Latin@ Rising by Matthew Goodwin

Author:Matthew Goodwin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wings Press
Published: 2017-08-15T04:00:00+00:00

The house buzzed with activity. Her grandmothers, mother and about twelve aunts swarmed in and out of the kitchen, wiping and polishing everything until it shone like stainless steel. The men in her family were outside: mowing the lawn, hosing down the screened-in porch, and waging war on the aggressive bougainvillea, with its lipstick-colored flowers and perilous thorns, that had the audacity to grow a little too high or too far. And they set up la caja china, both coffin and barbeque, for the pork. Kids of all ages ran around screaming like maniacs. Their constant chatter, in three different Spanish accents as well as various degrees of English, rose above the four TV screens blaring the news or novelas throughout the house.

Ruth had left late last night and Cary was now paying for it, but the din mingling with the astringent, artificial lemon scent jolted her more fully wake. She wondered if this is what it would be like, their voices always chittering in her head like invisible insects on a balmy night. Would her own Miami accent, with its imperfections and superimposed English grammar, be reduced to something flat and boring and precise like the news anchors on TV?

An aunt, Tía Mari, grabbed her as she shambled down the hall and squeezed her tight. “Happy birthday! I’m so proud of you!”

Cary nodded and struggled lose. Everyone exploded with glee as she stepped into the family room, embracing her, congratulating her, praising her, wearing her down with words the way they rubbed at the grime on the furniture.

She went into the kitchen, picked out un pastelito de guayaba from the white box someone had gotten at the bakery early in the morning and dropped on the table. The harsh glare from the window hurt her eyes so she focused on her mom’s butt moving rhythmically back and forth. It was the only part of her sticking out of the oven. Cary opened her mouth to say something, announce that she wasn’t going to go through with the procedure, but with everyone around she felt outnumbered so she shoved the pastelito in her mouth and watched the bustle instead. And she chewed, working the gummy guava jelly out of her teeth, building up courage.

“Where’s Papi?” she mumbled when she could speak again.

“He went with Yovany to buy headbands for everyone,” her mom’s butt said, then the rest of the woman crawled backwards and reared its head. For an instant, it struck Cary how much she looked like her mother: milk chocolate skin, bouncy, curly hair, only Cary had her father’s prominent nose and almond-shaped eyes. “¡Que robo! Those things have gotten so expensive. You’d think that as the technology gets better, the prices would get cheaper.” She talked about the things as if they were nothing — phones or personal fabricators — not the devices that would turn her daughter into an automaton.

“I’m scared,” Cary whispered, when the last of her aunts scurried out of the kitchen hauling a large bottle of Clorox.

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