Revolution of Evelyn Serrano (9780545469586)

by Manzano, Sonia

  The best, or worst, part of the movie was when some rebels were stuck behind a wall, and refused to come out even when the French police warned them that they were going to bomb the building. Even though there was a kid about Angel’s age with them.

  “Pobre gente, poor people,” said Mami when the bomb exploded.

  When the lights came up, we all kind of applauded and began to gather our stuff to go home. I noticed lots of people were crying and looking to each other for some kind of explanation. They said stuff like “I can’t believe that little kid died stuck behind that wall.” The movie even upset Angel. “That kid was about as old as me, right?”

  Migdalia came over. “Did you see all those women fighting? They were as tough as the men, right?”

  “Yeah,” I answered. The women in the movie were fighting right beside the men, and even though they were wearing those Arabian-type outfits that covered their faces, they were really equal. But why did the little kid have to die? As I thought about all this, I caught the guy in the wheelchair being helped with his jacket by his friend.

  “Who is he?” I asked Migdalia.

  “He got shot in his spine in a gang fight,” she said. “That’s why he’s in a chair. He can never walk again.”

  “Who shot him?”

  She looked at the paralyzed guy’s friend wheeling him toward the door and down the stairs.

  “That guy helping him,” said Migdalia.

  “The guy helping him?”

  “Yep.”

  My mother sucked in her breath saying, “Was he in the other gang?”

  “Yes, that’s what Wilfredo said.”

  “Qué horrible,” said Abuela.

  That’s when I felt an unexpected painful lump in my throat. I started to struggle into my coat. Migdalia tapped me on my shoulder.

  “Huh?”

  “You’re putting your coat on inside out.”

  “Oh …” I smiled and tried putting it on properly. It was embarrassing to be caught in a walking dream state, but I couldn’t help it. The movie and the story of that guy in the wheelchair and his ex-enemy-now-friend put me in a funky frame of mind. I didn’t want to talk to anybody. I needed to go home. I went out the door, ahead of Abuela and Mami. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. The cold wind was whipping, but I leaned right into it hoping it would clear my head. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. There were many kinds of fights. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Little fights that happened in one neighborhood, and great big fat ones out there in the wider world. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Sometimes enemies had to get together to fight the bigger bad guy. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. I got home, went to my room, and got into bed. Mami came in ten minutes later.

  “¿Mija?”

  “I’m sleeping,” I said.

  She left me alone.

  I turned over and faced the wall and was surprised that knowing there was a bigger fight out there to deal with didn’t make me feel bad — it made me feel free. I pulled the covers over my head and fell into a heavy, muddy sleep.

  The next morning I woke up feeling great. No wonder, it was late. I had slept until almost one in the afternoon.

  “Mami?”

  No answer. Jumping out of bed and running through the apartment, I realized I was alone. I got dressed and flew to the bodega.

  “Where is Mami?” I asked Pops.

  “She’s at the church,” he said. “What’s going on over there? Your mother’s there now. I don’t understand. First she goes there to watch you and now she go there alone. Who is taking care of who?”

  “We’re taking care of each other.”

  I whirled around, went back out before he could say another word, and headed toward the church. I had a feeling something was going on over there that I didn’t want to miss. Not like the mayor or another movie star showing up — but something more important, and I was right. Wilfredo and some Young Lords and three guys in sweatshirts and hoods were crowded around the door. There was a big bundle by their feet.

  “Aw … man, you don’t have to check us for weapons or drugs,” one of them growled.

  “Yeah, we don’t want to come in,” said the second guy.

  “Stay back, Evelyn,” said Wilfredo.

  I didn’t like the way he told me to get out of the way. I know he was just doing it because I was a girl and he wanted to protect me but I still didn’t like it. Maybe I couldn’t carry a bomb in my dress like those girls in The Battle of Algiers did, but I sure didn’t have to stand back from some tough guys in my own neighborhood, so I stood my ground.

  “We just want to make, a whatchamacallit … a donation,” said one of the guys.

  Wilfredo and the Young Lords talked quietly together, then agreed to open the door a bit wider. Just inside were Mami, Abuela, and Angel. Then, the three hooded guys outside pushed the bundled package at their feet over the threshold.

  “Good luck, man,” said the one who seemed to be their leader, and they walked away.

  Wilfredo gave me a look and waved me in without trying to search me.

  “You better search me,” I said.

  “What? You just a little kid.”

  I stared him down. It was the principle of the thing.

  “All right. All right.” He searched me and let me in.

  Inside they opened the package. It was a TV set.

  “Hey, we could use this!” said a Young Lord.

  “Check it out,” said Angel. “A TV set. Now we can watch that cool new TV show Sesame Street.”

  I saw Wilfredo examine the set a little closer, gasp, then look at me seriously. I leaned down and took a better look at the set myself. It was the TV set from our bodega!

  “I knew you didn’t have anything to do with that robbery,” I whispered to Wilfredo.

  “I didn’t! It was them guys.”

  I pulled on my mother’s arm and whispered, “See, Mami. Some other people stole our TV, not Wilfredo!”

  Mami looked embarrassed. “I’m sorry I accused you, Wilfredo.”

  “That’s okay,” he said quietly. “I guess you want us to take it back to the bodega.”

  Mami stared at the TV for a moment before saying, “The TV can stay here.”

  “Mami?”

  “¿Qué se va a hacer?” She shrugged. “What are you going to do? Come on, let’s help with the clothes,” she said.

  We went downstairs and started poring through the clothes.

  “¡Mira!” Abuela held up a huge pink bra. “Who gave this?”

  Mami could barely suppress a laugh.

  “I think I know who donated that,” I said, riding on the tiny little wave of goodwill. “La señora Maldonado on 115th Street. She loves pink.”

  “You better go find her and tell her to cover her body before somebody calls the police.”

  Mami couldn’t help laughing at that.

  “Panties, over there,” she said, throwing them over to Abuela.

  “Calzoncillos, over here,” I shouted just in time to catch a pair of men’s underwear being hurled.

  “Good catch, mija,” said Abuela.

  “Tírame las enaguas,” giggled Mami. “Toss me the underwear.”

  Abuela found an old-fashioned full slip as big as a circus tent and tossed it over to Mami. It flew through the air. Mami caught it right before it landed on her head, and folded it with a few flicks of her wrist. She laid it down with the other underwear with a flourish. Abuela and I applauded her. And we all laughed.

  I didn’t want the night to end.

  By New Year’s Eve 1969, we had occupied the church for four days. The atmosphere was electric with excitement, and I almost felt sorry for all the police who had to stand around outside in the cold and just guess at all the fun we were having inside.

  The whole neighborhood showed up for Pepe y Flora, folkloric singers who were famous in Puerto Rico. They performed in Spanish, but I got the story of the Three K
ings and how their visit to baby Jesus was celebrated every year on Three Kings Day, January 6. They told us this was how Christmas was celebrated in most Latin countries and how it used to be celebrated in Puerto Rico, before we became Americanized, and how now they had Santa Claus over there, like we had Santa Claus over here.

  “How could Santa Claus be in Puerto Rico with all his heavy clothes and stuff? Isn’t it hot over there in Puerto Rico?” asked Angel, chewing on a sandwich.

  “Exactly,” I said.

  “Huh?”

  “Santa Claus is not really part of our culture, get it?”

  But Barrio people still did some old-time Puerto Rican stuff around the holidays, even my tiny family.

  Mami had made the usual pernil and arroz con gandules. She even let us have a few of her precious pasteles. Then Chucho, who helped Papi out in the bodega sometimes, made his obligatory visit while aching to get it over with so he could be with his own family. My family went through the motions of having a good time for two reasons — they never felt they had enough money to celebrate Christmas and they were just plain tired.

  Abuela perked things up by waltzing in wearing a red pantsuit with ruffles on both the pants and sleeves cuffs! She kissed Mami lightly on the cheek before sitting down to watch Miracle on 34th Street with Pops and me while Mami fussed around in the kitchen. In the middle of the movie, we heard a guitar in the hallway.

  “I have a surprise for you,” said Abuela, eyes twinkling. She answered the door, and there was don Juan with his guitar and one of his friends playing a cuatro. And like lots of parranderos do at Christmas, they busted in singing:

  “Saludos, saludos

  Vengo a saludar …”

  Mami had enjoyed the music but I could see her peeking over at the food, trying to figure out if we had enough to share. Pops caught her looking and with an embarrassed expression offered the singers food after they had serenaded us with one song. When they went on to sing another song, don Juan pulled out a güiro but realized he had no scraper to play the gourd with.

  “No hay problema,” said Abuela. “We’ll just use a fork.” And she scraped on that gourd like a maniac as she sang the next aguinaldo with them. It was fun.

  I couldn’t help notice the stiff smile on Mami’s face and the forced friendliness in my stepfather’s statements. Abuela, Pops, and I ate between songs. Mami nibbled at the stove. Chucho declined dinner, claiming to have food waiting for him at home, but I think he was just being a good guest by not eating.

  When there was nothing else to do, Abuela and the parranderos left to sing at some other place where people really wanted to have fun. My parents were glad to see everybody go so they could get some sleep.

  The next morning, we exchanged the usual presents of scarves, hats, and gloves from La Marqueta, and then my parents went to the bodega. Just for one half of the day, they had said; after all, it was Christmas.

  And now, a week later on New Year’s Eve, I looked at my mother listening to Pepe y Flora sing, and it was like seeing a different person. She was excited but there was something else — she kept looking over her shoulder expectantly. At a certain point, she asked Pepe y Flora if they could sing a particular song. I looked to Abuela to see if she had any idea what was up, but she revealed nothing. At last Mami said:

  “Can you sing ‘¿Si me dan pasteles’?”

  “Sí, como no,” said the singers, and they launched into the silliest song ever.

  “Si me dan pasteles

  Denme los calientes

  Los pasteles fríos

  Empachan la gente.”

  In a nutshell:

  If you bring pasteles

  Make sure they are hot

  ’Cause if I eat them cold

  My stomach will be shot.

  Right at the end, like it had been all planned, Pops entered with a small cooler full of frozen pasteles!

  “I have a surprise for everybody….” said Mami with the littlest-girl look on her face you can ever imagine. “Pasteles for everyone! These are still frozen. Let’s go boil them and all eat them hot so we don’t get a stomachache!”

  I couldn’t believe it, and neither could Pops, though he was going along with her. He looked so confused, it made me laugh.

  “¡Esta mujer se ha vuelto loca!” he said, sounding like Ricky Ricardo yelling about how crazy his wife, Lucy, was. Dropping the pasteles off, he scooted out the door. “I gotta get back!”

  But she didn’t look crazy to me. She looked great.

  Things changed after New Year’s. We sensed the takeover was going to come to an end no matter what the Young Lords said. But it was all right because we were ready and strong enough to do whatever came next. There was such a gush of love spilling out all over the place, it was powerful enough to turn bad news good.

  On the third of January, I rushed into the church from school and found out that Angel had been diagnosed with tuberculosis.

  “I got it! I got it!” said Angel.

  “It’s a bad thing, you dope. You have to go to the hospital.”

  “Yeah, I know, but you should see how nice my father is to me now. Last night he came to my corner of the room and started crying all over me.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah, with snots and everything!”

  I saw what Angel meant when his father came to the church to thank the Young Lords. With his hat in his hand and wearing two pairs of pants and two sweatshirts, he stumbled through some gracias to the Young Lords for setting up the health-care service. Angel set himself up as a translator.

  “My father says, ‘Thank you for saving my son’s life.’”

  What a dope. Young Lords understood Spanish. They just couldn’t speak it too well. When señor Santiago took Angel out, he bundled him up like he was a baby, even pulling Angel’s hat down around his ears as far as it could go.

  “Hey, Angel, you look like Mickey Mouse in The Sorcerer’s Apprentice on Disney.”

  “I know, cool, right?”

  When his father put his hand on his shoulder, Angel looked so happy I almost wished I had gotten tuberculosis.

  On January 4, a story came out in the paper that said that the Young Lords had “vowed” to stay in the church. Still, Mami and Abuela must’ve felt they should get their own personal problem fixed quickly, because our time in the “Enchanted Cottage” was running out.

  I was sitting in on Abuela’s political education class about the Grito de Lares. We were going further back in history now. Much further back than the Ponce Massacre. Good. I hoped I didn’t have any relatives involved in that. But then again, who knew? Maybe I did. Maybe then my ancestors were on the side of the people who wanted Puerto Rico to be independent from Spain. Anything could happen in families. Look how different Mami, Abuela, and I were, and we lived in the same era.

  “The Grito de Lares happened in 1868 when Puerto Rico still belonged to Spain,” Abuela was saying. “Ramón Emeterio Betances was the father of the Puerto Rican independence movement. The revolt was unsuccessful but …”

  I couldn’t help daydreaming as I was listening, and I kind of explained what she was saying to myself, in my head.

  There’s an island — Puerto Rico — that belonged to Spain, and people from all over the world go there and do whatever, and some stay and get married and don’t go back to wherever they came from for so long, they actually forget where they came from, and decide to come from where they are — Puerto Rico. They like this idea because now they don’t have to say things like: My father was French and my mother was a Spaniard and I was born in Puerto Rico and my son married a Taino Indian, whose mother was a slave from Africa, blah, blah, blah, blah … They can just say, I’m Puerto Rican. Simple.

  I was wondering if that was the same idea as when us kids wanted to call ourselves Nuyoricans so we wouldn’t have to go through the whole speech of, well I was born here but my parents are from Puerto Rico so I’m really Puerto Rican but born in New York, blah, blah, blah, blah, ever
y time somebody asked us what we were.

  When I looked around, I saw Mami standing in the back of the room.

  Abuela was finishing saying that tomorrow she would speak about the Ponce Massacre. As everyone gathered themselves, Mami walked up to Abuela. I followed.

  “Mamá, I want to give you this.” Mami pushed some folded-up photos into Abuela’s hands. I knew it was photos of the police shooting into the crowd of people at the Ponce Massacre.

  “Mamá, you could maybe use these when you teach your class….”

  And for once in her life, Abuela was quiet.

  “Pues, qué se va a hacer — what are you going to do?” they both said at exactly the same time. That made them giggle.

  “I mean …” and when they said that at the same time again, they both laughed out loud. “You go first, mija,” said Abuela.

  “I just was going to say that it doesn’t matter if Papá was one of the shooters in the picture.”

  Abuela stood very still and quiet.

  “Yes … well, I’m going back to the store,” said Mami.

  Abuela blurted out, “God bless you. Dios te bendiga.”

  See what I mean about “love”? After Mami and Abuela began acting like a loving mother and daughter, I saw more love everywhere. Even Wilfredo fell in love.

  I walked in one day and saw him holding this beautiful black girl’s hand. She looked familiar but I couldn’t place her until she turned around and smiled at me. It was Dolores from the five-and-dime store. The reason I didn’t recognize her at first was that she was wearing her hair in an Afro!