How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents

by Julia Alvarez

  “Doña, excuse our dropping in on you,” the man is saying with false politeness that seems as if it is being wastefully squeezed from a tube. “We need to ask Doctor Garcia a few questions, and at the clínica, they told us he was home. Your boy”—Boy! Chino is over fifty—“he says el doctor is not home yet, so we will wait until he shows up. Surely, he is on his way—” The guard looks up at the sky, shielding his eyes: the sun is dead center above him, noon, time for dinner, time for every man to sit down at his table and break bread and say grace to God and Trujillo for the plenty the country is enjoying.

  “By all means, wait for him, but please not under this hot sun.” Laura switches into her grand manner. The grand manner will usually disarm these poor lackeys from the countryside, who have joined the SIM, most of them, in order to put money in their pockets, food and rum in their stomachs, and guns at their hips. But deep down, they are still boys in rags bringing down coconuts for el patrón when he visits his fincas with his family on Sundays.

  “You must come in and have something cold to drink.”

  The man bows his head, grateful. But no, he must stay put, orders. Laura promises to send him down a cold beer and drives up to the house. She wonders if Carmen has been able to get hold of Victor. At the first sign of trouble, Victor said, get in touch, code phrase is tennis shoes. He is good for his word. It wasn’t his fault the State Department chickened out of the plot they had him organize. And he has promised to get the men out safely. All but Fernando, of course. Pobrecito ending up the way he did, hanging himself by his belt in his cell to keep from giving out the others’ names under the tortures Trujillo’s henchmen were administering. Fernando, a month in his grave, San judas protect us all.

  At the door she directs Imaculada to unload the groceries and be sure to take the man down at the gate a Presidente, the common beer they all like. Then she crosses herself and enters the house. In the living room, the two men rise to greet her; Fifi runs to her in tears; Yoyo is right behind, all eyes, looking frightened. Laura is raising her girls American style, reading all the new literature, so she knows she shouldn’t have beaten Yoyo that time the girl gave them such a scare. But you lose your head in this crazy hellhole, you do, and different rules apply. Now, for instance, she is thinking of doing something wild and mad, sinking down in a swoon the way women used to in old movies when they wanted to distract attention from some trouble spot, unbuttoning her blouse and offering the men pleasure if they’ll let her husband and babies escape.

  “Gentlemen, please,” Laura says, urging them to sit down, and then she eyeballs the kids to leave the room. They all do, except Yoyo and Fifi, who hold on to either side of her, not saying a word.

  “Is there some problem?” Laura begins.

  “We just have a few questions to ask Don Carlos. Are you expecting him for the noon meal?”

  At this moment, a way to delay these men comes to her. Vic is on his way, she hopes, and he’ll know how to handle this mess.

  “My husband had a tennis game today with Victor Hubbard.” She says the name slowly so that it will register. “The game probably ran a little late. Make yourselves at home, please. My house, your house,” she says, reciting the traditional Dominican welcome.

  She excuses herself a moment to prepare a tray of little snacks they urge her not to trouble herself to prepare. In the pantry, Chucha is alone since Imaculada has gone off to serve the guard his beer. The old black woman and the young mis-tress exchange looks. “Don Carlos,” Chucha mouths, “in the bedroom.” Laura nods. She knows now where he is, and al-though it spooks her that he is within a few feet of these men, sealed in the secret compartment, she is also grateful that he is so close by she could almost reach out and touch him.

  Back in the living room, she serves the men a tray of fried plantain chips and peanuts and casabe and pours each one a Presidente in the cheap glasses she keeps for servants. Seeing the men eye the plates, she remembers the story that Trujillo forces his cooks to taste his food before he eats. Laura breaks off a piece of casabe for Fifi on one side of her, and another for Yoyo. Then she herself takes a handful of peanuts and puts them, like a schoolgirl, one by one in her mouth. The men reach out their hands and eat.

  When the phone rings at Doña Tatica’s, she feels the sound deep inside her sore belly. Bad news, she thinks. Candelario, be at my side. She picks the phone up as if it had claws, and announces in a small voice, so unlike hers, “Buenos días, El Paraíso, para servirle.”

  The voice on the other end is the American’s secretary, a no-nonsense, too-much-schooling-in-her-voice woman who does not return Tatica’s buenos dias. Embassy business, the voice snaps, “Please call Don Vic to the phone.” Tatica echoes the secretary’s snippiness: “I cannot disturb him.” But the voice gloats back, “Urgente,” and Tatica must obey.

  She heads across the courtyard towards casita #6. Large enough already inside her broad, caramel-colored body, Tatica renders herself dramatically larger by always dressing in red, a promesa she has made to her santo, Candelario, so he will cure her of the horrible burning in her gut. The doctor went in and cut out some of her stomach and all of her woman machinery, but Candelario stayed, filling that empty space with spirit. Now whenever trouble is coming, Tatica feels a glimmer of the old burning in the centipede trail on her belly. Something pretty bad is on its way because with each step Tatica takes, the pain roils in her gut, trouble coming to full term.

  Under the amapola tree, the yardboy is lounging with the American’s chauffeur. When he sees her, quick he busies himself clipping a sorry-looking hedge. The chauffeur calls out, Buenos dias, doña Tatica, and tips his cap at Tatica who lifts her head high above his riffraff. Casita #6, Don Victor’s regular cabin, is straight ahead. The air conditioner is going. Tatica will have to pound hard with strength she does not have so her knock will be heard.

  At the door she pauses. Candelario, she pleads as she lifts her hand to knock, for the burning has spread. “Urgente,” she calls out, meaning her own condition now, for her whole body feels bathed in a burning pain as if her flame-colored dress were itself on fire.

  A goddamn bang comes at the goddamn door. “Teléfono, urgente, señor Hubbard.” Vic does not lose a beat, but calls out, “Un minuto,” and finishes first. He shakes his head at the sweet giggling thing and says, “Excusez, por favor.” Half the time he doesn’t know whether he’s using his CIA crash course in Spanish or his prep school Latin or his college French. But dicks and dollars are what talk in El Paraiso anyway.

  When he first got to this little hot spot, Vic didn’t know how hot it would be. Immediately, he looked up his old classmate Mundo, who comes from one of those old wealthy families who send their kids to the States to prep school, and the boys on to college. Old buddy introduced him around till he knew every firebrand among the upper-class fellas the State Department wanted him to groom for revolution. Fellas got him fixed up with Tatica, who has kept him in the little girls he likes, hot little numbers, dark and sweet like the little cups of cafecito so full of goddam caffeine and Island sugar you’re shaking half the day.

  Vic dresses quickly, and as soon as his clothes are on, he is all business. “Hasta luego,” he says, waving to the little girl sitting up and pouting prettily. “Behave yourself,” he jokes. Naughtily, she lifts her little chin. Really, they are so cute.

  He opens the door unto a crumbling Tatica, two hundred pounds going limp in his arms. He looks up and sees over her shoulder his chauffeur and the yardboy rushing to his aid. Be-hind him, above the air conditioner’s roar, he can hear the little girl shout Doña Tatica’s name, and as if summoned back from the hellhole of her pain, Tatica’s eyes roll up, her mouth parts. “Teléfono, urgente, Embajada,” she whispers to Don Vic, and he takes off, leaving her to collapse into the arms of her own riffraff.

  Vic goes first to Mundo’s house, since the call came from Carmen, and finds her in the patio with endless kiddies having their noon meal at the big table. Carmen rushes to
wards him. “Gracias a Dios, Vic,” she says for hello. A sweetheart, this little lady, not bad legs either. Unfortunately, the nuns got to her young, and Vic has nodded himself silly several times to catechism lessons disguised as dinner conversations. He wonders if it shows all over him where he’s been, and grins, thinking back on the sweet little number not much older than some of the little sirens sitting around the table now. “Tio Vic, Tio Vic,” they call out. Honestly, lash me to a lamppost, he thinks.

  Quick look around the table. No sign of Mundo. Maybe he’s had to take refuge in the temporary holding closet Vic advised him and the others to construct? He smiles comfortingly at Carmen, whose smile back is a grimace of fear. “In the study,” she directs him.

  The kids keep calling for Tío Vic to come over to the lunch table they are not allowed to leave. He waves at them and says, “Carry on, troops,” as he goes by. Over his shoulder, he hears Carmen call after him, “Have you eaten, Victor?” These Latin women, even when the bullets are flying and the bombs are falling, they want to make sure you have a full stomach, your shirt is ironed, your handkerchief is fresh. It’s what makes the nice girls from polite society great hostesses, and the girls at Tatica’s such obliging lovers.

  He taps on the door, says his name, waits, says it again, a little louder this time since the air conditioner is going. The door opens eerily as if by itself since no one admits him. He enters, the door closes behind him, a gun’s safety clicks off. “Whoa, fellas,” he calls out, lifting his hands to show he’s their unarmed, honest-to-god buddy. The jalousies have all been closed, and the men are spread around the room as if assuming lookout posts. Mundo comes out from behind the door, and Fidelio, the nervous one, stands by the bookshelves, pulling books in and out as if they were levers that might work their safe escape out of this frightening moment. Mateo squats, as if lighting a fire. Standing by different windows are the rest of the guys. Jesus, they look like a bunch of scared rabbits.

  “Thought you might be SIM,” Mundo says, explaining his withdrawn gun. He pulls a chair out for his buddy. The chairs in his study bear the logo from their alma mater, Yale, which Vic notes the family mispronounces as jail.

  “What’s up?” Vic asks in his heavily-accented Spanish.

  “Trouble,” says Mundo. “With a capital T.”

  Vic nods. “We’re on,” he says to the group. “Operation Zapatos Tenis.” Then he does what he has always done ever since back in Indiana as a boy the shit first began hitting fan: he cracks his knuckles and grins.

  Carla and Sandi are having their lunch at Tía Carmen’s house, which is not breaking the rules because, number one, Mami told them to SCRAM with her widened eyes, and number two, the rule is that unless you’re grounded, you can eat at any aunt’s house if you let Mami know first, which goes back to number one, that Mami told them to SCRAM, and it is already almost an hour since they should have eaten back home.

  Something is fishy like when Mami walks in on them and they quick hide what they don’t want her to see, and she clips her nose together with her fingers and says, “I smell a rat.” Fishy is Tio Mundo arriving for lunch, then not even sitting down but going straight to his study, and then all the uncles coming like there’s going to be a party or a big family decision about Mamita’s drinking or about Papito’s businesses while he’s away. Tia Carmen jumps up each time the doorbell rings, and when she returns, she asks them the same question she’s just asked them—“So you were playing Statues and the two men came?” Mundín is jabbering away about the gun he got to hold. Every time he mentions it, Carla can see a shiver go through Tia’s body like when there’s a draft up at the house in the mountains and all the aunts wear pretty shawls. Today, though, it’s so hot, the kids got to go in the pool in the morning right before Statues, and Tia says if they’re very good, they might be able to go in again after their digestion is completed. Twice in the pool in one day and Tia has the shivers in this heat. Something very fishy is going on.

  Tia rings the little silver bell, and Adela comes out and clears all the plates, and brings dessert, which always includes the Russell Stover box with the painted-on bow. When the box goes around, you have to figure out by eyesight alone which one you think will have the nut inside or caramel or coconut, hoping that you won’t be surprised when you bite in by some squishy center you want to spit out.

  The Russell Stover box is pretty low because no one has been to the United States lately to buy chocolates. Papito and Mamita left right after Christmas as usual but haven’t come back. And it’s August already. Mami says that’s because of Mamita’s health, and having to see specialists, but Carla has heard whispers that Papito has resigned his United Nations post and so is not very well liked by the government right now. Every once in a while guardias roar in on their jeeps, jump out, and surround Papito’s house, and then Chino always comes running and tells Mami, who calls Tio Vic to tell him to come pick up his tennis shoes. Carla has never seen Tio Vic bring any kind of shoes to the house but the pockmarked ones he wears. He always comes in one of those limousines Carla’s only seen at weddings and when Trujillo goes by in a motorcade. Tio Vic talks to the head guardia and gives him some money, and they all climb back in their jeeps and roar away. It’s really kind of neat, like a movie. But Mami says they’re not to tell their friends about it. “No flies fly into a closed mouth,” she explains when Carla asks, “Why can’t we tell?”

  The Russell Stover box has gone all the way around back to Tia, who takes out one of the little papery molds, and sighs when the kids argue about who will get it. Tio Vic comes out, grinning, and ruffles Mundín’s hair, puts his hand on Tia’s shoulder and asks the whole table, “So who wants to go to New York? Who wants to see the Empire State Building?” Tio Vic always talks to them in English so that they get practice. “How about the Statue of Liberty?”

  At first, the cousins look around at each other, not wanting to embarrass themselves by calling out, “Me! Me!” and then having Tio Vic cry, “April Fool!” But tentatively Carla, and then Sandi, and then Lucinda raise their hands. Like a chain reaction, hand after hand goes up, some still holding Russell Stover chocolates. “Me, me, I want to go, I want to go!” Tio Vic lifts up his hands, palms out, to keep their voices down. When they are all quiet, waiting for him to pick the winners, he looks down at Tia Carmen beside him and says, “How about it, Carmen? Wanna go?” And the kids all chant, “Yes, Tia, yes!” Carla, too, until she notes that her aunt’s hands are shaking as she fits the lid on the empty Russell Stover box.

  Laura is terrified she is going to say something she mustn’t. These two thugs have been quizzing her for half an hour. Thank God for Yoyo and Fifi hanging on her, whining. She makes a big deal of asking them what they want, of getting them to recite for the company, and trying to get sullen little Fifi to smile for the obnoxious fat man.

  Finally—what a relief! There’s Vic crossing the lawn with Carla and Sandi on each hand. The two men turn and, almost reflexively, their hands travel to their holsters. Their gesture reminds her of a man fondling his genitals. It might be this vague sexuality behind the violence around her that has turned Laura off lovemaking all these months.

  “Victor!” she calls out, and then in a quieter voice she cues the men as if she does not want them to embarrass themselves by not knowing who this important personage is. “Victor Hub-bard, consul at the Embajada Americana. Excuse me, seņores.” She comes down the patio and gives Vic a little peck on the cheek, whispering as she does, “I’ve told them he’s been playing tennis with you.” Vic gives her the slightest nod, all the while grinning as if his teeth were on review.

  Effusively, Laura greets Carla and Sandi. “My darlings, my sweet Cuquitas, have you eaten?” They nod, watching her closely, and she sees with a twinge of pain that they are quickly picking up the national language of a police state: every word, every gesture, a possible mine field, watch what you say, look where you go.

  With the men, Victor is jovial and back-patting, asking t
wice for their names, as if he means to pass on a compliment or a complaint. The men shift hams, nervous for the first time, Laura notes gleefully. “The doctor, we have come to ask him a few questions, but he seems to have disappeared.”

  “Not at all,” Vic corrects them. “We were just playing tennis. He’ll be home any minute.” The men sit up, alert. Vic goes on to say that if there is some problem, perhaps he can straighten things out. After all, the doctor is a personal friend. Laura watches their reactions as Vic tells them news that is news to her. The doctor has been granted a fellowship at a hospital in the United States, and he, Victor, has just heard the family’s papers have received clearence from the head of Immigration. So, why would the good doctor get into any trouble.

  So, Laura thinks. So the papers have cleared and we are leaving. Now everything she sees sharpens as if through the lens of loss—the orchids in their hanging straw baskets, the row of apothecary jars Carlos has found for her in old druggists’ throughout the countryside, the rich light shafts swarming with a golden pollen. She will miss this glorious light warming the inside of her skin and jeweling the trees, the grass, the lily pond beyond the hedge. She thinks of her ancestors, those fair-skinned Conquistadores arriving in this new world, not knowing that the gold they sought was this blazing light. And look at what they started, Laura thinks, looking up and seeing gold flash in the mouth of one of the guardias as it spreads open in a scared smile.

  This morning when the fag at the corner sold them their lotería tickets, he said, “Watch yourselves, the flames of your santos burn just above your heads. The hand of God descends and some are lifted up, but some”—he looked from Pupo to Checo—“some are cast away.” Pupo took heed and crossed himself, but Checo twisted the fag’s arm behind his back and threatened to give his manhood the hand of God. It scares Pupo the meanness that comes out of Checo’s mouth, as if they weren’t both campesino cousins, ear-twisted to church on Sundays by mothers who raised them on faith and whatever grew in their little plot of dirt.