Handbook for an Unpredictable Life: How I Survived Sister Renata and My Crazy Mother, and Still Came Out Smiling (with Great Hair)

by Perez, Rosie

  While I was enjoying the party, dancing in my little frock, I felt a tug at my blue velvet dress with the white ribbon wrapped around it. I turned and saw Tio Ismael clapping and smiling with a glassy look in his eyes. I recognized him instantly! I remember that he had on such a nice suit too. He was sitting in Tia’s blue wingback sofa chair with a glass of Harvey’s Bristol Cream on the rocks. “Psst. Psst. Rosamarie. Come over here,” he said in a drunken whisper. “Please. Come here. One minute.” I slowly and cautiously walked toward him. Oh God, I thought. I hope and pray this man doesn’t start crying again.

  He grabbed me close. “Rosa. I mean, Rosemary. Rosemary, right?” he clumsily slurred. “I’m your daddy.”

  Say what!

  There was an awkward pause. My face tensed up into a stern frown. “I’m your daddy. Me. Tio Ismael. Okay? I daddy. Okay. Me. I’m your daddy,” he kept saying over and over. I shook my head no. I couldn’t stop. I kept shaking it no over and over again each time he repeated those words. I couldn’t speak. This man isn’t my father. I hate him. I hate him so much.

  “It’s true, Rosie. I am.”

  No! No, you’re not. Oh no. I knew it to be true. Why? I don’t know. I just knew it to be true. I didn’t want it to be true. Why? I didn’t know. I don’t know!

  “No! I hate you!” I finally shouted and ran to Tia, crying, burying my face into her dress.

  “¿Pero que paso? [But what happened?]” she asked me.

  “Yo le dije, yo le dije [I told her, I told her],” my uncle-father loudly declared. “Es verdad. [It’s the truth.] Tu ya sabes. [You know it.] Todo el mundo sabe! [Everyone knows!]”

  A few of the party guests who were dancing nearby stopped.

  “Callate, studipo [Shut up, stupid]. Por que esta haciendo esto? [Why are you doing this?]” Tia said. “You’re drunk.” She turned to everyone. “He’s drunk. Pay him no mind. Don’t cry, mija [my daughter]. He’s stupid. It’s not true. He’s so stupid. Tell her, Ismael! Tell her, please!”

  My father looked dead at me and smiled. “I’m your daddy.” Tia ran over and started to hit him.

  “Okay. Okay. I’m sorry. I was kidding. I’m Tio. Okay. Sorry.”

  Tia’s friends pulled her back. She scooped me up in her arms and carried me into her bedroom through the French doors. As she was carrying me, I turned my head back and looked at him, giving him an angry, pissed-off look. He looked up at me, smiled through his drunken tears, and mouthed, I’m your daddy. I love you.

  • • •

  Millie told me that after that first Christmas back home, Tia went on a mission to try to get custody of me. But Child Welfare Services told her that the “mother” or “father” (meaning my mother’s husband—my dad was not recognized on the birth certificate), along with the Catholic Church and the state of New York, were the only ones who had any say over me.

  Tia was friends with Lydia’s older sister—the one Lydia stole her date from, but didn’t know Lydia as well. (She did however know of my mother’s infamous temper.) Tia began to make an effort to become friends with her. She felt if my mother liked and trusted her, she would have a better chance at getting custody of me. So, after that Christmas, Tia would often take my cousins over to my mother’s house for a Saturday afternoon visit and make small talk over coffee while her kids played with my half-siblings—yes, they were there on many a visit without me.

  After several Saturday social calls, Tia told me that she waited awhile, after she and Lydia had drunk their Café Bustelo, then casually brought me up.

  “… And she was acting out all the commercials in de television. Ga, ga, ga, ga, gaaaa! She was so funny. She was—”

  Tia stopped in the middle of her story. The look my mother had on her face as she slowly nodded her head up and down made Tia very uncomfortable. She knew that look. It was suspicious in nature. It was hard to pull anything over Lydia.

  “So, anyway, thank you so much for letting me take Rosie … to my house, I mean.”

  Awkward pause.

  “Tu sabes, yo puedo ayudar si lo desea. She can stay at my house instead of the Home.… So you don’t have to worry about Durin [Ventura, Lydia’s husband]. And you can see her anytime you like, and I can bring her here anytime you like or whatever you want. So it could help to make it easier for you and Rosie.”

  Lydia slightly cocked her head back with an indignant, perplexed look on her face.

  “ ‘Anytime I like’?”

  “Yes, of course, Lydia.”

  “Oh! So … you are telling me what I can do? Because you said, ‘Anytime “you” like,’ as if you were giving me permission to decide what I can do with my daughter.”

  “No, no, no. Please. Lydia. I didn’t—”

  “Because it just sounded like you were giving me permission.”

  “No. I would never. Please forgive me. You are her mother and I am not.”

  “I know I am her mother. You don’t have to tell me that,” Lydia austerely stated.

  “Yes, you are. You are right, Lydia.”

  “I know I am right. Why would you assume that I wouldn’t know that I’m right? You think I’m stupid, ignorant? You think I don’t know I am her mother?”

  “No, Lydia. Please, I am de ignorant one. Please. Lo siento. [I’m sorry.]”

  After an even longer, excruciating, awkward-ass pause, my aunt got up to leave.

  “Ay, me voy. I have to go. Please tell my girls to come home before dinner.”

  My mother walked Tia to the door.

  “Minguita, let me ask you a question. So … you think Rosie doesn’t belong in the Home, but my other kids do?”

  “Whaa? Oh no, I didn’t mean it like that. I—”

  “Oh, okay. You didn’t mean it like that. I see. (pause) Because it sounded like you wanted me to leave all of my other kids there and just let Rosie go. So it could be ‘easier’ for her.”

  “No, I—”

  “You think that’s fair?”

  “No, I—”

  “Then why did you say it?”

  “I didn’t, I—”

  “Ah, but you did. You said—”

  “Lydia, please.”

  “YES! You said you wanted me to leave all of them there and let Rosie go! Because you said that it would make it ‘easier for Rosie.’ Did you not say that?!”

  Tia knew that when Lydia started repeating herself it was time to go. My mother could be like Robert De Niro’s portrayal of Jake LaMotta in Raging Bull, with his neurotic, ranting fits of jealousy. I think the paranoia hit hard because of the guilt Lydia felt over placing all of her kids in the Home. Why did she do so? Well, the social workers told us she was too poor to have all of us. And that’s why she kept having more kids, of course—right. I know, horrible for me to say, but true.

  The whole walk home, Tia worked hard to shake off the oppressive sense of intimidation that Lydia had pressed upon her. She knew she had to find another way to get me out.

  CHAPTER 8

  IT WAS a new spring. I was five now and still in Baby Girls. Diana Ross and the Supremes’ hit “Love Child” and the Rolling Stones’ “Honky Tonk Woman”—which we were not allowed to sing (in front of the nuns)—sang through the crisp, sunshiny air. And my disposition was just as sunshiny … and very complicated. I was known to be the first to greet you with morning cheer, and yet I had my moody moments for sure. I was beginning to develop a short temper as well as greater shyness.

  I began to fall into the routine of the Home and started to like it. “Like”? I don’t know if that’s the correct word. Perhaps it’s more accurate to say I became “habituated” to it. The strict structure and repetitive routine offered a strange, if false, sense of security: it gave me less free time to think about my reality. Get up, line up, shower up, line up, pray, eat, line up, do chores, pray, eat lunch, line up, go to school, line up, eat a snack, line up, play, line up, clean up, line up, pray, eat, line up, shower … and then … TV time!

  Oh, TV time!


  La, la, la, la, la, la, la,

  TV time!

  Yes, I made up my own “TV Time” theme song (sounding suspiciously like the song “Hooray for Hollywood”). And there was a little jig to go along with it, of course. We saw so many movies too—classic Hollywood love stories, dramas like It’s a Wonderful Life, sometimes film noirs that had a moral ending (duh), comedies, and musicals. Oh, how warm and fuzzy TV time seemed: the lights dimmed, all us little girls in our bathrobes and slippers gathered around the wood-encased television set while the nuns sat in their rocking chairs knitting or reading their Bibles. I’d always be wishing this magical time could be played out in a real home instead of “the Home.”

  I loved being silly, especially with our group’s counselors. I felt more comfortable with a few grown-ups as opposed to a group of kids. We were always in a damn group, and I needed something different. One counselor taught me how to flare my nostrils in and out and curl my tongue. It brought me hours of joy. I would go up to an adult or a nun and flex my nose back and forth continuously.

  “What are you doing, Rosemary?”

  “Nothing, Sister Mary-Domenica” (nostril flare, nostril flare). Why are you asking?”

  I would teach all that I had learned to Crazy Cindy whenever I saw her. She had already moved up to Group One, so I didn’t get to spend as much time with her as I used to. I missed her a great deal, too. I especially missed how we would talk to each other in hushed whispers after lights out until one of us fell asleep. At least I got to see her outside on the playgrounds, even though she had a new group of friends from her new dorm. Sure, we were still friends and played together whenever I saw her, but now I didn’t have her undivided attention. That was okay, sort of.

  We didn’t have Hot Wheels or Barbies (I never got into dolls anyway), but we had an Olympic-sized pool and a few toys, chalk for a homemade skelly court, jump ropes, old cans for Kick the Can, Spaldeens for handball, a basketball, and my favorite, baseball—with a real baseball field on the grounds! I don’t know if it was the Puerto Rican in me, but I took to the sport like crazy. And a team sport was good for me. It forced me to interact with the other kids and learn to socialize better. But I could as easily entertain myself making blueberry mud pies—especially when Crazy Cindy was with her new group of friends. I would pack the mud in a circle, slice it in eight, and then roll tiny pebbles in the mud and place them on top to be blueberries—genius, right? I know, I can’t stand it either—ha!

  My favorite place was the music room, where they had a piano and a music teacher who taught us all types of Christian songs and silly secular songs. We even had dance lessons! I learned tap because they told me that my legs were too short and stubby for ballet (I know, sad, but funny). I loved tap, and I was good at it. I discovered that I had a natural sense of rhythm, which gave me a lot of joy. I loved rehearsals even more—nerd. At bedtime all I could think about was whatever routine we were practicing. I’d tap out the steps in my head until I fell asleep.

  • • •

  It was a few weeks before Easter, and the Home was putting on a show in the auditorium. Several of the boys’ and girls’ dormitories were selected to present a specific number. The Baby Girls’ dormitory was selected to do a tap dance to “The Candy Man,” and I was picked for the front line—holla!

  Easter Day finally came, and I was ready! The stage looked like a cheaper version of a Busby Berkeley set. Now, “cheaper” didn’t mean tacky—oh no, far from it. This was a Catholic production, and you know how good those folks are at putting on a show. All the girls were getting their costumes on, bragging about their parents coming to see the show. I knew my mother wasn’t coming, but I was hoping that maybe Tia would show up, even though I knew she wouldn’t. The nuns had told me that she was taking my cousins to church but would see me the following weekend.

  One of the counselors pulled me over to do my hair. God bless America two times it wasn’t torture queen Sister Mary-Domenica.

  “Please make two pigtails with curls … like this,” I asked, twirling my hand around in a spiral.

  “Your hair won’t do that,” the counselor remarked.

  “Yes, it will. You have to use Dippity-Do and twirl it around your finger … like this,” I precociously instructed.

  “Dippity-Do,” she said with a laugh. “I’ll just twist it in two and braid it on the ends to secure it.”

  “Ah, for the love of Pete,” I said, kicking my heel against the chair, “it’s not gonna stay!”

  I was so annoyed.

  The audience was in their seats. A bunch of the girls peeked out of the stage curtain to see if they could spot their parents. “Ooh!” screamed one of the girls. “There’s my mother!” My heart sank a bit, but I played it off as I stood back while the rest of the girls peeked through the curtains with her.

  The music began. We entered the stage, tapping our hearts out. I was so nervous, but I was having so much fun and I was on fire! The whole group was killing it!

  Who can take a sunrise (tap 2-3-4)

  Sprinkle it with dew (tap 6-7, hand circles)…

  … The Candy Man … (tap, tap, tappity-tap!)

  Then disaster struck. My left pigtail came undone right in the middle of the number! I was mortified! I kept tapping, with my hands in position on my hips, flinging my head back, thinking it would whip my hair back into a curl, which did nothing at all but make it unravel more and begin to frizz! Goodness sakes! I told that stupid counselor this would happen! I started to cry, like annoyingly loud, with my feet still tapping, arms still swinging up and down to the music, not missing a beat.

  I looked down at the front row. A few kids were pointing at me, sneering and jeering at my fit. I then looked to my right—Sister Mary-Domenica was trying to catch my attention, waving me off of the stage. “Psst! Rosemary! Rosemary! Come over here! Right now!” She looked pissed! Her face was bright red. I ignored her. I had to. I’d watched way too many musicals and knew that the show must go on—and it did, in perfect form!

  Great applause came from the audience—of course! Yay! Applause makes everything better, right? I sniffled back my tears and joyfully took my bow with the group. When we walked off the stage, Sister Mary-Domenica was waiting for me in the wings with steam coming out of her ears. She looked so funny that I almost laughed. I tried to avoid her by slipping off stage left, but she grabbed me by my costume, screaming and wagging her finger in my face. I couldn’t tell you what the hell she said. I was concentrating on the parents rushing up to the side of the stage, hugging and congratulating their kids. I shrugged off the feeling of being left out and Sister Mary-Domenica’s tirade and made my way to the little after-party that the nuns had put together.

  I walked into the canteen room where the party was held. Ooh! There were frosted cupcakes and watered-down Kool-Aid! I loved sweets—things were really looking up now! I grabbed a chocolate cupcake and a cup of the fake juice. Norman Greenbaum’s “Spirit in the Sky” was playing on the radio up on a shelf. The young Catholic counselors loved this one for sure. “Set me up in the spirit in the sky … when I die and they lay me to rest, I’m gonna go to the place that’s the best.…” One of the girls in our dance class invited me to join her and her mother. I felt too proud to accept and politely declined, but watched her with her mother from afar. The discomfort was similar to what I had felt during my mother’s visit, except in reverse. The girl was completely detached while her mother was at a loss, trying to make a connection. It made me think of how Tia was with me when she first came to visit. My good cheer started to fade. Where was Crazy Cindy? She always made me feel better. I looked across the room and saw her with her mother, her brother, and I think her older sister! They never came to visit! She caught my eye and waved me over. On the way, Sister Ann-Marie stopped me.

  “You did so good, Rosemary,” she said, bending down to speak face to face to me. “You’re quite a dancer! What’s wrong?”

  “Oh nothing. Everything’s just swell,” I a
nswered with as much sarcasm as a kid could muster.

  “I think I know what’s wrong. Well, all I have to say is that you kept going. And that’s the most important thing. You didn’t give up, ’cause that’s who you are. And I know next time you’ll be even better onstage, because you’re a natural talent!”

  Her words made me feel wonderful, important, and strong. I know it sounds weird for a five-year-old to feel that way, but it’s true. It took a minute for the smile I was feeling inside to appear.

  “Thank you, Sister Ann-Marie. Thank you very much.”

  I still remember that moment to this day—that bit of kindness and acknowledgment. I joined Crazy Cindy and her family. They were intense, to say the least—it explained a lot. Cindy and I got some pastel-colored cupcakes and Kool-Aid, went to sit outside in the sun, and enjoyed the rest of our Easter Sunday—just the two of us.

  • • •

  I began to ease into a few more friendships since Crazy Cindy was in Group One now.

  One weekend, as I was outside showing some of the girls my Jackson 5 moves—holla!—I was told that I had to come inside.

  Mrs. Vasquez greeted me at the doorway of the Baby Girls’ dorm. Mrs. Vasquez, the Home’s official social worker, was a short, curvy woman who was in charge of parent-child relationships, foster care, and adoptions. She was always in a tight-fitting outfit. You could hear her coming a mile away by the sound of her big fat thunder thighs rubbing together. I didn’t remember her face at first from when my mother first left me at the Home.

  All five of my half-siblings were already there. I quietly entered and waved hello to Amy and Terry. Both of them were nice, waved back, and said, “Hello!” Yay! I didn’t wave hello to Betsy. I just gave her a sheepish smile, since she was the one who had told the whole Home that I was their “half-sister,” not their real sister. She smiled back, then made fun of my hair—jeez. I never really caught my brothers’ names, so I just offered them a slight grin.