I left a message for Martini on the machine; then I called Arturo and Yolanda.
* * *
If there’s one thing people in our building can’t resist, it’s a party. Any reason to have one is good enough. We have fiestas to celebrate everything — births, baptisms, birthdays, weddings, going away, coming home, or just because somebody has a few extra bucks to blow — and I’ve even been to some funerals that weren’t too dull either. So I got Teresa, Sandi, and a few others I trust to help us put an invitation in every mailbox and a second one under every apartment door too, just to make sure nobody missed it. It just said, “Party on the Roof, Tomorrow at 5:00 P.M.” It was a Saturday in the middle of summer, so everyone was sure to be home, with nothing to do except sweat. The roof was a good place to do it. Of course, I had to get our super, Tito, to unlock it for us. He’s my old man’s best friend and my godfather, so after I promised him that we’d clean up after ourselves, he agreed and went up with us. It was great. A wide-open place with just sky overhead. The pigeons used it as their outhouse, so we had to sweep up and hose it down good, but when the tables and chairs Martini had rented arrived and we lugged them a million steps up there, it began to take on a kind of Hollywood-movie look. People started getting curious when the florist man came in with red roses. Yolanda said, “Thank you, my man,” to the truck driver, who didn’t crack a smile, and she put them over her face to smell them like Miss America. She sneezed thirteen times in a row — Arturo and I counted out loud. We put one rose on each table in a white paper cup, and it looked classy as hell.
The cake came next, and the machine for cold drinks. Martini had done what I asked him to do — everything just right. I left the cake in its box on a table in the middle of the place.
Yolanda, Arturo, and I stood back and admired our work. Perfecto. We had kept the door locked behind us while we set up because we didn’t want some bad elements, as Mami called Matoa and a few other boys, to mess with us. Now it was time to get cleaned up and come back to welcome our guests.
At home, my mother stood in the doorway of my room and stared at me with a funny expression on her face. I had asked to borrow her red dress, the off-the-shoulders one with a skirt like an umbrella that she wears to sing her mambos. It fit me perfectly. It’s just that she had never seen me dressed like that before. I don’t like to dress up much. Why should I? I ain’t got nothing to show off. But this was different. I wasn’t just doing it for myself. I put on lipstick, and moussed my hair into shape, and I was ready to go. She hugged me as I went by her.
“Dorita, do you want me to sing at your party?”
Now, that was unusual. Mami never offered to sing. Since she had to do it so much, she thought of singing and making music strictly as a job.
“Yeah!” I answered quick before she changed her mind.
“Any requests?”
“ ‘Las Mañanitas.’ Do you still know it?”
“Yeah, I know it. But that’s a birthday song.”
“Will you sing it when I tell you? And no more questions now please?”
She looked at me very seriously for a minute before she answered.
“I’ll do it for you, hija. And no more questions.” She gave me a kiss. “For now.”
I had to squeeze through the line of people going up the stairs to the roof. The door was locked, and I had the key. I let them in and they started partying right away. I mean, they were getting down before you could say “fiesta.”
My plan was to let everybody eat, drink, and relax, then I was going to tell them all the reason for the party.
I was getting a little nervous as I went over my little speech in my mind. What if people got angry? What if I started a fight? I began to wish that I was invisible again. But it was too late. I was wearing a bright red dress. I was going around with a tray of cookies in my hands. I was not invisible. Arturo came up to me and said, “There’s a clown coming up the stairs.”
“Doris?” Arturo waited for me to explain, but I just shook my head. Everyone would find out soon enough. He shrugged his shoulders and walked off. Arturo has a limit on the words he’ll waste on any situation. It’s one of the things I like about him. He lets you do your thing, all he’d like is for others to do the same for him.
I looked around — I wanted everyone there before I put the next step of my plan in action. I saw Matoa, Luis, and some of the other members of the Tiburones in one corner, leaning precariously over the rail. Tito was on his way over to say a few chosen words to them, I could tell by the angry expression on his face, but I beat him to it. “You screw things up for me, Kenny Matoa, and I’ll personally rearrange your face, you won’t have to jump off the roof to do it.”
“Oooh. Are you scared, Kenny?” Several of the boys hooted and howled, mocking me. But they moved away toward the food table. My heart was trying to break out of my chest — I’d surprised myself too.
Yolanda was bouncing around telling everybody who would listen about going to see Cats. Teresa was handing out punch, and the others were scattered around. My mother had come up with a group of her women friends, and there was loud laughter coming from her table. Papi had joined Tito over with the Tiburones. It was a loud, happy crowd. A good party.
People now turned to stare at the clown, who was dressed all in white, his face was painted white, his fuzzy hair was white. Only his mouth and eyes were outlined in shiny black. Rolling down his cheeks were two big black tears. He carried a huge bunch of helium-filled white balloons with something written on them. He winked at me. I smiled and he came up and handed me one of them. My knees were shaking and I was so scared that I thought I was going to pass out. But I took a deep breath and plunged into my little speech.
“This is a birthday party we have been celebrating. For someone that would have loved a fiesta given to him by his friends and neighbors in this barrio. He cannot be here. But he sends you his love. I also want to tell you that soon some of us will be putting on a show at the Caribbean Moon. It was Rick’s dream to have a theater group in this barrio, and it will now come true. We are the Barrio Players.” When I said this, all the kids involved in Rick’s project came to stand around me, as we had planned. That was Arturo’s cue to take the cake out of the box and show it to everyone. On it was written: “Happy Birthday, Rick Sanchez.”
There was a smattering of applause from my mother and some of the other women whose kids were in our group. But most people just stared at us. I felt the tension rise as the clown went from person to person giving each one a white balloon. But no one refused to take one, although I saw my father lower his eyes and stare out at the city with a sullen expression on his face. I knew he couldn’t ever really accept someone like Rick Sanchez, yet I also knew that he would, in his own way, understand what we were trying to do. When every person there had a balloon, the clown came up to me and said softly in my ear, “That was beautiful, Doris.”
A low rumble started then, something like the beginning of angry words and people starting to move toward the door. But before anything could happen, my mother came up to stand next to me, and in her beautiful high voice began singing “Las Mañanitas.” Some of us joined in, others didn’t but no one spoke and no one left. I was glad that my mother held my hand because I had begun to feel that I had been in the spotlight too long, that I was beginning to fade. Through her tight grip I felt the energy and the courage it takes to sing in front of people. Each time you do it, you risk public failure. But when it works, you hold people’s attention, and for a few moments you may change their lives. I could see it in our neighbors’ eyes, how Mami’s song was bringing back memories to some, or making them turn to each other and smile.
When the song ended, the clown let go of his balloon and then I let go of mine. Arturo and Yolanda let theirs float up together, then the other kids in our group released their white balloons. Everyone’s faces turned up to look above the city, over the rooftops and the gray smoke of factories, toward the patch of clear sky where the
balloons were being drawn by the breeze. It was a solemn moment, like the time reserved for silent prayer at church when people respect each other’s right to speak to God privately. Then Doña Iris stepped forward and sent her balloon up with a blessing, “Dios te bendiga, hijo.” Most of the people said, “Amen,” setting their balloons free too. Before long the purple, blue, and orange sky above our building was filled with white balloons carrying the name “Rick Sanchez” toward the setting sun. Under the last rays of light, everything and everyone on the roof took on a sort of golden glow, and it all looked so peaceful: like a family posing for a picture after a celebration.
The author wishes to thank the following special people for reading manuscripts, for listening to the stories, and for caring about this book: her wise and patient editor, Melanie Kroupa; her agent, Liz Darhansoff; her colleagues and friends Betty Jean Craige and Rafael Ocasio; her family, Fanny Morot Ortiz, Basi Morot, and Nilda Morot, and, as always, John, Tanya, and Kenneth for their support.
JUDITH ORTIZ COFER was born in Puerto Rico and moved to Paterson, New Jersey, as a child, traveling back and forth between the Island and Paterson during her childhood. Her book Silent Dancing: A Partial Remembrance of a Puerto Rican Childhood was selected for the New York Public Library’s 1991 Best Books for the Teen Age, was awarded the 1991 PEN Martha Albrand Special Citation for Nonfiction, and received a Pushcart Prize. Ms. Cofer is the Regents’ and Franklin Professor of English and creative writing at the University of Georgia. She now lives in Athens, Georgia.
Text copyright © 1995 by Judith Ortiz Cofer. All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Inc. SCHOLASTIC and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc. ORCHARD BOOKS and design are registered trademarks of Watts Publishing Group, Ltd., used under license.
This book was originally printed in hardcover by Orchard Books in 1995.
This edition first printing, September 2009
Cover art by Raúl Colón
Cover design by Steve Scott
e-ISBN 978-0-545-28154-6
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Scholastic Inc., Attention: Permissions Department, 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.
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