55 pages • 1 hour read
Almost a Woman
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Prologue-Chapter 3
Prologue Summary: “Martes, ni te cases, ni te embarques, ni de tu familia te apartes.”
Esmeralda remembers how often she moved with her mother—20 times in 21 years. Ruminating on how possessions lose their value when one must leave so many things behind, Esmeralda describes how things become “as temporary as the walls that held us for a few months” (1). Esmeralda describes a bigger family she travels around with—“three adults, eleven children” (1)—but focuses on her relationship with her mother, “Mami,” in her descriptions. Esmeralda’s family moves apartments for many reasons: “in search of heat, of fewer cockroaches, of more rooms, of quieter neighbors, of more privacy, of nearness to the subway or the relatives” (1). Eventually Mami, Esmeralda, and the others return to Macún, a Puerto Rican barrio “where everyone knew each other and each other’s business” (1).
When she turns 21, Esmeralda moves to Florida, leaving a letter addressed to her Mami because she isn’t brave enough to say goodbye in person. In Florida, Esmeralda continues her mother’s patterns of moving around restlessly. Many years later, Esmeralda returns to Macún. Standing in her childhood home, Esmeralda recalls events from her childhood but feels no connection to it: “It was no longer familiar, nor beautiful, nor did it give a clue of who I’d been there, or who I might become wherever I was going next” (2). Esmeralda doesn’t recognize the blue tile on the floor and half-wonders if she’s returned to the wrong home.
Chapter 1 Summary: “Something could happen to you.”
Esmeralda’s family moves to Brooklyn in 1961 because her brother Raymond needs medical treatment for his foot, which was injured when he was four. Esmeralda, Mami, five-year-old Raymond, and six-year-old Edna arrive in New York and are greeted by their grandmother, Tata. Esmeralda is disappointed by how dark and flat New York is: “Everywhere I looked, my eyes met a vertical maze of gray and brown straight-edged buildings with sharp corners and deep shadows” (3-4). Sitting outside one day, Esmeralda encounters a neighborhood girl who asks if Esmeralda is Hispanic. Esmeralda says she’s Puerto Rican, but the girl explains in America they’re called Hispanic, though both become confused on what makes someone Hispanic—whether because they speak Spanish or have parents who come from a Spanish country. Esmeralda asks her mother about being Hispanic, but when Mami learns Esmeralda was outside meeting strangers, she berates her, “Algo te puede suceder,” meaning, “Something could happen to you” (5).
Mami often warns Esmeralda about every possible danger lurking in the city. One morning while Mami goes to look for work, Esmeralda, Edna, and Raymond go down to Tata’s apartment and watch cartoons. Watching the television, Esmeralda has difficulty following the English cartoon, which makes her feel anxious. In school, Esmeralda gets placed in a remedial class because she can’t speak English. In school, Esmeralda phonetically learns “The Star-Spangled Banner” and the Pledge of Allegiance without understanding what either mean. The remainder of Esmeralda’s siblings come over to New York. The extended family gathers, including several cousins, uncles, aunts, and family friends. Mami warns Esmeralda against becoming Americanized like some of her cousins. After everyone leaves, Esmeralda is comforted by the sound of her siblings settling down to sleep, “which soothed and reassured me in a way nothing had since we’d left Puerto Rico” (13).
Chapter 2 Summary: “I don’t care what American girls do.”
Esmeralda remembers Mami’s strictness, especially now that Esmeralda has reached an age where a girl “should be watched by her mother and protected from men who were sure to take advantage of a child in a woman’s body” (14). Esmeralda worries about deceitful men and vows not to be either a “calculating puta” or a “pendeja, who believed everything a man told her” (14). In school, Esmeralda befriends another Puerto Rican girl named Yolanda who speaks good English and is an only child. Yolanda collects various items to put into binders, and Esmeralda thinks she has too much time on her hands without siblings. Esmeralda invites Yolanda over, but Yolanda’s mother doesn’t want to let her go, so Mami forbids Esmeralda from going over to Yolanda’s place. Yolanda takes Esmeralda to the library, where Esmeralda begins checking out picture books so she can learn English. Esmeralda and her siblings use books and television to learn a hybrid between English and Spanish.
Mami takes Esmeralda to the welfare department to apply for aid, because Esmeralda speaks better English. Esmeralda tries to fill out the forms and explain their situation to the case worker—Mami has lost her job and needs support while she looks for another—but Esmeralda realizes she needs to learn better English to communicate: “I had to learn English well enough never again to be caught between languages” (20). At night, Esmeralda wakes to a cockroach trying to climb into her ear. She kills it, but afterward lives in fear of the cockroach infestation in their apartment. No matter what the family tries, they can’t get rid of the pests. As winter approaches, the family realizes they have no heat and spend most of their time huddled around the stove. Because of the cold, everyone constantly gets sick, so Esmeralda tries to persuade Mami to let them eat American food because Americans always seem so healthy and hearty. Tata thinks it’s a bad idea, but Mami gives in and lets the kids try a few items, though they continue getting sick.
At Mami’s cousin’s apartment, Esmeralda enjoys American goods like Coke, Hostess cakes, and Archie comics. Esmeralda marvels at how different her life is from the characters in the Archie comics. Mami surprises Esmeralda at school and learns Esmeralda has been rolling up her skirts and putting on makeup after she leaves the house. Mami drags Esmeralda home, but Esmeralda is unusually defiant, angry at having been humiliated at school. Esmeralda daydreams that her Papi will return, smooth things over with Mami, and bring them back to Puerto Rico, “where we would never be cold, where our lives would resume in our language, in our country, where we could be a family again” (30). Soon after, Esmeralda receives a letter from her father saying he’s remarried. Esmeralda determines to hate her new stepmother, sight unseen, and mourns at the loss of their connection to Puerto Rico: “With Papi married, our ties to Puerto Rico unraveled” (30).
Chapter 3 Summary: “Are you going to be famous?”
Mami falls in love with a local man, Francisco, who lives across the street with his parents. Tata doesn’t approve because Francisco is two years younger, and she gives Mami a hard time. Francisco eventually moves in, but Esmeralda knows Mami and Francisco won’t marry, even though Mami expects all her children to “stand in front of a priest and receive the vows she never had” (33). Shortly after Mami learns she’s pregnant, Francisco is hospitalized with stomach cancer. Tata moves in to help with the kids, but the family gets kicked out of their apartment and they move again—the fifth time in a year. At her new school, Esmeralda gains the attention of her guidance counselor, Mr. Barone, after doing well on an aptitude test. Mr. Barone wants Esmeralda to apply to a special school for performing arts, though her family is skeptical: “There are no Puerto Rican actors on television” (35). Esmeralda trains with various teachers for the audition.
A group of girls from Esmeralda’s school, led by ringleader Lulu, bully Esmeralda for having high ambitions. Esmeralda’s friend, Natalia, comforts her for wanting better things than their peers: “They’ll be pregnant and on welfare before we graduate high school” (37). Mami likes Natalia as a friend for Esmeralda because she’s a good girl who’s a role model to her sister and wants to be a doctor. Mami brings home a new dress and girdle for Esmeralda to wear to the audition, a concession that Esmeralda is growing up. Esmeralda worries about not living up to the expectations of Mami and her teachers, who all want her to get into the school. On the way to the audition, a nervous Esmeralda overeats. After the audition, Esmeralda throws up, too ashamed to admit to her mother that she bungled the audition and forgot everything she practiced. Esmeralda worries that her hopes have been prematurely raised so that she “long[s] for a life I was now certain I’d never get” (42).
Prologue-Chapter 3 Analysis
Esmeralda opens her first-person memoir as an adult, returning to her childhood home and reflecting on everything that has brought her to this point. Through describing the amount of times that she and her family have moved over the years, Esmeralda establishes a theme of homelessness and never quite belonging that will run throughout the rest of the narrative: “Each time I packed my belongings, I left a little of myself in the rooms that sheltered me, never home, always just the places I lived” (1). Along with physically moving from place to place over the years, Esmeralda describes a sense of being displaced by her family’s move to America, thrusting her into a brand-new world. Esmeralda chafes at the difference in her physical surroundings—“Used to the sensual curves of Puerto Rico, my eyes had to adjust to the regular, aggressive two-dimensionality of Brooklyn” (3)—as well as the cultural differences. Because she initially can’t speak English, Esmeralda is placed into a remedial classroom and mocked for her accent.
Esmeralda finds herself confined by Mami’s strict rules and expectations for her to be a good Puerto Rican girl and role model to her siblings, while also taking on the responsibility of being translator for her mother and simultaneously trying to fit in with her American classmates. As a result, Esmeralda doesn’t quite know where she belongs culturally, shown through her confusion at being called Hispanic for the first time by a neighbor: “I’d always been Puerto Rican, and it hadn’t occurred to me that in Brooklyn, I’d be someone else” (5). To further complicate matters, Esmeralda is at an age where she is on the brink of womanhood, not still a girl, but not yet a woman, and becomes confused about how she is supposed to behave. As Mami refers to her, Esmeralda is “a child in a woman’s body” (14). Physically, culturally, and emotionally, Esmeralda finds herself not quite belonging one place or another, and she searches for things that will help her define herself and understand where she fits in.
One of the most important figures in Esmeralda’s life, Mami, also seems torn between two worlds. Like many immigrants who come to America looking for a better life, Mami wants a better future for her children and holds them to higher standards than herself. Mami warns Esmeralda against men and teaches her the kind of woman she should be: “Her lectures, and the pointed conversations I was supposed to overhear, were meant to help me distinguish between a puta and a pendeja” (14). Yet in Chapter 3, Mami begins living with Francisco without marrying him, engaging in the type of behavior she warns Esmeralda against. Esmeralda notes the contradiction: “Mami hadn’t married in a church, but we were supposed to” (33). Similarly, Mami wants her children to have all the advantages afforded by living in America but does not want her children to become Americanized:
It was good to be healthy, big, and strong like Dick, Jane, and Sally. It was good to learn English and to know how to act among Americans, but it was not good to behave like them. Mami made it clear that although we lived in the United States, we were to remain 100% Puerto Rican (24).
Mami loves her children and wants them to have more opportunities than she had, but the contradictions between what she says and what she does confuse Esmeralda and make it difficult for her to navigate her adolescence. Though Esmeralda loves her mother, she also worries about becoming like her, fearing that she’ll wind up “sewing underwear in a factory alongside” Mami (42). As the oldest daughter and Mami’s trusted translator, Esmeralda’s identity often becomes blurred with Mami’s, and the two women must learn how to navigate loving one another while still respecting each other as separate beings and not just extensions of one another.
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