How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents Read Online Free
Author: Julia Álvarez
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 compound 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 refreshing 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
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 compound 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 refreshing 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
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