When I Was Puerto Rican (7 page)

“Okay.” She went back to her sewing.

Morcillas
were one of my favorite treat foods. They were black sausages, which were roasted or fried. I especially liked the ones with tiny bits of hot peppers crushed into the meat. “All right, tell me.”

“I thought you didn’t want to know ...”

“Is it pig guts?”

“Yes. The outside.”

“What’s on the inside?”

“Little pieces of meat. Some rice. Spices.”

“And blood?”

“Mostly blood. Some people call it blood pudding.”

“Ay Dios mío,
Mami, why do we have to eat that stuff?”

“Because once you kill the animal, it’s a sin to waste anything that can be eaten.... Besides, it tastes good.” She winced.

“Are you okay, Mami?”

“Yes. It’s just your baby sister or brother swimming around.”

“Can I feel it?”

She took my hand and placed it on her round belly, which rested on her thighs like a giant water balloon. I put my head to it, my hands on either side. A giant wave spread from one end of her belly to the other, and I heard water gurgling as the baby swam around in her private pool.

“Papi, what’s a sin?” I was collecting grass for the camels of the Three Magi, who were coming that night with presents for all the children. The only grass to be had in the
barrio
grew in the alley, along the edges of fences that kept chickens and scrawny dogs separated from one another.

“A sin is when you do something that makes God angry.”

“Like what?”

“Well, let’s see. There’s the first commandment, ‘Honor thy father and mother.’ ”

“What’s a commandment?”

“It’s actually commandments. God wrote ten of them so people would know what to do.”

“What do the others say?”

“Thou shalt not take the Lord’s name in vain.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means you shouldn’t mention God except in prayers.”

“You can’t say ‘
Ay Dios Mío
’?”

“Not technically.”

“But everyone says it.”

“Very religious people don’t.”

“We’re not religious, right?”

“We don’t go to church, but we believe in God.”

“Is it a sin not to go to church?”

“If you’re a Catholic.”

“Are we Catholic?”

“Yes. But not very good ones.”

I finished collecting grass for the camels, while Papi told me more about the commandments. We never got through all ten, because I kept interrupting him for explanations of what murder was, and what adultery meant.

Mami moaned through the night. I worried that if she kept it up, the Three Magi wouldn’t come with presents. But in the morning our shoes were filled with nuts and candy, and each one of us had a small gift wrapped in green paper tied with ribbon. Later in the day, Papi played with us outside while, through the open windows, we heard Mami’s screams and the midwife’s gentle urgings. By the next day we had a new baby sister, whom we named Alicia.

After Alicia was born, Papi came around more often. When he visited, on weekends, and sometimes weekdays after work, he played with us, read the comics aloud, or took us for walks. At first he and Mami didn’t talk much. As soon as she saw him come up the alley, she would pick up a basket of mending, or scrub the pots, or reorganize the canned goods on the shelves of the kitchen area. Papi would lift his hat when he came to the door, like the men who sometimes showed up on Sunday mornings selling religious magazines. She’d just ignore him and go on with her work and wouldn’t even ask him in. Papi would stand on the threshold and call us to put on our shoes and he’d take us out for a
piragua,
or to come out to the steps and he’d tell us a story. Mami would pretend he wasn’t even there. But little by little, he won her over. We’d come back with a half-melted tamarind
piragua
for her. Or he’d bring the newspaper and, instead of taking it with him, he’d leave it for her on the table. Once, I looked up from my place on the steps and she was sitting at the top, elbows on knees, face cupped in her hands, listening to Papi recite a poem he’d written.

One day he came after dinner and she’d saved some food for him. When he stood at the door she told him to come in and sit down. She served him a plateful of rice and beans and fried up a pork chop or two. He ate without looking directly at her if she came close to put down a knife and fork, or to fill his water glass, or to hand him another napkin because the first one was crumpled.

Afterwards they talked out on the steps long after we’d all been sent to bed. It was too far from my bed for me to hear what they said, and they spoke softly. But just listening to their voices made me happy. The rise and fall of their words sounded like a promise, and I strained to hear them over the crack of cars backfiring, dogs barking, and the blaring jukeboxes of bars on the street a few houses from ours. I concentrated on their rhythmic murmurs coming from the steps, and that sound, isolated from all others, soothed and lulled me to sleep.

We returned to Macún in a rickety truck, our furniture and cooking utensils tied to the sides, our clothes and bedding bundled into cushions. As we bounced along the rutted road, I fidgeted, grazed by low branches from ceiba and
flamboyán
trees, breathing the dust of the highway, the exhaust, and the gritty dirt that flew in all directions and coated my skin, my hair, my teeth. I was taken over by a soft giant that filled my chest and head, its too large heart pounding against my ribs as we lurched up and down the dirt road toward the pebbly hill where our house gleamed in the afternoon sun.

I wanted to jump out of the truck and run, run down the hills dipping into sandy valleys in front of familiar houses bordered with passion fruit and morning glory. To climb the rocky hills at the peak of which our neighbors’ porches rose even higher, their balustrades festooned with potted plants, the zinc overhangs sparkling in the midday sun. To climb the grassy mound behind Uncle Cándido’s house and grab a pink
pomarrosa
from the scraggly trees that were forbidden to everyone but family members. To crunch into that succulent fruit that smelled like roses and let the aromatic juice run down my chin and stain my pretty city dress with its bows, buttons, and ribbons. But when I tried to stand up, Mami pulled me down, saying something about my falling out and breaking my neck. I gripped the sides of the truck, fingers digging into metal, the giant in my chest growing larger until it seemed I would explode. The truck creaked to a stop, and I jumped out and ran into our yard, looking from one thing to the next, not knowing if what I was seeing was the same or different from what was there before because it didn’t matter; I didn’t care. I was home. And I never wanted to leave home again.

I walked the land from post to post, trying to place myself within its borders. Our house stood in the center, its shiny zinc roof splotched with rust at the corners. Next to the house was the kitchen shed, from which a thin curl of smoke wove into the air. Behind the house, under the breadfruit tree, there was a pigsty, now empty, the mud the pigs loved to bathe in dried into dusty ridges. The chicken coop squatted between the pigsty and the mango tree, a branch of which held one end of Mami’s laundry line, the other end stretched to the trunk of an acerola bush. Away from the house, near Doña Ana’s, the latrine with palm frond walls under a zinc roof was hidden from the road by hibiscus bushes and an avocado tree. The boundary between our land and Doña Ana’s was bordered by eggplant bushes, and between us and Doña Lola by annatto, oregano, and yucca.

Behind our house was Lalao’s
finca,
which stretched into the next town. Sometimes a herd of cows grazed on this land, or a man on horseback rode the borders, a
sombrero
shading his face, his shirt stained yellow with sweat. We were not allowed to go into Lalao’s
finca,
which was surrounded by a well-maintained barbwire fence. Not three feet from our backyard, on the other side of this fence, was a fragrant grove of grapefruit trees. The grapefruits weighed on the branches, huge and round, dark green speckled yellow. In the mornings, I heard them tumble from the trees, and it seemed a waste to let them rot under the branches when we could be enjoying them. But Mami and Papi made it clear that we were never to go into that grove, so I stood at the barbwire fence and stared at the fruits growing and ripening, then falling and rotting on the ground where they formed a pulpy wet mud, which I was sure was sour.