Читать книгу Gabi, a Girl in Pieces - Isabel Quintero - Страница 8

July 24

My mother named me Gabriela after my grandmother who—coincidentally—didn’t want to meet me when I was born because my mother was not married and was therefore living in sin. My mom has told me the story many, many, MANY times of how, when she confessed to my grandmother that she was pregnant with me, her mother beat her. BEAT HER! She was twenty-five.

That story forms the basis of my sexual education.

Every time I go out with a guy, my mom says, “Ojos abiertos, piernas cerradas.” Eyes open, legs closed. That’s as far as the birds and the bees talk has gone. And I don’t mind it. I don’t necessarily agree with that whole wait-until-you’re-married crap though. I mean, this is America and the twenty-first century, not Mexico one hundred years ago. But, of course, I can’t tell my mom that because she’ll think I’m bad.

Or worse: trying to be White.