How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents

The old aunts lounge in the white wicker armchairs, flipping open their fans, snapping them shut. Except that more of them are dressed in the greys and blacks of widowhood, the aunts seem little changed since five years ago when Yolanda was last on the Island.
Sitting among the aunts in the less comfortable dining chairs, the cousins are flashes of color in turquoise jumpsuits and tight jersey dresses.
The cake is on its own table, the little cousins clustered around it, arguing over who will get what slice. When their squabbles reach a certain mother-annoying level, they are called away by their nursemaids, who sit on stools at the far end of the patio, a phalanx of starched white uniforms.
Before anyone has turned to greet her in the entryway, Yolanda sees herself as they will, shabby in a black cotton skirt and jersey top, sandals on her feet, her wild black hair held back with a hairband. Like a missionary, her cousins will say, like one of those Peace Corps girls who have let themselves go so as to do dubious good in the world.
A maid peeks out of the pantry into the hall. She is a skinny brown woman in the black uniform of the kitchen help. Her head is covered with tiny braids coiled into rounds and pinned down with bobby pins. “Doña Carmen,” she calls to Yolanda’s hostess aunt, “there are no matches. Justo went to Doña Lucinda’s to get some.”
“Por Dios, Iluminada,” Tía Carmen scolds, “you’ve had all day.”
The maid stares down at the interlaced hands she holds before her, a gesture that Yolanda remembers seeing illustrated in a book for Renaissance actors. These clasped hands were on a page of classic gestures. The gesture of pleading, the caption had read. Held against the breast, next to the heart, the same interlaced hands were those of a lover who pleadeth for mercy from his beloved.
The gathering spots Yolanda. Her cousin Lucinda leads a song of greeting with an off-key chorus of little cousins. “Here she comes, Miss America!” Yolanda clasps her brow and groans melodramatically as expected. The chorus labors through the first phrase and then rushes forward with hugs, kisses, and— from a couple of the boys-fake karate kicks.
“You look terrible,” Lucinda says. “Too thin, and the hair needs a cut. Nothing personal.” She is the cousin who has never minced her words. In her designer pantsuit and frosted, blown-out hair, Lucinda looks like a Dominican magazine model, a look that has always made Yolanda think of call girls.
“Light the candles, light the candles!” the little cousins say, taking up a chant. Tía Carmen lifts her open hands to heaven, a gesture she no
doubt picked up from one of her priest friends. “The girl forgot the matches.”
“The help! Every day worse,” Tía Flor confides to Yolanda, flashing her famous smile. The cousins refer to their Tía Flor as “the politician.” She is capable of that smile no matter the circumstances. Once, the story goes, during who-knows-which revolution, a radical young uncle and his wife showed up at Tía Flor’s in the middle of the night wanting asylum. Tía Flor greeted them at the door with the smile and “How delightful of you to stop by!”
“Let me tell you about the latest at my house,” Tía Flor goes on. “The chauffeur was driving me to my novena yesterday. Suddenly the car jerks forward and dies, right there on the street. I’m alarmed, you know, the way things are, a big car stalled in the middle of the university barrio. I say, César, what can it be? He scratches his head. I don’t know, Doña Flor. A nice man stops to help, checks it all-and says, Why, señora, you’re out of gas. Out of gas! Can you imagine?” Tía 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 shows surprise at the cake in the shape of the Island. “Mami thought of it,” Lucinda’s little girl explains, beaming.
“We’re going to light candles all over,” 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. Tía 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.
“Five years,” Tía Carmen says, sighing. “We’re going to have to really spoil her this time”-Tía 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,” Tía 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, “¡En español!” 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.