Free How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents by Julia Álvarez

almost falling over with exhaustion. So I sent
    him
    home to bed."
    The young man yawns and laughs.
    "He was so dead tired, he didn't hear the burglars when they broke in. They stole us blind.
    They even stole my shoes and my under-was The grandmother remembers it is indelicate to say so. "Every last article of clothing," she adds coyly.
    The young man pretends to be alarmed.
    "But this is what I mean about luck-they caught the burglars, and we got every last stitch back." The grandmother taps the glass. "Cuquita," she coos at the baby.
    "Lucky," she says to the young man. "That Fifi has always been the lucky one. Not to mention her luck with"-the grandmother lowers her voice-"with Otto."
    The young man looks over his shoulder. Otto?
    Who would name a poor kid Otto?
    Carlo, Yolanda, Sandia, Sofia
    "Imagine," the grandmother continues. "Fifi drops out of college and goes off on a church trip to Peru, chaperoned, of course, otherwise we wouldn't have let her go. We don't believe in all this freedom." The grandmother frowns as she looks out over the nursery. Beyond the glass, between the slender white bars of their cribs, half a dozen babies are fast asleep.
    "Anyhow she meets this German man Otto in a Peruvian market, who can't speak a word of Spanish but is trying to buy a poncho. She bargains for him, and he gets his poncho for practically nothing. Well, just like that, they fell for each other, corresponded, and here they are, parents!
    Tell me that isn't lucky?"
    "That's lucky," the young man says.
    "And you're going to be a lucky one too, aren't you?" The grandmother clucks at her granddaughter, then confides to the young man, "She's going to look just like an angel, pink and blond."
    "You never can tell when they're this young," the father says, smiling at his daughter.
    "I
    can," the grandmother claims. "I had four of them."
    "Mami picks up like these really gorgeous men,"
    Sandi laughs. She is sitting cross-legged on Fifi's living room floor. The new mother sits in Otto's recliner, the baby asleep on her shoulder. Carla is sprawled on the sofa.
    At her feet, Yolanda is knitting furiously at a tiny blanket, pink and baby blue and pastel yellow squares with a white border. It is early morning. The family has gathered at Fifi's house for Christinas, which falls a week after the baby's birth. Husbands and grandparents are still asleep in the bedrooms. The four girls lounge in their nightgowns and tell each other the true story of how their lives are going.
    Sandi explains that she and the mother were in the waiting room, and the mother disappeared. "I find her at the nursery window talking to this piece of beefcake-was
    "That's offensive," Yolanda says. "Just call him a man."
    "Lay off me, will you?" Sandi is close to tears. Since her release from Mt. Hope a month ago, she cries so easily she has to carry Kleenex with her anti-depressants in her purse. She , looks around the room for her bag.
    "Miz Poet is so goddamn sensitive to language."
    "I don't write poetry anymore,"
    Yolanda says in a wounded voice.
    "Goddamn it, you guys," Carla says, refereeing this one. "It's Christmas."
    The new mother turns to the second oldest sister and runs her fingers through her hair. This is the first time the family has gathered together in a year, and she wants them all to get along. She changes the subject.
    "That was really nice of you to come see me at the hospital. I know how you just love hospitals,"
    she adds.
    Sandi looks down at the rug and picks at it.
    "I just want to forget the past, you know?"
    "That's understandable," Carla says.
    Vblanda lays aside the baby blanket. She has the same scowl on her face her sister wore a moment ago, a family sign of approaching tears. "I'm sorry," she says to Sandi. "It's been the worst week."
    Cada, Yolanda, Sandra, Sofia
    Sandi touches her hand. She looks at her other sisters. Clive, they all know, has gone back to his wife again. "He's such a turd. How many times has he done this now,