How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents (3 page)

But, of course, La Romana has

already been spoken for by Tia Flor's little goddaughter, who suffers from asthma and shouldn't be contradicted. Lucinda, whose voice is hoarse with disciplining the rowdy crew, hands Yolanda the knife.

"It's your cake, Yoyo. You decide."

The road up through the foothills is just wide enough for two small cars, and so at each curve, as she has been instructed, Yolanda slows and taps her horn. Just past one bad curve, a small shrine has been erected, La Virgen surrounded by three concrete crosses recently whitewashed.

She pulls the Datsun over and enjoys her first solitary moment since her arrival. Every compound outing has been hosted by one gracious aunt or another, presenting the landscape as if it were a floor show mounted for her niece's appreciation.

All around her are the foothills, a dark enormous green, the sky more a brightness than a color. A breeze blows through the palms below, rustling their branches, so they whisper like voices.

Here and there a braid of smoke rises up from a hillside-a

campesino

and his family living out their solitary life. This is what she has been missing all these years without really knowing that she has been missing it. Standing here in the quiet, she believes she has never felt at home in the States, never.

When she first hears it, she thinks it is her own motor she has forgotten to turn off, but the sound grows into a pained roar, as if the engine were falling apart. Yolanda makes out an undertow of men's voices. Quickly, she gets into the car, locks the door, and pulls back onto the road, hugging her right side.

A bus comes lurching around the curve, obscuring her view.

Belching exhaust, the driver saluting or warning with a series of blasts on his horn, it is an old army bus, the official name brushed over with paint that doesn't quite match. The passengers see her only at the last moment, and all up and down her side of the bus, men poke out of the windows, hooting and yelling, holding out bottles and beckoning to her. She speeds up and leaves them behind, the quiet, well-oiled Datsun climbing easily up the snaky highway.

The radio is all static-like the sound of the crunching metal of a car; the faint, blurry voice on the airwaves her own, trapped inside a wreck, calling for help. In English or Spanish? she wonders. That poet she met at Luanda's party the night before argued that no matter how much of it one lost, in the midst of some profound emotion, one would revert to one's mother tongue. He put Yolanda through a series of situations. What language, he asked, looking pointedly into her eyes, did she love in?

The hills begin to plane out into a high plateau, and the road widens. Left and right, roadside stands begin appearing. Yolanda keeps an eye out for guavas. Piled high on wooden stands are fruits Yolanda hasn't seen in years: pinkish-yellow mangoes, and tamarind pods oozing their rich sap, and small cashew fruits strung on a rope to keep them from bruising each other. Strips of meat, buzzing with flies, hang from the windows of butcher stalls. It is hard to believe the poverty the radio commentators keep talking about. There seems to be plenty here to eat-except for guavas.

The fruit stands behind her now, Yolanda approaches a compound very like her family's in the capital. A high concrete wall continues for about a quarter of a mile. A guard rises to his post beyond an iron grillwork gate. He seems-glimpsed through the flowering bars-a man locked in a strangely gorgeous prison. Beyond him up the shady driveway is a three-story country house, a wide verandah all the way around it. Parked at the door is a chocolate brown Mercedes. Perhaps the owners have come up to their country home to avoid the troubles in the capital. They are probably relatives. The dozen rich families have intermarried so many times that family trees are tangles of roots. In fact, her aunts have given her a list of names of uncles and aunts and cousins she might call on along her way. By each name is a capsule description of what Yolanda might remember of that relative:

the one with the kidney bean swimming pool, the fat one, the one who was an ambassador.

Before she even left the compound, Yolanda put the list away in the glove compartment. She is going to be just fine on her own.

A small village spreads out before her-altamira, say the rippling letters on the corrugated tin roof of the first house. A little cluster of houses on either side of the road, Altamira is just the place to stretch her legs before what she has heard is a steep and slightly (her aunts warned "v") dangerous descent to the coast.

Yolanda pulls up at a cantina, its thatched roof held up by several posts, its floor poured cement, and in its very center, a lone picnic table over which a swarm of flies hover.

Tacked to one of the central posts is a yellowing poster for Palmolive soap. A creamy, blond woman luxuriates under a refreshing shower, her head thrown back in seeming ecstasy, her mouth opened in a wordless cry.

"stBuenos!"

Yolanda calls out.

An old woman emerges from a shack behind the cantina, buttoning up a torn housedress. She is followed closely by a little boy, who keeps ducking behind her whenever Yolanda smiles at him.

Asking his name drives him further into the folds of the old woman's skirt.

"You must excuse him, dona," the woman apologizes. "He's not used to being among people." People with money who drive through Altamira to the beach resorts on the north coast, she means. "Your name," the old woman repeats, as if Yolanda hasn't asked him in Spanish. The little boy mumbles at the ground. "Speak up!" the old woman scolds, but her voice betrays pride when she speaks up for him. "This little know-nothing is Jose Duarte, Sanchez y Mella."

Yolanda laughs. A lot of names for such a little boy-the surnames of the country's three liberators!

"Can I serve the dona in any way?" the old woman asks.

"fUn refrescol fUna Coca Cola!"

By the pride in her voice, Yolanda understands the old woman wants to treat her to the best on her menu.

"I'll tell you what I would like." Yolanda gives the tree line beyond the old woman's shack a glance. "Are there any guavas around?"

The old woman's face scrunches up.

"fGuayabas!"

she murmurs, and thinks to herself a second. "Why, they grow all around, dona. But I can't say as I've seen any lately."

"With your permission-was Jose Duarte has joined a group

of little boys who have come out of nowhere and are milling around the car, boasting how many automobiles they have ridden in. At Yolanda's mention of guavas, he springs forward, pointing across the road towards the summit of the western hills. "I know where there's a whole grove of ripe ones." Behind him, his little companions nod.

"Go on, then!" His grandmother stamps her foot as if she were scatting an animal. "Get the dona some."

A few boys dash across the road and disappear up a steep path on the hillside, but before Jos6 can follow, Yolanda calls

him

back. She wants to go along too. The little boy looks towards his grandmother, unsure of what to think.

The old woman shakes her head. The dona will get hot, her nice clothes will get all dirty.

Jose will bring the dona as many guavas as she is wanting.

"But they taste so much better when you've picked them yourself." Yolanda hears the edge in her voice.

The old woman has turned into the long arm of her family.

The few boys who have stayed behind with Jose have again congregated around the car. Each one claims to be guarding it for the dona. It occurs to Yolanda that there is a way to make this a treat all the way around. "What do you say we take the car?" The little boys cheer.

Now that is not a bad idea, the old woman agrees. If the dona insists on going, she can take that dirt road up ahead and then cross over onto the road that is paved all the way to the coffee barns. The old woman points south in the direction of the big house. Many workers take that shortcut to work.

They pile into the car, half a dozen little boys in the back, and Jose as co-pilot in the passenger seat beside Yolanda. They

turn onto a bumpy road off the highway, which grows bumpier and bumpier as it climbs up into wilder, more desolate country. Branches scrape the sides and pebbles pelt the underside of the car. Yolanda wants to turn back, but there is no room. Finally, with a great snapping of twigs and thrashing of branches across the windshield, as if the countryside is loath to release them, the car bursts forth onto smooth pavement and the light of day. On either side of the road are groves of guava trees.

The boys who have gone ahead on foot are already pulling down branches and shaking loose a rain of guavas.

Yolanda eats several right on the spot, relishing the slightly bumpy feel of the skin in her hand, devouring the crunchy, sweet white meat. The boys watch her.

The group scatters to harvest the guavas.

Yolanda and Jose", partners, wander far from the path that cuts through the grove. Soon they are bent almost double to avoid getting entangled in the thick canopy of branches overhead. Each addition to Yolanda's beach basket causes a spill from the stash already piled high above the brim.

The way back seems much longer than the way there. Yolanda begins to worry that they are lost, and then, the way worry sprouts worry, it strikes her that they haven't heard or seen the other boys in quite a while. The latticework of branches reveals glimmers of a fading sky. The image of the guard in his elaborate flowering prison flashes through her head. The rustling leaves of the guava trees echo the warnings of her old aunts: you will get lost, you will get kidnapped, you will get raped, you will get killed.

Just ahead, the thicket of guava branches clears, and there is

the footpath, and beyond, the gratifying sight of the car still on the side of the road. It is a pleasure to stand upright again. Jos6 rests his burden on the ground and straightens his back to full measure. Yolanda looks up at the sky. The sun is low on the western horizon.

"The others must have gone to gather kindling,"

Jos@lobserves.

Yolanda glances at her watch-it is past six o'clock. At this rate, she will never make the north coast by nightfall. She hurries Jos@lback to the car, where they find a heap of guavas the other boys left behind on the shoulder of the road. Enough guavas to appease even the greediest Island santo

for life!

They pack the trunk quickly, and climb in, but the car has not gone a foot before it lurches forward with a horrible hobble. Yolanda closes her eyes and lays her head down on the wheel, then glances over at Jos@l. His eyes are searching the inside of the car for a clue as to what could have happened. This child won't know how to change a flat tire either.

Soon the sun will set and night will fall swiftly, no lingering dusk as in the States. She explains to Jos@lt they have a flat tire and mst* go back down the road to the big house.

Whoever tends to the brown Mercedes will surely know how to change a tire.

"With your permissionst" Jos6 offers. The dona can just wait in the car, and he will be back in no time with someone from the Miranda place.

Miranda, Miranda.... Yolanda leans over and gets her aunt's list out of the glove compartment, and sure enough, there they are.

Tia Marina y Ho Alejandio Miranda-Altos de Altamira.

A note elaborates that Tio Alejandro was the one

who used to own English saddle horses and taught you four girls to ride.

"All right," she says to the boy. "I'll tell you what." She points to her watch. "If you're back by the time this hand is over here, I'll give you"-she holds up one finger-"a dollar." The boy's mouth falls open. In no time, he has shot out of his side of the car and is headed at a run toward the Miranda place. Yolanda climbs out as well and walks down a pace, until the boy has disappeared in one of the turnings of the road.

From the footpath that cuts through the grove on the opposite side of the road, she hears the sound of branches being thrust aside, twigs snapping underfoot. Two men, one short and dark, and the other slender and light-skinned, emerge. They wear ragged work clothes stained with patches of sweat; their faces are drawn. Machetes hang from their belts.

The men's faces snap awake at the sight of her. Then they look beyond her at the car. The darker man speaks first. "Yours?"

"Is there some problem?" he speaks up again. The taller one is looking her up and down with interest.

They are now both in front of her on the road, blocking any escape. Both-she has sized them up as well-are strong and quite capable of catching her if she makes a run for it. Not that she can move, for her legs seem suddenly to have been hammered into the ground beneath her. She considers explaining that she is just out for a drive before dinner at the big house, so that these men will think someone knows where she is, someone will come looking for her if they try to carry her off. But her tongue feels as if

it has been stuffed in her mouth like a rag to keep her quiet.

The two men exchange a look-it seems to Yolanda-of collusion.

Then the shorter, darker one speaks up again.

"Senorita, are you all right?" He peers at her.

He is a short man, no taller than Yolanda, but he gives the impression of being quite large, for he is broad and solid, like something not yet completely carved out of a piece of wood. His companion is slim and tall andofa rich honey-brown color that matches his honey-brown eyes. Anywhere else, Yolanda would find him extremely attractive, but here on a lonely road, with the sky growing darker by seconds, his good looks seem dangerous, a lure to catch her off her guard.

"Can we help you?" the shorter man repeats.

The handsome one smiles knowingly. Two long, deep dimples appear like gashes on either side of his mouth.

"Americana,"

he says to the darker man, pointing to the car. "No comprende."

The darker man narrows his eyes and studies Yolanda a moment,

"iAmericana right-brace was

he asks her, as if not quite sure what to make of her.

She has been too frightened to carry out any strategy, but now a road is opening before her. She clasps her hands on her chest-she can feel her pounding heart-and nods. Then, as if the admission itself loosens her tongue, she begins to speak, English, a few words, of apology at first, then a great flood of explanation: how it happens that she is on a back road by herself, her craving for guavas, having never learned to change a flat. The two men stare at her, uncomprehending, rendered docile ai