How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents

by Julia Alvarez

  “Very nice,” Sandi’s mother said a little stiffly.

  Dr. Fanning hissed at his wife. “That’s enough, Sylvia.”

  As the show progressed, Sandi could 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 spot-light, 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 with-drew 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, but 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 Garcías. 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 seňoritas. 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 in English, but her voice was heavily accented like Dr. García’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 Garcías 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 maracas 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—” 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 aske
d 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.

  III

  1960—1956

  The Blood of the Conquistadores

  Mami, Papi, the Four Girls

  I

  Carlos 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 Vic has smuggled in for him—just in case—is wrapped snugly in an extra shirt, 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 Tío Vic 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 Mundín, the only boy here, where his father is. Mundín explains his father is probably still at the office, and so the man asks him where his mother is, and Mundín 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 realize a moment later that he is in the wrong when Mundín 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 back 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, “Doña 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, “Doña, hay visita.”

  Laura plays along, controlling the tremor of her voice. “Yes, company.” She stops and motions for Chino to come to the car. “! Quehay, Chino¡”

  “They are looking for Don Carlos,” Chino says tensely. He 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 Doña 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.