their mother, their Spanish was halting and accented. Mami said they were Americanized. The way she pronounced the word Americanized, it sounded like a terrible thing, to be avoided at all costs, another algo to be added to the list of “somethings” outside our door.
    When they walked into the apartment, my sisters and brother submitted to hugs and kisses from people who were strangers to them but who introduced themselves as Cousin this or Auntie that. Delsa was on the verge of tears. Norma held on to Alicia as if afraid they’d get lost in the confusion. Hector circulated among the men, followed by Raymond, who chattered about Paco’s exploits in the ring or about Don Julio’s generosity with pocket change.
    Luigi, his usually solemn face lit by the hint of a smile, performed new tricks, and the kids relaxed somewhat, as if this reminder of our life in Puerto Rico were enough to dissolve their fears. Margot had brought a portable record player and records,
which played full blast in the kitchen, while in the front room the television was tuned to the afternoon horror movie. The kids shuffled from room to room in a daze, overdosed on the Twinkies, Yodels, and potato chips Don Julio had brought for us.
    The welcome party lasted into the night. Don Julio and Jalisco went to the bodega several times for more beer, and Tío Chico found a liquor store and came back with jugs of Gallo wine. Mami ran from the adults to the kids, reminding the men that there were children in the house, that they should stop drinking.
    One by one the relatives left, and the kids once more surrendered to hugs and kisses. Our pockets jingled with pennies that the aunts, uncles, and cousins had handed out as if to pay