My Broken Language: A Memoir

Abuela’s house is full of cousins, always coming and going. Quiara is the “hump cousin,” younger than most of her generation yet older than their babies. One day, Cuca, an elder cousin, invites Quiara to Six Flags, an amusement park. Quiara is in awe of her grown-up cousins and is delighted with the invitation.

The kids pile into the car and head out. Flor, who coins the nickname “Qui Qui,” instructs Quiara on how to get a trucker to blow his horn, and everyone cheers when a passing 18-wheeler honks at them. Quiara frequently suffers from car sickness, but by the time they arrive at the amusement park, she is so ill that she cannot get out of the car. She insists that her cousins go on without her and immediately falls asleep in the backseat. On the way home, she whimpers in pain and apologizes for ruining the day. Her cousins assure her that they felt bad she couldn’t join the fun. Everyone is quiet on the way home; they are tired, but they also avoid boasting of their fun in front of Quiara, who is surprised by this kindness. 

When they return to Abuela’s and Quiara finally goes to the bathroom, she discovers evidence of her first period. Cucu is delighted and immediately rushes to the bodega to buy Quiara pads and initiate her into womanhood with aspirin and a hot shower. She falls asleep on the sofa as Cucu bustles around, preparing for the week, pausing occasionally to kiss Quiara on the forehead.

Abuela’s house is the site of all important family events, and today, they are celebrating the Fourth of July, Abuela’s birthday. No one knows how old the woman is, and Quiara feels she has been “ancient” for as long as she has known her. Abuela shares a birthday with Flor, one of Quiara’s many cousins. However, Flor hasn’t been seen since she was “plucked from sanity” by substance use disorder and smashed her youngest son’s head against the bathtub when he wouldn’t stop crying. However, the party is full of family, and everyone is dancing. 

As Quiara nears high school, she finds herself in a deep depression. However, life is not without consolation. She begins taking piano lessons, kissing boys and girls, sneaking wine when her mother is out, and reading One Hundred Years of Solitude. A new album by Juan Luis Guerra is the soundtrack to the summer, creating joy during “a decade of hijas lost to alleyways” (66). Quiara serves herself a plate of rice and beans and watches the Perez women dance to keep Flor’s absence at bay. Nuchi, with her “tight and right” spandex bike shorts, will soon become “skeletal” from substance use disorder. Mary Lou, dancing with her midriff exposed and exuding joy, will die of an aneurysm at 27. Tía Toña, “almost spry” as she dances, will become too large to stand after the deaths of her husband and son. 

Quiara eats slowly, hoping to avoid being dragged onto the dance floor, reading the living room “like the private, treasured pages of a novel” (70).

Freshman year, Quiara attends an arts high school. She finds the readings in English class interesting, but most of her classmates stay up too late working on art projects to participate in discussions. Sophomore year, she transfers to a competitive magnet school. The school is mostly white and African American, with just a few Latino and Asian students.

Reading Arthur Miller’s classic Death of a Salesman, Quiara argues that Willy Loman’s tragedy is “being average,” and her teacher tells the class to write it down. As they discuss, Quiara thinks of her father and his suburban “malaise.” She thinks these “American archetypes” suffer because they expect too much. The Perez women in her family can remain “above the fray” because they haven’t been promised any “false thrones” by society (73).

Quiara is called out of class by the news that 27-year-old Mary Lou is dead from an aneurysm. Riding the train home, she realizes that she has experienced many more funerals than her classmates from other neighborhoods and wonders, “What [is] wrong with the Perezes?” (74). Already, Tía Toña has lost her husband and son. Flor is lost in her substance use disorder. Nuchi is becoming thinner by the day. Little Danito is “already an experienced griever” (75), and Mary Lou’s eight-year-old daughter is now an orphan. 

Driving home from the funeral, Quiara asks her mother what an aneurysm is. Virginia explains, and Quiara feels relieved that Mary Lou’s death was “not sociologically complicated;” it could have happened to someone of any race, ethnicity, or socioeconomic status. Then, Quiara asks about Big Vic, Tía Toña’s son. Virginia says that he died of kidney failure due to taking too much ibuprofen. Quiara asks further, and her mother admits that the man “might’ve had AIDS” (80). When Quiara asks about Tía Toña’s husband, Guillo, her mother first says he died of liver failure, then also concedes that he could have had AIDS.

Although Quiara loses many family members, she never cries for them. The losses feel more like collective family sorrow than her own personal pain. Her father’s family has also experienced grief, losing family to the Holocaust. However, Quiara thinks that his story has a beginning and an end; it is “made slightly less unbearable through the telling […] the bearing of witness” (83). In contrast, there is no story to explain the Perezes’ losses. For Quiara, there is no context for the deaths in the Perez family, no concept of the crack and AIDS epidemics, or “of the human cost of residential segregation” (83).

As an adult, she again asks her mother how Guillo and Big Vic died. Virginia tells her daughter two versions. In the first, Guillo contracted HIV from a mistress in Puerto Rico. Big Vic moved in with his parents as a caretaker when he got sick. A year later, Big Vic died of the same disease. The next version makes Quiara angry. Her mother tells her that Big Vic was a dealer. When he was arrested, he traded information for less jail time. However, the woman he turned in had associates who “were into the dark arts” (87). They put a curse on him, and before long, he was dead.

One day, a turtle appears in Quiara’s bathtub. Her mother warns her not to get attached to the creature, but for months, she listens to its claws scraping against the porcelain tub. Finally, Quiara enters the kitchen to find her mother scraping flesh from the turtle’s shell. Altars to the Yoruba spirits known as “Orishas” appear in the house, and other animals like goats and chickens are sacrificed for ceremonies. Her mother becomes involved in Philadelphia’s Lukumí community, taking Quiara along to elders’ houses, where they sometimes perform cleansing ceremonies when her teenage depression gets out of hand. Most of the gatherings are made up of Black Latinos, and Quiara knows that her white skin in an African-based religion means she cannot be “cavalier” and take her invitation for granted. She learns that those who progress in the religion receive a new name, and she relishes the new sounds of this language. 

One night, a ritual occurs in her house while Quiara listens upstairs. She hears drums beating and a stranger’s voice filling the house. She sneaks downstairs to find her mother sitting at the table with two men. The stranger’s voice is coming from her mother’s mouth, who chugs rum while one man asks her questions and the other records her answers. 

As Quiara watches her mother’s possession, she thinks back on the Perez women dancing on the Fourth of July. She thinks dancing and possession are part of a language she doesn’t understand. Since her best language is English, she lacks the words to describe her own world. Quiara prays for God to give her a language to describe her world and make her “whole.” Tired of the fear and “disgust” on her white friends’ faces when they come to her house and see her mother’s strange altars, she wishes for “a home that require[s] no explanation” (99). She is ashamed of her friends’ reactions but also ashamed that she says nothing to defend her mother.

She wants to disavow religion like her father, but she feels in her gut that what her mother believes is true. In Quiara’s living room, her mother’s accomplishments cover the walls. There are letters of recognition and achievement, certifications, and awards for her contributions to the community. Meanwhile, Virginia’s altars, save for the one that must guard the door, are kept out of sight for “self-protection.”

After leaving CHOICE, Quiara’s mother becomes a youth ambassador doing outreach work. As part of her job, she travels with Quiara to South Dakota to work with Lakota Sioux teenagers. Quiara is surprised by the houses that look as fragile as “card castles,” struck by the “panoply of invisibilities” of poverty in the United States. Virginia and Quiara are invited to the tribe’s Sun Dance, and Quiara watches in awe as men dance around a pole attached to it by ribbons tied to piercings in their chests. They dance until the piercings tear through their skin and blood runs down their chests. Impressed by this blood sacrifice, Quiara is inspired to begin her own “search,” looking for “better languages” to describe her reality.