by Perez, Rosie
That put an even bigger chip on my shoulder, which only backfired on me, but I couldn’t stop it. After-school detention became a regular event. My grades started to drop. I couldn’t concentrate during class. Taking tests was a blur of confusion, and the low marks made me feel stupid and inept for the first time. I got even more depressed—worried about my chances of getting into college.
Grace came back for a visit.
I felt embarrassed by how little regard the new girls had for her. There were only maybe half of us who were still there from before she left. No one even asked Grace to sit down. As I got milk and cookies for us, she kept looking around at the chaos and lack of empathy in the room. Grace grabbed my hand, looked me directly in the eye, and said:
“Listen to me. You can make it! I knew it when I first laid eyes on you. Study hard, be good, and get yourself out of here! Do you hear me? You must stay focused. You must do that for yourself! Promise me!”
I nodded yes. My eyes flooded. I wanted to reach out and hug her so badly, but I couldn’t—I didn’t know how. She gave a final squeeze to my hand and got up and left. That was it; she was gone again, just like that.
When the GH parents and the Home refused to give me a forwarding address for Grace, I finally snapped. Okay, I had a nervous breakdown, to be exact, but who’s counting.
I went into hysterics and tore my room to pieces, breaking everything. I stopped when I realized that I had broken my 45 of “Penny Lane” in two. I locked myself in my closet for an entire day and fell oddly silent. I could hear everyone looking for me but kept quiet hiding. I even peed on myself a bit but couldn’t bring myself to come out. I felt too bottomless to move.
Then, as the sun was setting, a haze of sunlight seeped through the closet’s wooden shutters. I felt some kind of presence. Maybe it was God, maybe not. But, I prayed earnestly for the first time in my life (I’d never really bought the whole Catholicism thing), telling God that he had to come through for me or I’d never believe in him, ever.
I softly sang to myself the Commodores’ “Zoom” repeatedly and everything from Earth, Wind, and Fire to Todd Rundgren, and then fell into a deep sleep. When I woke, I calmly climbed out of the closet and quietly cleaned my room, blasting the Rolling Stones’ “Paint It Black,” hearing the song in a whole new way. When asked where I had been, I shrugged my shoulders and said I was in my room the whole time. I didn’t feel like I owed them any further explanation. All I cared about was that I had a new mission. I was going to get out, like Grace suggested, and that was that.
I made a call to Mr. Neil on the sly and convinced him to advocate for me to live with Tia. He couldn’t get my mother to agree, so instead, he set it up so that I could be transferred to a “foster home.” I told this girl from school, who went to the same church as I did, to pray for me. (At the Group Home, we were allowed to go to a church of our choosing. After my deal with God inside the closet, I became really religious—evangelistic.) She told her mother. They became my foster family. That didn’t work out so well. They desperately wanted to save me by being even stricter than the Home. And to add insult to injury, they told me I had to leave Freckles behind even though they lived just up the street—God, that hurt. I resented them for it and made them pay—I acted out badly. Shocked and confused by my behavior, they agreed with me to end it before things got really ugly.
I got transferred to another Group Home further upstate. That didn’t work out so well either.
First day, one of the girls started an argument with me over something stupid. The Group Home mother, who was cool as hell, broke it up before it got violent. During dinner, this girl Mandy started to growl like a pit bull at me when I asked her to pass the peas—I kid you not! I was like, “Uh, hello?” Then she started talking to the air and answering it. Oh boy. I knew she was crazy at that point. Then later, in the wee hours of that night, some of the girls woke me up. “Mandy’s digging your grave!” Yes, folks, she was out back digging deep! The next morning she was taken away to a special “hospital.” Mandy was schizophrenic, and the change in the house, meaning me, triggered voices in her head and paranoia. I felt guilty, responsible for her madness. Why? Who knows? Half the house hated me after that. Well, in fairness, I was a bitchy snot during that time to boot.
Thank goodness there was Nigel and his sister Michelle, the counselors—cool and supportive to all. Michelle was laid-back and insightful. Nigel was the best: smart, had that Isaac Hayes cool vibe about him, a stand-up guy who never got excited, never had to. He would say stuff to me like, “How’s that attitude working for you? ’Cause it ain’t working for anyone else,” or, “The world is waiting for you to arrive. You ready?” Nigel and Michelle had integrity and self-worth that I admired greatly. It affected me immensely, which allowed me to be nice and act like the nerd that I was around them and with the kids in the neighborhood outside of the Group Home.
Once again, I dived into the social scene, making a lot of friends at school and church, barely staying in the house. I must say, I loved being a social butterfly again, especially upstate. It was mad fun. I especially loved hanging with these two black girls, upper-middle-class, who lived a couple of houses up. They were part of the cheerleading squad and were smart, polite, corny, and fun! It wasn’t a rarity in upstate New York—well-to-do African Americans who weren’t that different from the white people up there—despite how they choose to depict black folks in movies.
The girls in the Group Home would make fun of these girls behind their backs, calling them Oreos. Once again, they gave me shit for hanging with them and the white cheerleaders, constantly. When I became the manager of the cheerleading squad, they really had a field day calling me a wannabe. It was such a bore! By this point, I didn’t give two poop-poops about it.
• • •
I was obsessed with Woody Allen and Neil Simon movies. Annie Hall, Sleeper, The Prisoner of Second Avenue, and The Odd Couple were some of my favorites. Back in Brooklyn on a visit to Tia’s, that was all I wanted to go see. It drove Cookie crazy. Especially since we had to find theaters that were still playing some of their older hits as well as the newer ones. So, of course, she took me to see The Deer Hunter and Midnight Express instead. Okay, I loved those movies too, but Annie Hall, people!
Tia and I went down to Puerto Rico for the summer. My father had lost his house in Aguadilla that winter and moved into a government housing apartment in the same town—three bedrooms with a balcony made out of rebar and cinder blocks to protect it from hurricanes. I wondered if my father was embarrassed about everything, but no. He took it all in stride. He told me it was just money, and he didn’t need money to make him happy.
We went up to Tia Aya’s for the day to escape the concrete slabs with patches of grass in between.
They had freaking killed Miguel the pig for the holidays!
“It was his time. But no worries, he went painlessly. A nice clean bop on the head,” said Tia Aya’s husband, like it was funny.
Killing Miguel was the same as if someone had killed my precious dog Freckles, who I’d painfully had to leave behind. I had a fit! I fell to the ground, rolling in the dirt like Giulietta Masina in Nights of Cabiria (love!). I rolled too far and fell down the tiny hill at the edge. I could hear my father laughing his ass off up top. Brushing off his help to pull me up, I hastily pushed past him, tripping on a rock, which only made him laugh harder.
When I went inside and sat at the kitchen counter wiping my tears, Tia Aya, paying me no mind, pulled out one of Miguel’s shoulders that she had salted and saved, stuck it in the oven, and asked me to baste it. I stormed out the front door, feeling a dry heave of vomit swell up in my throat.
Dad came out to sit with me in the driveway. We just sat there saying nothing. Then he started to sing his favorite Tony Bennett song.
“ ‘I left my heart in San Francisco.’… You know, my second favorite Tony Bennett album was—”
“Beat of My Heart,” I rudely interrupted, “and C
andido played on it, and you told that story a thousand times! Gosh! Get some new material!”
Dad chuckled instead of being hurt, like I regretfully thought he would be. I slowly started to laugh with him. I then looked behind me, felt someone watching. It was Tia, tucked behind the door. She quietly smiled and then ducked back inside.
Carmen had gotten tits that summer, slimmed down, and was buck wild. She was hanging with these girls who were just as bad. They kept making fun of my poor Spanish, calling me a Yankee—typical Nuyorican versus Puerto Rican hurtful drama. Carmen, in constant competition with me, would add her two cents by making fun of my conservative way of dressing. I would get back at her by stealing her boyfriends, like Tuti, who I broke up with after one day, because he kissed horribly. Carmen spent that whole break trying to get me back.
César was the finest guy in the Municas, and he asked me for a walk to the “woods.” Scandalous! I was never allowed to walk around Aguadilla unaccompanied by a man, which usually meant either my father or at the very least my younger brother Tito. Plus, I didn’t know that going for a walk in the woods meant sex, but quickly figured it out when he asked me to go to third base without even getting to first.
Carmen had followed behind with one of her girlfriends to spy on us so she could tell on me to Dad. So, as César was sucking on my neck, trying to maneuver his hand down my tit, we heard blood-curdling screams. Carmen had stepped on a fallen beehive and was swarmed. She and her girlfriend were screaming, running circles around each other. Hilarious! Thank goodness, because I only had barely been to first at that point—nerd—and I was terrified when César was touching my tittie.
As I was dabbing calamine lotion on Carmen’s numerous bumblebee stings, she noticed the big-ass hickey on my neck. Oh my goodness! We both knew if Dad saw this he would be pissed! She told me she was an expert in hickey removal: she heated a spoon on the stove and pressed it into my monkey bite. Shit blew up and blistered on the spot.
“Just put some Cover Girl on it,” Carmen said.
We did. It didn’t work. Then we heard Dad come in.
“Oh my goodness! Get me a Band-Aid, please, and my white button-down collar from my suitcase!”
I buttoned the shirt all the way up and turned up the collar. Talk about not being obvious.
“Why you got that hot shirt on?” Dad later asked.
I just shrugged.
“Come out to the balcony with me.”
I went out. It was a blazing summer night. I was sweating to death. He looked at me, paused for a moment, then started to chuckle a bit. I rolled my eyes back at him, which only made him laugh more.
“So … anyway, you know, it’s your life, Rose, and you can do what you want, but you know, I just want you to respect yourself and me, ’kay?”
“What? What are you talking about?” I answered, all snotty and paranoid and shit.
“Nothing.… This is a small town, you know?”
Awkward pause.
“Remember when I told you I’d be so proud if you married in white?”
“Oh my goodness, Dad! I didn’t do anything! I swear!”
“That’s good.… No, I’m just saying.… It would be nice, for me … and for you too, to be respectful in the things you do.”
I looked down at the cemented courtyard, feeling weirdly happy, proud even, that my pops was setting me straight.
“Come on. I traded one of my Sarah Vaughans for Dinah Washington for you! She got a Grammy for this album!” Dad said excitedly. He was part of a record/social club where albums were traded and no money exchange was allowed. “ ‘What a difference a day makes.…’ Oh, I love how she interprets that song. I’ll get the record to wash!”
“Can I wash it, Pop?”
Carmen was sitting at the dining-room table in front of the tiny kitchenette, desperately wanting to know the bochinche. I covertly smiled, letting her know all was copacetic. Dad poured the dishwashing soap in a circle over the record, and I very gently washed it in a circular motion, making sure not to scratch it, just as he had taught me. He then started to laugh. “Please forgive me, but please take that shirt off. You look so silly in that hot thing.”
We all cracked up with that one.
That night he kissed me good night for the first time, and before he left the room he turned and said, “I like that. ‘Pop.’ Thank you, baby. ’Night.”
Oh happy-joy-joy!
CHAPTER 20
I TOLD my aunt that I didn’t want to go back to the Group Home, I had to leave and live with her or something bad was going to happen. The tensions between the girls and me were escalating, and I didn’t want to go live with my mother either—besides, she still wasn’t exactly offering. Tia and Titi called the main offices at Saint Joseph’s late that night. The nuns told her I was lying about the friction in the house and that was that. Say what? I had to come back or they were going to call the authorities. I’ve always had great disdain for the system, but now it was at its all-time peak of contempt. Why not give me to my aunt? She had a home, constant employment, never had an incident of abuse or neglect, loved me, would do anything for me. Seriously!
I don’t know if it was conscious or not, but when I got back upstate I got into a fistfight with one of the girls from the Group Home the next morning on the school bus in front of the house. It was a bad one. She bit my breast during the fight, and I went so crazy that I blacked out during the actual brawl; when I snapped out of it, I found myself on top of her, banging her head against the pavement. I didn’t even know how we got off the bus and onto the street!
I couldn’t fathom or connect that I was the same person who would do that to someone. After an interrogation, punishment, and blah, blah, blah, it was decided that I needed to be transferred out and live permanently with Tia. My mother agreed later after it was decided that she would retain legal rights and that I would spend at least two weekends a month at her house—which also meant that Lydia was the one to receive the welfare compensation for me. I was glad that it was all finally happening, but I was also hurt that my mother didn’t insist that I live with her, even though I didn’t want to.
A month before I was to leave the Group Home for good, I was called down to Saint Joseph’s to talk to Crazy Cindy. She’d had a mental and emotional breakdown, and no one could reach her.
Cindy had started to hang out with a bad group of girls, getting into a lot of trouble. Also, she began to go on home visits. I heard through rumors that she would come back in disturbed moods and ready for a fight. She had gotten into an argument with this counselor who shouldn’t have been working with emotionally disturbed kids. The fight escalated into a brawl, and Cindy proceeded to stomp, literally stomp, this woman’s face in. The nuns sent her to Graceland, and the rumor was that she had received shock therapy. I didn’t know if it was true or not, since she was still underage. But the rumors began because, when she returned, her eyebrows were shaved off, her eyelashes were plucked out, and she had stopped talking, except for asking to see me. I was kind of surprised, since we hadn’t spoken since our first fight a year before—but not really.
Ours was not the only Group Home that Saint Joseph’s had. There was another one for boys and an additional one of girls. The other girls’ Group Home was about a thirty-minute drive from our GH, and fly compared to ours. First of all, they had a pool. Second, they had more than one TV! Third, and most important, they had liberal GH parents who were very supportive and lenient. Cindy was friends with this girl, from that other GH, who was pretty and popular. I had found out that Cindy was going up to visit her somewhat regularly. Say what? I didn’t even know kids from the Home were allowed to visit! And if so, how come Cindy didn’t want to come see me?
One weekend our Group Home had gone over for a visit to swim in their pool. Cindy was there. I was hurt. She tried her hardest to make me feel better, acting silly, making jokes, but I couldn’t shake the feeling. She began to play-fight with me to bring me around. It turned into somethi
ng more serious, and I really started to pound her. Everyone knew that Cindy could beat me up easily, she was a great fighter, but she didn’t fight back. She just let me hit her until I started crying and stopped, apologizing in between my sobs. We hugged it out by the end of the day, but I knew we would never be the same after that.
As the van pulled into the Home, I began to wonder how Cindy was going to receive me even though she had asked for me. I also worried how far gone she was mentally and emotionally.
Walking back into the girls’ dormitory gave me a feeling of disgust and fear, yet I felt above it, like I had survived. And of course I bumped into Sister Renata.
“Hello, Rosemary … I said, hello, Rosemary. And what may I ask are you doing here?”
“I have permission. And my name isn’t Rosemary, sister.”
“Nice to see that temper of yours hasn’t changed.”
“Thank you, sister. Nice to see yours hasn’t either.”
“You’re lucky you’re not here anymore, or I’d give you a good crack right across that smart mouth of yours.”
“You’re not allowed to hit us anymore, sister. Didn’t you know about the new child protection laws?” I said beguilingly, blinking my eyelashes up and down.
She gave me a contemptuous look and left. Yay! I know it sounds horrible of me, but it felt so good.
I found Cindy sitting alone on her bed in Group Two. I sat down on the bed next to her. I didn’t say anything at first. I tried not to stare; she looked so strange and sad.
“What happened to your eyebrows?” I eventually asked.
“I shaved them, stupid.” She chuckled.
“Oh. Your eyelashes too?”
“I plucked them out,” she said with a shrug.
“Why?”
“… Don’t know. Just felt like it.… It looks stupid?”
“No … yes … only a little bit.”
We both laughed. Then we both got quiet, looking away for a moment.