Nilda

by Nicholasa Mohr

  “Vanilla.”

  Nilda jumped and turned around. “Vanilla? Vanilla!”

  “Shhhhh … don’t make a fuss and scream, now. Be quiet or we won’t get any.”

  “Are you sure, Sophie? They never did that before.”

  Sophie looked down at her and with a look of annoyance brought her forefinger up to her lips. “Look now, see?” She pointed over to the back of the counter. Nilda stretched up on her toes trying to see in back, beyond the long high counter. “See,” Sophie said, “they are putting it into those white containers.”

  Sure enough, she could see the women in white uniforms transferring the soft velvety white substance with large ladles into white cardboard containers, sealing them and putting thin wire handles on them. “Just like the candy store,” Nilda half whispered. She turned to look at the rest of the people in line who had come after them, wanting to shout, Vanilla ice cream for everybody! Instead she smiled a knowing smile at the lady in back of them who smiled back at her briefly. She’s not very excited, thought Nilda. Wait till she finds out.

  She wanted to carry the ice cream home, but it was packed away with the other things in the large shopping bag. All the way home she wondered if there would be enough for everyone. She hoped the ice cream wouldn’t melt before they got home.

  “I’m getting thirsty. How about you?” Sophie asked.

  “Uh huh!” nodded Nilda.

  “I can just imagine what it tastes like, sweet, creamy and cold,” Sophie said. She went on, becoming talkative all the way home.

  As they climbed up the stairs after the long walk, Nilda’s head throbbed and her throat was unbearably dry, but she was happy to be the bearer of good news. Once she entered the apartment she went to find her mother, then remembered that she was visiting her stepfather in the hospital. “We got ice cream, vanilla ice cream!” she said.

  No one answered. Except for Aunt Delia, who was studying her newspaper, the apartment was empty.

  “We got ice cream today, Titi Delia.” The old woman looked up. “We got vanilla ice cream at the food station.”

  “Did you read what happened to that couple? They were stupid enough to open the door to …”

  Nilda looked at her and said, “Never mind.” She went back to the kitchen.

  “Sit down, Nilda. I’ll serve you a little bit now,” said Sophie.

  “Maybe we better wait for Mamá.”

  “She’s not gonna mind. After all, we went to get it. Right? Sit down; go on. I’ve already got the plate. Go on, now.”

  “Okay then.”

  “Hurry up now before it melts.” Sophie put the plate in front of Nilda.

  Nilda noticed it looked different from regular ice cream, but scooped a spoonful into her mouth anyway. Something horrible was happening to her. She could not swallow what was in her mouth. A lumpy liquid began to drip down the sides of her mouth down to her chin. Gagging and coughing, she spit out the sticky oily substance. Lard! God, that’s what it was. It was lard! she thought, closing her eyes. She could hear cackles of laughter behind her. Turning around to look, she saw Sophie. Sophie’s eyes were wet and her cheeks streaked with tears as she held on to the sink to balance herself. Her large belly swayed and shook with uncontrollable laughter.

  Nilda waited in her room. “I hate her and I wish she would drop dead! When Mamá comes home I’ll tell her and she’ll throw her out.” She had been crying in her bed with her back to the door in case Sophie walked in. “When she asks for forgiveness she’ll have to eat a whole big plateful of lard. All of it! She can’t leave nothing over or she can’t stay. I’m gonna tell Paul so he won’t think she’s so nice anymore.” In spite of her anger she felt ashamed that she could be so easily and completely fooled. “Maybe I’ll only tell Mamá. They might tease me, especially that Frankie; he thinks he’s so smart.” A sinking feeling somewhere inside was beginning to interfere with her anger.

  Nilda heard the front door shut, and voices. Taking a deep breath, she sat up. She wasn’t crying anymore but she was afraid she would burst into tears again, so she waited a little while, looking out the window. The clotheslines were full of towels, sheets, underwear and all kinds of clothes. They were moving, flapping, swaying as the wind blew. Living on the top floor of the tenement, she could see down the alleyway in back. She could see the clotheslines going crisscross and zigzag all the way down to the bottom floors. After waiting a little while, she got up and walked to the kitchen.

  Her mother was sitting with her elbows on the table, her face buried in her hands, supporting her head as she bent slightly forward. Aunt Delia was sitting on one side of her and Sophie was sitting on the other side. Her mother lifted her head. Her eyes were red from crying. “He might be home in about ten to fourteen days.… God, I don’t know what I’m going to do. María Purísima.”

  “Mamá, what happened?”

  “Your papá is still very sick and he has to come home, but he can’t work. Complete rest for God knows how long.”

  “Mamá, I gotta tell you something, Ma.” Her mother did not answer. “Mamá, I gotta tell you something!”

  “What is it? Go on, tell me!”

  “No, I gotta tell you alone.”

  “What alone! You have something to say, Nilda, say it. Por Dios, what do you want from me, eh!”

  Nilda could see her mother was angry, but she went on anyway. “Well, it’s what Sophie did.”

  “Well, what did she do?”

  “She told me we were getting ice cream at the food station instead of lard, and then … well, when we came home from the food station she gave me some lard to eat.”

  “She gave you lard to eat, and you don’t know the difference between ice cream and lard?”

  “Mamá, she said it was ice cream and …”

  “It was just a little joke, Mom,” Sophie said. “I was just kidding.”

  “Some joke, you mean witch!”

  “Nilda, you are too sensitive. You can’t live in this world being that sensitive,” Sophie added.

  “And you are too awful and you get out of my room!”

  “¡Nilda! ¡Basta! Stop that right now!”

  “But, Mamá, she was laughing at me.” Nilda could feel the tears swelling in her eyes.

  “With all my problems and all the things I have to do, I have to worry that you don’t know the difference between ice cream and lard.” Her mother shouted, “Go to your room! Go on, get out of my sight!”

  As Nilda ran out she could still hear her mother. “Ten years old; when I was ten I had no mother and …”

  “I hate them all, I just hate them all!” Nilda whispered to herself as she lay face down on her bed.

  As she often did when she was upset, she took her “box of things” out from under the bed. Nilda loved to draw; it was the thing that gave her the most pleasure. She sat looking at her cardboard box affectionately. Carefully she began to stack her cardboard cutouts. Her stepfather would give her the light grey cardboard that was in his shirts whenever they came back from the Chinese laundry. She cut these into different shapes, making people dolls, animals, cars, buildings or whatever she fancied. Then she would draw on them, filling in the form and color of whatever she wanted. She had no more cardboard but she had some white, lined paper that Victor had given her. Drawing a line and then another, she had a sense of happiness. Slowly working, she began to divide the space, adding color and making different size forms. Her picture began to take shape and she lost herself in a world of magic achieved with some forms, lines and color.

  She finished her picture feeling that she had completed a voyage all by herself, far away but in a place that she knew quite well. “At last,” she said. “All finished.” Sticking out her tongue, she thought, I’m not showing this to Mamá. She put her things away under the bed. Glancing in the mirror, she looked at herself with some interest. She was going out now; she wasn’t so angry anymore.

  Mid-November 1941

  Nilda heard the bell ring as she
walked into her classroom and sat down at her desk. The teacher, Miss Elizabeth Langhorn, was already there opening the supply cabinet. She was a short plumpish woman close to sixty years of age. Her thinning grey hair was cut short and done up in a tight permanent wave. She had a sallow complexion and small eyes surrounded by puffy skin. Because her voice had a loud sandpaper tone, the kids nicknamed her “Foghorn.” The loose-fitting dresses she wore were made of a crepe material, usually dark in color, and most of them had stains that years of dry cleaning had permanently set into the fabric. Her bosom caved in and her stomach extended out. She always wore low-heeled shoes in need of a shine.

  Every day Miss Langhorn opened her supply closet first thing in the morning and closed it after milk-and-cookies time. She would reopen it after that for “emergencies only,” quickly locking it up again. “Don’t tempt a thief,” she would say to the class in a knowing tone. “That’s how it all starts; first it’s just a pencil, then perhaps a fountain pen. It’s all so easy, why not open somebody’s purse? Oh, no! Start right from the beginning and you’ll get into the habit of being honest. H-O-N-E-S-T-Y,” she said, spelling out the word. “Brave people they were, our forefathers, going into the unknown where man had never ventured. They were not going to permit the Indians to stop them. This nation was developed from a wild primitive forest into a civilized nation. Where would we all be today if not for brave people? We would have murder, thievery and no belief in God.”

  It was always more or less the same speech that preceded the Pledge of Allegiance. Nilda remembered that yesterday it had been a speech on Abraham Lincoln and the rights of slaves to become citizens.

  Miss Langhorn picked up a piece of chalk and wrote the morning’s assignment on the blackboard. On her desk sat the long, thick wooden ruler for all to see. Everyone knew that today someone would get rapped on the knuckles with that ruler. The lucky students only got threatened; however, real luck meant you didn’t get caught. Miss Langhorn had a strict set of rules everyone in the class knew by heart. One of her most strict rules was that no Spanish was allowed in her classroom. Anybody caught speaking or even saying one word of Spanish had to put out both arms and clench his hands into fists. “None of that,” she would say, “if you are ever going to be good Americans. You will never amount to anything worthwhile unless you learn English. You’ll stay just like your parents. Is that what you people want? Eh?” she would ask earnestly, waiting for an answer.

  “No.”

  “No, who?”

  “No, Miss Langhorn.”

  Nilda looked at the ruler on the desk, recalling that feeling she got when she had to hold her arms outstretched. She always shut her eyes because she knew she would run away or cry out if she saw the ruler coming down to strike her. She hated when the skin broke and the knuckles swelled; her hands stayed sore all day and hurt for a long time. This was especially upsetting to Nilda when she looked forward to working on her cutouts and drawings for her “box of things” at home.

  Miss Langhorn had a high stool placed in the back of the classroom, off to one side, and a large white coneshaped cap made of cardboard. On this cardboard cap was written the word “dunce” in large black letters. Any student who refused to take the punishment had to wear the dunce cap. Nilda had worn the cap three times this term.

  Students were hit for talking, lateness and coming into class unwashed. Sometimes it just depended on Miss Langhorn’s mood.

  “Well, class, are we ready to work hard this morning?”

  “Yes, Miss Langhorn.”

  She walked over to the side of the room and opened up some of the windows from the top, letting in the cold, crisp late-autumn air.

  Nilda felt the cold breeze. Soon it’s going to be winter, she thought. I hope it snows a whole lot.

  “Now, let’s see if we can be really good today, eh?” Miss Langhorn went on smiling. Her teeth were discolored from heavy smoking. “No need to use this,” she said, picking up her wooden ruler. “I have nothing to do with it. You are responsible for what happens and you bring it down upon yourselves. Good behavior and progress go hand in hand indeed. It all stems from the home. Why, I hear them on the Madison Avenue bus coming to work, and sometimes going home.… Yapity yap yap. How are they ever going to learn to speak English? When I was a child we could look up to our parents. Why, my father …”

  A similar version of the same story concerning Miss Lang-horn’s childhood had been told every day now, at least once a day, since the beginning of the school term.

  “It was a happy family we had as children. At dinnertime we would all sit around the large, old oak table. Father would say grace.”

  Nilda began to daydream. This year me and little Benji and the other kids are going to build a neat fortress of snow in Central Park, she was thinking.

  “… a family of modest means but honest, hardworking. Mother had to make do with little or no servant help. Store-bought dresses were a luxury; Mother had to buy material herself and bring it to the seamstress,” she went on.

  Maybe, Nilda thought, we could build an igloo house like I seen in them pictures about Eskimos.

  “… we knew the value of a dollar. Nobody gave you anything free in those days. Father was a splendid man. He and Mother would …”

  Miss Langhorn’s voice was far, far away.

  Nilda was bent over her English reader when she heard Miss Lang-horn say, “Milk-and-cookies time, children.” Her stomach turned. I hate milk-and-cookies time, damn! she thought. She finished writing out her name and heading in the assignment book:

  Nilda Ramírez

  Class 5B-2

  P.S. 72 Manh.

  November 19, 1941.

  Looking up to the front, she felt her stomach turn again. Every morning the small containers of milk were lined up on Miss Langhorn’s desk. For three cents any student could buy one. Next to the milk, the teacher had set out a box of chocolate-covered graham crackers. Miss Langhorn sold these personally. They cost two cents apiece or three for a nickel.

  “All right, children, let us line up.”

  About half the class could afford to buy milk every morning. A much smaller percentage could afford to buy both milk and cookies. Very rarely did Nilda join the line for milk; most of the time she had no money at all. Every morning Nilda longed to have milk and one of those cookies.

  “Here, Nilda, you can have one of mine,” Mildred, the girl who sat next to her, had offered once.

  It was so delicious, she remembered. Another time Leo had given her money and she could buy both the milk and cookies. That was great! she recalled. All that sweet chocolatey taste on the outside, but when you bit the inside it was real good and crunchy, slowly melting in your mouth. A few times when she had money for milk, Nilda tried to buy just the graham crackers but Miss Langhorn had said, “No, it’s against school rules. You can buy the cookies only to have with your milk.” At the beginning, some of the kids would share their cookies, but now Miss Langhorn had set a class rule that no sharing or offering of milk and cookies was allowed.

  As she did almost every morning, Nilda just sat and stared with the other children who weren’t eating. They all waited for the milk break to be over, which took about twenty minutes. It seems to get longer all the time, thought Nilda. Someday I’m gonna come in and buy a whole nickel’s worth of cookies. And when I grow up I’m gonna buy a whole box, sit down and eat them all up. If Miss Langhorn happens to come around and ask for a cookie—she’ll be real old by then—I’ll see her probably strolling down Central Park and I’ll be sitting on a bench holding the box and eating. When she asks me for a cookie I’ll say, “I’m sooooo sorry, my dear Miss Langhorn, but I don’t think it’s polite to ask. Do you? Eh?” I’ll chew loud and make sure I smile at her.

  The morning dragged on until Nilda heard the lunch bell. She was going home for lunch this term. After the experience at camp this past summer, she had convinced her mother to let her come home for lunch. She hated the free lunches given at scho
ol. “All that awful soup, Mamá. It tastes like water. The bread is hard, and the milk tastes funny, and you always get prunes for dessert. The food tastes just like at the camp. I know I’m gonna be sick. I just know it.”

  It had taken a lot of talking, but at last her mother had agreed to let her come home. She, in turn, had also agreed to the condition that she eat whatever her mother could spare. “No complaining, Nilda,” her mother had said. “If you start with the bobería that you don’t like this or you don’t like that, you go right back to eat at school! ¡Se acabó! Understand?”

  This whole week it had been chocolate pudding and tea with milk. At first she had been overjoyed at the idea of chocolate pudding for lunch. Her mother served it cold sometimes and hot sometimes, like cereal. But after several days, the thought of chocolate pudding again sent a feeling of disappointment right down to the bottom of her stomach. Oh well, it’s still better than eating in this place, she thought, and headed for home.

  To get home Nilda had to pass through the dark tunnels on Park Avenue. That was the worst part; even worse than the short lunch hour. It seemed that no sooner was she up the steps and in the apartment than she had to leave in order to arrive back at school before the late bell rang.

  Nilda reached her corner of Park Avenue and 104th Street and looked carefully into the tunnels. There were three tunnels; one set in the middle for traffic, and one at either side for pedestrians. The tops curved into archways; inside each tunnel a single small bulb shone, giving off very little light. Nilda squinted her eyes as she stood at the entrance trying to see inside. Lately, some of the older children had come around at this time of day, asking for money, and she recalled how she got shoved around when she told them she had none.

  “Don’t be a sucketa, stupid,” her brother Paul had told her, “put your money in your shoe,” which is what she did whenever she had any.

  Sometimes she walked through the middle tunnel when she felt she would run into trouble, but the large trucks and cars coming through frightened her. She saw the tunnel was empty and quickly stepped inside. People were coming in from the other side; they were adults, two men and a woman. They were talking in loud tones and Nilda heard their voices and footsteps echoing the length of the tunnel. When she was with a group of friends they would all scream just to hear their voices echo. Sometimes when she was alone she would sing, enjoying the resonance of her voice as it filled the dark chamber; but she was afraid someone would hear her so she very rarely indulged herself. As she went past the middle of the tunnel, she side-stepped the puddles that filled up and seeped through the cracks and holes in the concrete. Holding her breath, she tried to avoid the smell of stagnant water and urine. At the other side, she stepped out and looked quickly to see if there was any traffic coming, and then, almost running, she went toward her building.