Handbook for an Unpredictable Life: How I Survived Sister Renata and My Crazy Mother, and Still Came Out Smiling (with Great Hair)

by Perez, Rosie

  “Yeah, right, missy! Hurry up and get me the hairbrush so I can brush this bush. Then you can help me clean the closet bin instead of wasting your entire Sunday doing only God knows what! How’s that for ya, little Miss Smarty Pants!” she barked.

  As I started to dress myself I watched Cindy slowly and dejectedly walk away to get the brush. Why were they so cruel? Yes, Crazy Cindy was a fuckup, but innocently and hilariously so. We were freakin’ little kids—come on!

  Sister Mary-Domenica walked me into the main office and instructed me to wait. I climbed up and sat on one of the chairs, my feet dangling. Another even older-looking nun brought in two girls. I’d seen them around, I thought, in the cafeteria and on the playgrounds. One was skinny and tall, with a dark olive complexion, dark, long, and wavy hair, pretty, and she wore Coke-bottle glasses. The other one was very short with the same kind of hair, just slightly less wavy, and the same skin tone. She looked older than the first one, even though she was shorter and even prettier. And everyone knew her, she was very popular because she was so pretty and funny. “Rosemary, I’d like for you to meet your sisters, Betsy and Terry,” said the archaic nun. “Betsy and Terry, this is your youngest sister, Rosemary. They’re both in Group One.”

  My sisters? Wait! Why didn’t they tell me that I had siblings here? I thought that was so weird. Imagine how shocked I was to learn that they had been in the Home before me. How long, I really don’t know. Gosh, I thought, they are so pretty, and look at all their long, soft, beautiful hair. I betcha they’re not tender-headed. Gosh, these are my sisters? They had that Ava Gardner essence. I looked down at my little chubby stomach and put my arms around it in an effort to hide it. They, however, looked, with surprise and envy, at the still fairly new-looking shoes Tia had given me, as if to say, Who the hell are you and why do you get to wear new shoes?

  “Hi!” I said, like a stupid, overly excited cornball. Ooh, I hope they like me, I hope, I hope, I hope!

  Another older girl, who looked around sixteen—tall, same coloring and hair—came in. “Rosemary, this is your other sister, Amy. She’s in Group Three,” explained the nun. I’d seen her around as well. She was one of the popular girls too. And oh boy, she also was a stunner. With the utmost sincere sweetness, Amy bent down to me and said, “Hi, Rosemary. Nice to meet you.” Ooh, I hope, I hope, I hope she likes me too! Then two boys came in, sixteen and fourteen. They looked like the rest of the tribe as well. Man, how many kids did this woman have?

  “Mommie!” the three girls screamed out. I turned and saw that pretty, mean lady who’d brought me here. Gosh, she was prettier than all of them. She was so petite too. They greeted her with a kiss, and she returned their kisses with kisses and hugs of her own. Ooh, I hope, I hope, I hope!

  “Hello, Rosa,” she said, as if she were saying hello to the postman. She held out her cheek toward me. I kissed it. She didn’t kiss me back—no hug either. She seemed uncomfortable around me. Oh great, what a great start. Not only were my “sisters” and “brothers” beautiful, but this even more beautiful lady was not excited about seeing me like I’d fantasized she’d be. Really, I had scripted the whole thing in my head as Sister Mary-Domenica walked me to the main office. In my mind, it would be a total Shirley Temple scenario with the happy ending to boot—so much for that. I looked up at the big handsome man standing next to her. Man, he was really handsome. I was told that this was my “stepfather.” He gave me a nod and motioned with his head for all of us to head out. Things weren’t looking too good. I suppose we went over to the playground or the visitors’ room or something. I don’t remember. It must not have been good because I blocked it out.

  One thing I do remember is that after that Sunday, whenever my mother visited—which was very rarely—with her handsome husband, Ventura, I was ostracized from the family group, and it wasn’t just my imagination. I was literally set apart. When we would go to the benches to eat the delicious Puerto Rican food that my mother made, my siblings would all get served, but not me—no lie. I would have to wait for Ventura to nudge Lydia the “okay”—then and only then would she make me a plate. In hindsight, I’m sure that in her crazy head she did that because of the whole “love child” thing—she didn’t want him to think that she favored me or showed special treatment to another man’s child. But at that time, it made me feel like she had stomped on my face while trying to step over me. I did my best to play it off.

  My siblings rarely interacted with me even after the introduction. It was in part because we were separated by dorms. I barely saw the boys. When I’d see the girls—I mean my sisters, not my cousins who used to be my sisters—I couldn’t stop staring at them. Betsy would roll her eyes at me each time she caught me staring, then would make fun of my hair or my potbelly or whatever she could pick at. Why? I didn’t understand. And Amy, well, I didn’t see her much either. She was always sweet, yet distant. Terry had warmed up to me too, kind of. Since we both were natural comedians and loved to act silly, we had a few moments. But I never felt connected to them the way I wanted to be. It was all very detached.

  I told Crazy Cindy they were my sisters and made her promise not to tell anyone because I thought my sisters might become angry with me. I don’t know why I felt that way, maybe an instinct. She, of course, told Puerto Rican—Jew Evita Feinstein, who told everyone on the goddamn planet. Man, that did not go over well. And I was right, sort of. For some reason, not all of my sisters liked me claiming them as my blood. The word that got back to me was that Betsy was telling everyone I wasn’t their “real sister,” I was only their “half-sister.” Half? Yeah, I understand, now, the biology behind that statement, but how does the heart and soul divide that up when you’re under the age of five? Do you half-love them? It hurt like hell, but I began to learn how to suppress those types of feelings, so it was okay—or at least that’s what I told myself. Okay, it wasn’t okay, and it hurt like a biatch!

  CHAPTER 7

  IT WAS the first week of December. The leaves had all fallen, and the cold air was brisk. I loved the cold. Everything seemed clean, ready for something new. Each group had its own Christmas tree, and the nuns and counselors let us put tinsel and one ornament each on our tree. I loved it. Thank goodness I was able to enjoy the festivities because I wasn’t going on a holiday home visit like some of the other girls or like … wait for it … my siblings! Yes, they all left to spend the holidays with my “mother.” Tia had already warned me that she wasn’t going to be able to send for me because my “mother” didn’t allow it. I loved Christmas too much, though, for all of that nonsense to bum me out.

  One night a couple of weeks before the holiday we all gathered around the TV with Sister Mary-Domenica and Sister Ann-Marie, in our bathrobes and slippers, and watched A Charlie Brown Christmas. I loved the Charlie Brown Christmas special. I identified most with Charlie and Linus and was surprised that many saw me as Lucy. The fireplace was glowing; snow was falling outside. We were given cookies with warm milk. I think that was the first time I was somewhat happy at the Home—at least for that moment. It felt like Christmas in a Shirley Temple or Bing Crosby movie.

  On the day before Christmas, to my utter surprise, I was told that I was going on a five-day home visit for the holidays. “A home visit! To my mommie’s?” Nope. It was to Tia’s house. My heart dropped just for a second. Despite the rejection, a kid still wants her mother to want her, you know? But I was excited to go. I still don’t know what changed, but I was going!

  Tia and her best friend, Doña Ida, came to pick me up. As we rode the Metro-North down to the city, even though I was so happy to be with Tia, I kept wondering if our mother Lydia picked up my “half-siblings” or whether they went it alone, like most of the kids did. I kept wondering what her house looked like. I wondered if she would ever come to like me one day.

  Tia, Doña Ida, and I entered into the main hall of Grand Central Station. Wow! The place seemed so big and scary and beautiful. My head was spinning—from the ride, the masses o
f people, and the architectural grandeur. I don’t remember arriving at Tia’s. But I do remember that her apartment smelled of yummy food!

  At first everything looked and felt foreign to me. I felt lost going from one room to another. Little things would make me close up, especially when I saw the French doors to Tia’s bedroom. I just froze and went silent. Tia tried not to freak out over my reactions, acting as if they weren’t a big deal, as if I’d never left, as if the fact that I was ripped away from her and sent to a home never happened. She played it as if I had just been away for a brief moment and now I was back. But it didn’t work. Her anxiety was too close to the surface.

  Like when Millie first saw me, she cried and cried and picked me up, twirling me around. I went silent again. It was too overwhelming. Tia, with a controlled yet panicked command, told Millie to put me down: “No! Don’t! De nuns say she don’t like to be touched!” Or when my cousins would ask, “Rosie, you wanna play with …” “No!” Tia would yell in a whisper. “You have to call her Rosemary now. That’s what de nuns say.”

  What the hell was up with that name? I stomped my foot on that one, demanding they all call me Rosie. It drove me crazy, like Rosie was dead and this “Rosemary” had taken her place. Their whispering about me when they thought I wasn’t listening drove me bonkers as well. They would lean into each other and say things like, “I feel so sorry for her,” “She looks so sad,” “I can’t believe Lydia didn’t want her to stay at her house for the holidays,” etc. Their intention was wonderful but misguided: the “handle with care” treatment came off more like “handle with anxiety.” It made me self-conscious and even more aware of the fact that I lived at the Home.

  The medium-sized Christmas tree in the living room paled in comparison to the one at the Home and was decorated in the weirdest way. It just had Christmas balls on it—all the same color—and a string of lights. That was it. Tia wasn’t big on decor.

  Titi and Millie put on “Soul Man.” “Come on, Rosie, dance, dance.” The pout on my face from my little fit over them calling me “Rosemary” quickly disappeared. Millie grabbed my hands and swayed me to the beat while everyone else formed a little circle, clapping their hands, encouraging me to dance. The ham in me couldn’t resist. How could I let a captive audience down? The beat took over my tiny body, and I was gone. I bounced, twirled, bobbed my head, and jumped up and down. My goodness, I was in heaven. What made that day even better was that Tia had made arroz y gandules and pasteles (similar to a tamale, made of green plantains instead of cornmeal, and stewed meat, pork, chicken, or seafood in the middle, wrapped in banana leaves) that night: heaven all over. I stuffed my face like a fat little pig until my potbelly swelled even bigger.

  Tia took me into the bathroom to bathe me. I immediately tensed up. For the past six months I’d been showering with twelve strangers, feeling humiliated each time. Tia’s bathroom was really narrow, making me feel claustrophobic. She began to take off my clothes while I stood next to the porcelain tub. “No!” I said with a paranoid pout.

  “What’s the matter, mija?” Tia asked confusedly.

  “I wanna do it … please,” I replied with my eyes cast down toward the cheap linoleum floor. I felt so bad being so curt and mean to her.

  “Okay,” she softly said with a warm smile.

  She let me undress myself, and I slowly got in the old-fashioned bear-claw tub. Tia sat on the toilet seat. Cookie came in shouting, “Mommie, me and Millie are going to the park. See you later, Rosemary!” I tensed up again. “Don’t come back too late!” Tia shouted back as they left. She looked at me and started laughing. “Ay, you look so mad again. No worry. I’ll tell them to call you Rosita, ’kay?”

  I exhaled a sigh of relief. Tia looked at me, smiled, and said with her thick Spanish accent, “God bless America two times that they left. They drive me crazy.” Then she made a silly face. I cracked up. She cracked up with me, both of us cackling in unison. She took the big white bar of soap and gently washed me. It felt good, soothing. I started to play with the soap, letting it slip in and out of my hands.

  Tia picked me up out of the bath, wrapped me in a towel, and carried me into her bedroom. Gosh, that felt so good, to be held like that. Nuns never held us, not ever. When I saw the French doors again, a smile began to form at the corner of my mouth. I looked down at the peach bedspread with the little puffy balls as she set me on it. I laid my head down, ran my hands over it, stuck my thumb in my mouth, and drifted off to sleep. I was home, even if I didn’t know it. I was home.

  • • •

  After the third day or so, things started to become more familiar, and I was happy to be there. I still couldn’t shake the feeling of being left out, of not being with my mother and my new siblings. But since I had learned to keep my feelings to myself at the Home, I tried not to let on how it was affecting me.

  On Saturday my cousins and I gathered around the TV set and watched Stevie Wonder or someone like that lip-synch on American Bandstand while Tia went to work, under the table, for the Jews, selling the irregulars from the dress factory door to door throughout the neighborhood. I think she got 20 percent of each sale.

  Titi, Millie, and Cookie, with their hair all in big-ass rollers wrapped in a fake silk scarf, got up and tried out the new dances the Bandstand dancers were doing. All of them knew how to dance, and they’d criticize all the white people for dancing so corny and would show off how they knew how to do the dances correctly. “Nah, nah, you doin’ it wrong. That’s not how it goes,” Titi, who was the coolest chick on the block, said to Millie. “Lemme show youse. It goes like this,” and she would do the steps. “Perate! Perate! [Wait! Wait!] Mira. [Look.] Ahhh!” answered Millie, who was the jokester, trying to outshine her older sister. “Both of ya’ll look stupid,” interjected Cookie—who had the best wit—as she did her thing, killing them both. I sat there with a smile on my face watching my sister-cousins dazzle and shine.

  Saturday was housecleaning day. A holiday party was happening that night so the house had to be extra clean, which meant it was going to take all day. Since Tia was always working and too tired to tidy up and my cousins were lazy—except Cookie, who was a neat freak—by Friday the house was a cluttered mess. There were always dishes piled up and clothes thrown all over the beds. That was shocking for me to see since the Nazi nuns kept everything spotless and in its place at the Home. Tia and all her kids except Cookie, of course, would take off their street clothes as soon as they came in the door—including Tia’s “American Express” (her girdle: she never left home without it … get it? I know, corny, but true)—fling them on their beds, and put on a bata, also referred to as a bata de casa, which literally means “housedress.” All batas looked pretty much alike—a sleeveless, semi-baby-doll-looking, plain dress, often with a paisley print, that hit at the knee. There was no zipper, but the head opening was large enough that you could just whip it on. Every Latin female has or has had a relative who’s worn one.

  So, after Bandstand, the cleanup started, and it seemed like nothing had changed in the six months that I’d been away. On Saturdays Cookie was always the anal housecleaning sergeant, ordering everyone around with a broom in her hand, a joint—yes, folks, a joint—dangling from her lip, wearing a bata or shorts and a tank, with her fake silk scarf wrapped around her big pink-and-blue hair rollers that she wore from when she got up until she went to hang at night. The record player or radio was always blaring, and it had to be her choice of music. If anyone dared to change it, she’d scream at the top of her lungs in her husky, low-octave voice, “Leave iiiittttt!” And it would take her hours to clean because if one of her favorite songs was playing, like “Grazing in the Grass” by the Friends of Distinction, she’d start singing, then dancing, then the other girls would join in, and then she’d take me by the hand and dance with me too. By the time dinnertime came and went, the house would start to be messy again from all the company—the neighbors, friends, family—who’d stop by.

  But I dig
ress.

  Tia loved company. She loved parties even more, although she’d get stressed out over them. Mostly she hated the cleanup afterwards, but she also hated the preparation, except for the hair and makeup part. For most Nuyoricans, getting ready for a party is just as big of an event as the party itself. I loved watching the girls put on their makeup. Titi used the most, at least twenty or so strokes of mascara—no lie. The amount of mascara and black eye liner that was used in just our house was not to be believed. However, being Puerto Rican, the hair took precedence—it was all about the hair, first and foremost. Right after breakfast everyone started the ritual of shampooing, conditioning, and roller-setting.

  Everyone would wash their hair with either Lustre Cream or Prell shampoo. I forget what kind of conditioner we used, but we used a lot. Since we were so freaking poor, we used Vaseline Intensive Care Lotion as a leave-in. (Yes, we were ahead of our time with the leave-in shit.) Miss Cool setting lotion was applied afterwards, and then the hair was rolled up real tight with those big-ass plastic hair rollers and bobby pins. It was a hilarious sight, the three girls and Tia, all in big-ass hair rollers, cleaning and cooking up a storm. My hair was done last just in case I messed it up before the company came. Millie usually did my hair. Dippity-Do was gently applied to my cotton candy and produced two pigtails with the smoothest looped curls.

  Sorry, digressed again—conversations over hair will do that to me.

  That night the house was packed. Everyone was dressed up. I had on a blue velvet dress with a white ribbon wrapped around it, just below my chest, white laced bobby socks, and black patent leather Mary Janes. The salsa music was flowing. Boogaloo was still in fashion, but the latest sound was jazz salsa; Willie Colón, Héctor Lavoe, Eddie Palmieri, and all the new Fania All-Stars took precedence. Tia loved to dance salsa. She was so cute when she did. I loved it when she’d take my two hands and partner with me. The best part was when we’d break and do our little solos. I tried my very best to do it just like her.