Read Online In the Name of Salome by Julia Álvarez - Free Book Online Page B

When the third Spanish governor arrived, Josefa welcomed him with some verses in
El Eco del Ozama
.
    Everyone exclaimed how lovely the verses were, but I was not so sure. I mean, the verses were lovely verses, but they were doing an unlovely thing. They were binding us to a country that had turned us into a colony. It was like the verses I had written for Don Eloy, funny and clever, but shaking mangoes off the wrong tree. Don Eloy should have been courting his old wife and making her feel like the young girl he was dreaming about in his head. That’s what I should have said to him. I’ll write a verse you can give to Caridad that will wake up every inch of her half-dead body.
    â€œSalomé, for heaven’s sakes. They’re just verses.” Ramona could be fierce in her defense of the plump, pretty poetess. It was as if Josefa were a human version of her old doll Alexandra, on whose porcelain prettiness Ramona had doted. “It’s not her fault we’re back to being a colony. She’s just being polite.”
    But I wasn’t convinced. It was one thing to be polite and another thing altogether to welcome intruders and say, “Please make yourself right at home.” And some people were doing just that. The sisters Bobadilla had gone overboard with their hospitality: holding teas for the Spanish soldiers and dignitaries, flying a Spanish flag from their roof—their fine, Spanish-tile roof. Their lisps had gotten so pronounced that you didn’t want to meet themon the street, for they would sprinkle you with saliva before you ever got past talk of the weather.
    Right then and there, I promised myself that I would never write verses out of politeness. Rather than write something pretty and useless, I would not write at all.
    It was a high standard to set for myself just as I was starting out. But I suppose it was like me, as Mamá would have pointed out, to give with all my heart or not at all.
    It was an attitude that would not serve me well in love.
    O UR TUTOR A LEJANDRO R OMÁN brought his younger brother, Miguel, to class one day. By now I was eighteen and had learned everything Alejandro had to teach me, so I was glad for a new face. Miguel was an aspiring poet, and he had heard from his brother that the Ureña girls were none other than the daughters of Nicolás Ureña, and they were smart as clockwork. Miguel was hoping not only to meet us but to make the acquaintance of the poet himself at Mamá’s house.
    â€œWhat kind of poetry do you write, Miguel?” Ramona asked him the first time he came to our house. How I hated that question—like pinning down a butterfly.
    â€œThe Noah’s ark kind, a little of everything,” he answered, a smile in his eyes as he glanced my way.
    I tried not to smile. Recently, Mamá had begun reading to us out of
Doña Bernardita’s Manual of Instruction for Young Ladies
, and among the things that Doña Bernardita warned against was smiling at a man.
    â€œSmiling is a gift of intimacy,” Mamá explained. Nice young ladies gave such tender responses only to their husbands along with—Mamá hesitated—along with everything else. About the everything else Mamá was not very specific. Indeed, Doña Bernardita counseled that too much of that kind of knowledge might lead a young lady to solitary indulgence.
    Ramona and I looked at each other with just the faintest lift of the brows. Then Ramona, who as the oldest usually went ahead into unknown territory, asked, “What’s that, Mamá?”
    Mamá colored prettily, the pink in her cheeks making her look younger. “It’s a term that is used to describe . . . individual transgression.”
    â€œ
That
explains a lot, Mamá,” Ramona said.
    Mamá closed
Doña Bernardita’s Manual
and looked straight at my sister. “Are you being fresh with me, young lady?”
    â€œNon, non, Maman, pardonnez-moi,”