But even the crazy need love, and she loved him. “Coming to America made him crazy,” Gloria told her mother.
“He was probably crazy before he left Puerto Rico,” Gloria’s mother said. “There are crazy people there. Once there was un tabaquero whose daughter ate her own flesh. She bit off pieces of her fingers. Crazy.”
Although Gloria was forbidden to see Regalo, she snuck him in when her parents and César were not home. But one evening he began beating her, and she ran from the house. She escaped out the back door, and he chased after her.
The Taylors were eating dinner, and through the screen door they could hear Gloria and Regalo coming toward their back door. Gloria kicked and fought her way onto the Taylors’ porch. Mikey jumped up from the table. Samuel moved toward the door, but before he could get there Gloria and Regalo had fallen against the screen. The door came loose from its hinges and crashed into the kitchen.
The door hit the floor first, then Gloria, face up. Regalo landed on top.
Mary Kate and the children were screaming, crowded in the doorway between the kitchen and living room.
“What the hell is this?” Samuel said. “Get out of my house.”
Mary Kate calmed down enough to ask, “She dead?”
“She don’t look dead to me,” Samuel said, “just knocked out.”
Regalo had gotten to his knees and was trying to revive Gloria.
He kissed her and kissed her while he knelt among the scattered and broken plates, the pinto beans, corn bread, half-eaten chicken.
“She dead!” Mikey yelled. “She dead!” And he ran upstairs.
“Take them kids out of here,” Samuel yelled.
“Get them out of here? They in they own house,” Mary Kate yelled back. “Where you want me to take them? Get them out my house!”
Samuel glared at her. “What you want me to do?” he asked. “You can take them kids upstairs.”
Regalo paid none of them any attention. He had begun to cry.
Samuel looked out of the space where the door had been. A crowd had gathered, staring into the hole, right into the house. Samuel stepped over the couple and yelled at the people gawking outside. “What ya’ll want? Get out my yard.”
Nobody moved. They were not scared of him.
The children had quieted down, and Mary Kate went to the sink, wet a dishcloth, and handed it to Regalo. Gloria was coming around. She opened her eyes and Regalo picked her up. Without a word he carried her past Samuel, nodding to him as he went out of the hole.
“Who going to pay for this shit?” he yelled after them.
“He going to kill that girl if this keep up,” Mary Kate said.
No one would have been surprised if Regalo had been found stabbed to death, Jesús having snuck back to kill him.
But Gloria had had enough. She stopped seeing Regalo. He would still come around, a coquí crying out in the night, but she would not answer his calls. Finally, only an arrest kept him from coming back.
He had been riding the bus from Buffalo, and when it was time for him to get off on Ridge Road, he did not have the ten cents to exit in the suburban zone. So, although other people had their exit fares, the driver refused to stop at the last three stops on their side of the bridge.
“I’m sick of you people doing this,” he said. “The whole lot of you always wanting something for nothing. No more. No more.” He drove the bus right over the bridge to Capital Heights, pulled up across from the police station, and began honking the horn.
When two officers in front of the station approached the bus, Regalo panicked. He tried to kick out a back window but only managed to crack it. By this time the officers had walked around to the front of the bus, and when the driver opened the door to let them on, Regalo rushed the door. The officers grabbed him and dragged him struggling from the bus, across Ridge Road, right into city hall, and down to the basement headquarters.
Regalo was charged with disorderly conduct, destruction of property, petty larceny, resisting arrest, and assaulting two police officers.
Gloria started dating a new man. The neighbors were still apprehensive. “1 don’t know why I got the damn screen door fixed,” Samuel said.
There was no need to worry. The new man, who had white hair, was named Orlando, and Gloria had met him at a Saturday night bingo game at the Our Lady of Assumption Church on Ridge Road. The games were conducted bilingually, but Orlando was illiterate in both English and Spanish. He came to bingo to socialize, and sat smoking and drinking coffee while the games were played.
Gloria would look up to catch him staring at her. Every week he sat closer. At first he was across the room, but with each progressive week, he moved a table closer and held his stares a little longer. When Gloria stopped dating Regalo, she began to return the gaze of this white-haired man.
Because Orlando worked night hours, cleaning the offices at Capital, he seldom saw Gloria during the week. He met her mother for the first time at bingo.
He was respectful, addressing her mother in Spanish, and he offered a small gift, a bar of chocolate. Because of the chocolate, Gloria’s mother thought Orlando must be a pervert.
When she had been a girl there was an old man, un abacero, who owned a small candy store. He had given chocolate to her friend Mercedes, a very dark girl, thin and quiet. He let her eat as much chocolate as she wanted. Once she had eaten ten bars. To pay for them, she would sneak out and come to him at night. The old man would slip his penis into her mouth.
Gloria’s mother put the chocolate Orlando had brought in her purse, but threw it out when she and Gloria got home. “I don’t like that man,” she told Gloria. “He is trying to buy you.”
“Mommy, buy me? With what?”
“I don’t like him. He is too old for you. An old man like him should be ashamed. He could be your father,” her mother said.
“Mommy, he is not that old.”
He kept bringing small gifts to Gloria’s mother, a bottle of soda, peanuts, a ripe avocado. One week he brought her a piece of sugar cane three feet long. Finally, she invited Orlando to come home with them and share it.
Gloria’s father peeled the cane and gave everyone a piece. Gloria never had cane before. A sweet and milky juice that reminded her of coconut milk ran down her chin. The rough fibers of the cane bit at her tongue.
“I chopped so much as a boy, I thought I’d never want to see a piece of this again,” Gloria’s father said, sucking on his fourth piece. “Sometimes for days it was all we ate.”
“It’s not as sweet as in Puerto Rico,” Gloria’s mother said.
“It’s good,” Gloria’s father said, “but nothing is as sweet as that.”
Gloria and Orlando were married in a civil ceremony at the city hall four months after they met. Gloria’s mother cried through the entire ceremony. César and Gloria’s father attended. Regalo was there too, still in the basement jail. He was supposed to have been moved to the county holding center in Buffalo, but there was no room for him yet.
The day prior to the wedding, Gloria’s mother had given her some advice. “You’re a smart girl. You could get a good job, be a secretary. Live some of your life. You have a choice. Work until you have children. Have something to fall back on because children can be disappointments.”
Gloria listened to her mother’s advice, stored it away. But her mother did not know. Like so many women, she had not had the chance to explore the world. Her place, their place, was at the shore, pressed against the sea. Their men had explored the seas, discovered the roundness of the world. Gloria’s mother did not know where to tell her to go, or how to get there. All she could do was stand at the shore and point. A woman who has never been into the world thinks of it in two ways, finite or infinite, ending at the horizon or stretching on forever. Gloria’s mother believed in its infinity. But Gloria was afraid to try, to become a disappointment. A month after the wedding, she was pregnant.
Gloria’s pregnancy was easy. Orlando would come home from w
ork early in the morning and tend a small garden he had planted in the back yard. Gloria would sit there too, inside the chicken-wire fence he had put up. Like his garden, Gloria was ripening. Her thick hair was growing, beginning to inch down her back. She was rounding out, her legs and arms growing bigger, her face filling in. Her breasts grew. These mornings in the garden, her breasts were like avocados he could rub for luck. But he did not touch her. He refused to touch her.
Gloria did not know what to do. She tried to cover her confusion, but her mother saw right through it. “Is he beating you?” she asked. “If he is beating you, I will kill him.”
“It’s not like that,” Gloria said.
“He’s doing something to you. Hijo de puta. You should not have married him. Nothing good will come of this marriage.”
“Everything is fine,” Gloria said.
“Why are you lying to your mommy? Don’t you know it’s a sin to lie to your mother?” she said, stroking Gloria’s hair.
Gloria began crying. “Orlando, he won’t touch me. You know, touch me. I don’t think he loves me.”
“Is that all?” her mother asked. “Don’t cry for that.”
“He’s my husband,” she cried.
“My niña, I know he’s your husband, but don’t you cry. Orlando loves you. Sometimes men act strange when a woman is expecting. When I was carrying Jesús, I thought Poppi was crazy. He wouldn’t let me do a thing. He cooked, he cleaned. Ay! He brought me breakfast to bed. I thought I was a queen. That was with Jesús. By the time I had you and César, he knew better. He treated me like a woman with you two. I cooked, cleaned, everything.”
“It’s embarrassing,” Gloria said. “It’s like I did something wrong . . . Maybe he has another woman.”
“Ha!” her mother yelled. “Who would want him? He is lucky to have a girl like you. He knows that, and when the baby comes he will be all right. You’ll be glad for these days. When the baby comes, he’ll go back to treating you like a woman.”
All summer the plants grew up around Gloria. The onions, the peppers, the tomatoes. The tomatoes were threatening to take over the entire garden. They were leaving no room for her. Orlando would walk past her like she was a ghost and tend to the needs of the plants, pulling weeds, turning over leaves looking for bugs, hosing down the garden if there had been no rain.
Toward the end of the summer, on a morning before Orlando came home from work, Gloria flew into a jealous rage. During a light rain, she rose from the stool where she sat, spotted a tomato plant near the fence, and tried to rip it from the ground. It was choked with green and red tomatoes, and it fought her, unwilling to give up its life.
As Gloria was struggling with the plant, a woman came around the corner in a mad dash. It was Venita, in search of a piece of salt pork for Moses’s breakfast. She had set out for Mary Kate’s house, hoping she would have some. In her haste she had forgotten her scarf, and between the rain and her husband’s demands for pork at six in the morning, her hair was going to go back. She was in no mood.
When she saw Gloria pulling on the plant, though, she stopped. “What you doing, girl?” she asked.
Gloria started and let go of the plant.
“If you trying to pick tomatoes, that ain’t the way,” Venita said. She approached the fence. “You got some fine ones here. I’m in a rush now, but I’m a come back by later and give you something for some. How much you want?”
“You can take some,” Gloria said.
“That’s kind of you, but I can’t let you do that,” she said, pulling a few green ones from the plant. “I want these, and I’m a get some to put up. I’m a pay you, hear?” Venita said, and continued on to Mary Kate’s.
Venita came back later with a dollar and a bag, and Gloria told her to take as many tomatoes as she wanted. “You should start putting some of these up,” Venita said. “The frost’s coming soon and they going to go to waste. The peppers too. You got a green thumb. This is a fine garden you got here. I can’t make nothing grow.”
“It’s my husband’s,” Gloria said.
Gloria’s mother was right. When the baby was born, Orlando went back to treating her like a woman. And he loved his son. They named him Miguel.
Each morning when Orlando came home from work, Gloria would be in the kitchen and sometimes Miguel would be awake, lying in a basket in the center of the table. If he was not awake, Orlando would go upstairs and get him.
“Enamorado, he’s tired,” Gloria said. “You’re going to spoil him.”
“You always say that, honey. But I never see him. He’s always sleeping.”
“He’s a baby. He needs his rest.”
“Look at him. Can you believe it?” Orlando would say, holding the sleeping Miguel.
Miguel was four months old when Orlando was laid off. Along with severance pay he was given a slip of paper in an envelope. He took it home for Gloria to read to him.
“It says this next week will be your last week. They’re cutting back on the cleaning staff.”
“My last week! How can they fire me?” Orlando said. He was holding Miguel, who was asleep.
“Mira, you weren’t fired. They’re cutting back. Half of the cleaning staff is being let go.”
“How will the place be clean? Half the men! Pigs. It’s so dirty. Cigarette butts, coffee cups everywhere. Piss on the bathroom floors. They run around in those suits, looking all nice and neat. Big shots. But they’re pigs. What do they think I’m suppose to do, just like that?” he said, snapping his fingers. “Sending out these little pieces of paper in a envelope. At least they could have faced us like men. Maricóns.”
“We will make a way,” Gloria said. “My parents can help.”
“I don’t want them to help. You’re my wife, and I’ll take care of you and Miguel. I will get another job,” Orlando said.
Nearly two months passed before Orlando found a job. A Puerto Rican man could always find a job mopping a floor or scrubbing a toilet.
But Gloria found herself being pulled out to sea, water swirling around her ankles.
“I was thinking, Orlando. About going back to school,” Gloria said one night as he was preparing to go to work.
“Back? You finished school.”
“Not high school, business school,” she said.
“Why do you want to go to college?”
“Not college, Orlando. I could be a secretary. Already I can type forty words a minute. I could when I graduated.”
Orlando was not listening. “You think I can’t take care of you and Miguel. That’s why you want to work. You want to take over.”
Gloria was stunned. “That’s not true. I was thinking that I could, that I might—”
He yelled at her. “You don’t think I’m good enough for you. I’m nothing but a casero, cleaning up piss and shit. You want one of those blancos sitting behind one of those fancy desks, not the man who cleans up after them.”
“That’s not true,” Gloria yelled back at him. “How can you say something so crazy? Trying to push me into the arms of a white man.”
“You should’ve married one, somebody who could give you something. With me you will never have nothing.”
“You give me all I need. You’re mixing up what I’m saying. I’m thinking about the future. Maybe we can send Miguel to college. Being a secretary is all I think I can do. It’s all I think I can be good at. You’re good at cleaning.”
Orlando laughed bitterly. “I’m good at it. I can’t read. I can’t write in two tongues. I’m a stupid man. That is what makes me a good janitor,” he said.
“Orlando,” she said. “You are a man. I take pride in your work. You take pride in your work.”
“It’s not pride I take in my work. I work hard, do honest work. That is what I take pride in. But it is not enough. Mi padre worked and took care of everybody, us kids, Mommy, a brother too. I have trouble feeding just three mouths.”
“That was Puerto Rico. It’s not the same now, here. Nothing works
for us here. Here we pay, pay, pay. Water, food, big rent, heat. Bills, all the time bills. And what do we get? Hell, we pay for a sewer that backs up in the yard.”
Gloria was accepted at secretarial school in downtown Buffalo, with enough grant money to cover the cost of the yearlong program. There was one problem: what to do with Miguel. Her classes started at eight A.M., but she had to leave Lackawanna by seven. Now that Orlando worked nights in Buffalo, he did not get home until eight.
“I’ll get someone to keep him mornings,” Gloria told Orlando. “Maybe the lady in back of us.”
“Her? She has twenty-seven kids.”
“Don’t be silly. Mrs. Taylor is a nice woman. She keeps her kids nice.”
“I don’t know,” Orlando said. “Where will she put mi niño? When it’s time for his nap, she will have to put him on a hook.”
Gloria decided to ask anyway. Venita was at Mary Kate’s when Gloria came by. She had Miguel with her, hanging from her hip. Though Gloria spoke to Mary Kate, Venita jumped in. “I’ll keep him. Can I keep him?” She reached for the baby and he went to her. “See, he like me, with his pretty self. Girl, you got you a pretty baby. He a angel.”
“He’s no angel,” Gloria said. “You’ll see that.”
“You mind, Kate, if I keep him?” Venita asked, and before Mary Kate could answer, she turned to Gloria. “I know you ain’t asked me, but I want to keep him. I’ll do it for free.”
“Gloria, I think you should let Venita keep your baby. If the truth be told, I can’t really take him on, and she good with kids. She love them.”
Venita’s morning son began coming the next week. The first morning, Venita tried to sit and hold him, but he was eight months, too big for that. He climbed out of her lap and slid off the couch. He explored her living room and kitchen, and Venita was amazed that he kept finding things. She thought her house was clean, but suddenly he would be chewing, and when she pried his mouth open, she would find a tiny pebble, a grain of rice, a button.
All-Bright Court Page 14
