Sabrina & Corina: Stories

The narrator, Clarisa, opens this story by saying, “A dermatologist with a can of liquid nitrogen can remove a wart in four to five seconds. I can remove one overnight with a clove of garlic and a Band-Aid” (70). She learned the remedy from her great-grandmother Estrella, who learned all manner of folk remedies from “her own grandma on their pueblo in northern New Mexico” (70).

Clarisa used to get lice from her half-brother Harrison. The first time it happened, Clarisa’s mother, Millie, used a tip she learned from another hygienist at the dentist’s office where she worked: She put mayonnaise in Clarisa’s hair. When Clarisa asked why they didn’t consult Grandma Estrella for help dealing with the lice, her mother sternly told her, “You can never tell your grandma Estrella you have lice” (71).

Harrison lived in an apartment on Grant Street in downtown Denver with his mother. Millie began taking Clarisa there to pick him up for visits when Clarisa was 11 and Harrison was 10. Clarisa noticed that, in Harrison’s building, there was “a bathroom built into the wall, like a lime-green goat closet. [She] peered inside at an old porcelain bathtub with claws at the bottom” (73). Clarisa recognized the bathtub as one similar to her Grandma Estrella’s, and Millie told her that, in the olden days, people would share bathtubs. However, when Clarisa asked Grandma Estrella about the tub she saw in Harrison’s building, Estrella said that “those hallway bathrooms were only in buildings where dirty people lived, people who did awful things for a living, people she prayed for each night before she rubbed cold cream on her face in slow upward strokes, because downward caused wrinkles” (74).

Grandma Estrella lives in a Victorian house made of red brick. It sits on next to Benedict Park: “She was a short, wide woman who wore long colorful skirts and carried on her skin the scent of rose oil and Airspun face powder,” writes Clarisa (74). Estrella was a widow, and her only daughter died in a car accident when Millie was 4 years old. Millie and Clarisa lived with Grandma Estrella when Clarisa’s father abandoned them, and they continued visiting Grandma Estrella every weekend (except for the ones during which Harrison would visit) after they eventually moved into a townhouse of their own: “While Grandma Estrella hated all of Harrison, she only felt that way about half of me, my father’s half, the white half,” writes Clarisa (74). Clarisa also remembers the times in which Jerry Springer would come on the TV at Grandma Estrella’s house and Estrella would say:

Ah, mija, I hate watching these hillbilly white people […] Look at this man […] He was given every chance to make it in this world and what did he do? Threw it away on booze and drugs and can’t take care of his family. Just like your father (74).

Clarisa would also watch soap operas, filmed in soft-focus lenses, at Grandma Estrella’s house: “White people with diamonds and pretty eyelashes kissed or lied and cheated on each other. That’s how Grandma Estrella liked her people on TV—rich and scandalous” (75). Grandma Estrella also encouraged Clarisa to drink an herbal tea that she fixed up to make her hair grow long and luscious like the women in the soap opera. However, Grandma Estrella also cautioned Clarisa about the dangers of going too far with vanity. She told Clarisa the story of Clarisa’s great-great-aunt Milagros, whom Millie was named after. Milagros had legendarily beautiful black hair that made all of the men around her want to marry her. Grandma Estrella claimed:

[Milagros] would not choose [a man] because she believed the longer and more beautiful her hair grew, the better her choices of husbands would be until one night, when the rest of the children were sleeping soundly in the same bedroom, her hair coiled around her neck like a snake, squeezing all the life from her throat (76).

Clarisa remembers that, whenever Harrison would come over, her mother would pepper him with questions about his father. She’d also tell Harrison that he looked just like a miniature version of his father—which Clarisa agreed with. Although Millie told Clarisa that they should be nice to and have sympathy for Harrison, whose mother had an alcohol and pill problem, Clarisa did not like Harrison. Clarisa felt that he brought a bad smell to their apartment, and his needy, unhealthy appearance disgusted her. She writes, “In the middle of the afternoon, [Harrison would] open my dresser drawers, stick his face against my T-shirt and jeans, turn on and off our microwave, and ask annoying questions that made me wonder what his life was like at home” (77).

Clarisa recounts the last Christmas she shared with her father. She was nine years old. She remembers that when she was asked to fetch a butter dish for her father during dinner, she caught sight of a sparkly green Christmas card in the garbage. When she fished it out, a picture of Harrison with a baseball bat fell out. She stared at the photo for a long time, before eventually stuffing it back in the trash.

Eventually, Millie took Harrison and Clarisa to an out-of-the-way hair salon to get their hair cut due to the intransigent lice. They shaved Harrison’s head bald and gave Millie and Clarisa haircuts that they both hated. Afterwards, Clarisa found her mother weeping in the bathroom. Her mother had finally reached the end of her rope about the lice: “[Clarisa] had only seen her like this one other time—when Daddy left for good” (82). Clarisa then did the only thing she could think of: She called Grandma Estrella.

After Clarisa explained the situation with the lice, which had been ongoing for many months, Grandma Estrella yelled very loudly for a long time. Then, Clarisa drove everyone over to Grandma Estrella’s house. There, Estrella commanded all of them to go upstairs, after chastising Millie for their awful haircuts. In her clawfoot tub, using the big pot normally reserved for menudo, Estrella poured a mixture containing neem over Clarisa’s head. She then commanded Clarisa to do the same for Harrison—which she did, haltingly.

When it was Millie’s turn, Clarisa noticed that her mother was shaking. Grandma Estrella protectively rested her hands on Millie’s head, and told her, “That man and his choices are behind you now” (84): “I just wanted [Harrison] to know he has a sister,” Millie replied (84): “And now he does, my baby, but none of this is your place,” Estrella said (84). The next day, Millie dropped Harrison off at his home for the last time.

Prior to her death, Grandma Estrella gave Clarisa a book containing all of her remedies: “Inside, with an unsteady hand she had drawn pictures of plants and, beneath them, their Spanish names, their scientific names, and just for [Clarisa], their English names (85). Although Clarisa mainly uses modern over-the-counter solutions for her maladies, she occasionally breaks out one of her great-grandmother’s remedies.

Clarisa, now grown, also sees Harrison “every now and then in the city at parties or shows. He’s a bass player in a punk band called the Roaches” (85). One day, she spots him on stage donning a blue mohawk: “Nice hair,” she mouths to him (85). Harrison smiles back.