Rita Moreno: A Memoir

by Rita Moreno

  Birdsong was supplanted by the screech of the aboveground subway—the el—and the honk and hum of car traffic. The air itself looked gray, sooty. The few birds that I saw looked dirtied by the polluted air—they were bony little house sparrows and pigeons whose gray chests offered the single tint of color—a faint iridescence, shades of violet and green that must once have been brighter. The birds seldom flew; they hopped to retrieve stale bread crumbs from the gutter.

  We had crossed one frame, in full color, to step across the threshold into the grimmest of cinema verité. My memories of what followed are blurry and jumpy, as if filmed by a handheld camera. Even as I lived my new life, I didn’t want to remember it.

  Why did we leave Juncos? It was crazy to say this was better.

  Now I understand that my twenty-two-year-old mother had to leave Juncos to get away from her unfaithful but still domineering husband, my father, to find a new husband (she would find a total of five). She was young and needed to change her fortunes, to find her own work and a new way. For my mother, Rosa Maria, Juncos had offered more problems than charms. I would always miss Juncos; maybe she would not.

  Now I can see my mother as a heroine, a true pioneer, striking out to a new country to create a new life. She arrived on the mainland very early in the history of Puerto Ricans in New York City; 1936 was long before the major migration of the Puerto Ricans in the fifties. In 1936, there were only a few outposts for our kind in New York City—and we were in one of them, the Bronx.

  Rosa Maria (now known by her maiden name, Marcano) was in the forefront, a heroine. But then? She was only Mami. And I thought she had led us astray, that this was a terrible mistake. Now I see how I misjudged her.

  That first night, exhausted, we climbed into the narrow iron bed we would share for many nights to come…and were immediately bitten by bugs. What were these strange ugly black insects? American mosquitoes?

  They were bedbugs. Welcome to America.

  * * *

  The cold was so severe that I still trembled under the covers in bed. All night, my mother had to hold me close; the heat of her body helped me sleep. I dreamed I was back home at Abuelo’s house playing with my caserolitas, my adored tiny toy cooking pots and saucepans; I was pretending that I was cooking for the family, and talking to myself…. “This is for Mami; this is for Francisco….”

  And then a fierce windstorm swept away my pots and pans and I woke up crying. When my mom asked what happened, all I could say through the sobs was, “Caserolitas.”

  My image of myself as adored and protected shattered like the eggshells that decorated the garden of my true home, the pink cottage. All that was bright and beautiful vanished.

  I awoke to the metallic clang of the radiator. Bang-bang, clang-clang. The steam heat hissed and made the metal expand and contract; our heat source sounded like weapons fired at dawn. I woke up, crying, to my new life in America. In my day and night dreams, I still lived in paradise—my imaginary life in Puerto Rico. Here, by day on Mohegan Avenue, I lived a nightmare. There were Irish and Anglo gangs who roamed the Bronx streets armed with pipes and insults. The cold wind blew, and it carried with it the hiss of the ultimate insult: “Spics!”

  Our existence was excuse enough for a chase. “¡Madre de Dios! Help us!”—the dreaded ambush in an alley and then a fist punch or pipe swing. There was a race war in the tenements, and the new arrivals, the Puerto Ricans, were the new targets. We were referred to by the more benevolent “Jews,” Italians, and occasional Swedes as “the PRs.” These other minority immigrants favored us above the “schvartzes”—the blacks. But the Irish hated our darker skin, our loud radio songs, our apparent frivolity in the light of the Irish premonition of doom. To the Irish, perhaps we seemed too happy, too eager to celebrate and continually party, while they gathered, glum, in their somber green-lit bars and at constant wakes. This philosophical difference extended to children as young as five, who might chase a Hispanic girl and whack her with a baseball bat.

  “Spics,” was the war cry, the insult, and I don’t even know whether I understood that it had to do with my skin color, or that it meant Hispanic. Slowly, through conscious and unconscious absorption of the culture—blond movie stars, billboard goddesses, and popular blondes at school—I learned that I was the wrong race, that light skin was better than dark skin. Back home in Juncos, people came in all colors and shades—it didn’t matter that Mami and I were on the light side, that my abuelo Justino was dark. But here it mattered, and my “light” skin was not light enough. I was a running dark girl on the street, an object of ridicule later in the school. And in the apartment I was for the first time critical of my reflection in the mirror. I would stare down at my small hands and wonder whether they looked dirty even when they were clean.

  I didn’t understand it then, but later the threat of rape also loomed, with Puerto Rican beauties in pastel dresses displaying their golden-tan cleavage and giving rise to both desire and hatred. I remember as a child knowing, “They can spot us.” They knew Puerto Ricans on sight—by our color, our style of dress. I was always on the alert for danger…. I would stiffen with fear when I saw a group of boys loitering on the corner or, worse, slinking down the alley. They often wore leather jackets and reminded me of snakes. They smoked and shouted; they seemed to speak in a constant jeer. They could spot me easily in my bright colors, my shining shoes. I would look “too fancy.” In summer, my dresses had ruffles no American girl would wear. I crisscrossed the streets to avoid the gangs, but I could not avoid their taunts: “Spic!” “Garlic mouth!”

  I ran through the streets of the Bronx faster than I ever thought my legs could carry me, the fear of being caught propelling me forward, not knowing what they would do to me if I ever got caught. Would they use their bats? Clubs? A gun? Or, worst of all, would they use the switchblade and plunge it into me? Or reach back in their hair and produce a razor? The notorious Fordham Baldies were rumored to have those razors, and I always feared for my own scalp. There were other gangs to fear, like the Ducky Boys. The gangs at that time were mostly Irish, fair-haired and angry. One time, one boy got close enough to me that I could see his eyes, and they were blank. I thought, He could kill me.

  How fast I ran, my footsteps and my heart keeping time, holding my apartment key in my pocket, ready to turn the lock as soon as I reached the door…or cut someone’s face if I had to. Hurry, hurry, run, run.…Get in the door; slam it shut in their faces.…They are right behind me, right behind me! There, in the alley, someone is waiting to pounce….

  Run, run, catch your breath…no, don’t stop. Stitch in my side. Heart hammering in alarm. Faster, faster, slam the door.…Made it!

  Within Titi’s apartment, at least everyone spoke Spanish, and although they all said we were lucky to be in America, we shared a lifestyle so much worse than in Juncos that I could not understand how we were “lucky.”

  Comforts were few. At night, our new home was freezing cold, more frigid for those of us with “tropical blood” than for the pale immigrant Irish, who looked accustomed to cold and chapping. At the time, during the Depression, it was legal for landlords to shut off heat at night, all night, no matter what the outside temperature. In cold, damp New York, this felt like a punishment for leaving warm, fragrant Puerto Rico. At night I lay awake shivering, trying to stay close to my mother for the warmth of her scorching skin. She was like a human space heater. She was like a stove.

  My mother often kept a hot-water bottle tucked under her feet to keep them from going numb. Soon Rosa Maria found other ways to keep herself warm, but that was later…. When we walked around the apartment, we often wore our coats and hats; on bad mornings we draped extra blankets, like serapes, over our shoulders. I shuddered in the unfamiliar cold; my teeth would clack like a novelty-store gimmick.

  At night, in the cold, I could sense the roaches on their raids to the kitchenette, where they must have, with their disgusting tentacle-like feelers, seized upon a stray grain of our arr
oz con pollo or a crumb of bread, or even a hard red bean. If I woke early and flipped the switch, there was a mass roach migration as the roach regiments retreated into invisible cracks. The occasional triumphant attack with a shoe or swat of the Puerto Rican newspaper would leave a crunched roach corpse, his shellac-back shell crushed and oozing his brown-gold roach blood. It was hard for me to decide at age five whether they disgusted me more dead than alive. I remembered even the bugs of Juncos with affection—they were better bugs, colorful, tropical bugs; the red spiders were attractive, and they left you alone.

  At night I would also often feel the sharp bite of the bedbugs; every few months my mother would remove the bug-infested mattress and with my help, drag it up to the roof. We’d go bedbug hunting and kill every one we found. Afterward, we’d wash the metal springs with kerosene and get inadvertantly high off the fumes.

  My mother could hardly wait to move out of Aunt Titi’s domain. Titi herself was overwhelming; her voice filled all four rooms. If we did go out for a rare treat at the movie house, going along with Titi was torture. She was always being shushed, and on a couple of occasions there were rather loud words between her noisy self and another patron: “Shaddup, you noisy old hag!” To which she’d respond, “Guade ju min, ju estúpido? Songsin rong wid ju ears? Go to a doctor and ju ears feex, ju dommi! Chathope juself!” (Translation: “Whaddya mean, stupid? Something wrong with your ears? Go to a doctor and get your ears fixed, you dummy! Shaddup yourself!”)

  With Aunt Titi on the scene—outdoors or inside the apartment—my mother could never do what she thought needed to be done: find a new husband. For that she would need privacy and a better apartment, one that would be a place of our own.

  As always, my mother had a plan: She began to work—in a near-feverish obsession—not only sewing in a factory in the garment district, but also cleaning apartments. At home—in her “free” time—she was making tissue flowers to sell to Woolworths, and in this she enlisted me: I folded the paper and learned the Bronx origami technique that resulted in large, carnationlike creations. I took pride in my fluffed tissue flowers and worked at Mami’s side—each flower would bring us closer to a nicer life, to Rosa Maria’s next move, to a better place, to a better man.

  During the day, when Mami worked in the downtown sweatshop, it was necessary for me to attend school. On my first day of school, Mami led me to the building, a stout brick fortress, to attend a kindergarten so alien from the white, sun-washed schoolroom back in Juncos.

  I walked beside her, holding tight to her hand. The early morning was cold, and my overcoat hung heavy on my shoulders. There was a new variety of snow beneath my tropical feet: This version was a near gelatinous gray, and it was called slush.

  Rosa Maria escorted me to the schoolyard, which was surrounded by a black iron spiked fence. Inside the fence, the kids were lined up in preordained “buddy” pairs. I quivered. There was no place for me; they all knew one another. I didn’t want to go in. I clung to my mother’s coat, and she used a ruse to make me let go.

  “Wait here,” she instructed. “I’ll get you some gum, some chicle, and I’ll be right back….”

  I stared at the pale faces of the other kids, who were now filing into the building. They were all speaking that language to one another. No one spoke Spanish. I didn’t see a single Hispanic face. Later I found out the reason for this: Because my mami was in such a rush to migrate, she was ahead of the curve. When we arrived in the mainland United States, mostly lone adults were coming over to work and make some money to send back to their families in Puerto Rico…. Mami was a forward thinker; she brought us here to start a new life—something most other Puerto Ricans wouldn’t do for twenty more years. Now I see she was a true pioneer; barely more than a girl, she left everyone and everything she knew behind to “colonize.” Her courage to move to a new world was admirable, but it left me the only Spanish-speaking kid in the schoolyard.

  When the teacher came to ask why I was still standing there in the slush, I couldn’t understand what she said. I tried to answer: “My mami…chicle…gum…” but I could not make her understand me.

  Why did Mami do that? Why didn’t my mother come inside with me? Why didn’t she wait and explain to them who I was? Why didn’t she come back? I began to cry; I couldn’t help it. Against my will, the teacher led me inside. I cried for my mami, even though I knew she wasn’t coming “right back.” The more frightening question was one I tried not to contemplate: Would she ever come back?

  There are so many unanswered questions with my mother. Why didn’t she return for Francisco? Why did she sever all ties with Paco? Why did she have to tell me, that day when I stood alone in front of the strange school with all the staring kids, “I’ll be right back, okay?”

  Did she avoid all unpleasant confrontation, or was there a deeper reason?

  Whatever my mother’s reason, she left me that day, my feet numbing in the slush of the schoolyard, crying in Spanish, and no one understood me. As soon as I could, I started running back to the apartment…. I did that almost every day. If the class had recess, I left.

  When I met my mami’s eyes, somehow I could not ask her: “Why?”

  Then, just as she would do something so suddenly hurtful, my mother might commit a good deed, also without warning. One gray afternoon, when I came home from school, wept out, drained, and wanting only to curl up in bed, warm myself, and hug my knees, she said, “Surprise for you, Cooookie…”

  She held out a cardboard box with airholes punched in—they looked like openings made with a screwdriver. I could hear something scratching inside, and a low familiar peep.

  “Open it, Cookie…. He’s for you…. He’s your little Puchito.” In disbelief, I pried open the carton and there he was—or at least an identical stand-in yellow fluff-ball chick.

  This stand-in Puchito was to live in our room at Titi’s—and he did, for a while. He grew fast, and lost his fluff in record time. In a few weeks he wasn’t a sweet fluff-ball chick anymore; he was a goose bump: a pebble-skinned, scrawny, raw-red-necked little rooster who skittered around our room on his big scaly feet and squawked at the Motorola radio. Apart from losing his chick looks, Puchito was firing off gooey greenish gobs of chicken shit and eating a fortune in birdseed. Whenever we sat down to eat, he fixed a beady red gaze upon us, which was uncomfortable, especially when we were having arroz con pollo or any other chicken dish.

  Nonetheless, he made me laugh, and I often cut school to stay home with the chicken. Precedents were set; school wasn’t necessarily a given in our apartment. Mami was relaxed about my skipping.

  Puchito was the single creature that was making me happy. He reminded me of home.

  My mother soon found Puchito an unsuitable pet for apartment life; she exiled him to a poultry cage on the roof. I visited with him and sat on the roof, holding him and stroking his growing feathers. One day I went up for my chicken visitation and found Puchito upside down, his scaly feet in a death curl on his chest. I wept. I had lost my Puchito, and somehow, with his chicken death, he symbolized a second parting from Puerto Rico.

  Puchito had been my best friend. I had no friends—no one could speak to me, and I understood no one. That was when I began to concentrate on inglés. It hurt to switch languages, to lose my familiar words, but I learned, in secret, to speak and understand.

  Mami could speak: She was quick that way, but she dropped all the vowels: This led to her hilarious mistaken pronunciations: “Every Saturday, it’s time for us to change the shits,” and in summer, she would say it was too hot to work for “pissake,” and we should “go to the bitch.” I would correct her: “Say sheets. Say beach.”

  And she had a great punch line: “I can’t. You know I got trouble with my bowels.”

  But I didn’t want the accent. None of it. If I had to speak inglés, I would speak it perfectly.

  And I did.

  THAWING OUT

  We celebrated a single event those first months in the Br
onx: As the winter deepened and its bitterness numbed my fingers, toes, and face, something unexpected….

  Through the frosted window of my first winter, I saw the unfamiliar lace of descending crystals.

  “Maruca,” Mami cried out.

  “¿Qué es eso?” I wanted to know.

  “¡Nieve! Ice from the sky.”

  “Snow.”

  “Let’s go up on the roof.” I put on a jacket and a little wool cap. My mother and I ascended to the roof, only a short flight of iron stairs above us. We pushed open the heavy metal security door with the DO NOT ENTER THE ROOF warning, and stepped out on the urban equivalent of permafrost—frozen tar. All the ugliness of the city quickly disappeared, curtained and buffered by that first blizzard we witnessed. As the crystalline flakes flew, my mother and I opened our mouths. I stuck out my tongue and caught the delicious treat—the first offering of my new homeland that I could enjoy.

  Maybe there could be miracles in America, after all, I thought. This white magic that dissolved like a quick kiss.

  * * *

  The suffering of winter gave way to the sudden city summer. New York City heat was different from Juncos heat—it was not so gentle. It descended like Mami’s two-ton hand iron and pressed onto the tar of the roof and the asphalt of the streets. Everything softened and stank of the tar. But it was heat.

  And to the two of us Puerto Ricans—who froze through that first winter—it was a heaven-sent relief. Throughout that first torturous winter, I would have done anything to get warm—I even sat on top of the radiator, nearly burning my bottom. Always, my mother and I huddled for that heat, and it seemed as if our entire migration was going to be a heat-seeking mission, a constant attempt to get warm.

  Then one day my mittens and socks, draped on the radiator to dry after being frozen nearly solid with slush, gave off a fragrant steam. It was not just the radiator hissing steam but the radiant heat of the new spring sun streaming through the window. The window glass felt warm. Then summer struck in an instant: A fly appeared and buzzed.