The four Garcia sisters, Carla, Sandra, Yolanda and Sofia,
enjoyed a fairly sheltered and luxurious childhood in the Dominican
Republic. They often received exciting presents from FAO Schwarz
in the United States. Carla remembers an iron bank representing
Mary ascending to heaven, which she gave to one of the family's
maids, who was later dismissed for stealing the bank. Yolanda played
with her boy cousin and showed him her genitals in exchange for
a Human Body doll and modeling clay. She also stole a newborn kitten
from its mother and put it inside a drum that she played until she grew
bored and threw the kitten outside, where it sadly hobbled away.
The mother cat appeared to her in nightmares and haunted her. Sandra
wanted to be an artist but her irrepressible spirit got her in trouble
and she was thrown out of art class. She later came upon a naked
chained insane sculptor who scared her as she fell and broke her
arm. She lost her artistic vision and settled for being the sculptor's
muse when she realized he had used her face in a representation of
the Virgin Mary.
When their father, Carlos, got in trouble with the secret
police for agitating against the military dictatorship, the family
enlisted the help of a CIA operative, Vic, to get them out of the
country. They fled to New York City, where they had trouble adjusting
culturally and materially to the new situation. Laura, the sisters'
mother, came from a wealthy and influential family in the Dominican
Republic and did not like having to become a middle class nobody
in the United States. She found comfort through supporting her daughters'
endeavors, such as Yolanda's poetry and Sofia's defiance of her father's
overprotective nature.
Dr. Fanning helped Carlos get a medical fellowship, and
offered to take the family out for a celebratory dinner once they
had settled in the United States. Laura wanted to make a good impression
and pressured the girls to behave themselves and not ask for any
special treats. After Sandra saw Mrs. Fanning kiss her father in
the restroom, she insisted that Dr. Fanning buy her a flamenco doll. Carla
had trouble fitting in to American school settings, and was harassed
by abusive and prejudiced schoolboys. She also was nearly molested
by a perverted exhibitionist in a car. Yolanda began to write in
English and found a way to express her own voice, though she started
off by imitating Walt Whitman. Her father criticized her insubordination,
which Yolanda perceived to be intellectual independence. Sofia was
sent to the Dominican Republic as a punishment for using marijuana,
though she ended up getting into more trouble by spending time without
a chaperone with her illegitimate cousin, Manuel.
In college, Yolanda had trouble relating to men, since
she was turned off by the vocabulary men use to describe sex. Though
she was attracted to a boy, Rudy, she would not sleep with him and
he accused her of being frigid. She was hurt by this but later realized that
he was just a jerk. She later married a man she thought she loved,
John, though at a certain point they had problems communicating.
Like Rudy, he did not understand her Dominican cultural heritage,
and could not appreciate the Spanish language. When Yolanda stopped
trusting and loving John, she could not understand the words he
used, and only heard "babble, babble." She had a mental breakdown
at her parents' house, in which she could only quote and misquote
bits of things she had read and heard throughout her life. She spent
time in a mental hospital until she recovered. Her sister Sandra
also had a mental breakdown, in which she thought she was regressing
through evolution, and would eventually cease to be human.
After Sandra is released from the hospital, Sofia planned
to reconcile with her father during a birthday party. She broke
tradition, in that the daughters would usually come home for their
father's birthday, but she hosts the party at her house to show
off her German husband and two blond children. She and her father
had fought when he accused her of sleeping around during a trip
to Colombia, where she met her husband, Otto. She ran away from home
to assert her independence, and later married Otto. Though the party
was going well, Sofia was hurt that her father did not express more
affection toward her. She humiliated him with a seductive kiss in
the ear as part of a party game. Yolanda returned to the Dominican
Republic, possibly for good, to embrace her extended family and
cultural roots. Her family thought she was crazy for driving into
the countryside by herself, but she ignored them. She got lost looking
for fresh guavas, and then got a flat tire. When approached by two
men, she panicked and pretended not to speak any Spanish. Yolanda
felt more comfortable in her English speaking American identity
than with the Dominican side of her personality.
