Almost a Woman : A Memoir (9780306821110) by Esmeralda Santiago Page A

face as wrinkled as a raisin. She called us “honey” or “darling,” and once she had served our coffee and pastry, she came over several times to see if there was anything else we needed and to refill our cups.
    I was nervous, but that didn’t stop me from eating my pineapple danish and half of Mami’s and drinking two cups of strong coffee with cream and lots of sugar.
    â€œShe eats, for such a skinny thing,” the waitress said to Mami, and she nodded and smiled as if she understood.
    We walked the half block to the school, and as soon as I was called into the audition room, I was sorry there was so much food in my stomach. My innards churned and churled, and if the interview wasn’t over soon, I might vomit in front of the three
ladies in whose hands lay my future as an artista. But I managed to get through the monologue and a pantomime and to walk out of the heavy red doors of the school before throwing up between two parked cars as Mami held my hair back and fussed, “Are you all right now? Are you okay?”
    On the way home she asked what had happened in the audition, and I said, “Nothing. I answered some questions and did my monologue.”
    I couldn’t tell her that I’d been so nervous I’d forgotten everything learned from Mr. Barone, Mr. Gatti, and Mrs. Johnson. I raced through the monologue, toppled a chair, answered questions without understanding what I was asked. I wouldn’t tell Mami how badly I’d done after she’d spent money we couldn’t waste on a new outfit and shoes for me. I was ashamed to return to JHS 33 and tell Mr. Barone that I’d bungled the audition. Everyone would laugh at me for presuming I could get into Performing Arts, then fail to get in, in spite of all the help I’d been given. I imagined myself in school with Lulu and Violeta, LuzMari and Denise, who would never let me forget I thought I was too good for them. Mornings, while I took the bus to Eli Whitney, Natalia would be on the train to the Bronx High School of Science. I’d have nothing to talk to her about, because she’d be busy preparing for college, while I’d be sewing underwear in a factory alongside my mother.
    As Mami and I rode back, the train charged out of the tunnels, clattered over the Williamsburg Bridge toward Brooklyn. The skyline of Manhattan receded like an enormous wall between us and the rest of the United States. My face away from Mami, I cried. At first my tears came from the humiliation of what I was sure was a terrible audition. But as we neared our stop in Brooklyn, I cried because the weeks of anxious preparation for the audition had left me longing for a life I was now certain I’d never get.

“But they’re still legitimate . . .”

    As Mami’s belly grew larger, she had trouble moving around because her legs and back hurt. She quit her job, and I again accompanied her to the welfare office.
    â€œI need assistance until the baby is born and his father is out of the hospital,” she had me translate.
    â€œAnd how long have you and Mr. Cortez been married?” the social worker asked.
    â€œWe’re not married,” Mami said. “We’ve lived together for the past ten months.”
    The social worker pressed her lips together. “Does your first husband provide child support?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œHow long since you’ve been divorced?”
    â€œTell her,” Mami said, “that your father and I weren’t married.”
    The social worker gripped her pen, and her slanted, left-handed writing crawled across lined paper like rows of barbed wire.
    â€œThen the seven older children are also illegitimate,” she said, and Mami blushed, although I’d not yet translated.
    â€œTheir father has recognized them all,” she had me interpret, pulling our birth certificates from her purse.
    â€œBut they’re still illegitimate,” the social