Nov 1 , 2012
CUANDO ERA PUERTORRIQUEÑA --- UN FRAGMENTO---R3- CAP 2 PG. 100-3 TRADUCCIÓN
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-toceiling.
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.