The Time It Snowed in Puerto Rico (10 page)

“Oh,
sí”
the turtle-lady said under her breath, obviously impressed that Papi was a Borinqueneer.

“Bueno,”
Titi Lola said, and continued to paint.

“Okay. And Lola, do something with that hair.” Mamá sighed. “I’ve tried everything.”

I rolled my eyes. I did my own hair. Mamá hardly touched it except on special days. She made it sound like my hair was on
her
head. I’d show her. The Simplicity picture was in the pocket of my jean shorts. I could feel the paper stiff against my leg.

“Adios!”
She waved to the room, then locked eyes with me. “Verdita, be good for Titi.” She talked to me like I was still a
bambino
. I looked away and nodded. When she went out, the doorbell clanked again.

“I love this song,” Titi Lola said, and a woman with hair knotted in rags turned up the radio. A
charanga
orchestra played out a fast rhythm. Titi Lola shook her hips and took quick back-and-forth steps around the turtle-lady.
“Cha-cha-cha, cha-cha-cha,” she sang, then put the bowl and brush down.

“Verdita, what you want? Shorter? Bangs?” She fingered my sprouts.

I reached into my pocket and slid out the paper folded neatly in fourths. Titi Lola unfolded it and squinted. “I want that,” I said.

She lifted an eyebrow, and for a second I thought she’d say no.

“I was going to try blond next too.” She laughed. “Do you like the brown?” She fluffed her hair and lifted her shoulder to her chin like the actresses in magazines.

“It’s nice,” I lied. I had to. I wanted her to make my hair blond and straight. I’d have said anything to get it done.

“Me too.” She grabbed a green smock and spread it around my neck like a backwards cape. It was the first time I had my hair done at Titi’s salon, and I seemed to fit easily into the pink picture of the room in the mirror.

“You want it cut, too?” Titi Lola asked.

“I want it just like hers.” I pointed again to the picture. “Straight and blond to my shoulders.”

“Your mamá say okay?”

Mamá hadn’t bothered to ask me anything about my hair. “She doesn’t care.”

“Okay.” Titi Lola yanked out my elastic band, along with a few corkscrewed strands. “I think you’ll look very beautiful with this blond hair. Oh,
sí
. I think so.”

My chest zippered from my navel to my neck. This was it! I was going to be beautiful like the girls in the States—more beautiful than Mamá. Titi Lola brushed out the snarls, and my hair expanded, rising like a black sea sponge. I hated that reflection. Ugly and dark with island hair and island dirt. I was glad that when the day was done, it would be gone.

She trimmed my ends, then told me to lie back in the sink and squeeze my eyes shut. She applied a thick cream. It burned my forehead, the tips of my ears, and the back of my neck; even the hairs in my nose hurt from the smell. She combed; my scalp stung and itched, but Titi Lola assured me that it was a natural part of the process. She had to brush out the curls, had to show my hair how to behave, punish it for being unruly and disobedient. It was bound to hurt a little, like when Papi punished me. So I held my breath and dug my nails into the chair cushion until she finished and rinsed the fire from my head.

Water dribbled down my temples; my nose itched with no relief. Torture. Titi Lola cut squares of tinfoil from a long roll, poured a couple different bottles into a bowl, and mixed it with a paintbrush.

“Here we go. Magic time,” she said and began painting and wrapping my hair in tin shingles until I looked like a cartoon spaceman on television.

I had to sit and wait for my hair to take the paint and change color. Titi Lola gave me a stack of magazines. I flipped through all the Spanish ones until I found an
English headline. A
TV Star Parade
with Cynthia Pepper on the cover saying, “The biggest fights with my parents ever.” I liked her. Cynthia was blond, like Id be; she had bangs that curled open like a flower, with the rest of her hair in two braids on each shoulder. I decided I’d wear my hair just like that tomorrow, and I wanted to rip out the photo for my journal. I paged through the advertisements until I found the section with her interview. I liked the American magazines best. They were easy to read and never had big words—like
automobile
.

I’d finished the Cynthia interview and an article on Elvis when Titi Lola tapped the tinfoil on my head with a comb. It sounded like dried banana leaves in the breeze.

“You ready to see your new hair?”

I’d been ready a long time. I leaned back in the sink. Titi Lola stripped off the tinfoil and poured warm water over. The smell was strong, like she was washing my hair in
coquito
. She hummed a little to the radio. It had been on the whole time, but I hadn’t heard the songs. The music blended into the hum of blow dryers, the crackle of foil, the splashes of water, the talk of women.

“La-la da-da! You wanted blond hair—you got it,” she said. “What they call them in the States? Blond-ay bombshell? You a blond-ay bombshell.” She smacked her thigh with a wet hand before squirting shampoo into it and sudsing my head in gardenia-scented shampoo.

She scrubbed hard; it felt good after all the itchy creams from earlier. The muscles in her arms moved up
and down under her skin. When she leaned in close to rinse my hair, her crucifix necklace spindled on my nose. Down her shirt, two large breasts hugged together in a black lace brassiere. Mamá had nice breasts too. Once, when she was dressing, I saw them, round and full, with two brown tips like passionfruit stems. While Titi Lola hummed and rinsed, I slid my hand up to my own chest beneath the smock, beneath the cotton of my shirt, and ran my fingers over
my
nipples. Goosebumps dominoed across my skin. The softness grew hard, and I noticed a lump beneath each tip. Breasts! I hadn’t noticed the guava berries before. I ran my hand across again, proud of them, and at the same time ashamed that I was becoming more like Mamá.

“Hola!”
Mamá suddenly appeared. I jerked my hand from my shirt, even though it was hidden, and eyed the wall clock. I’d been in the salon two and a half hours. She was already finished with her meeting. Lying back in the sink, I felt like she was standing on top of me, like I was a baby again looking way up to see her. I didn’t like it.

“Venusa, you’re just in time to see.” Titi Lola helped me sit tall, and I felt more myself. A pale foreign wave fell across my eyes, and I pinched it to get a good look. It wasn’t just blond. It was nearly white. I couldn’t believe it was attached to my head. I pulled, truly believing that it might somehow unravel, like a piece of yarn.

“Ay, Dios mio!
Lola, what have you done to her?” Mamá snatched at her chest.

“What do you mean? She wanted the blond and straight. She say you okay with it.”

Mamá narrowed her eyes at me. “Your papi will be so angry!”

Titi Lola wrapped my hair in a towel and led me to the high chair. “You wait until it’s done. It’s not done yet. I fix, Venusa. No worry. I fix.”

I sat down before the mirror. She pulled the towel off. White-blond waves fell to my shoulders. My skin seemed browner than it had before, my bushy black eyebrows like caterpillars across my forehead. Sweat beaded on my upper lip and forehead. I looked nothing like the Simplicity picture—nothing like Cynthia Pepper. I was a monster! A Chupacabra! The same dirty island girl I’d been two hours ago, only now white-haired, like an old ghost.

I stared at the ceiling, at the floor, at Mamá pacing back and forth, at anything but my reflection; and I prayed that Titi Lola would make me beautiful like she promised. She set my hair in cantize rollers, tight pins jabbed my scalp, then put me under the dryer. It blasted hot air into my ears, softening the wax and making me deaf. I counted the lines on my palms until the process was complete, refusing to look up. Titi Lola had one last chance to change me into what I wanted. She used raspberry pomade to smooth the choppy locks around my face, to pull them straight. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the greasy wings, slick and stiff.

“Okay,” said Titi Lola. She spun me around to my reflection.

I was the ugliest girl I had ever seen. I ran a hand over the top of my head. The hair was coarse, like a horse’s tail, despite the oily pomade. It wasn’t straight or curly, but some unnatural in-between, like the coated feathers of the dead roosters in Papi’s study. Nobody in Puerto Rico or the States would think I was beautiful.

“Your hair is very curly, Verdita. Very hard to make straight. I tried, but sometimes the cream don’t work so good. But it is the color you wanted,” she explained.

I wanted my old hair back. But I couldn’t go back.

Mamá rubbed her eyes and crossed herself. “
You
will explain this to your papi, and
no
crying. You did this, Verdita.” She shook her head.

“I’m not crying.” The words popped out in a half-sob. “My head hurts. That’s all.” I prayed Mamá’s hair would turn white and fall out. Then she’d be even uglier than me.

She huffed for a minute, then waved at me like she was saying good-bye. “It is hair. It will grow back.” She turned to Titi Lola. “I have to talk to you. Alone.”

Titi Lola pulled my smock off and kissed my forehead. “I think you a pretty girl.” She dug into the pocket of her apron, pulled out a nickel, and motioned with her lips to the round gumball machine at the front of the salon. “Here. The green are my favorite. Sour apples.”

Mamá took Titi Lola to the back, behind the curtain
where they kept the shampoos and pomades and chemical creams. They laughed, and I wondered if it was at me. The gumball machine choked on my nickel, and I had to give it a smack with my fist to get the ball out. I hit it twice more, even after I heard the gum roll down, just because. I got a blue. It filled up my mouth with sweetness and tinted my lips. I tried to sit with my back to the mirrors, but they boxed the room, and everywhere I turned, I caught sideways glimpses. I looked like a dirty American flag. My lips were blue, my ears and forehead prickled red, and my hair was white as the globe of a lightbulb. The women in the room gave me sympathetic smiles and tense grins, then looked away. I chewed hard on the gum and didn’t smile back. I wanted to go home and hide from everyone.

When Mamá and Titi Lola came out, it was as if nothing had happened, as if they’d forgotten all about me.

“Adios
, Lola. I will talk to you soon,” Mamá said, and kissed her.

Titi Lola sighed and ran a hand over Mamá’s arm. “Oh, Venusa.” She turned to me, her eyes twinkling wet. “Verdita.” She kissed my cheek. “You are such a lucky girl to have a new baby.”

I wondered if Titi Lola was joking. I was certainly not lucky. I was probably the unluckiest girl on the whole island, on the whole earth!

On the drive home, Mamá didn’t say one word. Instead she opened all the windows, turned on the radio,
and hummed loud. The wind swirled through the jeep and tangled my hair into a crisscross of stiff gnarls even worse than the corkscrews. I tried to pull it back into a ponytail, but it was too short now and wouldn’t stay put. So I sat with the coarse strands whipping in the breeze, leaving greasy lashes on my face. I would have liked it better if Mamá had yelled at me the whole ride home. Then I could be mad back, and I wouldn’t think about my hair. But she didn’t even care enough to do that.

Papi came up the grassy hill from the chicken coop when we got home. As soon as I stepped out of the car, he yelled, “Venusa!
Ay Dios! Madre Maria y los santos!
” He put his hands in the air and waved them around.

“Talk to your daughter. I had nothing to do with it,” Mamá called back.

I was in for it good. But I was glad that Papi at least paid attention to me, unlike Mamá.

“Verdita! What is this? Why—how—your Titi Lola did this? Can you change it back?”

“I didn’t know it would be so blond,” I explained, and tucked my chin to my chest, hiding my face from him. I looked worse straight on.

“Cristo!
Venusa, how could Lola do this to her? Did she go blind? Could she not see the mess she made? Why didn’t you stop her?” Papi set his tools on the porch and put a hand on my shoulder. He was on my side.

“I wasn’t there. Lola said that Verdita showed her a picture of what she wanted and said I knew. But no, I didn’t.”

Papi took his hand off my shoulder and grabbed my chin. His fingers smelled like chicken feed. The dirt made his grip like sandpaper.

“You lied, Verdita?” It was a question and a statement.

“Mamá never told me I couldn’t,” I tried. He didn’t believe me. His eyebrows wrinkled.

“It’s done now, Faro. No use punishing. Look at her! It’s enough,” Mamá said.

I was relieved not to be punished. I didn’t want the belt.

“It’s horrible,” said Papi. Then I knew for sure that I was ugly, even to Papi, and the sting of the belt couldn’t compare with that.

I tried to swallow the tears, to gulp them down into my belly. It didn’t work. So I ran to my room and slammed the door. I grabbed my scissors, pulled the Simplicity picture from my pocket, and sliced the blond image into a pile of bits. That helped some, but my cheeks still burned; so I kicked off my shorts and underwear, sent them flying into the corners of my room. I laid the cold metal scissors against my warm private parts and snipped the thin, light hairs until every last one was gone. I didn’t want to be anything like Mamá or Papi.

My blondness reflected in the mirror. I wished I’d never been born. I wished my soul had been put in another body, in the United States—not here on this island. Hot tears welled. I couldn’t watch myself cry, my face all twisted and red beneath the white-blond haze, a ghoulish
vegigante
,
a carnival queen. With all my might, I threw the scissors. The mirror shattered into a hundred little reflections—a hundred of me staring back at me. Hideous! Mamá and Papi burst into my room. They looked at the mirror, at the scissors on the floor, at me and my nakedness.