Unit 2: Part 2 Vocabulary

We sat in the cool shadows of the TV with the volume low and watched cartoons, a prelude of what was to come.

I sat down on the grass and examined my foot: the stinger was pulsating.

More ticks had migrated to his snout.

My arms ached from buffing, which though less boring than weeding, was harder. But the beauty was evident.

She winced at the grille and returned inside the house.

We took a rag and began to polish vigorously and nearly in tears, but the fog wouldn’t come off.

But at school I was Judy or Judith, and once an English teacher mistook me for Juliet.

I was Hoo-lee-tah only to Mami and Papi and uncles and aunts who came over to eat sancocho on Sunday afternoons—old world folk whom I would just as soon go back to where they came from and leave me to pursue whatever mischief I wanted to in America.

What an awful name to have to transport across borders!

But inevitably, my accent and coloring gave me away.

I pronounced it slowly, a name as chaotic with sounds as a Middle Eastern bazaar or market day in a South American village.

Back home, my tíos and tías and primas, Mami and Papi, and mis hermanas had a party for me with sancocho and a store-bought pudín, inscribed with Happy Graduation, Julie.

They were all filling out applications, hoping to be one of the 274 families chosen.

We knew about problems, heard about them, saw them, lived through some hard ones ourselves, but our community wrapped itself around us, put itself between us and the hard knocks, to cushion the blows.

They formed a resident council to look into any neighborhood problems that might come up.

They started a choral group and presented music and poetry programs on Sunday evenings in the social room or on the playground.

“One of these days we ought to have a Langston reunion.”

Before the end of school, Jennifer came running up to me in the halls and told me John Quinn had announced to everyone he was going to exact revenge on me after school on Monday.

He looked as if he understood exactly how I felt and wasn’t going to call me stupid or demented or a big yellow coward.

You’ve got to be observant. Did you know that Mickey Mouse has only four fingers on each hand?

There, across the street in a field behind Ronkewitz's Candy Store, was a crowd of about 300 kids standing around like a big, undulating horseshoe, with John Quinn standing at the center bend glaring at me.

I saw only their faces distorted in ecstasy and expectation.

The crowd was shocked, and booed me with mass condemnation for my Sicilian fighting technique.

Archaeologists surmise that the gardens were laid out atop a vaulted building, with provisions for raising water.

An architect named Imhotep designed a new kind of tomb for his pharaoh, with six stone mounds, one on top of the other.

Colossal statues of gods stood in temples.