How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents

How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents Summary | Part 1, 1989-1972, Antojos Summary

Yolanda has returned home from the United States and her aunts and cousins have been busily preparing for a party in her honor. The relatives are all babbling around Yolanda, telling about their lives and asking about hers. There is a big cake with many candles to be lit, each one signifying a city in the Dominican Republic where they live. Yolanda has been away for five years and is not sure she is going back, but has told no one of her plans just yet.

The women ask Yolanda what she wants to do while visiting here, and all she can think of is that she would like to eat some guavas and hopes to pick some in a drive north in a few days. This puts the women in a spin because women do not drive by themselves alone anywhere in this country. It is not the United States.

However, two days later Yolanda manages to borrow a Datsun from her aunt and finds herself on the narrow road up the foothills realizing that this is her first moment alone since returning home. Finally, the hills plateau a bit and the road widens, and Yolanda can see a roadside stand up ahead. There are no guavas so she continues on. Before long, Yolanda comes into a small village and pulls up before a cantina. An old woman and a young boy greet her, offering her the best they have but Yolanda simply wants some guavas. The boy knows where they are growing on both sides of the road. He crawls into the car with her and they drive to the spot which is deep in the countryside.

The boy was right. The guavas are more than plentiful and Yolanda eats several right on the spot and she and the boy walk a bit to harvest more. When Yolanda starts to drive away, the car lurches and stops, and she realizes that it has a flat tire. Yolanda offers the boy money if he will run back down the hill for help. In the meantime, two men emerge from the undergrowth, dirty from their work and machetes at the ready. They seem to startle each other. Yolanda tries to tell them in English about her situation, but she ultimately leads them to the car and they fix her tire. The men reluctantly accept her money as a gesture of gratitude.

On the way back down the hill, Yolanda encounters the small boy who is crying. No one believed that a woman would be in a car in the hills, especially at that time of day, so they called him a liar and would not come. Sorry for his trouble Yolanda gives him more than the promised dollar when she deposits him back in town with the old woman. As she heads out again, Yolanda waves goodbye in the rear view mirror, her trunk filled with guavas.