My Beloved World

Sotomayor is diagnosed with diabetes in 1962, when she is seven years old. Treatment is “primitive by today’s standards,” and her life expectancy is considered to be shorter than the norm (16). Her ordeal begins when she faints in church. Her family’s doctor, a German immigrant called Dr. Fisher, sends her to a lab for bloodwork. The first time she ever sees her mother cry is when Dr. Fisher announces her test results: diabetes, which Sotomayor’s maternal grandmother may have died of. From the doctor’s office, they go to the apartment of her paternal grandmother, Abuelita, where her extended family’s reaction makes Sotomayor realize the severity of the diagnosis. Dr. Fisher gets her into a clinic that is doing juvenile diabetes research; it is located in the Bronx, where Sotomayor lives. She is jabbed hourly by a giant needle, and every half hour, her finger is lanced for a smaller sample. She has never forgotten the pain.

Shortly after her diagnosis, Sotomayor hears her parents fighting about Sotomayor’s insulin shots. Her mother screams at her father for being unable to administer the shot because his hands are shaking, which serves as a veiled critique of his drinking. Her father tells her mother that she should administer the shot because she is a nurse, but Sotomayor realizes her mother is afraid to. Sotomayor does not like to hear her parents fighting, especially about her. She worries that if Abuelita cannot give her the shot, Sotomayor will not be allowed to sleep over her house. These sleepovers allow her to escape “the gloom at home” (11). She resolves to teach herself how to administer the shots. Her mother shows her how to light the stove and properly boil and fill the syringe. She learns to give herself the shot, and the experience is an early lesson in “self-discipline” (16).

Sotomayor says she is “blessed” with “native optimism and stubborn persistence” that has helped her persevere through hard times (18). Her diabetes forces her to become self-reliant, though she acknowledges that she has been supported “at every stage of [her] life” by “those who raised and loved” her (18). She is raised speaking Spanish among extended family in the South Bronx, “Hispanic New York City” (18). Both of her parents, Juan (called Juli) and Celina, came from Puerto Rico to New York in 1944, her mother as part of the Women’s Army Corps and her father with his family. Her younger-by-three-years brother, Juan Jr., would become a doctor, but to her he will always be “Junior” (19). Though she finds him “a nuisance” as a younger brother, she protects him fiercely at school (19).

After his birth, Sotomayor’s family move to a new housing project called Bronxdale Houses, which are twenty-eight buildings spread across three city blocks. Her mother feels it is cleaner and brighter than the tenement neighborhood they had lived in, but Abuelita feels it isolates their family. Sotomayor sees truth in this but also feels her father’s drinking necessitated the choice due to the “shame attached to it” (20). Friends and family almost never visit them, the one exception being her cousin Alfred, older by 16 years and the son of her mother’s sister, Titi Aurora. Her father is an excellent cook who prepares dinner then retreats to his bedroom. Her mother works night and weekend shifts at Prospect Hospital to avoid being home with her father. Sotomayor feels neglected by both parents. Her mother’s neglect makes her angry because she perceives her mother as strong but her father as unable to help himself.

She often overhears her aunts and grandmother gossiping, including about Sotomayor’s parents. Abuelita blames her mother for never being home. This criticism hurts Sotomayor, who also struggles “to understand and forgive” her mother (22). She recounts an incident after her father passed out and had to be taken to the hospital by her mother. Two uncles come over and remark at how dirty the house is. From then on, Sotomayor always keeps the house clean. She also goes shopping with her father to ensure there is enough toilet paper and milk, the latter being the source of a blowout fight between her parents. Her father, his hands shaking, had repeatedly spilled it while trying to pour some for Sotomayor, until the carton was finally empty. When Sotomayor’s mother returns home from work and wants some for her coffee, she is enraged to find the milk gone. Sotomayor feels guilty.

Sotomayor believes children need at least one person in their lives who show them “unconditional love, respect, and confidence” (24). For her, that is Abuelita, who Sotomayor strives to emulate and to whom she feels “a deep emotional resonance” (24). Abuelita’s home in a five-story tenement provides “a safe haven” from her parents’ fights (24). Her closest cousin in age and her “inseparable co-conspirator,” Nelson, also shares “a special connection” with their grandmother (24).

On Saturday mornings, Sotomayor goes grocery shopping with Abuelita. First, they select a chicken to be butchered and pick up fresh eggs. On their way home, they stop for produce, Abuelita haggling with vendors. She buys an orange (an expensive treat) to share as they walk. Their final stop is for warm, fresh bread at the neighborhood bodega—“a tiny grocery store” that “is the heart of every Hispanic neighborhood and a lifeline in areas with no supermarket in walking distance” (26). It is crowded with men reading Spanish newspapers and “arguing about the news” (27). They use horseracing results to play “an illegal lottery” (27). Abuelita sometimes sends Sotomayor to the bodega with a napkin bearing a string of numbers. Her grandmother is often lucky in the lottery, as Sotomayor has also been. Abuelita can also see bad news coming (27).

She cooks traditional meals for Saturday parties at her apartment that run late into the night. Cousins gather in the bedroom and the women have “coffee and gossip” as they cook together (28). Sotomayor’s step-grandfather, Gallego, selects the music. Despite Celina’s best efforts, Sotomayor is always rumpled by the time they arrive at Abuelita’s. Celina apologizes for her, and Abuelita says there is nothing wrong with her but an excess of energy. Sotomayor enlists Nelson and his siblings, Eddie and Miriam, in games, one of which ends with her cousin Eddie breaking his leg and Sotomayor receiving a walloping. Games of dominoes among adults take precedence even over Abuelita’s cooking, and Gallego strums his güiro, “playing along with the record” (29). Eventually, someone turns off the record, and it is “time for poetry” (30). Everyone crowds around to listen to Abuelita recite poetry in Spanish, moving adults to tears with nostalgic poems that “obscure the poverty, disease, and natural disaster that they had left behind” (31). Sotomayor reflects how that nostalgia lingers on, even in generations born and raised in the United States. After the poetry, some stay on to hear Abuelita and Gallego “call the spirits to ask them questions” (32). They put the children in the bedroom to sleep, but they would observe through the door crack. Sotomayor knows that her grandmother uses her ability “for healing and for protecting the people she loved” but that the ability could also be used for ill (32).

Juli rarely joins the parties except on rare holidays. It is “easier that way,” as his presence causes anxiety. Sotomayor watches for cues that he has consumed too muchand he is unable to walk. At home, Sotomayor knows there will be screaming. She prefers to stay overnight at Abuelita’s, which she does most Saturday nights. Everyone else goes home, and Sotomayor has Abuelita all to herself on Sunday mornings. Her grandmother makes pancakes, and her parting words are, “May God bless you, favor you, and deliver you from all evil and danger” (34).

Sotomayor’s best friend in elementary school is a boy called Gilmar, who also lives at the Bronxdale projects. One summer day, he tells her that his family is moving to California. Sotomayor takes him around the neighborhood for a goodbye tour.

First, they go to Pops’ truck, where they buy candy. Sotomayor’s father gives her a penny every day (10 cents on Fridays, Julie’s payday) to buy candy from Pops. In honor of Gilmar’s imminent move, Pops gives both a free piece of candy. Next, they visit Louie, who lives with his grandparents, because, Sotomayor overheard from the adults, “his parents had died in a car accident (35). Louie’s grandmother always wears black. He attends Hebrew school and does not play with other project kids very much, but Sotomayor plays with him because she likes his grandmother. Their next stop is to Mrs. Beverly, an older woman who works in an office and has a grandson, Jimmy, living with her because “his mother had problems” (36). Mrs. Beverly always wore a fur coat, even in mild weather. Sotomayor’s mother explains it might be because that coat is the only valuable thing she owns. They also visit Ana, Celina’s best friend, who keeps an eye on Sotomayor and Junior until their father gets home from work. Junior worships her husband, Moncho, a merchant marine.

Sotomayor and Gilmar continue their tour at their school, Blessed Sacrament. The schoolyard is “empty and silent” because it is summer vacation, but Sister Marita Joseph and Sister Elizabeth Regina are in the office. Sister Elizabeth had been her teacher in third grade, and “it was a more or less continuous state of dread” (37). Trouble always seems to find Sotomayor. One Christmas, her father gifted a metal ruler to Sister Elizabeth. Fearing being punished with it, her furious classmates berated and punched Sotomayor, but Sister Elizabeth never used the ruler.

Celina values the discipline of Catholic School. Public schools are “a rough environment” compared to Catholic ones but not “as severely troubled as they would become” (38). Sotomayor and her brother are the only children among their cousins to attend Catholic school. At Blessed Sacrament, the corporal punishment angers Sotomayor, who sees it as contradictory to what they are taught about God as “loving, merciful, charitable, forgiving” (39). During her first years, she feels “little warmth” from the nuns, who disapprove of working mothers (39). Sotomayor notes the irony that her mother works to pay for Catholic School because she believes it will provide “the key to any aspirations for a better life” (39).

Gilmar and Sotomayor say goodbye. She recalls her first trip to California during law school. By then, she had lost touch with Gilmar, among other old friends. She reflects that they “may never know what memories they’ve left behind in my keeping” (39).

Sotomayor’s first trip to Puerto Rico is with Abuelita to San Juan, a city that “seemed to teeter on the edge of dissolving into nature” (40). Later, her mother and Junior visit Celina’s family there together. Right out of the airport, they get giant coconuts cut in half. First, they drink the juice, then eat the interior while Titi Aurora, who visits Puerto Rico often, fills Celina in on family issues that need sorting out. In Celina’s hometown, Sotomayor and her family stay with Titi Maria, the first wife of Celina’s oldest brother. The large family convenes at lunch for a meal Titi Maria prepares. A siesta follows, which Sotomayor uses to read.

She notices that her family members have better jobs than do Puerto Ricans in New York. Walking around town, Sotomayor feels “a proud thrill to read the little signs above the doors, of the doctors, the lawyers, and the other professionals who [are] Puerto Rican” (43). In the Bronx, Puerto Ricans are nurses but rarely doctors. They work in shops but are rarely “managers or owners” (44).

Tío Mayo has a bakery. His then-wife, Titi Elisa, cooks lunch and snacks they sell to local factory workers. Sotomayor helps serve and work the cash register when her uncle, who is not “comfortable with the idea of girls handling money,” is not around (44). When she is not helping, Sotomayor plays Three Stooges with her cousin Tito. She also explores the island with Junior and her mother, who takes them to places she had not had the chance to visit during her childhood. The water is clear, and there are no traffic jams. In the city of Ponce, the Parque de Bombas, a historic firehouse, and the art museum fascinate Sotomayor. She learns what a portrait is and notices that other paintings tell stories. She recognizes that paintings have meanings even if she does not yet understand what they are. This triggers awareness that there is more to art than what she understands and that there are “gap[s] in [her] knowledge” (46).

Celina takes Sotomayor to visit her maternal grandfather, who walked out on the family when Celina was a baby. He is in a hospital, and Tío Mayo and Titi Aurora want Celina to visit him. Sotomayor does not know what to make of her mother’s “flat indifference” (47). Celina introduces herself to her father in “an ice-cold voice,” and Sotomayor realizes in that moment that her mother “had been wounded as deeply as a human could be” by this man (48). Sotomayor remembers that day “as a grave caution” that “acknowledgment and communication” are necessary paths to forgiveness (48). 

Sotomayor’s father dies in April of the year she turns nine. She and Junior return home from school to find their apartment filled with grieving relatives. Junior asks where their father is, and Celina says, “God took him” (49). Sotomayor understands this means he has died but does not know what it means to die. Did he “become a spirit” (49)? She does not know what she is “supposed to feel, or say, or do” (49). She joins the chorus of weeping then throws herself on her bed. Celina’s friend Ana tells her she must stop crying and be strong for her mother. Sotomayor immediately stops crying. She remembers that morning how her father had wanted to make a breakfast of pancakes since he was not going to go to work. Celina had yelled at him to go back to bed if he was too sick for work.

Abuelita cries continuously, which is “unbearably painful” for Sotomayor (50). Abuelita’s grief consumes Sotomayor and fills her with fear that her grandmother will “never be happy again” and that she will die, too (51). Celina is mute and unresponsive. After the funeral, Titi Aurora tells Sotomayor to kiss her father and touch his hand. Sotomayor does not want to but also does not want to further upset Abuelita. The “powdery white face” resembles but is not her father, and she realizes that he will never come back. She also recognizes that this is “where Papi was heading” with his drinking, and it may “be easier” for her, Junior, and Celina to go “along without him” (51).

They do the rosary for seven nights, praying and crying. On the last night, Sotomayor falls asleep while saying the prayers and wakes up to hear her mother angrily confronting Abuelita, saying “you can’t do this” and threatening to never let Abuelita see Sotomayor again (52). She later learns that, in her sleep, she had spoken in a voice Abuelita and other relatives recognized as “Abuelita’s long-dead sister” delivering news that Juli was safe and with her (52). Sotomayor never experienced anything like that before or since and notes, “it’s hard to separate what they heard from what they wanted to hear” (52). She wanted to comfort her grandmother, but Abuelita’s desire to develop what she sees as Sotomayor’s gift upsets Celina, who threatens to keep Sotomayor from her.

After the funeral, Celina is too upset to return to their old apartment. They move to a different one within the Bronxdale complex. When their uncles help them move, they find empty liquor bottles everywhere. Abuelita and Juli’s sisters blame Celina for his drinking. Sotomayor recognizes that her mother’s responses escalated tensions. Celina said “all the wrong things,” but her mother “didn’t make him drink any more than she could make him stop”: “he was the only one responsible” (53-54). Sotomayor recalls her father sitting at the window looking out and imagining what the future would bring, how empty lots would develop. Yet for one of those moments “were so many more long hours of sadness” as he stared silently “at a city and a life that slowly strangled him” (54). On the day he died, Sotomayor had thought of him randomly at recess, “like the barest shadow of a mood passing over, or a breeze so perfectly soft that nothing moves” (54). She wonders if maybe that was her father “saying goodbye” (54).