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culture — a distance we all felt we could easily wanted to return me in the same condition in
retrace with just a little practice. It wasn’t until I which I had arrived. Out there in the boonies,
failed at first love, in Spanish, that I realized how the old-world traditions had been preserved full central text
unbridgeable that gap had become. strength. But I can’t help thinking that in part,
That summer, I went down to the Island Utcho and Betty treated me like a ten-year-old /
by myself. My sisters had chosen to stay in the because I talked like a ten-year-old in my halt-
States at a summer camp where the oldest was a ing, childhood Spanish. I couldn’t explain about Julia Alvarez
counselor. But I was talked into going “home” by women’s liberation and the quality of mercy
my father, whose nephew — an older (by twenty not being strained, in Spanish. I grew bored and
years) cousin of mine — had been elected the lonely, and was ready to go back to New York
president of El Centro de Recreo, the social club and call it quits on being “presented,” when I
of his native town of Santiago. Every year at El met Dilita.
Centro, young girls of fifteen were “presented” Like me, Dilita was a hybrid. Her parents had
in public, a little like a debutante ball. I was two moved to Puerto Rico when she was three, and
years past the deadline, but I had a baby face she had lived for some time with a relative in New
and could easily pass for five years younger than York. But her revolutionary zeal had taken the
I was — something I did not like to hear. And my turn of glamour girl rather than my New-England-
father very much wanted for one of his daugh- hippy variety. In fact, Dilita looked just like the
ters to represent la familia among the creme de other Dominican girls. She had a teased hairdo;
la creme of his hometown society. I let my long hair hang loose in a style I can only
I arrived with my DO-YOUR-OWN-THING!!! describe as “blowing in the wind.” Dilita wore
T-shirt and bell-bottom pants and several novels makeup; I did a little lipstick and maybe eyeliner if
5
by Herman Hesse, ready to spread the seeds of she would put it on for me. She wore outfits; I had
the sixties revolution raging in the States. Unlike peasant blouses, T-shirts, and blue jeans.
other visits with my bilingual cousins in the But in one key way, Dilita was more of 15
capital, this time I was staying in a sleepy, a rebel than I was: she did exactly what she
old-fashioned town in the interior with Papi’s wanted without guilt or apology. She was in
side of the family, none of whom spoke English. charge of her own destino, as she liked to say,
Actually I wasn’t even staying in town. and no one was going to talk her into giving
6
Cousin Utcho, whom I called tio because he that up. I was in awe of Dilita. She was the first
was so much older than I was, and his wife, “hyphenated” person I had ever met whom I
Betty — who, despite her name, didn’t speak considered successful, not tortured as a hybrid
a word of English either — lived far out in the the way my sisters and I were.
countryside on a large chicken farm where he Dilita managed to talk Utcho into letting me
was the foreman. They treated me like a ten- move into town with her and her young, mar-
year-old, or so I thought, monitoring phone ried aunt, Carmen. Mamacán, as we called her,
calls, not allowing male visitors, explaining their was liberal and light-hearted and gave us free
carefulness by reminding me that my parents rein to do what we wanted. “Just as long as you
had entrusted them with my person and they girls don’t get in trouble!” Trouble came in one
denomination, we knew, and neither of us were
fools. When the matrons in town complained
5 Hermann Hesse: a Nobel Prize–winning German poet and novelist
in the early to mid-1900s. —Eds. about our miniskirts or about our driving
6 Tio: “uncle” in Spanish. —Eds. around with boys and no chaperons, Mamacán

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