Halsey Street

by Naima Coster

  “Oh, déjala quieta,” Ramona said. “I bought them for her. Now, tell me about school.”

  “Her grades are nothing special,” Mirella said. “She’s lucky she got into this middle school—there was a lottery. She needs to work harder if she wants to go to a good college one day. They won’t care if she has As in art.”

  “Maybe that’s all she needs. Maybe she’ll be an artist one day.”

  “Who do you know who left this pueblito, went to New York, and came back an artist?”

  “Penelope isn’t from this pueblito. She was born in New York.”

  “You think that matters, Ma? It’s not easy over there. Dominicans in New York work hard.”

  “How would you know what Dominicans do? Your only friends are morenos.”

  “I don’t have time for friends, Ma. I work. And if Penélope doesn’t work hard now, she’ll be working hard for the rest of her life, too. If I had been born in New York, I would have studied. I would know better than to spend all my time drawing.”

  “Why would you spend your time drawing? You were never any good at it.”

  “My art teacher says my art could help me get into college,” Penelope said. “I could get a—” She turned to Mirella and spoke in English. “Mami, how do you say ‘scholarship’?”

  “Beca,” Mirella said begrudgingly.

  “I could get a beca, Abuela. For college.”

  “You’d be the first one in our family to go,” Ramona said.

  “She wouldn’t be the first Jiménez. Papi went to college. In la capital.”

  “Well, she’d be the first Santos.”

  “Mami, can I go get my paintings to show Abuela?”

  Mirella waved her hand indifferently, and Penelope went to the bedroom, where they had left their luggage. The bedroom had no furniture besides a bed, a dresser, and a footstool where Ramona kept a shrine to la Virgen de la Altagracia. She had covered the footstool with tall votive candles, a dried branch of red framboyan, and a broken teacup that held coins and a gold chain. Penelope would sleep in the bedroom with her grandmother, and Mirella would find them in the morning, wrestling for blankets, their arms and legs intertwined, as if they were a pair of little girls.

  “You shouldn’t encourage her,” Mirella said. “Filling her head with tonterías. I’m the one who has to make sure she is prepared for life.”

  “Being an artist doesn’t seem to be the problem in Penelope’s life.”

  “Y eso?” Mirella leaned across the table and pointed her finger in Ramona’s face. “What are you trying to say?”

  “Nothing, except I know how you all live over there. Without neighbors, without friends. At least, Penelope has something she loves.”

  “It’s not the campo, Ma. You can’t leave your door open at night and yell at anyone who passes, ‘Oigan! Que vengan para ’ca. Hice un sancocho y me quedó bien rico!’”

  Ramona ignored Mirella’s parody of her.

  “Penelope’s my granddaughter. If she wants to draw, I want to see her drawings. If she decides to be a fisherman, I want to see her fish.”

  “Don’t try to teach me how to raise a child. I raised myself, didn’t I?”

  “I was young. I didn’t know how to be a mother. We lived in the same house, and I thought that was the same thing as raising you. Now, I’m old, and I see things.”

  “I was thinking of Penélope before she was even born. I left this little campo because I knew I’d never raise a child here.”

  “I thought you left because you were ashamed to be a campesina like me.”

  Mirella watched her mother pick up a grain of rice from the edge of her plate and lick her finger.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Ramona said. “We all make choices to chase our own happiness. You made yours.”

  “And I am happy.”

  “Good.”

  Mirella looked around the little shack, its mint green walls.

  “But listen to me—you better make things right with that girl. She won’t keep waiting for you.”

  “What do you mean ‘waiting’? I am already her mother.”

  “You’ll see.”

  A bang on the door ended their disagreement. Mirella should have known visitors would arrive. It was their first night back, and everyone in Aguas Frescas had seen them arrive that afternoon.

  “Ramona!”

  Angelina’s voice rang clear and high from the road, just as Fernando pushed open the door. He, Angelina, and their six children poured into the house. There were hugs and kisses, as if they didn’t all live within the same square mile and see each other every day. Angelina gave Mirella a kiss on the cheek; the children gave her limp hugs. Penelope bounded back into the room with a stack of her watercolors, and the other children charged at her. She lifted her hands high so they wouldn’t crush her work. She hugged them back and gave them kisses, the three young boys, the eldest girl, and the girl who was her age.

  “I’ll get the drinks,” Ramona said, heading for the cabinet stocked with rum, malta, and mabi. Penelope set her paintings down on the table and went to help her grandmother carry the bottles. Fernando, Angelina, and their children arranged themselves on the sofa and started asking Mirella questions rapid-fire. How did she manage to look so much younger than both of them; was the water in New York softer on your skin? How old was her morenito now, and was he treating her well? Penelope was becoming so beautiful; did she know how she was going to keep those New York tigueres away?

  Ramona returned with the rum and the radio. Penelope sat on the arm of the couch to trade secrets with the eldest girl, who Mirella could see had been changed by the past year as well. She was tall and willowy in the pink leggings and dirty striped tank top she wore without a bra. Even her feet looked like the feet of a woman, the nails filed and clipped, neat, although her flip-flops were caked with mud. She and Penelope began to whisper to each other, the other daughter craning her ear to hear what they were talking about. The adults began singing along to a ballad that had become popular in the years since Mirella had been away. She didn’t know the words.

  They opened the bottles and turned up the radio, the bachata and laughter filling where there had been silence. Mirella began to let herself drift, out of the house, beyond the stone kitchen, the mountain, the red dirt road.

  Mirella woke up on a mattress on the living room floor, her nightgown clinging to her skin. She had forgotten to open the windows, and no mountain breeze cut through the house to soothe her. Her ears rang from the rum, the dark syrupy taste still on her tongue.

  Mirella fumbled in the dark for the cup of water she had set beside her. She took a sip and watched a mango-green lizard spring onto the wall and crawl up to the ceiling.

  The water tasted like tin. At least it’s clean, Mirella thought. She had bought Ramona a water filter years ago after hearing a news report about parasites. Mirella had told her mother she could do whatever she wanted with the filter during the year, but to make sure she installed it every summer before she and Penelope came to visit.

  Mirella listened for the sound of Penelope breathing in the bedroom. She heard nothing. The mountain was quiet, only the wind and the sound of fruit dropping from the trees until sunrise when the roosters started to crow. Aguas Frescas was the sort of place where married couples clamped their hands over each other’s mouths while they made love, where teenagers snuck off to las cascadas to do the same.

  Mirella had taken only one boy, Dionysus, down to the waterfalls. The other boys were too afraid of her; she was untouchable with her red hair and golden skin. She spent evenings sitting in a plastic chair in front of her house, wearing short shorts and a translucent T-shirt without a bra, because it pleased her to catch them watching, lingering on the road, but never venturing to her door to say hello or to gossip. She kept her schoolbooks open as they passed, satisfied to see how they slowed to watch her watch them.

  Mirella kissed Dionysus one day at the river. She was fourteen and still attending the yo
uth hour at the chapel every Friday. The kids went swimming after the service, disappearing into the trees or behind the waterfall at dusk. Mirella and Dionysus stayed by the riverbank, dipping their legs in the current, marveling at the tiny fish that circled their feet and pecked at their toes. These fish ate the dead skin off their heels, and it tickled, as they slowly cleared the old flesh away. Dionysus was midlaugh, pointing at their feet in the sand, when Mirella tipped his head back and kissed him, just to see what it was like.

  Mirella finished her water, crept toward the bedroom, and eased open the door. The bed was empty. Ramona’s mud-encrusted chancletas were under the bed beside the Adidas sandals Penelope used as house slippers. Had they gone out barefoot? Mirella took the grainy bedsheets into her hands; they were still damp.

  Back in the living room, Mirella searched for a flashlight. Her fingers brushed plastic plates and tin cups in the cupboard, the sticky edges of a cobweb. She cursed. The lights were out, and there was no generator to power the little house. She knew Ramona had to keep a flashlight somewhere for the blackouts that came to Aguas Frescas daily.

  Mirella found only Ramona’s collection of candles, each for a different saint. She picked a candle with a sticker-portrait of a brown-skinned woman with no hair, just an emerald-green mantilla flowing from her scalp. She was more sensual than holy, with lips as pink as the undersides of river fish. Mirella struck a match and lit the wick and carried it with her out of the house.

  The candle cast just enough light for Mirella to follow her feet on the road. The darkness closed in around her, and the quiet seemed to fill her ears and crush. She passed the tiny houses, all wooden planks and zinc roofs, a few plastic chairs in every yard.

  Mirella spotted Lulú, sleeping just off the side of the road in front of a small stucco house with a slanted roof. She couldn’t remember who lived there, and it bothered her to see the old mutt with her chin in the dirt, sleeping anywhere in the pueblo that she pleased. Maldita perra, Mirella thought, and she considered kicking Lulú in the side to wake her and send her back to Ramona’s house.

  The dog had never been a part of Mirella’s life in Aguas Frescas. She and Penelope returned one summer to find her pissing under the lime tree, a scruffy pup that yapped at night and hunted rats, dragging their carcasses into the yard to show off to Ramona. Mirella had liked Lulú only briefly, during the summer when Penelope was four and chased the dog up and down the road, squealing, and grabbing at her grubby fur.

  Mirella decided not to wake the dog and turned the bend in the road. The moon loomed low over the trees, and an uncountable number of stars stretched across the sky, but they were too small and distant to emit much light. It was the moon that kept Mirella on the road and off the rocks. She didn’t need the candle anymore, but she let it burn, the waxy smell familiar and comforting.

  The framboyan-red shack at the top of the road that led to las cascadas was the schoolhouse. Mirella circled the shack looking for her daughter. Were they sitting on the stones watching for shooting stars? They weren’t.

  Feathery curtains hung over the schoolhouse windows; discarded coils of wire and deflated balls lay dead in the yard. Mirella had spent years in the schoolhouse, listening to the illustrious biographies of dead Dominican presidents, and singing rhymes the teacher taught them to fill the time. She made her way back to the road, the old couplets returning to her.

  Los zapatitos me aprietan, las medias me dan calor

  Y el anillito que yo tengo, me lo regaló mi amor.

  Mirella had been spared attending secondary school in the red shack by one of the teachers, Señorita Chelsea, a nun who had come to Aguas Frescas on mission. She was an American woman with ice-blue eyes, and she suffered constant sunburn from her years on the mountain. She recommended Mirella for a secondary school in Santiago, and with Ramona’s permission, Mirella found a man with daily business in Santiago, who was willing to drive her and two other girls down to a Catholic school in the city, where they could continue their lessons. The girls rode down in the truck every day, unless the rain was too heavy and there was a chance the road would dissolve to mud.

  Mirella had loved being back in Santiago, winding through the maze of narrow, cobbled streets. She paraded down the avenues and sat reading in El Parque Valerio, watching the fountain spout water, until it was time for her to meet the truck to take her back up the mountain. At school, she took an English class, and she learned how to sew and make dresses. She practiced her English vocabulary, words like Eucharist and ascension and Holy Ghost, while the truck lurched back to Aguas Frescas in the afternoon. She had hoped her schoolmates in Santiago would have heard of her father and La Billonera, that her skin and hair would be proof she had been one of them. Instead the girls laughed at the red stains on her calves, how dusty and nauseated and disheveled all the Aguas Frescas girls were when they arrived in the morning.

  When Mirella was seventeen, her tía Mercedes called from New York. Mercedes wasn’t really her aunt; she was an elderly vecina who had left Aguas Frescas several years ago and never returned. She knew a clothing factory that was hiring—did Mirella want to come to New York to work? She needed someone to help take care of her, and in exchange, Mirella could live with her for free.

  Mirella said yes, although she had never dreamed of living in the United States. She had planned on finding a job in Santiago after she graduated, but she would still have to live in the mountains with Ramona. In New York, no one would know she was from the campo. She could work in the factory and make dresses, save enough money and then leave her tía to find an apartment of her own. In Santiago, girls her age didn’t live apart from their families; in New York, they might, either on their own, or with an American boyfriend.

  Dionysus had asked her not to go. He had grown into a handsome man, lithe and dark, with hands that were blistered from swinging a machete and pulling weeds from the ground. He had quit school after sixth grade to help his father, who grew coffee. Mirella never admitted they were novios, but she met him every night, after she finished proofreading her homework in the front yard and tormenting the other local boys. They kissed for hours and for years, at the river, in Ramona’s stone kitchen, behind the colmado. Dionysus groped her flat chest, and Mirella massaged him over the fly of his jeans. When they started making love, she charted her periods, and wouldn’t let him near her for half of the month. The other times, she ordered him to come in his hand or on the wall of the schoolhouse, in the sand at the riverbank, and he listened, chuckling every time, the same throaty laugh he had at fourteen, when they went swimming after church and let the fish peck at their feet.

  Dionysus knew to love Mirella was to obey her, to worship her, to expect to be remembered but only after whatever else she was chasing—English, Santiago, the Mother Superior’s list of prized students. He consented to adore her in secret, never inviting her for dinner at his mother’s house, or visiting her when she was studying or practicing her sewing. He didn’t ask her to drink and roam the mountain with the other young people who were all out of school and free every evening. But when she said she was leaving for the US, he told her to stay. He would marry her and let her work in Santiago if she wanted; he would wait until she wanted to have children. He kept pleading during the months it took her to raise the money for her ticket and receive her visa, but for Mirella, there was no question about whether to leave. On her last night in Aguas Frescas, she waited for Dionysus behind the school, but he never came to meet her.

  The bats swooped overhead as Mirella neared the center of town. They flew up from the caves in the valley and were gone as suddenly as they had appeared.

  The shacks at the center of the town were all dark; the gate to the colmado was pulled shut and locked. Could they have gone to the river? Ramona was crazy enough to do it—to hike to the waterfall at midnight, convince Penelope to dive for crabs and collect stones. If they were there, Mirella would find a way to punish her mother. For taking Penelope downhill in the dark, for bring
ing her home wet and cold.

  She kept walking toward the edge of the town, where the houses stopped, and the chapel stood, and the narrow Aguas Frescas road joined with the main road leading back down the mountain. Mirella couldn’t make out the steeple in the dark, but she knew the way, and kept on.

  She had been living in New York for six months when Ramona mentioned in passing that Dionysus had been killed. It was a routine piece of Aguas Frescas gossip, mentioned just after Ramona finished detailing who was newly pregnant, who had miscarried, who had failed to show up to Sunday mass. He had moved north to Puerto Plata—just a few days after Mirella had left, incidentally—and found a job in a resort. He rented chairs on the beach to the tourists and delivered piña coladas to the topless European women who spent hours in the sand, roasting themselves. He was headed to the beach one morning, riding on the back of the motorcycle, when the driver stopped abruptly and he was thrown off the back. The crash hadn’t killed him, and he was taken to a public hospital nearby. During surgery, one of the doctors sliced open an artery in his thigh, and he bled to death in the operating room. He was buried by his relatives in Los Chocos, in the ground for days before word got across the island and reached his mother. She was wild with grief, collapsing in the road and sobbing nearly every day. Ramona had taken her a sancocho; wasn’t it a shame—such a young boy?

  Mirella had mourned him in private, crying in the bathroom at the factory, or when she was cooking for her tía Mercedes. She knew better than to cry on the subway, or to Ramona, who hadn’t known Dionysus was her first love and her friend, the only one in Aguas Frescas who ever came to know her as more than the red-haired girl who did her lessons outside each afternoon, on a plastic chair in the shadow of her little shack. She mourned that he’d stayed behind, although she’d never fantasized about him coming to New York with her. This is what it meant to be Dominican—to be bound for life one moment, and the next, left for dead on the road.

  The wind extinguished Mirella’s candle just as the chapel came into view. The road rose, and Mirella climbed. The church stood on a small hill, the only building in the whole village made of so much concrete. The lights were off inside, the rainbow colors of the stained-glass windows undetectable in the dark. The front door was ajar, and Mirella pressed her hands into the whitewashed block and peered into the sanctuary.