Authors: Rosie Perez
The party was crazy. Jimmy Castor’s “It’s Just Begun,” Manu Dibango’s “Soul Makossa,” Barry White, Al Green, the Brothers Johnson, Donna Summer, Chaka Khan, Labelle, and especially Dr. Buzzard’s Original Savannah Band, played endlessly. I danced for hours! There was a perpetual cloud of marijuana smoke that lingered till dawn. Everyone except the two youngest and myself were smoking, drinking bottles of Night Train or malt liquor, and the party continued into the next day!
I was exhausted and went to bed early that next evening in the back room in one of the three beds all eight of us shared, including my half-brothers’ best friend, Armin, who our mother took in. (Yes, she took him in, but didn’t ask me to come home—but, whatever.) I think only my three half-brothers were home. I don’t know where the girls were. Just as I was about to fall into a deep sleep, the oldest brother, the same one who showed me his thing years before, lay down next to me and began to caress me sexually, telling me to lie still.
“It’s okay. I love you, Rosie. Just relax.”
I wanted to scream but couldn’t. When he tried to put his hands down my panties, I got up as calmly and quickly as possible. He tried to stop me, but I was too quick. As I was rushing to the bathroom,
the other half-brother asked me what was wrong. “He tried to molest me!” I loudly whispered.
Shocked, he told me he’d go and talk to him and work it out. Inside the bathroom, I overheard them talking in a hushed panic. “You think she’s gonna tell? I told you not to try it on her. You should’ve waited for one of the other girls to come back!” Say what! I calmly walked out, quietly put my clothes on, and snuck out the first-floor window.
I didn’t want to go home to Tia because I was so freaked out and knew she would ask a million questions. What was I going to tell her? I ran to my friend Candy’s house next door instead. She had confided the previous summer that her uncle had molested her, so I knew she would understand my hysteria.
She wanted us to run away. Being pragmatic, I convinced her it wasn’t a good idea. We broke night instead, walking around Bushwick with two male friends of hers—one of them was eighteen and fine as hell. Candy told them what happened while they passed a bottle of Night Train and a joint around—not to me, of course.
Five o’clock in the morning, my oldest brother, the molester, found us hanging in Knickerbocker Park and tried desperately to apologize, begging me not to tell. Then the fine-ass eighteen-year-old got up in his face and threatened to beat him up, calling him a nasty motherfucker. I got so scared. My brother never backed down from a fight, but to my surprise he dropped his head in shame and walked away. Weirdly enough, I felt sorry for him.
Candy and her two friends walked me back to my mother’s house—I wanted to get my stuff and haul ass to Tia’s. The fine-ass eighteen-year-old kissed me good-bye on the lips and told me I was beautiful. (That was weird, especially since that was my first kiss and I was only twelve.) Armin was waiting outside on the stoop. He told me that Lydia was home and knew what had happened, it was okay for me to come in, and she had my back. Really? Cool!
When I walked inside, I was greeted by a crack across my face so hard that I fell to the floor. “How dare you! You think he would do that to you? You think he would pick you, when you’re the ugliest? He can pick any of your sisters who are way prettier than you! Huh? Fucking liar!” I was pissed, shocked, and hurt!
She then made me scrub the kitchen floor with a toothbrush. This is true, folks, and I dare any one of my “brothers” to question it!
Later that night, I jumped out the window with my suitcase and went to Tia’s. My mother never checked on me either. I was in bed for a few days, only getting up to use the bathroom. Tia was so worried. I kept telling her that I was just feeling ill. I don’t think she bought it, because this time I was way beyond depressed.
BACK AT the Group Home, the depression and anger grew.
School had already begun, and I believe I was thirteen now. One of my teachers accused me of cheating on an essay because I would never pay attention in class, would always be late, yet would score high on my essays and tests—what can I say! She gave me an F, I cursed her out and accused her of being prejudiced, and she reported me to the vice principal. I wouldn’t back down and was made to write an essay on the spot in front of everyone. After reading it, the vice principal turned to the teacher and made her apologize to me. I smugly replied, “I accept your apologies.” I got detention for it.
That put an even bigger chip on my shoulder, which only backfired on me, but I couldn’t stop it. After-school detention became a regular event. My grades started to drop. I couldn’t concentrate during class. Taking tests was a blur of confusion, and the low marks made me feel stupid and inept for the first time. I got even more depressed—worried about my chances of getting into college.
Grace came back for a visit.
I felt embarrassed by how little regard the new girls had for her. There were only maybe half of us who were still there from before she left. No one even asked Grace to sit down. As I got milk and cookies for us, she kept looking around at the chaos and lack of empathy in the room. Grace grabbed my hand, looked me directly in the eye, and said:
“Listen to me. You can make it! I knew it when I first laid eyes on you. Study hard, be good, and get yourself out of here! Do you hear me? You must stay focused. You must do that for yourself! Promise me!”
I nodded yes. My eyes flooded. I wanted to reach out and hug her so badly, but I couldn’t—I didn’t know how. She gave a final squeeze to my hand and got up and left. That was it; she was gone again, just like that.
When the GH parents and the Home refused to give me a forwarding address for Grace, I finally snapped. Okay, I had a nervous breakdown, to be exact, but who’s counting.
I went into hysterics and tore my room to pieces, breaking everything. I stopped when I realized that I had broken my 45 of “Penny Lane” in two. I locked myself in my closet for an entire day and fell oddly silent. I could hear everyone looking for me but kept quiet hiding. I even peed on myself a bit but couldn’t bring myself to come out. I felt too bottomless to move.
Then, as the sun was setting, a haze of sunlight seeped through the closet’s wooden shutters. I felt some kind of presence. Maybe it was God, maybe not. But, I prayed earnestly for the first time in my life (I’d never really bought the whole Catholicism thing), telling God that he had to come through for me or I’d never believe in him, ever.
I softly sang to myself the Commodores’ “Zoom” repeatedly and everything from Earth, Wind, and Fire to Todd Rundgren, and then fell into a deep sleep. When I woke, I calmly climbed out of the closet and quietly cleaned my room, blasting the Rolling Stones’ “Paint It Black,” hearing the song in a whole new way. When asked where I had been, I shrugged my shoulders and said I was in my room the whole time. I didn’t feel like I owed them any further explanation. All I cared about was that I had a new mission. I was going to get out, like Grace suggested, and that was that.
I made a call to Mr. Neil on the sly and convinced him to advocate
for me to live with Tia. He couldn’t get my mother to agree, so instead, he set it up so that I could be transferred to a “foster home.” I told this girl from school, who went to the same church as I did, to pray for me. (At the Group Home, we were allowed to go to a church of our choosing. After my deal with God inside the closet, I became really religious—evangelistic.) She told her mother. They became my foster family. That didn’t work out so well. They desperately wanted to save me by being even stricter than the Home. And to add insult to injury, they told me I had to leave Freckles behind even though they lived just up the street—God, that hurt. I resented them for it and made them pay—I acted out badly. Shocked and confused by my behavior, they agreed with me to end it before things got really ugly.
I got transferred to another Group Home further upstate. That didn’t work out so well either.
First day, one of the girls started an argument with me over something stupid. The Group Home mother, who was cool as hell, broke it up before it got violent. During dinner, this girl Mandy started to growl like a pit bull at me when I asked her to pass the peas—I kid you not! I was like, “Uh, hello?” Then she started talking to the air and answering it. Oh boy. I knew she was crazy at that point. Then later, in the wee hours of that night, some of the girls woke me up. “Mandy’s digging your grave!” Yes, folks, she was out back digging deep! The next morning she was taken away to a special “hospital.” Mandy was schizophrenic, and the change in the house, meaning me, triggered voices in her head and paranoia. I felt guilty, responsible for her madness. Why? Who knows? Half the house hated me after that. Well, in fairness, I was a bitchy snot during that time to boot.
Thank goodness there was Nigel and his sister Michelle, the counselors—cool and supportive to all. Michelle was laid-back and insightful. Nigel was the best: smart, had that Isaac Hayes cool vibe about him, a stand-up guy who never got excited, never had to. He
would say stuff to me like, “How’s that attitude working for you? ’Cause it ain’t working for anyone else,” or, “The world is waiting for you to arrive. You ready?” Nigel and Michelle had integrity and self-worth that I admired greatly. It affected me immensely, which allowed me to be nice and act like the nerd that I was around them and with the kids in the neighborhood outside of the Group Home.
Once again, I dived into the social scene, making a lot of friends at school and church, barely staying in the house. I must say, I loved being a social butterfly again, especially upstate. It was mad fun. I especially loved hanging with these two black girls, upper-middle-class, who lived a couple of houses up. They were part of the cheerleading squad and were smart, polite, corny, and fun! It wasn’t a rarity in upstate New York—well-to-do African Americans who weren’t that different from the white people up there—despite how they choose to depict black folks in movies.
The girls in the Group Home would make fun of these girls behind their backs, calling them Oreos. Once again, they gave me shit for hanging with them and the white cheerleaders, constantly. When I became the manager of the cheerleading squad, they really had a field day calling me a wannabe. It was such a bore! By this point, I didn’t give two poop-poops about it.
• • •
I was obsessed with Woody Allen and Neil Simon movies.
Annie Hall
,
Sleeper
,
The Prisoner of Second Avenue
, and
The Odd Couple
were some of my favorites. Back in Brooklyn on a visit to Tia’s, that was all I wanted to go see. It drove Cookie crazy. Especially since we had to find theaters that were still playing some of their older hits as well as the newer ones. So, of course, she took me to see
The Deer Hunter
and
Midnight Express
instead. Okay, I loved those movies too, but
Annie Hall
, people!
Tia and I went down to Puerto Rico for the summer. My father
had lost his house in Aguadilla that winter and moved into a government housing apartment in the same town—three bedrooms with a balcony made out of rebar and cinder blocks to protect it from hurricanes. I wondered if my father was embarrassed about everything, but no. He took it all in stride. He told me it was just money, and he didn’t need money to make him happy.
We went up to Tia Aya’s for the day to escape the concrete slabs with patches of grass in between.
They had freaking killed Miguel the pig for the holidays!
“It was his time. But no worries, he went painlessly. A nice clean bop on the head,” said Tia Aya’s husband, like it was funny.
Killing Miguel was the same as if someone had killed my precious dog Freckles, who I’d painfully had to leave behind. I had a fit! I fell to the ground, rolling in the dirt like Giulietta Masina in
Nights of Cabiria
(love!). I rolled too far and fell down the tiny hill at the edge. I could hear my father laughing his ass off up top. Brushing off his help to pull me up, I hastily pushed past him, tripping on a rock, which only made him laugh harder.
When I went inside and sat at the kitchen counter wiping my tears, Tia Aya, paying me no mind, pulled out one of Miguel’s shoulders that she had salted and saved, stuck it in the oven, and asked me to baste it. I stormed out the front door, feeling a dry heave of vomit swell up in my throat.
Dad came out to sit with me in the driveway. We just sat there saying nothing. Then he started to sing his favorite Tony Bennett song.
“
‘I left my heart in San Francisco.’
… You know, my second favorite Tony Bennett album was—”
“Beat of My Heart,”
I rudely interrupted, “and Candido played on it, and you told that story a thousand times! Gosh! Get some new material!”
Dad chuckled instead of being hurt, like I regretfully thought he would be. I slowly started to laugh with him. I then looked behind
me, felt someone watching. It was Tia, tucked behind the door. She quietly smiled and then ducked back inside.
Carmen had gotten tits that summer, slimmed down, and was buck wild. She was hanging with these girls who were just as bad. They kept making fun of my poor Spanish, calling me a Yankee—typical Nuyorican versus Puerto Rican hurtful drama. Carmen, in constant competition with me, would add her two cents by making fun of my conservative way of dressing. I would get back at her by stealing her boyfriends, like Tuti, who I broke up with after one day, because he kissed horribly. Carmen spent that whole break trying to get me back.
César was the finest guy in the Municas, and he asked me for a walk to the “woods.” Scandalous! I was never allowed to walk around Aguadilla unaccompanied by a man, which usually meant either my father or at the very least my younger brother Tito. Plus, I didn’t know that going for a walk in the woods meant sex, but quickly figured it out when he asked me to go to third base without even getting to first.
Carmen had followed behind with one of her girlfriends to spy on us so she could tell on me to Dad. So, as César was sucking on my neck, trying to maneuver his hand down my tit, we heard blood-curdling screams. Carmen had stepped on a fallen beehive and was swarmed. She and her girlfriend were screaming, running circles around each other. Hilarious! Thank goodness, because I only had barely been to first at that point—nerd—and I was terrified when César was touching my tittie.