Nov 1 , 2012

CUANDO ERA PUERTORRIQUEA --- UN FRAGMENTO---R3- CAP 2 PG. 100-3

TRADUCCIN
You are going to read a fragment of an autobiography. It is about Esmeralda
Santiago, a young Puerto Rican girl that emigrated with her family to New
York. Esmeralda is giving an audition at the famous secondary school of the
Performing Arts. While you read, note in a table the following points: what
does Esmeralda do and how does she feel
1. Before the audition.
2. During the audition.
3. After the audition:
By paragraph
The tests are in less than a month! You have to learn a dramatic scene, and
you're going to perform it in front of a jury panel. If you do it well and your
grades here are high it might be that they will admit you to the school.
Mr. Barone put himself in charge of preparing me for the test. He selected a
soliloquy of a work by Sidney Howard titled the Silver Cord, put on stage for
the first time in 1926, but the action of which took place in a lady's drawing
room in New York, around the year 1905.
Mr. Gatti, the grammar teacher, will direct you And Mrs. Johnson will talk to
you about what you should wear and those things.
My part was that of Christina a young married girl that was confronting her
mother-in-law. I learned the soliloquy phonetically, under the direction of Mr.
Gatti. My first words were:" You belong to a type that's very common in this
country, Mrs. Phelps, a type of self-centered, self pitying, son-devouring
tigress, with unmentionable proclivities suppressed on the side".
We don't have the time to learn what each word says said Mr. Gatti. Just be
sure that you pronounce them all.
I had dreamed about this moment for several weeks. More than anything, I
wanted to impress the jury with my talent in order that they accept me in the
Performing Arts high school and to be able to leave Brooklyn every day, and
one day never return.

But as soon as I faced the three ladies that formed the jury of the audition, I
forgot the English that I had learned and the lessons that Mrs. Johnson had
instilled in me about how to behave like a lady. In the agony of answering
their questions, their incomprehensible questions. I moved and pushed my
hands this way. In that way forming words with my fingers, because they
would not come out of my mouth.
Why don't you let us hear your soliloquy now? asked the lady with the
hanging glasses.
Startled, I stood up and my chair fell over to about 3 feet from where I was
standing. I went to encounter it, wishing with all my soul that a lightning bolt
would enter through the window and would burn me to a crisp right then and
there.
Don't worry, said the lady. We know that you're nervous.
I closed my eyes and I breathed deeply. I walked to the center of the room
and I began my soliloquy.
(--Now you see a phonetic representation of the English that she was
supposed to memorize.)
In spite of the instructions Mr. Gatti gave me to speak slowly and to
pronounce well the words even if I didn't understand them I recited my
monologue of 3 min. in 1 min. without taking a breath, not even once.
The false eyelashes of the short lady appeared to grow in surprise. The
serene face of the elegant lady trembled with controlled laughter. The tall
lady, dressed in brown, gave me a sweet smile.
Thank you, darling. Would you please wait outside a little while?
I resisted the wish to bow to her. The hallway was long, with narrow wood
panels from floor-to-ceiling.
Lamps with large and round bulbs were hanging from the ceiling from long
cords, creating yellow pools on the polished floor. Some girls of my age were
seated in chairs on the edges of the hallway, waiting their turn. They looked
at me from top to bottom when I came out closing the door after me. Mom
stood up from her chair at the end of the hallway. She looked as scared as I
felt.
What happened to you?

Nothing, I didn't dare to speak, because if I began to explain to her all that
had happened, I would begin to cry in front of the other people, whose eyes
were following me as if looking for signs of what awaited them. We walked
until the exit door. I have to wait here a minute. (I told her)
They didn't tell you anything?
No, only to wait here.
We leaned against the wall. In front of us, there was a corkboard with
newspaper clippings about the graduates from the school. On the edges,
someone had printed PA and the year when the actor, dancer or musician
had graduated. I closedmy eyes and I tried to imagine a picture of me on the
corkboard with the writing PA 66 on the edge.
The door on the other side of the hallway opened and the lady dressed in
brown stuck her head out.
Esmeralda?
Present! I mean, here, and I raised my hand.
She awaited me until I entered the room. There was another girl inside the
room. She was presented as Bonnie, a student of the school.
Do you know what a pantomime is? asked the lady. I indicated yes, with my
head. Bonnie and you are sisters decorating a Christmas tree.
Bonnie looked a lot like Juanita Marin, who I had seen for the last time four
years ago. We decided where to put the invisible tree, and we sat on the floor
and acted as though we were taking out decorations from a box and hanging
them on the branches.
My family had never put up a Christmas tree, but I remembered how one
time I helped dad put colored lights around an eggplant bush that divided
our yard from that of Dona Anna.
We began at the bottom, and we wrapped the electric cord with the little red
lights around the bush until there were no more. Then Papa plugged in
another electric cord with more lights, and we continued wrapping it around
until the branches were drooping with the weight and the bush appeared to
be lit in flames.

In a little while. I forgot where I was and that the tree did not exist, and that
Bonnie was not my sister. She pretended as if she passed me a decoration
that was very delicate and I at extending my hand to take it made like it fell
and broke. I was afraid that mom would enter shouting at us that we had
broken one of her favorite figurines. When I began to pick up the delicate
fragments of the broken invisible glass a voice interrupted us and said: thank
you.
Bonnie stood up, smiled, and she left.
The elegant lady extended her hand, so that I would extend out mine.
We shall notify your school in a few days. It was a pleasure meeting you.
I extended my hand to the three ladies and I left without turning my back, in
a silent fog, as if the pantomime had taken away my voice and desire to
speak.
Upon returning home Mom was asking me what had happened, and I
answered her- nothing. Nothing happened, ashamed that, after so many
hours of practice with Mrs. Johnson, Mr. Barrone and Mr. Gatti, after all the
expense for clothing and new shoes, after Mom having to take a day off work
without pay in order to take me to Manhattan, after all that, I had not passed
the test and never more would I leave Brooklyn.
Epilogue: one of these days.
10 years after my graduation from the performing arts high school, I returned
to visit the school. I was living in Boston, a student with a scholarship at
Harvard University. The tall, elegant lady at my test had become my mentor
during my three years at the school. After my graduation, she had married
the principal of the school.
I remember the day of your test, she said, her dreamy angular face, her lips
playing with a smile that that still it seemed she had to control. I had
forgotten the skinny, dark-haired curlyhaired young girl,, the wool dress and
the islands still, hands. But she had not. She told me that the judges had had
to ask me to wait outside so that they would be able to laugh. Now that it
seemed so funny to them to see that 14-year-old Puerto Rican girl babbling a
soliloquy about a possessive mother-in-law during the turn-of-the-century,
the words were incomprehensible because they were going by so rapidly.

We admired the courage necessary to stand in front of us and do what you

did.
Did that meanto say that they accepted me at the school not because I was
talented., But because I was daring?
We. We laughed together.