When I Was Puerto Rican (14 page)

“Let me have a couple of those
alcapurrias
and two Coca-Colas,” Papi said. “You do want a Coca-Cola, don’t you?” he asked, and I nodded my head as I whirled on the stool, which rattled as it spun me faster and faster. Colors blended into one another in streaks of red, yellow, brown, and orange. Music came in and out of my ears, a syncopated half song that was familiar and foreign at the same time.

“You’d better stop that, or you’ll hurt yourself.”

I tried to brake the stool by sticking my leg out and hooking my foot on the one next to it. That threw me off balance and I fell, spinning to the ground. Papi was next to me in a flash.

“Are you okay?” he asked, but I felt heavy and light at the same time. My legs were wobbly, and when I looked around, there were two of everything. Two Papis and two of the gray woman next to him like shadows.

“She’s all right,” he said to her and drew me back to the stool. I was floating in a fog of colors and smells and warbling birds and voices singing, “I like you, and you, and you, and no one else but you, and you, and you.”

“Jesus doesn’t love children who don’t behave,” the gray woman said. Her voice crackled like a worn record. “And he will punish them.”

“Just ignore her,” the counterman said. “She’s crazy.” He set a hot
alcapurria
and a frosty Coca-Cola in front of me. “Leave my customers alone,” he shouted at her and waved the greasy rag the way Don Berto used to wave his sharp machete.

“That’s what happens to women when they stay
jamonas,”
he said with a snort, and Papi laughed with him. The gray woman retreated to her bleeding heads.

“Papi, what’s a
jamona?”
I asked as we left the market, our bellies full.

“It’s a woman who has never married.”

“I thought that was a
señorita.”

“It’s the same thing. But when someone says a woman is
jamona
it means she’s too old to get married. It’s an insult.”

“How come?”

“Because it means no one wants her. Maybe she’s too ugly to get married.... Or she has waited too long.... She ends up alone for the rest of her life. Like that woman in the mercado.”

“She was ugly, that’s for sure.”

“That’s probably why she stayed
jamona.”

“I hope that never happens to me.”

“No, that won’t happen to you.... There’s our
público.
Let’s run for it.”

We dodged across the street holding hands, avoiding cars, people, and stray dogs sunning themselves on the sidewalk.

“What do they call a man who never marries?” I asked as we settled ourselves in the front of the
público.

“Lucky,” the driver said, and the rest of the passengers laughed, which made me mad, because it felt as if he were insulting me in the worst possible way.

“
¡Ay Santo Dios, bendicemela!”
Abuela hugged me and crossed herself. “She’s so big!”

Her hands were large-knuckled, wrinkled; her palms the color and texture of an avocado pit. She rubbed my hair back and held my chin in her strong fingers.

“She looks just like you, Pablito,” she told Papi, which made both of us feel good. “Look at the line of her hair. The same shape as yours.... A large forehead,” she said as she led us into her house, “is a sign of intelligence.”

“She’s the best student in her class,” Papi said, which wasn’t entirely true. Juanita Marin was much smarter. “And you should hear her recite poetry!”

“Just like you, Pablito. You were always memorizing poems.”

Abuela’s house was two stories high and made of cement, with a front garden on which grew medicinal herbs and flowers. She and my grandfather, Don Higinio, lived on the ground floor, and her son Bartolo and his family lived upstairs. Abuela’s Miami windows were draped with white crocheted curtains, as was the glass-topped table, the sofa, the doors to all the rooms, and all the beds and dressers. The tablecloth was bordered with yellow and brown pineapples. Red crocheted roses on bright green petals hemmed the doilies on the side tables.

Abuela fed us
sancocho
, a vegetable stew thickened with mashed tubers, with cornmeal dumplings floating on top. Papi and I sat at the table, while she drifted in and out of the kitchen bringing us food, water, a chunk of bread, and finally, a steaming cup of sweetened
café con leche.
As soon as we’d finished eating, Papi stood up from the table and stretched.

“I’d better get going, Mamá. It’s a long way to Macún.”

“But we just came, Papi. It doesn’t take so long to get home....”

“I have to see some people on the way,” he snapped, his back to me. He unhooked his hat from the nail by the door, knelt in front of me, and pushed the hair off my forehead. His eyes had a peculiar expression, as if he were begging. He kissed and hugged me, and in his arms there was a plea. I was confused by the rage that thudded into my stomach like a fist. I was certain that he was not going home to Mami and my sisters and brothers and that somehow I had been used.

I didn’t return his embrace. I stood stiff and solid, swallowing the bitter lump that had formed in my throat, and swore to myself I wouldn’t cry, wouldn’t beg him not to go, wouldn’t even miss him when he left. I pulled out of his arms.

“Now, you be a good girl and do as Abuela tells you,” he said, trying to sound stern. “I’ll come get you next week.”

I sat on the sofa, stuck my legs out in front of me, and studied the scabs on my shins, the brown scars of countless wounds and scrapes.
“Sí.”

I felt his eyes on me and knew he knew I knew. He kissed Abuela’s forehead. “Bless me, Mamá,” he said in a near murmur. She touched his shoulder and mumbled softly, “May the Good Lord keep you on your journey, Son, and may He watch over you.” She crossed the air in front of him and, without looking back, he left. She watched him go, her head shaking from side to side as if she felt sorry for him.

“Come, let me show you where you’ll sleep,” she said as she led me to the back of the house.

I followed Abuela into the room next to hers, where she had laid out fresh sheets and a pillow. The bed was large, covered with a crocheted spread on which two peacocks stood beak to beak. The drape covering the blinds also had peacocks on it, only they faced forward, their plumage spread into a thousand blue-green eyes that seemed to watch us.

“Change into something comfortable,” she told me and showed me where to put my belongings. “I have some things to do in the kitchen.”

When she was done, she sat on her rocking chair facing the door, took up a basket of crochet, and began working. She worked quietly. The needle flashed as her fingers flew in, around, and out. I could find nothing to do, so I sat on the sofa and watched, not daring to speak for fear I’d break her concentration. After a long time, she put the work in her basket, covered it with a cloth, and stood up from her chair, knees creaking.

“I’m going to say my prayers,” she said. “If you get hungry, have some crackers from the tin.” She disappeared into her room.

I sat on the stoop and watched the street beyond the garden fence. People came and went, dressed in their Sunday clothes, some looking as if they were going somewhere, others wrinkled and worn, as if they’d already been away and couldn’t wait to get home. Every so often a car or truck rumbled up the hill, chased by scrawny dogs whose barks sounded hoarse and exhausted. Next door was a shack not much better than ours in Macún. My Aunt Generosa lived there with my cousins, most of whom were older than I was. I had met Titi Generosa when we lived in Santurce and liked the sound of her loud, coarse voice and the way she moved her hands when she spoke, as if she were kneading words.

As evening fell, the street slowed, and all life and sound came from inside, as if it were time for secrets. But nothing could remain private in the echoing treble of cement walls and ceilings. People talked, or fought, or sang
boleros
while they showered, and every sound was amplified in the cul-de-sac where Abuela’s house sat. Spoons clanked against pots, and the street filled with the steamy smells of garlic, hot oil, and spices. Radios blared frenzied
merengues
from one house, while from another, an Evangelist exhorted his listeners to abandon their sinful lives and seek salvation in the arms of Jehovah, Aleluya, Amen!

I wondered where Papi had gone, who he had to see on a Sunday afternoon in San Juan. I remembered Margie and her mother and imagined them in New York, wearing beautiful clothes and eating bright yellow eggs. I mulled over Mami’s words that men were always up to one
pocavergüenza
or another. That, Mami claimed in one of her bean-shucking discussions with Doña Lola, was men’s nature. And Doña Lola had nodded and then shook her head so that I wasn’t sure if she was agreeing with Mami or not.

I wondered if it were true, as Mami claimed when she and Papi fought, that he saw other women behind her back. And if he did, was it because he didn’t love us? My eyes watered, my mouth filled with a salty taste, but if I cried, Abuela would hear me and think I didn’t want to be with her. From the stoop, I could hear the rhythmic clicks of her rosary beads and the soft hum of her voice reciting prayers whose music was familiar to me, but whose words I’d never learned. And I wished that I knew how to pray, because then I could speak to God and maybe He or one of His saints could explain things to me. But I didn’t know any prayers, because Mami didn’t believe in churches or holy people, and Papi, even though he read the Bible and could lead novenas for the dead, never talked to us about God.

I determined not to cry, because if she asked me, I didn’t want to tell Abuela why. But the pressure was too much, and as the tears came, I looked around for something with which to hurt myself so that when Abuela asked, I could show her a reason for the tears. I put my hand in the doorjamb and slammed the door shut.

The pain burned across my knuckles, through my fingers, and a scream, louder than I had intended, brought Abuela to my side. She hugged me, walked me to the sink, where she poured cool water over my hand, dried it with the soft hem of her dress, rubbed Vick’s VapoRub on the pain, and held me against her bosom. She half carried me to her chair, pulled me onto her lap, and rocked me back and forth, back and forth, humming a lullaby I’d never heard.

Later Abuela wrapped my hand in a white rag and tucked me into bed. She shuttered the house and, after making sure I was settled, went into her bedroom, where I heard her moving about, the springs of her bed creaking as she sat on it and got up again, sat, got up, until it seemed as if she were rocking herself to sleep.

My hand throbbed. I shushed the pain by rubbing the inside of my arm and told myself that next time I shouldn’t slam the door so hard. The chinks on the window slats changed color, from russet to an intensely dark blue that deepened into impenetrable darkness, until it didn’t matter if my eyes were open or closed. I dropped into a solid sleep unbroken by the distant sounds of cars and barking dogs, or the careful unlatching of the door when my grandfather came back in the middle of the night, fed himself from whatever was left in the kitchen, went into his own room, slept, and woke up and left before the sun rose. It was days before I realized he lived in the small room near the front door, the only room in the house unadorned by Abuela’s crochet.

Abuelo slept in a narrow metal cot with a thin mattress wrapped in white sheets. There was a small table and a chair in his room, and on the wall a picture of Jesus wearing the same exasperated expression as the statues in the
mercado
, his wounded hands palm up as if he were saying, “Not again!” A coconut palm frond knotted into a cross was nailed above the picture.