When I Was Puerto Rican (19 page)

Gloria came back to live in a neat wood house in the middle of a coconut grove behind her mother’s property. Her
marido
was from a nearby
barrio
and worked for the electric company.

“Maybe now,” Mami joked, “we’ll get light back in Macún.”

As soon as Gloria returned, Mami unfolded her work clothes, washed her hair, and polished her shoes. But instead of Gloria coming to our house every morning, we now went to her shady house under the palms.

One day she handed me a small paper bag, tightly packed with something soft. “Throw this into the latrine, would you please?”

“What is it?”

“Nothing that concerns you.”

“Then why should I throw it out?”

“Are you this mouthy all the time or just with me?”

“All the time.”

“I figured. Take the thing out and I’ll tell you about it when you come back.”

I was tempted to open the bag and look inside, but she kept her eye on me as she changed Raymond’s diaper. When I looked down the hole of the latrine I noticed a couple of little bags like the one I held floating on the dark smelly waste at the bottom.

“Okay, I threw it out.” She put Raymond and Edna down for their afternoon
siesta.
The air was light, breezy, aromatic of guavas, which grew in tall bushes along the side of her house. “What was inside the bag?”

“A Kotex.”

“What’s that?”

She poured water into a bowl and salted it generously. “How old are you?”

“Ten.”

She grabbed two green plantains from a high shelf and brought them to the table. “And Doña Monin hasn’t told you about being a
señorita?”

“She told me I should stop playing with boys because I’m almost
señorita,
and that I should keep my legs closed when I sit.”

Gloria laughed so hard she almost dropped the knife she found near the
fogón.

“What’s so funny?” I was embarrassed and pleased. Clearly there was a lot more to this
señorita
business, and Gloria knew what it was. I laughed with her, sensing she was about to tell me something my mother was supposed to but hadn’t.

“Do you know where babies come from?”

“Everybody knows that!”

“Do you know how they’re made?”

I’d seen roosters chase hens, catch up, climb on top of them, and dig sharp beaks into the hen’s head as she cackled and screeched and he flapped his wings. I’d seen male dogs chase females, the male climb on top of the female, ride her while she tried to shake him off, and dig his narrow pink penis into her backside. I’d seen bulls ride cows, horses hump mares, pigs rolling in mud, their bodies connected under the female’s tail. And I’d seen eggs laid, bloody puppies wet and shimmery, calves encased in a blue bubble, slippery wet ponies thin and vulnerable, and hundreds of pink piglets suckling engorged teats. But until Gloria asked, I’d never put it together that in order for me and my four sisters and two brothers to be born, Papi had to do to Mami what roosters did to hens, bulls did to cows, horses did to mares. I shuddered.

“Yes, I know how babies are made.”

Gloria slit a plantain from tip to tip, peeled the casing back, and cut diagonal slices which she dipped in the salted water.

“Before you can make babies, you have to be a
señorita,
which means you bleed once a month.” Gloria then explained what a period was, how long it lasted, what a woman had to do so her clothes wouldn’t get soiled. “Very soon you will be a
señorita,”
she said, “and then you have to keep your legs crossed, just like your Mami says, all the time.” She laughed at her own joke, which didn’t seem so funny to me. “Ay, you’re so solemn! I must have scared you. Don’t worry, it’s nothing. Just a nuisance you learn to live with. Every woman does.”

But I wasn’t worried about my period, which couldn’t possibly be worse than the worms I’d found in my panties. I imagined Mami and Papi, in bed, stuck together in the middle. I remembered Tato’s words that he could stick his penis in a woman, and I realized that’s what Papi did to Mami after we’d all gone to sleep and the springs on their bed creaked in rhythms that always ended in a long, low moan, like a moo, or a hoarse whimper.

Mami was one of the first mothers in Macún to have a job outside the house. For extra money women in the
barrio
took in laundry or ironing or cooked for men with no wives. But Mami left our house every morning, primped and perfumed, for a job in a factory in Toa Baja.

The
barrio
looked at us with new eyes. Gone was the bland acceptance of people minding their own business, replaced by a visible, angry resentment that became gossip, and taunts and name-calling in the school yard.

I got the message that my mother was breaking a taboo I’d never heard about. The women in the neighborhood turned their backs on her when they saw her coming, or, when they talked to her, they scanned the horizon, as if looking at her would infect them with whatever had made her go out and get a job. Only a few of the neighbors stood by Mami—Doña Ana, whose daughter watched us, Doña Zena, whose Christian beliefs didn’t allow for envy, and Doña Lola, who valued everyone equally. Even Tio Cándido’s wife, Meri, made us feel as if Mami was a bad woman for leaving us alone.

I was confused by the effect my mother’s absence caused in other people.

“Why, Mami? Why is everyone so mean just because you have a job?” I pleaded one day after a schoolmate said Mami was not getting her money from a factory but from men in the city.

“They’re jealous,” she said. “They can’t imagine a better life for themselves, and they’re not willing to let anyone else have it either. Just ignore them.”

But I couldn’t close my ears to their insults, couldn’t avert my eyes quickly enough to miss their hate-filled looks. I was abandoned by children who until then had been friends. The neighbors on the long walk to and from home were no longer friendly; they no longer offered me a drink of water on a hot afternoon or a dry porch when it rained.

Papi seemed to have the same opinion about Mami’s job as the neighbors. He looked at her with a puzzled expression, and several times I heard her defend herself: “If it weren’t for the money I bring in, we’d still be living like savages.” He’d withdraw to his hammers and nails, to the mysterious books in his dresser, to the newspapers and magazines he brought home rolled up in his wooden toolbox.

I had worried that not having Mami around would make our lives harder, but at first it made things easier. Mami was happy with her work, proud of what she did, eager to share with us the adventures of her day in the factory, where she stitched cotton brassieres she said had to be for American women because they were too small to fit anyone we knew.

But her days were long, filled in the morning with the chores of making both breakfast and dinner, getting seven children ready for school or a day with Gloria, preparing for work, going there and back, returning to a basketful of mending, a house that needed sweeping, a floor that needed mopping, sheets that had to be washed and dried in one day because we didn’t have two sets for each bed. As she settled into her routine, Mami decided she needed help, and she turned to me.

“You are the oldest, and I expect you to be responsible for your sisters and brothers, and to do more around the house.”

“But isn’t Gloria going to take care of us?”

“I can’t count on anyone from outside the family. Besides, you’re old enough to be more responsible.”

And with those words Mami sealed a pact she had designed, written, and signed for me.

“Delsa, you’d better get in here and do the dishes before Mami gets home.”

Delsa looked up from the numbers she wrote in her composition book. Rows and rows of numbers, over and over again, in neat columns, in her small, tight script. “It’s not my turn.” She went back to her homework.

“Whose turn is it then?”

“Yours. I did it yesterday.”

The sink was full. Plates, cups, spoons, pot lids, the heavy aluminum rice pot, the frying pan, all half submerged in gray water with a greasy scum floating on the top. “Norma!”

“What!”

“Come here. I’m going to teach you to wash dishes.”

“I’m watching Raymond.”

“Well, let Hector watch him.”

“I don’t want to.”

“If these dishes aren’t washed by the time Mami comes home ...”

“You do them, then.”

I didn’t want to either. I didn’t want to do any of the things Mami asked of me: feed the kids an after-school snack; make sure they did their homework; get Raymond and Edna from Gloria’s; change the water on the beans and put them on the stove to cook over low heat; sweep the floor; make the beds; mound the dirty clothes in the basket; feed the chickens and the pigs. Delsa and Norma were supposed to help, but most of the time they refused, especially when I tried to get them to do the unpleasant tasks like changing Raymond’s diaper or scrubbing the rice pot. Almost every day just before Mami came home I scrambled around to do all the things she’d asked me to take care of that morning. And almost every day I received either a lecture or
cocotazos
for not doing everything.

“You’re almost
señorita.
You should know to do this without being told.”

“I just can’t ...”

“You’re lazy, that’s your problem. You think everything will be handed to you.”

“No I don’t,” I whimpered, my hands protecting my head from the inevitable blows.

“Don’t you talk back!” And she pushed me away as if I were contagious. “The least you can do is set an example for your sisters and brothers.”

I looked at Delsa, who at nine could already make perfect rice, and at Norma, who swept and mopped with precision, and at Hector, who dutifully changed out of his uniform into play clothes every day without being told. “What makes them so good and me so bad?” I asked myself. But there were no answers in Delsa’s solemn eyes, or in Norma’s haughty beauty, or in Héctor’s eagerness to please. Every night Mami told me how I had failed in my duty as a female, as a sister, as the eldest. And every day I proved her right by neglecting my chores, by letting one of the kids get hurt, by burning the beans, by not commanding the respect from my sisters and brothers that I was owed as the oldest.