I hid under the sheets. When it was safe to come out, I wrapped the sheet around me and ran to the bathroom to get my bathrobe and do my business. But the bathroom door was locked.
“I need to go!” I shrieked.
Abuela was already in there.
Pops came up behind me. He had a hankie pressed to his nose, which was bleeding.
“Abuela, we have to get in there!”
She flung open the door. The sight of her made us suck in our breath in horror. Abuela had green goop all over her face. Without her eyebrows drawn on, she looked like an escapee from a monster movie.
“Sorry, Porfirio, I was giving myself a facial.”
Pops was hot-mad.
“You got a bloody nose?” Abuela asked.
That brought my mother running in from the kitchen. “Bloody nose? ¿Qué pasó? Ay, Dios mío.”
We all started talking at once. I had to pee — badly. I was hopping from one foot to the other. If it hadn’t been so early and so hot, this all would have been funny.
“Ven, Porfirio,” said my mother, coaxing Pops into the kitchen. I scooted into the bathroom past Abuela, shut the door behind me, and quickly used the toilet. Abuela had left stuff all over the sink. Lotion bottles, shavers, tweezers, nose-hair scissors, hairbrushes, combs, and three half-used tubes of Alberto VO5. Even the drain had evidence of Abuela — it was clogged with wads of her Bozo-orange hair.
When I came out, Abuela had disappeared, probably into my bedroom.
Mami was trying to stop Pops from fleeing as he pressed the hankie to his nose. “Wait, Porfirio — eat something.”
“I’ll eat at the store,” he answered gruffly, slamming the door behind him.
I tiptoed into the kitchen.
“¿Avena?” Mami offered.
She dumped some oatmeal in a bowl. Abuela came to the kitchen, green face and all. My mother put some oatmeal in a bowl for her. She made a face as soon as she tasted it.
“Eww, you’ve put a lot of sugar, ¿sí?”
“Sí,” Mami answered, dragging out the word to sound like seeeeee.
“If you put a lot of sugar in, you get fatter than you already are.” Abuela shot Mami a harsh look.
Mami pressed her lips together, grabbed her purse, and flew out the door.
The green gunk on Abuela’s face had begun to harden. She turned and went into the bathroom, where she started to run water. Soon she came back to the kitchen.
“I wish your mother didn’t get so mad at me,” Abuela said. She had replaced the green gunk with a layer of Pond’s cold cream. My grandmother with no eyebrows now looked like a space alien. She threw out her sweetened oatmeal and made a fresh bowl for herself with no sugar.
“The only thing I have sugar in is café,” she explained, trying to make conversation. Rummaging through the cabinets she found some raisins. “Perfect,” she said, “I’ll put these in my oatmeal.”
“Those raisins are for the bread pudding Mami makes to sell at the store,” I said. “Besides, oatmeal tastes better with sugar.”
Abuela changed the subject. “I will go shopping today. You come with me?”
“I’m working. I have to go to my room to get dressed.”
Abuela’s shoes, scarves, and long-line bras were all over the place. I tried to ignore the mess. I started to take the rubber band out of my hair, but it got stuck.
“Evelyn?”
Abuela had followed me.
“Let me help you with that.”
“No … I can do it….” But I was struggling.
Abuela got manicure scissors out of her makeup kit.
“I can just cut that rubber band.”
She had already started cutting and was very determined. All I could say was, “Fine, go ahead.”
“You should never use rubber bands. They break your hair. It’s best to use one of these.”
She showed me a fabric-covered elastic hair band. I nodded.
“Where do you work?” Abuela asked.
“The five-and-dime.”
“I’m sure they sell all kinds of nice bands that won’t break your hair. I can go shopping there later. My gray hairs are coming in — I have to get hair dye to cover up my canas, and I could use some new makeup. I’ll just come to the five-and-dime to get everything I need. I know exactly where the store is. I used to live on 116th Street years ago.”
Abuela had set my hair free. Before I knew what was happening, she was brushing it and gently putting my hair into a ponytail. It didn’t hurt at all, and my hair looked good. “Gracias,” I said softly, then turned to go.
“I see you later?”
I sure hoped not. I didn’t want my grandmother with no eyebrows and orange hair coming to my job. I shrugged, not answering yes or no.
The whole day at work I watched for Abuela. I knew she’d come but was still shocked when I saw her. She was wearing a striped halter top and flowered pants. At least they were long pants. And this time only half of her hair was piled up. The other part was flowing down her back.
She looked around expectantly, all open-faced. I tried to make believe I didn’t know her. Dolores spotted her right away and approached Abuela. I wanted to die. They talked, then Dolores pointed to me. Abuela came over, smiling. Lydia was taking care of a customer. I tried to hide behind the hairbrushes.
“There you are!” Abuela squealed.
“Hi.”
I introduced Abuela to Lydia.
“Lydia, this is my … grandmother.”
“Your grandmother! ¡Sí, seguro que sí! You look exactly alike.”
Lydia couldn’t stop staring at my grandmother’s drawn-on eyebrows. Then, to make this moment even more terrible, Awilda came in with Dora and Migdalia. I wanted to slip through a hole like one of the roaches or mice from Pérez y Martina, my favorite childhood tale, a love story between a mouse that dressed like the King of Spain and a cockroach that wore a mantilla and a skirt. If only I were that cockroach — I could escape what had to be the most humiliating moment of my life.
But I wasn’t a roach or a mouse that could disappear quickly. The next best thing was to try to get to Mr. Simpson’s office.
“Lydia, there’s not too many people in the store now,” I said. “Mr. Simpson told me to check back in with him.”
But it was too late to make a getaway.
“Hey, Rosa,” Awilda called.
Abuela said, “She doesn’t like to be called Rosa anymore. She likes Evelyn, ¿verdad?”
“Excuse me, lady?”
“Awilda, this is my grandmother.”
“This is your grandmother?”
Dora and Migdalia came up, and I figured I’d get it over with. “Migdalia, Dora, this is my grandmother.”
Migdalia was working hard not to laugh. “Hola.”
Now she was the one who couldn’t stop looking at Abuela’s eyebrow lines.
Abuela didn’t seem to notice. “Hola,” she said, “and who is the other one?”
“I’m Dora.” She was checking out my grandmother’s hair and halter top.
“Evelyn, where is the hair-color section? I have to dye my canas.”
I pointed.
“I’ll get some nice hair bands for you, too.”
“I’ll show you where those are,” said Lydia. And they went off. That left me with Awilda, Dora, and Migdalia.
Awilda spoke first. She spelled out my name. “So what’s happening, E-v-e-l-y-n?”
“You could just say Evelyn, without spelling it,” Migdalia said.
“That’s okay,” I said. “I know Awilda has to show off that she can spell.”
“I don’t need to show off anything. Everybody knows I can spell.”
“Ha, ha, ha!” said Dora. Laughing as if Awilda was so funny.
“Let’s go to the pool at Jefferson Park,” Awilda said. “Then maybe my apartment. There’s nothing happening around here … except maybe a grandmother clown show …”
Thank God they left right after that. Abuela had purchas
ed her hair dye and wasn’t far behind them on her way up the street.
I went into Mr. Simpson’s office.
“Yes, Evelyn?”
“Mr. Simpson, could I please try working at the hardware counter?”
“The hardware counter?”
“Yeah, I think I’d like to learn how to make keys and cut window shades.”
Mr. Simpson looked as though he was thinking about it.
I didn’t tell him that the real reason I wanted to work behind the hardware counter was that then I wouldn’t have to talk to anybody. Not too many people came to the hardware counter, and when they did, they didn’t talk much. All they cared about was getting a key made or a shade cut. The hardware counter was a good place if you didn’t want to interact with people.
After two days with Abuela, a crazy morning with my parents, and an afternoon with Awilda, Dora, and Migdalia, I was ready for keys and shades that didn’t talk back.
The next day, Mr. Simpson taught me how to make keys.
“After you clamp both keys in the slots — the blank copy and the original — you follow the outline of the original.”
He pulled down his safety goggles, switched on the saw’s power, and began grinding along with the keys’ metal edges.
Halfway through, he said, “Now you try it.”
I put on my own smaller pair of goggles and finished making the key, doing exactly what Mr. Simpson had told me. It was pretty easy, and fun, too.
“Looks like you got it, Evelyn. If you need help, just let me know. I’ll be in my office working.”
I knew he was going back there and reading the newspaper. Mr. Simpson read the New York Times every day. Maybe that’s what he called work.
I swept up the metal shavings.
“Oye, Mami.”
I turned around. It was Wilfredo.
“How you be?” he said.
I flinched when I saw him. He had a black eye and a cut lip.
“Wilfredo, what happened to you?”
“Nothing … I just had a … confrontation, let’s say, with some … friends.”
Wilfredo could even make a black eye look good. The swollen skin around his eye couldn’t keep me from checking out their wild amber color, made even more beautiful by the flecks of gold inside their brown warmth.
“How come you don’t hang with my sister, Miggy, anymore, or come around the house?” he said.
“I’ve been busy. I worked at the bodega in July and now I’m here.”
Wilfredo was checking me out, but not in a good way. Then I realized — oh, God, my bangs. They must have gotten pushed up after wearing those goggles. And my blouse — I hadn’t tucked it in.
“Work must be agreeing with you, because you look good, Evelyn.”
Wilfredo said my name slowly, like he was tasting it and liked the flavor. I was surprised he knew I wanted to be called Evelyn. That meant Migdalia had been talking to her brother about me, even though she hardly talked to me.
“Miggy told me you were working here, but I didn’t know you’d be in hardware, Mami.”
He kept calling me Mami like I was his girlfriend or something. All I could say was “Uh-huh.”
“You be the perfect one to make this little key for me.” He held up a small key that looked like it was for a locker. It was on a little key chain that Wilfredo swung in front of me. If he was trying to hypnotize me, it was working. I reached up and took the key chain out of his hands. I put on my goggles, careful to get my bangs out from under them so I didn’t look like a doofus. But when I read the words engraved on the key, I pushed the goggles onto the top of my head, wadding my bangs up in them.
“What’s this key for?” I asked. “It says ‘Do Not Duplicate.’”
“Just make it up for me, mamacita.”
“I don’t think I can….”
A little cloud passed over Wilfredo’s expression. But then he brightened up.
“Come on, baby. It just be a key to where I used to work, and I gotta get my things out of there, that’s all.”
Wilfredo had dropped out of school his last year and now just mostly hung around, decorating the neighborhood with his presence. I didn’t remember him having any job.
“Why don’t you use that key in your hand?”
His eyes got narrow. But he still looked good.
“What a lot of questions you be asking me.”
“Let me just check with my boss about making your key.”
“Oh, come on. You so afraid you’ve got to ask permission to make a stupid little key?”
“No, I … just …”
And suddenly, as fast and bright as Wilfredo had been a minute ago, he got slow and dark. “Hey, just forget it, Mamita. I’ll get this done by someone else. I just thought you were cool. But I guess I be wrong.” He snatched the key out of my hand, looked over his shoulder, and turned to go. Then, like he’d had a second thought, he turned back, and looking to where the tools were, he hurried over and got a crowbar.
“Wrap this up for me, okay?”
I wrapped the crowbar, nervous that Wilfredo wouldn’t have money to pay for it, but he did. I handed the crowbar to him and watched him meet his boys outside the store.
Were they Viceroys or Dragons? I couldn’t tell from where I was standing. I came out from behind the counter to get a better look, but when I saw that Dolores had been watching the whole thing from her place at the paper goods counter, I scurried back and patted my bangs.
Two weeks with Abuela felt like a month as the snipes between her and Mami grew sharper and sillier. They argued about everything. One night when I came home, they were standing over a pot on the stove in the kitchen.
“I can tell you right now that Porfirio doesn’t like those kinds of beans,” Mami said. “He only likes red beans and black beans.”
“These beans don’t go with rice. These you eat alone. It’s bean soup. Like asopao,” Abuela countered.
“He hates any kind of sopa that isn’t asopao or Cuban black bean soup. Any other kind of soup is for when you feel sick,” Mami argued.
Next they bickered about a song.
Abuela had put on an old 78 record. It must’ve been one of the first records ever made. It was thicker than a Frisbee, but still played. Even the big wave in its vinyl didn’t prevent it from playing as it undulated around the turntable. The music was super corny. It was by a group called Pajarito y su Conjunto. The sound coming from it was so full of static, and so scratchy, that I could barely hear it. From what I could make out, it told a story about a massacre.
“Why do you have to play that song?” Mami said tightly. “Can’t we just have music about amor?”
“This is about love. Love of Puerto Rico.”
“It’s about bad memories,” said Mami.
Both were silent as the music played.
Heavy air had swelled between these two stubborn women. I muttered, “I gotta get … something from my room.”
My bedroom was still a mess with Abuela’s stuff all over. I had to move her pink and orange long-line padded bras off the dresser just to be able to open my top drawer, which was stuck. I jiggled the drawer as hard as I could, and pulled the whole thing out of the dresser, spilling everything onto the floor — panties with the days of the week printed on them, hair rollers, clips, bandanas, and the thing that was jamming up the works — a photo album filled with greeting cards and pictures.
Three Valentine’s Day cards and one Christmas card slipped out. The Valentines were puffy hearts. One was from a “Hernán,” another was from “René.” My abuela had lots of boyfriends.
There was also a Christmas card that my mother had sent Abuela in 1965. I couldn’t believe Abuela had saved a card for four years. She didn’t seem like the sentimental type. Keeping old Christmas cards was more like something Mami would do.
I looked through the whole album. There was a picture of Abuela as a young teen standing by my grandfather. Abuela looked better in the old days. Her clothes
did anyway. She was wearing a light-colored dress with a round collar and black buttons that went from her neck to the bottom of her hem. She had on little-girl socks and wedge sandals with a strap that went around her ankle. The outfit looked pretty cute, and except for the clothes, it could’ve been me standing next to my grandfather. As a teenager Abuela looked even more like me.
There was also a picture of Abuela with a little baby. Was that my mother? I turned to the album’s next page, where there was a picture of Abuela and three girls about her own age, taken at what looked like the top of a hill. The girls were watching the town below. Villea, was written on the back of the photo. It was the only picture taken in a real place, not in a photo studio.
But it was the pictures stuck way in the back of the album that really flipped me out. They were worn and might’ve been from newspaper articles. Two were pictures of policemen with rifles pointed, but you couldn’t tell what they were shooting at.
The third picture was so big it had to be folded to fit on the page. Or maybe it was folded over because it was so shocking. It was a photo of a sunny street in what looked like a small town in Puerto Rico. There were policemen shooting in that image, too, only you could tell what they were shooting at — a crowd of terrified people.
One thing was clear, though. Abuela’s past was a mystery.
Dios te bendiga, Dios te bendiga, hermana, Dios te bendiga, hermano.”
God bless you, God bless you, sister, God bless you, brother.
Three “God bless you’s,” and nobody had even sneezed yet.
We were at the First Spanish Methodist Church on 111th and Lexington, where you were blessed fifty times if you were blessed once. Whenever somebody got up to read a passage from the Bible, the congregation was blessed. And somebody was always yelling “hallelujah.” You never knew where a “hallelujah” would pop up. “Hallelujah” could come from behind you, in front of you, or even from right next to you.
Mami was too uptight to yell out “hallelujah,” though she did like to “bless” all over the place and happily stood up, then sat down the fifty thousand times the pastor asked us to.
Going to church was not my favorite thing. Same for Abuela. She never joined us. Neither did Pops. His excuse was having to work at the bodega.
Revolution of Evelyn Serrano (9780545469586) Page 3
