Becoming Maria

by Sonia Manzano

  She says it slowly but it’s what I want to hear. “Okay …”

  “We’ll play hooky. They won’t even notice.”

  “Okay, meet at the subway …”

  Twelve hours later we’re on the train. Now if we can only find Queens. We go uptown, downtown to Forty-Second Street, but get confused that there are two Forty-Second Streets, east and west. Hours later we finally get to the World’s Fair and are starving so we share a pretzel because it’s all we can afford.

  “Look, here is a list of all the free exhibits,” I say.

  Unfortunately all the free exhibits are the crappy ones. Still—we don’t care. We wander around and before we know it it’s one forty-five and we have to be back by three.

  “Oh no! We’ve got to go!” I say.

  Running into the train station we begin our journey, jerking forward and backward to the Bronx because we’ve retained no information about how we got to the Fair in the first place and get just as lost heading back. Finally, after hours and hours, we stumble upon a familiar train station.

  “This is it!” cries Lisa.

  Standing on the station we look at each other triumphantly. We don’t have the words but we feel great because we did it!

  “Oh my God, Sonia!”

  “I know … !”

  “We did it …”

  “I know—I can’t believe it.”

  Suddenly we sing, “… summer’s here and the time is right for dancin’ in the street …” And it’s so funny that we started warbling at the same exact moment we press cheeks together, slap each other five, and run out of the station, thrilled that we went somewhere.

  Judging by the way Joe looks when he comes back from Puerto Rico months later, I think my parents did the right thing in sending him there.

  “Hey, Joe!” I say.

  He smiles.

  “Ay, gracias a Dios …” says my mother. She helps him out of his little suit.

  “I’ll make coffee,” she says, flitting into the kitchen.

  Pops says nothing but I think he is happy, because he follows her.

  Joe takes a deep breath, and then another. I smile at him but he doesn’t smile back. His next breath comes on a little quicker.

  “Let’s go into the room,” I say.

  We do and by the time we get there his breath starts coming on super fast.

  “Joe?”

  He says nothing but starts gasping. I can’t believe he’s having an asthma attack! He’s filled out. He looks so good. But why is he sick? I look at the corner of the bed, the wall, pick up a magazine, then put it down. I try not to hear. I wonder what Larry is doing upstairs, but before I know it, I find myself sitting with Joe at the window just like in the old days. He tries to suck up the air, and it’s as if he never left town. Ma hears and comes in wild-eyed. “This is my cross to bear,” she wails.

  “¡Mal rayo te parta!” screams my father.

  But they leave us alone for a moment.

  “Joe,” I ask carefully, “do you want to go back to Puerto Rico? Did you like it better there? You didn’t get sick there. Maybe you should go back. They’ll send you back … if you want to go … You looked great in the pictures they sent … always in a suit … always slightly smiling …” And then my spiel is cut short when in the exact same theatrical way a blind person who finally accepts God flings off his black glasses and screams, “I can see! I can see!” or the way a cripple crawls up to an altar then flings his crutches away in a moment of epiphany and screams, “I can walk! I can walk!” my brother’s attack ends in midgasp.

  But we are not done with Puerto Rico. I find myself roiled in foul imaginings of the island when Ma announces that she and I will visit. “Down with Puerto Rico! Revenge on the island! Screw those people!” becomes my internal battle cry as I vow to shun and reject the place I’ve never been to, where kids drown in sewage, the place of dead mothers, of negligent fathers, of starvation and poverty, of macho men throwing coconuts at their wives’ heads for fun! I know of all the horrors even beautiful songs written about the island can’t cover up and will not be fooled by it.

  I’ll even expose my grandfather for the rat he is. One look from me and he’ll know that I don’t play that way, and that I know how he kicked Ma down the stairs for wearing a nice skirt and that he cheated on my grandmother Encarnación Falcon, the saintly angel, and then abandoned his kids as soon as she died.

  Who did they think they were, making Ma work like a slave just so she could eat? I know all about those mongooses she had to navigate through and her terror of being spackled into a wall and about the urine she had to drink.

  Of course my mother had to pick Manhattan over this dumb island, and I am going to get a high school diploma to prove she did the right thing. Maybe they could beat down an orphan girl like her but not me, because I was born in the USA. I’ll show those hicks up.

  Vanessa arms me with a white sheath dress and I wear my hair in a French twist to meet the enemy. We land in San Juan and I get ready to fight—but the Puerto Rican air ambushes me. It stops me in my tracks as it sweeps through me disguised as “breeze.” How was I to know it was going to be balmy, sweet, perfumed, delightful, erotic, warm, and make me happy to perspire just so? Still, I am determined to remain sullen. A half brother of Ma’s, Rafa, picks us up at the airport and asks, “How are things?”

  “¿Y qué, Isa? ¿Como están las cosas?”

  Ma answers, “In the struggle.”

  “Ya vez, todavía luchando.”

  He asks after my father.

  “¿Y Manzano?”

  “Como siempre.”

  “Like always”? I listen—what did that mean, my father was “like always”? Did they know about my father? Was the way my father acted part of being Puerto Rican?

  Hibiscus flowers growing over, around, even through chain-link fences bordering the roadway undermine my determination to “show them up” even more. I’m rendered even more useless by the flamboyan trees with perky pink flowers standing at attention that remind me of my fifteen-year-old nipples, and then by the mangos and other fruit I can’t identify that resemble private parts, and then by giant philodendrons waving to me as we drive by. Christ, I can’t even think! I’m dizzy, drunk on extreme sensory overload, and I try sobering up by listening to Ma and Rafa’s conversation, but the next question is directed toward me.

  “¿Y qué, Sonia?”

  Once again I am surprised at how much Spanish I know. I answer in Spanish.

  “I’m fine. Bien.”

  “It’s great to finally meet you.”

  “Does Puerto Rico have any great places like Coney Island?” I ask bitterly.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Did you know that millions of people go to Coney Island on Fourth of July weekend?”

  “I didn’t know that.” He grins.

  “Not only that, you can buy a Sabrett hot dog almost anywhere.”

  “You don’t say …”

  “And chocolate egg creams. Can you get a chocolate egg cream in Puerto Rico?”

  But then I forget what I’m showing off about because we turn onto a road along a beach, and the turquoise and blues of the Caribbean Sea make me dumb. On the rest of the ride I wonder how I could have been told that Adam and Eve were thrown out of paradise, which was no more. Well, paradise is right here.

  Finally Rafa points out my grandfather’s house on a wide, shady street as we park a ways from it. The hot sunlight creates lacy patterns on the sandy ground as it shoots through the plants, reminding me of the patterns created by the sun through the Third Avenue El. As we walk toward the house, neighbors come out to meet and greet us, and I am struck that their skin tones really are canela, trigueña, negrita, just like the songs say. The people are caramel color with light eyes and wavy, long, black hair, chocolate color with kinky blond hair and olive-black eyes. Is it the sun? Do we not look like this in New York because our skins turn generic gray with cold?

  I finally co
me face-to-face with Ma’s first tormentor.

  My grandfather could play an elder Picasso in a movie. Short, bald, barrel-chested, and wearing Bermuda shorts, a white athletic undershirt, and brown rubber sandals. He looks like he has been bleached and tanned by the sun so many times his original color is gone. He has some spots but I can’t tell if he is a dark man with light spots or vice versa. I try looking into his face as Ma coaxes me into giving him a hug. I don’t notice him giving her a hug. He gave her an impersonal jostle. Our hug is like accidentally bumping into someone.

  He seems totally self-contained, solitary, and like a rock in the middle of a river—things seem to float around him.

  “Hola, Sonia.”

  “Hola.”

  “¿Qué tal?”

  “Bien, bien.”

  Then to Ma.

  “Hola, Isa.”

  “Hola.”

  “¿Qué tal?”

  “Bien, bien.”

  After a few days I become aware that he never gives way or extends himself. You could be there or not; he never takes notice. He speaks when spoken to but never offers any information or asks any questions. You are free to stay or go as you please. He sleeps in his own room on a full-size bed that is pushed against the wall under a window.

  “Mira como hace su cama,” Ma whispers to me.

  Ma is fascinated by how he makes his bed, so I watch him do it as well. Every morning he adjusts the sheets and light blanket with the tip of his cane, before arranging the mosquito net out of the way for the day.

  Ma and Dionisio don’t talk much—not even about Joe’s rehabilitative visit. My grandfather’s wife and daughters quickly fill in the empty spaces his attitude leaves with listless chatter, and soon his stepson, Rafa, steps in by coming around two or three days later and insisting we stay with him and his wife in Bayamón. We say good-bye to Dionisio.

  “Adiós, Sonia.”

  “Adiós.”

  “Hasta luego.”

  “Sí.”

  Then to my mother.

  “Adiós, Isa.”

  “Adiós.”

  “Hasta luego.”

  “Sí.”

  Rafa’s wife runs a dress factory that makes beautiful, sexy clothes “suited to the Latin woman,” she says. She has green eyes and caramel skin and sometimes her hair is curly and sometimes it is straight.

  “How do you make it straight?” I ask.

  She gestures toward the ironing board in her sewing room. “Come and kneel down in front of the board.” I do and she loosens my hair and grabs a strand of it.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Be still …”

  Laying my hair on the board she irons it! And after twenty minutes of contorting my body around I have a head of stick-straight hair. Then we talk about favorite television shows, even particular episodes we have both seen, and I begin to feel Puerto Rico is not very backward at all.

  But when we go to the countryside to visit Ma’s older sister, Cristina, Puerto Rico flips back in time and I see a glimpse of what Ma always talks about. Cristina is cooking at a charcoal stove in a shed at the back of her house, soot covering her hands and face.

  “Don’t hug me.” She smiles up at Ma. “You’ll get like me!”

  Ma doesn’t care and I can see the blend of sorrow and pleasure on her face as she hugs her anyway. They squeeze, then step away long enough to examine each other before crushing together again.

  “¡Tanto tiempo … !”

  I look at Cristina and place her in the stories my mother has told me. My aunt is plump and wears a loose housedress and rubber sandals just like the ones my grandfather wears. Her hair is slightly gray and pulled in a tight, substantial bun. Her hands are thick, her nails grimy. My mother introduces me.

  “Mi hija, Sonia …”

  My aunt hugs me and I look into her face, so similar to my mother’s—except where my mother’s eyes are impatient, my aunt’s are calm and serene with a sweetness in her gaze that overwhelms me as it covers my mother with joy, as if she had last seen her a hundred years ago or yesterday. We walk inside and see the main room is festooned with her grandchildren. Babies and toddlers in dripping diapers ramble around a floor with huge holes in it. Later, in the quiet of the mountains, my mother pulls Cristina’s husband of more than thirty years aside and counsels him. “You must cover the holes in the floor of your house. There is no reason to live this way anymore. Think of the children.”

  “But the children know where the holes are by now,” he answers seriously.

  But it is in this interior of the mountains that Puerto Rico grabs my heart. A magic mist floats around the greenery of it all, making the plantain leaves and red, red earth mysterious, and the sound of all the roosters crowing in the mornings is comically droll and arresting. My mother looks different to me.

  “When I stayed with Mama Santa, a grandmother, we used to get up in the morning and gather herbs for her remedios,” Ma tells me. “And then we used to grind coffee together. She always had her head wrapped up in a scarf and wore necklaces, and bracelets that jangled on her arms, making sounds I used to love …” In my imagination my mother looks sweet as a barefoot little girl with red dirt coming up between her toes and a raggedy dress on.

  I take inventory of all my mother’s siblings: Uncle Eddie, who had suffered so much on the island he vowed never to return; Uncle Frank, who followed Ma to New York; Cristina, who stayed on the island. There is one more to meet, Félix, the one whose urine my mother was forced to drink. I am shocked by his handsomeness. Very tall, with chiseled features. He has been with the same woman, his wife, Minerva, since they were both fourteen-year-old children and sold fried foods from a pushcart to make ends meet.

  He hugs Ma and looks over her shoulder at me and we giggle. His wife is very black and they have three children, and he will do anything to make them laugh. He loves to tease her.

  “These plantains you cooked look like they were run over by a truck!”

  But he and I don’t need a gag or a joke to laugh over—we laugh for no reason at all, communicating in broken English and Spanish.

  When it is finally time to return to New York, we stop on the way to the airport when Uncle Félix spots a roadside vendor selling coconuts. My mouth waters as the vendor picks a coconut, slices off the top with a dangerous-looking machete, sticks a straw in it, and hands it to me. I am disappointed that it tastes weak and watery, not like the canned Coco López coconut milk I had imagined.

  I leave the island longing for Puerto Rico with the phantom ache of an amputee who still feels his missing arm.

  The new drama teacher wants to put up a board illustrating all the wonderful theater he is going to introduce us to.

  “The title of our board will be, ‘Drama Is Everyday Living.’ ”

  “How about, ‘Drama Is Life’?” I suggest.

  “Yes,” he agrees. “That is better. I sound like a teacher, don’t I?”

  “Yes.”

  I am surprised that he speaks to me without the tone of correction in his voice, and the next morning I decide to dress more grown-up. I wear my hair in a French twist, and iron a white blouse to wear with a black jumper.

  “Who would like to help with the board?” he asks.

  I raise my hand immediately.

  “Okay, cut out these letters to say, ‘Drama Is Everyday Living.’ ”

  I thought he had liked my idea of saying “Drama Is Life” and wonder what changed his mind. Maybe my idea wasn’t that good after all. But he did notice me for a second. Maybe I can make him notice me again. How to do that? I decide to wear tight sweaters. He plays a recording of the Broadway show Oliver! and asks us to listen to the lyrics of a song.

  I’m surprised that it’s a love song about a woman who is beaten by her lover, who is a cruel thief. (At least my father isn’t a thief.)

  The teacher loves this song. It’s weird. What’s going on with this? What’s so great about clinging on to a man who beats you? Why
do people find it entertaining? He announces we’re going to do a production of a few of the songs.

  “Will you write a couple of scenes to get into the songs?” he asks me. Me? Why me? Was it the tight sweater? I write a scene where Oliver Twist talks about his mother dying:

  Oliver: She went … (Oliver looks up to the sky) … you know.

  “Hmmm …” says the drama teacher. Then he reads it out loud, ridiculing it with mimicry in his voice, then adds, “A little corny, don’t you think?” Screw you, I think. I’ve never done this before! But I stick with it.

  Months later the drama teacher tells me he thinks I should audition for the High School of Performing Arts.

  “What’s that?” I ask.

  “A special school in Manhattan, part of the New York City school system. It’s for artists like musicians, and dancers, and actors. You would audition for acting.”

  “What’s ‘audition’?”

  “A tryout, and if they like you, you go there.”

  “I don’t know if my parents would let me.”

  “I’ll go ask them myself.”

  “What?”

  “What time are you done with dinner?”

  “Seven thirty.”

  “I’ll be there at eight.”

  And he is. Right on time. He comes over and tells my parents about Performing Arts. My father looks on stonily. Ma listens unsurely and quickly agrees that I can attend Performing Arts if I get in. I can tell they are uncomfortable with having a white teacher in their living room and want to get rid of him as soon as possible, but I feel uncomfortable that they agree with him so quickly. They don’t know him that well.

  To prepare for my audition we practice a monologue about a woman whose husband got shot by Nazis.

  “Now, when you say, ‘and they shot him,’ I want you to really feel it.”

  “Like how?”

  “Like this.” He demonstrates by squishing up his face and curling his upper lip into a snarl.

  I squish up my face and curl my upper lip into a snarl and practically growl when I say, “… And they took him out and they shot him.”