Free Almost a Woman : A Memoir (9780306821110) by Esmeralda Santiago Page A

cashiers wore white shirts, black pants with suspenders, and skullcaps. They had ringlets on either side of their face, like the vendors at the marketa and at the used furniture stores on Graham Avenue.
    We stood on line behind a skinny woman struggling with a child. The little girl screamed and kicked, scratched at the hand
that held her tightly by the wrist. Those waiting stared at them, moved away without relinquishing their place on line. The woman yelled at the little girl to stop it, stop it, stop it, yanked her hand, smacked her, which made the child cry harder, fight more. The woman looked up at everyone staring, her eyes defying us to say something, and we shifted our gaze elsewhere. Inside their cages, the cashiers were the only ones who dared look back at her, their contempt directed at her, at the child, at all of us waiting on line.
    When our turn came, Mami pulled a ballpoint pen from her purse and signed the welfare check in front of the cashier. She didn’t look at the man insulated behind the plate glass, and he didn’t look at her. Their transaction was silent, the air heavy with her shame and his disdain for people like us: female, dark-skinned, on welfare.
    Before we stepped outside, Mami put her cash in her wallet, stashed it deep inside the purse she held tightly against her side, and led me out. The men glanced up expectantly and then turned from us, annoyed when neither of us was the woman they waited for.
    â€œWhich store are we going to?” I asked Mami as she led me past.
    â€œThat one.” She glanced across the avenue, toward Dolores’s Ladies Shoppé, where on the way home from school earlier that week, I had spotted the perfect thing in the window, a yellow sleeveless dress with a full skirt and a wide sash at the waist.
    â€œDoes my dress have to be black, or can I get a color?”
    She looked at me quizzically as we crossed the street, didn’t answer until we were on the other side. “You can wear any color you like.”
    My sigh of relief brought a smile to her lips, and she put her hand on my shoulder as we entered Dolores’s Ladies Shoppé, where my dress waited, yellow as lemon peel, its bodice and skirt made of lace, the sash of nylon organza tied into a bow at the back.
    â€œIt makes you look jaundiced,” Mami said when I tried it on.

    I looked in the full-length mirror, at the golden glow on my brown arms and legs, at the light the dress reflected on my face. “I think it looks nice on me.”
    â€œMaybe she would like this baby blue one,” Dolores rummaged through the clear plastic bags that encased every garment hanging along the walls of her cramped storefront.
    â€œShe doesn’t like baby blue,” Mami said, as she joined Dolores in her search through the plastic bags.
    I narrowed my eyes to get a different view in the mirror, tried to see myself as a stranger might, and saw a young woman with dark brown hair teased into a flip, dark eyes with blue eye shadow on the lids and black liner all around ending in a tail at the corners. On my lips, pink frosted lipstick so pale that my lips looked white. On my feet, spiked heels with pointy toes. I looked like one of the Chiffons, the girl group that sang “He’s So Fine.” Opening my eyes fully, I saw the way I really looked, with shoulder-length hair in a loose ponytail, no makeup, brown loafers with knee socks.
    â€œHere’s one,” Mami said. “It’s more your color.” She held up a navy blue dress with a square neckline, three-quarter sleeves, a dropped waist. It was like the dresses she always bought for me, simple and modest, not like the bold ones American girls wore.
    I squinted into the mirror again. “I like this one.” I sensed both of us brace for an argument. “It’s my graduation, I should wear something dressy.” I turned my back on her.
    Mami stiffened, but she wouldn’t make a scene before Dolores,