Rita Moreno: A Memoir

by Rita Moreno

  I am dazed with joy: Everyone loves me; my gifts form a small mountain. I dance around everyone in my new ruffled dress, and point my toe in my silken slipper. It is a delirium of delight. How can I know it is the end of my life as I know it?

  THE GREAT CHANGE

  When did my mami decide to favor me over Francisco? Was her decision—which seems so cold, even cruel—made then, at Christmas, or did she decide later? Or was there another reason for what happened?

  I had very little warning of the end, the Great Change. One morning my mother woke me earlier than usual, in the predawn darkness when the birds of Juncos were still silent and presumably asleep on their jungle perches. A disturbed rooster gave an angry squawk; even he felt the Great Change. Something very big, something fateful was about to happen. My mother dressed me in an unusual number of layers. She buttoned on an unaccustomed sweater.

  Then, in the dimness, after I spooned up my special oatmeal custard, my mother presented me with a small suitcase and three shopping bags packed with my dresses, my dolls, and their miniature wardrobe. Then Mami gave me a surprise “new” wardrobe—a heavy sweater, a woolen coat, some long knee socks, and a pair of new thick shoes, all closed up—no place for my toes to poke out, as they do from my sandals. Then she announces in a breathless voice, new as the morning shadows, “We are leaving Juncos. We are moving…to America.”

  I am very excited at the thought of taking a trip on a ship. The puzzlement is that Francisco isn’t going with us—not yet. “But he will come too, later. I am taking you first because you are a big girl and you won’t cry.”

  The magic trunk, repacked with all the treasure, will also take the trip back to New York City, along with several shopping bags, as is the tradition with poor people because they don’t have the money to pay for suitcases. The trunk is to be delivered to someone named Titi within a week or so.

  Titi means “aunt,” but my mami explains, “She is my titi, but in America, she will be your titi too, because we will stay with her until we find our own place for you and me and Francisco, when he comes…later.”

  When she said “later,” was she already lying about Francisco? Was she deciding to abandon him then? Was this a deception on Mami’s part?

  The disturbed rooster does not stop squawking. The hens cluck, ruffled in their nests. My special chick, Puchito, the one Francisco and I keep in our room, squawks too, and my mother tells me to return the chick to his mother hen. The little yellow fluff-ball chick always followed me and Francisco; he would sit in our hand and lie hypnotized if we turned him upside down. I don’t want to leave my little Puchito; I do so with reluctance. The hen stretches out her wing and tucks him under, beside the warmth of her feathered body.

  * * *

  What about Paco? Even then, at five, I sense that my father, Paco, is history—that we are leaving not just Puerto Rico, but also Paco. Paco seemed to be already fading in my memory, as if I always knew somehow that he was not a permanent papi. He disappears almost before my eyes—a thin man with an even thinner “gigolo” mustache. He is growing fainter.

  * * *

  Now, I can conjure only two images of my father, Paco José Alverio: In the first he is standing, leaning back, his thumbs hooked through the belt loops at his waist. He wore his pants high, almost under his armpits, which had the effect of making him look even shorter. Yet, in this permanent mental snapshot in my mind, my father assumes a pose of confidence for such a slight man who was about to be left behind.

  The second image is more specific and extraordinary. It is a true glimpse through the chink of memory: a crack below the outhouse door. Behind the ice-cream house is the outhouse, once also painted in ice-cream colors but by that time weathered clapboard with only hints of pink and a previous paint color, blue. There are boards missing, and one major crack on the bottom of the door where the wood doesn’t meet the earth.

  I am peering through this space to stare up at my father. I want to see what makes a man different from me. I lie on the ground and peek into the outhouse shadows. I see Paco—he is standing in that patient pose men assume to pee. My papi has something between his legs—a confusing dark apparatus, a mystery mass that dangles there.

  There is only so long I can lie like this, gazing at this, while I inhale the odors of the outhouse. I bolt upright to catch my breath and carry away only this murky memory of the dangling shadow and the bulging mass. It is more confusing than anything else, and I know it is forbidden. This glimpse does little to satisfy my curiosity; it only adds to it.

  It seems that Paco José Alverio’s main role in my life was to disappear and be forgotten.

  Thirteen years later, my father would make one last startling comeback appearance, but his surprise return occurred when I was already far removed from my life in Puerto Rico, already an ingenue in movies. The meeting was so unexpected that I reacted reflexively. I will forever regret what occurred between us at that time. When I left Puerto Rico, such a future reunion was unimaginable; my mother and I had emigrated not just from Puerto Rico, but from the past and from so many people I loved.

  Leaving Paco seemed acceptable under the circumstances, but my brother? “What about Francisco? We can’t leave Francisco!”

  I cried as Mami kept repeating, “Francisco can’t come to America this trip,” in answer to my pleas that my baby brother come too. “Francisco, Francisco…” became my chant. “Francisco too.” I could not imagine my life without him, my soft butter-skinned baby brother; I had been the big sister, holding him when Mami was sewing and Fela was cooking. I showed him how to dig in the yard with his small shovel, and chase the chickens. Together, we watched the eggs hatch, and had been raising the fluff-ball yellow chick Puchito. What will happen to our coquís? Who will race them with Francisco? He needs me…the chicken and the frogs need me. And I need him.

  “Francisco too,” I repeat. “Francisco must come too.”

  “Later, later,” my mami tells me. “He is too small now and he would cry…. When we are settled in our own place and he is a little bigger, then Francisco will come….”

  The impact of leaving my grandparents, my baby brother, my father, my home, my birthplace, my chicken, did not strike me until much later. At our predawn departure, I remember standing on a dusty road with Justino, and Fela, who was holding Francisco. Justino and Fela would see us off on the journey, and care for Francisco for what I imagined would be a brief interval.

  While we stood there, waiting for a hired jalopy truck to San Juan, dawn broke over the jungle, over the ice-cream houses. All the forest awakened. A sudden tropical rain fell like a theatrical scrim—all silver shimmer, no real impact. We were barely dampened.

  Then an old truck rattled to a stop, and we all climbed on. I looked back as long as I could, back at Juncos through the shimmer of rain. The colors softened like pastels, and that final image of home became less than a memory, more a half-remembered dream.

  How do you know when you truly say good-bye? The answer I was to discover, too late, is that you may not know at all. How was I to know that I would never see Francisco again? Or Abuelo or Fela? All I have left of my grandparents are a few memories, faint as their sepia snapshots. And of my smooth-skinned baby brother? The scent of cocoa butter and the feel of his downy head under my hand as I caressed him, the softness of his cheek as I kissed him. But I never kissed him a real good-bye. I still feel I will be reunited with little Francisco, though now I know that is impossible.

  We wave to them from the ship’s deck—wait, Paco’s there too. Does he know what’s going on? I stretch my neck to get a good look at him, at Francisco and my grandparents, but the crowd of migrants on board is so thick, Mami and I cannot reach the railing. We stand two rows back. I hope they can see us better than we can see them—maybe they recognize my small hand, raised up high by Mami, waving, waving goodbye. Within hours, I wonder: What was “good” about “goodbye”?

  * * *

  I could not invent the horror of
our voyage to New York; such is the stuff of fiction, of perilous shipwrecks and near death at sea. Clutching my mother’s hand, I boarded the SS Carabobo. I could not invent a name like that; carabobo translates from Spanish as “stupid face.”

  The boat was so packed with Puerto Ricans, now I wonder whether it was even legal. Surely the hold, which was our accommodation, could not have passed any country’s health standards. Later I would read descriptions of slave ships, of people crammed together, of toilet effluent running down the deck, and it would be all too familiar.

  No sooner do we leave the see-through turquoise waters off San Juan than the water and the sky darken. A storm appears like a dark knotted fist above us; a black, hard rain begins to fall. It seems to fall only upon the SS Carabobo. It does not take long for the motion of the ship to become alarming; it slides down the waves and rolls in the dips between them. On the deck, as the ship moves into an increasingly roiling open sea, I sway too. “Let’s not go,” I suggest. “Let’s turn back….”

  My mother holds my hand and says, “It will not take long. The boat ride will be fun. It is only for a few days….”

  The stench begins almost immediately. Belowdecks, the smell of the bodies and the toilets becomes unbearable, unbreathable, and my mother and I risk the unsteadier upper deck, to stay outside and breathe salt air. Of course, we take one breath and a heavy rain begins to fall even harder than before, propelled soon by a gale-force wind. Somewhere in the history books of weather at sea, I expect there is an account of the hurricane that almost sank the SS Carabobo.

  Above the wailing of the wind rise the howls of the passengers. Puerto Ricans are not known to suffer in silence; panic is operatic. Soon the entire boat rings with the screams and moans of seasick, scared Puerto Ricans who, like me, wish they had never left home. Calls to Madre de Dios are heard from every deck. Rosaries come out and final prayers are uttered. The creak of the boat harmonizes with the human chorus of fear. On the top deck a young mother paces, singing to the baby in her arms. As if in backup, the hurricane escalates and the wind drives the old SS Carabobo up and down the deep swells of the storm-tossed sea.

  Belowdecks, another sea flows from the toilets, which had gone over capacity within minutes. Every known fluid pours from every end of every passenger. The decks run with a fetid mixture of vomit, urine, and feces. At times the roiling sea looks inviting, cleansing. Maybe it would be worth a fatal dive to feel that cool seawater wash over me. My mother walks me, sideways, to the toilet whenever it is absolutely necessary, and whenever we do, my mother retches too, in reaction. I am too scared to vomit, and retain everything, concentrating on survival.

  This lasts for five effluent-flowing days and nights. When at last the SS Carabobo lists into New York Harbor, I look up to see this large green statue wearing what appears to be a crown on her head and holding a huge ice cream cone. My mami tells me she is welcoming us to America.

  Now that we have almost arrived, my mother divides up some of our clothing and puts her choices in the center of large scarves and knots the corners. These makeshift carriers will hold our essential clothing until the trunk arrives. We carry our things like hoboes.

  Curiously, though I had held my stomach down throughout the voyage of the SS Carabobo, it is only when I alight and my inner body maintains the sickening rhythm of the sea that I heave.

  FRIGID CITY

  My first response upon entering the port of New York was to feel more nauseated and chilled than I had ever felt in my life. After disembarking, I was struck by a kind of cold that shocked me, knocked me back a few feet. I didn’t want to enter this new gray, cold world. Though my mami had brought me a coat and hat, knee socks, and wool gloves, I wasn’t anywhere near prepared for the onslaught of a very icy wind that slashed at every exposed place—my face, the back of my neck, the space where my winter coat sleeves did not quite reach my gloves.

  There followed endless lineup after lineup at the dock as a small staff of officials tried to process thousands of panicked, ill migrants. Few of the admitting officials spoke or understood Spanish, and my trial by language began at once. “¿Habla español?” “¿Habla español?” “¡Por favor, español!” Everywhere people were calling out in Spanish, crying for help, or just crying.

  The first impression I had of being a newly emigrated Puerto Rican to the mainland was to feel frightened and unwanted. If I could have reboarded the rancid ship, SS Carabobo, and made my way back to San Juan on a tide of nausea, I would have done so gladly. Instead, Mami and I trudged into America, hanging on to our knotted scarves, single suitcases, and shopping bags.

  My mother had made arrangements, and once processed we boarded a bus. The trip by city bus to what I later learned was the Bronx was as dreary as our destination. We had stepped out of Oz into the gray, gritty world, and there was no turning back to Technicolor.

  I peered out the grimy bus window and saw only more gray—gray concrete and sad trees that had been stripped of leaves and bent by winter. Some trees wore metal braces, as if they were crippled. Everything looked dirty. I saw some overturned garbage cans and one ashy-looking cat. I asked my mother, “Where are the palm trees and flowers? Where is the bougainvillea?”

  “In summer they will all come back….” She explained that here, it was not “summer” all the time like at home; here there were four different seasons, and this one, February, was called “winter.” And winter was why the icy wind sliced at my tropical skin.

  Too soon we were back on the street, that unyielding cold concrete, and the bitter wind of the city struck me in the face. We carried our suitcases, scarves, and bags to Mohegan Avenue in the southwest Bronx.

  Today, this section of the Bronx is rebuilding after being destroyed by arson and vandalism in the seventies. In 1936, the neighborhood had a drab stolidity. There were a few buildings that overreached for some faint grandeur, with names like the Luxembourg Houses or even Clarington Mansion. Most had only numbers—high numbers that suggested the reality: hundreds of look-alike stained facades that hid identical boxed apartments, which offered only narrow views of the outside.

  The dark brown-bricked apartment buildings, many built defensively around cement courtyards with defunct fountains, would never rise to be luxury buildings, but neither were they true slums. They were lower-class accommodations that were, in the 1930s, owned by landlords who would look the other way as to the number of tenants that constituted legal occupancy, and they would rent to immigrant Irish, Jewish refugees, and Puerto Ricans, who needed any place they could call home.

  There on Mohegan Avenue in the Bronx awaited one room in a four-room apartment. The apartment was, as all our apartments would be, a walk-up, this one five flights up. That first place in America, the promised land where life would be so much better, offered no charm, and it was already occupied beyond capacity. Aunt Titi’s apartment was crammed with relatives and people she knew from the island. Three other families—twelve people in all—slept on cots and foldout sofas. These accommodations seemed just slightly better than the hold of the SS Carabobo.

  We climbed up the five dark flights of stairs to find Aunt Titi, stocky enough to block the doorframe to her inner sanctum. Titi gave us an embrace. I don’t know how truly glad she was to welcome two more to the small apartment that was already overfull, but Aunt Titi was Puerto Rican, and hugged and kissed us on both cheeks and cried out over my beauty (“A-dor-a-ble!”). Titi may once have been pretty herself—dark lipstick outlined her Cupid’s-bow mouth as it once must have appeared, and a dyed spit curl looked pasted to her forehead. She wore clothes she imagined still fit and “showed off” her ample figure; Titi’s memorable ass was probably her best asset—Latino men liked “something more back there, something a man can grab onto!” She gave me a very raucous and warm welcome. She spoke at a roar, and I learned later that Titi never learned the meaning of the words “keep your voice down.”

  Behind Titi, I could see my new “cousins,” now apartment mates, w
ho looked up with little curiosity from their positions on faded slipcovered sofa beds aimed at a Motorola radio in the living room that was playing a loud Spanish station. A lone two-toned snake plant poked its spiky leaves from the windowsill, where it sat in a hot-pink ceramic art deco dish. In a clear glass bowl, an orange goldfish swam in constricted circles. A heavy drape printed with split green banana leaves hung on the window, secured by tiebacks to allow the weak winter city sun to streak through the dust-opaque glass. These colorful objects were all that remained as reminders of our shared tropical origins.

  My mother whispered to me, “Don’t worry, Rosita; it is just for a little while,” a consolation I had already, at five, learned not to heed. My first priority was to adjust to my new climate. My barefoot days were over; I had to wear the unaccustomed heavy shoes and, on rainy days, new rubber contraptions called galoshes that buckled over the regular footwear. A new, even heavier woolen “overcoat” was given to me, along with sweaters, woolen skirts, “woolly” underwear, and a flesh-colored stocking made of a cloth called lisle. My tender skin could not be exposed. To top it off, knit hats with chin straps appeared and trapped my face. Soon my nose turned from pale tan to red; my lips, so soft at home, hardened and chapped. I could not even offer a cracked smile.

  Replacing the scent of hibiscus wafting from the jungle was the too-sweet chemical stench of Flit roach spray. We applied the Flit with a pump; it poisoned the atmosphere but didn’t seem to kill that many roaches, only enough to leave some upturned putrid corpses in the kitchen.