How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents Read Free

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 Carmen'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