Sabrina & Corina: Stories

Alejandra Atencio, the narrator of this story, lives with her father, Ramón, her mother Nayeli, and her older sister Cora. Her father works as a maintenance man at Julian Plaza Senior Home. Alejandra and Cora are in the habit of checking the chalkboard in the Home’s lobby for the names of recently deceased inhabitants.

One day, Cora asks Alejandra one of her characteristically leading questions: “Do you think Papa loves one of us more than the other?” (87). After Cora concludes that their father clearly likes Alejandra more—but that the issue of his actual love is a more complicated one, she also asserts that he “doesn’t love anyone more than he loves Mama” (88): “You’re supposed to love someone the most if they’re sick,” Alejandra replies (88).

Alejandra recalls the day, during the previous December, during which her mother forced her to aid her in examining her breast. After Cora refused the task, Nayeli placed Alejandra’s hand beneath her nightgown and onto her breast, to confirm the hard lump that she had found there.

Afterwards, Ramón kissed Alejandra’s collarbones and told her that everything would be fine. He told her that he could switch to a job with a better insurance plan. Nayeli, however, responded that a job switch would be too risky: “I’ll go to Cynthia’s when it’s time,” Nayeli responded (89).

Alejandra explains: “Miss Cynthia and her husband, a barber we called Uncle Rex, lived several blocks away in a house even older than ours” (89). She also explains that Cynthia’s last name is Castillo—“an old Spanish name that [her] father said was somewhere on [their] family tree, although [she] didn’t see a resemblance” (90). Miss Cynthia always had a toddler whom she was taking care of balanced on her hip, and addressed the Atencio family warmly whenever they visited.

Alejandra recalls one of these visits. Their mother was placed in one of the rooms in Cynthia’s home: “We sat around my mother like she was a tree, hooking onto her limbs, smoothing her scratchy Pendleton blankets” (91). Cora tried to tell her mother that she wanted her back in their home, and that she had developed the habit of wearing her mother’s Betty Boop shirt. However, Nayeli suddenly drifted into sleep before she could respond. This caused Cora to retreat into silence at the foot of the bed. Before they left Cynthia’s that day, Alejandra saw her father pay Cynthia with a fistful of bills.

Alejandra recalls that her father made goulash for dinner that evening. Over the meal, he also shared that Mr. George Baker, one of his clients, called in that day for a dishwasher repair. However, when Ramón arrived, he found Mr. Baker—naked except for his socks—curled over the edge of his bathtub, dead. Mr. Baker was known as a very poor old man who had no family around him.

Later, Cora and Alejandra watch as their father showed another man a television in the driveway. The family’s garage is full of items that Ramón sells: “You know, he steals all that stuff,” Cora tells Alejandra (93). When Alejandra insists that their father would do no such thing, Cora insists that Alejandra is merely young and naive, and that the television the men are discussing belonged to Mr. Baker.

One night, Alejandra dreams of her mother before she was sick. In the dream, she is 5 years old and the family is visiting her grandfather in Saguarita, which is far away from them. Nayeli grew up in Saguarita. In the dream, the adults socialize on the porch while Alejandra and Cora play on “the edge of the property, a place where a barbed-wire fence split the land in two” (96). Alejandra and Cora discover a baby doe, who appears to be alone. Alejandra immediately imagines them taking the doe home, where it will be their animal sister. However, Nayeli quickly appears and promises Alejandra that the doe’s mother will soon return.

The next morning, Alejandra finds her sister sitting on top of the garage. She joins her, and Cora points out where her mother is—behind the Burger King that they can see from their vantage point. Alejandra remembers a day before her mother went to live at Cynthia’s. On that day, Cora and Alejandra watched their mother collapse in the front yard while going to check the mail. The two girls had had to drag their mother back into their house, unaided, before calling their father.

Cora and Alejandra continue talking about their mother. Alejandra asserts that Miss Cynthia does a good job taking care of their mother, but Cora replies that she only does it for the money. Cora then tells her sister to get ready, and the two of them walk all the way to Miss Cynthia’s.

When the sisters arrive, Miss Cynthia tells them that her mother is not having a good day, but Cora insists on seeing her. The two girls then succeed in lifting their mother out of her bed, but the heavily-medicated Nayeli begins to wail due to pain. Miss Cynthia rushes into the room to stop the fiasco. Ramón soon arrives to take his daughters back home. They spend the car ride in silence.

After this incident, Cora vows that she will find another way to bring their mother home, but she doesn’t have to: The family’s garage is robbed and Ramón is forced to bring Nayeli home.

One hot summer day, Cora and Alejandra are at Julian Plaza while their father works, as they often are. During a racing game, they find themselves on a floor in which almost all the doors are open. As they dart about, Alejandra remembers a time before her mother became ill. She, her mother, and her sister came to deliver pies to some of the Julian Plaza residents: “The pies weren’t for everyone, just those without family, the people who needed them most” (104). Alejandra continues: “My mother knocked, and when each door opened, the people of Julian Plaza beamed with happiness, as if they’d never seen a young woman so lovely in all their long lives” (104).