The Revolution of Evelyn Serrano (14 page)

¿Q
uién es ese?”
asked my mother.

We were approaching the church. A blond giant was being searched for weapons out front.

“
No sé
….” I
didn't
know who it was. One second later, Angel came running toward us, eating a hot dog and yelling, “Hey, check it out — it's Ronald Summerland.”

“Who?” I asked.

“Ronald Summerland.”

But I knew who it was when we got closer and saw the giant's girlfriend — Jane Fonda. Yep, Jane Fonda the famous actress. The blond giant man she was with was Donald Sutherland, another movie star. Mami and I got right behind them to be checked in. Everyone around Fonda was excited, saying things like “
mira la
Jane” or “she
cut her hair” and “I bet the Young Lords got in line to search her,” stuff like that.

Inside the church, she and Sutherland went to talk to the Young Lords, and it was like they left a trail of star-dust behind them. A little while later, another blonde, Pia Lindström the newscaster, showed up. They were really happy to see each other, and I thought I had never seen such glowing white people in
El Barrio
since Mayor John Lindsay paid a visit. Jane Fonda and Donald Sutherland were as dazzling to look at as they were on a big movie screen, but not as dazzling or shocking or confusing as the dark poet we were to hear a few hours later after the movie stars were long gone.

There were the usual at least a hundred people around, going here and there. Angel and some kids were tossing a ball back and forth in the front hall, Lydia's kids were playing tag, and Migdalia and I were trying to have a conversation over the noise, about how Jane Fonda looked in person as opposed to how she looked in the movies.

“She's not as big as I thought,” said Migdalia.

“I know,” I said. “But she's still taller than I'll ever be.”

Mami was crocheting while she hovered over me so she didn't even hear a Young Lord calling everybody into the main room for a poetry reading.

“Poetry?” I said to Migdalia. “I hate poetry.”

“I know. Me, too. It's so boring,” she said. “Let's get out of here.”

We headed toward the door but it was hopeless. Mami was one step behind me.

“Well, let's at least all sit together,” Migdalia offered hopefully.

That's why she was a good friend. If I couldn't leave, she was willing to sit through this boring poetry with me. Migdalia, Angel, Mami, and I headed for the few seats in the back. Catching Abuela's eye, I motioned her over to join us, too.

The poet introduced himself shyly. Pedro Pietri. Migdalia, Angel, and I giggled. Mami gave me a stern look. How stupid. She didn't even know what we were going to listen to, and she still wanted me to be polite. The poet was medium-size and dark, with short curly hair. I couldn't tell how old he was because his shirt cuffs were unbuttoned and flapping around like a little kid's. He began to recite his poem in a droning voice.

I started to laugh. I couldn't help it.

“What's so funny, Evelyn?” asked Angel.

“Nothing …”

“No, really …”

“Nothing
really
.” Truth was, I didn't know why I was laughing.

The poet went on about how tough it was to be Puerto Rican. Like I didn't already know.

“What Puerto Ricans is he talking about?” asked Angel.

“Shhh,” I whispered.

Migdalia laughed.

“
¡Cállense!
” said my mother. “Listen to the
poeta
….”

“What's a
poeta
?” asked Angel.

“Shhhh,” said the people around us.

The poet went on reciting about how Puerto Ricans worked and worked and worked and never got nowhere.

The crowd shuffled and moved around, settling. Somebody's foot tapped the floor unconsciously. Lydia urgently whispered to her children that they be still. A tiny old lady coughed. There was a sneeze followed by a few giggles.

The poet started in about how Puerto Ricans will die without any of their dreams ever coming true.

“I just want to know who exactly are the people that he's talking about,” pressed Angel, beginning to sound worried.

“Angel, it's a poem, they are not real people.” I answered impatiently. “Now be quiet.”

When the poet said how Puerto Ricans never got the good jobs, and how they could never, ever live in a nice
neighborhood, it got unnaturally quiet. The little kids stopped wiggling and began looking into their parents' faces anxiously. Not because they understood the poet's words but because they could feel that something was up.

When the poet said how sometimes Puerto Ricans got so mad about everything, they took it out on each other, somebody sniffled and had to blow their nose, and some kids laughed at that — but I could tell nobody thought this was funny.

Angel shifted anxiously in his seat.

Then the poet said that all these Puerto Ricans will die, never even knowing why.

“Evelyn, why are they going to die?”

Suddenly, a wave of anger flushed through me. “This poem is not about anyone that we know.”

“But it kind of sounds like he's talking about your mother, too?”

I pinched Angel hard. Tears sprang to his eyes. Then I was embarrassed and so sorry I had to look away; and then, when the poet said how much happier Puerto Ricans would be if they just acknowledged their beauty, and greatness, and capacity for love, my own tears took me by surprise. Pushing down the lump of emotion threatening to publicly humiliate me, I checked out Mami and Abuela.

Abuela's eyes were bright with understanding, but Mami looked as exposed as if she had been caught in the street in her underwear.

In the end, the crowd's reaction was mixed. Some looked surprised, some angry, some didn't know where to look, and some took it out on their kids. I could tell, because I heard some soft slaps, some yelps, and some rough putting on of coats.

Some really loved it and showed it by standing up and cheering, and whooping and hollering as if Ray Barretto had just finished playing a conga drum solo. Angel looked confused. He should've been angry with me; instead he looked to me for answers.

I looked to Abuela and Mami, wanting to know what they thought. Or maybe, really, to figure out how I should feel myself, but I got no clue from them except that they both looked like they were about to cry, Abuela because she liked it so much, and Mami because she didn't. However anybody felt, I knew this: My heart was full of painful love, and everything he said was as true and big as the sky, and five trillion hands could not cover it up. And I was glad it was out and couldn't be taken back any more than one could fold up the sky and put it in your back pocket.

On the way home, Abuela and I made plans to collect more clothes for the clothing drive.

“What time can you meet me at the church tomorrow?” I asked Abuela.

“How about ten in the morning?”

“Okay,” I said.

“Bring boxes,” she added.

“I got plenty of boxes in
la bodega
,” said Mami quietly.

We were all speaking quietly, like we didn't want to disturb one another in our separate worlds of thought.

T
he next morning Mami handed me the boxes. She looked confused, like she had lost a battle. “I hope you get a lot of clothes.”

“Me, too,” I said, taking the boxes from her.

Mami poured herself a second cup of coffee.

“I'm going to the church after Abuela and I pick up some clothes.”

“Sí, sí,”
Mami said, looking into her cup like it held all the secrets of the world. “I will see you later over there.”

Mami was letting me go by myself.

At ten o'clock on the dot, I met Abuela outside the church, holding two cardboard boxes. It was freezing.

“And don't think this doesn't feel like the North Pole,” she said, laughing.
“¡Ay, qué frío!”

Abuela was smiling, ready to have some fun. Me, too.

But I couldn't stop thinking about Mami. I folded my arms tight around me.

“Hey,
¿qué te pasa?
” Abuela's cheerful voice drew me out.

“Nothing is wrong. Here are some boxes. From Mami.”

She grabbed one, saying, “So,
¡vámonos!
”

We took off to
La Marqueta
. Abuela had a crazy idea that the store owners would give us
new
clothes because we were helping out the Young Lords. They didn't, but one guy loaned us an old shopping cart.

“
Señora
, here, you don't have to carry the boxes like that in your arms. You use cart, then you can bring back.”

Not what we expected, but not too bad. We wheeled our cart around in perfect step with each other, going in and out of buildings, knocking on doors, getting our boxes filled with clothes. We communicated silently and knew when we wanted to dash across the street instead of waiting for a light, and when we wanted to take a left instead of a right. Pushing the cart toward the church, Abuela read my mind.

“That was some poem we heard yesterday,” she said.

“What was it about, Abuela?”

“All of us …”

“This is why the Young Lords are doing this,” she went on. “They see their parents working, working, working as
hard as anybody else, even harder sometimes, and not getting anywhere.”

I thought about Mami.

“Listen to me,” said Abuela. “It is not fair that powerful people beat up smaller people. It happens everywhere and all the time. Sometimes the rich people make believe they are helping you, but they are not. Ever since I saw the killing at the Ponce Massacre, I wanted to fight for people who cannot fight for themselves. The people in that poem cannot fight for themselves.”

Abuela's eyes were filled, not with tears but with possibility. She looked so beautiful, like she was an opening to something new and good. And I wanted to follow.

After being searched, Abuela and I started to take our stuff down to the basement, but there were so many people standing in line to
get
clothes we had to snake our way around them. When we finally got downstairs, I could see Migdalia at one of four long tables that had been set up around the perimeter of the room. There were boxes of clothes on each of them and people trying to sort them by type. There was even a mirror set up so people could look at themselves as they tried on jackets and coats and hats.

“Hey,” said Migdalia as soon as she saw me. It sounded like a cry for help and when I got closer I saw why —
Awilda and Dora were at Migdalia's table, handling the hats.

“I like this one,” said Dora, reaching for a green knit cap with a visor and a pom-pom on top.

“I wouldn't touch that if I were you,” snapped Awilda, slapping her hand away. “It might be full of cooties.”

“They don't have cooties,” I said like I knew that for a fact. Once I started talking I kept right on going. “My
abuela
has checked them out.”

Abuela caught on. “
Sí, sí, yo las miré. Todas están sanas.
I've already looked at them,” Abuela was saying. “They're all clean.”

“… but you can check them out some more. I mean — if anybody knows what a cootie looks like it would be you because you probably seen so many of them.”

Se puso sosa.
Awilda's face got flavorless, like my mother used to say. I almost felt sorry for her but not quite. She started to say something but then gave up and turned around to leave. Dora was still eyeing the hat.

“Dora!” yelled Awilda, shaking her out of her hat daydream. At that, Dora dropped the hat and scurried after her.

Abuela winked at me.

“You guys are just in time. I am exhausted!” said Migdalia. “You want to take over?”

The church basement was like being at Klein's on 14th Street on a Saturday afternoon. Controlled shopping hysteria. We looked around at all the mothers trying coats on their kids, teenagers looking for something hip, and old men looking for anything warm.

“Sure, we'll take over,” I said.

“Just put your boxes aside. We'll sort them later. These people need stuff now.”

Abuela and I took Migdalia's place as an old lady came up to us. She was bent over, really tiny, and with just a few teeth in her mouth. Her hair was white and so thin you could see her pink scalp.

“Mira, mija, por favor, no tienes un abrigo or una súeter que me caiga bien. Este frío me tiene loca….”

“
Déjeme ver
,” said Abuela. Then to me, “She's looking for a coat or sweater.”

“
Sí
, I understood her,” I said.

“Coats and sweaters?” said Migdalia, who had understood her, too. “Over there!”

I went to where Migdalia was pointing. The old lady shuffled over behind me. I rummaged through a box and what I found in the bottom stopped me — it was a familiar-looking black sweater. I looked at the size and buried my face in it so I could smell it. There was no doubt about it. It was my mother's.

“Abuela, look at this.”

Abuela came over, looking at me quizzically.

“This belongs to Mami.”

Abuela was just as shocked as I was.

“You mother donated clothes?
Qué milagro.
”

I looked some more and found another sweater that Mami hardly ever wore, some long-sleeved dresses, and a few blouses. It
was
a miracle. Mami never bought new clothes. She wore the ones she had until they practically fell off her back. I couldn't believe she would give any of them away. But this
viejita
standing in front of me needed clothes more than my mother.

I gave her Mami's sweater and a dress and she was so happy to get them, even though they were a little big for her. She needed help taking off her old rag of a coat in order to put the sweater on under it. Through it all she kept muttering,
“Gracias, gracias, gracias, que Dios te lo pague.”
It was good to help her, and when she walked away, I wondered if my mother would look like that in twenty years, even before she got her house in the Bronx.

 

Later on at the church, Abuela and I were gathering to watch a movie, but I found myself looking over my shoulder for my mother. It was getting dark and she hadn't arrived yet.

“What's up, Evelyn? What movie we gonna watch?”

It was Angel. I unfolded the flyer the Young Lords had distributed and read it out loud:

 

There will be a showing of
The Battle of Algiers
Presented by Budd Schulberg and Elia Kazan

 

“Who's that?” asked Angel.

“What do you care? It's free. We'll watch.”

I had never heard of Budd Schulberg, Elia Kazan, or
The Battle of Algiers
either, but why not watch anyway? Could be good.

The church filled up quickly with all kinds of people. Teenagers. Out-of-work people. Old people and little kids. As I searched for my mother, I was distracted by a guy in a wheelchair. He was about twenty years old, and from the waist up he was built like any regular boy from the block. From the waist down, his legs were withered and skinny. He had a friend with him who was so good to him, guiding him, moving stuff out of the way for him, that for a minute I wondered if they were brothers. They settled in with the rest of us to watch the movie. Mami rushed in right before it started and I was surprised at my
sense of relief to see her. Abuela waved her over to sit with us.

She looked different somehow.

We watched the movie. I'm not sure people knew what to make of it, but it was really something. At first, I thought it was about Puerto Ricans. I mean, the good guys kind of looked like us but they weren't Puerto Ricans, they were Algerians fighting some French people for keeping them down. But that was the other thing that was confusing. Who were the good guys? The guys in uniform, like the cops, or the Algerians, who kept blowing things up? I didn't really get it all but I did get this: that it wasn't just us Puerto Ricans who lived in a culture that didn't like us and that other people in the world lived in the same situation. I liked the movie even though, to tell you the truth, if I knew there was a bomb somewhere, or I thought people were going to get hurt, I would warn everybody to run so fast out of the way you wouldn't even believe it — no matter what side I was on.

The best, or worst, part of the movie was when some rebels were stuck behind a wall, and refused to come out even when the French police warned them that they were going to bomb the building. Even though there was a kid about Angel's age with them.

“
Pobre gente
, poor people,” said Mami when the bomb exploded.

When the lights came up, we all kind of applauded and began to gather our stuff to go home. I noticed lots of people were crying and looking to each other for some kind of explanation. They said stuff like “I can't believe that little kid died stuck behind that wall.” The movie even upset Angel. “That kid was about as old as me, right?”

Migdalia came over. “Did you see all those women fighting? They were as tough as the men, right?”

“Yeah,” I answered. The women in the movie were fighting right beside the men, and even though they were wearing those Arabian-type outfits that covered their faces, they were really equal. But why did the little kid have to die? As I thought about all this, I caught the guy in the wheelchair being helped with his jacket by his friend.

“Who is he?” I asked Migdalia.

“He got shot in his spine in a gang fight,” she said. “That's why he's in a chair. He can never walk again.”

“Who shot him?”

She looked at the paralyzed guy's friend wheeling him toward the door and down the stairs.

“That guy helping him,” said Migdalia.

“The guy helping him?”

“Yep.”

My mother sucked in her breath saying, “Was he in the other gang?”

“Yes, that's what Wilfredo said.”

“Qué horrible,”
said Abuela.

That's when I felt an unexpected painful lump in my throat. I started to struggle into my coat. Migdalia tapped me on my shoulder.

“Huh?”

“You're putting your coat on inside out.”

“Oh …” I smiled and tried putting it on properly. It was embarrassing to be caught in a walking dream state, but I couldn't help it. The movie and the story of that guy in the wheelchair and his ex-enemy-now-friend put me in a funky frame of mind. I didn't want to talk to anybody. I needed to go home. I went out the door, ahead of Abuela and Mami.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.
The cold wind was whipping, but I leaned right into it hoping it would clear my head.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.
There were many kinds of fights.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.
Little fights that happened in one neighborhood, and great big fat ones out there in the wider world.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.
Sometimes enemies had to get together to fight the bigger bad guy.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.
I got home, went to my room, and got into bed. Mami came in ten minutes later.

“¿Mija?”

“I'm sleeping,” I said.

She left me alone.

I turned over and faced the wall and was surprised that knowing there was a bigger fight out there to deal with didn't make me feel bad — it made me feel free. I pulled the covers over my head and fell into a heavy, muddy sleep.