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

underwear, toothbrush, bedspread, nightgown, plastic cup, towel, brush and comb set as the other three, but the first girl brushed in yellow, the second one boarded the school bus in blue, the third one slept in pink, and the baby did everything she pleased in white. As the baby grew older, she cast an envying look at pink. The mother tried to convince the third daughter that white was the best color, and the little one wanted pink because she was a baby and didn't know any better, but the third girl was clever and would not be persuaded. She had always believed that she had gotten the best deal since pink was the color for girls. "You girls are going to drive me crazy!" the mother said, but the girls had gotten used to the mother's rhetorical threats.
    The mother had devised the color code to save time.
    With four girls so close in age, she couldn't indulge identities and hunt down a red cowboy shirt when the third daughter turned tomboy or a Mexican peasant blouse when the oldest discovered her Hispanic roots. As women, the four girls criticized the mother's efficiency. The little one claimed that the whole color system smacked of an assembly-line mentality. The eldest, a child psychologist, admonished the mother in an autobiographical paper, "I Was There Too,"
    by saying that the color system had weakened the four girls' identity differentiation abilities and made them forever unclear about personality boundaries. The eldest also intimated that the mother was mild anal retentive personality.
    The mother did not understand all that psychology talk, but
    she knew when she was being criticized. The next time the four girls were all together, she took the opportunity of crying a little and saying that she had done the best she could by the four girls. All four girls praised the good job the mother had done in raising four girls so close in age, and they poured more wine into the mother's glass and into the father's glass, and the father patted the mother's arm and said thickly, "Good cows breed cowsst" and the mother told the story she liked to tell about the oldest, Carla.
    For although the mother confused their names or called them all by the generic pet name, "Cuquita," and switched their birthdates and their careers, and sometimes forgot which husband or boyfriend went with which daughter, she had a favorite story she liked to tell about each one as a way of celebrating that daughter on special occasions. The last time she told the story she liked to tell about the eldest was when Carla got married. The mother, tipsy on champagne, seized the mike during the band's break and recounted the story of the red sneakers to the wedding guests. After her good cry at the dinner table, the mother repeated the story.
    Carla, of course, knew the story well, and had analyzed it for unresolved childhood issues with her analyst husband. But she never tired of hearing it because it was her story, and whenever the mother told it, Carla knew she was the favorite of the moment.
    "You know, of course, the story of the red sneakers?"
    the mother asked the table in general.
    "Oh no," the second daughter groaned. "Not again."
    Carla glared at her. "Listen to that negativity." She nodded at her husband as if to confirm something they had talked about.
    Carlo, Yolanda, Sandia, Sofia
    "Listen to that jargon," the second one countered, rolling her eyes.
    "Listen to my story." The mother sipped from her wine glass and set it down a little too heavily. Wine spilled on her hand. She looked up at the ceiling as if she had moved back in time to when they were living on the Island. Those downpours! Leaks, leaks-no roof could keep them out during rainy season. "You all know that when we were first married, we were really really poor?" The father nodded, he remembered. "And your sister"-the stories were always told as if the daughter in question were not present-"your sister wanted some new sneakers. She drove me crazy, night and day, she wanted sneakers, she