Call Me Maria

by Judith Ortiz Cofer

  whose floods in the bathroom, whose disasters always happen

  at midnight, whose heaters stop working

  on the coldest night.

  On the coldest night, at midnight.

  Papi is their hero with a toolbox. El Súper. And I am

  his secretary, his hostess, always on duty before school,

  after school, when the telephone rings at midnight

  on the coldest night. Linda, they call me, Pretty Girl,

  to get my attention, to get on Papi’s busy schedule.

  But I do not answer unless they call me María.

  Please call me María, I tell them.

  The truth is that all of us in this barrio are what the tide

  brought to the American shore — from my father

  who answers their calls for help late at night,

  early in the morning, in winter, spring,

  fall, and summer, carrying his heavy black toolbox,

  and believes he is in his America,

  to the homeless man who warms his backside

  at the front door to the building. We are like seaweed

  in the rising and falling tides

  that is life in this barrio. The tides

  that bring more and more from the other side

  of the ocean, like the mixed treasure and trash

  of bottle tops and rare seashells and smooth pieces of glass,

  and things that poison and cut you, that Mami and I

  would dig through with sticks on the beaches of San Juan.

  My father’s way of dealing with my mother telling him that she may not ever leave La Isla has been to plunge into his new life here, although it turned out to be very little like the futuristic vision he once had of his familia in a shining home replete with laborsaving devices and technology making our lives easier; in fact, here we have traded down from the life we had on the Island — not much money because my mother is a teacher and that made us middle-class to what they call blue-collar life here.

  And it is true that my father is all azul in his super’s uniform. But he does not seem to remember his promises of a high-tech, steel-shiny future, and I do not remind him. I know that he is trying to find a way to keep his promise of a college education for me on the mainland. The price I paid was to live away from my mother and from the Isla we both love.

  Week by week Papi is becoming more a part of this building, this street, this life. He is connecting to the people in ways that do not include me. He seems to be shedding his Island like an old skin and becoming Barrioman in blue, the superhero to the tenants, able to fix any of our decrepit old building’s problems: leaky pipes, broken windows, broken hearts.

  My new best friend, Whoopee Dominguez, speaks in the barrio way because she grew up here. I am beginning to hear this as a new dialect invented by people who can dream in two languages. I used to think it was broken English, but it really does have its own rules of grammar: Oye, vamos to the marqueta ahora, or La maestra has me entre un rock and a hard place. I mean, you have to dive in feet first before it starts making sense.

  Papi has picked it back up quick; he spoke it when he was a little boy, before he went back with his parents to the Island. I am trying to keep my textbook English (what my mother calls it) so I can get into college in two years. But Spanglish is like a song you cannot get out of your head. It has rhythm, it has a beat, you want to dance to it.

  “Oye, girlfriend, you wanna ir al mall today, whadda ya say?” Whoopee Dominguez is sitting on the sidewalk, pressing her face to the window that looks down on my basement home. Her eyes are big and green and her bushy wild hair is done in dreadlocks. Whoopee’s face is like the sun at my window, lighting up my basement home. “Okay, Whoopee, let’s go to el mall.”

  La señorita Stuckey wears makeup and jewelry in colors that I have seen on parrots and flowers in tropical rain forests: chameleon-green eye shadow, bird-of-paradise red lipstick, and earrings made of coral and purple seashells. Sparkling in her dyed-black frizzy hair, she wears homemade barrettes of eye-of-god designs.

  Tight over her big chest, she wears lumpy sweaters made by the descendants of Incas who live above the Andes, the wool carried down the treacherous peaks of Machu Picchu by llamas and yaks, whose own fur is used to make the lining of those boots on the big, traveling feet of la señorita Stuckey.

  Her skirts are woven by Ecuadorians and her concha belt of leather, punctuated by multicolored lentejuelas, is the handicraft of Mexican stay-at-home mothers. Her bracelets that click and clack and warn us of her approach are of abalone shells from beaches where she has spent entire nights waiting for giant turtles to emerge from the sea, heavy with the next generation, whose precious eggs she will cover with sand and watch over during one of her working vacations.

  La señorita Stuckey sits on her desk, looking like she should be the American Tourist on the cover of an old National Geographic magazine. She speaks Spanish with an accent that sounds like the United Nations of Below the Border, and she lists the countries she has visited for us; the obscure pueblos she has discovered, the palaces she has entered, the churches, the huts, the caves.

  Yet she never tells us about the people. In her tales of adventure there are no people except guides and drivers of cars and buses. There are never any tales of friends she has made, or of boyfriends. And I ask myself in Spanish, ¿Está triste? ¿Está sola? Does she walk in those tired boots made from the skin of an animal that can only be found in the darkest corner of the farthest mountain in the tip of the point of the southernmost hemisphere? Is she always alone? She is always alone here at school. She walks down the halls alone, staying close to the walls, as if she were afraid of being accidentally touched by one of us. She eats her lunch of mango or guava juice and tamales from the barrio bodega alone in her classroom. She freshens her bright smile before each class and tells us that she loves the Spanish language, in a passionate low voice, like that of an actress in a telenovela (she has confessed that she is addicted to Univision), that she will travel a thousand miles to hear it spoken. In two weeks, when school lets out, she is going to San Juan on a cruise ship.

  I send her some words telepathically: Señorita Stuckey, gracias, adiós, buen viaje, may you find el amor when you visit the place where my parents once found el amor, and then, I think, also where they lost it.

  Querida Mami,

  In answer to your question, so far, I do not have many friends because I hurry home after school to cook for Papi and to answer his messages from the tenants and finally to do my homework until bedtime.

  My goal is to get into college and move into an apartment above ground where I can see the sky through my windows instead of the legs of people on the sidewalk, although you can tell a lot about people by the shoes they wear. I play this game with my friend Whoopee, who wears combat boots; she changes the strings to match her clothes every day. The game is called Instant History. We try to guess what kind of person is going by just from their zapatos, by the way they walk, the sounds of their voices as they hurry down the street.

  Mami, in your last postcard you said you had been taking trips around the Island with your students, teaching them the English words for everything. I am doing the same here, trying to learn the words of my little world. I know your estudiantes are learning green, blue, sun, mountains, music, friends; I am learning gray, snow, dark, cold, lonely, mall, clothes, music, friend. I miss you and our Isla. I am taking care of Papi. He needs me, although he does not admit it. I know you love your work teaching English at la escuela elemental and do not want to leave your students. I made the choice to come here with him. I will not forget you. I am remembering your English lessons more and more every day.

  My maestro in English class, Mr. Golden, said that I was good with words! ¡Estoy alegre!

  Te quiere,

  Your María

  Dear María,

  Yes, let us continue to practice our English by writing letters to each other. I am writing you this lette
r in a place you would love. It was raining today and I decided to take shelter in the library of the Instituto Cultural. I begged some paper from a colleague of mine who volunteers at the museum to write to you. I can smell the pulp of the ancient trees that went into the making of all these books, hija. Imagine me in a thick forest of book-bearing trees and a profusion of exotic flowers with blossoms the color of this indigo ink. The rain is streaming down but the canopy of green protects me. I would like to make you a tree house in a library. Whenever you felt the hunger for a story or a poem, you could climb down and take your pick.

  The storm is ending, I must leave this enchanted place. But it will always be there for us, hija. Come see me in the summer and I will take you to our favorite places: la playa, los museos, las tiendas del Viejo San Juan. My friend has offered to walk with me. He is a historian, a very intelligent man. You may remember him from school.

  Hija, I am sorry that we are separated. I know you understand why I chose to stay. It took me so long to become a maestra, and my work means so much to me. I know you understand. I wish you had stayed with me. But I respect your choice to accompany your father. You know you can come home to me any time. You know that I can tell if you are alegre or triste from your letters.

  You ask me if I am lonely. Un poco because I miss you.

  I will write again soon. I promise to visit you in the spring, pull you away from your books, and take you a bailar.

  Te quiere mucho,

  Mami

  P.S. Send me your poems!

  I’ve got the look, like the song says, I’ve got the look. There are guys who are born to the part. It is your destino, and you know it from the start. First, it’s the way your mother looks at you. She might start calling you papi-lindo or mi chulito. She will say ¡Mira, qué lindo! while she’s dressing you for kindergarten and tell you that you will break many corazones in your life. Your father will take the time to part your naturally wavy hair just as he does his. He will yell at the women for treating you like a baby doll.

  “Es un macho,” he will say. “Don’t tell him he’s pretty. Let him get dirty. He is a machito.”

  Even your sister will treat you differently than other girls treat their brothers. When she is not angry with you, she will ask you for advice about clothes. When she is angry, she will accuse your parents of playing favorites. You know she envies your eyelashes, how they curl naturally while she has to use one of those pliers things that make hers look like check-marks. She envies your skin — which is bronze in color — like a shiny copper penny. You are thin. You can eat anything and not gain weight. You never get pimples. When she wakes up with a blemish on her nose or her chin or her jeans won’t zip up, she will call you papi-lindo in front of her friends, and it will be spit in your face. You blow kisses in their direction. It is your way.

  Papi-lindo, you are un sueño. Not tall, but not short, you can look into a girl’s eyes, and that’s all that counts. But female jocks don’t interest you. You like a feminine woman, a girl who likes skirts better than jeans, a girl who asks you what you like her to wear.

  You never try out for sports teams. That’s for ordinary guys who have nothing better to do. You don’t work out. It’s not about physical power, that’s too easy. What you do doesn’t have anything to do with muscles, it’s a mind game. It’s a God-given talent. Either you have it or you don’t. And you do. You get what you want because you are who you are. If you ask a girl why she will do anything to get close to you, it’s not your body she’ll mention, or your car, or where you live, or where you’ll take her on a date. She’ll say that there is something mysterious about you. It’s the way he looks at me, she’ll tell other girls, it’s how he makes me feel when he says my name.

  You always put on your best Spanish accent when you take the white girls out; your best manners for the Latinas — open their doors and you open hearts, like your Mami says. When you look at a girl and sort of lower your eyelids like window shades, they know what you’re saying. Your eyes speak all the languages in the world. Plus you can dance to anything: hip-hop, salsa, techno — you name it. The rhythm of the Caribbean, of Africa, of el barrio, the Bronx — it’s in your blood, papi-lindo.

  Sometimes you will be teased by other guys because you like shopping better than shooting hoops. They will call you names. You will ignore their taunts. You will keep your head. You have money in your pocket from the part-time job at the mall boutique that gives you discounts on jewelry and shoes and designer clothes. You will always wear a thick gold chain around your neck with a big cross and that azabache your mother bought from a witch-woman in the barrio when you were a baby — a little black hand making a fist that will keep away el mal de ojo caused by the envy of others. You know who you are. You don’t need to answer to anyone.

  You know that you will always be protected from harm by the women around you. Because you are a tesoro: soft when you need to be soft, but when the time is right, you ask for and get what you want — there can’t be any doubt that you are un hombre latino.

  And here is the secret: Everything you learned about girls you learned from watching them. And you, papi-lindo, you can be anything they want you to be.

  Because my mother is a teacher of English on the Island, I learned it growing up: pollito, chicken, gallina, hen, lápiz, pencil, y pluma, pen — the little song we sang every morning, and what she taught her classes she also taught me. I have a thick accent; it makes people in school think I am not good in English. But I know more words than many native English speakers because I need words to survive.

  Every day I look up a word I will use to protect me. I know the meaning of words like underestimate. I know it means to not give someone their full value. I know prejudice means to prejudge. I know what advantage means. I know that it is the prejudice of some people that makes them underestimate me; they prejudge me because I do not look or sound like them.

  I know words in two languages. I will not give up either one. It gives me an advantage to know more than you know. I am also taking Spanish Conversation with la señorita Stuckey. I will not forget my first language. And now I know my second language well enough so that I am not going to be lost in America.

  The huge boiler my father keeps running through the long cold American winter sits just beyond my bedroom wall in the dark recesses of the basement. It is a real presence in my nights, a sleeping dragon that keeps me company with its rattling noises and constant need of attention. I have gotten good at reading its dials and guessing what it might need.

  My father has begun to speak only in the Spanglish he grew up with. He was born in this city of Island parents who wanted to go back to their native land. Papi says he never felt at home on the Island. He says the other kids made fun of the way he spoke Spanish. He tried to stay after he met and married my mother. But la tristeza only left him when he came back to the barrio.

  “Es very sad, hija,” he has said to me. “Your mother and I are both Puerto Ricans, but not the same kind. There is not just one way to be a Boricua.”

  And I say only to myself: What kind of Boricua will I be, Papi?

  “¿Qúe haces?” My father’s favorite question to me, “Whatcha doin’?” No matter how obvious it is.

  “I’m writing a letter, Papi.”

  “Pues, tell your mother that I’ll write to her soon. Estoy muy busy. Muchos problemas, you know?”

  “Yes, I know, Papi.” My father rules a kingdom of seven stories, each floor is a foreign land. His loyal subjects tell him their troubles each in a different language, and Papi answers them with the same old songs. Ay, ay, ay, ay. They always seem to understand him. He is the good King of the Barrio.

  I do not bother to tell my father that I am not writing to Mami about him.

  At times, he seems to be angry with me, but I know it is not me he sees when he is yelling at me for little things. I know that he is afraid I will leave him too like he knows Mami will.

  At night, he meets his colegas at the bode
ga, to play dominoes with the men, he claims, but I know there are women in his life too. He is practicing his guitar playing and singing, transforming himself from janitor to balladeer for the nostalgic little groups of refugees from paradise — who yearned for what my father and I left behind — the idealized Island life of their childhood dreams and grown-up fantasies: the little casa in the country or by the sea, palm trees, green mountains, and ocean breezes.

  Papi does not compose new songs; he only sings the old ones, playing the sad notes until he brings tears to the ones who claim that machos never cry and to the women who are like Amazons in their daily battles to survive in this place that will always feel like a foreign country to them even though most of them were born here. But they have been taught in Spanish that they are Island people, and they believe this myth because it makes them feel special.

  Papi’s music is also a magnet for the women whose city-hardened faces soften and their winter-dry eyes glisten with tears as they listen to his deep sad voice recalling for them a world they never really knew, one that as puertorriqueñas, they believe they should long for although some of them have never been there. Papi grows less triste with time because he is home. Home is where you need to be no matter where you are taken, the place that calls to you. He is the Super-Hombre, the Barrioman.

  Dear María,

  I want to share a cuento with you about a greedy baker who wanted to charge the starving man for the smell of his fresh-baked goods, aromas which gave the poor man pleasure and hope. He took the beggar to court to make him pay for what he was taking from him. The judge, to everyone’s amazement, agreed with the baker. “If a man enjoys the smells of your labor, good panadero, then he must pay you in kind.” The judge gave the poor man some coins from his own pocket and called both men to the bench. “Now, my brother, I want you to put those coins in your pocket and jingle them so the baker can hear the sound of money and thus you will settle your debt to the baker.”