How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents

As younger children, the cousins are often paired off together. Yoyo is paired with Mundín, and they are the only “mixed-sex” pairing. Eventually, Mundín’s mother tries to stop this. The kids treat all the aunts’ and uncles’ houses, which are connected, as their own. Everyone gathers at their grandparents’ house for Sunday dinners, but their grandfather, Papito, is often sent out of the country on bogus missions because the men in charge were jealous of the educated and affluent.

The children’s grandmother always brings back gifts when she returns from the States. One year, Mundín receives a doll with all of the internal organs that he could play with and explore. Yoyo gets a story book. Their grandmother also gives Yoyo a paddle ball and Mundín a packet of clay, which Yoyo really wants. When Fifi is about to tattle on Mundín, he offers her some of the clay that Yoyo wants, which makes Yoyo jealous. Mundín tells her that if she pulls down her pants to prove she is a girl, he will give her some clay. Both Yoyo and Fifi do so in an old coal shed. Yoyo knows that, being older than Fifi, she should know better. The aunts have been telling the older girls that they must protect their bodies. Mundín is unimpressed with the girls, and he gives them some clay.

Charito and Jose met each other in Europe. They went back to the Dominican Republic, where they built a house that the children considered to be Hansel and Gretel’s house. They saw Charito as a witch. Sandi, in first-person narration, says, “I was born to die one of the innumerable, handsome de la Torre girls” (241). Sandi has artistic abilities, however. Milagros comes to Sandi and tells her that her child is ill and that she must come release him, believing that Sandi’s drawings of the baby caused the illness. Sandi burns the drawing, and the baby is healed. She starts drawing cats on the wall, and after she is punished for this, rats invade the home. The family decides to ask Charito to give Sandi art lessons.

While Charito initially refuses to teach the children—14 sisters and cousins in all—she eventually relents. Charito puts them through some exercises to prepare them, but Sandi cannot hold herself back and starts drawing a cat on the paper in front of her. Charito is upset, and Sandi is removed from the room and told to stay in a chair assigned to her. She rebels against this control and leaves, finding a shed outside. She peeks inside and sees a man, naked, carving a woman’s body into wood. The man sees her, and she breaks her arm running away. She has to wear a cast, and when she gets it off, they discover it has not healed properly, and her arm has to be broken again and reset. Even after her arm heals, she no longer draws. She has the temperament of an artist, but no way to express it. That Christmas at the cathedral, she sees the statues the man was carving and that the Virgin Mary he carved has Sandi’s face. Sandi is overcome with joy.

Everyone is excited because Papi has returned from America, and he has a gift. Gladys has many saint statues in her room, and she takes the time to explain them to Carla. Papi gives each of the girls a gift, and at first, they are underwhelmed at the statues. Then, Papi shows them that they are banks, and if they put in a coin, the statue moves. The girls now love them. The banks are meant to help children save to donate to the church. Carla tries to get the money out, but her father holds the keys. The kids at school love the banks, but eventually, the banks are relegated to an abandoned shelf in the toy room.

On Christmas, everyone, including the servants, open their presents. Later Gladys approaches Carla and asks her if she will trade the wallet, along with the money she received, for Carla’s bank. Carla tells Gladys that she will just give her the bank. One day Mami asks Carla where the bank is, and Carla feigns ignorance as they search it out and cannot find it. That Sunday, Mami finds the bank in the maids’ room, and when she confronts Gladys, the woman leaves in tears. Carla explains that she gave it to Gladys as a gift. Gladys still leaves, as Papi tells Carla that they cannot trust her and that she asked to leave. The bank is broken.

Mamita buys a drum for Yoyo at F.A.O. Schwartz, but she is only allowed to play it outside. Mamita tells her that she will someday bring Yoyo to America to see both the toy store and the snow. Eventually, Yoyo loses one drumstick and the other breaks. There is a coal shed on the property, and a Haitian laundry worker, Pila, is said to have caused it to be haunted; she frequently spoke of trances and spirits and similar things. Eventually, Pila left the compound, having stolen quite a few things from the family. Mami decides not to press charges because her American education tells her that the Pila could not have known better.

Yoyo goes into the coal shed one day and hears some kittens, and she chooses one that she wants to keep. She plans to name her kitten Schwartz. She does not know, however, when kittens can be taken from their mother, and she fears being attacked by the mother cat. Yoyo leaves the shed and sees a strange man in their compound with a dog and a gun, and she thinks he might be the devil because of his appearance. He explains to her that she should wait a week before taking the kitten from its mother so that it will not die. The man goes into the trees, and Yoyo goes back into the shed and notices that the kittens are afraid of the man’s guns. Yoyo is about to leave when she realizes the hypocrisy of the man who told her not to take the kittens from their mother too early, while he goes into the woods to shoot other animal mothers trying to provide for their own offspring. Yoyo grabs the kitten and puts it in her drum, banging loudly so the mother cat cannot hear the meows. She hears the mother crying for her baby, but the gun scares the mother cat away. Yoyo gets overwhelmed by the kitten’s meows and tosses it out the window. On numerous nights, Yoyo believes she sees the mother cat on the bed looking at her. It cannot be determined with certainty whether the cat was ever in her room. The cat eventually disappears when they leave for the United States.