by Alisa Valdes
“And I hate basketball, okay?” I say. The tears come, and I stare at my now-greasy map of Cuba. Havana is soggy with oil. Matanzas is covered with a hunk of saucy beef from my ropa vieja. Holguín has disappeared beneath a black bean. None of the other sucias have left such a mess on their placemats. Of course not. I look at the front of my white sweater and, sure enough, there’s a greasy line of tomato sauce between my breasts. I look up at the girls, and start to talk before I even realize I’m talking.
“Jovan can write about a basketball arena and I’m, like, in convulsive tears—he’s that good. I think I love him, but he sucks at love. He’s beautiful, but, God, how can such a sensitive writer be such an insensitive human being? He sucks. I hate him.”
I tell them about my increasing curiosity in the kind of dangerous prettyboy tigres that roam the streets of this neighborhood and others. I tell them I think Dominican men are the handsomest on the planet. I tell them of my dream of saving one of them, making him a professional, putting him through college or—something. “At the least I’d like to do one of ‘em, you know what I mean? Just to see what it’s like.”
Rebecca breaks her silence, smiling kindly, and says, “Lauren, I hope you don’t mind my saying, I respect you a lot. But you’ve got a real self-destructive streak. You must protect yourself more. You have to stop getting attracted to these gangster types who are only out to hurt you. I don’t want to have to go ID your body at City Hospital.”
“Just because he’s a black American doesn’t make Jovan a gangster,” I say, pissed. “He’s a writer. An amazing writer.”
“Not race again,” Liz says. “It’s always race with you.”
“That’s so racist,” Amber says to Rebecca. “You should examine your hatreds.”
“I meant Ed,” Rebecca says with that tight little smile. “I don’t even know Jovan, though I do enjoy his columns. I’m not a racist.”
“And Ed’s not a gangster,” I say.
“Oh, please. Miss ‘I like blacks but I’d never date one’?” Amber says to Rebecca. “You’re not racist?” She laughs, and I’m struck again by the gravelly power of her voice.
Rebecca ignores her, raises a perfectly plucked eyebrow at me, and tilts her head in a way that says, “You sure?” She smirks. I hate when she does that.
“What do you mean? He’s not! He’s a speechwriter for the mayor of New York!”
Several sucias laugh at this defense.
“Oh, Ed’s fine,” Sara says with a shrug. “He was a doll on the ski trip. A real gentleman. Hold on to him, cariño.”
“Oh, please, how would you know?” Elizabeth jokes. “I hear you spent the whole day sliding down the hill on your culito.”
“Be careful, m’ija,” Usnavys jokes to Elizabeth. “You’re almost acting un-Christian. Don’t let no one—anyone—catch you.”
Elizabeth blinks slowly, annoyed. “Christians can have fun, too.”
“It’s true,” I say of Sara’s skiing. “She’s an awful skier. I witnessed it. It was seriously sad.”
“Please,” Amber says. “He’s a fake Indian. Don’t trust Indios falsos.”
“Who’s a fake Indian?” Usnavys asks.
“Ed,” Amber says.
“What in the world is a ‘fake Indian’?” Rebecca asks.
“Like you,” Amber says. “In denial of your beautiful brown roots.”
“Not this again.” Rebecca rolls her eyes. She covers her forearms with her hands.
“I think Ed’s got some … good qualities,” chirps Usnavys. Her eyes betray the lie. She drowns her guilt with a swig of wine and looks away from my eyes.
“Name one,” Elizabeth demands, pounding the table with her fist, flashing her beautiful grin.
“Ay, bendito!” Usnavys cries, staring at Elizabeth in mock surprise, with a hand on her chest. “Que manera de Cristiana hits the table like that? Por Dios.”
“I’m serious,” Elizabeth says, ignoring Usnavys. “Name one good quality in Ed. Just one. That’s all I want.” She pulls her shoulders to her ears, holds her hands out as if waiting for a gift she knows will never come.
Silence. Amused glances all around.
Laughter. You too-honest bitches.
“See?” Elizabeth asks. She drops her shoulders, dusts her palms together in a conclusive sort of way. Then, looking at me, she points with a long finger: “You can do better. And should.”
“Shut up, you guys!” I cry. “I’m going to marry him. Remember? Look at this ring! It’s a nice ring, isn’t it?”
Amber rolls her eyes. Elizabeth bites her lip to stifle a laugh. Rebecca looks at her watch. Sara covers her own beautiful engagement/wedding ring set with her right hand and raises her eyebrows in a deliberate, charitable smile. Usavys gulps, smiles, and says, “Yeah, sure,” but shrugs.
“It’s a piece of junk,” I say. I turn the stone side down and curl my hand into a fist over it. Rebecca looks up from her watch and purses her lips.
“It’s fine,” Sara offers, moving her ring hand beneath the table. “A ring is a ring.”
“He didn’t even get me a good ring,” I say. I uncurl my hand and examine the rock, again. “It’s probably not even a real diamond. It’s probably cubic zirconia.”
“It’s a ring, nena,” Usnavys says. She holds up her own undecorated ring finger, uses the other hand to point at it. “That’s the good thing.”
“Rings are symbols of ownership,” says Amber, chewing on her short black fingernails, spitting what she gets onto the floor. “Why would you even want one?”
“Oh, please,” Rebecca says, fingering her own massively expensive ring set. “Not everyone wants to have a barefoot Mayan wedding they don’t even invite their friends to.”
Amber shoots her a hateful stare. “Aztec.”
“He’s got a master’s in public policy from Columbia,” I say. “He’s going to run for office himself someday. He kisses babies! He shakes hands. He charmed my uncharmable grandma. He’s incredible!”
Sara, in spite of the right hand over her mouth and the sympathetic look in her eyes, laughs. “I’m sorry,” she says. “It’s just so funny.”
“New York has been run by gangsters for a long time,” Amber says with a sad look in her eyes. She takes a notebook out of her pocket and starts scribbling.
“I hate when you do that,” I tell her. “We’re trying to talk and you start writing.”
Amber ignores me.
“She’s an artist,” Usnavys offers. “She creates whenever the muse bites her skinny butt.”
“New York couldn’t run any other way, I don’t think,” Sara adds, placing a hand over her belly. “Roberto has a lot of friends in New York, and the mob really does control everything there, even now. The docks and everything, and the bridges. It’s an island, so you control the bridges, you control the city.”
“All I’m saying is be careful, Lauren,” Rebecca concludes, with that pompous smile and one of her skeletal little hands on my robust one. Her manicure looks much better than mine. Until now, I was proud of my manicure. Now I see it is pedestrian, the edges too square, the color not quite right. Rebecca does this to me. “You’ve got everything going for you. If you put half the energy into your personal life that you put into your writing, you’d be in great shape.”
“I second that emotion,” says Elizabeth.
“I thought you loved me,” I say to them. The room spins like, like, why, like Brad. “I thought you were my friends.”
“If we weren’t, we’d say marry the guy, que no?” says Amber, popping up from her creative place with that humorless Aztec priestess look. Fierce. “You need guidance sometimes, because alone you get lost.”
Usnavys sees the pain in my eyes, the kind of terrified pain that comes with having someone hold a mirror to your face when you look your worst, and she jumps in. “Hey,” she says. “I got something for you guys.” She fishes through the pockets of her fur coat and takes out five little boxes wrapped in elegant p
aisley paper.
“What’s this?” Sara asks, sitting forward.
“Unas cositas,” Usnavys says, doling them out, one for each of us. I take the small box in my hands, and begin to shake. I don’t know why, but I feel like crying.
“Que esperan, sucias!” Usnavys says, with a mock critical wave of her hand. “Open them already!”
We begin to remove the skins from the gifts, and find light blue Tiffany boxes underneath. Inside each one is a shiny, heart-shaped pendant, gold, with each of our initials engraved on the front, and one simple word carved into the back: sucias. There is no price tag attached; they will not be going back. She’ll be paying for this for months. This little thing must have cost ten times what the nicest gift Ed has ever gotten me cost. My trembling escalates up through my legs and torso, into my hands, and finally to my face, and I start to cry.
“Ay, Dios mío,” Usnavys says with a roll of her eyes. “What a llorona!” But she still gets up and comes over and puts her arms around me. “What’s the matter, mujer? You okay? Tell the sucias. That’s what we’re here for.”
I look around the table at these people, these incredible, loving, dedicated people, and I think of Ed, of Jovan, of all the men I’ve made the mistake of allowing to live in my heart, of how empty every single one of them has made me feel. Papi. I shake my head and start to sob.
“It’s just,” I start, and stop. I look at Rebecca, and even she looks sympathetic. “It’s so beautiful, so thoughtful. So incredibly incredible. And it’s just this—” I hear my little drunken slur inside my head, as if I were somewhere else, watching everything go down. Part of me is embarrassed, but another part of me just can’t stop talking, as usual: “It’s just this. Why can’t there be one single guy out there as committed as all of us?”
I admire those women who buy Christmas presents in July and store them in plastic Tupperware boxes under the bed, alongside the box of wrapping paper (bought when it was on sale the year before) and Scotch tape. My friend Rebecca is one of those people. I wish I had those kinds of organizational skills. Judging from the swarms of bodies I battled at Downtown Crossing this weekend, I’d guess many of you are just like me: procrastinators. Only thirteen more shopping days to go. Have you found what you’re looking for? I haven’t. But enough about my love life. Let’s talk about gifts.
—from “My Life,” by Lauren Fernández
rebecca
MY SCHEDULE FOLLOWS.
5:15 A.M. Grapefruit, two glasses of water, and a cup of coffee, black.
5:40 A.M. Dance France tights and red leotard, red socks and new Ryka sneakers, North Face parka, gloves and scarf. Walk across Copley Square from my apartment on Commonwealth Avenue to the gym for a 6:00 A.M. step aerobics class.
5:55 A.M. Claim my spot in the front row. Greet the other regulars. Ask about their jobs and families. When they ask about Brad, say everything is fine.
6:50 A.M. Pick up dry cleaning. Put mother’s Spanish-language religious birthday card in the mailbox.
7:00 A.M. Buy flowers for the large vase in the dining room, tulips in dark red, to match the wallpaper.
WALKING HOME, I admire the Christmas displays in the shops, the wreaths with red and green plaid bows and twinkling white lights. I take out my Palm Pilot and make a digital note to remember to buy a present for my “little,” the girl I mentor through the Big Sister Association. Shanequa regalito, quizás una cámara digital.
Shanequa Ulibarri is thirteen, born in Costa Rica, now a Dorchester gang member. She wants to have a baby right away so someone will love her. Her “man” is a twenty-eight-year-old who, she says, wants to knock her up. I got her one of those fake babies, the kind that cry at regular intervals unless you feed, diaper, and love them. I said that if she could make it through one weekend I’d give her my blessing to have a child. She agreed, but the next week told me she had “lost” the baby at a party.
She paints as well as anyone I know. And when I let her use my camera at a concert once, the photos came back artistic and brilliant. She has talent, but doesn’t know it because her mother is an illiterate who beats her with extension cords. Her stepfather calls her names I wouldn’t use on my worst enemy, and I’ve seen him stare at her blooming body. I think I’ll get her a digital camera to go with the computer I got her last year. Come to think of it, I haven’t seen that computer in a long time. I wonder who she sold it to.
7:15 A.M. GO home and begin to prepare for another long day.
I’ve stapled holiday lights in the two front bay windows of my top-floor apartment, and decorated the firm, full pine tree in the living room. I did these things alone while Brad read Marxist theory in his underwear, sprawled on my antique. day bed in the guest room. As he walked past on his way to the kitchen, his privates almost poking out of his drawers, he mumbled, “Religion is for the feebleminded.” He was not really speaking to me, as he didn’t wait for a reply. He and I haven’t spoken of the Christmas tree, or anything really. Talking for us is limited lately to “Here’s your mail.”
7:45 A.M. I write a detailed list for Consuelo about what needs to be done around the apartment, including scrubbing the bathroom floors and removing the scum from the shower curtains. She can’t read. When I have time, I help her with her literacy program homework. Today Brad will have to read her the list. I’m busy.
Brad stares at the ceiling when I talk and mumbles to himself. I can’t tell him anything and have him remember it, so I write the list for him as much as for her. Brad’s head is always up in the clouds with his “research.” I used to admire that about him. I even used to find it sexy, and used to enjoy sitting across from him listening to his ideas. I’d never known someone so proudly intellectual. But lately it irritates me. His ideas are harebrained when you take them apart. I didn’t go to an Ivy League school like all his friends, but even I recognize that my husband is a dolt with a large vocabulary.
When I met Brad, I wasn’t exactly well read when it came to esoteric philosophy or academic publications. I made it a point to immerse myself in that type of material as a way of showing my love for him. What a mistake. The more I learned, the more I realized he didn’t know what he was talking about, the more I recognized that he just stuck words like “paradigm” and “undergird” into his daily speech to impress people. Brad, I have realized, approaches academia the same way his parents approach life: by advertising brand names. With his family, it’s designer clothes and cars. With Brad, it’s predictable male intellectuals. Now his spouting irritates me. His peppery, papery library smell irritates me. The way he blows his nose all the time in that dirty monogrammed handkerchief irritates me. His hair is messy because he wants it that way. His friends all look just like him, and they irritate me, too. Basically, Brad, my husband, the man I am stuck with for life, irritates me.
God help me.
Consuelo is scheduled to come at noon. This time, Brad better be here. Last time, he claims, he forgot and went to the MIT library. Poor Consuelo had to get back on the bus in the cold and go all the way back to Chelsea. I’m surprised she didn’t quit. Brad suggested we give her a key. He’s suspicious of all men who look like his father, but Consuelo he trusts? He’s got to be crazy.
7:50 A.M. I pull the Cherokee onto Commonwealth Avenue before Brad has even rolled off the guest bed that is now officially his nest, full of papers, old food, and dirty socks with holes in them. It has been five months since we slept in the same room. I don’t wake him to say good-bye anymore. I prefer it this way. It hurt at first, but now I can read through magazines in my own bed at night without him complaining about how crass pop culture is. I can enjoy my work without him sniffing and snorting about my magazine and my mission. The silence between us does this much, at least. Thank the Lord for that.
8:00 A.M. I head to South Boston to have the jeep washed. Tonight is the monthly dinner of the Minority Business Association, at the Park Plaza Hotel, and it’s not acceptable to have a dirty car. Lauren would tell me I’m sha
llow, but she hates me for some reason. And there are studies about this kind of thing. People make up their minds based almost entirely on nonverbal cues. The shade of your teeth, if your nails are clean, your posture as you wait for the valet. I try not to judge people based on these kinds of cues, but we’re animals. That’s how God made us, and who are we to challenge His work?
In March, I will be the keynote dinner speaker at the Minority Business Association gathering. This is a great honor. And it’s no mistake. I prepared for this in every way, in my presentation of self. I have begun working on my speech, about media images of minorities, and taking control of our images of ourselves. I have a lot to say.
I neglected to say I shower at home. Public facilities are for the public. I am wearing a tasteful suit, nothing too flashy or worth detailing. Work clothes.
8:10 A.M. I wait in the heated lobby of the car wash and watch through the observation window to make sure none of the droopy, embarrassed young men working here scratches my vehicle. A heavyset woman bumps me on her way to the door, and I choke on the protest I would like to issue.
When Brad started to remove himself from my life, I kept quiet too. I think my parents removed themselves from each other the same way, long before I was born. I wonder if they ever had passion for each other at all. I used to wonder if I was adopted, but I resemble them both. Whenever I see that painting of the farmer and his wife, where they frown behind a pitchfork, I think of Mom and Dad in church, side by side, shoulder to shoulder, with me on the other side of my mom. There was no yelling, no crying, little talking in our house. My mom took me aside once or twice and whispered, “Please remember that you don’t have to be like me.”
That was all the guidance she gave.
8:15 A.M. IN the shiny Cherokee, I steer toward my office. I turn on the stereo and my Toni Braxton CD plays softly. I crank the volume up until I can feel the thrum of bass in my chest, and try to sing along. I tap time on the steering wheel, and move my shoulders until I notice a man in the car next to me smiling my way. I blush and stop. Was he laughing, or flirting? I dare not look again. I turn down the stereo and look the other way. Snow has begun to fall again.
