Gab: to chatter, banter, blabber, gossip
To gossip (a person who gossips), in Spanish, is chismoso(a), bochinche.
In my culture, a gossiper or one one who gossips is almost always ascribed to women (bochinchera). Woman and girl talk was considered useless chatter, blabber with little value.
My childhood friend, Carmen, was a considered a bochinchera at an early age. She seemed to know a lot about everyone. For example, that Rosa got a beating last night after smart-mouthing her mother, or that my new, clean white sneakers came from John's Bargain Stores and not a real shoe store in Westchester Square. Carmen almost always told these stories behind the palm of her hand as she leaned into your ear, creating a momentary intimacy that could flip in a heartbeat.
Our small group of friends liked Carmen, for the most part. She was funny, could dance real nice, shared her gum, and was known to beat up some of the boys on the block. She was a force of nature, I tell you. Carmen held a kind of power over us because we never knew if she was going to share a secret with us or about us. Sometimes when Carmen wasn't around, the rest of us would talk about her in low tones, calling her a bochinchera, a word we learned from the older girls, with a tone that dripped with accusation.
Carmen was really no different than her older brother, Alex, a tall, lanky 10-year-old who seemed not to know that sentences could and should have a period at the end. But Alex was never called a bochinchero even though he told many a lie and tall tale in his day. A Puerto Rican boy, when he spoke on and on about whatever, it was never considered chatter or gossip. Rather, boy-talk was viewed as a good sign, a sign that he was practicing his God-given, DNA-driven, boy intelligence, and it mattered little if it was accurate or true. It was enough that he spoke it.
A note from Zee: Today was DICTIONARY DAY in our Saturday Morning Writing Circle. When Vivian opened a dictionary to the word "gab" this childhood memory came right up. All of us in the Circle were so glad that it did!
