We rarely ate meals communally. Mom was always coming, Pop always going, my baby sister Gabi, a new arrival, stayed at Abuela’s house late, and I was the latchkey kid. One night I was eating dinner alone, hunched over homework, flash cards in one hand, spoon in the other. Mom came in, too tired for anything beyond a “Hi, mija.” She tossed down her keys, placed a book by my soup bowl, and trudged up to her room. A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies by Bartolomé de Las Casas. It was written in 1542, fifty years after Columbus set foot on Boriken and thirty years after Ponce de León met Taíno insurrection with a one-two punch of bloodshed and smallpox. Las Casas was a bishop sent to the West Indies as a Spanish Catholic ambassador. The book was his letter to “the most high and most mighty Prince of Spain,” in which he anatomized the massacres he witnessed firsthand. Reporting the mass slaughter in detail and describing the humanity of Taínos he’d spent years with, Las Casas urged the Spanish throne to discontinue its violent campaign immediately. He anticipated the disappearance of an entire people and Spain’s consequent downfall by a just and mighty God. Las Casas advocated for a kinder, gentler colonial project focused on Christian conversion. I left my soup unfinished on the table, though it was my job to clean the kitchen after dinner. Turning pages as I climbed the stairs. Though it wasn’t about Lukumí per se, the book painted a picture of what greeted the Orisha on the shores of the New World. The Taíno blood already swallowed by the soil and an empire perfecting its acquisitional pillage. The phrase “wild dogs” looped in my gut, so proliferative were mentions of this cheap effective weapon. Trained and unleashed against children, women, cacique chiefs. There was no mention of the seaside petroglyphs that had culled my longing that windy day in Puerto Rico. No, in this book, Taínos were the expired, not the enduring. But I had seen the sun rays etched in stone. The fact of me visiting those seaside caves was proof that Taínos lived on. Carrying my grandfather’s blood, I embodied a survival that Las Casas warned might become impossible. Around two a.m. mom came into my room, took the book from my hand, and turned off the light.
As I studied the books, returning to highlighted passages, cross-referencing them against each other, I gained a richer understanding of many elements in my own home. For instance, the coconut is used to consult with Eleguá. So that’s why it was always thrown by the front door, where Eleguá lived, unlike most other divinations and ceremonies that happened farther back in the house. Of course. But now I knew why. Once, I had sung along to mom’s tape, joining the jubilant chorus of “Cabiosile pa’ Changó!” The exalting energy had been clear, but now I knew the precise meaning. It was a way to greet Changó’s source energy by saying “Hail the king!” The religion required and rewarded study. Things I had once half intuited now had vocabulary, words offered material confirmation. We existed. I was learning to describe my world.
Ofrenda a los Orichas arrived alongside a Spanish-English dictionary, hardbound in blue leather. Mom had exhausted the English-language books she could find on the subject. After that, gifts were often in Spanish. Each new book appeared like a secret message, its receipt acknowledged only when it vanished into my room. The silence of her gifts felt curated and intentional, like anything I might say mattered less than how deeply I dove. In this way, mom and I developed a clandestine exchange, ever respectful of the other’s private worlds.
Skip Notes
*1 Mason quoting S. O. Babayemi, pp. 28–29
*2 p. 68
*3 p. 50
*4 p. 70
A Racial Slur
My senior year, The Bell Curve was published. When the school bell rang and lockers started slamming, the buzz was palpable. A vocal subset of guys applauded its publication, relieved that someone had spoken up on their behalf, saying at last what they had all, apparently, known: whites were smarter than Blacks. (Other racial categories seemed altogether excluded from discussion.) The book’s argument connecting race and intelligence emboldened certain Centralites to assert that the poor were irreversibly doomed, that affirmative action contradicted the destiny writ in our DNA. Inequality wasn’t the workings of the privileged or the systems they engineered—it was biological imperative. Lunch breaks, guys read passages aloud. They’d become overnight intellectuals. The bestseller gave permission to state their superiority, no apologies required.
As an academic magnet, Central High brought in the top test-takers from every neighborhood. It was a microcosm of the city’s white and Black demographics. Split fairly evenly, the two groups made up ninety percent of the student body.*1 At Central, kids from Grays Ferry and Chestnut Hill crammed for math quizzes. Kids from the Northeast and Germantown napped on homeroom desks or sold soft pretzels between periods. Some walked to school, others commuted two hours from the city’s farthest corners. Peek into our hallways, you’d have no clue that Philly was among the most segregated cities in the nation.*2 But after the seventh-period bell rang, students took the Broad Street subway and various SEPTA buses home to separate worlds. We were sorting blocks—taken out and mixed on the playroom floor by day, returned to our distinctly shaped holes by night.
Latinos were underrepresented by half, so most of us huddled together when chance allowed. Miguel was good for a hallway chuckle. Ana, Rubi, and I shared a table in physics. Willie and I checked each other’s Spanish worksheets. He was the better speaker but the teacher gave him hell about his dropped s’s and r’s said as l’s. Plus Willie couldn’t spell, he got the vowels all scrambled up. So, despite his fluency, I got the A and he got the D. But mostly Central’s Latinos befriended other ethnicities or became socially aloof. In a graduating class of five hundred, fourteen Latinos walked across that stage. Our cohort had been bigger when I’d arrived sophomore year, but many had peeled away. You don’t notice erosion when it’s happening.
A year later at Yale, my Latino classmates were surprised to meet a Philly Rican. “Cool, never heard of that before!” They were Boricuas from Los Bronx, Hartford, or Chicago. I was excited to inform them (based on no evidence) that Philly had one of the largest Puerto Rican communities nationwide. It wasn’t until I wrote this chapter that the 1990 census schooled me on the real numbers. During my adolescence, Latinos were five percent of Philly’s population. A sliver. Residential segregation had given me a warped view of reality. Sure, other communities existed. West Philly (where I lived), South Philly, Chinatown, Rittenhouse Square. But if those were neighborhoods, North Philly was, to my eyes, a universe.
* * *
—
Each class at Central had a distinct microclimate based on the kids in the room. Because the teacher encouraged discussion, Government and Politics was a place where you got to know your classmates. There was Avi, a dark-skinned Indian who fashioned himself in Alex P. Keaton’s shadow. His striped polos were buttoned to the top. The way he raked fingers through his hair? It was obvious he’d practiced the move in the mirror. Around his liberal female classmates, Avi played the beleaguered conservative to flirtatious advantage. Though he never mentioned faith to me a single time, his yearbook quote was from John 8:12: “I am the light of the world.” He wasn’t referring to god.
Robin was a volatile, school-of-hard-knocks, I-will-bash-your-face white guy—at least that was his mask. The blond hair above his fire-hydrant neck was buzzed to bristle. You could always see his goatee because he was a head taller than the South Philly Italians he rolled with. Afternoons, in the standing-room SEPTA bus, obscenities flew out his mouth like bats from a cave. Each curse was its own dare for anyone to complain. Making people ignore him was wicked good sport. “Sit on my lap, bitch!” he hollered to his girlfriend, a wispy creature who collapsed onto his legs, giggling away the humiliation. The elderly riders slouched farther into blue plastic seats. “She did it! She listens to me!” Robin announced. He burrowed into her neck and bit hard, as if her hickey constellation needed one more star. One time the driver stopped in rush-hou
r traffic on Olney Avenue. She turned off the ignition and intercom-announced that we would not be moving until the delinquent at the back got off. “You can’t let a passenger off unless it’s a designated stop! I’ll sue you!” Robin yelled. “This is my bus, child,” the intercom replied, “and this is my finger on the police button.” Robin and crew paraded out, muttering about being walking distance from home anyway. His yearbook quote was from A Clockwork Orange: “I was cured all right.”
Pete, unlike Robin, was actually blue-collar white. (Turns out Robin’s mom was a professor at U Penn.) Pete’s father, a firefighter, was Pete Sr. Ten bucks says there were more Petes on the family tree. He was from the deep Northeast—you could practically smell the frankincense from his Roman Catholic breeding. Dude adored his father—the kind of hero worship high schoolers should have long since outgrown. Pete had a gentle-giant slouch, always stooping to your eye level so you could see his kind, melancholy gaze. Broad-jawed and mild-mannered, rugby shirts and khakis ironed with care. His etiquette was textbook. Devoted, honorable, confession-taking Pete. When I visited his health class as part of a safe-sex campaign and rolled the condom onto the banana, I thought Pete would blush right into a coma. After class he asked me, saddened, how I could do things like that in public. Another day Pete looked particularly ruminative. His father had been gunning for that promotion in the fire department. Pete Sr. was a shoo-in, it was a foregone conclusion, and then without explanation was denied the position. Affirmative action, Pete said, shaking his head, more wounded than angry. His hero had been ready to step into the light, rise into his birthright—fire marshal. Even when disagreeing with Pete, I felt for the guy. “How do you know it was affirmative action?” I asked. “The new fire chief is in pampers. He hasn’t put out one-tenth the blazes my dad has.” Pete didn’t mention the new chief’s race—he didn’t have to.
These three guys were a motley crew. In a John Hughes film, they’d be at different cafeteria tables. In Government and Politics, their desks were in various corners of the room. Robin in the back, taking up two desks (one for his ass, one for his feet). Avi wherever the girls were clustered. Pete alone in the middle. But when the debate topic was government assistance and someone brought up welfare queens? Their interest jolted the room like lasers. The three sat up straighter. An instant, unspoken alliance formed.
Welfare queen. The phrase was new to me, but its blunt weaponry seemed obvious. As with many racial slurs, there was innuendo packed in tight, a pretend innocence and fake sociological neutrality. Still, the phrase was a kid playing hide and seek with half his body exposed, eager to be discovered. It didn’t literally say “Monstrous Boricua Woman” but it had North Philly written all over it.
“What’s a welfare queen?” I asked, skeptical. The Three enlightened me: When you’re on the dole, you receive a set amount per kid. Welfare queens got knocked up as budget strategy, to score a bigger check. They were running the best grift in the U.S. of A. and they had the three-inch mani-pedis to prove it.
“No one does that,” I said. “That’s some nightly-news race-baiting Bell Curve nonsense. Do you know any such person?”
“Read the paper,” Robin said.
“There’s new stories every day,” Pete said. “Not just in the Daily News. In the Inquirer, too.”
“Give me an example,” I demanded. “Name one welfare queen, Avi.”
“I mean, I can’t just, like, conjure one off the top of my head, I don’t exactly hang out with welfare queens in my free time, but they exist.” The Three nodded like their assertion was clear as gravity, no additional proof necessary.
“No woman has a baby for that reason. That’s a complete mischaracterization of childrearing motives,” I said.
The thought of my cousin Nuchi as queen of anything other than a crumbling row home was perverted. Nuchi was loyal as hell, a great dancer, joked with grace about life’s bum rap, and made a mean potato salad. But she wore her trauma like a windbreaker in a blizzard. The woman’s poverty turned heads. Depression and constant hustle had aged her by thirty years. People saw her and thanked god for their blessings. Nuchi needed a root canal, maybe two. Heck, her dental catastrophe needed a time machine. Nuchi needed prenatal care. She needed talk therapy and antidepressants. She needed a laundromat in walking distance. She needed an exterminator and an address not adjacent to a crack house. She needed taxi fare or—dream big—a car. Cable would’ve been nice. Her oldest son needed an orthodontist for his overbite. Her tall boys went through two sizes a year—she needed clothes for their telescoping legs. The lights had been shut. The hole in her front wall needed covering before the snow. The bathtub leak was worsening—she needed it plugged before the ceiling caved in. Or at least a bigger bucket to catch the water by the sofa. Nuchi needed roach spray and a mold specialist. She needed duct tape to keep the upstairs window attached. Nuchi needed love. One of these needs was within her ability to grasp, to hold on to. Her kids were seven lighthouses in a hurricane.
The assertion that this human want—to love—was her way of enacting some injustice upon us? That her desire to have a family was a hoax—or worse, criminal—or worst of all, implausible—because its setting was poverty? I wasn’t saying it was their job to fix her woes, to plug the patchwork leaks in her heart. But we were not the victims of her maternity swindle. If Nuchi was public enemy number one, if our nation’s advancement depended upon stripping her bare—she, who had barely a thread to her name—then we were a soulless people, a cruel nation dancing atop its victims’ graves.
I stood at my desk (when had I risen to my feet?) and said these things aloud. I had neither Pete’s etiquette, nor Robin’s rage, nor Avi’s smug rationality. I was a hackneyed salesman for a pariah cause. I had outed my kin, aired her dollar-store laundry. And to fully disqualify myself, I had wept. The Three let me finish without interrupting. Their victory speeches came softly. Robin mumbled something about anecdotal evidence versus scientific. Avi sounded vaguely apologetic. Perhaps Nuchi was an exception, they conceded. Then again, Pete offered, perhaps loyalty clouded my judgment. Either way, the issue was real, they said. Women were having kids all the way to the bank.
“Do you want a breather, Quiara? Maybe go take a walk?” Mr. Lafferty offered.
* * *
—
The water ran in the bathtub, fogging up the mirror, so Nuchi and I had to talk loud above the noise. It was unfamiliar, this chemical assault—I had never dyed hair before. Eyes tearing, nostrils dripping. And yet this toxic process was, incongruously, a platform for intimacy. I squirted goop onto Nuchi’s scalp and swirled it in with my fingertips. “Don’t forget my hairline in the back,” she instructed. The nape of her neck was soft. I pressed the gel in tenderly. A vulnerable place to massage a woman, at the small boneless trough between skull and neckbone. My fingers swirled there for a long moment. Nuchi accepted the touch and then nudged me onward. “Don’t forget my forehead and temples.” Every so often Nuchi wiped a condensation circle from the mirror, but it fogged up too quickly for her to see. So she instructed me blind and trusted my progress. Through thin rubber gloves, I felt my cousin’s skin, its warm elastic tenderness. I knew this sort of touch well—fingers in firm circles, thumbs asserting pressure. The summer before kindergarten I’d developed a nasty pneumonia, and mom shiatsu-massaged my back ribcage to break up the phlegm. Her left and right rotated in gears, until I could feel the pneumonia break loose a bit and my lungs came unburdened.
“I’m done,” I said after double-checking Nuchi’s roots. “What’s step three?”
“The shower cap.” I slid it over her head. “Now we wait for me to be a blonde.”
“For how long?” I asked. She told me to check the instructions. But they had been left by the sink, out of reach. Since my hands were dripping with dye, I didn’t want to stain the bath mat. So, I asked her to check the instructions while I rinsed off in the bathtub. Nuch
i was reticent, which baffled me. It’s not like I was asking her to run a marathon. She finally grabbed the instructions and held them before my eyes.
“How much time does it say?” she asked. I was now washing my hands beneath the tub’s spigot, watching the gel swirl toward the drain, craning my neck toward the instructions’ tiny type.
“You tell me,” I countered. Finally, I turned off the tub and the room plunged into quiet. The only sound came from towel-drying my hands. It seemed Nuchi wanted me to intervene, but I hadn’t a clue how or why.
“I thought you knew, Qui Qui. I can’t read.” It was said with neither shame nor malice, just pragmatic resignation. I had backed her into a corner, till she had no choice but to explain. The weight of her statement settled in. I filed through all my memories of Nuchi—dancing, talking, hanging with her kids. Yeah, I guess we’d never read together.
“But…didn’t you graduate high school?” Even as it left my lips, the question felt unkind. What right did I have to demand her credentials? And yet, I needed to know the score. This was seriously fucked. It didn’t seem possible.
“They just pass you,” Nuchi said. “I just stood in the back.” We were two cousins connected by today’s beauty ritual, by Abuela’s sofa and countless family gatherings. But in my magnet school, commas in e. e. cummings poems were debated. In her zoned school, invisibility was lauded as life skill. My loudmouthed cousin shrank herself to a crumb and the school rewarded her compliance with the prize of a diploma.
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