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

  I forced a slight laugh, trying to hide how sad that story made me feel for her.

  “And you never wanted to get married again?”

  “What for? Ay, men can be so exhausting, even. I don’t need de headache.”

  I nodded, trying to make sense of it all.

  “Tia, why did you take me in?”

  “Because I had to.”

  “You had to? No, you didn’t.”

  “Jes, I did. I love you, so I had to.”

  She smiled softly. I smiled back and started to cry.

  “Ay, Rosamarie. Don’t cry. You’re here now, and I love you, okay?”

  I wiped the snot and smiled.

  That was the moment I got it in my head that Tia had to get full custody of me. If I wanted to maintain any sanity that was still in me, I had to do it. The problem was that my mother had to give consent, and we would have to go to court. Or she could sign her rights over and just Tia and I would have to go, which I knew would fail because my mother was too smart and her paranoia would make her think we were plotting an evil scheme against her and she would lose it. Well, I was kind of plotting, but there was no malice behind it, sincerely. I spoke with Tia about it, suggesting that she do the asking—thinking that would be easier since Lydia liked her so much.

  “Oowie, I don’t know. That makes me nervous. You know how she is.”

  “But, Tia, I just can’t keep going over there.”

  “But why? That’s your mother. She loves you.”

  “No, she doesn’t. She doesn’t even like me.”

  “But why you say that? That’s not true. She’s your mother.”

  I still didn’t and couldn’t tell Tia about the abuse. So I brought the idea up to my mother, kind of. I told her it was only because Tia needed me. Her life was so hard and pathetic since she didn’t have a man and she was so lonely—that was a big Latin issue back then, not having a man around. And she was so fat and had arthritis and diabetes—she needed me to cook, clean, and shop for her. Also, it would be for school reasons too, since Grover Cleveland High School was closer to Tia’s house.

  “Oh, you want everyone to think I’m the bad guy, right?” she said in that calm, angry tone of hers. “You think I’m stupid, Rosie?” She wasn’t looking at me but at the potato she was peeling with a paring knife.

  “No, Ma. I just—”

  “I am not signing a fucking thing. And for your information, Minguita already told me everything. Oh yes, I know everything. I know the entire plot. You want a war, Rosie? Is that what you want?”

  I was flabbergasted! Tia betrayed me? And on top of that, the weirdest thing happened. I saw through my mother’s paranoia. Her feelings were hurt. To see that hurt on such a proud woman broke something inside of me. I felt it in my stomach, like an ache that was old and bad. I walked back to my house stunned and filled with regret. What the hell do I do now? She looked so wounded. And now I am caught as well.

  In a non-accusatory way, so as not to tip her off that something bad went down, I asked Tia if she had talked to my mother about the “papers.”

  “No, I haven’t seen your mother for a month. Why? You didn’t say nothing about the papers?”

  “No … kind of.”

  “Ay, Rosie! Why?”

  “I don’t know! Sorry.”

  I was in a daze. I couldn’t get over it, how I fucked it up and how my mother lied and I fell for it. Well, I lied too, but she lied about Tia betraying me—that pissed me off. How could she do that to her! I kept an even greater distance from my mother after that. I barely went over, maybe once a month for a night or two.

  Lydia didn’t protest in the slightest. Maybe it was her pride—maybe not. She never came to check up on me, not even for a visit. Matter of fact, she never came to Tia’s to visit me, ever. Besides Carmen and Tito, none of my half-siblings ever came to see me—well, except my oldest sister, Amy, who came twice. I guess it never occurred to the rest of them to return the courtesy.

  Then the final blow finally happened.

  It was the weekend, and I was at Lydia’s house. She was going off about me not watching after my little sister, Kathy, who was always hanging out on the street a lot. “You didn’t ask me to watch her, Ma.”

  Smack! I didn’t flinch. I grabbed a pack of cigarettes that were on the kitchen table, lit one, and blew the smoke in her face as if I were Barbara Stanwyck in Double Indemnity. (I don’t know why the hell I did that. I didn’t even smoke! I guess I watched too many film noirs.) I thought she was going to smack me again, but to my surprise, she calmly tried to defend her assault.

  “No, you see, I have to fix you, because you have to look out for each other. Like I tell everyone.”

  “Really? No one in this house ever looks out for me.”

  Smack!

  “I fucking hate you!” I screamed. “I swear to God I fucking hate you!”

  She punched me in the face. For the first time, in a knee-jerk reaction, I grabbed her arm with one hand and pulled back my other hand in a fist ready to punch her back—bad move. She quickly grabbed my fist on some kung fu shit, wiggled her arm free, and proceeded to punch me repeatedly to the floor. I managed to scramble away and ran to my house as if my life depended on it.

  I came busting through the door with blood running down my nose, panicked as shit as I rushed to the bathroom. Tia, on the toilet, looked up at me and freaked out.

  “What happened? Ay Dios mio! Your face! Who did that?” she shrieked as she quickly gathered up her underpants.

  “My mother!”

  “What? No! How could she hit you?!”

  “With her fist, Tia! She does it all the damn time!”

  The truth just shot out. I guess I was too hysterical to lie at that point.

  Then the front door swung open, slamming against the wall. I froze for a moment, then peeked out the bathroom door. It was Lydia! She had followed me! I had rushed in so quickly I forgot to lock the damn door!

  “You think you’re slick! Get over here!”

  “Ma. I’m sorry, Ma. I swear! I’m sorry! Pleeeeaaassse, Ma! Please don’t hit me! I’m fucking tired of you hitting me all the time!”

  Just as she was about to charge at me, flinging the kitchen chairs out of her way, Tia came screaming out of the bathroom and jumped in front of me.

  “Lydia! Please! No! Please don’t hit the child! Please! Don’t hit my baby!”

  Her baby? Major bad move. My mother lost it.

  “Your baby? She’s my daughter! Not yours! Mine! I gave birth to her, not you!” she said, pounding on her chest and then on the kitchen table with hurt and pain.

  The commotion made some of the doñas in the building rush upstairs. Their mouths dropped as they saw my aunt on her knees in front of me, pleading on my behalf as the blood continued to flow out of my nose.

  “Lydia, please. Por favor! [Please!]”

  My mother, taking in the neighbors, cleverly got calm in an instant.

  “No, you see, she tried to hit me. Yes. (Sniffles) I try so hard with this girl, but you don’t know her. She lies all the time. She says things about you all the time. How you’re pathetic and fat and slow and how she pities you. You see? And then she hits me! It has to stop.”

  Doña Gladys and even Doña Ponchi didn’t buy it. My mother’s volatile reputation was too legendary and trumped her calculated response.

  Unfortunately, Tia saw the bit of truth. She turned to me, questioning with her eyes. I couldn’t lie to her—I mean about the lies, even though my mother was twisting the situation. I looked at my aunt and couldn’t say a thing. I loved her too much to keep it going.

  Humiliated. Caught. Panicked. I ran to the back window, climbed out and up the fire escape, and ran over the rooftop to the next building, into the apartment of my friend Guy, and then out onto the street. I continued to run to nowhere.

  Tia found me the next day at my best friend Jeanette’s house across the street. She looked as haggard and bleary-eyed as I did. She
kindly asked me to come home; she had cooked one of my favorite meals, pollo guisado y arroz con gandules. That was all that was said. It took a few awkward weeks, but things got back to normal between us, and she never brought it up. Lydia never brought it up either. When I eventually started to go over there again after a month or so—I know, I know, but she was still my mother—she was different with me. She offered me a bit of respect and a more grown-up relationship—more like distant friends. It was a relief, but also left me with the disenchanted reality that I was never going to have that mother-daughter relationship I secretly wanted.

  CHAPTER 22

  DEPRESSION SUCKS. And I was really depressed for a while after the big fight. My grades at Grover Cleveland High School began to drop. Tia would try to encourage me to study. “Why don’t you put on music? You study better with it on. Want me to play your ‘Bac-ka-rrrack’ for you?” I got into a lot of trouble at school, was sent to the dean’s office many times. Most of the time it was my fault, but sometimes it wasn’t. Still, I took things too far. Like the time I kept correcting my English teacher’s use of grammar during class. She told me to stop, and I wouldn’t and was very impertinent about it. To make matters worse, I had cursed out my guidance counselor after she told me to reconsider applying to a university since my grades were slipping: “You shouldn’t set yourself up for potential failure.”

  I would cut class early for the first time, ever, and wander off for long periods of time by myself, going to Clinton Hill, sometimes to Fort Greene Park, even though no one dared to go into the park for fear of gangs or getting robbed. Clinton Hill brought me peace. It was the Brooklyn I had seen in the old movies. Those beautiful houses that I longed to own someday snapped me out of it somewhat and refocused my dreams, my goals. I began to try again at school. I had to. I had to be as determined as ever. I had to believe I was immune to the emotional and mental blows of my life thus far. I had to believe that I was above it. If I didn’t, how could I win?

  • • •

  It was the ’80s. I was obsessed with boxing (Willie Benítez, Sugar Ray Leonard, and Tommy Hearns especially), hip-hop and new wave music and MTV—even though we couldn’t afford it. Life with Tia was my world, my happiness, but I knew I had to leave. Reaganomics and the beginnings of the crack epidemic were hitting Bushwick hard. The lack of job opportunities increased limitations and produced a negativity and an apathy that were trying. There were good, smart, honest, and hardworking people in my neighborhood, but the opposite was also prevalent and now increasing. I was lucky to still be working as a typist at Wyckoff Hospital, transcribing doctors’ recorded medical notes from a Dictaphone, but I’d soon be laid off due to budget cuts.

  Tia had slowed down too. Her arthritis and diabetes prevented her from working her two extra jobs on the side in addition to her regular work. To see her struggle because for days at a time she could only provide cereal, rice and beans, chicken gizzards, Wonder bread, fried eggs, and leftover pego was tough. I helped out as best I could with the money I had saved from my job, told her I was too old for an allowance, and bought meat that I sneaked into the refrigerator on the sly. (Tia never would accept money from me.) Sometimes I’d stuff myself with slices of pizza from Mario’s Pizzeria so I wouldn’t seem hungry after dinner.

  I liked Grover Cleveland High. I loved the old beautiful building, but didn’t feel the same way about the majority of the student body. There were a lot of nerdy smart kids, but the rest—oy vey, hoodlums in the making.

  I was about sixteen years old. Walking home, I had gotten jumped by three girls because of their Five Percenter boyfriend. The Nation of Islam, whose members were African American Muslims, was gaining popularity with young black kids. They made up their own sect and referred to themselves as Five Percenters, from the Nation of Gods: they believed that only the Asiatic black man is God, and only 5 percent of the world possess true knowledge.

  So anyway, this Five Percenter in school wanted me to become his main Earth—meaning his main woman. Me not being black and the fact that those girls were only his Flowers—meaning his subset—set them off on a mission to kick my ass. They followed me after school. I fronted, walking casual, while inside my heart was beating.

  Please, oh please, God, don’t let them kick my ass.

  I turned into Car Barns Hill; they made their move, surrounding me. I was terrified!

  “You think you cute,” said one of the Flowers.

  “I don’t think, I know,” I sassily replied.

  “This bitch is crazy,” the Flower exclaimed.

  “I know you are, but what am I?”

  I know, a cornball comeback. Bitch whipped out a razor blade and tried to cut my dimple out—not kidding, shit hurt like hell, screamed like a bitch. I started swinging and popped her in the mouth. She stumbled back. One of the other girls grabbed me from behind while the third kicked me in the stomach. As I was buckling over to the ground, the girl I popped punched the side of my head with a power right hook, repeatedly. Curled up in a fetal position to protect myself as they stomped, punched, and kicked, praying I wouldn’t die, I grabbed one girl’s pinky and held on so hard that I heard it snap. She screamed for me to let go, I screamed back, telling them I would let go if they stopped. Friends and neighbors from my block finally arrived and broke it up.

  Next day at school I walked in, ribs bandaged, busted lip, and a closed fat black eye. The “cool” crowd greeted me with respect. I’ve gotta get the fuck outta here.

  I started to think about the benefits of being in the Home. Seriously. A moral code was instilled in me as well as a motivation to do well in life. Okay, maybe that was who I was all along; but maybe the nuns helped bring it out in me. Whichever the case, they definitely had a hand in making me an ethical and hardworking person.

  I watched a few kids my age and a bit older, upstate and down in Brooklyn, get pregnant. Upstate, it was something to be ashamed of, kept secret. Parents would hide their kid’s belly, and adoptions were considered, even early marriages, to save face. But in Brooklyn kids were moving in with their baby’s daddy or momma as if this was something to aspire to, to be envied even. To me, teen pregnancy was selfish and immature, let alone limiting in your chances for success, regardless if you were rich or poor. Especially if you had issues with neglect and/or abuse you were still experiencing yourself or hadn’t dealt with—why subject an innocent child to your growing pains? Forget that. Plus, I had plans. Most of my friends did, like Luis, Vinnie, Anthony, and Jeanette. We all wanted more and were willing to put in the necessary work to get more. I still had a light in me, an optimism that anything was possible if I tried hard enough.

  My cousin Titi, Tia’s oldest daughter, the heroin addict, suggested that I come to Los Angeles, where she’d moved about four years before. She was stressed out with the kids, and since I used to babysit them all the time, she asked me to come help her out while I went to school. I was wary at first. Besides the fact that I really wanted to go to Stony Brook University, I wondered if she was still an addict. “No, no. I’m done with all that shit.” She also told me life in La-La Land was laid-back and fly, and provided opportunities way beyond what I could find in Brooklyn. I decided to give it a shot.

  I called Dad. He was upset, didn’t like the idea of me being so far away from him and Tia, but supported my decision.

  I went over and told my mother. There wasn’t a big reaction. She just blessed my trip and told me to call.

  Tia cried for weeks! She begged me not to go. I tried hard to explain why I wanted to leave.

  “I want to have a career. I want to see Paris and go to Brazil and listen to Astrud Gilberto live.”

  “Who?”

  “It doesn’t matter, Tia. I want all that life can offer and more.”

  “You sound like a Hallmark commercial.”

  We both laughed a bit. Then she started to sob.

  “But I’ll miss you so much. I’ll worry so much. I can’t stand it.”

  “Me too.
So much. Mommie, I want to be able to support myself and not have to depend on anyone, especially you. You’ve done enough, and I thank you for it.”

  “Ay, you’re so stupid, even. You don’t have to thank me—for what? Loving you?… You promise to go to college?”

  “Yes.”

  My last day—all packed and ready to go—I walked out of the apartment. It seemed like half the block was waiting to send me off. Tears. By the time everyone got in the gypsy cab, Cookie, Millie, Tia, and a couple of grandkids, the body weight made the muffler drag and spark all the way to JFK. Tears and kisses at the terminal, nonstop. Every time I went to hand in my ticket, Tia would start wailing.

  As the plane took off, my desire to leave Brooklyn instantly began to fade. I thought of all the loving moments I’d had with Tia and my cousins. All the fun I’d had with Jeanette and the rest of our nerdy clan. I thought of summers in Coney Island, the trips to the Museum of Natural History, walks to Clinton Hill and over the Brooklyn Bridge. I felt a panic inside, questioning if I was making the right choice.

  • • •

  Titi had never kicked the shit, in fact it had gotten worse. And the neighborhood was not “fly.” She lived on the edge of the Crenshaw/Adams District. Her broken-down, cheap apartment was always dimly lit, filled with questionable characters, either dropping off drugs or getting high with her, and muscle men coming by looking for late payments on drugs purchased. Her sweet kids who used to listen to me had become brats. Didn’t blame them, though. I understood they were acting out, growing up with a drug-addicted mother.

  They tested my nerves to the limits, but I had learned patience from babysitting Millie’s and Cookie’s kids. One afternoon, while watching Millie’s three kids, one of them had kicked me in the shin. My hand acted on instinct, popping her in the mouth hard to the point of blood, just like my mother would do with me. I couldn’t believe I did that, and shame and regret instantly flushed out of every pore, along with immediate empathy. I held her begging for forgiveness as I tried to erase the pain and humiliation. I told Tia when she got home. She just nodded in a grave and slow manner. I fell into an instant depression—I couldn’t speak the rest of the night, woke up silent, and couldn’t look Tia in the eye when she smiled good-morning. Two days later, as we were watching WABC’s Saturday 4:30 movie, Tia said I reacted that way because that was what I’d been taught, but that I didn’t have to be like that. I never hit a child ever again.