“When was the last time you visited your mother?” asks Uncle Eddie.
My father says nothing.
“If my mother was alive,” says Franco, “I would carry her on my back.”
My father grunts and leaves the room as I picture my tall, skinny grandmother being carried by my father, piggyback style. Iris changes the subject.
“You knew which kids had worms because they had big stomachs.”
“Thank God, they tore down that horrible slum El Fanguito.”
My father returns with his guitar. The horribleness of Puerto Rico makes everyone want to sing about it. The song, about a poor country hick who works like a slave only to be horribly disappointed when he can’t sell his goods in town, is a beautiful song that stabs me in my heart like a knife that stays there. I hear more and more happy/sad songs until it’s time for my uncle and his family to leave or I fall asleep on the sofa.
The baby inside Ma grows until she gets tired and lazy and wants me to run errands for her. I love it when she sends me to the store all by myself.
“Can you do it?” Ma asks. “Can you get un aguacate para hoy? Just go and ask Don Joe for an avocado for today and come right back. Don’t talk to anyone but Don Joe.”
I got it. I can do this, I think. An avocado for today—not for tomorrow or the day after, but for today! “Un aguacate para hoy,” I repeat. I figure out how I will remember—I will repeat it over and over in my head until I get to the store, and then say it out loud as soon as I enter and see Don Joe. Perfect. Flying down the stairs repeating, “Un aguacate para hoy, un aguacate para hoy, un aguacate para hoy …” I enter—but it’s not Don Joe—it’s Don Tito, and everything flies out of my mind.
“Hola, Sonia, ¿qué tal?” He gives me his lightning-quick tic smile.
I stare at him—what was it? What was it I wanted?
“¿Que necesitas, hija?”
My mind is a total blank. I run outside and scream up to the window until Ma sticks her head out.
“Ma, I forgot.”
Her eyes roll before she goes in and then tosses down a piece of paper weighed down with some coins. Catching it, I solemnly go back into the store. Don Tito reads the note, feels up the avocados, and shakes them near his ear until he picks the perfect one to be eaten today.
“Here,” he says. “Must be eaten today—not tomorrow—today.”
After he writes up our purchase in his notebook, he hands me the avocado in a bag and goes back to chopping up some pork.
What a dope I am, not being able to remember anything, I think, as I see a tray of coconut candy covered over with wax paper. Watching the flies trying to sneak in under the wax paper and onto the candy I remember a household conversation, “No money, no money, no money, we got no money,” and I get a great idea. Don Tito has forgotten I am there—so I steal the candy and run upstairs.
Ma is happy about the aguacate and having her all to myself makes me want to share my stolen candy with her.
“Hmmm,” she says, rubbing her belly, “so delicioso—but don’t buy anything on credit again unless you tell me, okay?”
“But I didn’t buy it, Ma,” I say, chewing. “It’s free.”
“Don Joe gave it to you?”
“Don Joe wasn’t there—it was Don Tito.”
“He gave it to you?”
“Nobody gave it to me. I stole it.”
Ma stops chewing.
“You what?”
“I stole it. I got it for free.”
She swallows and looks at me very seriously.
“It is very bad to steal. You must never steal.”
“But you always say we don’t have any money …”
“No, no, no. Never mind that. When you steal it breaks the Virgin Mary’s heart and she cries.”
“How do you know that?”
“I know because it rains.”
“What?”
“Yes, when it rains it is the Virgin Mary crying because children have done something bad. You must go downstairs—here—give Don Tito these three pennies and tell him that you are sorry.”
I go downstairs.
“Hola, Sonia, can I help you?”
“Sí …” But I don’t say anything. I am too scared. He looks at me, waiting.
“Is the aguacate okay … ?”
“I … er … I …” I try to get brave enough to tell him I’m sorry but I can’t.
Don Tito sighs and because he is used to the whole neighborhood hanging out in his store he finally goes to the back, saying, “When you think of what you want, let me know, okay?”
I look at all the flies stuck to the tape hanging from the ceiling and then count all the cans of tomato sauce on the shelves. Finally I figure out what to do. Since I’m doing this because of the Virgin Mary, I kiss the three pennies up to heaven where she hangs out, leave them on the counter, and run out!
“Sonia … !” he calls out as I reach the door but I don’t turn back. I just keep going and running up the stairs, thinking about the Virgin Mary crying every time some kid did something bad in the Bronx.
Then, in the middle of one night soon after, I hear Ma scurrying around her room putting a nightgown into a small valise and I see Pops pulling on his pants. When I go to their room to investigate I’m shushed back into bed. I don’t know where she’s gone but it has something to do with the baby. In the days I wait for her to return I stay close to my father. One day he decides to work on his car across the street from our building and I watch him open the hood and look around and wrestle with something deep inside. Finally he pulls himself out, opens the trunk, and hands me a jar.
“Go to Don Joe’s and get me some water.”
I’m glad to be sent on an errand like Ma sent me. He waits until the Third Avenue traffic is clear.
“Go now,” he commands.
I run across the street and get the water, but on my way back I watch a coal delivery. The coal skips and tumbles down a chute, feeding our hungry building. I don’t know how long I watch before I realize that I’ve been watching too long, and I suddenly bolt across the street when a black car comes just close enough to twirl me. I manage to keep the water from spilling. The car slows down as I shoot a look across the street to see if my father had seen. When the man in the car sees I am still standing he speeds off as I sigh, relieved my father is still working under the hood, his ass sticking out.
I’m glad he didn’t see because he would’ve scolded about how I never pay attention and how I deserve that the “lap” will be taken away from me when the new baby comes anyway. Who cares? I think. Can a new baby run across the street, almost get hit by a car, and not spill a drop of water?
Ma comes home from the hospital with Joe and a great fuss is made and all the grown-ups tease me even more about how my mother’s “lap” has been taken away from me. I know what they mean—they mean that now Joe will be the baby of the house.
Weeks later Joe is sick and the room the crib is in is spooky and gloomy with candles. He lies there naked, looking tiny and lost, as mean Genoveva gives out medical advice and my worried mother hovers over him. I am just tall enough to see into his crib and his smallness panics me. I want someone to pick him up and wrap him in a blanket, and take care of him because he is a boy and special, not an old chancleta, an old slipper like me. I know boys are better than girls because neighbor women always groan with disappointment when they hear anybody’s had a girl. They even curse the mother’s bad luck. So I wonder why they don’t just pick Joe up instead of standing around—but I can’t get them to look down at me for my opinion, so I wander around the apartment until I fall asleep on the sofa.
The next day I watch cartoons. There is one with submarines and bombs going off and funny bad guys with little square mustaches right under their noses who hold their right arms straight out to say “hello.” In an ocean scene a tube with a big eye comes out of the water and chases the submarine all over the place. In between the cartoons are commercials for chocol
ate candy. The delicious melted chocolate is poured from one container to another in slow, tempting ways and I get really hungry. I go into Joe’s sickroom.
“Ma …”
“What?”
Then she suddenly knows what I want and we go into the kitchen where she gives me a bowl of canned fruit that had been in the refrigerator for a few days and goes back to Joe. I sit at the table and start to eat when I see a small black thing in it. I look closely and I think it’s a tiny roach.
“Ma, look!”
She comes running in, looking all scattered and busy.
“What is it?”
“There is something in my fruit.”
She looks quickly but sees nothing.
“Where? Where?”
“There”—I point—“don’t you see … ?”
But then Joe makes a tiny wail.
“It’s fine, just eat it …”
She runs back to him. I look in my food again. This time I am absolutely sure there is a roach in it. So I eat around it, but my stomach feels jumpy and I don’t understand why—I usually love Del Monte fruit cocktail.
That night I sleep in my bed and not the sofa and a scraping metal sound wakes me up. I am facing away from the wall but I know that it is the big eye from the submarine in the cartoon come to visit. I can feel it watching and screeching along with my every move. When I breathe it leans in so close I can feel its breath on the back of my neck. I am paralyzed with fear and too scared to move even though I can hear Aurea and Ma in the kitchen and really have to pee. If I scream or yell, the eye will get me.
Finally Ma comes in carrying Joe.
“¿Qué te pasa?”
I try to signal her with my eyes but she doesn’t react—can’t she see the eye thing behind me?
“Come and eat …”
I get up, balancing a puddle of fear in the small of my back.
“Hurry up,” she says.
And when I turn and look behind me, the eye is gone!
“What’s the matter with you?” says Ma. By this time Aurea has joined us. I tell them about the eye. They listen to my every word like it was the most important word they will ever hear, or like there is a worm coming out of my nose. They are both fascinated and horrified.
“You dreamed it,” says Aurea.
“Of course you did,” adds my mother, eyeing me suspiciously and feeling my head for a fever. “Don’t you dare get sick!”
“No, it was here,” I insist.
“Don’t be stupid,” says Aurea. “There was no periscope. You dreamed it. Come on, let’s eat.” Then they both turn away.
“Wait,” I add. They turn back and wait.
“Not only that, Ma beat me with a wire clothes hanger yesterday.”
“What?” my mother screeches.
“You did, you did!” I insist.
“Where do you get such nutty ideas? I’ve never done that in my life and I would never do that! Are you crazy?”
I believe what I say though I know it never happened.
When Joe is stronger and it gets warmer we go to the beach with Grandmother but nobody likes it. Grandmother hates the harsh wind. Pops hates the sand getting into his black shoes and socks. Ma hates that her heels dig into the sand, and Joe is just a baby; and whose idea was it to come to the beach anyway? I look at all the happy families hiding under bright umbrellas, dressed in shorts and sandals while the grown-ups in my group are in Sunday clothes. Aurea is allowed to play at the shore. I am happy digging in the sand, looking busy so I can watch her, a dark stick figure in the brightness, and listen to the grown-ups.
“What happened to your woman Juana?” asks Grandmother.
“Na, nothing, she was just … nobody … really …”
“You were with her a couple of years,” says Ma, bored.
“Kid stuff. She never loved me,” says Pops.
I stop digging—I just know that Ma couldn’t have had another husband—only bad women have many husbands—but if Pops had a wife, maybe Aurea was his kid, right? No—they hate each other. I go back to digging and getting nowhere.
Grandmother compares Rockaway Beach to beaches in Puerto Rico. I look out and wonder if that bit of land I see beyond the waves of Rockaway Beach is Puerto Rico. She complains about the cold.
“¡Esta playa está muy fría!” says Grandmother.
Everyone mumbles in agreement. “Yes, it is cold at this beach …” And then there is silence.
“¿Una silla?” My father offers his mother a beach chair.
She grabs it from him and tries to open it herself. Her hands are like claws. When engrossed in a task she mutters “Perate, perate, perate,” meaning wait, under her breath until she sounds motorized. “Wait, wait, wait” for what?
“Perate, perate, perate …” she says while she tries to figure out how the chair works. Suddenly she curses “¡Mal rayo te parta!” as in her final efforts to open the chair she breaks a finger. My father bows his head like it was his fault and she ignores him.
We have to pack up our blankets and sandwiches and beer and take her to a hospital emergency room.
Later on at home as Ma undresses I roam around the room, and looking for something to play with in the drawers I come across a picture of Aurea as a girl about my size. She looks so cute but is standing on a wooden sidewalk in front of a broken-down wooden house. Was this place El Fanguito, where babies drown underneath the houses? Then suddenly I know something! Or maybe I always knew it but it just came up. Or maybe I knew and forgot. However it happened I know this—Aurea has a different father from me! And I even remember hearing his name! It was Aureo! Aureo Andino! It’s just like her name except with an “o” at the end! Yes, yes, how could I have forgotten an old story I had heard in the kitchen or in the sound waves that floated around the apartment—Ma had said she and Aurea had been downtown once and seen a man Ma had pointed to and said, “That’s your father, Aurea Andino.”
Ma has her leg up on the bed and is slipping off the stocking she wore to the beach when I understand this.
“Ma, you are Aurea’s mother but she has a different father named Aureo, right? Aureo Andino, right, right?” My mind loves it when something is clear! But Ma stops stripping her stocking off midcalf and shoots me such a hard look I feel stabbed in the head.
“Don’t you ever mention that name is this house again.” And her stabbing look holds my emotions dangling in the air until I know she means business. But who cares—I know I have a sister!
I am invisible or at least fading away.
Genoveva takes me to school and we are almost out the door when I remember—“My tissue! I need a tissue!” I am so happy I remembered this time.
“AveMaríaPurísima,” exclaims Ma, running into the bathroom and tearing off a piece of toilet paper. “Here—a tissue, okay?” I stand there in hat, scarf, gloves, and coat and she becomes irritated that she’ll have to undress me in order to shove the tissue into my skirt pocket. “Paciencia,” she says, stretching her fingers up to the heavens in despair. Pulling and shoving and unbuttoning and jamming the tissue into my pocket she kisses me bluntly and, like I’m dust on a broom, shakes me out the door.
P.S. 4 is old and beautiful with tall windows that must be opened with mean-looking hooks on the ends of long poles, and fancy fan-shaped windows over doors way above my head. I’m in kindergarten and all we do is play. I can’t wait to set up the blocks to play my favorite game—jumping out a window of a burning apartment! I practice so I’m not like those kids in the newspaper who always die because they are afraid to jump.
“Coats off, everybody,” sings my pretty teacher. First I take off my gloves, then my hat, then my scarf, then my coat, then my sweater, then my blouse, then my skirt, and suddenly I realize I’m down to my slip! Ma had dressed me in so many clothes I got on a roll and couldn’t stop undressing. This strikes me as funny but when I look around I see no one has noticed. How can that be?
I put my clothes back on and play jumping out
the window but the boy all set to catch me walks away and I lie sprawled on the rug. Did he not see me flying toward him? Later as we sit around in a circle, the pretty teacher asks each of us to show her our handkerchiefs or tissues. I am proud when she gets to me because for once I haven’t forgotten.
“Where is your handkerchief or tissue, Sonia?”
I show her proudly. She grabs it from my hand and lets it unfold in neat little squares so that everyone can see, then asks me, “Is this a tissue? Is it?”
I see a tissue; doesn’t she see a tissue?
“Look, everybody, this is what Sonia’s family thinks is a tissue.”
But it is a tissue. Why can’t she see that?
“I sure don’t see a tissue,” she says, reaching into her handbag and pulling out a Kleenex. “This is a tissue.”
I still don’t see the difference.
At home Ma does not see that I cannot keep my panties up. They are so old and the elastic is so stretched they dance loosely around my hips. I take two steps and they slip down to my thighs, two more and they are around my ankles—the only solution is to hold them up through my dress. So for days I clutch them in my fist as I go to school and it almost works until older boys surround me at recess and stick their fingers up my leg. I kick and kick and kick as hard as possible, but can only hit them with one hand because the other one is holding up my panties. The only thing that makes them stop is when they hear the recess bell that signals that playtime is over. They run away from me but I can still feel their fingers.
I am late returning with my bedraggled dress and my white collar all torn. “Why are you late?” asks Mr. Applebaum, the principal, when he sees me. I tell him what happened.
“That’s what you get for playing with boys,” he says, his face looming at me, his big, fleshy nose practically touching my own. “And let go of your dress!” I switch hands, holding up my panties as I go back to my classroom.
At home I wait for Ma to see if she notices me.
“Let me just have my coffee, please,” she begs coming in. I watch her fix herself some syrupy strong café and sink into her seat. After a moment she puts her head in her hands and sits quietly but even then it looks like she is struggling. When she doesn’t rise or even drink her coffee I move away. Wandering around the apartment I notice that my ankles are encrusted with dirt and it surprises me. I had only seen dirt embedded in skin on Moncho the bum’s cheekbones, or on the ankles of the Gypsy children who came through our neighborhood and lived in storefronts. How long had my ankles been like that? Had I been invisible to myself? Remarkable! Incredible! The dirt moves as I flex and point my foot, and I feel I must show someone this fantastic phenomenon so I go into my sister’s room. Standing by her door, I check out her mood, wait for her to turn around and talk to me, but she shoots me a baleful glare instead. She’s working on a movie-star photo album, pictures of Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh, the most beautiful actors of all time. She concentrates, gluing a heart by each of their faces and connecting those hearts with a skinny pink ribbon. I slither closer and sit on her bed to watch but she ignores me so I creep over to a jar of pencils.
Becoming Maria Page 3