How the García Girls Lost Their Accents

Sofia was generally the sister who broke the rules the most, but at different points throughout their youth each of the sisters had a reputation for being the “wildest.” Yolanda’s streak of being the wildest started when she was in boarding school. A lot of boys chased her, which Yolanda attributes not to her looks but to her “vivacious” personality, as her teacher put it. Yolanda was still learning English at this time, but she was good at conversing with boys. When Yolanda went to college, boys still chased her but they didn’t stay interested for long because Yolanda didn’t have sex with them.

Yolanda meets Rudolf Brodermann Elmenhurst, the third in English class. She lends him a pencil and he mocks her because it is sharpened into a stub. She still has the pencil because her parents taught her to save everything. That night, he comes to her room to return the pencil, and he asks her out to lunch. After the two have lunch, they start spending much of their free time together. Rudy often stays late into the nights in Yolanda’s room, but she doesn’t let him spend the night. He teaches her a lot of sexual wordplay, which entices her because she loves words. The phrases are new to her since English is her second language and because she is sexually inexperienced.

Yolanda wishes she fit in better with Rudy and their other classmates—she misses a lot of jokes and cultural references because she and her family are immigrants and her parents are “old world.” She and Rudy start seeing each other, and they party together on the weekends. Rudy continuously pressures Yolanda to sleep with him, but she always refuses. Rudy uses coarse language to talk about sex, which puts her off. Yolanda is also afraid of getting pregnant, and she believes that she can become pregnant just from Rudy touching her. When Rudy tells his parents he’s seeing Yolanda, they think it’s a good educational experience for Rudy since Yolanda is from a different culture. This bothers Yolanda.

One night, Rudy becomes frustrated by Yolanda’s refusal to sleep with him and says he doesn’t want to be with her. He calls her “cruel,” and says that sex is a physical necessity for men. She is offended and saddened, and feels that people misunderstand her blend of Catholic old world culture and American culture. Rudy doesn’t talk to Yolanda after that, but in class he starts writing love poems. Yolanda hopes he still loves her. She thinks they will reconcile at the school’s spring dance, but she sees him at the dance with another girl. She knows now that his love poems are about the other girl.

Five years later, Yolanda is in grad school. She is now experienced with sex and drugs, and she considers herself a poet. Rudy calls her out of the blue, and invites himself over to her house. He arrives with a bottle of nice wine. When Yolanda tries to make conversation, he interrupts her and suggests that they have sex. She immediately tells him to leave. As he leaves, she feels the same insecurity that he made her feel five years before. She drinks the wine that he brought.