by Ilan Stavans
I don’t know why my mommy’s friends feel sorry for her because we live on the fifth floor. It’s not too tiring to climb the stairs, and besides, we do little things to make life easier—if the mailman or the milkman or anyone comes with something, we just drop a little basket with a string tied to it over the balcony. That way we don’t have to go up and down the stairs. When we get home from school, and before we climb the stairs, we yell up to the apartment to see if we need to buy bread or tortillas. On the days Mommy goes to market, she pays a little boy to help her because no one in the family can carry all those bags up five floors.
After having gone to the Sephardic school many times and eaten in a hurry while the bus waited downstairs where we used to live, it’s been a relief to live in this neighborhood because when the bus drops us off, there are still a lot of kids on it. While they’re taking them and then returning to pick us up again, we have time to play on the sidewalk with Dori and her two brothers, who come to wait also.
Mommy didn’t set aside her usual routine even when Dori came to eat. She sits the six of us around the table together and she lets us know that the belt is just over there; we don’t talk; we eat quickly; we don’t even argue; then she sends us down to the street to play; and she doesn’t want us to throw anything. Fortunately, we can play ball or skate outside; there are always a bunch of kids playing in the street. I don’t understand how all these things can make that silly Dori laugh. She said my mother is very nice and it’s nice to have a bunch of brothers and sisters. Nice? It’s horrible! And it’s even worse when you’re the oldest one and you have to stop them from fighting and they hit you really hard because you’re the oldest. Look . . . she doesn’t even have a mother. But my mother is nice? Well, she’s even less than nice when she gets mad and digs her four nails into my arm, making it bleed. Now there are little scabs like fingernail scratches that were really visible last week, and when I said something to my dad that I shouldn’t have, she did it again. How was I supposed to know that I shouldn’t have said anything to him?
Acapulco is really beautiful! And I never believed that the ocean could be so big! It never ends! I was lucky to be invited. I’m the only one of my brothers and sisters to go to the ocean. My aunt Chela and I slept in one room and my grandparents in another. And my aunt took so long to get ready! She puts on one lipstick, then another, looks at herself in the mirror, makes a face, touches up her eye makeup, looks at herself again—this time from another angle—smiles, looks again, makes another face, then looks at herself out of the corner of her eye. After this ritual, she remembers that someone else is in the room with her—that’s me—and says, “Oshinica, I’m ready, let’s eat breakfast. If we don’t, your grandfather will disown us, he’ll think something has happened to us, or that I spend too long getting ready. Actually, I’ve spent less time here than back at home, mainly because I didn’t spend so much time styling my hair.”
I had already put on my long, flowered beach robe, the one my daddy bought from Chucho in the store across from ours in Lagunilla Market. It covers my bathing suit. Finally, we’re all decked out for our entrance into the dining room where my grandparents are waiting.
“Good morning, Daddy,” she says as she kisses his hand, and then greets my grandmother in the same way.
“Oshinica, aren’t you going to kiss your grandfather’s hand?”
The hotel is on top of a mountain and you can see the huge, beautiful ocean from the dining room. And right now I’m thinking about my aunt, who looks so pretty this morning, knowing that she has an elegant bathing suit on underneath her robe, and another one that she hasn’t worn yet in the closet. It has a picture on it, with a woman diving into the ocean and a bright sun in the background. I’ve never seen a more beautiful bathing suit! They buy her whatever she wants. My mother doesn’t find it very amusing. She says they spoil her so much that she’s useless. But, with me, she’s great! She likes me as if I were her little sister. My daddy, her only brother, is fifteen years older than she is.
Shabbat always begins at six o’clock on Friday evening, just as the first star appears in the heavens, and it ends the next day with the first star. I sing in the choir at school because the teacher said I had a good voice; Moshón doesn’t. That’s why I go on Fridays, and if we don’t, we won’t be able to sing at weddings. They pay us to sing too. That’s the only way I can earn some money, but I also like to go to the synagogue because we always have fun there. Since the bus picks us up before prayer time, we’ve got half an hour to fool around. At the corner of Monterrey and Bajio, where the synagogue is located, between the bakery and the store, a woman is usually selling hot tortillas, but she’s not always there. Our big thrill is to eat. First we buy some bread rolls and strips of cooked chile wrapped in paper. Then we put them together and have a feast. We continue walking with fire coming out of our mouths, and then a little later we buy tortillas (if we have any money left).
At 7:15 we take our places in the choir. The prayer begins with our singing, well, our shouting. I don’t know why the people like our toneless voices—it’s so silly to say that we sing nicely, and that our temple is the best one around because of the choir.
I don’t like taking baths with my brothers and sisters anymore, because Dori laughed at me. My mother gets the four of us older ones into the tub, sits on the edge near the hot and cold faucets, soaps my head, scratches me with her nails, goes to the next one, Moshón, and at the end Zelda and Clarita, then back to me. Every eight days each one of us gets scrubbed down three times. I asked if we could bathe separately, but she says it’s too much work. The next step is even worse: brushing our hair and making long braids for all of us girls. We begin crying from the very moment she begins brushing out the tangles. It’s frightening to have to take a bath, but the good thing is that once our hair is braided, it doesn’t get tangled again. During the rest of the week she just undoes the braids and sprinkles lemon juice on them so they won’t get tangled.
Every day my daddy gets up early and goes to Chapultepec Park to do his rowing. But he doesn’t leave until he sees us safely on the bus, and the only thing I don’t like is that he makes me eat two soft-boiled eggs, which is the only thing in life that makes me sick to my stomach. Just looking at them makes me want to vomit, but I swallow them quickly, after which I always start running toward the bathroom as if I were going to throw up.
Daddy has a lot of friends at the park, like Don Gume, who has a clothing store in the Escandon Market, or another, the milkman, who lends my dad his bike. They’re almost always together in the park because they take the same bus line: Chorrito, in Juanacatlán. First they walk together for a while, and then each one rents a rowboat. We go there on Saturdays, Sundays, and every day during summer vacation. We always have fun with him; Mommy doesn’t like to have fun. Mothers only like to clean house. I like going there because we get to row the boat, first me and then Moshón, and afterward he buys us fruit drinks and pieces of papaya at a stand on the edge of the lake. While we’re eating, he rows us around the lake really fast. I can row fast too, and when we pass through the tunnel underneath the street—the long one that goes to the other side of the lake—I don’t even hit the oars against the sides. Since Moshón can’t beat me, he gets all bent out of shape. I can even do more pull-ups.
“Hey, Dad, why don’t we rent two rowboats tomorrow and we can race to see who wins?”
I want to marry my dad because he’s really handsome. Or even Moshón will do.
“Like I was telling you, Ernesto, that’s the way life is, my twentysomethingth child, first it was a girl, impossible; you know Oshinica, my granddaughter, I adore her, she has my mother’s name, may she rest in peace. I didn’t say a solitary word, you know I’ve got good manners, I don’t stick my nose into things; in fact, I had called the hospital several times to see if the girl had opened her eyes yet. Two years later, thank God, a boy. I was his godparent, and it was my right. He was named after my grandfather because in our re
ligion, as you know, it’s required that the grandson carry the name of the grandfather. My daughter-in-law didn’t go to the circumcision ceremony; if the baby needed her, she was there, but she couldn’t even give much milk; she has boys, takes care of them, raises them, and that’s it. Anyway, to make a long story short, her third child was a girl. Only God knows what he’s doing. And, eleven months later, lo and behold: another girl. She gave us a total of three of them. For the last two, the mother chose names from her people. Can you imagine? Three dowries! My son is going to have to work like a dog in order to get them married. Would you like some coffee? ‘Hey! A cup of coffee for this man.’ As I was saying, right now I would like for my daughter Chelita to get married, and I can vouch for the fact that she’s a doll with a creamy-white face, a real sweetie pie, and obedient. We’ve had some real pests come around, because those Arabs are asking for hundreds of pesos—and if the boy is from a good family, even as high as several thousand pesos. Between you and me, that’s the way it is. I tell you these things because you are my friend; I’ve known you ever since I arrived in Mexico . . . Ernesto, why are you getting up? It’s still early; it’s barely ten o’clock . . . wait a little longer!”
My granddaddy got sick, and I think Dr. Ernesto did too, because as much as my granddaddy wanted him to stay, he left there quickly. What horrible things he said!
What a neat green rocker! It’s cool the way it rocks back and forth. But I don’t think they’ll let me try it because last Friday, after Moshón had gotten all comfortable in it, they said, “Get out of that rocker! Your grandfather is about to come home, and he’ll get upset.”
I know they’ll never let me sit in it. So my five brothers and sisters and I sat all squished together on a couch and, once we got absorbed in a TV program, we forgot about fighting for the rocker. Grandfather makes his appearance. We all jump up at once, just like when the school director comes into the classroom. Tall, standing erect, one hand in his pocket and the other ready to tweak our little chins, we take turns giving him kisses. Chelita, my aunt, is also standing, hunched over a bit, and speaking like a mouse to show him how insignificant she is compared to the superiority of her father. She kisses his hand and puts it on her forehead as if to receive his blessing. He puts his hand forward, and while we kiss it, he looks the other way. That’s his way of doing things. Next, he takes his hand out of his pocket and changes channels on the TV. Once he has decided which program we’ll watch, he sits down in his rocking chair.
Sometimes I just stare at the photographs on the living room walls. They all look so old. There’s one I especially like of my granddaddy sitting at a table. I don’t know how they took them, but there are other grandparents from different angles, some laughing and others very serious. What a funny picture! Next to the window there’s a picture of us sitting together arranged by age: first me, I was laughing with my braids and a huge topknot, my mother really knew how to make those curls in my hair too. I was smiling and giving Moshón, who was always handsome, a big hug; then Zelda and Clarita. We all look great together! Next to our picture, there’s a map of Israel, and a blue-and-white flag with a Zion symbol in the middle, and it reads below, “Israel, nation of Hebrews.” In the next picture, Aunt Chela is wearing a green dress and a protruding hairdo; then comes my father when he was still single, and above the chimney, which has never been used, there’s a Mason diploma with silver-and-gold edging that my grandfather is really proud of. He says it’s a secret group and some of his best friends are Masons. No doubt about it, my grandfather is really pompous.
Today I went upstairs to his room and on top of the chest of drawers there were a million oddly shaped and different colored bottles of cologne; one of them has a little black ball on top, and when you squeeze it, a wet, strong smell comes out. I adore going up to his room because it’s as elegant as a king’s chamber, and so is my aunt’s bedroom: it’s all hers, and it has a dressing table and stool. I’ve never seen myself from the front and the back at the same time before. Is that the way they see me when they see me from the side? I didn’t really recognize this new Oshinica, and I think my nose is too big if you look at me from the side, but . . . what a luxurious bedroom . . . and it has a terrace with cane furniture. She has her own bathroom. It’s violet with turquoise and white. Then I begin poking around in her chest of drawers. Wow! Is that neat or what? It’s like getting inside my aunt’s world. She has hose, invitations, spools of thread, little boxes; everything’s a secret, but I just go about opening and closing doors and drawers.
Here there’s plenty of room to store things; at our house all I have is the bottom drawer of the chiffonier. That’s where my mom puts my folded underwear, so I can’t really hide anything there. Oh, how I’d like to be able to lock it and have my own private space! Even if I just had a place to hide this diary, so I wouldn’t have to live in fear that someone is going to read it. It’s no one’s business but mine.
A lot of times I hear the adults say they’d give anything just to be kids again. Being a kid is marvelous, we’re supposed to be happy, not be in need of anything, and laugh at anything . . . and also, they begin gazing nostalgically. I don’t understand it. What do they see that’s so great about it? This is being happy? My mother yells at me, she spanks me, and at school they punish me. I still haven’t finished writing “I must obey my parents and my teachers” five hundred times. For more than a month now, I’ve had to fill up page after page of the same thing. And they won’t let me talk in class either. The only homework I have time for is to repeat this writing, and I like it, especially when all the lines are connected. I can do it fast and they look great. I think that those adults who believe those things about childhood probably couldn’t draw those lines, or their parents didn’t scold them. And if that’s true, will it be worse when I grow up?
Do I want to look like my mom, my grandmother, or my aunt? No, I’d rather look like my grandfather, my dad, or even my brother. Those women are so boring, and they’re dumb as well! Well, I guess my mom isn’t so dumb, but she’s not all fun and games either. My grandmother can’t even go to Sears by herself, and it’s only two blocks away. But she goes secretly with Uba. Women are supposed to stay at home; it doesn’t even occur to them to go rowing. My dad is really nice; the men go out to work and the women take care of the children or the brothers and sisters, like me. At least I don’t get bored, because I can go outside and always beat the guys at soccer or baseball.
“That man dressed in blue, is he the groom?”
“I don’t know, honey, but I think so. The other one looks too old, but let’s go to the park, because your grandfather doesn’t want anyone to disturb him.”
“Is it really possible? That ugly guy wants to marry my aunt?”
“I don’t know. I’ll ask your grandma later. All I know is that your aunt has been jumpy lately, and who knows what they’re going to talk about?
“When I brought the coffee, I heard them talking about the property in Polanco as a part of her dowry. But I shouldn’t say anything; your grandfather would kill me. Let’s take your little boat to the park, and we’ll put it in the water; all the kids will be taking theirs. Didn’t you bring yours with you?”
“Yes I did, Uba, and I like to come over here because then you always take us to the park.”
When we got back, they were saying good-bye.
“That guy dressed in blue, the one with the straight hair,” said my dad, “he’s not going to marry your aunt.”
I felt faint. Oh my God! What a shame! Everyone was mad.
And my poor aunt, she’s so pretty and he’s really ugly. She was so embarrassed that she locked herself in her room. My father doesn’t have any land or even a car, so how is he going to get me married? When we were leaving, I heard my grandfather say, “They’re crazy! Is that all they think of her? They can go straight to hell! They don’t know what they want. Well, I dare them ever to find any girl as beautiful as my daughter.”
I don’t want
anyone to know that I cried all night long, or that I bit my blankets out of rage. But what difference would it make if just one of us got mad? What did my aunt feel? What a shame, him rejecting her like that! How embarrassing! She had already gone out a few times with this guy, who had a beard and wore a black hat, and now, when they finally come to formalize the engagement, the deal is off. This isn’t going to happen to Moshón. Maybe I’ll just stay like a little girl. I don’t want this to ever happen to me. It’s horrible being a woman. If I’m stronger than Moshón and I can do anything he can, what’s the difference? I don’t want to even get close to an Arab. Yesterday, when those men arrived, my granddaddy, smiling with his gold teeth, said that I was his little granddaughter, and they said what everybody says: “Like a bride! A true bride!” That means good luck!
Why would I ever want to get married?
“Auntie, you’re so pretty. Why would they want to do that to you?”
“Well,” my mommy answers, “they’re backward and stupid. They never let your aunt go out alone; they always hired a teacher to come to the house. They always made her seem like she was hard to get, and that’s why she talks like that. Ugh! They didn’t even let her have any friends. And those from Persia? They’re all the same. What’s the difference? Your grandfather has made a slave out of your father. See what I’m saying? Yesterday he told him to get the car out of the garage just as we were getting ready to go to the movies. That ended that idea. Heaven help him who doesn’t do what he’s supposed to. Everything will get ruined. And don’t you see? If you’re not high class, you don’t have good clothes, and we’re even without a car. In Istanbul, I used to go to the best schools, and our classes were taught in French. My mother’s family, of course, was upper class.”