Nilda (17 page)

They went into a large dining room set with long tables and wooden folding chairs. Nilda saw that the chairs were exactly like the ones in Benji's church. Oh, man, she thought. Turning to comment, she realized that there was no one who would know what she was talking about. Miss Rachel led them to a table set for ten persons and they sat down. The table was covered with a clean white tablecloth.

“Today we'll be served, but tomorrow we serve ourselves, as well as clear the table! So enjoy the service, ladies,” she smiled.

They were served a vegetable soup, breaded chicken cutlets, carrots, hash brown potatoes and a green salad. A large platter of bread with butter, dishes of jam and pitchers of milk were on the table. Everyone passed them around. Dessert was an apple cake, which Nilda enjoyed. She ate everything.

The girls played outdoors for a little while after supper, running, and climbing on the equipment. Nilda began to play with a few of the girls in her group, chasing each other and tossing a large rubber ball around. Someone blew a whistle and the girls lined up.

As they walked back to their cottage, Nilda was feeling tired already. The counselors began to sing songs. At first, she barely opened her mouth, but then slowly she began to mouth a chorus, getting louder and louder. She heard herself singing clearly just like the rest of the girls.

That night in bed, Nilda pulled the covers around her, tucking in her feet. It was dark and quiet, except for the sound of the crickets. She could not fall asleep although she felt very tired. She thought of home again and the sounds and smells, so different. Sounds and smells she could understand. Footsteps on the hard sidewalk. A woman's high heels clicking, or a man's heavy shoes slapping the concrete as he ran to catch the bus late at night.
Someone coughing. Someone whistling. All the traffic whizzing by. Summertime, everybody outside. The radios playing, people talking. Her mother making fresh coffee with boiled milk. The smell of the heat. Sometimes when it got unbearably hot, her mother let her sit on the fire escape with her pillow and blanket.

Suddenly the silence scared her and she wanted her mother; she wanted to go home. Nilda began to sob quietly and heard some of the other girls crying. She thought, They are crying too? Surprised, she listened to them cry for a little while, then remembered that tomorrow they were going to use the swimming pool. She had never been in a pool before. I wonder what that's gonna be like, she thought.

Everyone had stopped crying and she heard the heavy breathing of the girls fast asleep in the silent room. Outside the crickets continued chirping, occasionally changing their rhythm patterns slightly. Slowly Nilda became used to the new melody of sounds surrounding her.

July 14, 1942

Dear Mami,

I am fine. I'm haveing a real good time. I passed my swimming test. I am now advance beginner insted of only beginner that is a higher thing to be. We do a lot of art and crafts I am makeing you something and something for Papá. I received you letter. I told everybody about Victor that he is in Fort Bragg North Carolina. We had a cook out that is where you make a fire and cook the food outside and it tasted real good. We ate hot dogs and hambergers and milk and juice. We also toasted marshmellos. I like Miss Jenete she is really nice to me she is my counselor. I seen a lot of flowers like you told me about when you live in Puerto Rico. I hope you are fine and haveing a good time. Tell Titi Delia I made some
drawings of the camp so she could see what it looks like here. I learn some songs. We really have a lot of fun it is swell here.

Well that is it. Mami I love you and Papa and Aunt Delia and everybody. Bendicion Mama.

Love

     
Nilda xxxxxx

P.S. my friend Josie is nice and so is Stella

   
they live in another state.

Nilda read the letter she had just written to her mother and, satisfied, folded it and put it inside an envelope. This was free time and she had finally decided that she had better answer her mother's letter. Most of the girls in her group were either writing, reading or just sitting around. Getting up from her bunk, she decided to walk to the main house and put the letter in the mail basket. Looking for her two friends, she realized that they were probably at the main house anyway. Nilda started walking down the road; in the past two weeks she had gotten to know the camp quite well. She loved being able to recognize a large oak tree or a clump of bushes, a certain curve in the earth, a gentle slope in the horizon. All these familiar landmarks gave her a sense of security.

Nilda passed a trail off the side of the main road. They had all hiked through there one day; it was thick with trees and bushes. Stopping for a moment, she took the trail and started walking into the woods. She came to a fork in the trail. Taking the path on the right that seemed to climb, she continued along and came to a clearing where the landscape opened up into wide fields covered with wild flowers. The white Queen Anne's lace covered most of the fields, which were sprinkled with yellow goldenrod and clumps of tiny orange and purple flowers. The sky overhead was bright with the sun. Large white clouds glistened, rapidly moving across the horizon and out of sight.

Nilda remembered her mother's description of Puerto Rico's beautiful mountainous countryside covered with bright flowers and red flamboyant trees.

“There it was a different world from Central Park and New York City, Nilda,” she could hear her mother saying. Looking ahead, she saw miles and miles of land and not a single sign promising to arrest her for any number of reasons. Signs had always been part of her life:

DO NOT WALK ON THE GRASS.…

DO NOT PICK THE FLOWERS.…

NO SPITTING ALLOWED.…

NO BALL PLAYING ALLOWED.…

VIOLATORS WILL BE PROSECUTED.

No dog shit on my shoes, she laughed. And Mamá always telling me to watch out for the broken pieces of whiskey bottles in the bushes. No matter where she was in Central Park, she could always see part of a tall building and hear the traffic.

Here there was not a building anywhere, she thought, no traffic and no streets to cross. She became aware of the silence again. The world of the Barrio and the crowds was someplace else far away, and it was all right. Miles and miles away someplace, but she could still be here at the same time; that could really happen. Yes, it's true, she smiled to herself. She felt the letter to her mother still in her pocket.

Nilda went back toward the main road, drinking in the sweet and pungent smells of the woods. She listened to the quiet buzzing of insects and the rustling of the bushes as small animals rushed through, sometimes appearing and disappearing within a split second. She noticed that off to the side of the trail a few feet away was a thick wall of bushes. Curious, Nilda went toward it and started to push her way through. Struggling, she pushed away the bushes with her arms and legs and stepped into an
opening of yards and yards of roses delicately tinted with pink. The roses were scattered, growing wildly on the shrubs. The sun came through the leaves, stems, and petals streaming down like rows of bright ribbons landing on the dark green earth.

Breathless, she stared at the flowers, almost unbelieving for a moment, thinking that she might be in a movie theater waiting for the hard, flat, blank screen to appear, putting an end to a manufactured fantasy which had engrossed and possessed her so completely. Nilda walked over to the flowers and touched them. Inhaling the sweet fragrance, she felt slightly dizzy, almost reeling. She sat down on the dark earth and felt the sun on her face, slipping down her body and over to the shrubs covered with roses. The bright sash of warm sunlight enveloped her and the flowers; she was part of them; they were part of her.

She took off her socks and sneakers, and dug her feet into the earth like the roots of the shrubs. Shutting her eyes, Nilda sat there for a long time, eyes closed, feeling a sense of pure happiness; no one had given her anything or spoken a word to her. The happiness was inside, a new feeling, and although it was intense, Nilda accepted it as part of a life that now belonged to her.

After supper that evening, Nilda's group received a visit from the older girls. They wore jumpsuits as well, yellow with a brown trim, styled differently. Nilda was sitting alone at the side of the hill opposite the cottages. She was barefoot, reading a book. A tall dark-haired girl approached her. She was about fourteen or fifteen years old. Smiling, she looked at Nilda and asked, “Are you Nilda?”

“Yes,” Nilda said, returning her smile.

“What's your last name?”

“Ramírez, Nilda Ramírez.”

“Hi,” she said, sitting down comfortably next to Nilda. “I'm Olga. Olga Rodríguez. This is my third summer here.” Nilda nodded, impressed with the older girl. “Somebody told me about you. They said you are Spanish. Do you speak it?”

“Yes!” said Nilda. “I speak it at home to my mother sometimes, and all the time to my aunt; she don't speak English at all.”

“Okay then,” said Olga, “let's talk. How are you?” she asked in Spanish, and continued, “How do you like camp? Tell me, how long have you been here?”

“Oh,” Nilda responded excitedly in Spanish, “I been here since like about two weeks already. But I will be here a whole month. I like it very much here.”

“Where do you live? In New York City?” asked Olga.

“Yes. I live near Central Park right off Madison Avenue—”

“In the Barrio?” interrupted Olga.

“Yes! Do you know it? Do you live there, too? Maybe you go to my brother Frankie's school.”

“I don't live in the Barrio,” Olga answered. “I live downtown, on 14th Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenues.”

“Oh, my mother took me there once. Is that where there is a big church? Our Lady of Guadalupe, I think. My mother and me took a subway there. That is a great big church.”

“Yes, that is our church,” responded Olga. In English she asked Nilda, “You are Puerto Rican, ain't you?”

“Yes,” Nilda answered, reverting to English.

“You know Puerto Ricans ain't really Spanish. You shouldn't say that. That you are Spanish. I can't even understand you when you talk.” Surprised, Nilda realized the older girl was cross. “It's very hard to understand what you say … like when you say … say the number five in Spanish.” Olga paused. “Go on, say it; say five in Spanish.”

“Five,” Nilda said clearly in Spanish.

“There, that's all wrong! You are saying it all wrong! What kind of accent is that? In Spain they talk Castilian. That's what my parents talk at home. You probably never even heard of that,” Olga said angrily. Nilda did not know what to say and looked at Olga. “Say shoes,” Olga went on. “Go ahead, I'll prove it again; say the word ‘shoes'.”

Nilda wanted to say something. She thought, perhaps I should tell her about Papá. He speaks like that. He sounds like her and he comes from Spain, so he must speak like she says. But the older girl's angry face left Nilda mute. She said nothing.

“Go on,” Olga insisted. “Say shoes. I'm waiting.”

“Say shoes!” Nilda repeated in English.

“Very funny,” Olga said. “Well that proves what you speak is a dialect.” Getting up, she went on, “Don't let me hear you calling yourself Spanish around here when you can't even talk it properly, stupid.”

“You're stupid,” Nilda answered.

“I'm leaving,” Olga said. “We don't bother with your kind. You give us all a bad name.”

Nilda watched Olga turn away and disappear over the next mound of grass. Picking up a single green blade, she popped it in her mouth and began to chew. It had a bitter taste at first, then she got used to it and she chewed slowly, imitating some of the cows she had seen eating in the countryside. She lay back, digging her heels into the soft ground, thinking about the older girl and what had just happened. Nilda stuck out her tongue, then looked at the sky, the trees and the small birds that flew overhead. At that moment she wanted to absorb all that was around her. Quickly, she began to let her body roll down the hill; faster and faster she went until her weight carried her to a full stop. Jumping up, she ran back to get her sneakers and her book. She didn't care about being Spanish; she didn't know exactly what that meant, except that it had nothing to do with her happiness.
Nilda promised to take her two friends to her secret garden today. A few days after she had discovered the garden, she had told them all about it. Josie and Stella had been excited about going and, after much debating, Nilda had finally agreed to take them. She waited by her bunk for the other girls. They were going to meet in the dormitory and leave together.

“Hi, Nilda.” Josie walked in and went over to her own bunk. She took her plaid cardboard suitcase and placed it on her bunk. The suitcase was a present from Miss Rachel and Miss Jeanette. Opening it, she began to rearrange the contents, taking things out and then putting them back inside. At least once a day, Josie would take out her suitcase and go through this ritual. She was the only girl in the group who had come to camp with her clothes in a cardboard box tied with twine. The other girls had laughed and made fun of her. Josie began to brag that she was rich and lived in a mansion with a swimming pool, but her parents were separated and she was staying with some people for a little while. She had been sent to camp from a foster home and nobody believed her. Nilda remembered Josie's reaction to the girls' laughing and teasing. “You won't laugh when you see what my parents are going to send me. They ordered a very special suitcase for me; it has my initials on it and they are J. F., which stands for Josie Forest. It is probably on its way to camp right now.”

Nilda sat on her bunk and watched as Josie carefully busied herself with the suitcase. She's always fussing with that thing, she thought. Nilda recalled that when they had been in camp just a few days, she had entered the dormitory with Josie and found her large cardboard box sitting on her bunk. It was battered and had marks and words written all over it: JOSIE STINKS! JOSIE LIVES IN A GARBAGE CAN. JOSIE FOREST IS FULL OF BUGS. J. F. EATS WORMS! HA HA … HEE HEE … TAKE A BATH POOR LITTLE RICH GIRL. Bursting into tears when she saw the box, Josie quickly ran out of the cottage. Nilda
saw a few of the girls look at her, then at one another and begin to giggle. “I'm telling Miss Rachel and Miss Jeanette!” she had heard herself screaming at them. Running inside to the counselors' quarters, she knocked loudly on the door.