My Beloved World

Sotomayor explains that it was not until she began writing her memoir, almost fifty years after her father’s death, that she gained a full understanding of her mother’s grief. It was not just guilt-induced shame. She had never before asked her mother to tell her “version of events,” and when Celina does, Sotomayor discovers her parents’ relationship “was richer and more complex than a child could imagine” (60).

Her mother was born in 1927, the youngest of six children. Her siblings raised her because her father abandoned the family after Celina was born and their mother had become an invalid. Aurora worked as a seamstress, and Celina helped by sewing handkerchiefs. Her brother Mayo disciplined Celina with a belt, and she hated him for it but grew more understanding with age, explaining, “it was kids raising kids” (62). She loved reading and her school’s library. When she was nine, her mother died, and Celina moved in with Aurora, who was strict and religious, and Aurora’s husband.

After Pearl Harbor, Celina joined the Women’s Army Corp, telling them she was nineteen though she was only seventeen. A six-to-seven-hour train ride brought her to San Juan for the military’s physical and mental tests, which she passed. They asked her to produce a birth certificate, and she acquired an altered one with Mayo’s help. The military sent her to Miami, a happy time of “meeting with the modern world,” “unthinkable, giddy new freedom,” and “a coming of age” (67). Though segregated because of their limited English, for many of the women in her unit, “one of the first Puerto Rican units of the Women’s Army Corp,” and the many Puerto Rican men who served, it was “how they came to see themselves as rightfully American” (67). From Miami, she went to Georgia, for basic training, then was assigned to New York, where she worked at the 42nd Street Post Office “sorting letters and packages for the troops in Europe” (68).

Celina’s friend Carmin took Celina to a party at a friend’s house in the Bronx (68). There, Celina met Juan Luis Sotomayor, “Juli” to his family, who was handsome, gentle, and attentive and with whom she shared a love of reading (69). She fell in love with him and with his dynamic, friendly mother, Mercedes, who was “the life of the party” (69). With Juli’s family, Celina “could forget about being an orphan” (69). When the military discharged Celina, Juli asked her to marry him. They moved in with his family and then into their own two-bedroom apartment in the same tenement building. Juli applied his “creative exuberance” to making their apartment beautiful with flowers, pretty tiles, and colorful paint. At heart, “he was an artist” who created sculptures, including one of Celina’s face (70).

Though very bright, her father dropped out of school in sixth grade after his father became ill with tuberculosis. He worked in a factory to help support his family. His intelligence and talent were recognized, and he was offered a scholarship to go away to school, but his mother, who had moved the family from Puerto Rico to New York in 1944, “couldn’t bear to let him go” (70). He worked first in a mannequin factory then a radiator factory, “but with no education the opportunities were limited” (71). He encouraged Celina, and within the first years of their marriage, she finished high school, completed a secretarial course, and studied to become a practical nurse. Seven years into their marriage, he was overjoyed at Sotomayor’s birth. He was “calm and patient” with the colicky baby and rambunctious toddler, even when Celina felt “panicked and incompetent” (71).

Their problems began when Celina, wanting a safe and quiet environment for their family, moved them to the projects. For Juli, “it was exile in a wilderness of concrete and vacant lots, far from the enfolding life of family and give-and-take of friends” (71). At the same time, the mannequin factory where he loved working closed. Yet he loved his children and always worked to support them financially. Foreseeing Juli’s early death, Dr. Fisher insisted he take out a life insurance policy, even offering to pay for it himself if they could not. The policy enabled Celina to pay for Juli’s funeral. Celina explained to Sotomayor that she locked herself in her room because she was sad and afraid, grieving “fitting to the time” and the realization of the finality of Juli’s death (73).

Sotomayor says her life is split into before and after her father’s death. The day after Sotomayor yells at her mother, Celina begins to emerge from her grief. The “constant, bitter conflict” that had been the center of their lives ends (74). Home becomes “a good place to be” (74). Celina begins working day shifts so she can be home when the children return from school. Though it takes time for her to get over her anger at her mother, Sotomayor acknowledges that Celina is their extended family’s unofficial, 24-hour, on-call nurse, taking care of everyone and seeking doctors’ instructions when confronted with an unknown medical issue. She also listens to others’ troubles “with full attention and sympathy” and without judgment (76). Sotomayor recalls being the recipient of her mother’s attention on hot nights when her mother sits beside her with a pot of cold water and a washcloth, sponging her down.

Abuelita never emerges from her grief over losing her firstborn son. She dresses in black, and the parties end. Her eyesight begins to fail, and she rarely leaves the house after her Gallego’s Parkinson’s leaves him bedridden. Sotomayor continues to visit her, but they are quiet nights, just the two of them.

School also begins to change. Her fifth-grade teacher, Mrs. Reilly, is kinder, and school becomes something to look forward to. Her mother begins speaking more English at home, something she had been reluctant to do while Juli, who did not know it well, was alive. Celina insists on the value of education for getting “ahead in the world” (79). She purchases a set of Encyclopaedia Britannica—24 volumes, each the size of a “door-stop”; they cultivate curiosity in Sotomayor (80). Mrs. Reilly unleashes her “competitive spirit” by rewarding high-achieving students with gold stars. Her first “A” fills Sotomayor with resolve to earn more with each report card.

She also asks the smartest student in her class, Donna Renella, how to study, and Donna gladly shares her techniques. From this, Sotomayor learns a critical lesson: “don’t be shy about making a teacher of any willing party who knows what he or she is doing” (82). Asking for guidance and soaking up knowledge from friends becomes a pattern for Sotomayor. Yet Celina never pushes Sotomayor and Junior. She tells them she does not care what grades they get as long as they study, emphasizing process over goal.

Their first Christmas without Juli, Sotomayor cannot string the lights as her father did, concealing the wires entirely. When she finishes the tree, she thinks about how nice it would be to hug her father. Though she knows their lives are better, she also knows he loved them. Love and misery cannot be measured against each other but are “both true at the same time” (85).

At her pediatric diabetes clinic, Sotomayor meets Dr. Elsa Paulsen, “the first woman in a position of real authority” she has encountered (86). Nurses at the clinic take Sotomayor’s weight, urine, and blood samples. She receives cutting-edge treatment, but the disease is still fairly new. Sotomayor learns her “disease had progressed”; her pancreas no longer produces insulin. She must be regimented with her shots and food. Because “no easy, accurate way to test your own blood sugar” exists yet, Sotomayor learns to cultivate “a constant mindfulness” about how her body feels (87). She calls this an “accidental gift” from her disease that helps her intuit “others’ emotional states,” a helpful quality “in the courtroom” (88).

No matter how careful she is, though, at that time, complications are a reality, along with a shortened lifespan. Her family views her diagnosis “as a catastrophe of tragic dimensions” (88). Though calm and collected when dealing with patients, Celina falls apart when her daughter is the patient, fearing “amputation, blindness, and a panoply of other complications” (88). The only person who does not see her diabetes as “a terrible disability” is her cousin Alfred (88). Sotomayor translates her “family’s fatalism” into a sense of urgency to achieve as much as she can while she is able (89).

At the clinic, she receives a pamphlet listing professions she, as a diabetic, is eligible for and those she is not. The latter includes police officer, which Sotomayor takes to mean she cannot be a detective either. This she considered a “catastrophe” (90). She is a devoted reader of the Nancy Drew detective novels, which exert “a powerful hold on [her] imagination” (90). Sotomayor identifies with Nancy’s optimism and ability to turn obstacles into opportunities. Her world is a “fairy tale” fiction, but Sotomayor realizes that this world exists, and she is eager “to learn about it” (91). She feels certain she would “make an excellent detective” given the traits she shares with Nancy (91).

The family watches Perry Mason together every Thursday evening. The series is about a defense attorney who works “alongside a detective” (91). As the titular character, Perry Mason is clearly the show’s “hero,” but Sotomayor also admires the prosecutor for caring more about the truth than winning his case. Justice is finding the truth, not prosecuting the innocent. The judge fascinates Sotomayor most of all because he is “a personification of justice” (92). He calls “the shots,” deciding what is admissible and making the final decision at the end (92). Sotomayor concludes she would be a great lawyer, though part of her prefers to be a judge. Neither seems “more outlandish than the other,” as she had no idea what either would entail (92).

Sotomayor and Junior do their homework in front of the television, something both the Blessed Sacrament nuns and her mother’s friends disapprove of. Celina notes that her children study long hours and bring home good grades, so she leaves them to it. Television introduces Sotomayor to a world beyond the Bronx and gives her images of a life and professions that she could aspire to. Realizing she will need to be comfortable with public speaking if she is to become a lawyer, she offers to do the Bible reading at church. The first time, she is extremely nervous but gains confidence as she reads. More importantly, she knows she can “do it again” (99).

Her friend Carmelo calls her “computer-head” because she is so “rational and methodical” (94). He sees “the benefit of being friends with a nerd,” sitting next to her for quizzes and tests and, in return, ensuring no one bullies her (94). Her mother welcomes Sotomayor’s friends. It keeps her children close and under her surveillance. Sotomayor loves hosting friends and recreating the atmosphere of Abuelita’s past parties, “even if it was just a bunch of middle school kids” (95). At home, she and her brother fight, often physically, though she continues to serve as his protector beyond their apartment. As he grows, she realizes that his physical size and abilities will outstrip hers, and they graduate to snitching or blackmailing each other, “whichever availed the greater advantage” (96). In high school, they outgrow their fights and eventually become very close.

Pope Paul VI visits New York in the fall of 1965. A group of Blessed Sacrament students are taken to see him, but Sotomayor is not included because she does not attend the school’s church regularly. She prefers to attend a different parish with one of her aunts. Sotomayor is “especially upset and disappointed” because she “loved this pope” for his commitment to helping the poor, opening dialogue across religions, and making the church “more responsive and open to ordinary people” (97). After interrogating classmates, she concludes that she saw more on television than they did in person and is relieved.

Graduating from Blessed Sacrament in eighth grade, Sotomayor feels the Sisters of Charity helped shape her, but she is also happy to leave it behind. In the yearbook, each student writes “a ‘last will and testament’ to the life being left behind” at the school, and the nuns comment on it (99). Their low expectations for their students strike Sotomayor, though her own entry demonstrates her growing confidence in her intellect and the nuns’ tentative hopefulness for her future.

Whatever she disliked about her experience there, Sotomayor acknowledges that the school launched many of her classmates “toward a productive and meaningful existence” (100). The “discipline they instilled, however roughly,” served students well in a “poor neighborhood where many young lives were fatally seduced by drugs and alcohol or cut short by violence” (100). Visiting the school as an adult, Sotomayor notices more lay teachers, smaller classes, and “a more nurturing approach” without corporal punishment (100). She concludes, “Every generation has its own way of showing it cares” (100).