My Sister

by Selenis Leyva

  “Hello?”

  It was Ms. Hernandez, the social worker. I knew her well because of all the children who had come through our house. She was always friendly and kind. That night, she asked to speak to my mother.

  “But she’s asleep,” I said.

  “It’s an emergency.”

  I crept back down the hall to my parents’ room to wake up my mother. There was a phone in their room, but she didn’t take the call there so as not to wake my father. I walked with her back to the dining room and listened as she spoke.

  “Oh, una nina,” Mami said.

  It was a girl! I started waving my arms, motioning to her: Please say yes! But even then, I saw the exhaustion on her face.

  “Lo siento,” she said into the handset, her eyes on me, “pero no puedo en este momento.”

  She hung up the phone, and the two of us stood there, looking at one another.

  “Mami, it’s a little girl, a baby!” I wanted a little sister so badly. “Why did you say no?”

  “Es que no puedo mas,” she said. She was tired, and everything that had been going on with Jose was just too much.

  “I know, Mami. But the baby girl needs someone. I’ll help you, I promise.” I knew I was laying it on thick.

  “Okay,” she said finally and called Ms. Hernandez back. I stood right next to her, my ear to the phone so that I could hear.

  “Oh, well thank you,” Ms. Hernandez said, “we’ve already placed her. But we just got a call about another little girl—are you willing to take her?”

  “Yes, of course. We’ll take her.”

  It took several hours for the agency to process everything and get the baby to us. We didn’t know anything other than she was removed from her mother and that she was nine months old. Isalyn arrived well after midnight, a lanky, beautiful baby girl. She didn’t have anything but the clothes she was wearing, but she was curious, with big round brown eyes that looked directly into mine. She grabbed at my hair and didn’t cry once. Later, in my bed, I was so excited, I couldn’t sleep. I was so happy to finally have a baby sister.

  THE ADDITION OF Isa to our home meant that we had two babies to care for. And for a while, everything seemed to be okay. Isa and Jose were bonding with us and one another, and we all felt so lucky to have these beautiful babies in our lives. But then, things took a turn. After disappearing for several months yet again, Ruth suddenly reappeared with Jose’s birth father. Jose Sr. was finally out of prison, and they were trying to be a family. With a baby girl on the way, even.

  Mami invited them over to our home for a visit. This was not a common thing to do. Typically, all visits were organized exclusively through the agency. But because of my mother’s trust, kindness, and love for baby Jose, she gave them more access. Now, I recognize that she did this as a way to maintain a connection with them and thus protect Jose. She knew how the system worked. She knew that the agency had a reputation for turning over children to their biological parents well before they needed to. And in many ways, her friendliness toward this couple worked: when Jose was baptized, Ruth and Jose Sr. asked Mami to be his godmother.

  I, however, did not have as much patience. Right away, from the moment he walked into our house, I didn’t like Jose Sr. He was full of machismo, claiming his territory and making his presence known. He was also overly friendly—but not in a sincere way. He was making a show. He smiled too much and spoke too loud. He was jumpy. I didn’t trust him.

  We all sat awkwardly in the living room. The floors were shining, and fresh yellow roses adorned my father’s statue of La Virgen de la Caridad.

  “Come and kiss me,” Jose Sr. said to the baby. “I’m your father! Call me Papi.”

  Jose turned his head, tried to pull away.

  Ruth, looking full and healthy in her pregnancy, seemed embarrassed by the rejection. “It’s okay,” she said. “Just let him be.”

  “No, I’m his father. Papi! Come say hello to your father.” Jose Sr. pulled baby Jose close to him, held him so that he couldn’t go.

  Jose screamed. He didn’t know them. He didn’t want to be hugged or kissed or touched by them. We are his family! I thought. Not you! Tears streamed down Jose’s cheeks. But Jose Sr. insisted.

  “I’m your father!”

  Always kind, my mother tried to talk him down. “Compai, you have to calm down. He’s scared.”

  “But I just love my son!” Jose Sr. cried, finally letting little Jose go. “I just want my son to love us!”

  “I know, Compai. I know.”

  When it was time for them to go, Ruth didn’t force Jose to come say goodbye. She kissed and hugged my mother and then, holding on to her pregnant belly, said, “He’s happy with you.”

  After their second child was born, Ruth and Jose Sr. began to have Jose stay with them for unsupervised overnight visits. This made us all nervous. We knew it wasn’t a good idea, and none of us could understand why, after years of Ruth failing drug tests and disappearing for months at a time, the system suddenly trusted her to care for a child she didn’t know. It was clear to us that the agency wasn’t aware Jose Sr. was living with Ruth, that they were not following up with visitations or inquiries. Thinking back, I question how it was possible that they could just forget about Jose and not monitor the situation with his birth mother at all. Over the years, I’ve heard too many horror stories about children in the foster care system who suffered. I wonder often about the many others who also fell through the cracks.

  Whenever a visit was coming up, and my mother mentioned it to my father, I’d object and get angry. And Mami would turn to me, looking defeated, and say, “Yo no puedo decirle que no.” The court had made its decision, and we had to follow it.

  And then, after we had cared for Jose for three years, the system returned him to his biological family. He was just a toddler. I hated that he was gone, that he was no longer part of our family. My mother hated it, too, but she had done what she had promised: she had cared for Jose while Ruth and Jose Sr. got themselves together, and now they had the chance to be a family.

  For a few weeks we heard nothing from Ruth or Jose Sr., but about a month had passed when Ruth’s mother called my mother.

  “You have to come get him,” she said, her voice shaking, out of breath. “You have to come get him because this isn’t good for him.”

  “He’s crying all the time,” she said. “He’s sad.”

  And so my mother and father went. When they got him home, my mother and I gave Jose a bath, just like we had always done. He was angry and crying, splashing the water out of the tub. And out of nowhere, Jose slapped Mami across the face.

  Some of the children we had stay with us had behavioral problems. Some of them were angry and would lash out physically. Throw things. Scream or hit. But not Jose. He had always been a happy baby. A sweet, loving, affectionate baby. This was something new.

  Mami stopped washing and pulled Jose against her chest, rocking him back and forth while he cried.

  “It’s okay, baby,” she said. “It’s okay. You will never leave here.”

  Later, my mother noticed a bruise on Jose’s calf, just behind the knee, that bore a distinct resemblance to the mark a belt would leave.

  “Who did this to you?” she asked.

  Jose looked at her for a moment, his eyes wide and full of fear. Finally, he said, “Jose.”

  Immediately, Mami called Jose Sr. “I saw the bruise,” she said. “Just know that this isn’t going to happen again because if it does, I am calling the police.”

  “Oh, how could you say that, Comay? I love him—he’s my son!”

  “I’m just letting you know,” she said, and hung up the phone.

  She was doing all that she could to protect Jose, and I wanted to do the same.

  Chapter 2

  SELENIS

  In our family—like in most other Latinx families—the sense of machismo was prevalent. Gender roles were rigid, defined. Growing up, hardly ever did I see my father wash a dis
h or help tidy up the house or wash clothes or even watch us when my mother had to step out. Papi would often be heard saying things like, “Eso es cosa de mujeres,” or “Men don’t do that!” And the only time anyone mentioned the words gay or homosexual was as the butt of a joke. At family gatherings, my father and his brothers would laugh and make fun of their cousin’s gay son. Even though I was young, a pit hardened in my stomach. That isn’t nice, I thought.

  In his early years, Jose didn’t speak or babble like other babies. If he couldn’t reach something—a fork, a toy, a crayon—he’d extend his arm, point his finger, and grunt. We tried to get him to use words, to have him ask for what he wanted, but my mother knew he needed more help. She discussed the situation with his caseworker, and Jose was evaluated. Because of his birth mother’s drug use while pregnant, he had developmental issues and was placed in a school in northwest Manhattan that specialized in speech therapy. He was three years old when he first spoke, and right away, his personality came through in a way it never had before. And as he grew, I began to notice his movements, how he didn’t encounter the world the way my brothers or other little boys did. Here was Jose with tightly cropped hair, dressed in little boys’ clothes, walking around, hands on his hips, tsssking—like a sassy little girl. I thought to myself, Well, this is what it is. Everyone better learn how to deal.

  My mother noticed it, too. And though we never verbalized it, there was a moment when we looked at each other, almost to say, How do we feel about this? We’re fine. But we knew, from then on, that we had to be the ones to take charge and protect Jose. We had to protect him from my father, from my brothers, from anyone else in our family. We had to protect him from the jokes, from that constant question: Why can’t you be more like a man?

  IN EIGHTH GRADE, I was accepted to LaGuardia High School for the Performing Arts. It was the school I had dreamt of attending ever since I saw the TV show Fame. The way the students danced on tables, sang out loud in the hallways, took acting classes—these were things I wanted to experience. My middle school guidance counselor told me early on that getting into a school like that for a girl like me—a girl from the Bronx with no acting experience—would be impossible. He gave me instead a short list of schools that had good secretarial programs, but I knew I had to go to LaGuardia. I begged him for the application, which he literally threw at me. He stopped me as I left his office with the application in hand.

  “Remember what I told you,” he said, “when you don’t get in.”

  I went straight to the library. The application said that I needed two monologues for the audition. My first thought was, Okay, I need to know what a monologue is. I researched and researched, and finally chose two. One was from Rashomon, and not appropriate at all for a fourteen-year-old, but I was very dramatic, and thought I could use it to show off my skills. I practiced my pieces over and over, watching myself in my bedroom mirror.

  On the day of the audition, I was so nervous. I made my mother take the train with me to Manhattan. The audition went great! It was the callback that didn’t go well. About halfway through, I began to notice all of the people in the room, and I blanked on my lines. I regrouped and pushed through to the end.

  The next few weeks of waiting were painful. But then, my acceptance letter arrived. I was so happy and excited, and my family was so proud. This was a huge opportunity for me, the child of immigrants who spoke little English. That fall, while all of my friends stayed in the Bronx and went to the local high school, I ventured out into “the city.” But attending LaGuardia was overwhelming. For the first time in my life, I was out of the Bronx, out of my comfort zone. For the first time in my life, I was one of just a few Latinxs. Suddenly, everything about me was different, strange. The fact that I spoke with an accent. That I was from anywhere other than Manhattan. That I hadn’t gone to private school or taken acting classes with Big Name Professionals. That my hips weren’t narrow, slim. I listened to different music and didn’t know the movies everyone talked about. My classmates made it clear that I wasn’t like them, and they teased me in the simplest of ways. I had a long leather jacket that I’d gotten from a store on Fordham Road. I remember the smell of leather, how the girls from my neighborhood stared at me with envy when I walked up to them in my new jacket. They loved it, and so did I. But at LaGuardia, no one complimented me. Every morning, some girl would look me up and down and say, “Who wears that?”

  I felt alone, like I had no one. Every day, I took the train by myself from 205th Street in the Bronx, transferred to the 1 Train, and got off at West 66th Street–Lincoln Center. It was an hour each way. And every day, I came home worn down and exhausted, feeling defeated. At home, I cried myself to sleep. At school, I excused myself from class to cry in the bathroom. I hated LaGuardia. I barely made any friends. My classmates made me feel dumb, ugly, and untalented. I missed my old friends. I missed laughing at the familiar jokes. The kids at LaGuardia acted so cool. They smoked and drank. They talked about how much they hated their parents, how they were in therapy, or how many times they had tried to kill themselves. It felt like a game, like everyone was trying to one-up one another to become the tortured-artist type. Granted, not everyone was like this, and some students were really suffering. Eventually, I found a handful of kids that made my life at LaGuardia a little less painful, a little less lonely.

  AT HOME, THOUGH, I had Jose. And, even for just short amounts of time, he made me forget all that I was going through. When I opened the front door, Jose whooped and cheered. “Seli’s home! Seli’s here!” He danced around the room, chanting my name: “Sel-li! Sel-li!” Every day was a parade. Every day, a celebration.

  “All right, all right,” I’d say. “Yes, I’m home!”

  But Jose couldn’t contain himself. He would hold on to my wrists and jump up and down.

  I’d grab a snack and sit down in front of the TV. Then, Jose would begin our ritual.

  My other brothers—Tito and Tony—never wanted to do my hair. Isa, my youngest sister, wasn’t all that interested either. Every so often she’d want to give me a ponytail, but when she did it was awful. She’d yank the brush through my hair. She jerked my head around so it was in the right place for her, completely oblivious as to how uncomfortable it was for me. The ponytail would be crooked, the hair pulled tight against my scalp, but lumpy.

  Jose, however, was always soft. I remember how he would watch me, how he’d follow me around the house, mimicking my movements and expressions. I recognized this as a sign of his attachment and love. But now, I see that I was the symbol of what he really wanted to be, or an example of how he saw himself.

  At first, it started out with just his fingers massaging my scalp, breaking up knots and snags like combs. His little hands were always gentle, so soothing. Then, one day, he added a brush. Quickly, our ritual became more elaborate, with styling products, clips, and pins. Later, he graduated from hair to makeup, putting lipstick and eyeshadow on me. When I sat down in Papi’s recliner in my parents’ bedroom to watch TV, Jose rushed to the half-bathroom where my mother kept her makeup and supplies to grab the basket of brushes and hairsprays. He climbed up on the chair to stand behind me, his feet pressing into the cushion, his legs and hips leaning into the chair’s back. For me, it was so relaxing, like getting a massage. It was perfect.

  But we weren’t supposed to be doing this. Papi didn’t like it, and he told me explicitly that what Jose was doing wasn’t for boys. Even Mami, who was kind and accepting, warned us. “Ya tu papa te lo advirtió,” she’d say, not wanting problems when Papi came home. Isa threatened to tell on us sometimes, and my brothers, who often brought home friends, would make sly comments. “Doing hair again?” they’d ask. Whenever they were around, I watched Jose shrink into the chair. He lost his confidence. He lost the excitement and joy he had when it was just the two of us.

  Sometimes, even after such harsh reminders, Jose and I would be sitting on the couch, surfing through midafternoon talk shows or cartoons, and out o
f nowhere, it seemed, a brush would appear. I felt Jose scoot closer to me, reach out, and stroke my head. Soon, he was behind me, the brush in his hand, parting and smoothing my hair. He was calm and happy; comfortable, even. In these moments, Jose was able to be himself. And I would be able to relax after my long, lonely day. I needed the comfort of what felt safe and familiar. The soothing touch on my head would even make me sleepy, and we both got lost in those moments. That is, until we heard the soft clap of a car door in the driveway or, if we were really into it, the jingle of Papi’s keys at the side door. Then Jose was outta there, leaving the products and styling tools on the floor. Pretending like he’d never been there at all. It’s funny to think about how we hid something so innocent, so harmless, from everyone else. But Jose’s fear of being caught was real, and I never wanted him to get in trouble.

  AFTER JOSE CAME back to us with the bruise on his leg, Mami refused to let him go to overnight or unsupervised visitations with his birth parents, despite what the courts or the agency had ordered. The visits from Ruth and Jose Sr. to our home became infrequent, but the phone calls from Jose Sr. were constant.

  Every time the phone rang, Jose would look at the caller ID. If he saw it was his father, he’d barely lift the phone off of the receiver before setting it back down and hanging up. And I did the same. Some days, if the phone kept ringing and ringing and ringing, I’d turn the answering machine off and silence the ringer. It’d be this way for a while, and I’d even forget—until Mami went to check the messages. She’d look confused and ask us, “Que le paso al telefono?”

  I would feign ignorance. “No sé!”

  I didn’t want to talk to Jose Sr., and I knew that Jose didn’t want to either. I just didn’t quite know why.

  DANCE CLASSES WERE a substantial part of my high school education. I loved performing and being onstage, but when I stood in front of the ceiling-to-floor studio mirrors with the rest of the girls in my class, all of those parts of my body I felt self-conscious about suddenly seemed amplified. Most of the girls were so thin. I had thick legs, wide hips, and a round butt. I tried to diet so that I could be more like everyone else—but I began to obsess. And very quickly, it turned into something much worse.