Almost a Woman : A Memoir (9780306821110) (8 page)

“Thank you, Mami,” I gushed, hugging her.

“For special occasions,” she said, as she kissed the top of my head. “They'll look good with your new dress and shoes.”

Over the next week, Tata ladled out larger portions of our meals, as if to fatten me up for what was to come. Aware of the attention I was getting, my sisters and brothers followed me with big, puzzled eyes, searching for what other people saw that they couldn't.

I felt the same way they must have. So many adults fussing over me on the one hand, while on the other, Lulu and her flock stepped up their threats and taunts, as if to keep me from getting too confident. I sensed that getting into Performing Arts was important not only for me but also for Mr. Barone, who strutted around the school telling anyone who listened that I was going there, even though the audition was still days away, and I might not impress the school with my dramatic talent. And it was important for Mami, who boasted to the relatives that I was going to be an
artista,
which brought the same images to my mind as it did to Norma's: curvaceous women in skimpy costumes with feathers in their hair.

The day of the audition, Mami took me to Manhattan, the first time I'd been out of Brooklyn since our arrival in New York. The elevated train ran level with the upper windows of warehouses and apartment buildings a few feet from the tracks. I tried to peek at what lay beyond them, inside the apartments that seemed an arm's length away. But the train moved too fast for me to see more than blurred images of shapes that might or might not be people inside shadowy rooms.

The school was one block from the bright lights and commotion of Broadway. It was a cold, blustery day, and Mami and I walked arched inside our coats, our eyes teary from the frigid winds. The few blocks from the Times Square station to the school were packed with people oblivious to the cold, who admired huge billboards on the sides of buildings or stared into storefronts, most of which featured posters of women with their private parts covered by a black stripe narrow enough to show they were naked.

On the corner of 46th and Broadway, there was a Howard Johnson's, and we went inside to warm up. The tables along the windows were occupied by people who looked as if they hadn't moved from that spot in years. Mami and I sat at the counter, where we were waited on by a woman with frothy platinum hair, turquoise eye shadow, false eyelashes, hot pink lipstick, and a face as wrinkled as a raisin. She called us “honey” or “darling,” and once she had served our coffee and pastry, she came over several times to see if there was anything else we needed and to refill our cups.

I was nervous, but that didn't stop me from eating my pineapple danish and half of Mami's and drinking two cups of strong coffee with cream and lots of sugar.

“She eats, for such a skinny thing,” the waitress said to Mami, and she nodded and smiled as if she understood.

We walked the half block to the school, and as soon as I was called into the audition room, I was sorry there was so much food in my stomach. My innards churned and churled, and if the interview wasn't over soon, I might vomit in front of the three
ladies in whose hands lay my future as an
artista.
But I managed to get through the monologue and a pantomime and to walk out of the heavy red doors of the school before throwing up between two parked cars as Mami held my hair back and fussed, “Are you all right now? Are you okay?”

On the way home she asked what had happened in the audition, and I said, “Nothing. I answered some questions and did my monologue.”

I couldn't tell her that I'd been so nervous I'd forgotten everything learned from Mr. Barone, Mr. Gatti, and Mrs. Johnson. I raced through the monologue, toppled a chair, answered questions without understanding what I was asked. I wouldn't tell Mami how badly I'd done after she'd spent money we couldn't waste on a new outfit and shoes for me. I was ashamed to return to JHS 33 and tell Mr. Barone that I'd bungled the audition. Everyone would laugh at me for presuming I could get into Performing Arts, then fail to get in, in spite of all the help I'd been given. I imagined myself in school with Lulu and Violeta, LuzMari and Denise, who would never let me forget I thought I was too good for them. Mornings, while I took the bus to Eli Whitney, Natalia would be on the train to the Bronx High School of Science. I'd have nothing to talk to her about, because she'd be busy preparing for college, while I'd be sewing underwear in a factory alongside my mother.

As Mami and I rode back, the train charged out of the tunnels, clattered over the Williamsburg Bridge toward Brooklyn. The skyline of Manhattan receded like an enormous wall between us and the rest of the United States. My face away from Mami, I cried. At first my tears came from the humiliation of what I was sure was a terrible audition. But as we neared our stop in Brooklyn, I cried because the weeks of anxious preparation for the audition had left me longing for a life I was now certain I'd never get.

As Mami's belly grew larger, she had trouble moving around because her legs and back hurt. She quit her job, and I again accompanied her to the welfare office.

“I need assistance until the baby is born and his father is out of the hospital,” she had me translate.

“And how long have you and Mr. Cortez been married?” the social worker asked.

“We're not married,” Mami said. “We've lived together for the past ten months.”

The social worker pressed her lips together. “Does your first husband provide child support?”

“No.”

“How long since you've been divorced?”

“Tell her,” Mami said, “that your father and I weren't married.”

The social worker gripped her pen, and her slanted, left-handed writing crawled across lined paper like rows of barbed wire.

“Then the seven older children are also illegitimate,” she said, and Mami blushed, although I'd not yet translated.

“Their father has recognized them all,” she had me interpret, pulling our birth certificates from her purse.

“But they're still illegitimate,” the social worker insisted, ignoring the documents.

“What does that have to do with it?” Mami asked in Spanish, and I translated, burning with shame because her voice rose and I could tell she was about to make a scene.

The social worker didn't respond, kept on writing on her clipboard. “That's all,” she finally said. “We'll let you know.”

When we came home, I looked it up.
Illegitimate
meant born of parents who were not married. But the way the social worker's lips puckered,
illegitimate
sounded much worse. It had a synonym,
bastard
, which I'd heard used as an insult. Without my knowing it, the social worker had offended me and Mami. I wished I'd noticed, so that I could have said something. But what was there to say? She was right. We were illegitimate. I worried then that Mami wouldn't get the help we needed from welfare because she and Papi were never married, but a few days later, the help came through.

The word, however, stayed in my conscience a long time.

A couple of months after his son was born, Francisco died. Mami's usually lively and curious eyes dulled, looked inward, where we couldn't reach her with hugs and kisses. On her dresser, she lit candles that burned day and night, their heat like Francisco's spirit hovering in watchful anticipation of whether, and how, and for how long we would mourn him.

I couldn't cry my disappointment that our family had fallen apart again. Papi had refused to follow Mami to New York, unwilling to help us cope with a cold, inhospitable city. Francisco had left us as quickly as he had come, taking with him the commitment he had made to love Mami forever, to be the man in our house, to make us a complete family with a mother, a father, and children. Every time I passed the altar, I stopped to look at the orange flames floating over melted wax. I placed my hand over them and felt the heat, the solid warmth like an embrace, a promise.

I tried to imagine Papi's life. He'd moved, and I wondered
what his new house was like. Was it in the country or in a town? Was his wife prettier than Mami? Was she as good a cook? Did her daughters sit near him as he read a poem he'd written, as I used to do? I wrote him subdued letters and didn't dare ask about his life, afraid he'd write about how happy he was.

If Papi had come with us, Mami would never have fallen in love with Francisco, he wouldn't have died, and we wouldn't be on welfare again. Yes, Mami and Papi fought, but they always made up. Just like me when I fought with my sisters and brothers; eventually, we made up and went on as before. If we could do it, why couldn't they?

I resented the men who stood on street corners, or who sat on stoops with their elbows on their knees, their hands around a can of beer or curled around a cigarette smoldering between their legs. They might be somebody's father, but they had nothing better to do than to stare at young girls and women passing by and mumble promises under their breath.

One morning, Mr. Barone bounded over as I entered the school. “Isn't it wonderful? Congratulations!”

My expression must have told him I had no idea what he was saying, so he stopped, caught his breath, and spoke slowly. “A letter came. You were accepted to Performing Arts.”

“Oh my God!” I felt light enough to fly. Mr. Barone led me into the office, where the secretary, the other guidance counselors, and the principal shook my hand. “I can't believe it,” I repeated over and over, “It can't be true.”

“You worked hard,” Mr. Barone said. “You deserve it.”

On my way to homeroom, I ran into Natalia. “Guess what? I was accepted!”

She screeched, dropped her books, hugged me. “Oh, my God! I'm so proud of you!” She pulled away quickly, embarrassed at her enthusiasm. I bent down to help her collect her books.