When I Was Puerto Rican (31 page)

“Hola.”
He stood stiffly on the other side of the gate, sleepy eyes begging me to ask him in. My first instinct was to run and change my tattered dress for something nicer. At the same time I was furious that he had just appeared uninvited.

Mami materialized on the porch steps as if she’d been expecting him. From every corner of the world my sisters and brothers emerged to stare at us as though at animals in a zoo.

“
Buenas tardes,”
Mami said, wiping her hands against her hips. “Negi, is this your friend from school?”

I wished a bolt of lightning would strike me dead right then and there. The idea that he now knew I talked about him to my mother, my mother!

“Sí.”
I growled.

“Aren’t you going to ask him in?” She was as cheerful as a sparrow, while I wanted nothing more than to be swallowed by the earth in one gulp.

“Come in,” I mumbled and raced up the porch steps.

He sat on the sofa, silent and dignified, while Mami fed him crackers and lemonade. My sisters and brothers casually arranged themselves around the room, pretending to read or play jacks while keeping an eye on everything that went on. I wanted to swat them away like flies.

“I know some Vélezes in Bayamón,” Mami said. “And there are some in Caguas.” I bet there were Vélezes in every single town of the island. But she acted as if she knew them all.

“My family is from Ponce, but my dad is stationed at the Roosevelt Base.”

“Oh.” She was impressed. His father was a military man with a steady job.

“Where did you get such a funny name?” I asked, evil as the radio vixens.

His chocolate skin reddened. Mami glared at me. My sisters and brothers stifled giggles.

“I ... I guess my Dad chose it.... I was born in Kentucky.”

“Kentucky!” Mami murmured. An American as my first suitor!

“There’s a Johannes-burgh in South Africa. Is that what you’re named after, a city?”

The kids laughed, and Johannes bit his lip.

“Negi,” Mami commanded, “come into the kitchen a minute.”

As soon as we were on the other side of the wall she grabbed my arm. “You’re being very rude to your friend!”

“He’s not my friend. I didn’t ask him to come. He just showed up.”

“Well, he’s here, and you must treat him with respect. Now get in there and behave like a proper
señorita.”

“All the kids are watching.... They’ll make fun of me.”

“See if he wants to go outside. Show him your gardenia bush or something. I’ll keep the kids here.... Wait a minute.” She moistened a rag and wiped my face and neck. “Scrub those grimy hands before you go.”

We went back to the living room, where Johannes sat examining Héctor’s new red and yellow top.

“Wanna see a tree?” I asked. Mami rolled her eyes.

We stepped into the yard, trailed by Delsa, Norma, Hector, Alicia, Edna, and Raymond. “You kids stay with me!” Mami called.

“I have to get my marbles!” Raymond wailed.

“Get them later. Come in here now.”

I led Johannes to the creek, away from the house but within view of Mami who would be watching.

“Your mother is very nice,” he said.

“What are you doing here?” I couldn’t help myself. He was the cutest boy in seventh grade, and I liked him. But every time I opened my mouth, something nasty came out, as if the part of me that spoke was different from the part of me that felt. I tried to remember what soap opera heroines said to their lovers, but I couldn’t compare this boy in shorts and knee socks to the manly Ricardos and Armandos. And I was no heroine. Not in my faded dress and worn shoes.

We stood by the creek, Johannes telling me about his dad’s work as a sergeant in the army, the many places he’d lived, how they were moving again, to Colorado. But I didn’t want to hear any of that. I wanted to hear a man’s soft voice telling me I was beautiful, that he would love me forever, that life would mean nothing without me. I tuned in to the creek’s gurgle, imagining a pristine river on a deserted island, its shore lined with orchids and gardenias, with birds warbling sweet melodies. I wanted to dance to this music in my head, but when I took a step, I tumbled into the creek with a wild splash. Johannes stood on the bank, stupefied. I fought the sucking mud and crawled out like some prehistoric creature from an ancient lagoon just as Mami and my sisters and brothers came running.

“You’d better go home now,” I told Johannes through my tears. The last I saw of him was his straight back convulsed in laughter, his khaki pants and knee socks spattered with mud.

Mami took Edna and Raymond to buy shoes, and I sat on the porch reading a Corin Tellado romance instead of watching my sisters and brother, who disappeared whenever I was in charge. A man came out of the house where
“una gente rica”
lived, his eyes shaded by a straw sombrero. He wore a yellow shirt tucked into white pants, and something about the way he moved reminded me of Jorge Negrete, the Mexican movie star. His broad shoulders tapered to a narrow waist, and he walked with the swagger of someone who wore a six shooter on each hip. He sat on a rock, dangled his hands between his knees, and stared at the quickly flowing water as if it held a secret. My heart thumped the name “Armando,” whispered hoarsely as in the radio soap operas, and I willed him to look up and fall in love with me at first sight. But he just stared numbly at the stream, his face invisible under his hat. I ran inside, combed my hair, washed my face, and tugged here and there so that the bodice of my dress lay flat against the bumps on my chest. With trembling fingers, I undid one of the buttons to show an inch more skin where the cleavage should have been.

When I returned, he was on his back, hands under his neck,
sombrero
over his face. The afternoon was quiet, disturbed only by the rushing stream and the buzzing of a
colibrí
around my gardenia bush. A flower now bloomed on the side of the bush facing the water, the first to bloom of hundreds of buds that studded the tree like pale gems. I nipped it, brought it to my face, and buried myself in its fragrance. He rose and looked across to where I stood. I felt dangerous, bold, older by years, inspired by all the Marianas and Sofias whose emotional ups and downs had fed my romantic fantasies. I looked at him, and my gaze was met by an amazingly blue pair of eyes against cinnamon skin and a faint smile tickling white teeth. He tipped his hat in greeting. I nodded then stuck the stem of the gardenia in the open buttonhole, where it flopped in the wide space between my soon-to-be breasts. He chuckled, but I didn’t mind. I took the gardenia out, pinned it behind my right ear, where, I thought, it accentuated my intensely black eyes. I felt beautiful, fragrant, warm as the morning sun. I leaned against the mango tree, throwing my chest up the way I’d seen Maria Félix do in movies when Jorge Negrete was about to kiss her. The man across the way folded his arms across his chest and smiled broadly. I closed my eyes.

“Negi, what are you doing?”

Mami stood outside the gate staring, with Edna and Raymond snickering behind her. She scraped open the gate against the cement walk, and I quickly buttoned my blouse. She stared at the man walking up the bank toward the big house on the corner.

“Who was that?”

“Who?”

“That man across the creek.” He’d gone into the house as quickly as he’d appeared.

“I don’t see anyone.”

“Get inside and help me with these bundles,” she said, dropping a shopping bag into my arms. “And I don’t want you out here again when that man is out.” On the rocking chair my Corin Tellado book flapped in the breeze. “I wish you’d stop reading this trash,” she said and flung it inside, where it fell under the sofa, to be retrieved later.

Mami and Papi’s arguments became unbearable. They screamed at each other, ruptured the night with insults and hate-filled words that echoed in my head for days. I lay in bed crying, afraid to step into the room where I heard things breaking, but the next morning there were no mismatched pieces, no chips or fragments, nothing to sweep away. We had breakfast in silence long after Papi left for work, Mami distant as another country, shrouded by something dark and grievous that we couldn’t break through. She served us, helped us dress, sent us off to school, and left for her own job in a fog of pain that obliterated all hope, all romance. I tried to disappear within the hallways of Ramón Emeterio Betances School, where children from happy homes crowded in cheery groups. The school library became a refuge from would-be friends, and I sat for hours reading fairy tales, diving into them as into a warm pool that washed away the fear, the sadness, the horror of living in a home where there was no love.

“Don’t be so dramatic!” Mami scolded as she wrestled with a chicken whose neck she was about to wring.

“But it’s true,” I sobbed. “Nobody loves me. I have no friends. Kids tease me all the time. And you and Papi ...” My throat closed.

The chicken flapped its wings wildly; downy feathers floated around Mami like a nimbus. “Oof! This one doesn’t want to be eaten!” She tugged hard, and the chicken’s neck cracked. She grinned. “There!” The bird’s wings slowed as if it were flying through water.

“You’re not even listening,” I whined.

She sighed deeply, hung the chicken on the side of the house, and wiped her hands on her dress. “Negi, we love you. But what goes on between me and your Papi is our business. We have our problems, just like every other couple.”

“I don’t hear all the neighbors yelling and screaming at each other like you do!”

“Now you’re being disrespectful.” The warning in her voice made me back down.

“It’s not fair,” I mumbled.

“What’s not fair?”

“Nothing’s fair. Life’s not fair!” I wailed in a fresh fit of tears.

She sat next to me on the steps and draped her arms around me. Her body jiggled, and when I looked up, tears streamed down her cheeks, but her mouth was curled into a smile that she was trying hard to conceal.

“What’s so funny?” I cried, on the verge of catching her giggles.

“Nothing,” Mami said, laughing and kissing the top of my head. “Nothing’s funny.”

We sat on the steps holding each other, laughing and crying at nothing, the chicken’s wings thumping against the side of the house.

“Next week you will be a
teeneyer,”
Papi said as we sat on the porch smelling the night air.