The Altar of My Soul

by Marta Moreno Vega

  But at home, Tom and I were elated. Together, it seemed as if we had planned our lives perfectly, and all we desired was being granted. Along with my brother’s and sister’s families, we purchased a three-family house in the Bronx on Olmstead Avenue. Our father contributed the down payment from his years of hard-earned savings. This was an act of love and commitment to the family, and it was my mother’s wish. My father was a penny-pincher. Concerned with his retirement and lack of health insurance, he was extremely careful with his money and had refused to move from East Harlem, because he was paying only thirty-six dollars per month in rent in 1969. Although the block was now infested with drug dealers and addicts, he chose not to move from the home he had shared with his family. The brightly lit, clean halls that had been my childhood playground were now covered with garbage and reeked from the stench of urine. Broken lights made the hallways ominous as the shadowy figures of men and women roamed aimlessly, hiding from the light of the entranceway. For my father, the act of withdrawing several thousand dollars from his savings account for a home for his children in another borough, seemingly a million miles away, was a gesture of selfless love.

  Our house on Olmstead Avenue was filled with happiness and children; it spilled over with joy. We felt as if we had stepped into a television scene of the perfect American home. The new three-story redbrick house had a small front lawn and backyard. All the homes on the block looked exactly the same, but it didn’t matter: 450 Olmstead Avenue was our special castle.

  I felt it important to continue working with children from my community. It was clear to me that there were individual teachers who had made a critical impact on my life, and I wanted to do the same for others. In the three years before my pregnancy, through teaching and counseling, I witnessed the glorious rewards of making a difference in young people’s lives.

  Although giving birth to Sergio was an equally glorious event, I missed teaching. After three months of staying home trying to occupy my time with caring for Sergio, cleaning, and cooking, I was ready to go crazy. Even my paintings took on the monotones of gray that expressed my gloom. Three months later I decided to return to work. I decided that there were more important things in life than washing dishes and cooking. Motherhood did not have to mean leaving my profession. I refused to follow my mother’s example and be forced to defer the dreams of a career. I didn’t want to.

  A friend referred me to a part-time job with a community parent group in the South Bronx, which I thought was a good solution. The mission of the project was to assist parents in improving their reading and writing skills so they could then help their children with their schoolwork and hold their schools accountable for their children’s education. I took Sergio with me and placed him in the nursery with the children of parents with whom I was working. I enjoyed my job. The parents eventually came to teach me more than I shared with them. At the time I began working with them, I was an awful cook and had no real interest in learning how to prepare anything more complicated than rice with beans and stewed chicken. They took me under their maternal wings and taught me to prepare “real” Puerto Rican and African American cuisine. I learned to make the rich brown soup sancocho; tasty grits with eggs and pork sausage; and my favorite dessert, flan—an egg caramel custard.

  The Parent Center was located in the community room of the St. Ann’s public-housing complex. Although the windows and doors were covered with iron bars, inside the parents had created an oasis. Each room was decorated with photographs and children’s drawings illustrating heroes, heroines, and revolutionaries of the black and Latino community. The beautiful, solemn face of Puerto Rican independentista Lolita Lebrón; the studious, stern face of Black Power leader Malcolm X; the atomic burst of Angela Davis’s Afro hairstyle, with her raised fist, ignited the room, demanding racial empowerment. The room filled with racial pride, mixing with the aromas of boiling chicken and rice; tostones, green plantain chips; and collard greens smothered with pork saugage, eggs, and grits. The parents enjoyed cooking and eating, so the stove was always lit. The delicious smell of food consistently greeted everyone who came to the center and always enticed me to enter the kitchen.

  The parents and I shared dreams and aspirations while I conducted the reading and writing classes. Part of the Parent Center’s mission was to make dreams happen. Kinshasa, one of the parents, was intent on becoming a beautician. Each day she would come to the center with a new hairstyle, new nail designs, and tight sexy outfits covering her chunky body. Each day she selected a parent on whom to test her hair designs and makeup looks. And these makeovers drew an audience for the lucky mother who left feeling like a queen. Consuelo, the parent of four small children, was almost invisible in the crowd of fun-loving women. Painfully thin, with an almond complexion, she had dark purple circles under her dull brown eyes. Each day she seemed to wear the same clothes: worn T-shirts and jeans that seemed to be four sizes too big.

  When Kinshasa selected her for a makeover session, Consuelo reluctantly accepted. Kinshasa felt challenged by Consuelo’s fear and made a special effort to make her look beautiful. Disappearing into the rest room with Consuelo, Kinshasa promised us that we were in for a surprise. An hour later the door slowly opened, and Consuelo stepped out. The look of isolation and pain had left her face and body. Consuelo had a newfound feeling of self-worth and presence. We later learned that, as a result of the parent support network, she had had the courage to leave an abusive lover.

  Moments of magical transformation like this seemed to happen daily. My involvement with parents who were struggling to pay their rent and untangle the maze of bureaucracy to get health care for their children and food on the table all convinced me of the importance of community. But as my commitment to community activism grew, I felt a growing uneasiness about my private life.

  Tom was increasingly unhappy with my community work. He felt that it was becoming more important than my own family. He did not intervene, and even lent casual support, but he was distant and annoyed that his son was being cared for in a public nursery center. His growing involvement with the private school sector began to draw him away from what I felt were important concerns for our community. When I went to meetings, he would stay at home caring for Sergio, always remaining distant from my activism.

  Responding to his growing annoyance that Sergio was in a public nursery, I asked my sister to baby-sit our son. Socorro had recently quit her job as a receptionist in a hospital to care for her twin daughters, who were entering puberty. Working in the hospital had changed my sister. She lost weight, dyed her hair blond, and enjoyed experimenting with makeup. Her personality was also transformed. She was more charming, developed a new group of friends, and willingly volunteered to assume the motherly role left vacant by our mother’s death. Sunday dinners were now in her home.

  Often, Sunday dinners included the doctors and nurses she had met while working in the hospital. I noticed that our family gatherings had become an excuse for her to socialize. With a new circle of friends, she was constantly outside the house and would take Sergio with her. They often appeared late in the afternoon. She would giddily describe the wonderful day they had had visiting her former job or friends.

  I soon noticed that small items were missing from my home. First I couldn’t find a gold ring; then a jade bracelet and coral earrings were among the things that disappeared. I was rather disorganized, and at first I thought I had misplaced these items or left the jewelry at school. Then my graduation ring disappeared. Next my watch was missing, and then the gold brooch Tom had recently given me for our fifth anniversary. The liquor cabinet always had bottles missing or bottles that were almost empty, but Tom and I did not drink very much. It could only have been my sister, because she was the only other person with a set of keys to our apartment. Summoning my nerve, I approached my older sister with uneasiness. When I confronted Socorro, she explained that her friends had visited and she had offered them a few drinks. I believed her. But in reality I was afraid to find
out what was really going on, and so I ignored her growing lies and inconsistencies.

  One day my sister-in-law Laura and I arrived at the house at the same time. When we entered the apartment to greet my sister and Sergio, Socorro was lying unconscious on my sofa, and my son was sitting in his high chair, covered with vomit, crying. At first we thought she was dead. She was lying motionless on the sofa, and her skin was a shade of pale yellow. I ran to pick up my son and realized that he had been sitting in the high chair for a long time. Laura ran to help my sister and shook her. The living room reeked of liquor. Empty liquor bottles were spilled on the floor alongside bright orange plastic prescription pill bottles.

  In shock, Laura and I looked at each other and began crying and shaking from fear. Laura placed a cold compress on my sister’s forehead. Slowly, Socorro came to, complaining that she had an upset stomach. She was barely able to sit up. It was painfully obvious to Laura and me that she had more than a drinking problem. My thoughts suddenly jumped to the missing jewelry. How blind could I have been? After my mother’s death and the purchase of our new home, I looked to Socorro as a substitute mother. My sister, a stabilizing force in our family, was out of control.

  Elusive and probably afraid of the truth, Socorro refused to address the incident with Laura and me. After the incident, our relationship deteriorated. In total denial, my sister accused us of lying when we tried to discuss the problem with her husband. In turn, he accused us of jealousy and of destroying his wife’s reputation, refusing to believe that my sister had a serious problem.

  Our family imploded. We all lost our heads and let anger and fear control our actions. In a matter of months, our family was destroyed. My sister disappeared and abandoned her family for three months. When she resurfaced, she insisted that she would not return to the house if we were still there. In 1969, we dissolved our three-way partnership in the house.

  Overwhelmed by our family problems and the task of finding a new home, Tom and I continued to ignore the fact that we were growing apart. We loved the idea of family, and neither of us had the courage to face the unhappiness in our relationship. The crisis created by my sister caused us to rally together and work toward finding a house with enough apartments to accommodate my brother’s family and my father. We tried hard to repair and heal our relationship, but we didn’t know how. There was something missing, yet we couldn’t figure out what it was.

  About the same time, I answered an ad in the employment section of The New York Times for a director for a school project called El Museo del Barrio—Museum of the Community—that was located in East Harlem. The state education project dedicated to children learning about Puerto Rican history and culture sought a director. The position was tailor-made for me, and I applied. Parents and school officials were impressed by the fact that I had been born, raised, and had gone to school in El Barrio.

  A week later the superintendent of District 4 called and confirmed that I had been hired. When I received the notice, I went into my room and cried. Tears kept flowing for hours. I was returning to El Barrio, my home, yet my joy was tarnished. I had lost part of my family.

  The words written by my mother suddenly filled my thoughts: “Don’t cry or mourn because I will always be with you.” I longed to feel the touch of my mother and the caress of my abuela. If they were alive, everything would be fixed. We had worked so hard to escape the tragedies of miseducation, poor housing, and substance abuse that had destroyed too many families in El Barrio. I wondered what we had done wrong.

  In the excitement of being interviewed for El Museo, it never occurred to me to ask to see the location of the program. I simply assumed there was a building somewhere in East Harlem that housed the emerging museum. When I reported to the superintendent’s office on my first day, I was instructed to go to a school on East 123rd Street and review the material that was stored there in a classroom. It was then I realized that El Museo existed only in the dreams of the parents and school administrators and was not yet an actual institution.

  I angrily emptied the material from the cardboard boxes and vowed to hand in my resignation to the superintendent at the end of the day. Then I opened a box filled with incredibly sensitive black-and-white photographs that showed the love the photographer, Hiram Maristany, had for the people and streets of El Barrio. An elderly woman’s piercing eyes caught my attention. Standing before a street altar on 110th Street, she looked straight into my eyes as if she knew me. Her worn wrinkled face and hands spoke of long years of hard work. Strands of white hair peeked out from the scarf that covered her head. The white shades of her dress created an enchanting quality. Part of the altar included a table covered with a white satin cloth that fell softly to the sidewalk; the top of the altar was covered with flowers. The photograph seemed to create a feeling of illuminating whiteness. The altar on display for the world to see was her declaration that the divinities had granted her personal request. Below the woman, a strip of street was visible along the full length of the photograph, as if to say the road from El Barrio goes both ways. You can leave or return. It is your choice. I chose to return.

  The four years I directed El Museo were a turning point in my life. I committed myself to making the vision of the parents of El Barrio a reality. In retrospect, I realize that my dedication grew from my devotion to my son Sergio. When he grew up, I wanted him to have a cultural organization that reflected the greatness of his heritage. I wanted him to be able to see himself in the photographs and paintings of Puerto Rican artists and to learn the history of his people. More than anything, I wanted him to understand that his parents struggled to build an educational institution that created a safe place in which he could learn and grow. Like all parents who have been on the receiving end of racial slurs, my desire was to protect my son from the debilitating wrath of racism.

  The national cry for racial and cultural empowerment was the seedling from which El Museo grew. I delved into the study of Puerto Rican culture. With the dedicated assistance of my sister-in-law Laura, community parents, and many community artists, the institution flowered.

  Tom contributed drawings for exhibitions and for the children’s coloring books. My niece Melody and nephew Chino helped with mailings of flyers announcing programs. El Museo was like a magnet attracting marvelous people who created moments of magic. One of the exhibitions I will always remember was El Arte de la Aguja, The Art of Needlework. Parents within the community contributed elaborate creations of crocheted doilies dipped in a sugar mixture that transformed their art pieces into airy, weblike, sculptural masterpieces.

  The proud parents and their families came out in their Sunday best for the opening. Women guided their families through the exhibition, carefully explaining the history of Puerto Rico and the importance of their cultural work in maintaining our heritage. Our message was clear: The creations of our community and the homes of our people were living museums. El Museo was a mirror that reflected the beauty of our people. From a school program locked in cardboard boxes in a closet, we had developed a vibrant independent cultural institution.

  I realized I was again pregnant in 1973 when my favorite blue jeans wouldn’t fasten. With the demanding struggle to obtain much-needed funds for El Museo, it was impossible for me to take time off from work. The solution was simple. I worked the full nine months. Tom was furious. Not one to lose his temper, he smoldered quietly, trying to make me see how my health and commitment to our unborn child should come first. I argued that the work of El Museo would be a source of pride for our children that had been missing in our own youth.

  Omar was born on August 14, 1973. Like his brother, Omar was underweight. At birth, Sergio had weighed in at five pounds and four ounces, and Omar at five pounds and eight ounces. Although they were both healthy, I felt that it was due to my negligence that they were born so small. Nevertheless, my zealousness in creating El Museo had me back to work in two months. Omar went to work with me and slept in a crib next to my desk. With the staff’s hel
p, I was able to care for him in between meetings.

  A year later, Tom and I realized that our relationship was no longer working. We tried to reinvigorate our marriage by making a list of what we thought were our problems. Tom attended more meetings with me. In turn, I went with him to parties held by his friends from his job and accompanied him on camping trips. I decided to cut down on meetings outside the house. Our efforts could not save our marriage, and we decided to end it. We had been on different paths for too long, and neither of us could turn back. But we were still very close and would remain friends forever. I had custody of our sons, and they would visit Tom on alternating weekends and during the summers. Tom tried to stay more involved, but, as in many divorces, he started another family and grew distant.

  My sons were unofficial staff of El Museo. They grew up in the organization. Visitors were shocked to see Omar’s crib next to my desk, but there it stayed until he outgrew it. Sergio went to the East Harlem Block Pre-School and came to El Museo after his day ended there. They traveled with me and stayed late into the night when we had an exhibition deadline.

  One of the exhibitions I created for El Museo, La Esclavitud, Enslavement, reinforced my desire to better understand my African heritage. My African American friends could not understand how I could be both black and Puerto Rican. As I was growing up, my speech patterns would change when I was in the company of African Americans and then switch back to my accented Span-English when in a crowd of Puerto Ricans. The question of how to place myself in the diverse group of friends provoked unsettling and often hurtful situations.