America's Dream (26 page)

quiet, though, doesn’t mix with the rest of us.” “He’s not Chinese, Papi, he’s Korean.”

“My father fought in Korea,” announces Rufo, “and my older brother was stationed there for three years.”

Elena leans over to América. “My sister has never dated a Pu- erto Rican in her life.”

“Nor do I intend to,” Carmen says. “Puerto Rican men are machista.”

“Watch it, nena,” Paulina warns, “your father, brother, and neighbors are Puerto Rican men.”

“I wasn’t talking about them,” she says quickly, like a guilty child, even though she’s two months younger than América.

“Ah, then, if you weren’t talking about us,” her brother says with a grin, “go ahead, insult the rest of them.”

“I think you have some residual machismo,” says Teresa from her corner of the table, where she is wedged between Rufo and Elena.

“You be quiet, woman,” says Orlando in a play gruff voice, and everyone laughs except Teresa.

“That’s not funny, you know.”

“Come on, Teresa, don’t take it so seriously,” says Rufo, “he’s just playing.”

“Don’t you defend him,” says Lourdes, leaning across Darío, pointing a fork at her husband.

“Señoras, señores, we have company,” says Leopoldo, and everyone laughs and looks at América.

“She’d better get used to our little arguments,” laughs Paulina.

“Don’t worry,” América tells them, “before long I’ll be starting some of my own.” They all laugh at this, generously, she thinks, for even as she said it, it sounded like a threat more than a joke.

After dinner Teresa sits with the children in front of the television, where they are all equally enthralled by a movie about a lost dog. The men set up a game of dominoes in the dining room. Elena and Carmen take América by the hand and away from the kitchen, to prevent her from helping Paulina and Lourdes with the dishes. “You do enough during the week,” Carmen says, pushing

América into Elena’s room.

“This is so beautiful,” América takes in the fragrant room with drapes on the two windows, the matching bedspread with a lace canopy, the fluffy pink wall-to-wall carpet.

“My sister adores Martha Stewart,” Carmen explains. “Who’s that?” América asks, and the sisters laugh.

“She’s a decorator.” Elena shows América a magazine with a glamorous blond woman on the cover, her arms laden with cut flowers. “That’s her,” she says in English.

América leafs through the pages rich with photographs of in- teriors, advertisements for china and flatware, step-by-step in- structions for making wreaths and centerpieces. “This is nice,” she says, to be polite. The truth is that the rooms look claustro- phobic to her, with their profusion of furnishings and pillows, pouffy drapes, patterned walls.

Carmen laughs. “Martha Stewart is not for everyone.” In Eng- lish she says, “She’s the WASP queen of the universe.”

“What’s that?” América asks, and Elena and Carmen laugh again.

“WASP,” Elena explains, “means White Anglo-Saxon Protest- ant.” She switches to Spanish. “It’s not a very nice word,” she says, glaring at her sister.

“I think the people I work with are Protestant,” América says thoughtfully. “I haven’t seen any crosses or statues of saints around.”

“They could be Jewish,” Carmen offers. “What’s their name again?”

“Leverett.”

“That’s not a Jewish name,” Elena says with conviction. “How would you know?” Carmen challenges.

“It doesn’t sound Jewish, that’s all.”

América wonders what a Jewish name sounds like but doesn’t want to ask because it seems that these sisters like to argue and she doesn’t want to get them going.

Carmen stretches full-length on Elena’s bed, where the three have been sitting. The other two adjust to give her room.

“Darío likes you,” she says in Spanish, looking at América, who shifts uncomfortably. “Don’t look so scared! He’s a nice guy,” she adds in English, sitting up, then flops back down again. “Since he stopped taking drugs,” she says under her breath.

“What?”

“Darío had a drug problem,” Elena explains. “He and his wife were addicts.”

“But then she caught AIDS,” says Carmen, “and died.” “Ay, Carmen, you make it sound so ugly.”

“There’s nothing pretty about AIDS,” Carmen says seriously. “Of course not,” answers Elena, “but what he did was really

wonderful.”

América has been looking from one to the other, trying to follow the conversation, which has been in English. “He has AIDS?” she asks.

“No, his wife had AIDS” Elena’s face is suddenly solemn, “When she came down with it, he took care of her. She died in his arms,” she says, moist-eyed.

“My sister,” Carmen says, “thinks life is a telenovela. No matter how bad things are, she manages to put a romantic spin on it.”

“My mother is like that,” América says, remembering Ester sitting before the television set night after night, watching the tortured lives of soap opera characters.

“That’s where you get it, Elena,” Carmen says, throwing a ruffled cushion at her sister, “from Tía Ester.”

The door opens and Teresa steps in. “What are you girls up to?” Her big black eyes scan the room, as if someone else were hiding in it. “Did I miss anything?”

“We were just telling América the sad tale of Darío Perez Vivó.” “Ay, we’ll be here for days,” Teresa laughs. She flops on a stuffed chair, pulls her feet up, and curls them into a yoga posi-

tion.

“How do you do that?” América asks, admiring the ease with which Teresa pulls her feet through the V formed by her thighs. “It’s called the lotus posture,” Teresa says, “it’s easy once you

know what to do.”

“I tried to do it once and thought my knees would never recov- er.” Carmen chuckles.

“You forced yourself into it, I saw you,” Teresa reprimands. “My sister is very determined,” Elena says to América, as if

this comment makes up for Carmen’s earlier statement about her. “So where were we in the story?” Teresa asks, pulling her long

black braid around to the front of her body.

“The dramatic death of Rita in the arms of Darío.”

“Ay, Carmen, stop teasing your sister,” Teresa says, laughing. “I think he likes you,” she says to América.

“I smell coffee,” América responds, and flees from the room, followed by the other’s giggles.

How can they be so flip about a sad life, she asks herself. It’s not his fault his wife died of AIDS. She catches a glimpse of him bending over the dominoes, the skin on his face so tight it’s easy to imagine the skull beneath. He looks like a drug addict, she concludes. At least, he has the same look as Pedro Goya, a Viequense who returned from New York to the island an emaci- ated skeleton that no one could recognize. He died too, in his mother’s arms, when a horse felled him on the pavement of the beach road.

“You can’t help,” Paulina chides her. “We’re all done here.”

“I think she smelled the coffee.” Lourdes laughs, pointing a finger at América, who smiles and grabs a cup from the stack on the kitchen table.

“Have those girls been filling your head with stories?” Paulina asks with a glint in her eye, and América nods and hides her smile behind the steam coming from her cup.

“These are our Sundays,” Paulina tells her later. “Every week they can, the kids come. And almost always Rufo and Lourdes and Darío, and of course, the twins.”

“Every week?”

“Every week, mi’ja. Sometimes other relatives come, or other neighbors. But I always have a full house on Sundays.”

Elena has gone to the movies with Carmen. Leopoldo is slumped in front of the television watching a documentary about penguins. Paulina and América sit at the kitchen table, their voices subdued.

“You seem to have such a nice relationship with your kids, Tía,” América says with such sincerity that Paulina beams with pride.

“Yes, I do. Leopoldo and I try not to get in their way too much.

We let them make mistakes.”

“I tried to do that with Rosalinda, but it didn’t work.” “Giving them the freedom to make mistakes doesn’t mean they

won’t make them, América.”

She considers that a minute, and the familiar tightness in her chest returns, a sorrow so deep she can’t name it, can’t push it aside. Tears slide down her cheeks.

“You’ve taken it so personally,” Paulina says with real wonder, as if it had never occurred to her that her children’s mistakes would reflect on her.

“Wouldn’t you, Tía?” she says resentfully. “What if Elena had run off with her boyfriend when she was fourteen. Wouldn’t you have taken it personally?”

“Nena, you have no idea what suffering my children have caused me.” Paulina brings her hands to her chest.

América looks up as if seeing her for the first time. “They

have?” It doesn’t fit with her image of the smiling faces in the Christmas pictures on Ester’s wall of memories.

“If I were to count the hours I spent sitting at this very table waiting for Orlando to come home from these dangerous streets, or the battles I had with Carmen over her friends…Ay, no, nena, you don’t want to know.” Paulina stares at her hands, which are wrinkled, spotted, with short, blunt fingernails and thick cuticles. “What I don’t understand,” América says, “is what a mother has to do to keep her children from repeating her mistakes. How

do you teach them that your life is not their model?”

“You can’t teach them that, nena, they have to figure it out on their own.”

“I can’t agree with you, Tía. Why are we mothers if not to teach them?”

“You can’t teach them,” Paulina insists, “you can only listen and guide them. And then, only if they ask for guidance.” She touches América gently on the forearm. “You heard Carmen talking this afternoon about her boyfriend?” América nods. “Every Sunday she comes with another story of another boyfriend, to taunt me. Like she wants to punish me for all those years I wouldn’t let her date. Every time she comes to dinner, it’s a dif- ferent boyfriend, from a different country, as if she’s looking to se which one is going to set me off screaming and yelling for her to stop.” Her voice is choked with tears. “I’m a religious woman, nena. I’ve devoted my life to being a good Christian. You can imagine what it feels like to have my daughter, almost thirty, come home every weekend to tell me about another boyfriend from another country. And to know that she’s sleeping with fu- lano de tal from who knows where.” She blows her nose on a napkin from the plastic holder in the middle of the table. “I tried to bring up my kids as best I could, as best we could, because Poldo was always there for them. He’s always been there.” She sights deeply.

“I think Rosalinda ran away with Taino to punish me for something. I don’t know what, though. I can’t figure out what I did that would make her do this.”

“Maybe she wasn’t thinking about you at all, when she did it,” Paulina suggests.

“If she’d been thinking about me, she wouldn’t have done it. She knows what I expect from her.” She looks at her aunt’s tired eyes. “But if she hadn’t done it, I probably wouldn’t be here to- night talking to you about it.” It is a cinder, a tiny little spark that glimmers briefly. Maybe Rosalinda was trying to force me to face my own situation. She shakes her head to erase the thought. Rosalinda is neither that sophisticated nor that willing to sacrifice herself for someone else’s sake. She went with Taino because she didn’t want to lose him. It’s that simple. At fourteen, all you care about is whether you get what you want. And she wanted Taino, and there was only one way to get him. América had forgotten how hard it is to lose when you’re fourteen.

“Rosalinda will be all right,” Paulina reassures her. “From what you said earlier, it sounds like she’s going to school, trying to be a normal teenager.”

“I shouldn’t have left her,” América blurts out as if she’s been holding it in for a while. “I should have brought her with me.”

“How could you have managed that, nena? If she were here, Correa could accuse you of kidnapping. Did you ever think of that?”

She eyes Paulina with astonishment. “No.”

“You are in a situation…forgive me, I don’t want to offend, but…you’ve let your situation drag on much longer than it should have. It was about time you did something about it.” She says it with finality, as if she’s been waiting for the opportunity.

América is stunned. It’s not that she’s surprised that her aunt knows about Correa’s abuse. It is common knowledge in Vieques, and Ester has surely confided in her sister. But it embarrasses her that her “situation,” as Paulina puts it, should have occupied any space in her distant aunt’s mind.

“There are places here,” Paulina continues, confidentially, “Where you can get counseling.”

“Counseling?”

“This sort of thing,” Paulina is tentative, searching for the right words, “it’s important to talk about it with someone.”

“A psychiatrist, you mean?”

“No, not exactly. There are groups of women…women like you…in your situation. Places where you can go and talk about it,” she repeats.

“Why would I want to talk about it? I’ve run away from him, what more should I do?”

“It’s not about doing more, América. It’s…this sort of thing…the violence…I’m sorry, I’ve offended you. Believe me, nena, from the bottom of my heart, I’m trying to help you.”

Does she think I’m crazy? Why would I go to a psychiatrist? I didn’t do anything. He’s the crazy one. He’s the crazy one. He’s the one who needs help.

“I appreciate your concern, Tía,” América says icily, “but I can take care of myself.”

“Ay, you’re insulted. Please forgive me, nena, I didn’t mean to.”

“I’m kind of tried…”

“Of course, let’s open the sofa bed. I’m sorry, mi’ja. I didn’t mean to offend you.”

“Don’t worry about it, Tía.” But she’s distant, formal, wrapped in a hard, impenetrable layer that makes her back stiff and her speech clipped. She thinks it’s my fault, she tells herself; she’s blaming me.

From the sofa bed in the living room, América hears the mur- mur of Paulina and Leopoldo’s voices in their room. In the apartment below, Janey and Johnny screech at each other for what seems like hours before a man’s voice quiets them and sends them crying into another part of the apartment. Sirens wail, trucks rumble by close enough that they seem to be just under the win- dow, one truck after another all night long. It’s not quiet in the Bronx the way it is in Bedford, the way it is in Vieques. She’s never been quite so aware of life around her as she is now. She’s distracted from sleep by the neighbors calling to each other, the television downstairs, Paulina and Leopoldo’s