The Time It Snowed in Puerto Rico (15 page)

“Suddenly, Zapato, who had never broken his pace, reared like the devil was in him and took off through the jungle. He left so quickly that we couldn’t see which direction to follow. Then—I’ll never forget it as long as I live—the coquis went silent, and in the distance we heard a terrible howling, like a pig being slaughtered.”

“Oh, Benny!” Mamá shook her head. “They are children,” she reminded him.

I gripped my ankles. Next to me, Blake’s arms flexed; his breath came shallow and quick.

Tío Benny went on, “Faro and I began to run away as fast as we could, thrashing the darkness with our machetes.” He sliced his arm through the air. “The jungle tearing at our clothes.” He pulled at his shirt. “The howling growing louder and louder. Nearer and nearer.”

I put my hands over my ears.

“Then. I fell.”

We gasped.

“The howling was right on top of me, and I knew I could not escape. I thought those were my last moments on earth. I turned to see the monster’s face—” Tío Benny stopped and crossed himself.
“Ay Dios mio!”

“Ay Dios mio,”
I whispered, not knowing what it was he saw, but imagining a great many horrors.

“There, hovering above me, were two glowing red eyes. The Chupacabra! Come to suck my blood and leave me white as a ghost!”

We all gasped again.

“You’ll give them nightmares,” Mamá said. “Faro, please.”

“Benny is the one telling the story, Venusa. I have nothing to do with it.” He took another sip of his gin.

The mountain jungle around our house seemed darker than before. I scooted closer to Blake. My skin felt like it was covered with a million mosquitoes, and I scratched at my arms and legs until they were red with nail tracks.

Tío Benny winked at Titi Ana, then continued. “And just as I knew it would lay its teeth into me, just as the hot breath of death warmed my face, there was a light. The brightest light I’ve ever seen.” He paused. “And the red eyes vanished back into the jungle.”

“What was it?” I asked.

“It was your papi. He’d found his way out and come back with a lantern and Abuelo. He saved me.”

Papi raised his gin to Tío Benny and laughed. “I would not let the devil feast on you, Benny.”

“I am grateful!” said Tío Benny. Then he reached out his arm to the black night and shook his head. “Never doubt the legends of the jungle, children.”

I bit my lower lip.

“Enough, Benny,” Titi Ana said. “They won’t sleep a wink.”

“Is it true?” asked Omar.

“Sí
. It’s true,” said Tío.

“Who wants some more
arroz con dulce?”
Mamá pulled herself up, belly first, from the chair.

“No more Chupacabra talk. Play something happy, Benny. It’s the boys’ last night,” said Titi Ana, and she followed Mamá into the kitchen.

“I tell you no lies,” he said. “I’ll never forget that night.” I knew I wouldn’t either. He picked up his guitar. “Let’s get you boys ready for America! How about ‘La Bamba’? Richie Valens, man.” The fast strum broke the silence.

He did his best rocker impression, and we clapped and laughed and, for a while, forgot about the red eyes of the Chupacabra. But later that night, while Mamá and Papi snored next to each other and Omar and Blake slept side by side on their netted cots, I lay alone with the sheets pulled up to my neck, the shadows dancing around the door and over the bumpy mounds on my bed. The howling sound Tío Benny spoke of wailed in the wind, the shimmer of his black eyes winked at me through the slats of my window. I tried to be brave, tried to ignore the sounds and sleep; but then there was a creak or a swish, and I’d sit up in bed, gripping my sheets.

We’d said “Chupacabra” out loud. It had to have heard us. And now it was coming to drink my blood and make me white! I thought of Dick and Jane, and Blake when he’d first arrived, of Mamá’s neck and the bloodless victims of the devil’s feast. I wanted my skin to turn white
like the men and women in the States, but not pale as death. I pulled the sheets over my head and prayed that the monster would eat all the chickens in the coop and be full before it reached our house. The window sill creaked. I opened my eyes beneath the covers. My hot breath filled up the space and choked me. I had to come out; I had to get air. But the Chupacabra—it could be right there, on the other side, waiting to bite. I imagined blood seeping out of my private parts like Mamá said, and the monster drinking the stream until I was empty. I cupped my hand between my legs and willed the blood to stay inside. Something billowed the sheets. The Chupacabra? Or even worse, maybe Teline tattled and Carlos had come in darkness to snatch me from my bed and make me a San Juan
puta
!

I kicked at the covers as hard as I could and ran to Mamá and Papi’s room. At the door, I stopped, afraid of turning the doorknob. But Padre Ramos said it was all natural. I thought of Teline kissing my neck, of Blake’s hand over my thigh and the way my body looked, wet and warm in the creek. I looked back to my room, more afraid of what I imagined than what I knew. I turned the knob. Mamá and Papi echoed each other’s snore. One fat lump next to one skinny. I went to the skinny.

“Papi,” I shook him.

He jumped up.
“Que-que?
Verdita?” He sniffed and rubbed his eyes.

Mamá rolled her belly to the side. “Faro?”

“I can’t sleep,” I said. I didn’t want to tell them I was afraid of the Chupacabra, and I couldn’t tell them about Carlos. “I don’t feel good. I think I caught the mountain mist,” I lied. Papi looked to Mamá. It was a bad lie, but I didn’t have time to plan a good one.

“Ay
.” Mamá shook her head, pushed over, and patted the space between her and Papi. “You want to sleep here?”

I hadn’t climbed into bed with them for a long time. I wondered if I should, suddenly nervous that Papi would notice the lumps on my chest through my nightshirt, that he might feel the growing guilty apples in me. I crossed my arms and stood by the side of their bed, hugging myself against the cool of night.

Mamá opened the sheet. The warm, familiar smell of their bodies rose up. Not the Old Spice or the bottled roses of the day, but the night smell, like corn after it was shucked. I missed that. Carefully I climbed in, Mamá’s belly like a pillow in my back. Her knees spooned me and my knees fit perfectly in the nook of Papi’s side. The three of us lay like puzzle pieces, and I let myself remember what it was like to love them.

Mamá ran her hand down the line of my back and whisper-sang,
“Los pollitos dicen, pio, pio, pio … La gallina busca el maíz y el trigo les da la comida y les presta abrigo.”

The Chupacabra seemed so unreal next to that moment. Our three breaths moved in and out together, protecting each other. I swam toward my dreams on the melody of Mamá, sleeping deep and soundless.

I
N THE FUZZINESS
of early morning, I was startled awake.

“Ow!” Mamá yelled, and sat up gripping her belly. Her knees jabbed me in the tailbone, and my knees did the same to Papi’s side.

“Aw,” he groaned. “Venusa? Watch out, Verdita.” He pushed me to the side so he could reach Mamá.

“The baby kicked me. Feel.”

Papi put his hand on her belly.
“Ay bendito!
It must be a boy. Strong.”

They laughed. I sat alone on the edge of the bed, watching the light pattern the walls, my eyes adjusting. Then Mamá began to sing. Only this time, it wasn’t to me.

“Los pollitos dicen, pio, pio, pio
.”

She rubbed her belly and hummed. That was my song, not the baby’s. It stole it from me, just like it stole Mamá and Papi. I left the bed. It was settled; they didn’t love me anymore. They were having a boy. Just what Papi always wanted. What did they need me for except to shuck the corn and take the blame for everything? Carlos could do what he wanted to me; the Chupacabra could suck my blood. Either way, when they found me dead,
they’d
feel guilty.

“Verdita,” Papi called.

My heart filled up warm. “Papi?” I said, hoping they might call me back, beg me to return.

“Do you want to feel the baby?” Mamá asked.

Papi waved his hand toward Mamá. “Come.”

My fingers went cold and numb. “No.”

I marched back to my room. The sheets were stretched across the tiled floor. I pulled them over my shoulders like a cape and dragged them to bed. The sun was rising. It lit up my room, exposing the corners for corners and the door for a door. There was no make-believe monster. No Carlos. Nothing. I closed my eyes and put the pillow over my head until I fell back to sleep. I dreamed that the Chupacabra grew inside of Mamá, making her white and drinking her blood until none was left, then it split her belly open, looking for me and Papi to feast on. I woke later to the sound of Omar and Blake dragging their suitcases across the hall tiles. On the bed, white lines sliced my body to pieces where the bright daylight shone through the window slats.

The World Within, the World Beyond

M
AMÁ’S BELLY GREW BIG IN THE HEAT OF MIDSUMMER
. And the bigger it got, the thinner her arms and legs became. She reminded me of the pincushion she kept for mending shirts, a fat, brown sand-sack with thin needles sticking out.

She stopped sleeping, unable to find a comfortable position, and complained that the baby kicked at her bones. So she sat on the couch all day and all night, watching the television and crocheting the blue and white blanket that now rolled over the entire living room floor. Mamá said the baby pushed on her bladder too, and sometimes she’d wet herself in the middle of dinner or on the couch or when she walked from the chicken coop to the house. Because of that, she didn’t go to town or even to church
anymore; and when people came over, she hid her enormous body in the bedroom until they left. She stopped having Señora Delgado and the prayer group visit. And when Titi Lola or Titi Ana came, she had me close the bedroom door and say she was sleeping. I was embarrassed for her. She didn’t look or act like my mamá. Not the beautiful woman that I hated and loved. She barely spoke, and when she did, her voice was thin and small, like each word hurt. She had completely transformed.

Papi said I needed to help Mamá until the baby came. She was too sick to be alone while he worked the long farm hours and spent even longer ones at the
jíbaros
bar. But being nurse to Mamá was not my idea of fun. I ached to jump into another world and leave that one.

I searched Papi’s study for something, anything, to take me away: worn Bibles and dusty journals, a handful of
National Geographics
with curled-up covers, notebooks filled with smudgy newspaper clippings, ripped books of poetry and ratty books of remedies, boxes of old photographs, distant relatives I’d heard of but had never met, my metal box with my birth certificate locked inside. On the top shelf, to the right of the dead roosters, was a dusty green book with gold lettering. It looked as old and untouched as the cocks. I climbed up and snatched it, being careful not to touch the stiff legs of the dead.

The cover read,
La Vida de Lazarillo de Tormes y de sus Fortunas y Adversidades
. The Life of Lazarillo de Tormes and of his Fortunes and Adversities. Swirling gold vines
framed the edges. My stomach fluttered when I opened the cover and found a cartoon of a boy and a man on the first page. Someone had stamped the word
PROHIBIDO
over and over across the picture. I had discovered a world that someone wanted to keep a secret. Mamá and Papi? Or someone else?

The book was my gateway. Through it, I was free to leave our pink house and Mamá’s constant groaning, to travel over the seas and walk the dusty roads of Spain. With Mamá’s sickness and Papi always gone, I hid in the chicken coop collecting eggs and reading, excited by the adventures of young Lazarillo. I picked the day’s vegetables and then sat in the dirt, eating tomatoes like apples, turning pages with seedy fingers. On the long trips to town for things Mamá needed, I carefully walked the winding roads with the book open in my fists, one ear listening for the whirring of cars and the other to the voice of Lazarillo. I was shocked and then afraid when I read that Lazarillo’s wife and the Archpriest were lovers. I was on my way home and nearly dropped my basket of
pan de agua
and powdered milk.
Amantes
. Lovers. I finally had a word for it. Mamá and Papi were
amantes
. So were Carlos and Delia. And from Lazarillo, I realized that Blake’s hand over my thigh wasn’t enough to make us lovers or pregnant. It wasn’t enough to make me a
puta
, either. By the time I turned the last page, I knew I could never go back to reading Dick and Jane. There was so much more in the world than tall buildings and automobiles.