Almost a Woman : A Memoir (9780306821110) (11 page)

I was neither black nor white; I was
trigueña,
wheat-colored. I had “good” hair, and my features were neither African nor European but a combination of both. In Puerto Rican schools I had not stood out because of the color of my skin or my features. I never had either the darkest or the lightest skin in a room. But when we lived in the city, I was teased for being a
jíbara
from the country. When in the country, my city experience made me suspicious to others.

At junior high schools 49 and 33 in Brooklyn, I was a recently arrived Puerto Rican in a school where most students were Puerto Rican, Italian, or black. I stood apart with the other recent arrivals because of my struggle to speak English. The few Americans in our schools, who were all white-skinned, lived and moved in their own neighborhoods and groups, closed to the rest of us.

When Mami accused me of wanting to go to a school for
blanquitos,
she guessed that most of the people at Performing Arts would be white and, therefore, richer than we were. In Puerto Rico, as in the United States, whiteness meant economic advantage, and when Mami talked about
los blanquitos,
she referred to people of superior social status more than to skin color.

The implication that I was reaching higher than I ought to by going to Performing Arts stung, but I wasn't about to defend myself to Mami. Any response to her assessment of me and what I wanted to do with my life would have confirmed her conclusions that I'd changed since we came to the United States. I had become too independent, she claimed, too bent on my own way, too demanding. All the attention around my application to Performing Arts High School had gone to my head. I had become ambitious and hard to please, always wanting more than I had or was entitled to.

She was right. I had changed. Some nights I lay in bed next to my sister wondering if she was changing too, if the Delsa in Brooklyn was different from the Delsa in Puerto Rico. Other than her growing ease with English, Delsa was the same high-strung, responsible, hardworking girl she'd always been.
She
wasn't applying to a high school in Manhattan. She was going to Eli Whitney to study nursing, a real profession that would bring her a good salary and steady employment. If I thought about it, none of my sisters or brothers seemed to feel the dissatisfaction with their lives that I felt.

I wanted a different life from the one I had. I wanted my own bed in my own room. I wanted to be able to take a bath without having to shoo the whole family out of the kitchen. I wanted books without a date due. I wanted pretty clothes that I chose for myself. I wanted to wear makeup and do my hair and teeter on high heels. I wanted my own radio so that I could listen to La Lupe on the Spanish station or Cousin Brucie's Top 40 countdown on the American one. I wanted to be able to buy a Pepsi or a Baby Ruth any time I craved one. In Puerto Rico I hadn't wanted any of those things. In Puerto Rico, I didn't know they were within my reach. But in Brooklyn every day was filled with want, even though Mami made sure we had everything we needed. Yes, I had changed. And it wasn't for the better. Every time Mami said I had changed, it was because I'd done something wrong. I defied her, or was disrespectful, or didn't like the same things as before. When she
said I had changed, she meant I was becoming Americanized, that I thought I deserved more and was better than everyone else, better than her. She looked at me resentfully, as if I had betrayed her, as if I could help who I was becoming, as if I knew.

In the summer of 1963 we moved again, to an apartment above a drugstore on the third story of a building on busy Pitkin Avenue. Delsa and I shared a room that faced the street and, across the way, a Woolworth's and a Thom McAnn shoe store.

Unlike other places we'd lived in Brooklyn, no children played on Pitkin Avenue after school. It was a commercial block with stores crammed against each other, windows plastered with SALE signs and seasonal decorations displayed year after year by owners who watched their Puerto Rican and black customers with mistrust and resentment. Once the stores closed, the street fell asleep; traffic slowed; the buses that ran up and down Pitkin Avenue and Rockaway Boulevard chugged along, slow and easy, as if conserving energy for the frantic days.

Our welfare worker told Mami she was eligible for survivor benefits. Since Mami and Francisco hadn't been married, there was a lot of paperwork that I had to interpret and fill out. I was now better at telling Mami's story, at conveying her frustration at being
leyof
when she wanted to work, but it was a challenge to calm my nerves so that my English wouldn't flee the minute I had to speak. Many visits and interviews later, our claim was approved. Once confirmed, however, welfare reduced Mami's AFDC allotment, so the Social Security didn't help much.

After weeks of looking, Mami found a job in Manhattan. The sadness didn't leave her when she went to work. Her grief was like
a transparent box that allowed her to sew bras in the factory, to talk to us, to cook and shop, but held her in, untouchable. Mornings, her muffled movements about the apartment woke me as she got ready for work. She woke up early, showered and put on a simple black shift or a black blouse and skirt. She brushed her black hair into a tight bun, scrubbed her face, powdered her nose and forehead. She never ate breakfast, not so much as a cup of coffee. She tiptoed down the wooden stairs, which creaked in spite of her efforts.

I stuck my head out of the window. The sidewalks were empty, the darkness broken by rings of light under the street lamps. Mami looked left, then right, before stepping onto the street. She stiffened her back, raised her chin, pulled her purse closer to her side, and walked to the corner, where she turned right toward the train station. Her shadowy figure pushed through the darkness without a backward or sideways glance, gaze fixed on a point somewhere in front of her. She looked so sad and alone that I worried she'd disappear into the city and never come back. As she turned the corner, her steps faded into the sounds of Brooklyn. I tried to still the fear that made my head pound with a thousand frightening scenarios. She constantly warned us of all the somethings that could happen to us. But what if
algo
happened to her? Was she as afraid for herself as she was for us?

Over the jagged horizon, the sun punctured through thin, wispy clouds that turned pink, then melted into yellow. A soft roar accompanied the dawn, a low growl that grew louder as the city awoke. Within minutes, people hurried up and down the street, across the avenues, into and out of stores, their staccato steps muted by the first horns, distant sirens, muffled radios.

School wouldn't start for weeks. The days dragged long and humid, each like the other except for weekends, when Mami was home and we did errands or visited relatives.

The highlight of the week was
la copra
, the Saturday grocery shopping. When we were on welfare,
la compra
took under an hour and was dragged home in one shopping cart filled with
the staples of our diet: huge sacks of white rice, beans, cans of tomato sauce, onions, garlic, green peppers, fresh oregano, and
recao
for the
sofrito.
Mami also bought a couple of cans of Bustelo, the only Puerto Rican–style coffee we could find in New York, not as nutty-sweet as what we could get on the island; a five-pound bag of sugar; and evaporated or powdered milk for when there was no money to buy it fresh.

But when Mami worked, my sisters and brothers and I argued about who'd help her with
la compra,
because there would be cornflakes and fresh milk, Franco-American spaghetti, Chef Boyardee ravioli, and other canned American food. When Mami worked, there was Nestle Quick,
queso del país
with guava paste, pork chops, hard salami on Ritz crackers, Cheez Whiz on Export sodas, beef stew with chunks of pumpkin and
yautías,
maybe a
pernil.
Mami was proud that even when things were bad, we never went hungry. “There's always bread and milk in the house,” she said, “and there's always a cup of rice and a handful of beans.”

But we didn't want rice and beans, milk and bread. We wanted Ring Dings and Yodels, pizza, Coca-Cola, Frosted Flakes, Jell-o, foods we never had in Puerto Rico and only got in Brooklyn when there was enough money or when the relatives gave us change for being well behaved during their visits. When we were on welfare, we talked about what we'd buy when we grew up and had jobs and could spend our money any way we liked.

“I'm going to buy the factory where they make Sno-Balls,” Alicia said, and we tongued our lips, anticipating the sweet, coconutty, chocolatey, creamy-centered cakes sold in pairs that looked like flaky breasts under cellophane.

“I'll open a candy store so that I can eat Baby Ruths and Almond Joys any time I like,” Raymond countered, and we agreed that a candy store with a variety of sweets was much better than a whole factory with only one kind.

When Mami worked and we helped her with
la compra,
we zigzagged up and down the market aisles looking for what new and tasty confection we might persuade her to buy. At home we
savored every morsel, licked our fingers to get the last taste of sweet from the tips, drained the bottle of soda until there was no more of the fizzy, tickly liquid, until the hard, smooth glass pressed firmly against our tongues.

Now that Tata lived with us again, Tío Chico found a room in the Bowery. We'd heard that's where bums lived, but Mami insisted Tio Chico wasn't a bum. “He drinks too much sometimes,” she said, “but he works and takes care of himself.”

No, Tío Chico didn't smell like the bums we passed on the side streets branching from Pitkin Avenue. He was clean, even if his clothes were rumpled, the collars of his shirts frayed, the soles of his shoes worn. He shaved at least every other day. When he didn't, black and white stubble grew around and inside the deep creases that ran from his nostrils to the corners of his lips. He had brown eyes like Tata's and a well-formed nose, long but not grotesque, well shaped. And he had beautiful, long-fingered, graceful hands.

Once he touched my left breast with those long fingers, gripped the nipple and pinched it. He'd been watching me comb my hair, and when Tata called him to the kitchen, I didn't move when he went past me, and he reached across and squeezed my breast. “Don't tell anyone,” he muttered into my ear. On the way back, he dropped a dollar in front of me.

I could have told Mami what he'd done, could have used the dollar as evidence, but I didn't. I spent it on an ice cream sundae and told myself he was drunk. From then on, I avoided him whenever he came around, disappeared into another room, hid in the bathroom, or sat as far away from him as possible when he came to visit. His caramel, red-streaked eyes followed me when I walked around the apartment. I avoided his gaze, aware that we shared a shameful secret, weighing whether the blame should fall heavier on him who touched me, or on me who let him do it.