How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents Read Online Free Page A

boy-the surnames of the country's three liberators!
    "Can I serve the dona in any way?" the old woman asks.
    "fUn refrescol fUna Coca Cola!"
    By the pride in her voice, Yolanda understands the old woman wants to treat her to the best on her menu.
    "I'll tell you what I would like." Yolanda gives the tree line beyond the old woman's shack a glance. "Are there any guavas around?"
    The old woman's face scrunches up.
    "fGuayabas!"
    she murmurs, and thinks to herself a second. "Why, they grow all around, dona. But I can't say as I've seen any lately."
    "With your permission-was Jose Duarte has joined a group
    of little boys who have come out of nowhere and are milling around the car, boasting how many automobiles they have ridden in. At Yolanda's mention of guavas, he springs forward, pointing across the road towards the summit of the western hills. "I know where there's a whole grove of ripe ones." Behind him, his little companions nod.
    "Go on, then!" His grandmother stamps her foot as if she were scatting an animal. "Get the dona some."
    A few boys dash across the road and disappear up a steep path on the hillside, but before Jos6 can follow, Yolanda calls
    him
    back. She wants to go along too. The little boy looks towards his grandmother, unsure of what to think.
    The old woman shakes her head. The dona will get hot, her nice clothes will get all dirty.
    Jose will bring the dona as many guavas as she is wanting.
    "But they taste so much better when you've picked them yourself." Yolanda hears the edge in her voice.
    The old woman has turned into the long arm of her family.
    The few boys who have stayed behind with Jose have again congregated around the car. Each one claims to be guarding it for the dona. It occurs to Yolanda that there is a way to make this a treat all the way around. "What do you say we take the car?" The little boys cheer.
    Now that is not a bad idea, the old woman agrees. If the dona insists on going, she can take that dirt road up ahead and then cross over onto the road that is paved all the way to the coffee barns. The old woman points south in the direction of the big house. Many workers take that shortcut to work.
    They pile into the car, half a dozen little boys in the back, and Jose as co-pilot in the passenger seat beside Yolanda. They
    turn onto a bumpy road off the highway, which grows bumpier and bumpier as it climbs up into wilder, more desolate country. Branches scrape the sides and pebbles pelt the underside of the car. Yolanda wants to turn back, but there is no room. Finally, with a great snapping of twigs and thrashing of branches across the windshield, as if the countryside is loath to release them, the car bursts forth onto smooth pavement and the light of day. On either side of the road are groves of guava trees.
    The boys who have gone ahead on foot are already pulling down branches and shaking loose a rain of guavas.
    Yolanda eats several right on the spot, relishing the slightly bumpy feel of the skin in her hand, devouring the crunchy, sweet white meat. The boys watch her.
    The group scatters to harvest the guavas.
    Yolanda and Jose", partners, wander far from the path that cuts through the grove. Soon they are bent almost double to avoid getting entangled in the thick canopy of branches overhead. Each addition to Yolanda's beach basket causes a spill from the stash already piled high above the brim.
    The way back seems much longer than the way there. Yolanda begins to worry that they are lost, and then, the way worry sprouts worry, it strikes her that they haven't heard or seen the other boys in quite a while. The latticework of branches reveals glimmers of a fading sky. The image of the guard in his elaborate flowering prison flashes through her head. The rustling leaves of the guava trees echo the warnings of her old aunts: you will get lost, you will get kidnapped, you will get raped, you will get killed.
    Just ahead, the thicket of guava branches clears, and there is
    the footpath,