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like us were thrown in the deep end of the public our elders. We were responsible for ourselves
5
school pool and left to fend for ourselves. Not and that made us feel grown-up. We couldn’t
/
everyone came up for air. just skirt culpability by using the reflexive: the
Mami managed to get us scholarships to bag of cookies did not finish itself, nor did the
her old boarding school where Good Manners money disappear itself from Mami’s purse. We
Narrative
and Tolerance and English Skills were required. had no one to bail us out of American trouble
We were also all required to study a foreign lan- once we went our own way in English. No family
guage, but my teachers talked me into taking connections, no tio whose name might open
French. In fact, they felt my studying Spanish was doors for us. If the world was suddenly less
equivalent to my taking a “gut course.” Spanish friendly, it was also more exciting. We found out
was my native tongue, after all, a language I we could do things we had never done before.
already had in the bag and would always be able We could go places in English we never could in
to speak whenever I wanted. Meanwhile, with Spanish, if we put our minds to it. And we put
Saturday drills and daily writing assignments, our combined four minds to it, believe you me.
our English skills soon met school requirements. My parents, anxious that we not lose our
By the time my sisters and I came home for vaca- tie to our native land, and no doubt thinking of
tions, we were rolling our eyes in exasperation at future husbands for their four daughters, began
our old-world Mami and Papi, using expressions sending us “home” every summer to Mami’s
like far out, and what a riot! and outta sight, and family in the capital. And just as we had once
believe you me as if we had been born to them. huddled in the school playground, speaking
As rebellious adolescents, we soon figured Spanish for the comfort of it, my sisters and
out that conducting our filial business in English I now hung out together in “the D.R.,” as we
4
gave us an edge over our strict, Spanish-speaking referred to it, kibitzing in English on the crazy
parents. We could spin circles around my moth- world around us: the silly rules for girls, the
er’s absolutamente no by pointing out the flaws in obnoxious behavior of macho guys, the deplor-
her arguments, in English. My father was a push- able situation of the poor. My aunts and uncles
over for pithy quotes from Shakespeare, and a tried unsuccessfully to stem this tide of our
recitation of “The quality of mercy is not strained” Americanization, whose main expression was, of
could usually get me what I wanted. Usually. course, our use of the English language. “Tienen
There were areas we couldn’t touch even with que hablar en espanol,” they commanded. “Ay,
a Shakespearean ten-foot pole: the area of boys come on,” we would say as if we had been asked
and permission to go places where there might to go back to baby talk as grown-ups.
be boys, American boys, with their mouths full of By now, we couldn’t go back as easily as 10
bubblegum and their minds full of the devil. that. Our Spanish was full of English. Countless
Our growing distance from Spanish was times during a conversation, we were corrected,
a way in which we were setting ourselves free until what we had to say was lost in our saying
from that old world where, as girls, we didn’t it wrong. More and more we chose to answer
have much say about what we could do with our in English even when the question was posed
lives. In English, we didn’t have to use the formal in Spanish. It was a measure of the growing
3
usted that immediately put us in our place with distance between ourselves and our native

3 Usted: the formal word for “you” in Spanish; used when speaking
to an elder or superior. —Eds. 4 Kibitzing: talking casually. —Eds.

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