Becoming Maria

by Sonia Manzano

  There is something different about the familiar indoor scenes as well. But here a guitar leaning against the wall looks romantic. The shadows of holy crosses on the homemade altars are so mysterious I quickly give religion a second thought—and seeing an actress wearing a cross daintily on her chest nails it for me. I, too, want to wear a sexy cross between my breasts. The colors I see are hot pink and turquoise and purple, but they are bold and important and meaningful, not just loud. I stare at the screen with some mental distance so I can reason and figure it out but there is no figuring to do, because when the actors sing and dance on a roof about being in America my heart takes over and begins to beat faster and faster until it makes a racket in my ears that roars.

  My soul or some power inside me begins to rise and I panic—will there be enough room in my body for this new feeling? Make way, make way, a voice inside me shouts. I sit up taller, because if I don’t accommodate this emotion it will spill out and explode, maybe even hurting those around me. My eyes open wider so I can see everything better. My ears pick up all the musical sounds flowing and crashing into each other in the air, and I wonder, how long have I been sleeping? My God, how long have I been unconscious and missing everything all around me? Asleep! Asleep! Asleep. Like a drugged person, like Dennis the junkie nodding out on Third Avenue. Is Ma right? Am I always daydreaming? Asleep, yes, but daydreaming, no … not really. Daydreams are possibilities. I never daydream anything I think could actually happen. I didn’t know what things were possible.

  This movie makes things possible. Music and words and songs and images that are possible. Breathe, I tell myself, breathe before you explode and somehow miss the end of this scene, or the end of this song, calm down, calm down until the end of this movie. And I almost make it but don’t because finally I cannot control any longer this thing that must come out—but wait—it’s not “this thing” at all. There’s nothing “inside me” coming out, like something I ate and shouldn’t have—it’s the “me” myself that is coming out. The “me” that will not be afraid to see and feel and hear whatever gets in my way.

  Shedding my old, sleepy cocoon so the real me can rise makes me giggle, and then laugh, but too soon the new me, the one who feels the air around and is being born too fast, begins to cry—no, not cry, but sob, gasp, and gush. I am all tears and choking breath and loud noise, and all this honking makes people in the theater look at me, and I look back and see the red curtain closing over the screen and excited people reach for their coats and jackets and finally I see that Miss Pellman is alarmed, and I struggle to suck it up when I see that Teresa has seen me crying and is trying to cry, too! But it’s fake, fake crying.

  No, no, no, I think. This sadness is mine. All mine. This sorrow at how stupid people hurt each other in the movies and in real life is mine, all mine, and dumb Teresa cannot have any of my despair.

  Miss Pellman whisks me to the bathroom and pats my face with cold water.

  “Calm down, calm down,” she says.

  I don’t want to calm down. “Calm down” means lie down and drop dead to me, and I am not going to do it. I have done enough of that. If this movie can happen, what else? Women and girls come into the bathroom and pee and flush the toilet and wash their hands near us and Miss Pellman smiles at them weakly and says, “She’s all right, a little overcome by the movie, is all …”

  It’s more—and not only that—I don’t care that strangers see me cry. These tears are important and I will not hold anything back at all. This sadness is not the usual sluggish, lethargic, somber one I didn’t even know I have gotten used to—this sadness is exhilarating, active, and relentless, like a wave that keeps knocking you down at Far Rockaway Beach every time you come up for air and you like the danger of it all.

  We make our way to the lobby and find Teresa and Norma. The girls stare at me, and Miss Pellman tries to make things nice.

  “Would you girls like posters?”

  We all want posters but that is the only way we are alike. I am not like Teresa and Norma, I am like me; and I’ll take the poster but I won’t let it calm me down; I’m keeping this feeling of aliveness, of importance, of bigness and activity no matter what happens next.

  Hanging on to the poster like it’s a life raft, I let it help me get through the “good-byes” and “thank you, Miss Pellman” and all the rest as I resentfully leave Manhattan to go back to my mother and her ridiculous nose-to-ground slavishness. Clutching the poster to my heart, I make my way home through sticky tears that harden down my cheeks.

  “How was the movie?” Ma asks.

  I don’t know what to say. This apartment is too small to hold the feelings that she will never understand, and anyway it is too full of the smell of dirty diapers for me to want to share any of the beauty that is going on inside me. I am big and important now with lots and lots of important things to do; and so I go into the only room with a door that’s not the bathroom.

  “AveMaríaPurísima,” Ma mutters, giving up.

  Unfolding my beautiful possession on the bed, I lie down next to it and look at the movie stars from an angle. They looked so beautiful singing and kissing on their fire escape that I have to touch their faces, and the fire escape and all that touching releases a dull, droning river of over-stored tears, different from the ones I shed in the movie theater. But when I touch the image of the old buildings that fade into white background I cry harder because they remind me of all the buildings my family have moved in and out of in the Bronx, looking for something they will never get.

  My mauling does some damage to the poster but suddenly other thoughts make me ignore it altogether. I sit up in the bed, push the movie souvenir aside, get up, and look out the window. I’m alive and awake now and I think again, If people can make that movie, what can I do?

  The movie made me strong. I can fight now. So I’m okay at the end of the term when I leave Miss Pellman’s class to go to J.H.S. 55 on Webster Avenue where every new student gets beat up. I don’t even try to avoid corners with tough-looking girls—which would’ve been impossible unless I went to school by way of Brooklyn—and I even walk by Brenda and her gang, Toni, Cynthia, and Martha. Toni is tall and thin with fluffy hair and says the way to not get pregnant is to wash with Pepsi-Cola after you do it. Cynthia is muscular and wears her hair in a French twist, and I think she secretly likes me but can’t show it because it would be letting her friends down. Martha is very dark and tiny as a whisper. But Brenda is built like a football player. Her hair is almost too short to straighten; yet she does, so there are straight strands of hair on top, covering some other kind of hair underneath. She is so tough she threw a guy against a wall after he quipped, “Hey, Brenda, tell your mother to stop wearing lipstick, she’s leaving rings around my dick.” Before he could snicker even once Brenda laid him out! She has a natural mean look but one day she doesn’t look so tough.

  I hang out in the back of the classroom but still hear.

  “Brenda, what’s up?” asks Toni.

  “Nothin’.”

  “Whatchu mean, ‘nothin’?” says Toni. “Your mother’s coming in, that’s what’s up!”

  “Why don’t you shut up, Toni!” Brenda barks.

  “You want to make me?” Toni laughs.

  “Somebody’s gonna get a whuppin’ tonight,” giggles Martha.

  Later, in homeroom, a woman bursts in and looks around wildly like she’s been let out of a cage. She turns left and right, looking to be attacked or ready to do the attacking herself. This woman is big and wearing an orange-and-black cloak with jagged white stripes that makes her look even bigger. Her shiny, dark, blemish-free skin is stretched perfectly over her high cheekbones, her nose is wide and delicate, but she looks angry enough to snort. She does not have any time to fool around with anybody—like she had been very busy, suddenly interrupted, and is furious about it, and I wonder if Ma looks like that when she is interrupted at work and has to come to school because of me. This woman’s eyes dart around the room and lan
d on Brenda like bullets, diminishing Brenda so she melts, quieting down the classroom. The bell rings, signaling us to go to our first class, but we wait to see what will happen.

  “Mrs. Watson,” the teacher says nervously. “Thank you for coming in. Let’s go down to the principal’s office. Brenda?”

  Brenda looks like she is walking the plank as they go out the door, teacher first, Brenda, then wild-eyed Mrs. Watson. The second they are out of sight the class erupts, following them.

  “Ohhh … man, oh man … Brenda gonna get it … oh …”

  But I am not interested in Brenda’s possible beating. I have been arrested by Mrs. Watson’s hair. It stuck two inches from her head like an inky sable crown.

  “What’s that hair … ?” I whisper out loud.

  “Oh … that’s called a ‘natural,’ ” somebody whispers back like it’s a big secret.

  Brenda comes in the next day angrier than ever and in the hallway I get a painful jab from her. I turn around to find all of them—Brenda, Cynthia, Toni, and Martha—giggling.

  “What’s wrong?” says Toni.

  “Why don’t you all stop,” says Cynthia.

  Only Brenda gives me a dead look and I know she is holding the safety pin.

  Next morning I put shorts on under my skirt so the boys can’t see my panties, and braid my hair in such a way that Brenda can’t grab it. I want to get ready for when she grinds me into the ground. It comes right after lunch. The minute I feel a push I push back with all my might. They all, especially Brenda, are happily surprised. We plan to meet at the schoolyard after three, where Brenda, I’m sure, will kill me, but I want to get it over with.

  I hear chanting all around me: “Fight! Fight! Fight!” And I don’t even wait for the uncontrollable white-hot fury to wash over me like when I jumped the boy and bit him on the neck at my old school, or when I threw the plank at Little Eddie. Ducking my head, I close my eyes and whirl around with clenched fists. My fists glance her, and as she knows enough to keep her eyes open while fighting, she quickly and easily pushes me over and sits on me. I look to my left, and see, through all the jostling legs and feet, a teacher coming. A teacher! I admit, though happy to fight, I am happier to see a teacher.

  “That’s enough! On your way, both of you,” he says gruffly.

  I feel good after my brawl. It wasn’t bad at all. It was like when you jump into a pool—cold at first but after a while you get used to it. I can’t wait to get home to examine my split lip, but it’s not as bad as I had hoped. Ma comes home.

  “Hey, Ma …”

  “Hurry up, help me with sandwiches. Iris is coming over.”

  She doesn’t even notice my lip and I’m surprised that it doesn’t matter to me, that I like having a secret. Anyway, Ma is nervous. This is Iris’s first visit to our life without my father. She and my uncle Frank have been busy with the new house they bought on Elder Avenue. Treasuring my fight secret, I straighten up the apartment a little and even figure out a way to cut the ham-and-cheese sandwiches Ma has made into four pieces so it looks like we have more food. Cousin Chaty and his mother, Iris, arrive. She has taken to wearing high heels and long-line bras all the time now and smiles tightly at the way we live without a single piece of plastic-covered furniture or a mirror from the downtown Italian furniture stores.

  “Ha!” laughs my cousin, taking a tiny square of food and popping it into his mouth. “Look at this! Who is this for? Midgets? Babies! Ha! Wait, I can eat this like popcorn.” He tosses the bit of sandwich in the air and catches it on the way down. I laugh along but I don’t feel it, and when I see Iris give him a scolding nod I know how badly we are doing. My mother is worn-out, she can’t make enough money for us—this move has been futile.

  It’s still light out when they leave so I go back to my place at the window and notice a cute boy unloading boxes of soda for the candy store across the street. He is beautiful with thick, wavy hair and I wonder how come I’ve never seen him before. But no matter, buying something at the candy store is a way to get out of the house and I run to him.

  “Can I have a Mallomar?”

  He gives me the chocolate marshmallow cookie. I pay and leave. Outside I eat it and try to think of something else to make him want to run away with and marry me, but nothing occurs to me except buying another Mallomar.

  “Can I have another Mallomar?”

  He gives it to me and I take my time opening and eating it as I leave. But he doesn’t say anything—so I turn around and buy another.

  This time his eyes widen as he hands me one and I stay put while eating. “Will you throw this away for me?” I say, handing him the wrapper. And then it is silent except for my chewing. When I’m done I can’t think of any reason to stay, and not having any more money I run upstairs and upturn all the cushions on the sofa to find some. Digging my hands deep in the crevices I come up with more change. Sue and her children are long gone but she has left plenty of pennies behind. I run across the street and buy another Mallomar.

  “You sure like Mallomars!”

  He speaks!

  “Yes, I do,” I say and wait for him to say something else, but he doesn’t.

  The only thing to do is eat.

  “I’d like another one.”

  He gives me another one and shakes his head in amazement and I grin. I’ve impressed him!

  “I’m gonna have to get another box from downstairs pretty soon if you keep eating them.”

  “They are my favorite. I just can’t stop. That’s just how I am. I can eat them all day. You might as well call me that Mallomars girl … or maybe just Mallo … but my name is Sonia. Sonia Manzano—but I should change it to Sonia Mallomar, really.”

  “My name is Tony …”

  Tony, I think—like in West Side Story … ? But before I can digest that idea my stomach cramps in such a way that I am speechless.

  “What’s the matter?” he says.

  My gut rumbles so loudly I am sure he can hear it.

  “Hey, are you okay?”

  I can’t answer because my insides turn into liquid and threaten to gush out with the slightest move, and I have to run home and twist and writhe on the toilet until I am spent and empty and feel that I have lost because my life is so different from West Side Story.

  It’s Saturday, the morning of my fourteenth birthday.

  “Happy birthday,” says Ma, handing me a box.

  Inside is a green dress so ugly it makes me mad. Not only because I’d never wear such a thing, but because it reminds me I have no place to wear it to.

  “Thanks, Ma …”

  “AveMaríaPurísima …”

  My stomach feels okay by now, but I’m still embarrassed in front of the boy, whose name I don’t even want to think because I feel like such a jerk, so I sneak past the candy store hoping he won’t see me. It’s rainy and muggy as I slip on over to Bathgate Avenue to buy stockings, at the same store where I had bought the handkerchiefs for Marion Uble’s birthday so long ago. And that old disappointment throbs anew and gets mixed up with this fresh disappointment of being fourteen years old today.

  Still, I buy a pair of stockings for fifty cents to last me the week. By the time I get home my hair is frizzy, making me look as ugly as I feel inside. I have nothing to do but look at the Fenway marquee blinking on and off, and flip through an old magazine when—bang! There it is! Everything I’ve been looking for. Everything that will give me joy and happiness everlasting—a short, blonde haircut like the one on a girl in a Maytag washing machine ad.

  She is thin and wearing a turquoise-blue jumper over a long-sleeved white blouse, with a big bow around her neck. Her hair is all wispy bangs around her eyes, the rest of it cut bluntly at her chin. It is pale yellow and silky.

  What gets me is the look of joy on her face. She’s in a series of pictures with the washer/dryer. In the first picture she is happily loading in the clothes, in another she is cheerfully pouring in the detergent, in the third she is impishly waiting for the
washer to be done, in the fourth she athletically tosses the clothes into the dryer, in the fifth she pirouettes while waiting, and in the sixth she’s done and stands triumphantly next to a pile of freshly laundered, exquisitely folded clothes! What a life. I want to be her so I can grin and flip my troubles away with my hair while I do the laundry if we ever get a washing machine. I hound Ma, who is in the kitchen singing “You really got a hold on me …” while making spaghetti. (Another good thing about not having my father around is that we can eat more American food.)

  “I want to cut my hair.”

  “What?”

  “Like that!” I point to the girl in the magazine. “Like that. So it looks like that.”

  “Your hair don’t go like that!” says Ma.

  “It would if I could cut it!”

  She laughs. “Go put your nice dress on,” she says. Then she continues singing: “Oh yeah, you really got a hold on me!”

  “No. Why get dressed when there’s no place to go. I want to cut my hair!”

  Ma rolls her eyes and ignores me and I fume around the apartment until it gets dark when the doorbell rings and it’s Little Eddie. As always he is grinning and cheerful and does not judge the squalor we live in like Reynaldo did because Little Eddie was never like that—and behind him is a fourteen-piece band!

  He has learned to play an instrument at the Boys Club of America and has become part of a group called the Caribbean Combo, and on that gloomy day he has convinced them all to show up at our apartment! They tumble into our place with instruments banging all over and begin to set up.

  I am flabbergasted and don’t know what to say.

  “Happy birthday, cuz.” He grins.

  There is laughing and joking. The trombone player cracks that the apartment is so small his trombone will smack against the walls. They play and it’s like the unbelievable events in a movie, like just when you think it’s curtains for someone but the cops show up, or the fairy godmother happens by, or better yet, the character in the movie realizes something that enables her to save herself like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz.