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« 'Shaggy Muses' | Main | Nan A. Talese: Touching a nerve »

Excerpt from "Fifteen Candles"

2:44 AM Sun, Aug 05, 2007 |
Michael Merschel   E-mail   News tips

Here's a short excerpt from "Uprooted" by Nanette Guadiano-Campos, one of the stories in Fifteen Candles, which is reviewed today.


Tía Chelo made her grand entrance in a leopard- print spandex jumpsuit so tight, you could see every nook and cranny made by every tortilla she ’d ever eaten in her seventy- one years on this planet. On the day of my quinceañera, she walked into the church right behind me in black patent- leather stilettos and fire red lipstick, smelling of Jean Naté and Wrigley’s Spearmint gum, oblivious to the “Ay, Dios mío’s” of the congregation and the mortified expression on Father Smith’s Irish- Catholic face.

I knew something was wrong when I saw everyone staring at something behind me, rather than right at me. Tía Chelo’s strong smells were almost enough to make me turn around, but the expression on my mother’s face and her year- long obsession with
this precise moment kept the smile glued to my lips and my eyes on the mark: Jesus staring down in pity from a life- size cross. “Keep walking,” my cousin (and escort) Juan whispered through a frozen smile. He had sensed my hesitation, felt the nails
on my right hand squeeze his left arm. In my peripheral vision, I saw my father walk beside me, then behind, and then reappear with my tía on his arm. He led her to a pew where she actually waved at the crowd and popped her gum before winking at me in
approval.


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