How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents by Julia Álvarez Read Free Book Online Page A

circled the old man, and kissed him from behind on top of his head. Then she tiptoed back to where she had been standing when she had first spoken.
    "Who was that, Papi?" she asked, extra innocent.
    "Mami?" His voice rode up, exposed and vulnerable. Then it sank back into its certainties.
    "That was Mami."
    "Count me out," his wife said from the couch where she'd finally given in to exhaustion.
    The father never guessed any of the other women in the room. That would have been disrespectful. Besides, their strange-sounding American names were hard to remember and difficult to pronounce. Still he got the benefit of their kisses under cover of his daughters. Down the line, the father went each time:
    "Carla?" "Sandi?" "Yoyo?" Sometimes, he altered the order, put the third daughter first or the oldest one second.
    Sofia had been in the bedroom, tending to her son, who was wild with all the noise in the house tonight. She came back into the living room, buttoning her dress front, and happened upon the game. "Ooh."
    She rolled her eyes. "It's getting raunchy in here, ha!" She worked her hips in a mock rotation, and the men
    all laughed. She thrust her girlfriends into the circle and whispered to her little girl to plant the next kiss on her grandfather's nose. The women all pecked and puckered at the old man's face.
    The second daughter sat briefly on his lap and clucked
    him
    tmder the chin. Every time the father took a wrong guess, the youngest daughter laughed loudly. But soon, she noticed that he never guessed her name. After all her hard work, she was not to be included in his daughter count. Damn him! She'd take her turn and make him know it was her!
    Quickly, she swooped into the circle and gave the old man a wet, open-mouthed kiss in his ear. She ran her tongue in the whorls of his ear and nibbled the tip. Then she moved back.
    "Oh la la," the oldest said, laughing. "Who was that, Papi?"
    The old man did not answer. The smile that had played on his lips throughout the game was gone. He sat up, alert. There was a long pause; everyone leaned forward, waiting for the father to begin with his usual,
    "Mami?"
    But the father did not guess his wife's name. He tore at his blindfold as if it were a contagious body whose disease he might catch. The receiving blanket fell in a soft heap beside his chair. His face had darkened with shame at having his pleasure aroused in public by one of his daughters. He looked from one to the other. His gaze faltered. On the face of his youngest was the brilliant, impassive look he remembered from when she had snatched her love letters out of his hands.
    "That's enough of that," he commanded in a low, furious voice. And sure enough, his party was over.
    The Four Girls
    ATAYATAVATATJ
    Carlo, Yolanda, Sandra, Sofia
    T
    he mother still calls them
    the four girls
    even though the youngest is twenty-six and the oldest will be thirty-one next month. She has always called them the four girls
    for as long as they can remember, and the oldest remembers all the way back to the day the fourth girl was born. Before that, the mother must have called them the three girls,
    and before that
    the two girls,
    but not even the oldest, who was once the only girl, remembers the mother calling them anything but the four girls.
    The mother dressed them all alike in diminishing-sized, different color versions of what she wore, so that the husband sometimes joked, calling them
    the five girls.

    No one really knew if he was secretly displeased in his heart of hearts that he had never had a son, for the father always bragged, "Good bulls sire cows," and the mother patted his arm, and the four girls tumbled and skipped and giggled and raced by in yellow and baby blue and pastel pink and white, and strangers counted them, "One, two, three, four girls! No sons?"
    Carlo, Yolanda, Sandra, Sofia
    "No," the mother said, apologetically. "Just the four girls."
    Each of the four girls had the same party dress, school clothes,