My Beloved World by Sonia Sotomayor Read Free Book Online Page A

look of heavenly bliss spreading over her face.
    IN MAYAGÜEZ , we usually stayed at Titi Maria’s house. She was the first wife of Tío Mayo, my mother’s eldest brother. Titi Maria helped to look after my mother when she was small, and their family bond outlasted the marriage. My mother is close to Tío Mayo’s later families too; she has a talent for not taking sides, which is handy in a complicated extended family. It is a trait I’ve adopted, trying never to lose contact with cousins and second cousins whose parents have separated or divorced. We visit with everybody. There were family members whom I’d never even heard of before; my mother was set on showing Junior and me off to every single one of them over a cup of coffee. At first, people would laugh because our Spanish was clumsy and limited, but within days I could hear myself improving, and people would compliment me on it. Junior would have improved too if he’d have just opened his mouth and said something once in a while. It took me years to appreciate how hard it must have been for him to be always in the company of two chatty and strong-willed women.
    At Titi Maria’s house, my cousin Papo always prepared a special welcome. Waiting for me under the sink would be two whole shopping bags of mangoes that he’d gathered from under the trees up the hill in anticipation of our arrival. I ate them all day long, in spite of constant warnings that I would get sick. Looking back, I suspect I was getting a higher dosage of insulin than I needed—not uncommon forjuvenile diabetics in that day—making the added sugar manageable. In any case, I hated the sluggish feeling that high blood sugar brought on, and I didn’t need reminding. I might have had to eat less of something else, but I could indulge my lust for mangoes.
    At lunchtime, the whole family came home from work, and Titi Maria cooked a big meal for all her kids—my adult cousins—and some of their kids too. Even those who lived elsewhere would often come for that meal. After lunch we settled down for a siesta. I would read a book—sleep wouldn’t come to me easily—but I loved this time when everyone was gathered at home and quietly connected.
    Papo had a job designing window displays for a number of big stores on the island. He claimed to be the first person doing this work as a professional designer in Puerto Rico, and he often traveled to New York to gather ideas. Charo was a high school teacher. Minita was the senior executive secretary for the newspaper
El Mundo
. Evita worked in a government office. It was clear to me even then that the people I knew on the island had better jobs than the Puerto Ricans I knew in New York. When we walked down the street in Mayagüez, it gave me a proud thrill to read the little signs above the doors, of the doctors, the lawyers, and the other professionals who were Puerto Rican. It was not something I had often seen in New York. At the hospital where my mother worked, there were Puerto Rican nurses but only one Puerto Rican doctor. At the larger shops and businesses in the Bronx, there were Puerto Rican workers but rarely managers or owners.
    Tío Mayo’s
panadería
was my favorite place to visit. They called it a
panadería
, but it was much more than a bakery. There were loaves of bread and rolls that Tío Mayo started making while it was still dark outside, kept warm in a special case with a heat lamp. There were cases full of cakes and pastries filled with cream, homemade cheese, and guava jam. My uncle’s then wife, Titi Elisa, also got up early to make lunch and snacks to sell to the workers who sewed in the factory across the street. She fried the chicken and roasted the pork, made stews and meat pies and pots of rice and beans. The smells of her cooking mixed with the yeasty smell of the bread, and the coffee, and the whole amazing cloud of flavors spread down the street and up into the balconies.
    When the noon whistle blew at the factory, the