Come Together, Fall Apart by Cristina Henriquez

Author:Cristina Henriquez
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2010-03-01T05:00:00+00:00

I was on summer break so my mother asked me to help her with her costume. We hadn’t been home ten minutes and already she was pulling out paper, a pen, her sewing machine, pins, a measuring tape, a white marking pencil, a thimble, two spools of thread, the kitchen chair, and a pair of scissors.

“Why did you bring the chair?” I asked, pointing to its rusted metal frame and padded orange seat covers.

“So I can stand on it and you can measure me.”

“Why can’t I measure you on the box?” My mother had a wooden box her clients usually stood on to get measured.

“It’s more professional this way.”

She seemed to have her mind made up about this since she was climbing onto the chair already and offering me the measuring tape, as if she were holding onto the tail of a snake.

She told me to measure her hips, her bust, her waist, her head. She smiled when I reported the numbers.

“Those women at the beach, they try to be too thin. You should want to be like this, Ysabel. Full.” She swayed her hips a little and winked at me.

“Okay, Mami.”

I was getting anxious to leave. I should have gone straight from Mass but I knew my mother wouldn’t let me get away that fast. She needed someone to share her excitement with, at least for a little while. I was supposed to be at the soccer field to meet Lucho Morales, a boy from my school. I had seen him a few days earlier and he said he needed to talk to me. I tried to ask him, About what? But he wouldn’t say. He just told me to meet him Sunday by the field.

“Okay, help me down,” my mother said. She reached her hands to me.

I took them and delivered her safely to the floor.

“What did the Virgin Mary wear?” I asked.

“Robes. Blue robes, I think. But that doesn’t sound very flattering, does it?” my mother said, and I could see then where this was headed.

“But if that’s what she wore, then you have to wear it, too. You have to dress like she did.”

“You think?”

“You’re supposed to be her.”

“But I could still be her in nicer clothes, no?”

“Why don’t you ask Father Castillo?”

“Bah,” she said. “You’ll see. I’m going to look radiant.”

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.