My Broken Language
Page 1
Praise for
MY BROKEN LANGUAGE
“It wasn’t until I read Quiara Alegría Hudes’s book that I realized I’ve spent much of my life running away from who I was as a girl in a tiny apartment in Brooklyn and from the mother who was then just a young woman with curly bangs and a lot of secrets. I write about myself for a living but I seem to only remember the sorrow, because I can see the scars—but there was joy in those early New York summers, even when I felt like the loneliest girl in the world. Reading this book felt like those summers, the first ice cream cone from the first ice cream truck down Myrtle Avenue, the choking sob thrill of a memory lost on every single page, over and over again, and I cried from the relief of knowing that this was my city, this was my community, this was my legacy, this was my family, this was my story too.”
—Karla Cornejo Villavicencio, author of the National Book Award finalist The Undocumented Americans
“In her vibrant memoir, My Broken Language, Quiara Alegría Hudes takes us on an unforgettable tour of her neighborhoods. Negotiating between languages, cultures, religions, and the most important boundary, the haves and have-nots, Hudes takes us with her to visit her relatives, leading us up the front stoop into the living room, past the household shrines. But more than being a translator for these vivid families, Quiara Alegría Hudes teaches us the grammar and the rules of the languages spoken and unspoken. Through music, food, storytelling, and memorable depictions of these worlds apart, Hudes has created a must-read book that is difficult to put down. Her generous intimacy causes us all to examine—and honor—our families’ broken languages that create a rich emotional legacy for the people we become.”
—Paula Vogel, emeritus Eugene O’Neill Professor and chair of playwriting at the Yale School of Drama
“Our histories, our spirits, our words, our racial diversity, our stories, our names will not be silenced thanks to Quiara Alegría Hudes. Her story helps us understand that our textured, rich cultural realities are to be valued, shared, and celebrated. The knowledge of Native and African elders grounded in nature’s forces is alive and Hudes’s journey urges us to understand and embrace the multiplicity of the spiritual energetic threads that guide our unique existence and contributions. It is in boldly standing in our truth that the misinformed histories that dominate the public narrative will be destroyed. Hudes is telling us: Say it loud, say it proud, we are the keepers of their stories, the spirit of our ancestors, and the storytellers that will pass forward their stories.”
—Dr. Marta Moreno Vega, founder of the Creative Justice Initiative and Lukumi Priestess Omo Obatala
“A wonderful and absorbing narrative…Hudes presents an exquisitely told and deeply personal narrative about notions of home, family, and belonging. It’s a master class on how we might all find the courage to tell our own stories on our own terms.”
—Kimberly Drew, author of This is What I Know About Art and co-editor of Black Futures
My Broken Language is a work of nonfiction. Some names have been changed.
Copyright © 2021 by Quiara Alegría Hudes
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by One World, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.
One World and colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Hudes, Quiara Alegría, author.
Title: My broken language: a memoir / Quiara Alegría Hudes.
Description: New York: One World, [2021]
Identifiers: LCCN 2020037277 (print) | LCCN 2020037278 (ebook) | ISBN 9780399590047 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780399590054 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Hudes, Quiara Alegría. | Hispanic American women dramatists—Biography. | Racially mixed people—Pennsylvania—Philadelphia—Biography. | Language and culture—America. | Philadelphia (Pa.)—Biography.
Classification: LCC PS3608.U3234 Z46 2021 (print) | LCC PS3608.U3234 (ebook) | DDC 862/.7 [B]—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020037277
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020037278
Ebook ISBN 9780399590054
oneworldlit.com
randomhousebooks.com
Book design by Jo Anne Metsch, adapted for ebook
Cover design: Anna Kochman
Cover illustration: Diana Ejaita
ep_prh_5.6.1_c0_r0
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Epigraph
Author's Note
Part I: I Am the Gulf Between English and Spanish
Chapter 1: A Multilingual Block in West Philly
Chapter 2: Spanish Becomes a Secret; Language of the Dead
Chapter 3: English Is for Atheism; Language of Woodworking
Chapter 4: A Name That Is a Mask
Chapter 5: An English Cousin Comes to Visit
Chapter 6: Language of the Forest
Part II: All the Languages of My Perez Women, and Yet All This Silence…
Chapter 7: Latina Health Vocab from the Late ’80s
Chapter 8: Spanglish Cousins on the Jersey Turnpike
Chapter 9: Body Language
Chapter 10: Sophomore Year English
Chapter 11: Things Go Unsaid Long Enough…
Chapter 12: Possession’s Voice
Chapter 13: Sedo Buys Me an Upright; Language of Bach
Chapter 14: Taíno Petroglyphs
Chapter 15: Lukumí Thrones
Chapter 16: Silence=Death
Chapter 17: Unwritten Recipes
Chapter 18: Yoruba Vocabulary
Chapter 19: A Racial Slur
Chapter 20: A Book Is Its Presence and Absence
Chapter 21: Mom’s Accent
Part III: How Qui Qui Be?
Chapter 22: Dad Buys Me a Typewriter
Chapter 23: She Said Norf Philly and One-Two-Free
Chapter 24: Atonality
Chapter 25: Fania Everything and Salsa Out-of-Prints
Chapter 26: The Serenity Prayer
Chapter 27: Sterling Library
Chapter 28: The Foraker Act (On Boriken’s—and the Diaspora’s—Language History)
Chapter 29: Gil Scott-Heron Asks Me a Question
Part IV: Break Break Break My Mother Tongue
Chapter 30: Writing’s a Muscle, It Gets Stronger
Chapter 31: Broken Language
Chapter 32: On Obscenity
Chapter 33: Cold Drink Became a Play
Chapter 34: Silence=Death (Déjà Vu All Over Again)
Chapter 35: The Book of Our Genius
Dedication
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Words carry power; they have their own aché.
—Marta Moreno Vega
(Note to reader: I changed a bunch of names.)
Part I
I Am the Gulf Between English and Spanish
A Multilingual Block in West Philly
Dad was hurrying mom in English. “Let’s go, Virginia,” as he leaned against the tailgate sucking an unfiltered so hard I heard it crackle all the way on the stoop. Mom propped the screen door w
ith her foot, ordering me to carry out boxes in snaps, gestures, and screams. And Titi Ginny was telling mom to pay dad no mind in Spanish. “Siempre tiene prisa,” she whispered with a tilted smile, turning dad’s impatience into a sweet little nothing.
My brat pack came to wave me off and started in on the obscene gestures whenever mom turned her back. Chien was first-generation Vietnamese. Ben and Elizabeth, first-gen Cambodian. Rowetha lost her Amharic after leaving Ethiopia. We all spoke English, unlike our parents, who all spoke different languages from one another. This was my West Philly crew, my pampers–to–pre-K alphabet soup. I assumed all blocks everywhere were like it—as many languages as sidewalk cracks, one boarded-up home for every lived-in, more gum wads than dandelions. But mom told me no, nature would reign at our new rental house on a horse farm.
Titi Ginny unlatched the screen so it slammed, and handed me a pastelillo grease-wrapped in paper towel. A snack for the drive. I wanted her to re-create our current layout in the new spot, to move next door so I could sneak across the alley and watch cartoons in her lazy boy. There was a spot between two pleather cracks, duct-tape repaired, where my butt fit perfectly. My Sunday morning throne. But mom said there were no alleys where we were moving, and no such thing as next door either. That gave me something to think about.
Anyway, Titi Ginny’s softball team was waiting in Fairmount Park and she had to be on second base in an hour. So she rolled down her driver’s side and promised to visit the farm, my big cousins in tow. Mary Lou, Cuca, Flor, Big Vic, Vivi, and Nuchi. She’d cram all their stinky teen butts in her backseat, and they’d see the country for the first time. “Bring Abuela and Tía Toña, oh, and Tía Moncha, too,” I said, marveling at the prospect of hanging with my fam outside of Philly. Titi Ginny turned the key and every version of dios-te-bendiga rolled off her tongue. There were a million ways to say god-bless in Spanish. Dios te cuide, dios te favoresca, dios te this and te that. There was only one way to say it in English, and you only said it after a sneeze. Then off she went before off we went.
Dad slammed the tailgate and mom teared up in the pleather passenger side. “Extrañaré a mi hermana.” Dad stayed quiet, probably didn’t understand. But I knew the Spanish word for missing someone sounded like the English word for strange. Sandwiched between them, I sensed mom’s worried profile. She had talked the move up for months, but saying goodbye to a sister was a whole ’nother thing.
“Then why do we have to move today? Can’t we finish out summer on the block?”
“Because, Quiara, I been stuck a city girl since I was eleven. But before that, before I came to Philly, I had a whole farm to myself. Mami gets to be with nature again, where she belongs, like in Puerto Rico.” And her tired eyes made room for a little spark.
How she told it, mom had been changing scenes all her life, same as geese veeing over the art museum. There was always a next stop full of new promise. Even Abuela’s memories about PR were made of a million places—towns, cities, and barrios. Too many to keep track. This time, I got to join mom’s migration.
Pulling away from the narrow block, the rearview showed my crew double-dutching and playing shoot-out. No final waves, hollers, or stuck-out tongues. Whatever’s the best language for saying bye, I’d flubbed it cuz the city already forgot me.
* * *
—
The horse farm was on a twisty road flanked by woods. Perky little hills worked a number on my bladder. Despite a strong midday sun, the road was all green shadow thanks to trees thick and tall as god’s fingers. My old block’s trees were like zoo elephants—one or two specimens stunted by a cement habitat. But this chaos of greenery had my heart calling dibs. Monster claws made of vine and bramble reached for our truck. Far as I had known, plants began in the soil and grew to the sky. But not here, where greenery grew sideways, diagonally, and downward. “We are your new brat pack,” the woods whispered, seeming mischievous as my old crew, and also like they wouldn’t tell on you.
When I got out of the pickup, I walked to the edge of the woods and stared. “Introduce yourself. Go talk to the trees,” mom said. I ventured in, ferns feathering my shins, and didn’t stop walking till I couldn’t see the house and the house couldn’t see me. Jack-in-the-pulpits were terrariums of rainwater and drowned flies. Mushrooms shriveled and swelled. A baby toad peed a puddle in my hand. In that moist wilderness, mine and mine alone, I recited a poem aloud. An original, from memory, about the Chuck Taylors that my dreams were made of. The trees listened close, gave a standing ovation. Their mossy velvet roots invited me to sit and felt so soft I almost forgot Titi Ginny’s lazy boy.
Spanish Becomes a Secret; Language of the Dead
“Please, mom? Can we go to Titi Ginny’s this weekend?”
“Ay, how many times do I have to say no?” Mom rested, sweating, against the hoe’s tall handle. Ribs heaving above spent lungs. All morning she had sliced the hoe’s blade downward, troughing and trenching a patch of earth out back. Now they reversed roles and the hoe supported her momentary repose. “Go cut me an eight-foot piece, entiendes?” She handed me a knot of twine. I found a measuring tape in dad’s workshop garage, and an exacto knife for cutting. Two important tools, I told myself, for an important task. When I returned with the measured and cut section, she told me to anchor one end in my fist. I held it firmly against the dirt, pink earthworms wriggling near my wrist. Mom lifted the twine’s loose end and walked a steady circular path using the rope as a tether, marking her course with a walking stick. In just minutes, she had etched a circle into the freshly turned soil. Its symmetry was flawless. Next came the compass, which I got to hold, as mom located north, east, west, south, and center. She marked each of the five directions with a river stone, conch shell, or raw quartz. The garden would be a living medicine wheel, she told me.
For the remainder of the weekend, whether baking bread or sweeping cobwebs from the ceiling, mom paused on the hour, headed out back, and jotted numbers in her marble composition book. “This column is time of day. This column is the sun’s position. This one, shadow length. So I know where to plant each herb. Back in Puerto Rico, Papi taught me. He couldn’t read or write, so his brain was his notebook. My job was to bring coffee to him while he farmed, then bring back the empty cup. Little by little, I observed his methods. He would share a tidbit about the plants, seasons, moon cycles. For a man who never stepped foot in a schoolroom, your abuelo was a genius.” A genius who died in Puerto Rico before I was born. The man and the island were mysteries to me, and the title Abuelo felt too familiar for, essentially, a stranger.
“How come he couldn’t read?”
“He knew a little. Mami taught Papi the basics. But when he was younger than you, Papi lost all his elders to a hurricane. An entire community carried out to sea and, whoosh, swallowed by the ocean. He was one of two children who survived. Grew up like a slave in poverty, but with his indigenous science knowledge.”
She compiled a notebook index of herbs and scooped me up for long drives to nurseries that might sell them. Angelica. Rosemary. Eucalyptus. Rue. Lemon balm. Yerba bruja. Basil (albahaca). Verdolaga (purslane). Peony. Artemisa (wormwood). Various types of mint. Parsley. Marjoram (mejorana). Hot peppers. Pazote. And many, many sages. Because of its strong personality and curative properties, sage was to be planted at center. Mexican sage. Purple sage. Pineapple sage. Lemon sage. Rooting young herbs in loose soil made mom glow with a radiance I’d never seen in Philly. Depending on the humidity, her hair might be a tall springy afro, pyramid down in loose curls, or lie smooshed beneath a bandana save a strand at the ears. As summer progressed, she darkened from new-penny bright to old-penny rich. But some things never changed: her ski slope nose, the overbite that emphasized her tiredest smile, and slender shoulders with enough soft to lean your head on.
Monday through Friday mom still left home early and came home late, the bone-tired breadwinner. I had no clue what she did in
the city, but the long train ride home was standing-room-only as briefcases pummeled her knees. She returned soggy-limbed, a marionette whose strings had come loose. Mom’s curls and clothes that had been impeccable in the morning drooped off her brow, shoulders, and hips. She looked like a neglected laundry line. I was usually already in bed and only heard her entrance, the muffled footsteps in the hallways, the mattress’s sigh as it accepted her troubles. Often, a fight would suddenly energize her and I’d stare at the ceiling to mom and dad’s vitriolic screams.
On Saturdays the notion of retracing her daily commute made her wince and so despite my pleas, our weekend hangouts at Abuela’s and Titi Ginny’s became a memory. Titi Ginny never did come to visit, not alone or with the promised carful of cousins. Instead, mom and I spent weekend daylight gardening or strolling the farm’s hills, while dad caught up with his carpentry in the garage.
The rituals began.
* * *
—
“Join me out back if you want,” and the screen door closed behind her. By the time I leapt up realizing the Spanish thing—the god thing—was about to go down, she was halfway up the hill. I followed her past the circle garden and up through the wild grass, breath thickening, windmilling my arms to show the grasshoppers how free I was. Way on top, overlooking the cows and horses, was the warmest patch of grass in the history of warm. That close to the sky, mom’s skin wore the sun like a candy coating. Boy, did she shine.