Mami Character Analysis

“Are they really policemen?” I keep asking Mami. It doesn’t make any sense. If the SIM are policemen, secret or not, shouldn’t we trust them instead of being afraid of them? But all Mami will say is “Shhh!” Meanwhile, we can’t go to school because something might happen to us. “Like what?” I ask. Like what Chucha said about people disappearing? Is that what Mami worries will happen to us? “Didn’t Papi say we should carry on with normal life?”

Not that I think of Sam as a boyfriend, which I’m not allowed to have anyway. Mami doesn’t approve of my being around any boys who aren’t related to me. But since my cousins moved away, the rules have both tightened and loosened in odd ways. I can’t talk about the SIM’s visit or my cousins’ leaving for New York City, but I can have Sam for a best friend even if he is a boy.

“Doris, put the lid on the sugar bowl, por favor. There are so many flies.”

I look around for flies, but there are none I can see. Lorena has just come out from the kitchen with a tray to collect the empty coffee cups. Perhaps she scared them away.

Then, just like that, it dawns on me: my mother is speaking to Mrs. Washburn in code. She’s saying: We are being overheard; be quiet. It’s as if I’ve stepped into a room I’m not supposed to be in—but now that I’m inside, the door has disappeared. I feel the same way as when Lucinda told me how one day I, too, would get my period.

“Suddenly, you have to be a big girl—”

“I am twelve, Mami!” I sigh and roll my eyes. Recently, if anyone talks to me as if I’m a little kid, I get mad. But I also feel sad that I’m not a little kid anymore and that I know as much as I do. I’ve written about these confused feelings in my diary, too, but this is one confusion that doesn’t get any clearer by writing about it.

“One last big favor to ask you, mi amor. No more writing in your diary for the time being.

“That’s so unfair!” Mami gave me the diary for Christmas. Telling me not to write in it is like taking away my only present.

“I know it is, Anita.” Mami wipes away my tears with her thumbs. “For now, we have to be like the little worm in the cocoon of the butterfly. All closed up and secret until the day...” She spreads her arms as if they were wings.

Whenever I feel this way, I start writing in my diary so there’s another voice that I can listen to. A third radio, tuned to my own heart.

So I snuck off to the bathroom with my diary, and soon enough, Mami was calling me, saying it was rude for me to be off by myself, come join them and be sociable, but then Tía Mari told her to let me be, that it’s a good thing that I’m writing, that ever since I started keeping this diary, I’m talking a lot more.

It took her saying it for me to realize it’s true.

The words are coming back, as if by writing them down, I’m fishing them out of forgetfulness, one by one.

Then one of them shook our hands and said, “Welcome to the United States of America,” and pointed us out of Immigration. And there was my answer to how I would survive in this strange, new world: my family was waiting for us—Mundín and Lucia, my grandparents, Carla, her sisters, and Tía Laura and Tío Carlos and Tía Mimí—all of them calling out, “Anita! Carmen!”

“Are they really policemen?” I keep asking Mami. It doesn’t make any sense. If the SIM are policemen, secret or not, shouldn’t we trust them instead of being afraid of them? But all Mami will say is “Shhh!” Meanwhile, we can’t go to school because something might happen to us. “Like what?” I ask. Like what Chucha said about people disappearing? Is that what Mami worries will happen to us? “Didn’t Papi say we should carry on with normal life?”

Not that I think of Sam as a boyfriend, which I’m not allowed to have anyway. Mami doesn’t approve of my being around any boys who aren’t related to me. But since my cousins moved away, the rules have both tightened and loosened in odd ways. I can’t talk about the SIM’s visit or my cousins’ leaving for New York City, but I can have Sam for a best friend even if he is a boy.

“Doris, put the lid on the sugar bowl, por favor. There are so many flies.”

I look around for flies, but there are none I can see. Lorena has just come out from the kitchen with a tray to collect the empty coffee cups. Perhaps she scared them away.

Then, just like that, it dawns on me: my mother is speaking to Mrs. Washburn in code. She’s saying: We are being overheard; be quiet. It’s as if I’ve stepped into a room I’m not supposed to be in—but now that I’m inside, the door has disappeared. I feel the same way as when Lucinda told me how one day I, too, would get my period.

“Suddenly, you have to be a big girl—”

“I am twelve, Mami!” I sigh and roll my eyes. Recently, if anyone talks to me as if I’m a little kid, I get mad. But I also feel sad that I’m not a little kid anymore and that I know as much as I do. I’ve written about these confused feelings in my diary, too, but this is one confusion that doesn’t get any clearer by writing about it.

“One last big favor to ask you, mi amor. No more writing in your diary for the time being.

“That’s so unfair!” Mami gave me the diary for Christmas. Telling me not to write in it is like taking away my only present.

“I know it is, Anita.” Mami wipes away my tears with her thumbs. “For now, we have to be like the little worm in the cocoon of the butterfly. All closed up and secret until the day...” She spreads her arms as if they were wings.

Whenever I feel this way, I start writing in my diary so there’s another voice that I can listen to. A third radio, tuned to my own heart.

So I snuck off to the bathroom with my diary, and soon enough, Mami was calling me, saying it was rude for me to be off by myself, come join them and be sociable, but then Tía Mari told her to let me be, that it’s a good thing that I’m writing, that ever since I started keeping this diary, I’m talking a lot more.

It took her saying it for me to realize it’s true.

The words are coming back, as if by writing them down, I’m fishing them out of forgetfulness, one by one.

Then one of them shook our hands and said, “Welcome to the United States of America,” and pointed us out of Immigration. And there was my answer to how I would survive in this strange, new world: my family was waiting for us—Mundín and Lucia, my grandparents, Carla, her sisters, and Tía Laura and Tío Carlos and Tía Mimí—all of them calling out, “Anita! Carmen!”