When I Was Puerto Rican (20 page)

I wished I could trade places with my cousin Jenny. She was an only child who ran her parents with tantrums and demands that, had they come from me, would have got me a swift slap or a
cocotazo
from Mami’s sharp knuckles. Jenny was so spoiled that even Papi, who never criticized anybody, complained that Jenny had no manners and no respect for her elders. She was so bad that we were not allowed to play with her.

Jenny was a year younger than I was, but I’d heard Mami tell Doña Lola that Jenny was already
señorita.
Her body had developed into a petite figure like her mother’s, with round hips and pointy bumps on her chest. While it had been a long time since I’d seen her sitting on her mother’s lap sucking her breast, I assumed that becoming
señorita
had rid her of that habit. But it hadn’t changed very much else about her. She still boasted about the clothes and shoes, dolls, games, and jewelry that her parents bought for her. She slept in her own bed, in a room decorated with dolls that had never been played with, with a closet full of pretty dresses and shiny patent-leather shoes.

Envy, Doña Lola had once said, eats at you from the inside and turns your eyes green when you look at the person of whom you’re jealous. If so, my eyes must have turned the color of the lizards that lived inside banana leaves every time I passed Jenny’s house. I hated the fact that even though she was a brat, she got whatever she wanted. She had no chores around the house, no sisters or brothers with whom to share her clothes and toys, no limits as to where she could go, whom she could go with, or how long she could stay out. She didn’t have to do her homework, didn’t have to do anything she didn’t want to, and her parents, the quiet, patient Tio Cándido and the tinny-voiced Meri, wouldn’t say a thing, wouldn’t beat her or yell at her or call her humiliating names. I was so jealous of Jenny that I couldn’t stand to be with her. Mami and Papi had forbidden that we fight anyone for any reason, yet every time I came near Jenny, I wanted to beat her up, to wipe the smirk off her face, to quiet her boasting once and for all so that she would see what it was like to hurt.

“Jenny got a bicycle!” Delsa’s eyes shimmered, her little hands fluttering in front of her as they drew a picture in the air of a girls’ bike. “And she’s giving everyone a ride.”

I dropped the mop in the middle of the floor and ran after her. Up the road, past Doña Zena’s house, Jenny straddled her two-wheeler. She wore shorts and sneakers, and a tight white shirt that displayed the bumps on her chest.

Children clustered around Jenny while she showed off the shiny fenders, the thick tires, the handlebars with multicolored streamers.

“Who else wants a ride?” she asked, enjoying the attention, the voices clamoring her name. I was choking with rage. I gathered my sisters and brothers, who clustered possessively around Jenny.

“Come on, let’s go. We have to get home.”

“Aw, come on, Negi,” Jenny cried. “They want a ride on my new bike.”

“I don’t care. Mami doesn’t want us playing all the way up here.”

“I’ll ride the bike down closer to your house. Then you can all get a turn.”

“Forget it.”

“But why, Negi?” Hector whined.

“Just forget it, okay?”

Jenny followed us on her bike as I shoved the kids in front of me toward the house. “You’re not their mother. You can’t tell them what to do!” she cried.

“Yeah!” Delsa yelled. “You’re not Mami. You can’t order us around,” and my sisters and brothers backed away from me, pushing against each other to be next to Jenny’s bike.

“You’re always so bossy,” Norma yelled. “You think you’re a grown-up or something.”

I wanted to cry that no, I didn’t think I was a grown-up, and it wasn’t fair that they all got to ride on the bike and I didn’t. I wanted to remind them that Mami didn’t want us playing with Jenny, but it would be wrong to say that in front of her. I grabbed Raymond by the hand and pulled him toward me.

“Fine, if you want to ride on that stupid bike, then go ahead. But when Mami gets home ...”

“I want to ride on the bike too,” Raymond wailed beside me, wriggling his hand out of mine. “I want a ride!”

And he ran to Jenny, who scooped him up and tried to balance him on the handlebars.

“Jenny, he’s too little to do that.”

“He’s all right.... You sit on the seat,” she said to him, “and I’ll ride standing up.”

“Stop it, Jenny. He’ll fall off. Raymond, get off that bike.”

“Leave us alone. I know what I’m doing.” She stood up on the pedals and pushed off slowly. Raymond giggled. “See, he’s having a good time.”

“Well, if you don’t care,” I yelled back, “then I don’t care either. Go ahead and ride the stupid bike!” I glared at Delsa and Norma, who, as the next oldest, should have known better. “You two are in trouble.... You’re supposed to obey me when Mami’s not around. She left me in charge.”

They laughed and chased after Jenny, who was riding the bike faster, with Raymond gripping the seat underneath him. My face was hot, and tears tickled my eyes, but I wasn’t about to let them see me cry. I turned toward home, dejected and abandoned by my sisters and brothers who wouldn’t stand by me against this spoiled brat.

As I reached our yard I heard a scream. Raymond, Jenny, and the bike had fallen over. “Serves them right,” I thought and continued into the yard. But the screams were loud and frightened, more than I would have expected from a simple fall. They were screams of terror, of pain. I ran, and as I did, it seemed that the whole
barrio
was converging in a circle around the bicycle, around Raymond whose toes were caught in the chain, his foot twisted on itself, mangled into a mess of blood, grease, and dirt.

Doña Zena and Doña Ana shooed us away. I gathered my sisters and brothers, like a hen her chicks, and stood by the side of the road as someone pulled the bicycle apart and took Raymond’s foot out. His shrieks cut into me, and I wanted to run to him, but the adults surrounded him and wouldn’t let anyone through. Someone wrapped his foot, and someone else took him to the emergency room in Bayamón. Mami was found at her job and brought there, and Papi too, somehow. I was left to care for my sisters and brothers. We ate the rice and beans that Gloria made for us, and in silence we bathed and dressed for bed, crawled under the mosquito netting, tucked ourselves in, and listened, listened for Papi to come home, or Mami to come home, or Raymond to come bouncing in with his goofy grin. But they didn’t, and he didn’t, and I fell asleep dreading what Mami would do to me when she found out that I had walked away and let Raymond get hurt.

But Mami didn’t do a thing. Somehow Raymond’s accident became Jenny’s fault. Mami, Meri, Tio Cándido, and Papi talked, and every neighbor who had seen what happened talked, and it was agreed that Jenny was to blame. Even though no one said so, it had been my responsibility to watch the kids, especially Raymond, who was the youngest. But no one yelled at me or called me names or beat me because I hadn’t watched my sisters and brothers. Jenny was accountable. I was furious that she was getting all the attention for something that was my fault.

Mami had to quit her job to care for Raymond. For many months she ran from one doctor to another because Raymond’s foot wouldn’t heal. The doctors told her that so much bicycle grease had got into the wound that they couldn’t be sure if they’d cleaned it all out. Raymond, Mami told Papi, would be plagued by all sorts of problems with his foot for the rest of his life, and she went on to list diseases the doctors had told her he was likely to develop. Diseases that all ended with
-itis.

But the more frantic Mami became in her search for the right treatment for Raymond, the more distant Papi became, as if we were all wounded in some way that he couldn’t help. There were more fights, more arguments, more yelling in the night, more long absences. Until it seemed as if anything would be better than living with these people who hated each other.

One day as I walked back from school, it started to rain. I stood under an oak tree for a while, but the rain didn’t let up. I put my books under my shirt, took off my shoes, and ran from tree to tree.

At the entrance to Barrio Macún, Mami and my six sisters and brothers clustered at the
público
stop with bundles all around them. Mami was annoyed.

“What took you so long? I almost left you behind.”

“Where are we going?”

“We’re moving to Santurce.”

“But I have a math test tomorrow!”

“Well, then, you’re lucky, aren’t you?”

The kids were quiet. They must have been as scared as I was, but none of us dared say anything.

We waited a long time for a
público
that could take all of us, our bundles, and our suitcases.

“Are you moving?” the
público
driver asked with a laugh, and Mami glared at him. He didn’t say anything more after that.

It took us three hours to get to the city. The rain was heavy, and traffic into Santurce was backed up for miles because of floods. Mami sat up in front with Edna and Raymond, while Delsa, Norma, Hector, Alicia, and I sat in the back. We didn’t dare speak or move because Mami kept looking at us with a dark expression on her face. She passed us a chunk of bread and cheese, and the
público
driver gave her a dirty look. I guessed he didn’t like people eating in his car.

When the
público
let us off, all we could see was the pale yellow light of electric bulbs reflected on water, and tall stacks with a red neon sign flashing CORONA BREWERY. As heavy rain drops plunked on either side of us, Mami told us to be careful, because we were walking on a bridge. It was slippery and narrow, with nothing to hold on to along the sides. If we took one false step, we would fall into black, smelly water.

I raised my head to the rain, to wash my face and clear the nasty stench that lodged in my nostrils, as if my insides were rotting. But the foul air was thick and oppressive, clinging to us as if anything new, clean, and fresh had to be contaminated by this noxious atmosphere or it wouldn’t survive.