Revolution of Evelyn Serrano (9780545469586)

by Manzano, Sonia

  We walked toward the candy counter, and I kind of hoped Mr. Simpson would put me there, with the cases of lollipops, licorice twists, peppermints, Raisinets, chocolate-covered marshmallows, and my favorite, French creams.

  I never stole, but if Mr. Simpson had put me on the candy counter, I’d steal a French cream or two. Or maybe not steal, but “liberate” as I’d heard some older boys in my neighborhood call it.

  We walked right past the candy counter and the hardware counter, and went up to the makeup counter. No “liberating” French creams for me.

  I guess Mr. Simpson figured that since I didn’t wear a ton of Cleopatra eyeliner like everybody else in El Barrio, I wouldn’t steal any. A lady stood behind the counter.

  Mr. Simpson introduced us. “Lydia, this is Evelyn Serrano. I’m going to start Evelyn on this counter first.”

  I was surprised he called the makeup lady Lydia. I mean — she was as old as my mother. I had to call people that old don or doña — or risk getting a dirty look from my mother for showing disrespect.

  “Now, Evelyn, it’ll be your job to stock the shelves when they start to get empty. You don’t have to go to the stock room — one of the guys will bring the stuff up — you just have to refill the counters with the items.”

  I looked around. There were counters with eye shadows, lipsticks, and makeup pencils of all colors. I liked the way the eye shadows went from dull to bright, and the lipsticks from beige to purple-black. There was even a variety of black pencils with names like midnight, coal, and ebony. They looked like little soldiers standing at attention.

  “Evelyn, let me see how you do at the cash register,” said Mr. Simpson.

  I already knew how the cash register worked from spending time in my parents’ bodega, but I guess Mr. Simpson wanted to make sure. An old lady came up with a bottle of wrinkle cream she wanted to pay for. Lydia and Mr. Simpson watched me ring up the cream. At that same moment, I noticed three girls I knew from the neighborhood, Awilda, Dora, and Migdalia, come in and sit at the lunch counter. Migdalia used to be my best friend but was starting to hang out with Awilda and Dora.

  I missed visiting Migdalia, her mother, and her older brother, Wilfredo. They lived on welfare, and if that wasn’t embarrassing enough for Migdalia, they hardly had any furniture. I mean — they had a sofa, and beds, and chairs. But Migdalia’s family didn’t have any little stuff, like a toaster, or a coffeemaker, or a TV, thanks to Wilfredo, who sold the stuff the minute their mother bought it.

  Their place always looked like they had just moved in or were getting ready to move out.

  Migdalia’s father wasn’t around. She and her mother were always worried sick about Wilfredo, like he was the most important person in the world. It made me happy I was an only child. Still, I have to admit Wilfredo was gorgeous looking — even with his troubles and all.

  Migdalia thought we should hang out more with Awilda and Dora. She said she wanted to have more friends. What was wrong with having just one friend? I didn’t need any more. Besides, Awilda was a bigmouth. Always talking louder than she really had to so that people would notice her.

  From all the way over by the lunch counter, I heard her say, “Let’s try for a cheap banana split.” Then she picked a red balloon.

  Meanwhile, Wrinkle Face gave me a five-dollar bill for the cream that cost one dollar and eighty-nine cents, plus tax. I figured out the change in my head even before the cash register told me what to give her back, so I was able to keep track of what was happening at the lunch counter.

  The waitress popped the balloon and gave Awilda the bad news. She had picked a balloon with a seventy-nine-cent price tag in it.

  “I can’t believe it,” said Dora. “How come we never get the thirty-nine-cent, or the forty-five-cent, or even the fifty-cent banana split?”

  I gave Wrinkle Face her change and put her cream in a bag. I couldn’t believe how dumb Awilda and Dora were. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that all those balloons had prices of seventy-nine cents in them. Migdalia should’ve known better. But Awilda and Dora wouldn’t have listened to her. She was the new friend, the one always going along. Mr. Simpson and Lydia were so busy watching me they didn’t notice what was happening at the lunch counter.

  “Very good, Evelyn,” said Mr. Simpson. “You stay here. Lydia will help you if you run into any trouble. I’ll be in my office if you need me.”

  Dora and Migdalia came over to the makeup counter. Dora started looking at the nail polish.

  Lydia said, “I’m going to the bathroom.”

  And just as Lydia stepped down from behind the counter I saw Dora slip a bottle of polish into her bag. Migdalia made believe she didn’t see it. I didn’t say anything.

  “Hey, Evelyn,” Migdalia said.

  “Hey, Migdalia.”

  That was as far as our conversation went.

  Mr. Simpson came over. Awilda, Dora, and Migdalia knew enough to disappear.

  “Where’s Lydia?”

  “Bathroom.”

  “Evelyn, the store’s going to get really busy with people who shop on their lunch hour, and I want to move all this old Fourth of July merchandise. As soon as Lydia gets back, go over to the paper goods counter and help Dolores.”

  Dolores was black. Ever since Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated last year, I seemed to notice black people more. Especially darker-skinned people like Dolores. When Lydia came back, I went to paper goods. Dolores looked older than me. Maybe she was sixteen.

  “Hi, I’m Evelyn. Mr. Simpson wants me to help you.”

  A line was beginning to form at the paper goods register, getting longer and longer.

  “I’m Dolores, and I can sure use help.”

  Dolores’s skin was the color of Hershey’s chocolate. She had two-tone lips. Her upper lip was darker than her lower one, and her teeth were as white as the inside of a coconut. Dolores had pretty eyes that slanted up at the corners. The only thing that messed up her style was her hair. It was straightened into a flip, but because it was stiff, one side flipped out more than the other.

  I looked at her lopsided hair, while she stared at my bushed-out bangs. I tried to push my bangs to the side, but they were still frizzy.

  Dolores said, “Here’s what we’ll do. I’ll ring ‘em up, and you bag ’em.”

  It’s a good thing Dolores had a plan. The place was overrun by people coming in to buy Fourth of July plates, cups, and napkins. We had to work fast.

  Dolores said, “People around here love America — when the price is right.”

  “I guess everybody is patriotic at half price.”

  When a customer spoke fast Spanish that sounded like a machine gun — “AvemaríaPurísimaMeEncantanTodosEstosPlatosDeCartónPorqueNoSeTienenQueLavarLosPlatos” — Dolores looked at me, hoping to get a translation.

  The woman was going on and on about how much she loved paper plates because she didn’t have to wash them, but I didn’t feel like going into all that, so I just whispered, “Let’s just say she is super patriotic!”

  Dolores and I cracked up, and kept ringing and bagging.

  We worked fast. When I looked up, the long line was gone.

  Dolores let out a breath. “Whew!”

  The paper goods department began to empty out.

  “I guess I’ll go back to the makeup counter,” I said.

  Dolores bumped her shoulder to mine. “You’re a good bagger, Evelyn. Thanks for the help.”

  When I got back to the makeup counter, Lydia was dusting the lipsticks. Her accent was Spanish, but a little different than Mami’s.

  “You Puerto Rican?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “I’m Dominican.”

  I thought, So what do you want, a medal for being Dominican?

  Then Lydia started to speak rapid Spanish. Something about how she didn’t want to work because she had three kids, but had to work even though it was hard to find a babysitter … Blah, blah, blah. I didn’t want to hear any
of that stuff, so I cut her off.

  “I don’t really speak Spanish that well.” Not that it was true. I mean — I understood Spanish as long as the person talking didn’t use big words. I just didn’t want to have to listen to Lydia. Telling her I didn’t speak Spanish shut her up right away.

  Se puso sosa. That was one of my favorite expressions in Spanish. It means, literally, that all flavor left her face. It was a little mean of me to stop Lydia, but it had been a long day. It was time to punch out.

  “Bye, Lydia,” I said.

  She still looked sour.

  “Adiós, Evelyn,” she said quietly.

  I went into the back and punched out.

  “See you, Mr. Simpson. What time tomorrow?”

  “Same time, Evelyn.”

  Outside it was still hot, and Angel’s father was selling piraguas.

  “Hi, señor Santiago,” I said carefully, wondering if he was going to remember me.

  “Hey, Evelyn, right? ¿Qué tal?”

  Okay, he knew me this time. Great, because I needed a nice, cold snow cone and I didn’t feel like dealing with an old man in a bad mood. He took the towel off the big square block of ice on his cart, grabbed the ice scraper with his other hand, and started to scrape. I always wondered how he knew exactly the number of scrapes it would take to fill a cone with just the right amount of ice. He filled the cone perfectly.

  One thing that always bothered me about señor Santiago’s face was that it didn’t agree with itself. Señor Santiago’s mouth turned up in a smile, but his eyes were as sad as la esperanza de un pobre — as sad as the hope of a poor person.

  “¿Cuál quieres?” he asked.

  I looked at all the colors of syrup for pouring onto the scraped ice. There was white, red, purple, and blue — coconut, cherry, grape, and blueberry.

  “Azul, blue,” I said.

  Señor Santiago poured syrup into the cone. That was my favorite part — watching the syrup melt and darken the ice. As I walked off slurping my cone, a cop approached señor Santiago.

  I stayed near enough to hear the cop ask him, “You got a license to sell that stuff?”

  “License?”

  “Yeah, a license.”

  “No, I …”

  “You can’t sell that stuff without a license. What if it’s contaminated?

  “Contaminated?”

  “Dirty.”

  “No, no, is clean. Just icy sirope.”

  The police officer took out his pad and started to write a ticket. “Yeah, well, the Board of Health might have another opinion.”

  “Wait! I can’t pay a ticket!”

  “You gotta, buddy. It’s the law.” He gave señor Santiago a summons.

  “But I been selling piraguas for a long time.”

  “Doesn’t make it right. Take care of that,” the cop said as he walked away toward the guy who sold bacalaítos fritos, codfish fritters.

  Señor Santiago stared at the summons. He looked around like he needed to tell somebody something, but didn’t know what or who to tell. His esperanza de un pobre eyes looked like they were going to cry.

  I was glad I’d gotten my piragua before the policeman got there. Its icy cold cooled the heat of this summer day. But somehow the blue syrup didn’t taste as sweet.

  When I got home, there were three weird things going on.

  Mami, who is usually at our bodega in the evenings, was home.

  There was music blaring in our apartment.

  At the kitchen table sat a woman whose eyebrows were drawn on with a black makeup pencil. On her eyelids was a thick spread of eye shadow the same blue as my snow cone. The woman’s lips were as pink as the inside of a seashell. And, oh, her hair — it was as orange as Bozo’s, puffed up and piled on top of her head like a wad of cotton candy. Mami was serving this strange lady a cup of coffee.

  Mami spoke in a very tired way. “Mija, this is your abuela.”

  I blinked. Twice. My grandmother?

  I knew I had a grandmother in Puerto Rico, who had married the guy with the painted cheeks in Mami’s picture. But this lady looked nothing like any grandmother I’d ever seen.

  She got up to kiss me. My piragua had turned to a puddle in my cup.

  My grandmother’s hot-pink sleeveless sweater was low cut. She wore black cotton pedal pushers. Her burgundy-colored toenails peeked out of chunky-heeled sandals.

  Her accent was as thick as the blue syrup in my cup and heavier than Mami’s accent. “Rosita, you are so beautiful,” she said.

  She crushed me to her. My face just reached her neck. I could feel she was wearing one of those stiff one-piece long-line bras that go from the chest to above the knees. I didn’t think anybody wore that old-fashioned corset type underwear anymore.

  I glanced at Mami, who didn’t look anything like her own mother. Mami was more white looking, with light brown hair always pulled into a tight bun. She never wore makeup or heels. Mami’s shoes looked like something a tired nurse would wear. Her skirts fell below the knees, and she didn’t ever wear pants.

  My grandmother smothered me in her strong arms for a long time, while Mami went into the living room to turn off the record player. The needle scraped the record as Mami stopped the music.

  Mami came back and put the record on the table in front of my grandmother, like she was daring her. My grandmother huffed. She released me from her killer hug. “You didn’t tell me Rosa was so beautiful,” she said.

  “I never know where you are to tell you anything,” Mami said.

  “That’s not true. I told you when I moved from Caguas to Cayey, and then to Cabo Rojo.”

  “It’s very hard for me to keep up with where you go. Especially when you don’t give the address.”

  There was silence then. Though the music was off, the song was going on in my head. The singer had been singing “… siembra …” which means planting or something. He was singing about how Latin people should plant something for the future.

  “Heat up the food when you get hungry, Evelyn,” Mami said.

  “Evelyn? Who’s Evelyn?” asked the lady with the fake eyebrows.

  “I’m Evelyn.”

  Mami explained, “Since she got to be fourteen last month, she wants to be called Evelyn. I guess you don’t know, but Evelyn is one of her middle names.”

  My abuela put a hand on her round hip. “Of course I know it’s one of her middle names. And I do remember when she was born.”

  “That’s right,” Mami said. “I did speak to you on the phone after I gave birth … wherever you were.”

  This whole scene sounded like something on one of the telenovela soap operas on Telemundo. I had never heard my mother use such a harsh tone before. It was my turn to talk.

  “I decided to call myself Evelyn. Too many girls in El Barrio are called Rosa.”

  “Good for you, Rosa — I mean, Evelyn. People should be called whatever they like to be called. I will try to remember you are now Evelyn.”

  “It shouldn’t be too hard since you just met her.” Mami’s tone was as sharp as señor Santiago’s ice scraper. My grandmother acted like she didn’t hear. She kept talking to me.

  “… if you try to remember to call me Abuela.”

  Mami wouldn’t look at either of us. “Mama is going to stay with us for a while,” she told me. Then Mami grabbed her purse. “I cooked some asopao. Have some while it’s hot. Nobody likes cold stew. I have to get back to the bodega. I’m not usually home at this hour.”

  My grandmother patted her hair. “I’m sorry I came in the middle of the day. It’s just that I found a last-minute flight and —”

  Mami cut her off. “Porfirio is waiting for me at the store.” Then she left, slamming the door harder than she ever had.

  Abuela studied me for a long moment. I did the same to her. She was an older, overdone version of me. Same complexion. Same rounded face. Same dark eyes.

  “Your mother said I could stay in your bedroom.”

  Sometimes
saying nothing is the strongest answer. So I kept my mouth shut and went to my room, where there had been a clothes explosion. Abuela’s suitcase was on my bed, yawning open, with a bunch of scarves, tops, and skirts in bright colors. My clean white desk was covered with books in Spanish. My dresser was piled with record albums and a makeup bag full of compacts — some broken, some not — and lipsticks and powders. In the middle of the dresser mess were combs with teeth missing and brushes clogged with hair. Abuela had hung a bag of hair curlers on one side of my mirror, and a mass of chain belts on the other.

  There was only one place left to go where I could be alone. I didn’t know the right Spanish word for it, but it was my only getaway — el roofo.

  The evening’s heat met me as soon as I pushed open the roof door. At least it was quiet and I was alone.

  I leaned down on the sloping edge of the roof. I took a hard breath, closed my eyes. That’s when I heard the sound of my name pressing into my solitude.

  “Hey … Evelyn.”

  It was Angel, leaning over me. He smelled like sweat. His shirt was all grimy, just like his neck. He was chewing slowly on his fingernails. “What are you doing up here?”

  “I live in this building, remember?” I snapped.

  Angel got quiet. We sat without talking. I thought about this abuela of mine. How she popped in out of nowhere. How different she was from my own mother. I knew other relatives had raised Mami in Puerto Rico, so I could understand why she didn’t know Abuela very well. But this was the first time I’d ever seen Mami so moody.

  Angel must have sensed I needed quiet. He let me be alone with my thoughts.

  This felt like the longest day ever.

  Abuela ruined my life immediately.

  Since she’d taken over my room, I was now sleeping on our living-room sofa bed, under a thin sheet.

  The morning after Abuela came, I woke up hot and sweaty. I kicked the sheet off just as Pops, who had forgotten I was sleeping in the living room, stepped out of the other bedroom. When he saw my naked leg up in the air, he turned to go back into his room so fast that he banged his face on the door.

  “¡Caramba!” he yelled.