When I Was Puerto Rican: A Memoir (A Merloyd Lawrence Book)
Esmeralda Santiago
Language: English
Pages: 278
ISBN: 0306814528
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
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Saving Each Other: A Mother-Daughter Love Story
500 Acres and No Place to Hide: More Confessions of a Counterfeit Farm Girl
each other where they could get carrots and broccoli, iceberg lettuce, apples, peaches, or pears. “At the conclusion of the meeting,” the Americano said, “you will all receive a sack full of groceries with samples from the major food groups.” He flipped the chart closed and moved his chair near the window, amid the hum of women asking one another what he’d just said. The next expert uncovered another easel on which there was a picture of a big black bug. A child screamed, and a woman got the
father’s soaking shirts. “Pablo!” she called, “Oh, my God! Look at her. She’s being eaten alive!” I screamed, imagining my skin disappearing in chunks into the invisible mouths of hundreds of tiny black specks creeping into parts of my body I couldn’t even reach. Mami pulled off my clothes and threw them on the ground. The soap in the washtub burned my skin, and Mami scrubbed me so hard her fingernails dug angry furrows into my arms and legs. She turned me around to wash my back and I almost
“Hola.” He stood stiffly on the other side of the gate, sleepy eyes begging me to ask him in. My first instinct was to run and change my tattered dress for something nicer. At the same time I was furious that he had just appeared uninvited. Mami materialized on the porch steps as if she’d been expecting him. From every corner of the world my sisters and brothers emerged to stare at us as though at animals in a zoo. “Buenas tardes,” Mami said, wiping her hands against her hips. “Negi, is this
great time, while I vacillated between fear and curiosity, between embarrassment and the knowledge that, like it or not, I was having my first sexual experience. I smiled at him then, a wide, seductive, Marilyn Monroe smile that took him by surprise. His eyes veiled suspiciously, and he leaned over to see if anyone else was hanging out from the other windows in the building. But it was just the two of us, me smiling brazenly while inside I quaked in terror, and him, flustered beyond
Literally, cuspidor. Chamber pot. fiambreras (fee-am-breh-rahs): Portable covered dishes used to carry meals to and from work finca (feen-kah): Farm fogón (foh-góhn): Cooking fire gallería (gah-yeh-ree-ah): Place where cocks fight gente mala (hen-teh mah-lah): Bad people guanimes (goo-ah-nee-mess): Cornmeal dumplings wrapped in plantain or banana leaves then boiled. Often stuffed. guarachas (goo-ah-rah-chahs): A type of dance music popular in the Caribbean guayabera
