The Time It Snowed in Puerto Rico (16 page)

I kept the book under my mattress, next to my journal, even after I’d finished. I couldn’t put it back in the study. I was lonesome for Lazarillo’s world, and hoped that by sleeping on it, I could go there in my dreams.

On my next trip to town, I stopped at the library and checked out an English book,
East of Eden
, because I once saw a picture of James Dean at the salon. He and Blake looked alike. I figured that book was the closest I could get to him and the States.

“V
ERDITA
,” M
AMÁ CALLED
on the afternoon I had just started
East of Eden
. I sat on the porch with a bowl of cut watermelon and a pillow propped behind my back, but my mind was walking the hills of California, U.S.A. I prayed Mamá would leave me alone. I was tired of her whining, tired of everything that had to do with the baby, and it wasn’t even born yet.

I held my breath and listened to see if she would call again. She didn’t.

Because of her belly, Mamá never left her room anymore, not even to lie on the couch and watch television. She was in bed all day, awake, with a cold cloth over her eyes, complaining that I was being too noisy or worrying that I didn’t make the
arroz con habichuelas
correctly. She didn’t like anyone near her. She said every touch was painful.

Later I put down my book and, still dreaming of
America, went to make sure Mamá hadn’t wet herself, and to see if she wanted rice soup. That was all she could stomach.

“Are you hungry?” I asked. She gripped my hand and squeezed it hard.

“Señora Delgado,” she whispered. “You know where she lives.”

“Should I get Papi?” Something wasn’t right. Her eyes were beady and ringed yellow.

“No. Just the midwife.” She covered her face with the cloth.

Señora Delgado had delivered most everyone in the
barrio
. I wondered if the baby was coming. Teline said that when Pepito came, Titi Lola wet the bed and cried out for hours. Mamá’s sheets reeked of urine and sweat, but she didn’t cry. In fact, she barely breathed. Her belly loomed over, knotted and hot, and seemed to bury her alive.

I ran down the tarred main road, hugging the brush, cars whirring and swerving by, until I came to Señora’s aqua house with white-painted iron on the windows and door. Pink and purple orchids climbed the fencing and smelled like candy. I caught my breath on the front stoop.

“Señora Delgado?”

Señora Delgado came to the mesh door and squinted. She was a large woman with strange violet eyes that matched her flowers. “Who’s there?”

“Verdita Ortiz-Santiago,” I said.

“Sí, Venusa’s girl. I thought so, but my eyes—they’re not so good as they used to be.” She opened the door. “You like Florecitas? I have a bowl of them right here.” She took my hand and pulled me into the living room.

“No,
gracias
, Señora. My mamá sent me.”

“Her baby has another few weeks. What does she want?”

“She’s sick. She told me to get you.”

“Everyone feels sick at the end. Sick and tired of having a baby inside!” She laughed. “Tell her to drink some chamomile tea and suck on those ginger peels. If that doesn’t work, tell her to put a lemon to her nose and smell it for ten minutes. And make sure she eats at least seven bananas a day. Okay? Here, take a Florecita for your walk home.” She handed me a cookie with a hard, yellow icing rosette.

“But, Señora—” This was different. I didn’t want the baby to come, rip right through Mamá, when I was alone. “She hasn’t left the bed for weeks.”

“Normal.” She ushered me to the door.

“She barely eats. Her arms and legs are thin as bamboo!” I was desperate. I put my back to the door and held the latch so she couldn’t reach. “Her eyes are yellow and she wets herself. The baby is killing her!”

The image of the Chupacabra bursting Mamá’s belly seemed as real as the Florecita crumbled in my palm, as real as Lazarillo, as real as anything I believed in. I didn’t want my dreams to come true—for it to feast on Mamá and then come after me. I wanted Señora there.

“
Ay bendito
. Relax, Verdita.” She patted my arm. “Okay,” she sighed, “I come.” She pulled a shawl over her shoulders, and I released the latch.

W
HEN
S
EÑORA
D
ELGADO
walked into our house, she took one sniff of the air and crossed herself.

“Here,” she said, and pulled a gold bracelet with a coral stone off her wrist. “Put this on.”

The stiffness of her words told me I shouldn’t argue, so I did as she said and followed her back to the bedroom.

“Venusa?” Señora Delgado said, but Mamá didn’t move. She flung the sheets off Mamá’s body, exposing the giant belly, lumpy and mottled like a canker on the side of a tree. Mamá wore no panties. I looked away, ashamed for her, reminded of my own body in the creek and what she had told me about
putas
.

Señora Delgado palmed Mamá’s foot and then rubbed it. “She’s hot. It’s the evil eye. I need wet cloths.”

I threw every washcloth we had into the tub, ran the spigot, and scooped them up. At the edge of the bed, I stood with soggy arms and a puddle at my feet. Señora Delgado pushed up Mamá’s chest, and for a moment I was sure Mamá was dead. Her eyes rolled back in her head showing only the yellow whites. I hugged the cloths to my chest; water dripped down my arms. I didn’t want her to die.

She moved her arm to her belly. “It hurts,” she moaned.

“Verdita, put them on her legs and over her stomach,” Señora Delgado instructed.

I laid the wet cloths over Mamá. She tried to kick, but only managed to flinch against the cold.

“Get your papi,” Señora Delgado said. “She needs to go to the hot springs in Coamo. I can’t get her there. We need a man to lift her. Go!”

It was late in the day. Papi wasn’t on the
finea
anymore. I knew where he was.

I dialed the number to the
jíbaros
bar. My heart pounded in my ears, temples, and forehead. It was my fault! God was answering my prayers, punishing Mamá and the baby. My stomach knotted. I hadn’t come when she called me, and now she was dying. The phone rang four times before someone answered.

“Please, I need Señor Santiago. Faro Santiago!” Mamá began to scream. I dropped the phone. “Mamá!”

Señora Delgado rocked her and rubbed her belly. “Where’s your papi?”

I couldn’t answer. The phone dangled by the cord.

“Hello? Hello?” Papi’s voice was so far away.

“Papi, Mamá is sick. God is punishing—”

Mamá howled.

“Verdita! What is it?”

“I prayed, and Mamá got sick, and the baby is killing her because it’s a Chupacabra.” My thoughts raced back and forth. The colors of the room blurred.

“Verdita,” Papi said.

“Please, Papi! Help me!” I cradled the phone and hugged my head to my knees.

“I’m coming!”

“It’s my fault,” I whispered into the phone. But there was no one there to hear. The line was dead.

I sat on ground beside the bed, with my knees pulled up to my chest, singing “Los Pollitos” to myself while Mamá screamed. Señora Delgado rubbed her stomach with a washcloth until Papi came, then she covered her with the sheet.

“Venusa!” Sweat trickled down Papi’s forehead and neck, and pooled in the dippy area below his throat.

“Faro, she needs to go to Coamo,” explained Señora Delgado. “The mineral waters will help. She cannot have the baby yet. It is too early.”

Papi wasn’t listening. He wrapped a sheet around her and scooped her into his arms like the wet rags I carried.

“Verdita, come!” Papi commanded, and I followed behind. “We are going to the hospital in San Juan.”

“But that is an hour away. She just needs—” Señora Delgado began.

“She needs a doctor.”

Papi laid Mamá in the backseat of the jeep, and I climbed into the front, buckled my seat belt, and said prayers to the Virgin Mary card in the rearview mirror. I didn’t need it to talk to God, but I wanted to see something holy.

As we pulled away, Señora Delgado stood in the front
yard, her limp shawl hanging over her arms bangled with gold
azabaches
. I hid mine from Papi. He’d be angry if he saw.

I
SAT ALONE
in the San Juan hospital waiting room, gray couches against gray walls along gray carpeting. I was drowning in gray. On the wall was a framed picture of Jesus, his chest torn open, his heart aflame. The single window looked out over concrete buildings. Green palm trees stuck through the street cracks like weeds. The room reminded me of one giant confessional booth. Only no priest was there to give me penance. I imagined Papi sat here while I was being born, and I wondered if he had felt the same way.

A nurse in a blue uniform with a white apron brought me a cup of apple juice. It was tangy and tasted nothing like the apples I ate at home.

“Your papi is with your mamá.”

I knew that already. The nurse spoke in a singsong voice, like Bambi in the
cine
.

“She is very sick.” I knew that, too.

“I can get you anything you need. More juice?”

I shook my head. My cup was still half full. Too sweet. The nurse didn’t say anything more, and I said nothing at all. I thought about
East of Eden
to keep from thinking about how I’d prayed for this. I tried to picture the mountains and
valleys exactly as the book said. I figured California and Washington, D.C., probably looked the same. They were both in the States. I wondered what Blake and Omar were doing at that very moment. Eating dinner? Playing baseball? I missed them and felt lonelier having imagined them at all.

The sky turned orange, then purple-pink, and finally black. The colors smeared into one another, and I wished I could disappear into air and float around the world on the breeze. I prayed that I wouldn’t be alone here anymore, that God would let Mamá live, that the baby wouldn’t be a Chupacabra, but I still didn’t want a boy.

When Mamá Juanita came through the waiting room doors, I couldn’t move fast enough to reach her.

“I’m here,
nena
. I’m here,” she said.

I buried my face in the smell of her cocoa-butter body and didn’t hold back the twisted sounds that came from my throat. I wanted to explain what I’d done. I wanted to confess, but my mouth and tongue wouldn’t fit together to make words. She rubbed my back until the sobs passed, and then led me out of the room.

We took a taxicab from the hospital to Mamá Juanita’s. It was my first time in one, but I couldn’t enjoy it, couldn’t even bring myself to keep my eyes open. They batted between seeing and sleeping until I felt the softness of sheets skim over me, and I stopped fighting.

Adam, Eve, and the Fruit

I
WOKE THE NEXT MORNING AND DIDN’T REMEMBER
where I was. Crocheted curtains hung in scalloped webs along the open windows of the bedroom. The sun didn’t cut through the blinds in stripes like at home; instead, it peeked through the holes in odd shapes that moved with the wind. White rainbows danced on the blue-green walls, like being underwater.

Mamá Juanita’s house was different from mine; it felt safe. I let myself forget to remember the day before, the weeks before, even the year before. I pretended that the room was deep beneath the sea in the castle of the Ocean King, and I was his mermaid princess. But the pretending didn’t last. Sooner than I wanted, I remembered Mamá’s cries and the taste of apple juice. The coral stone from Señora Delgado’s bracelet tickled my wrist. I started to take it off, but was afraid of what might happen if I did.
Mamá said that Señora Delgado was a woman who saw things—things that even the priests didn’t see. The light flickered on the bedroom walls. I’d keep the
azabache
on a little longer.

Down the hall, Mamá Juanita spoke to someone. I threw back the covers and followed the sound. In the kitchen, Papi sat at the table.

“Papi!” I yelled. He turned, his eyes red and swollen. I’d never seen him cry.

“Is she—” My voice choked on itself.

“No, Verdita,” Mamá Juanita said, and pulled me to her side.

I reached my hand out for Papi. I wanted him to say it, but he kept quiet.

“Your mamá is sick with an infection. The babies need to come out of her, but they are still too small.”

“Babies?”

“She has twins inside her.” Papi spoke low. “Fraternal. Do you know what that means?” Mamá Juanita asked.

I didn’t.

“You have a sister and a brother,” she explained.

I didn’t know any person who’d had more than one baby at a time. Cats and dogs and chickens, yes, but not people.

“I’ve got to go back. The operation starts at noon,” said Papi.

“Operation?” I asked.

“The babies have the infection too. The doctors need to give them medicine. You understand?” asked Mamá Juanita.

I did. Mamá was sick. The babies were sick. The doctors would make them better. Papi ran a hand through his dark hair. With no pomade, it stuck up in different directions. It looked like mine. He left it like that, then rubbed his eyes.