Just Kids From the Bronx

by Arlene Alda

  When I was little, there weren’t that many educational TV shows, but there were some. They would repeat them during the day. It didn’t matter what time of day it was. If Majora wanted to watch, if it was Sesame Street or Mr. Rogers’ or ZOOM or any of those shows, everything stopped and Channel 13 was turned on for me. My siblings hated me for it. It was like maybe there was a lesson I didn’t get so I had to watch again. My mother’s like, Majora’s got to watch Sesame Street—sorry! To this day, my brothers and sisters talk about it and this was nearly forty years ago. So you’re going to watch Sesame Street? You know how much we hated you?

  At the age of seven, I knew that I wanted to get out of the neighborhood and school was the way out. I was reading on a twelfth-grade level when I was in the third or fourth grade. I knew I was smart. Well, I’m smart enough to get out of here. I know I can go to a good high school and I’m gonna go to a good college and I’m never gonna look back. And my goal at that time was to be a neurosurgeon.

  My parents had each been married twice before. There were six kids at home, including me. That’s a lot of kids! In junior high school, I knew that I wanted to go to Bronx High School of Science. My teachers at Intermediate School 74 worked with a bunch of us, tutoring us. We weren’t at all prepared otherwise. Our school was definitely not up to par, so there were about ten or twelve of us who got tutored. Two of us got in. Eric Nuñoz and I.

  There were drugs in the neighborhood. I didn’t do drugs because my mother would’ve killed me. Actually, this is what people don’t quite understand. I didn’t really try pot until I had gone out with white people. They were like, “Really?” I mean, I totally faked it. We pretended, but we didn’t really inhale. It also didn’t occur to me to have sex early. Again, that was something that more of my white friends were doing than almost any of my black and Latino friends in high school. And the drinking? It never occurred to me to drink like that before high school.

  So I’m in Bronx High School of Science, and I’ve never seen so many white people in my life. Wow, they’re everywhere! We had only one white kid in my junior high. All the rest were either Hispanics or African Americans. So there I was in a school with about three thousand kids, and everything about it was miserable for me. At the time there were three kids from the neighborhood in addition to me who were going there. It was hard because it was really intimidating. I was smart, but I was in with kids—not even kids who went to private school—but kids who went to decent public schools in the city, and I was so far behind in my first year that I almost failed everything. Like, I was really bad at grammar. I actually said “aks,” A-K-S, instead of “ask.” I was shocked when finally someone told me that’s not how you say it. I was like, Really? Am I saying everything else completely backward too? I made it clear to my teachers that I didn’t want to fail. I was like, Okay—let’s make it happen. I got back on track.

  I also found out about a program run by this amazing, very wealthy woman named Alice Miller. She lived on Park Avenue and she basically paid for this program for inner-city kids interested in science to learn about medicine, by spending Saturdays at either Albert Einstein or Mount Sinai Hospitals.

  I took a bunch of classes. That’s how I spent Saturdays for the first two years of Bronx Science. I got a chance to examine babies’ hearts for different kinds of heart disease. We dissected everything on the planet and we literally got to sit in on autopsies with cadavers. I am so grateful for that experience in a big way. And then something happened. I don’t know exactly when it switched, but I realized that I didn’t want to do that anymore. I actually wanted to be an actress. Which was really bizarre, considering I was shy.

  I just fell in love with movies and I said, I can do that, and I want to do that. So I went to see Alice Miller at her Park Avenue apartment. We sat and had a wonderful lunch, or maybe it was tea. I told her that I didn’t want to be part of the program anymore. She asked, “So what do you want to do?” “I want to act.” She said, “Okay. Do you still want to go to college?” Of course I still wanted to go to college. She asked me which one. I didn’t know, although I was thinking about Carnegie Mellon and Purchase. She said, “How about Wesleyan? I know the financial aid officer. Maybe you should think about Wesleyan. You’d love it and it’s not too far away.”

  So I applied early decision. I got a call from the financial officer at Wesleyan, saying that they got my application, my essays, but that they didn’t have any of the records from my school. I’m like, “What do you mean you don’t have anything from my school? They knew I was applying.” “We don’t have it.” They had nothing from Bronx High School of Science. I had this guidance counselor who was a hateful woman. I would hand her all my stuff and she would kinda sneer. So my father and my sister went to school to see her. What’s goin’ on? She basically said that of course she had submitted everything. “We’ve spoken to the financial officer. He said that Wesleyan had everything except what you were responsible for.” The counselor looked around, the papers appeared, and then my father and sister got them to Wesleyan. That’s where I ended up going.

  CARLOS J. SERRANO

  Playwright, poet, and theatrical producer

  (1970– )

  My grandparents lived downstairs from us in our apartment building. Whenever they needed something or we wanted to communicate with them, instead of us calling each other, we’d hit the radiator—a steam pipe—with a spoon. The steam pipe went from the top of the building all the way down, so my grandparents, who were directly under us, would answer, Ding-ding-ding. Ding-ding-ding. We might just be asking them, Are you downstairs? Then we basically just invited ourselves there.

  My mom worked at the Woolworth’s store on 163rd Street on Southern Boulevard for at least the first five or six years of my life, so my grandparents were our babysitters during that time. They were also the people we went to if we wanted to get away from our parents. We were individually happy, but you had to deal with a lot of domestic arguments, like, Oh, no. Dad’s drunk. It’s the weekend. Or Dad’s drunk again so let’s go downstairs and get away from that. Or, you know, when my mother was in the middle of a personal hurricane, Let’s get away. Let’s just go downstairs and hide.

  My dad would get hired on the weekends to deejay a party or to go to some party, but he’d also drink and get really drunk. So my mother had to go out there, find him, and bring him back to the house safely. That led to another set of arguments, which weren’t out of the ordinary, ’cause you heard arguments in the neighborhood in one way or another. I mean, the arguments in our house weren’t violent, but they were screaming matches with my mother always threatening to leave. That’s the thing, at least in a Puerto Rican household. “You know, one day I’m not going to be here.” And that’s what she would tell everybody. “I’m not going to be here. You guys take me for granted, I’m going to go. I’m going to go to Puerto Rico and you’ll never find me.” Once when I was a teenager, when it was just me and her alone with her screaming that, and I said, “Why don’t you leave?” She had no answer. No one had ever asked her that before. She had absolutely no answer.

  People say that I look a little bit like my father, which kind of takes me aback. I don’t see myself that way, but then I see pictures of him and I see pictures of myself, and I do. Or I hear my voice. I hear how my voice is when I’m yelling. It’s the pattern, the voice pattern when he’s yelling in Spanish about why everyone is taking money from him. Money was always the basis of the arguments. Why do you need money for that? Why is everybody taking from me? That’s always the thing about Latino parents, or maybe just Puerto Rican parents. They’re always wondering why someone needs this or that. Why they need money, why they need me? They’re taking me for granted.

  We weren’t poor, or maybe we were as about middle class as a blue-collar family can be with one working parent. I guess when I look back, we took whatever we could ask for, and they did provide. For me, when I was growing up, a lot of examples of what a domestic family should be
like I got from watching reruns of The Brady Bunch and The Dick Van Dyke Show. These shows got me wanting something better.

  In the South Bronx, where we lived, there were gangs and there was a drug situation. My mom used to hate it when I would go downstairs to play with friends. I felt like I was never in any danger until I was a teenager and understood what those dangers were. But even then, it was like I knew how to take care of myself. But my mom would catch me downstairs and then hit me all the way up. So I tried to figure out how to get out without her knowing. I never had keys to the apartment, so I would just lock the door, go down through the fire escape, and come back up through the fire escape.

  My mother was afraid that I’d be recruited for a gang or something. What I did downstairs was play stickball and stoopball. Nothing dangerous. But she never really understood. When I was a teenager she never liked my friends. To me, they were just the neighborhood friends. Everybody had a particular role and characteristic. There was the guy who was the womanizer and would just joke around. And then there was this guy, Julio, who was probably the guy who would get into trouble because he looked like he would joke way too far. It would pass that boundary, and then he’d end up being in a fight. One day the boundary that he crossed was with me and I kind of fought him, but the next day it was like, “Hey, how ya doin’?” That was also the time when there were still those vacant lots and burned-down buildings, so we played in the rubble. As I said, my mother never really understood.

  I think I always had a moral compass. I understood right away what was bad and what was good. I saw people being beat up by gangs or getting hurt, and I heard stories of this person who got shot or that person who got thrown in jail. And I could see what people looked like when they were high on cocaine or other stuff. I also had a view of the neighborhood characters through my window and could see how they could get, and I saw my father when he was drunk, in his wobbly stupor. It just never appealed to me.

  My mother took us to church as kids. I was baptized late … when I was four … but I never did like church. My mom used to beat me to go to church when beating was the in thing to do. Nowadays, it’s like, “How can you treat your child like that?” But she’d say to me, “The reason I’m doing this is because I don’t want you ending up like them,” meaning the guys on the streets. And I always felt, like, I’m not!

  My mom was also into Santeria and she took me to her Santeria groups. There’s always this one leader of the group who would sit in the center and preach to everybody. I think at some point he would hold people’s heads and just shake them, I guess to get the bad spirits away from them. And people would go, “Viva Chango.” The God, Chango, is the head guy in Santeria. There are also a bunch of saints. There’s a learning thing there. Chango was just a flawed guy and when he became a God he took advantage of his position, so he had to learn the lesson that responsibility comes with power. I think that’s the whole learning thing about that God and the whole Santeria, that mistakes happen when you’re younger and that there are consequences to your actions. That Spider-Man credo. What comes with great power comes with great responsibility.

  I always felt myself different from everybody else. I think I was drawn into theater and the arts very early. I was the quietest of my three siblings, so I observed a lot and I watched a lot and I saw a lot. I’m fascinated with how people act and what people do. There was a PBS presentation of The Elephant Man. It was a stage presentation that was on TV and the actor that played the Elephant Man didn’t have makeup on. I remember asking why that was, and my sister explained to me, “I think it’s because everybody has a different perception of what ugly is.” So to have a fixed idea of what ugly is would give you only one point of view, but to have to imagine … For some reason, that stuck with me. So I started writing when I was thirteen because on those days that I couldn’t get away from my mom, or couldn’t figure out that escape, I wrote. I imagined stories. I imagined these adventures that I wanted to have, but couldn’t, or imagined adventures that I thought adults had, like looking for treasure or fighting a bad enemy. In seventh grade, one of my teachers said about something I had written, “We should produce it in front of the whole school,” and that was a big deal for me, you know, to have people laugh and enjoying themselves, and to have teachers saying, “You really did a good job.” Writing was an arena I felt really comfortable in. One where I thrived.

  After high school I ended up at Brooklyn College because they had just begun a new creative writing program there. The professor there, Saul Galen, said to me, “Carlos, I know that you’re a writer. You should apply to this program.” So I did it, just on a whim. Meanwhile, I had gotten a scholarship to Rockford College in Illinois. Then I got a call from Professor Galen. He said that they got my application and that they would like me to come down for an interview. So I went there to see him—he’s one of those close talkers, so he’s right in your face—“You know, Carlos, I understand that you got accepted to Illinois, and you’d probably be close to Chicago, but for theater, New York is where it’s at.” I said, “Really?” He said, “Yeah, you should stay here. You should do this program.” And that pretty much convinced me because that was the first time that I was seriously encouraged to write. My teachers before that had said to me that I did a good job, or that I should continue because it was a fun thing to do, but this was the first time that it really felt serious. I wanted to write and there was a program for that. And at that same time, I wrote a play about my senior year in high school and it won honorable mention in a citywide contest for young playwrights. It was a sign that I was headed in the right direction, with both the recognition and the encouragement.

  RENEE HERNANDEZ

  Physician, founder and owner of Tirado Distilleries in the Bronx

  (1973– )

  Becoming a doctor has been my passion since the age of fourteen. Initially, since I loved animals, I wanted to be a vet. Then at a certain point I think it just was easier to learn about one animal than a lot of different animals, so it boiled down to learning about humans. That’s how I became an MD. And then it evolved further into serving the people, serving the community, serving the area in which we live. I wanted to create an environment that was very different from what my mother used to go to, which was more like a Medicaid mill. They were just pumping out patients and not really giving them the attention they deserved. I love what I do as a doctor. I would do it for free. It’s what I dreamt of since I was young so I’m blessed that I’m living my dream.

  As a kid, we lived on Beech Terrace, with relatives living in the same building. I had a couple of aunts living floors above us and a couple of uncles living below us. My father was a chef who worked at the Mary Manning Walsh nursing home on Sixty-Eighth and York Avenue in Manhattan. My mom was a stay-at-home mom until we were a little bit older. Then she worked as a home health aide.

  I had been in the gifted program at I.S. 149, the same program as Ruben Diaz Jr. Where I was in the South Bronx, buildings were burning, and there was the crack epidemic, HIV. That was all around me, but basically as a kid in the gifted program I escaped that. One of the things they did in that program was to separate the top ten percent of the students and make them compete with one another so that they pushed one another to their limits. You challenged each other as to who was going to be the best. With that as your background, you knew you could pretty much handle whatever situation was presented out there.

  I would say that coming from a loving family that’s supportive, that’s constantly pushing you to achieve, was especially important. And the church was very important in my life too. You can’t do this job of doctoring without being spiritual. You can’t do this job without dedicating your work to God—dedicating your work to serving others. If you don’t have that foundation it’s hard. It’s really hard. You can get corrupted. You realize as you get older that money is nice to have but it’s not everything.

  I went from the junior high school in the Bronx to being a scholarship board
ing student at Suffield Academy in Connecticut. Although I was lonely there, I realized how blessed I was. A lot of students there were from privileged homes economically, but their families were really in disarray. I had my very strong family background with a lot of love within the family. And then I got to have that education opportunity at Suffield. It was awesome. Just thirteen students to one teacher. And in Spanish class, there were three students to a teacher. We also had advanced math courses. Suffield gave me the preparation and foundation for college.

  In the sixties and seventies, there was a shift in the Hispanic population in New York. That’s when a lot of Dominicans came in. It was a new culture for us as Puerto Ricans. There was initially a clash between the two cultures, which I think stems back to the island and the exploitation of each other in Puerto Rico and then continuing in the United States. The Dominican view, which is interesting, is you gotta work. We’re gonna work and we’re gonna do whatever it takes to make it here. The first generation wants to go back, but by the second and third generations they’ve already created enough networking to stay here.

  I married a Dominican. The cultures are similar in the food that they eat and the music that they hear. The difference is in their identities. For example, Dominicans are very proud of who they are, because they have their own country. Puerto Rico is in between. We really don’t know what we are. As an unincorporated territory, we’re really part of the United States. That limbo creates a different uncertainty. But the United States is a beautiful country. I love it here. It’s the only country that a son of a cook could actually become a doctor. I would die for the United States at any given moment.