Almost a Woman : A Memoir (9780306821110) (9 page)

“I can't wait to tell Mami,” I said. “She needs good news.”

“I wish I could see her face when she hears.” Natalia stuffed some loose papers inside a notebook. She seemed about to hug me again but pulled her books into her chest. “I'm so happy for you,” she said, and hurried down the hall.

I didn't realize I was smiling until Lulu passed me in front of the science labs, grabbed my arm, and asked, “What's so funny?”

“Nothing,” I answered, suddenly serious, “nothing's funny.” Lulu had lovely eyes—round, green, full-lashed. She blinked, seemed about to say something, but stopped when a teacher looked out.

“You girls better move on, the bell rang,” she warned.

Lulu clicked her tongue at me, pushed me hard enough to let me know she could hurt me. “Wipe that shit-eating grin off your face,” she growled, and went off in the opposite direction.

By the time I reached homeroom, Mr. Gatti was writing a question on the board for a pop quiz. He smiled and winked as I sat down. The telltale scratching of the speaker in front of the classroom let us know an announcement was coming. We dove for our books, intending to ignore the announcement for a few minutes of study.

“Ahem,” the speaker started. “Girls and boys, ladies and gentlemen,” Mr. Barone's crusty voice competed with the shrill feedback that accompanied the messages. “Ahem. I'm pleased to announce that one of our seniors, Esmeralda Santiago, has been accepted to Performing Arts High School.”

I was embarrassed and pleased at the same time, didn't hear the rest of what he said. Mr. Gatti shook my hand. Andrea, the girl next to me, patted my shoulder. Someone applauded and the other students followed, except the too cool. I sat in awe for the rest of the period, aware that something good had at last happened to me, afraid that it was too good and that it would disappear before the day was over.

I ran home from school, burst in the door of our somber apartment, found Mami sorting papers on her bed.

“I got accepted, Mami. I got into Performing Arts.” She looked puzzled. “The special school, remember? In Manhattan.”

Her eyes widened. “
¡Ay, que bueno!
” she said, pulling me close for a hug. I held on to her. Mami's hugs were scarce these days, and I wanted to stay in her arms, to smell the flowery scent of her soap, so faint I buried my face into her neck to find it.

“What did Negi do?” Alicia appeared, and next to her, Edna and Raymond. As usual when one of us received Mami's attention, the others flocked to her, wondering how they could get some too.

Mami guided me to the other side of her papers. “Your sister was accepted into the school for
artistas
in Manhattan,” she told them, and I was proud because I heard the pride in her voice.

“You're an artist?” Hector asked from the other room.

“She's going to learn to be an artist, so that she can be rich and famous some day,” Mami said with a smile.

I panicked. Is that what I was doing? “It's just a high school, Mami. So I can go to college.”

“Didn't you say it was to study drama and dance?” she scowled.

“Well, yes . . .”

“Are you going to be on television with Ricky Ricardo?” Raymond asked.

“I don't know . . .”

“She's too ugly to be on TV,” Hector piped in from his corner.

Everyone laughed. Mami hugged me, kissed the top of my head. “I'm going to start dinner,” she said. Performing Arts was never mentioned in that apartment again.

A week later, Natalia wasn't in school. She was absent several days in a row, so I went to look for her. Though we lived a few doors apart, we'd never visited each other, and it was strange to stand in
an unfamiliar hallway knocking on a door I wasn't sure was hers. There was no answer. I knocked again, waited a while, pressed my ear to the door to listen for a radio or a television or a reason why no one heard my knock. All was silent, but the door across the hall opened a crack.

“Who's there?” asked a frail voice in Spanish, and when I turned, one eye and half a shrivelled old face peered under the chain stop.

“I'm looking for Natalia Pons. I think she lives here.”

“They moved.”

“But that's impossible. I just saw her, she didn't say anything.”

“They're gone, that's all I know. Nobody has moved in yet, but someone will.” She closed the door. Several bolts caught and the woman shuffled deep into her apartment.

I didn't believe her. Natalia hadn't told me she was moving. When I asked Mr. Barone why Natalia wasn't in school, he said the family had returned to Puerto Rico.

“But she never bean there,” I said.

He shrugged his shoulders. “Her mother is sick.”

Mami found out that Mrs. Pons had had an accident at work and that Natalia's uncle had come to take the girls back to Puerto Rico. It made no sense, but that's the way things happened in our neighborhood. People came and went with no warning, no farewells. My own family moved five times in one year, and there was never a goodbye or a backward glance. Each move was supposed to be for the better, and I wanted to believe that for Natalia, a move to Puerto Rico was good. But I also knew that Natalia's Spanish was really Spanglish, a mixture of English and Spanish that got the job done but was understood only by people who spoke both languages. What would happen to her in Puerto Rico? Would she still be able to study medicine? If she were accepted to the Bronx High School of Science, would she go?

I felt sorry for her, and for myself. The thing I wanted most, a return to Puerto Rico, came true for her. But her dream was the opposite of mine. She wanted to stay in New York, to be a success
American-style, surrounded by the things we thought would make us happy: the apartment on Park Avenue, the luxury car, the clothes and dinners out and nights at the theater. I curled into myself much the way Mami did, afraid to dream—no, afraid to speak my dreams aloud, because look at what had happened to Natalia's.

The candy store in front of JHS 33 was owned by an old couple. They lived behind the store, in a room on the other side of a door that was split in the middle, so that the owner's wife could talk to him as she sat at a round table before stacks of fabric scraps that she stitched into colorful quilts. The man's hands were mottled and swollen, his fingers round and unwrinkled, like hard sausages. Kids said that he was contagious, so we never touched him when he made change. He placed the coins inside a plastic bowl on the counter, and I picked mine up, threw them in my pocket, rubbed my hands against my skirt to get rid of his germs.

On the sidewalk in front of the candy store there was a metal bench for newspapers. The old man took the money for them through a small window in the storefront. Mornings, he sat by the window, watching the students go into school, vigilant of the rowdies who liked to run off with armloads of his newspapers.

If the gangs were acting up, I often ran into the store, browsed through a magazine, or took a long time to buy a candy bar—all the while peering over the counter to make sure the kids were gone. The man behind the counter knew that his store was a haven for those of us neither strong nor brave enough to stand up to the tough kids. If one of us came in and took a long time to choose a purchase, he leaned out the window over the newspaper bench and looked to the right and left along the sidewalk. With a gruff “What's taking so long?” he waved us over, growled the price of the item we held in hand, glowered if we put it back because we had no money. “Get out of here,” he snarled, but we knew he was letting us know the coast was clear.

After Mr. Barone made his announcement about my acceptance to Performing Arts, Lulu's insults and threats became more frequent. Now that Natalia was gone and I walked alone, I left as soon as the bell rang, aware that Lulu and her gang were too cool to run out as if someone had chased them. But one afternoon after I crossed the street, relieved that once more I'd avoided her, Lulu stepped from the door of one of the abandoned buildings down the block from the candy store. Behind her were LuzMari and Denise. They surrounded me and pushed me into the cold, dark hallway, which smelled of urine and rotting wood. They punched and kicked me, their shrill voices a chorus of obscenities, their fists sharp and accurate, beating into my chest, my belly, my lower back. I fought back with kicks, scratches, and punches like the ones I used against my sisters and brothers whenever we tussled, only harder. The girls dug their nails into my arms and face, the back of my neck. I flailed against the six fists that pounded my ribs, the six legs that kicked my shins and crotch, the three toothy mouths that snarled and shrieked and spit, the six eyes that glinted in the musty darkness with fierce green hatred. I defended myself but, outnumbered, came out the loser, clothes torn and dirty, arms scratched, legs bruised, chest and back throbbing. As we fought, they screamed in English and I responded in Spanish, the obscenities I wasn't allowed to speak at home spewing from me like acid.

They left me sprawled against a pile of damp cardboard, screeched what must have been more threats, although I wasn't sure. I didn't know what they wanted from me, what I could do to make them ignore me as they used to. I didn't linger in the dark, smelly hallway. Creatures scurried in the depths of the abandoned building, I could hear them. I dusted myself off, found my belongings. When I stepped into the street, the candy store man stood on the sidewalk. He beckoned me in, handed me a frosty Yoo-hoo. From the back, his wife appeared with a damp rag and, mumbling
in a language that was neither English nor Spanish, wiped the grime and tears from my face, her rheumy eyes searching for open wounds on the inside of my arms and on my cheeks.

“Those girls,” the old man said, and slapped his swollen hands against the counter. He didn't look at me as his wife wiped alcohol on my bruises, making the welts and scratches on my arms and legs sting and burn. He stared through the window at the street in front of the school, his shoulders slumped, a sad expression on his face.