Authors: Rosie Perez
Lydia had been a singer in Puerto Rico until her husband, ten years her senior, made her quit, crushed all her dreams, and moved her to New York City in the fifties. Although she was madly in love with her husband, she feared him. He used to beat the shit out of her because of her mouth. Her tongue was cutting—sharp and deadly. She would never back down from a confrontation. And since she was mentally ill, she never stopped mouthing off, so he never stopped beating her.
Lydia felt trapped as a poor housewife and young mother of five. Her spirit was way too free and wild for that kind of life. She hated her husband’s control over her, but was torn between feelings of resentment and intense love, a powerful combination, especially for someone suffering from an undiagnosed psychological disorder. So she did what most paranoid schizophrenics would do with that kind of anger: beat the shit out of her kids. (I know—horrible, but sadly all too true.)
So, as Ismael strolled down Wallabout Street, Lydia’s older sister stuck her head out the window, then quickly tucked it back inside, screaming with glee. While she was fretting about fixing her makeup, Lydia quietly went over to the window to see him for herself.
Just at that moment, my father looked up and took in Lydia’s mesmerizing beauty—that’s how
he
described it to me anyway—and stopped dead in his tracks. Lydia gave him one of her infamous smirks and casually popped her head back inside. With a nonchalant shrug of her shoulders, she turned to her sister and said, “He’s all right looking—a little ugly.
Ay, fo
, the garbage is so stinky. I’m going to take it out for you, Minguita. I’ll be right back.”
She grabbed her coat and quickly ran down the staircase. Ismael ran up just as fast. When she saw him come into view, she slowed down to a sultry strut, step by step.
“When I saw your mother, I almost had a heart attack right there on the stairs,” my father told me years later. “I had to grab my heart. I couldn’t breathe.” (I know, Puerto Ricans, melodrama—gotta love it.)
They met halfway on the staircase, stopped, and just stared at each other without saying a word.
“You are the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen in my life. Would you do me the honor and join me for a cup of coffee?” he said, with a tip of his hat and a flirtatious smile.
She took his arm. Just like that, without a word to anyone, they
took off. I don’t know what my Tia Ana or Lydia’s sister, the abandoned date, thought happened, but I know her sister was pissed when she eventually figured shit out.
Both of my parents were very sexual, so I’m sure they didn’t waste any time and probably had sex right away. That’s so embarrassing to say, on one level, and incredibly cool on another. It had to be pure lust, with a touch of whimsical romance—at least for my father it was like that. (With that scene on the staircase? Come on!)
I know it’s weird, but I’ve always wondered how it went down. Where did they go to do it? How did the room look? Was the bedding nice? Was it cold inside or was the radiator steaming heat? I imagine that everything was white—the walls, the sheets, and the curtains billowing from the slight crack of the window to let some air in because everything was crazy. (I was going to say “hot and heavy” but didn’t want you to think I’m a pervert.)
What about her, what about my mother? Was it romantic, or just an escape for her, or both? What was she wearing? My father never told me that. I even wonder if she had nice underwear on. I’m such a Virgo that I wonder if she looked put together, if she’d planned a nice bra-and-panties combination.
More important, I always wondered how she felt. Was she scared, even just a bit? I wonder if she thought of her husband as she and Ismael kissed, if she thought of her five kids as she started to undress. Did she give a shit about the consequences? Did she think,
What the hell am I doing?
Probably not. With the whole mental thing, and her self-centeredness, I’m sure she was just living in the moment. She sure didn’t give two shits about her sister whose date she stole.
Or perhaps she was just so disappointed in her life that she saw in Ismael a shot at escape—maybe for a moment, or maybe permanently. And she took it, regardless of who got hurt along the way. I do know this about my mother: she always wanted more
than she had. And not just with money, but with life. It’s kind of sad, it really is.
• • •
Within months of their meeting, she got pregnant with me, left her husband when she started to show, took her five kids, and moved into an apartment in Bushwick, Brooklyn, that my father set up for her. He then left his
wife
and moved in with them—real classy move on both parts, right? He took her on hook, line, and sinker. It was a scandal of large proportions.
It was great the first few months. My half-siblings loved my father. He was a captain’s chef on the ships and could cook his ass off; he helped with the cleaning and played and talked with them like they mattered. They thought they had a new beginning, had seen the light at the end of the tunnel. Then the shit hit the fan. As the months passed and my mother’s pregnancy progressed, Ismael slowly started to see her mental malady. He didn’t understand at first—the unprovoked violent outbursts, the combativeness that would drag on for hours. He was at a loss. He tried to please her, but nothing worked. By the eighth month of her pregnancy, she was going at him full tilt—rages, paranoia. The arguing was constant, and the suspicion was at an all-time high. About that, I can’t blame my mother. With his reputation as a womanizer, and considering the way they started off, well, it’s understandable that anyone, even a crazy person, would assume the worst.
What’s sad, and ironic, is that my father told me he was being faithful. Lydia was his world, and he loved her children. But Mom couldn’t buy it. That paranoia was too strong.
One day he came home and she started in.
“Where the fuck was you? Out fucking some fucking slut?” my mother screamed. She had a mouth like a truck driver. (Explains a lot, right?)
He pleaded and pleaded until he finally snapped and started to scream back, told her he was sick of her craziness, that he was leaving her. So, of course, she got her pistol. (Yes, Mom carried a pistol.)
“You gonna leave me? Me? You motherfucker!” she yelled.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
She started shooting. My father jumped out the window, climbed down the fire escape—while she was still shooting—and ran for his life. He never went back.
This was my father’s recollection of events.
Now, in fairness to Mom, her version of this story is that they’d had an argument over his cheating—at least they agreed on that—and that he started screaming, she started screaming back, and then he packed his things and left her, eight months pregnant with me, and her five kids. However, according to her, there was no gun, no shots fired. I tend to believe Pops, since other people who lived on their block confirmed his story to me over the years. Plus, Mom did carry a pistol and was quick to pull it out. She would frequently bring it along with her, in a plastic bag for “protection,” just to go to the corner store that was half a block away—true story. Either way, it must have been tough to be left eight months pregnant.
Lydia, heartbroken, had no other recourse than to go back to her husband, Ventura, who everyone called Durin, with her tail between her legs. Ventura was a tall, dark, extremely handsome, smoldering-with-sex-appeal grump who had his moments of kindness. He was also a man of very few words. (I think I heard him speak maybe a total of three sentences the entire time I knew him—no kidding.) He took her back, but wasn’t happy about her being pregnant with another man’s baby, even though he claimed me as his and gave me his last name—all to preserve
his
and
Lydia’s
honor, of course. When she gave birth to me at Greenpoint Hospital, in September, there was a rumor that Ventura put a hit out on my father if he dared to show his face there.
Tia told me she stayed all day and through the night, standing guard, gazing at me through the maternity ward’s viewing window, falling deeply in love with me. A few mutual friends of Tia’s and my mother’s walked up, stood beside her, scanning the rows of newborns, searching for the scandalous love child.
“
Hola
, Minguita, which one is Lydia’s baby?” they asked.
“That one,” she replied, pointing to me.
“Which one?” they’d ask again, feigning confusion.
“That one, the tiny blonde,
jellow
one,” Tia answered again.
Shock crossed their faces. They were giddy and gasping.
“Oh!” one of them stated with an affected melodramatic pause. “Are you sure?”
“You know, Minguita,” another friend chimed in, “that baby kind of looks like … you … and your brother.”
Tia coyly shrugged her shoulders, trying hard to play along, concealing her pride in order to save the family’s face. She knew that they knew I was her brother’s notorious newborn, but she didn’t dare let on.
It didn’t matter. The streets of Bushwick were filled with even more
bochinche
(gossip) after that! All of Lydia’s other children were strapping like their father, had dark hair like their father, and had a reddish-olive complexion to boot. There I was, yellow, with sandy blonde hair and tiny as shit. I looked just like my father. There was no doubt that I was his.
Ismael snuck into the hospital late that night. When Tia saw him, she was pissed. She had told him that there was a hit out on him. But he said he didn’t care. Actually, he did. He just cared about me more. He told me later that he was scared as shit as he crept through the hospital’s hallways. He went up to the window, looked, knew who I was immediately, and cried, just cried. Then he ran out, without a word to his sister or anyone else. There was no shooting—just sad, pathetic drama.
• • •
Just a week after my birth Lydia decided to pay Tia a visit so she could see the baby. My mother arrived with me all bundled up.
“Hi, how are you? I brought the baby so you could see her,” my mom said in a panicked huff. “Listen, I have to go to the bodega. I’ll be right back.”
She handed me to Tia, left, and didn’t come back for three years. She never came to check on me. She never called.… And Tia never called her either. I guess the situation was understood and that was that.
TIA SPOILED the shit out of me by smothering me with love and attention. Her three daughters—Titi, the oldest; Millie, the next oldest; then Cookie—were all instructed to take extra good care of me. When I was a baby, I thought they were all my sisters rather than my cousins, and they treated me in kind.
Everyone, all the neighbors also, treated me special, like a “miracle” baby. Some new friends thought that having another baby at Tia’s age was beyond incredible. Yes, a lot of people thought I was her daughter—to this day many are surprised to learn I’m not. Her dear friends knew the truth but never spoke on it. Tia never officially stated that I was not her daughter, but she didn’t explain the situation either. That was private family business. That’s why, when I was a baby, I knew her as my mother and referred to her as “Mommie” instead of “Tia.”
I was a good baby, happy, sweet, polite, and a ham, except when I had one of my crying fits. Apparently I’d have these screaming spells all through the night, and my cousin-sisters would take turns holding me and stroking me back to sleep so Tia could have her rest. I was probably screaming for my mother. By the time I was crawling, I’d sporadically start crying and banging my head repeatedly on the floor for no reason. Weird thing, I remember that. My cousin Millie later told me that every time I did that it would bring her to tears.
I remember a lot, as far back as one or two years old, mostly it
comes to me in just bits and pieces, and flashes of images. Fortunately, I don’t just remember the bad things; I remember the good things too—especially the hammy parts! I loved television—from day one! And loved music even more. When I told Tia one day that I remembered dancing in my crib, her mouth dropped slightly and she said, “
Ay
, my goodness. You were less than one when you started doing that.”
The memory of dancing on my bed was really, like I said, just a flash of a moment. My cousin Millie filled in the rest. She said like clockwork, every day at three-thirty in the afternoon, I’d stand up in my crib, which was in Tia’s room, looking through the French doors into the living room, waiting for my cousins to come home from school. As soon as they came into view, I’d start gleefully jumping and screaming for them to put my favorite song, “I’m a Soul Man” by Sam and Dave, on the record player in the living room. And I wouldn’t stop screaming until they did.
As soon as the needle dropped, I’d hold on to the rail with one hand and do the “hitchhiker,” with my thumb sticking out, with my other hand. When I got tired, I’d suck on that thumb until I caught my breath and start hitching all over again—my cousins would die with laughter. Millie said that as soon as the record ended, I’d start screaming and they’d have to play it over and over until I was too exhausted to stand. She said at times I’d lie down in my crib from exhaustion, with my eyes closed, still dancing in my slumber.
What can I say, I was a cute kid, especially with my sandy blonde, curly, cotton-candy hair to boot … except for one major thing: I had the biggest forehead in all of Brooklyn. It was a monstrosity. Everyone would always tease me about it too. Everyone—except for Tia, of course—would call it a “big mofo,” which was short for “big motherfucking forehead.” What’s worse, when Tia would have a house party, she sometimes pulled all of my hair
tightly back, up into a big
moño
(bun), leaving the rest of my hair to stick out like a wilted Afro puff on the top of my head—not a good look, people.
The house was always filled—with family, or neighbors, or just friends. It was like a revolving door. Tia was very social and generous. Parties were a constant: Spanish, soul, and pop music playing; people dancing; the smell of rice and beans and roasted pork—heaven. I remember it as a sea of legs and shoes. That’s probably where my foot fetish started.