How the García Girls Lost Their Accents
by Julia Alvarez

 

“Mami,” Fifi whispered, “what’s pastolone?”

“Pastelón, Cuca.” Mami explained it was a casserole like Chucha used to make back home with rice and ground beef. “It’s very good. I know you girls will like it.” Then she gave them a pointed look they understood to mean, they must like it.

“Yes,” they said nicely when Dr. Fanning asked if pastelon was indeed what they wanted.

“Yes, what?” Mami coached.

“Yes, thank you,” they chorused. The doctor laughed, then winked knowingly at them.

Their orders in and fresh drinks on the table, the grownups fell into the steady drone of adult conversation. Now and again the changed cadence of a story coming through made Sandi lean forward and listen. Otherwise, she sat quietly, playing with sugar packets until her mother made her stop. She watched the different tables around theirs. All the other guests were white and spoke in low, unexcited voices. Americans, for sure. They could have eaten anywhere, Sandi thought, and yet they had come to a Spanish place for dinner. La Bruja was wrong. Spanish was something other people paid to be around.

Her eye fell on a young waiter whose job seemed to be to pour water into the goblets at each table when they ran low. Every time she caught his eye, she would glance away embarrassed, but with boredom she grew bolder. She commenced a little flirtation; he smiled, and each time she smiled back, he approached with his silver pitcher to refill her water glass. Her mother noticed and said in coded scolding, “Their well is going to run dry.”

In fact, Sandi had drunk so much water that, she explained quietly to Mami, she was going to have to go to the toilet. Her mother cast her another of her angry looks. They had been cautioned against making any demands tonight during dinner. Sandi squirmed at her seat, unwilling to go, unless she could be granted a smiling permission.

Papi offered to accompany her. “I could use the men’s room myself.” Mrs. Fanning also stood up and said she could stand to leave behind a little something. Dr. Fanning gave her a warning look, not too different from the one Sandi’s mother had given her.

The three of them trooped to the back of the restaurant where the maitred’ had directed, and down a narrow flight of stairs, lit gloomily by little lamps hung in archways. In the poorly lit basement Mrs. Fanning squinted at the writing on the two doors. “Damas?. Caballeros?.” Sandi checked an impulse to correct the American lady’s pronunciation. “Hey there, Carlos, you’re going to have to translate for me so I don’t end up in the wrong room with you!” Mrs. Fanning rolled her hips in a droll way like someone trying to keep up a Hula-Hoop.

Papi looked down at his feet. Sandi had noticed before that around American women he was not himself. He rounded his shoulders and was stiffly well-mannered, like a servant. “Sandi will show you,” he said, putting his daughter between himself and Mrs. Fanning, who laughed at his discomfort. “Go ahead then, sugar pie.” Sandi held open the door marked DAMAS for the American lady. As Mrs. Fanning turned to follow, she leaned towards Sandi’s father and brushed her lips on his.

Sandi didn’t know whether to stand there foolishly or dash in and let the door fall on this uncomfortable moment. Like her father, she looked down at her feet, and waited for the giggling lady to sweep by her. Even in the dimly lit room, Sandi could see her father’s face darken with color.

Sandi and Mrs. Fanning found themselves in a pretty little parlor with a couch and lamps and a stack of perfumed towels. Sandi spied the stalls in an adjoining room and hurried into one, releasing her bladder. Relieved, she now felt the full and shocking weight of what she had just witnessed. A married American woman kissing her father!

As she let herself out of her stall, she heard Mrs. Fanning still active in hers. Quickly, she finished hitching up her silly tights, then swished her hands under the faucet, beginning to dry them on her dress, but remembering after an initial swipe, the towels. She took one from the stack, wiped her hands and tapped at her face as she had seen Mami do with the powder puff. Looking at herself in the mirror, she was surprised to find a pretty girl looking back at her. It was a girl who could pass as American, with soft blue eyes and fair skin, looks that were traced back to a great-great grandmother from Sweden at every family gathering. She lifted her bangs—her face was delicate like a ballerina’s. It struck her impersonally as if it were a judgment someone else was delivering, someone American and important, like Dr. Fanning: she was pretty. She had heard it said before, of course, but the compliment was always a group compliment to all the sisters, so Sandi thought this was a politeness friends of her parents said about daughters just as they tended to say “They’re so big” or “They’re so smart” about sons. Being pretty, she would not have to go back to where she came from. Pretty spoke both languages. Pretty belonged in this country to spite La Bruja. As she studied herself, the stall door behind her opened in the mirror. Sandi let her bangs fall and rushed out of the room.

Her father was waiting in the anteroom, pacing nervously, his hands worrying the change in his pocket. “Where is she?” he whispered.

Sandi pointed back in the room with her chin.

“That woman is drunk,” he whispered, crouching down beside Sandi. “But I can’t insult her, imagine, our one chance in this country.” He spoke in the serious, hushed voice he had used with Mami those last few days in the old country. “Por favor, Sandi, you’re a big girl now. Not a word of this to your mother. You know how she is these days.”

Sandi eyed him. This was the first time her father had ever asked her to do something sneaky. Before she had time to respond, the bathroom door swung open. Her father stood up. Mrs. Fanning called out, “Why, here you are, sugar!”

“Yes, here we are!” her father said in a too cheerful voice. “And we must better get back to the table before they send the marines!” He smiled archly, as if he had just thought up this quip he had been making for weeks.

Mrs. Fanning threw her head back and laughed. “Oh, Carlos!”

Her father joined the American lady’s phony laughter, then stopped abruptly when he noticed Sandi’s eyes on him. “What are you waiting for?” He spoke in a stern voice, nodding towards the stairs. Sandi glanced away, hurt. Mrs. Fanning laughed again and led the way up the narrow winding stairs. It was like coming up out of a dungeon, Sandi decided. She would tell her sisters this and make them wish they had gone to the bathroom as well, though truly, Sandi wished she had herself never strayed from the table. She wouldn’t have seen what she could not now hope to forget.

At the table, the young waiter tucked the chair in for her. He was still lovely, his skin so smooth and of a rich olive color, his hands long and slender like those of angels in illustrations, holding their choir books. But this man could very well lean forward just as Mrs. Fanning had done downstairs. He could try to kiss her, Sandi, on the lips. She did not let her glance fall in his direction again.

Instead, she studied the Fannings intently for clues as to their mysterious behavior. One thing she noticed was that Mrs. Fanning drank a lot of wine, and each time she nodded to the waiter to fill her glass, Dr. Fanning said something to her out of the corner of his mouth. At one point when the waiter leaned toward her empty glass, Dr. Fanning covered it with his hand. “That’s enough,” he snapped, and quickly the waiter leaned away again.

“What a party fart,” Mrs. Fanning observed, loud enough for the table to hear, though “fart” was not a word the girls recognized. Mami instantly began to fuss at Sandi and her sisters, pretending that the exchange of angry whispering between the Fannings was not taking place. But little Fifi could not be distracted from the scene at the end of the table: she stared wide-eyed at the bickering Fannings, and then over at Mami with a serious look of oncoming tears. Mami winked at her, and smiled a high-watt smile to reassure the little girl that these Americans need not be taken seriously.

Blessedly, their platters of food appeared, borne by a cortege of waiters, directed by the busybody maître d’. The tension dispelled as the two couples took small, pensive bites of their different servings. Compliments and evaluations erupted all around the table. Sandi found most of the things on her plate inedible. But there was a generous decorative lettuce leaf under which much of the goopy meat and greasy rice could be tucked away.

Tonight she felt beyond either of her parents: she could tell that they were small people compared to these Fannings. She had herself witnessed a scene whose disclosure could cause trouble. What did she care if her parents demanded that she eat all of her pastelón. She would say, just as an American girl might, “I don’t wanna. You can’t make me. This is a free country.”

“Sandi, look!” It was her father, trying to befriend her. He was pointing towards the stage where the lights were dimming. Six señoritas in long, fitted dresses with flaring skirts and castanets in their hands flounced onto the stage. The guitarist came on and strummed a summoning tune. Beautiful men in toreador outfits joined their ladies. They stamped their feet for hello, and the ladies stamped back, Hello! Six and six, damas and caballeros, they went through a complicated series of steps, the women’s castanets clacking a teasing beat, the men echoing their partners’ moves with sultry struts, and foot stomps. These were not the dainty and chaste twirls and curtseys of the ballerinas at Lincoln Center. These women looked, well—Sandi knew no other way to put it—they looked as if they wanted to take their clothes off in front of the men.

Yoyo and Fifi were closest to the stage, but Mami let Carla and Sandi pull their chairs around in a cluster and join their sisters. The dancers clapped and strutted, tossing their heads boldly like horses. Sandi’s heart soared. This wild and beautiful dance came from people like her, Spanish people, who danced the strange, disquieting joy that sometimes made Sandi squeeze Fifi’s hand hard until she cried or bullfight Yoyo with a towel until both girls fell in a giggling, exhausted heap on the floor that made La Bruja beat her ceiling with a broom handle.

“The girls are having such fun,” she heard her mother confide to Mrs. Fanning.

“Me too,” the American lady observed. “These guys are something else. Hey, Lori, watch that one’s tight tights.”

“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 asked 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.