How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents (29 page)

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

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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?