America's Dream (25 page)

tagged with elaborate graffiti. Even at this early hour, people are out on the street. Women push strollers with children bundled up inside them. A group of teenage girls with torn jeans, combat boots, and perfectly coifed hair dances down the street to implied music. An old woman is guided by a boy into a van. Men loiter in front of a coffee shop.

“So this is New York,” she says softly.

“Haven’t you been here before?” Leopoldo asks, then answers his own question. “No, that’s right. You almost came, but you couldn’t.”

Correa wouldn’t let me, she tells herself, and feels heat rise to her face.

A loud thumping comes from behind. At first she thinks something’s wrong with the car, but then a Camaro pulls up alongside them, the radio blasting salsa rap. Two young men are in front, and both windows and the sunroof are open, the better to share the deafening sound coming from speakers that take up the entire backseat.

Leopoldo frowns in their direction. “¡Desordenados!” he mut- ters, and for a moment she sees the anger he keeps so well hidden most of the time. The car races ahead of them the minute the light changes, and the music fades, leaving behind a rhythmic thump- thump-thump that dissipates as the car turns under elevated train tracks.

“It’s different here from where I live.”

“Oh, sure, you’re up in the country. We took a trip up there one summer. Our church had a picnic at a lake near where you live.”

“I didn’t know New York was so big.”

“Oh, it’s enormous. From here, we can drive north for seven hours and still be in New York.”

“Wow! In Vieques, you can go across the whole island in twenty minutes.”

“Sí, claro, it’s a small island. But you don’t have people blasting their radios in your face on Sunday morning.”

“Saturday nights are lively.”

“People in Puerto Rico still know about respect,” Leopoldo

continues as if he hasn’t heard her. “They’re still considerate of others. Here”—he waves his hand at the avenue in front of them—“it’s all gone downhill. This area used to be quiet.”

They turn into a neighborhood of two-and three-story homes behind hurricane-fenced cement yards. The street is narrow, lined with parked cars on either side. A few tortured trees seem to defy the cement sidewalks, which their roots have cracked and broken into ruts. At the corner there is a taller building, pale green with olive window casements. With considerable maneuvering, Leo- poldo parks his car in a space América wouldn’t even think of trying. Next to the green building there is another small house, and beyond it, on the corner, a gas station on another broad av- enue.

“Here they are!” Paulina’s voice comes from above, and when América gets out of the car, she looks up to the top story of the green building, where her aunt is leaning out the window, waving happily.

“Hola, Tía,” she calls, and waves back.

Leopoldo carries her shopping bag into a hall with a locked door beyond it. A buzz opens it, and they go up three flights of steep stairs to a door where Paulina waits exuding childlike ex- citement.

“Ay, mi’ja, it’s been so long!” Stroking her hair, “You look beautiful as a blonde,” wrapping her arm around América’s waist to lead her in, “and you’re nice and plump.” Her enthusiasm is contagious, and América finds herself smiling, remarking how long it’s been, hugging her aunt back with a warmth that she doesn’t remember sharing with anyone else.

A petite young woman comes out of one of the rooms and hugs and kisses her on the cheek. It is her cousin Elena, Leopoldo and Paulina’s youngest daughter. She has thick, chestnut hair down to her waist, which she wears in a single braid down her back. She smells like roses.

“It’s so nice to see everyone,” América says, suddenly overcome with tears. Paulina hugs her close, leads her to a large stuffed chair by the window.

“It’s all right, mi’ja, you’re with family.”

Elena fetches a tissue.

“I’m so sorry,” América sniffles. Paulina and Elena hover around her, rub her shoulders, murmur comfort. Leopoldo brings her a glass of water. “Thank you.” She sips, keeps her eyes down, ashamed to meet their concerned expressions. She’s mortified that she hasn’t been with her relatives five minutes and already they have to worry about her. She can’t explain, even to herself, what happened, why Paulina’s embrace and welcoming manner broke open a wave of sadness that she didn’t know was there.

“Ay,” she sighs, composing herself with a deep breath, “it’s so nice to be speaking Spanish!”

Paulina, Leopoldo, and Elena smile with relief, accept this ex- planation for América’s tears, willingly and without question. Of course she misses Spanish! She’s been living among Yanquis for two weeks, poor thing. But América can’t convince herself so easily. It’s a relief not to have to translate her thoughts, but the relief it brings is the same as slipping into a comfortable shoe; after a while you forget the initial pleasure.

They ask about Ester and Rosalinda and Vieques, and she an- swers, even though it’s not new information to them. They don’t ask about Correa, they know she’s here running from him, but she wishes they would, if only to tell them that she doesn’t care what he’s up to.

“Come keep me company while I cook.” Paulina leads her through a dining room to a cramped kitchen at the rear of the apartment. Elena and her father excuse themselves and disappear into different rooms.

“How lovely Elena is,” América tells Paulina. “The pictures don’t do her justice.”

“Ay, mi’ja, what good is being beautiful when your head is full of straw?” Paulina takes a blender out of a cabinet.

“What do you mean?”

“That child, I should say woman, she’s twenty years old already, takes after her father. Dreamers, both of them, only Leopoldo has a serious side to him, you know. He’s responsible and has been a good provider.” From a drawer, she pulls out

onions and a large head of garlic. “Elena is a dreamer, but without ambition. She works as a receptionist in a clinic down the street. I’m hoping she’ll meet a nice young doctor and get married soon.” “Let me help you with the sofrito,” América offers, and Paulina hands her a paring knife and the garlic. América removes the crackly skin from each clove as Paulina peels and quarters onions. It’s the first time she’s heard Paulina complain about her children. On their infrequent, brief visits to Vieques, Carmen, Orlando, and Elena always seemed much too well behaved to be real. Ester claimed that her sister and brother-in-law drugged their children so that they wouldn’t behave with the wild abandon of normal kids. They were affectionate with their parents, with Ester, América, and Rosalinda, who was nine the last time they visited as a family. América knows that Ester has a soft spot in her heart for Orlando, her only nephew and, as far as América knows, the only boy to have been born in her family in several generations.

“And how is Orlando?”

“He’s good, mi’ja, he’ll be here soon with his wife and daughter.

That child is the sweetest thing you’d ever want to meet.” “Such an unusual name, Eden.”

“Ah, imagine, her mother is a yoga teacher. Kind of strange for a Puerto Rican, you know, so Americanized she can barely speak Spanish. But I’m teaching Eden some words here and there. She’s a delight, wait till you meet her.” She doesn’t wait for América to ask about her eldest daughter. “Carmen is a teacher. The only one of my children to have a real profession. Orlando is a salsa singer. He always had a lovely voice, you remember. So he’s decided to be a singer, and I don’t know how he can support his family as he waits for his big chance, you know how hard a business that is, and his wife a yoga teacher. Can you imagine, a Puerto Rican yoga teacher! Ay, Dios mío.”

She scoops up the peeled garlic and quartered onions and dumps them into the blender. “Where’s the green pepper? Didn’t I get one out of the refrigerator?”

“I didn’t see it.”

“Ay, Dios mío, I’m really losing it these days.” She opens the refrigerator door, exasperated, searches around until she comes up with a firm pepper and a bunch of dark green, fragrant leaves.

“Is that recao?” América asks, incredulous.

“Sí, I get it at the bodega down the street. It was owned by a Puerto Rican, but now it’s owned by a Dominicano. Everything that used to be owned by Puerto Ricans is now owned by Dominicanos.”

América washes a few leaves of the recao, lingering on their prickly feel. “There’s a lot of Dominicanos in Puerto Rico, too. Not so many in Vieques, but on the big island.” She dries them one at a time, each leaf a childhood memory of Ester in her garden, delicately choosing fresh recao, oregano, and achiote for that day’s meal.

“Those poor people!” Paulina dumps the recao in the blender, throws in a few peppercorns, punches the button that whirs the blade violently around the garlic, onions, pepper, recao, chopping everything into her pungent sofrito, much greener, América thinks, than Ester’s. “Their country is as backward as Puerto Rico was thirty years ago. They come here just like we did, full of dreams, expecting the streets to be paved with gold.”

Paulina’s chatter is comforting the way a radio is comforting. Everything she says is as familiar as if América had heard it yes- terday, yet it’s all new, and she muses on the difference between her mother and her aunt, daughters of the same mother, one of them an alcoholic, the other sober, with a long-standing marriage and children who, despite her complaints, are still loving of their parents and respectful of their expectations. Ester never had Paulina’s spirit. Her life, circumscribed by her garden, her soap operas, her occasional couplings with Don Irving, is all she seems to want. Maybe, if Mami had been more like Paulina, my life would be different. She flushes, ashamed of such thoughts as soon as she’s conscious of them.

While the cooking progresses, the apartment fills with peo-

ple. First comes Carmen, Paulina’s eldest, taller than her mother, with fuller lips, wider eyes, thicker hair, but with the same sunny smile and giggle, as if they had practiced until they sounded alike. Then Orlando, holding by the hand Eden, his six-year-old girl, followed by her mother, the Puerto Rican yoga teacher Teresa. Both mother and child are wiry, alert, with a savage look as if they have emerged from some ancient cave and are still learning to be with people. Orlando is as handsome a man as América has ever seen, tall and slender, with the assurance of the good-looking but with none of the swagger. They all greet her with such enthu- siasm that she again comes close to tears.

When the cousins have all asked and she has answered about life in Puerto Rico, including el problema con Rosalinda and her own surreptitious departure from the home she was born in and has lived in for most of her twenty-nine years, another group of people come in, the downstairs neighbors Lourdes and Rufo and their son, Darío, with his two children, the twins Janey and Johnny.

After introductions, discreet questions, and evasive answers to the nonrelatives, Paulina announces that dinner is ready. The women go into the kitchen and the four men into the living room, and the children play somewhere in between until all the food is put out on the crowded table with mismatched chairs. The chil- dren are set up at the end of the table, and the men take their place while the older women serve. América keeps offering to help, but she’s not allowed. She’s seated next to Elena, who asks her questions about her life in Bedford and manages to keep her entertained until everyone is seated and Leopoldo asks God to bless the food and all present.

América can’t remember the last time she sat at table with people who pray. Likely, it was the last time Paulina and Leo- poldo came to Vieques. Likely too, Ester grunted through the whole prayer, and Correa was there, eyes cast down, hoping the encounter with religious people would serve him well when he appears at Saint Peter’s Gates. Because, while Correa is not a reli- gious man, he is faithful to God. He indulges in the sins of

debauchery, adultery, and lechery but observes Ash Wednesday and Lent with a vehemence América has pointed out more than once is hypocritical.

Across from her Darío stares mournfully in her direction. She pretends to ignore him, to look past him at his mother sitting to his left, or out the window at the tops of other buildings and beyond them at a bridge, perhaps the same bridge she crossed on the snowy night she landed in New York.

I want nothing to do with men, she tells herself. I especially want nothing to do with men who look at me with those tearful eyes of his. I’ve never seen anyone look so sad and lonely, even in the midst of all these people.

“…and you should come too, América.” Orlando’s clear voice reaches her as if he had touched her on the shoulder.

“Yes, do, América,” Elena begs. “Where?”

“Another dreamer in the family,” Paulina mutters, her girllike giggle softening what América imagines is an insult.

“I’m sorry, I was just looking at that bridge over there.” As if they’d never seen it, everyone at the table follows her gaze, and Leopoldo actually goes to the window to get a better look at a bridge he must see every time he passes this way.

“Oh, the Whitestone,” as if it has been missing and has re- appeared in the middle of dinner. He sits down again.

“Anyway,” Orlando continues, “it’s not a fancy club, but the bassist plays with Rubén Blades’s orchestra and the pianist played with Celia Cruz.”

Elena leans closer to América. “My brother is making his debut singing with a famous salsa orchestra. He wants us all to come.” América smiles at her gratefully. Like at the Leveretts’, meals are used in this family to catch up on one another’s business. The willingness with which they share their lives makes her uncom-

fortable.

Carmen announces she has a new boyfriend, “who shall remain nameless for now.”

“Why didn’t you bring him to dinner, nena?” asks Paulina.

“He’s not ready for a Puerto Rican family,” Carmen says coyly. “Ah, another Americano, then?” asks Lourdes with a twinkle. “Who knows?” murmurs Paulina.

“As a matter of fact,” Carmen says, “he’s Asian.”

There’s a gasp, as if the idea of an Asian were so foreign, so unexpected, that it scares them all. Leopoldo is the first to recover. “There’s a very nice Chinese man in my office. He’s kind of