Question

1. Read the following passage carefully.
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My grandmother‟s house is like a chambered sea shell it has many rooms, yet it is not a mansion.
Its proportions are small and its design simple. It is a house that has grown organically,
according to the needs of its inhabitants. To all of us in the family it is known as la casa de
Mama. It is the place of our origin ; the stage for our memories and dreams of Island life.
I remember how in my childhood it sat on stilts ; this was before it had a downstairs-it rested on
its perch like a great blue bird-not a flying sort of bird, more like a nesting hen, but with spread
wings. Grandfather had built it soon after their marriage. He was a painter and house builder by
trade-a poet and meditative man by nature. As each of their eight children were born, new rooms
were added. After a few years, the paint didn‟t exactly match, nor the materials, so that there was
a chronology to it, like the rings of a tree, and Mama could tell you the history of each room in
her casa, and thus the genealogy of the family along with it.
Her own room is the heart of the house. Though I have seen it recently- and both woman and
room have diminished in size, changed by the new perspective of my eyes, now capable of
looking over countertops and tall beds-it is not this picture I carry in my memory of Mama‟s casa.
Instead, I see her room as a queen‟s chamber where a small woman emerged large, a throne
room with a massive four poster bed in its center, which stood taller than a child‟s head.
It was on this bed, where her own children had been born, that the smallest grandchildren were
allowed to take naps in the afternoons ; here too was where Mama secluded herself to dispense
private advice to her daughters, sitting on the edge of the bed, looking down at whoever sat on
the rocker where generations of babies had been sung to sleep. To me she looked like a wise
empress right out of the fairy tales I was addicted to reading.
And there was the monstrous wardrobe she kept locked with a little golden key she did not hide.
This was a test of her dominion over us ; though my cousins and I wanted a look inside that
massive wardrobe more than anything, we never reached for that little key lying on top of her
Bible on the dresser. This was also where she placed her earrings and rosary when she took them
off at night. God‟s word was her security system. This wardrobe was the place where I imagined
she kept jewels, satin slippers, and elegant silk, sequined gowns of heartbreaking fineness.
I lusted after those imaginary costumes. I had heard that Mama had been a great beauty in her
youth, and the belle of many balls. My cousins had ideas as to what she kept in that wooden
vault : its secret could be money (Mama‟s did not hand cash to strangers, banks were out of the
question, so there were stories that her mattress was stuffed with dollar bills, and that she buried
coins in jars in her garden under rose-bushes, or kept them in her untouched wardrobe there
might be that legendary gun salvaged from the Spanish American conflict over the Island. We
went wild over suspected treasures that we made up simply because children have to fill locked
trunks with something wonderful.
a. What was the la casa de Mama in the family?

b. Briefly explain the structure of Grandmother‟s house.
c. Why did Mama not keep the little golden key hidden?
d. What had the author heard of Mama as a young woman?
e. Give the title of the passage above.

Answer 1

Answer:

1.to all. of us in the family it is known as LA casa de mama.