The Time It Snowed in Puerto Rico (19 page)

“It’s been almost two weeks and no invitation to meet the new
bambino
, so we thought we’d come see for ourselves.” Titi Lola scanned the dirty dishes in the sink, the mound of unfolded laundry on the couch, the empty Similac tins, and the half-washed windows. Her gaze settled on me, and I hoped I didn’t look as unclean as I felt. She cocked her head and pursed her lips. “Hmm …” She waved to Delia, who carried two brown paper bags splotched with grease. “We brought food.”

“Fried chicken,” said Delia. She put the bags on the table, exposing her belly bump; it was not nearly as big as Mamá’s had been.

The smell of chicken filled the air. I hadn’t eaten any in months. I wondered if there was a cockfight the night before, if Papi had seen it while playing cards. Was this the losing rooster, bloodied and broken into oily pieces? I thought of the limp hen in Mamá’s hands, moving its wings, swimming through the air like Angela toward heaven. My stomach knotted, but my mouth watered.

“The baby is in there?” Señora Delgado asked, eyeing the locked bedroom door.

“No,” I said. My shirt was damp from the laundry and hugged tight to my body. I crossed my arms over my chest to hide the curves. “He sleeps in my room.”

“Your mamá?” Señora Delgado started toward the door before I answered. Titi Ana and the prayer women followed.

“She’s still sick. She doesn’t come out, but I bring her food and change her sheets and check on her all the time,” I explained.

“It’s okay. We’re here now.” Titi Lola ran a hand over my head. “Delia, give Verdita something to eat.”

Delia pulled fried chicken pieces from the bag and motioned with her head for me to eat. I couldn’t.

“Venusa, open the door. It’s me, Lola.” Titi’s voice was soft and low. She spoke to the crack of the doorframe.

“We can help,” said Señora Delgado.

No answer.

“We understand,
querida
. Please,” said Titi Lola.

Titi Ana began to hum, a soft monotone note that soon changed pitch with each woman’s added voice. Slowly their sounds made words, and they sang:

We shall overcome our pain, strong hearts and souls united
.

We shall overcome to tell our stories bravely
,

Our love defying sorrow’s gain
.

The door remained closed. The women gathered before it.

We’ll sing of wounds healed by divine embrace
.

We’ll sing of loss restored by grace
.

I’d heard the prayer hymn before, at church, but never in the soft soprano of all women. It was different then, changed by them into a kind of magic.

They sang, voices full and high:

We’ll share our hearts with those who weep alone
,

Chant songs of joy and courage to face the coming morn
.

We’ll celebrate the resurrection story
,

And join our circle of love reborn
.

Delia put her hand over mine. The same hand that had slapped Teline beneath the mango tree. It wasn’t as rough as I’d imagined. I left my hand beneath hers and blinked away the tears. Nothing was like I’d imagined.

The hymn ended, but I could still hear the music vibrating on the terra-cotta. Then the bedroom door opened. Mama’s ghostly face appeared. Tears streaked her cheeks and stained the front of her cotton nightgown. Titi Lola put her arms around her, and the group silently slipped into the room. They left the door open. Cracked, just a sliver. I could see the movement within.

“She’ll be okay,” said Delia.

Her dark eyes reflected my face and body, like a shadowy mirror, and I wasn’t afraid of her and Carlos anymore. She’d loved and been loved. A baby was not a punishment. I understood that now.

“Where is your brother?” she asked.

“In my room.” I led Delia there.

Inside the crib, he slept, his chest moving up and down, his lips puckered soft.

“We nicknamed him Naranja,” I told Delia.

She cocked her head, like Titi Lola had earlier.

“He was born orange.” I ran a finger over his tiny corn knuckles. “Orange like a new sun. I think his twin sister is the moon. She let him rise, but it meant she couldn’t stay.”

I hadn’t thought about his story before that moment, but it came out as if I had told it a hundred times.

“Delia?” Titi Lola called.

We left Naranja and went to Mamá’s room. Inside, the women sat around her on the bed.

“Bring me a basin of warm water, please,” Titi instructed.

I helped Delia fill a bowl with heated water from the stove. We took it into the room, where the women un-clothed Mamá. I didn’t look away from her nakedness. It no longer shamed me. They wrapped a fresh sheet around her and stripped the bed of the dirty ones. We put the bowl on the floor, and leaning her back over the side of the mattress, the women silently washed her hair. The water trickled and splashed onto the floor. Titi Ana toweled the ground on hands and knees. After the suds were rinsed clean, Señora
Delgado began to sing another hymn, and the rest joined. I didn’t know the words, but hummed along and helped Titi Lola comb the kinks from Mamá’s hair. It was soft and smelled fresh and sweet. I ran my fingers through the silky strands. I had missed her.

When Naranja awoke, I brought him to the bedside.

“Give him to your mamá,” instructed Señora Delgado, and I did as she said.

It was the first time Mamá had held him since the hospital. Her arms trembled with his weight.

“He’s a good baby, Venusa. A strong boy,” Titi Ana said.

“Naranja,” Mamá whispered to his head. He gurgled spit bubbles, reached for her hair, and tangled himself in its waves. She didn’t pull away, just stared down at him, running her thumb over his cheek.

The women stayed all day, cleaning, eating, and talking. When Naranja began to cry for food, I went for the Similac, but Señora Delgado stopped me. Mamá sat on the living room couch with Naranja. She pulled up her shirt and pressed his lips to her breast. Naranja fidgeted, cried out for the bottle in my hand, sucked and cried, sucked and cried. On the third try, Mamá’s milk came, and he ate peacefully.

“The real thing is always best. Only a mamá can give that,” said Señora Delgado, eyeing the trash can full of Similac tins and an empty bottle of gin.

“When is your papi coming home?” she asked.

“He’s at work. And sometimes he stops by the
jíbaros
bar—for dinner and politics.”

Titi Lola eyed Titi Ana and cleared her throat. Señora Delgado crossed herself, then took out the trash.

The women left late, but Papi still wasn’t home. Mamá slept with Naranja in her bed. I missed his steady breathing in my room, but was too tired to think about it for long. My head was heavy, my eyelids too, so I lay down on the pillow and closed my eyes. I hadn’t slept a full night since before Naranja was born, and I missed my dreams, even if they were only of quiet darkness.

In the morning I awoke to the smell of
funche
and
café con leche
. Mamá was not in the kitchen, though. I went to her room. It smelled clean, like the ocean. The windows were open, the bed made. The hump where Mamá’s body had been for so long was smooth, the sheets drawn taut. She came out from the closet in a yellow dress, one of the salsa dresses that I never saw her wear. She’d pinned her hair up along her temples, long and wavy in the back, painted rouge on her cheeks and lips, and even curled her eyelashes. She looked beautiful. My stomach fluttered. Mamá!

“Are you hungry,
nena?”
she asked.

I went to her and wrapped my arms around.

At the breakfast table, she ladled sweetened cornmeal into my bowl and sat beside me, breast-feeding. “It’s good?” she asked after I took a bite.

I nodded. Mamá smiled. I wanted to say so much. To tell her how sorry I was for everything, that I loved my baby brother, and that Papi would come home soon. He always did. He was just trying to forget the sad parts of Puerto Rico.

“I’m sorry,” Mamá said before I could. “It wasn’t fair to leave you alone.”

I let my spoon sink into the buttery mush.

“Thank you, Verdita. You did a good job taking care of him.”

I tried to lift my spoon, but it was caught, suctioned beneath. I couldn’t look her in the eyes, afraid that she’d see everything I’d done to hurt her, so I stared at the bumpy grits of corn.

“I always dreamed of having children.” She sighed. “After you were born, your papi and I tried for many years to give you brothers and sisters, but it was not God’s will. Then one day I felt another baby growing inside me, and I knew that I was called to be a mother of more. I imagined the faces of all the children I would have. I began to name them.” She rubbed the corner of her eye, then continued. “So when the doctors told me I could no longer carry a child, I thought my life was over. I thought your papi didn’t need me—that you and Naranja didn’t need me. I was wrong.”

She reached across the table. I let go of my heavy spoon.

“Tell me, Verdita, what do you dream of?”

I dreamed of Papi’s rainbow beach.

Naranja slept at Mamá’s breast. Milk wet on his lips.

This was my chance. But I remembered the MPI men with their angry faces and hateful signs. My palms sweated; a chill ran down my spine. Was I hot or cold?

“I’d like to go to the United States,” I said.

“The United States?” Mamá’s eyes shifted out the front window framing Puerto Rico’s mountains.
“Sí,”
she said.

She touched my head, smoothed a kinky curl. “I can still remember holding you like this.” She rocked Naranja. “Now look. My little girl is a grown beauty.”

I smiled, hopeful that Papi would agree.

Just after Mamá washed the pot and dumped the cold
café con leche
down the sink, Papi came through the front door in a stained
guayabera
, his face shiny with sweat, his eyes blistered red like a Chupacabra’s.

“Verdita, take care of Naranja,” Mamá said, and led Papi to the bedroom. She closed the door behind them. I held Naranja against my chest, his head lying on my shoulder, his face looking up into mine, asking questions I couldn’t answer.

“It’ll be okay,” I told him.

Naranja blinked hard at my words and breath on his face.

Their voices carried through the walls, Papi’s slurred, Mamá’s steady. She said his name over and over.

Naranja’s heart beat fast. I could feel it through my shirt. Mine did too. I took him out onto the porch.

“Los pollitos dicen, pio, pio, pio,”
I sang. In the distance, over the green mountains and valleys, the ocean crested here and there in foamy white. On the other side of that sea sprung from a pumpkin was the United States and the rainbow beach, Omar and Blake, Jill and Bob. I wanted to visit Hartford, Connecticut, U.S.A., and bring Jill and Bob sesame seed bars. The three of us could sit on their porch, crunching on candy, wearing straw hats, and singing “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

M
AMÁ MADE
ARROZ
MIXTA FOR
dinner that night, and I was sure it had never tasted so good. Papi came out of his room, washed and shaved, and pomaded smooth. His eyes were still ringed with red, but not nearly the bloodshot from earlier.

He sat at the head of the table. Mamá put a plate of
mixta
before him and took a seat, holding Naranja. Papi prayed over our food. A short prayer, his voice raspy and low.

When he finished, he turned to me. “Verdita, your mamá and I have spoken and she tells me you want to go to the United States. Is this true?”

I dropped my fork on my plate.

“Sí
, Papi,” I whispered.

“You can visit Tío Orlando, if that’s what you want.” He eyed Mamá, then looked down at his pile of red rice. “We’ll make plans. You wouldn’t be in America long.”

“A few weeks,” said Mamá.

Papi rubbed his brow, then looked up and our eyes met.

My thoughts swelled, and I was sure my brain would pop and seep out my ears, nose, and mouth. But it didn’t. In fact, nothing came out except, “Papi! Mamá!”

I kissed their cheeks and danced around the table, even though they barely moved, barely smiled, barely ate. I was grateful and feasted until my belly was full, until every speck of chicken, every grain of rice, and every smear of oil was licked clean.

Later I lay in bed listening to coquis chirp, wondering if it was all true. Would they really let me go? My finger-tips tingled, and no matter how I fixed my pillow, I couldn’t sleep.

It would be hard to leave them. And what if I started to forget things while I was away? Like how to speak Spanish or how to cook
arroz mixta
, or the taste of fresh coconut milk, the smell of banana leaves, the sound of coquis. What if I forgot Puerto Rico, like Omar? What if America stole Puerto Rico from me like the protesters said? And all at once my excitement changed. The butterflies in my stomach grew stone wings and batted against my rib cage, thumping and bruising my bones.