Everyone is dressed up—even Chaty and Mickey. Chaty has grown up into his real name, Reynaldo, which I never even knew he had. And though Mickey’s real name is Francisco, we continue to call him Mickey because of his brain trouble. The girls wear lots of petticoats under their skirts and the guys wear tight pants that just touch their ankles. They dance to the Platters and Richie Ray. But Carmen’s friends from upstairs, Lucy, Divina, and Blanca, are not there because even though Lucy is not married or even engaged she has gotten pregnant. I hear whispers in the kitchen.
“What happened?” asks Ma.
“Le hicieron el daño,” replies Iris.
She was “wronged,” and I ask Ma what that means.
“It means she is having a baby even though she is not married.”
“But how could that happen? I thought God sent babies after people got married?”
“Shhh!”
“But didn’t He know she wasn’t married yet?”
Suddenly a commotion in the living room draws us into a sea of slim legs and petticoats parting, making way for Carmen and Manny. He ends up against the wall, all nervous and sweaty, my uncle standing over him, Carmen shyly holding his hand. In a soft voice Manny asks Carmen to marry him. We all strain to hear her whispery “yes.” Then Uncle Frank takes the stage.
“I am so happy for my daughter. But I must say to Manny in front of all our friends and neighbors …”
“Sí, señor …” says Manny.
“If you ever lay a hand on her I will have to break your fucking face.”
Everyone is quiet as Manny gulps and answers, “Sí, señor.”
Manny becomes part of the family.
Soon after, God makes another mistake and sends Little Eddie’s sister, Zoraida, a baby as well.
“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been one week since my last confession,” I confess on Saturday so I can eat the body and blood of Christ on Sunday.
“What are your sins?” I am asked.
But he doesn’t sound like Father Fitzgerald, the priest who usually hears my sins. Then I remember. Father Fitzgerald ran off with one of the Daughters of Mary—they were a group of young ladies who sang and performed special services for the church. I confess my regular series of sins.
“I disobeyed my mother, I ate bacon on Friday …”
“Anything else?” asks this new priest.
“… I cursed my father in my head.”
“Anything else?”
“I danced around in my panties.”
There is a pause and I decide to confess something new—the sins caused by my erupting body.
“I touched myself.”
The Father is quiet, then he asks, “How?”
I’m shocked. Father Fitzgerald never asked for details. I don’t answer.
“Well?” he presses.
Shouldn’t he know? I think. I still don’t answer. It’s too private—besides, if God knows everything shouldn’t He know this?
“Were you alone?”
I feel uncomfortable and make something up. But he presses.
“Was anybody watching?”
I don’t say anything.
“Well?” he asks.
“No,” I say.
I hear his sigh, disgusted with my silence, as he gives me a bunch of Our Fathers and Hail Marys to recite. I don’t care, I won’t talk about my body with him even as it betrays me with feet growing at an alarming rate and Ma giving me dirty looks because new shoes are needed to relieve cramped toes, and now we have to shop for a training bra because my breasts are even more troublesome than my feet.
I never go to confession again.
One Saturday a group of girls I never saw before wander onto our block on their way someplace else and stop to play a game. Black girls are the best Double Dutch jumpers, with their fast counting and the sexy, tough swaying of the hips they do. This is not the very first time I have jumped Double Dutch, so I do well enough to be allowed to play awhile, and we all begin to take turns as naturally as if we had been playing together for years. Before I know it, I am in the Double Dutch zone and can almost totally keep up with them, when I feel neighborhood man-eyes looking at my chest. I am wearing a blue blouse that has two rickrack openings down the front from shoulder to hip. I don’t know where my training bra has gone and I know that skin is showing through the shirt’s rickrack decoration. The men are as interested in the two bumps growing on my chest as the train passenger, the parks department worker, and the pharmacist had been.
I call for a time-out and leave the girls so I can run upstairs and try to do something about this situation. But when I get inside my mother is too distracted, too busy doing laundry, and too busy talking to Uncle Eddie to help me.
I can’t wait for her to finish gossiping so I frantically peek out the window to see if the girls are still there, and they are, but they won’t wait forever. I have to come up with a solution quick. Aha! The answer comes to me in a flash—toilet tissue! Pinning two strips of paper with straight pins to the inside of my shirt, I manage to cover the openings. Then, I run back downstairs, almost bumping into my mother’s other brother, Uncle Frank, who is on his way upstairs.
“Bendición.”
“Dios te bendiga.”
Blessed, I rejoin the game. But trying to play as hard as the black girls do only makes the straight pins prick me. Still, I jump and get almost as good as they are at this game (for a Puerto Rican anyway) when I see my father coming up the street.
I check out his mood as quickly as I can and am relieved that he doesn’t look drunk … but I can see that he looks sterner and sterner the closer he gets.
“Ven acá …” I stop jumping. Whack! Whack! The ropes hit the sides of my legs. It hurts but I don’t let on as I step over the ropes to find out what Pops wants. He stares at me like I am supposed to know what he is thinking, but I can’t read his mind no matter how hard I try.
“Why are you shaking your hips to attract men?” he demands.
For a few sickening moments, I review my actions in the last half hour to see if I had somehow been doing what he says, but no—when all my marbles roll back into their proper places in my head I know that I hadn’t been trying to attract men. Still—there is no answer but to stand there and wish the ground would swallow me up. In the time it took me to walk away from the game and be accused by my father, the girls wound up their rope and took off.
My father turns to go upstairs and I am left with no choice but to follow. Sour and hollow, I ignore the grown-up talk and mope around the living room until I hear the word pregnant.
I go into the kitchen.
Uncle Frank barks, “Here we are starving to death and you women keep having babies.”
My mother turns away as if she’s been slapped, and I almost fall down. I have always understood that someday we are going to run away and live happily ever after without my father. How are we going to do that if she keeps having babies?
Petey is born around the time that Aurea is eighteen years old and making plans to move to California.
“But why so far, Aurea?” Ma cries.
I know why.
Ma names the new baby Enrique. Aurea nicknames him Petey and escapes west.
I miss Aurea all the summers I have to take care of Joe as Petey goes to a neighbor for care. A routine sets in with Joe and me. We sleep in as long as possible, we eat the lumpy oatmeal Ma leaves for us, I look through the TV Guide to see if there are any movie musicals to watch; after the movie I make tuna-fish sandwiches, fill a thermos with Kool-Aid, and drag Joe to the park.
On Fulton Avenue we find Little Eddie and the Fulton cousins. I sit in the metal bucket seat of a swing while Little Eddie twists the whole thing around until the chains groan—then hangs on as the swing unravels (and our brains along with it). Sometimes we all sit on a seesaw and bang each end into the ground as hard as possible to knock one another off.
When we are tired of that I spread the blanket, watch the a
nts get into the tuna, hope nobody kicks over the Kool-Aid. It’s only 11:30 a.m. when we are done. We don’t know what else to do. The time we kill before Ma gets home, kills us.
But one night the following summer, after the day has dragged itself into darkness, I find myself alone. Where is everybody? Then I remember Ma went to pick Aurea up at the airport! She’s coming back from California. At the window I look at planes in the sky and wonder which one is hers. Waiting, I listen for any noise of people at the door, but all I hear is the tired building groaning as it readjusts itself, muted voices from other apartments, radiators echoing, and mice scurrying in the wall. Time stretches longer and longer and even the train seems late in coming. In the space of waiting and sitting I am an easy target for all the creepy thoughts and bad imaginings flying around the air, like sharp shards of glass in space. Willing these bad thoughts away before they form takes all my energy. What is it that I don’t want to think? The thought comes through of my father, drunk, and then what? I don’t know, or do I? So I push the thought away as I nonchalantly hide the knives in the oven as if someone else were doing it, and pray for a grown-up to arrive.
I even wish that my uncle Frank and the cousins would come bursting through the door. I used to love their unexpected visits, but I’m ten years old, not a kid anymore, and now I don’t like it when they barge in and make noise interrupting whatever I was doing or whatever I was watching on television; but at this moment I want them to appear. If they just walked in this very minute I promise God I won’t mind if they interrupt the last five minutes of Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color for the rest of my life. If they just walked in in the next five minutes I wouldn’t care if Mickey wrestled Reynaldo to the floor and farted on his head. But they don’t come in and I run out of things to promise God. So I decide to call them so they’ll take the hint and come on over. Or maybe even invite me over to their house. I can be there in minutes. Iris answers.
“Es Sonia …”
“¿Qué pasa … ?”
“Mami no está …” But after I tell her that Ma isn’t home—that she went to the airport—I don’t know what to say next.
“Aha,” says Iris.
“Papi no está …” She must know what I mean when I say that “my father is not home,” but there is only a long silence, then a cough. Again, I tell her that my father isn’t home yet—surely this will make clear to her what is not clear to me.
“Somebody will come home soon,” she says so quietly I can barely hear her.
“Wait,” I say.
“Really, they will.” She hangs up. I listen to the empty sound that connects us before hanging up. The train swooshes by outside but I don’t want a train—I want the plane my sister is supposed to be on to have landed a while ago, and for Ma and Aurea to be at the door now, now, now, now! Why won’t they come home? My heart beats like I’ve been running though I am only standing still on alert … !
Suddenly there is a noise at the door. And when I hear my mother and sister enter, I run toward them and collapse in Ma’s arms, giggling, relieved, and feeling foolish.
“What’s the matter? AveMaríaPurísima, you should be hugging your sister, not me.”
I hug my sister and let their arrival wash away the stupid, bad, impossible things I had imagined. Ma makes coffee and we eat cake and Aurea talks about California and then my father comes home and grunts and sits and plays his guitar and I can’t even remember what I had been so scared of—so stupid of me to make things up.
Aurea gets an apartment in Queens that she shares with a roommate. Ma and I visit them in their clean space. I wear my hair in curlers and clutch my purse under my arm, looking like Aunt Iris when she visits us. The apartment has light-colored furniture called Danish. Aurea sleeps on the pullout couch.
She introduces us to her chubby roommate.
Ma looks around sadly. “If this is what you want …”
Aurea looks at me. “Stay over,” she says.
“I …”
“I’ll take her back tomorrow.” And Ma, outnumbered, says “okay” and leaves.
I sleep with my sister on the pullout couch, and when we awaken, the day is raining and gloomy.
The chubby roommate showers and wraps herself up in a fluffy robe.
I smell bacon, eggs, toast, coffee, and orange juice. Then, with curlers still in her hair, Chubby sets out a nice place mat with a napkin and a knife and fork for herself. Then she serves herself her nice breakfast and begins to eat.
After Chubby eats she retreats to her room and reappears in full makeup and her Eastern Airlines uniform. She has taken out her rollers but not combed out her fat yellow curls. Instead, she wraps her head and neck loosely with a scarf, just like Katharine Hepburn in the movies.
“How come you don’t comb your hair out?” I ask.
“I will at the office. I don’t want my curls to be ruined by the damp weather.”
On my way back to the Bronx with Aurea I think of how my mother is always racing out of the house to work with us hanging all over her before dropping us off to wherever we have to be for the day. I think of how Ma always feeds us first with a “hurry up and be done with it” look so she can finally eat, always last and standing at the stove. And if it’s raining she sure doesn’t have a nice-fitting raincoat and matching umbrella like Chubby does.
On the day I notice an A&P supermarket is going up across the street our usual routine goes slightly off. There is nothing on the television worth watching. Ma has left pancake batter for breakfast. I pour the batter in a hot skillet and yell for Joe. No answer. “Joe! Where are you? Come and get breakfast!” I run around the apartment but can’t find him. Finally I look out of the window and see him out on the fire escape.
“Joe, get in here … the pancake is going to burn!” He leans away from me. I run back into the kitchen to check on breakfast and discover that the batter has spread right up to the sides of the pan, making the pancake hard to flip, so I dig in with the spatula and flip it onto itself like it’s scrambled eggs, then run back to the window to get Joe.
“Joe! Get in here!”
He gives me a dirty look and tries to run up the fire escape steps, but I grab him by the neck and watch him slip through the opening of the fire escape in one long second—but he manages to hook his arms and legs on the sides. That stops us both. We stare at each other in hatred; I smell the pancake burning, pull him into the apartment, rush into the kitchen, toss the pancake mess onto a plate, and slam it on the table. He slinks in. “Eat it!” I command. Right after breakfast, I make the tuna-fish sandwich and Kool-Aid lunch to have in the park. I pack a blanket and some Superman comics.
Joe and I are wandering around the playground after lunch and the whole day is yawning in front of us when suddenly I see my mother frantically signaling to us. What is she doing home so early? But before that can register, I see my father stumbling toward her. I grab the thermos and blanket and approach my parents. I smell a new danger. As I get closer, I can hear him saying bad things about her. She grabs Joe and the thermos from me when I reach them—and we start for home. She walks slow and steady and all I can think of is Christ carrying His cross. My father walks all crazy, sometimes quick and sometimes slow and sloppy, darting in front and in back of her. I stick close to her, hanging on and looking for some kind of explanation. But her face is set, grim.
People walk along with us before they know they are in the middle of a fight. I look to the strangers for some sort of explanation, but none comes. After the passersby see what they have stepped into, they carefully step back and stand to watch as if we are a parade.
Some curious ones follow at a distance. I do both. First, I walk along with my parents for a while, and then I join the ones following, trying to look like I’m just a curious person, too, and don’t really know those three people jerking around in front of me. Neither of my parents notices me playing this game of being both part of them and not.
We turn the corner and walk past
Don Joe’s bodega. He comes out, wiping his massive hands on his bloodstained apron, and slowly shaking his head, watches us enter our building. We continue up the stairs, slow and steady.
I am bringing up the rear and see Genoveva open her door, then close it partway, leaving it open enough to peek out at us as if she is hungry. Half-dressed Flor comes out to see the action, La Puerca/Bizca opens her door and I wish I could yell that she’s stinking up the hallway with the smell from her messy apartment. All the Cabezas stick their heads out their door.
My mother passes them silently as if she is a queen and they are a bunch of nobodies. She keeps one landing’s space between her and my father, who is tripping up the stairs. And then, at a certain moment, when she is right above him and all eyes are on her, she does the unthinkable—she swings the thermos up in the air and bashes it down onto his head with such force the thermos breaks open.
The neighbors gasp as tiny, clean, white pieces of granular foam insulation swirl all around, turning the dark and dirty stairwell into a place of snowy beauty. The world goes into slow motion, the particles land on my head, my shoulders, and eyelashes, and my heart swells with joy and pride.
Months later I’m running down the stairs from my apartment, flying high on the announcement that we are moving.
“It’s that damned bodega,” offers Genoveva. “Now, he won’t have such an easy place to drink in.”
“A bigger apartment will be real nice,” offers Doña Cabeza.
“Remember, you work,” says Flor enviously.
I am sure that starting out in a new neighborhood will fix everything and that we will live happily ever after. Anything is possible.
Where are we? What is this place? We materialize in the middle of a maze of buildings that are only six stories high—too low to be projects. The entrances to the buildings do not face a sidewalk. My parents stare at the address on a piece of paper as if they’d never seen it before, as if they’d even forgotten what paper is. I see building numbers but they are written on the sides of the structures and not above the entrance doors like they are supposed to be!
Becoming Maria Page 9
