My Beloved World

Sonia says she didn’t understand Mami’s grief until nearly 50 years after Papi’s death. She knows now that her theory that everyone felt guilty was unsophisticated. As Sonia gets older, she begins to assume that Mami was just depressed. Eventually, she asks Mami and learns about a happy version of Papi. Sonia recounts her mother’s life story: Mami is born in 1927, and Mami’s father abandons the family around that time. Mami’s mother is unwell and near the end of her life, it affects her mind. Mami often has to lead her mother back to bed at night. They live in a wooden shack in the middle of a field, and it’s Mami’s job to carry water from the pump at a nearby uncle’s house. Mami’s mother once owned the farm, but she had to sell it to raise bail for her husband.

Some extended family members help out, but Mami’s siblings are really the ones who raise her. Aurora marries at 16 and leaves for the city, but she returns every two weeks to collect handkerchiefs from women who sew them. Mami hems 24 handkerchiefs per week as her contribution to the household. Mayo feeds the family and eventually marries Maria, but he punishes Mami harshly when she misbehaves. Mami hates Mayo for beating her, and her hatred is why she vows to never return to Puerto Rico. Sonia says that now, Mami recognizes that Mayo was doing the best he could—and at least they sent her to school.

Mami loves school, though the kids tease her and get her into trouble. She reads everything she can. When she’s nine, Mami’s mother dies and Mami moves in with Aurora. Mami loses track of some of her other siblings and continues to hem handkerchiefs. She and spends most of her time in the library, but her grades suffer since she reads instead of doing homework. One morning, Mami and her classmates go wave goodbye to young soldiers and are late for class. A bit later, she sees an ad in the paper for the Women’s Army Corps and mails in her application immediately. She says she’s 19, though she’s only 17.

The Women’s Army Corps asks Mami to appear in San Juan, and Aurora grudgingly sends her. Mami passes all the tests, and they tell her to reappear in four days to ship out to Miami—with her birth certificate. Aurora and Mayo find a lawyer willing to come up with a birth certificate stating that Mami was born in 1925. Sonia says that when she was a child, Mami’s stories of being in the army were some of the only ones Mami would share. It was a time of discipline but also freedom and of coming of age. For many women like Mami, being in the armed forces was how they came to see themselves as American.

Mami and her fellow recruits land in Miami in December. Basic training is difficult, as the women have to learn how to use a telephone and how to speak English, for instance, in addition to how to function in the army. Mami’s group heads for New York next and they work in the post office. Mami makes her first friend, Carmin, there. They explore New York together and are seeing a movie when it stops suddenly for the announcement that the Germans have surrendered.

One day, Carmin and Mami brave the subway to visit Carmin’s friends in the Bronx. Mami meets Papi there. He pays attention to her and they talk about reading. He begins writing her letters, and they fall in love. Mami also falls in love with Abuelita, who’s the life of the party. Joining the family helps Mami forget that she’s an orphan. Both Papi and Abuelita are storytellers and lovers of poetry; this is the first time that Mami hears poetry recited. When Mami’s time in the WAC comes to an end, she decides she doesn’t want to go back to Puerto Rico. She and Papi marry at city hall and then they move in with Abuelita, Gallego, and several of Papi’s brothers. Mami and Papi eventually get their own place downstairs and Papi does everything he can to make it beautiful.

Papi teaches Mami to dance and gives her lavish gifts. Once, he creates a sculpture of her face to be used on a mannequin at the factory where he works. Papi received little education, but at one point, professors at the university in San Juan heard about his talent for math and offered him a scholarship. Abuelita couldn’t bear to let him go, so they stayed together until Abuelita moved the family to New York. Papi arrived in New York within days of Mami. He loves his job at the mannequin factory, and when it closes, he does bookkeeping for a radiator factory. He supports Mami through a secretarial course and then her nursing course. He’s thrilled when Sonia is born. Sonia interjects, noting that Mami only recently shared that Papi was the one who stayed up with Sonia when she wouldn’t sleep as a baby.

Things begin to fall apart when the mannequin factory closes and when Mami moves the family to the projects. For Papi, the projects are an exile far away from his family. He was drinking before this point—he started at 13 years old, when Gallego married Abuelita—but Mami tells Sonia that it still took time before the drinking tore them apart. However, Mami still insists that Papi always cared for his children and always worked.

Sonia says that Mami couldn’t have paid for Papi’s funeral if Dr. Fisher hadn’t forced Papi to take out a life insurance policy. He even offered to make the payments himself, which Sotomayor believes is proof that Dr. Fisher knew Papi wouldn’t last. Papi’s death shocked everyone except for Dr. Fisher, and it shocked Mami most of all—even though she’s a nurse. When Mami sits in her dark room, she doesn’t just mourn Papi. She mourns for her marriage and is terrified of how she’ll manage two kids alone. She also feels as though being a widow is little different than being an orphan. Now, Sonia realizes that Mami was sad and afraid, not depressed.