The Time It Snowed in Puerto Rico (5 page)

“Fredo Rodriguez!” Señora Alonzo’s eyes squinted into slits and her singsong voice turned low and rough, like she’d swallowed gravel. “That is an
Americano
song. Elvis
es un Americano
, and so am I.”

In our house,
gringo
was a curse word. Papi would take the belt to me for sure if I ever used it. He said that Puerto Rico’s people were all colors of the rainbow. So even if the green didn’t like the yellow, one color couldn’t disrespect the other or pretty soon the whole rainbow would fall from the sky in broken colors. I assumed we were green and the
Americanos
were yellow.

But Fredo didn’t stop there: “I’m not allowed to sing
Americano
songs, and anyone who sings those are
gringos
too.” His voice was clear and defiant, but he looked down, his eyes drawing lines on the wooden desktop.

“You’re allowed to speak
Inglés
. Why aren’t you allowed to sing?” Señora Alonzo stood with her hands on her hips, her face flushed pink.

“Papá said,” Fredo replied, his voice now quiet and small.

Señora Alonzo breathed loud. The air came out of her nose like wind and we were all silent, listening and holding our own breaths.

“Estudiantes
, take out your Dick and Jane books.
La música se termina
. Time for
Inglés
reading. Perhaps, Fredo, your papá will not object to you learning how to read English.”

I opened the top of my desk and hid behind the lid. “Fredo!” I hissed below the shuffle of books and papers
and desk lids closing. “She’ll tell your papá and he’ll whip you for sure!”

“No, he won’t. He says we should be more like Cuba. Besides, she’s just a woman,” he snapped back.

I gritted my teeth and squeezed the desk lid, flexing my muscles. “If you say that one more time, I’ll punch you in the face!” I sliced my eyes the way Señora Alonzo did, took out my Dick and Jane, and slammed the lid closed. The sound was louder than expected. I jumped a little. So did Fredo, which was what I’d wanted in the first place.

Fredo was a runt. He always brought butter sandwiches fried in pork grease for lunch, making the whole classroom stink like dead pig. We nicknamed him
cerdito
, piglet, and called him that when he wasn’t around. It didn’t matter that he was Boricua or a boy—I was three inches taller, with muscles twice as thick.

I traced my fingers along the cover of
Streets and Roads
. Jane with her pretty blond hair tied in a bow. Dick in perfectly tucked shirt and shorts. Both were yellow-skinned and smiling. I liked the cover picture best. When I bruised myself from climbing the Flamboyán trees or tripping over dried sugarcane stalks, my skin turned yellow outside the round purpling. I figured it was the closest I could come to being like Jane. Jane on the cover, at least. Inside the book, her skin was as American white as the paper she walked on.

I was mad at Fredo for ruining our music class, for calling Elvis a
gringo
, for saying Señora Alonzo was just a woman, and, most of all, for reminding me that I was green
and they—Elvis, Dick, Jane, and even Omar—were yellow. I was happy thinking of myself as a rainbow, like Papi said, until someone like him reminded me that I was greener than any other color.

“ ‘John and the Robbins,’” Señora Alonzo read aloud. Her voice was softer now. “Verdita,
por favor
.”

I opened the worn cover and flipped to the chapter. Cars, tall buildings, and a bus with two layers were drawn across the top of the page. I put my finger to the first sentence, holding it down so my eyes could see.

“Park Street was a very busy street. In a very big city,” I read aloud. Papi was a good reader and made me practice reading the newspapers that Tío Orlando sent from Washington, D.C. Omar sometimes brought comic books when he came. Archie was my favorite.

“Swish, swish went the a-oo-tu-mo-bb-bb-ay—” My face went hot.

“Auto-mobeeles,” Señora Alonzo sounded out.

“What’s that?” I asked. I’d never heard the word before.

“Un coche
. Like a car,” she explained.

“Is an auto-mo-beeles different from a car?”

“No. But there are many words for the same thing in
Inglés
. We must learn them all.”

I understood because even I had two names.

T
HAT EVENING
, P
API
brought home a sack of yuccas. We sat on the veranda cutting the bark off. The rain clouds of
the day had swept off to the west, streaking the horizon in silvery purple. The sun was out, melting pink and orange into the dark waterline. I watched the sky on fire, paying little attention to the root half-peeled in my palm.

“What’s on your mind, Verdita?” Papi asked.

“Nothing,” I said.

“Don’t lie to your papi.”

But I really wasn’t lying. Other times I had said nothing, but I was thinking about the cockfight and Omar or the States and President Kennedy or the baby. Other times I had lied because I was thinking a lot of things. But now I truly wasn’t. This time it was like I was melting into the sea foam with the sun. But I knew Papi wouldn’t give up. So I asked, “Papi, do you like Elvis?”

“What?” With his knife still in hand, he scratched his forehead with his knuckles. The blade flashed speckles of gold.

“Fredo Rodriguez said that his papá hates
grin
—Elvis.” I flicked the peels off my lap and reached for another root.

“Everyone is entitled to his opinion, Verdita. For me,” Papi said, continuing to skin his yucca, “Elvis grunts too much. Reminds me of a pig taking a mud bath.” He made
uh-huh
oinks and I laughed, thinking of Fredo and wishing someone would throw him in the dirt where he belonged. “Do
you
like Elvis? That’s the better question.”

“We sing his songs in music class.”

Papi cocked his head and sucked his teeth.

“I like
Americano
music better than ours—better than
jíbaro
songs.” I couldn’t look Papi in the eyes when I said it. If I did, I knew for sure I’d cry. I meant to show him that I had changed; we were different. I was more like Señora Alonzo than Mamá.

My blade caught on the bark. I tried to push it free, but it snapped the yucca in half and sent the narrow end skittering across the veranda. Papi watched until its spinning stopped, then took the peeled end from my hand. “I think we have enough.” He put it into the pot and went inside.

A Taste of America

O
N THE MORNING OF
D
ECEMBER FIFTEENTH
, I woke early to the smell of Papi’s cologne on the warm shower air. Old Spice. The only cologne for island men, he said. It had ships on the bottle. Expensive. Papi only wore it on special days like today.

I kicked off the covers and followed the scent to his room. Mamá was still in bed beneath a yellow crocheted blanket. Waves of dark hair lay across the pillow, but her face was hidden.

“Mamá,” I whispered.

She didn’t move.

“President Kennedy,” I reminded her. It took her nearly twice as long as Papi and me to get ready. If she didn’t get up soon, we’d be late.

The room filled up spicy. Papi said, “Mamá is sick, Verdita.”

He wore a powder-blue, pressed
guayabera
and had pomaded his hair up and back, slick and glossy. He looked like Elvis. No, Papi was more handsome.

“She has morning sickness,” he said.

“Morning sick?” I’d never heard of such a thing.

“It’s like catching the mountain mist,” he explained.

It happened sometimes if you went out in the rain on the mountains of Puerto Rico. Salty ocean water came down in heat, then rose up again in cold mist. If you breathed in too much of it, the mist settled in your nose, your chest, your head, making you cold and achy. The day before when the rain fell, Papi and I had stayed inside and dry, but Mamá had gone to Señora Lopez’s house, returning with damp hair and lungs.

Papi sat on the edge of the bed. “Leave Mamá to sleep. Go get ready.”

I left their bedroom and dressed. Mamá was ruining our trip. I figured she’d done it on purpose, had gone out and breathed the mountain mist to keep me from doing what I wanted—seeing the United States. That was just like her. I pulled my hair back into one big ponytail and licked the flyaways to make them stay. I hated those black, corkscrew curls. A pair of round-tip scissors lay in a pile of crayons and colored pencils beside my dresser. I picked them up and snipped off a couple of curls near my temple.

Perfect. I was ready to meet the President.

I heard Mamá’s and Papi’s voices, whispering low, and I wondered what secrets they shared. I didn’t like to leave
them alone together for too long anymore, so I slid my feet into sandals and hurried back to their room. The whispers stopped as soon as I entered.

“Is she going?” I asked.

Papi patted Mamá’s shoulder. “No.”

She was a
jíbara
woman who never took an interest in anything away from our mountain
barrio
. I stamped my feet in the bedroom doorway. My sandals clattered on the tiles like flamenco shoes.

Papi stood and put his wallet in his pocket.
“Vámonos
.”

When I realized we were going without her, electric pulses zipped through my legs. I shuffled down the hall making similar but very different clicks on the terra-cotta. Papi chose me over her, over Omar, over everything finally.

It was an hour to San Juan. We drove in Papi’s jeep, top down, and I sat in the front since Mamá wasn’t there. The sun shone; the rains had passed. The trees and grass were emerald bright and winking as we drove down our winding mountain. Fruit stands stood at every bend. Oranges, bananas, and pineapples. Along the straightaway, a man sold fried chicken from the back of his pickup truck with a fryer sticking out of the bed. We passed the
jíbaros
bar, the
Schitz
sign dark in the daylight. I thought of Omar for an instant. We drove on. A lone goat gnawed on the jungle brush where the mountain fell steep to a mossy waterfall. A pack of dogs ran beside us for a while, their black marble eyes never blinking. We passed another bar with
Navidad
lights strung across the front and three plastic kings, like
stairs on the roof. Round and round, down we went until the jungle gave way to paved roads, a Walgreen’s, concrete buildings, and a new Big Boy restaurant. Painted just above the doorway was an American boy in red checkered pants and slicked-back hair like Papi’s. It had been a long time since I had been down the mountain. Not since we took Omar to the airport in August. The Big Boy hadn’t been there then.

“Look, Papi,” I pointed to the restaurant and read the sign.
“Hamburguesas
.”

Papi gave a little snort and sucked his teeth.

“Can we try one on the way home? Real
hamburguesas Americanas?”
I had only ever seen hamburgers on the television commercials. I didn’t know what they were, but the people in the commercials said they were delicious.

“Your mamá will have dinner waiting,” he explained, but I saw him eyeballing the restaurant in his rearview mirror.

When we arrived in Old San Juan, some of the streets were blocked off for cars; crowds of tourists and islanders pushed their way along the cobblestones. Policemen with guns stood on the corners talking and adjusting the rifles slung across their backs. All my life I’d been around machetes and knives that were used for farmwork or protection, but never guns. They were only used for one thing, to kill. I rolled up my window a little and wished for a moment that I was home snuggled in bed with Mamá.

We drove on past the pink and orange buildings, past the Plaza de Colón with Columbus standing proud. If only he could see the island now—Indian and Spanish, American and African, green, blue, yellow, red—all blended together. We followed the road along the fortress wall, a thin brown line between the green lawn and the green sea.

“Mamá Juanita is meeting us in the Plaza San José,” Papi explained. She’d just returned from visiting the United States.

We thanked the Virgin Mary hanging from the rearview mirror when we found a parking spot. A policeman with a rifle leaning on one shoulder stood in front of the Museo de San Juan, so I held Papi’s hand while we walked. Across the boulevard, it seemed only the stone wall of El Morro kept the ocean from flowing into the city. I could almost touch it. From our porch, the water seemed so far. I wondered what Mamá would say if she was here, so close to the Ocean King again. I imagined him sending a giant wave over the city wall to sweep her back beneath. I shivered at the thought and was glad she was home safe.

We took a turn and followed the crowd that dipped down a narrow street. Vendors littered the sidewalk with carts of peeled oranges and
piraguas
. Tall buildings with carved archways and bright flags lined the cobblestone. Tourists with bulky cameras around their necks stopped and did backbends to take pictures of the old towers. A man in Bermuda shorts put his arm around the statue of
Ponce de León while his wife told him to say “cheez.” Americans, the first white ones I’d seen up close. The woman’s face was freckled pink, but her legs stuck out from under her skirt, thick sticks of bleached sugarcane. The man’s head was bald and shiny red. I’d never seen such candy-cane people. Or maybe they painted themselves up that way for the
Navidad
. How strange they were. I wanted to take a closer look, but Papi pulled me away. In the middle, on a park bench, Mamá Juanita sat with a book under a plum umbrella. She wore a white cotton dress and shone as bright as the sun.