Because I am a Girl (11 page)

Eric and myself made a pact to get in shape, changing our diets and visiting the campus gym regularly. I found it easier to stay on course (poor Eric never managed to kick his addiction to American food: candy, Coca-Cola, hot dogs, burgers and fries), and the pounds started flying off, to the point that other men were soon noticing me. To Eric’s sadness, one was Alexi; a Ukrainian, who was a passionate, powerhouse lover. I suppose that it was this
gringo
who further helped me find the Dominican woman within me, the one I had forcibly repressed for so long.

6

A fuller life did not curtail my focus on my studies and I graduated second-from-top in my year, with an excellent degree. Crucially, this enabled me to obtain a bursary to
go
on to New York City and take a master’s qualification, and I now no longer had financial dependence on Mama Santos. New York suited me even better than Chapel Hill, as there were many Dominicans in the city and I moved into the community at Washington Heights, sharing an apartment close to Juan Pablo Duarte Boulevard. I loved the Spanish-speaking life on the asphalt of 163rd Street, and on the sidewalks of bustling St Nicholas Boulevard. At times it felt as if all of Santo Domingo was here, with the Dominican flag flying proudly from balconies, apartment windows, storefronts and
patelito
stands. Following his graduation, Alexi went back to Kiev, and our relationship fizzled out in cyberspace over a string of emails.

I met my next boyfriend, Victor, at a local theatre group’s comedy improv production. He was a second-generation Dominican but had only been to the old country once. Nonetheless, he had a rose-tinted fascination for it, and hated me deriding the place. ‘You’ll be estranged from yourself as long as you’re alienated from where you grew up. The Westerners feel that they want to condemn our poverty, because it affronts them. Well, I want to condemn their misery. It affronts me! Let them do something about that first; fix their own miserable, unhappy lives!’

Victor could afford that perspective. His parents were socialists who had fled the Trujillo regime and had made money in the USA. He wanted for nothing, and had just finished a film studies degree at NYU. As cynical
as
I was, however, I had to concede that there was some truth in what he said. Looking back on my childhood, I saw the misery I remembered was all mine, and mine alone, and spread by me to others in the form of my constant city-girl’s grumblings about life in Cocoseco. In retrospect, I had been a beacon of gloom. Renata, and even Christina in her own way, resembled the other villagers; in spite of their squabbles they were essentially happy souls.

In New York, and America in general, in spite of (or perhaps because of) the material wealth, people often seemed so joyless and depressed. A commonplace incident brought this home to me. One day, on the subway, I was crushed next to a man reading a novel, smelling of beer and cigarettes, his pores secreting slow-mo bullets of sweat before my very eyes. His shoulder, hip and leg were welded to mine, and I could feel our breathing synchronise. I noticed suddenly that there were tears in his eyes, and as I only saw this man in profile, I would never know what this book had said to him or had triggered in him, that moved him so. I wanted to ask, but by the time I was emboldened he had risen and was gone. I thought about the madness of those transitory intimacies which doomed us to know nothing of each other, and for the first time, I yearned for home. I thought of Rudy, Christina, Mama Aida, those children I had never seen, and even Grandmother Monica Santos back in
Santo
Domingo. But most of all, I longed to speak to Renata.

She was supposed to be somewhere in this great city, working in a restaurant, but still there was no response to my emails and Christina would not divulge her whereabouts, if indeed she knew them. I asked around Washington Heights; nobody had seen her. Almost every time I passed a restaurant I was compelled to look inside. My phone calls to Mami invariably ended on her usual note of complaint: ‘Both my daughters have abandoned me! What selfish children I have raised!’

On graduating for the second time with a master’s degree in Applied Marketing, I took a job as a lecturer in a community college in Long Island. It was decent pay and for the first time I was able to send money back home to Mami. I would go to my local Western Union office every fortnight after I was paid my salary, and send whatever
remesa
I could afford on to her. This had the immediate effect of quelling her histrionics on the phone and made her less inclined to suggest that I should give up my life here and return to the Dominican Republic.

In time though, my old relationship with Christina began to reassert itself. Soon the money I sent was never enough. She would call me a
tacano
, and worse, while I referred to her as a dirty
campesino
, fearing that my hard-earned
cash
was being squandered on shirts for Benjamin, or some other idler that she’d taken up with. Every time I sent her payments, in my mind’s eye I could see Christina inside the Vimenca in San Juan, counting out the pesos, a taut sneer of entitlement pulling at her features.

I enjoyed working in Long Island, although it was further from the city than I would have liked. The trek was arduous, involving the subway ride from 168th and Broadway to Penn Station and then an MTA commuter train to the college. I got on well with my students, but after a while, I decided I wanted to move on and applied for a similar post in Spain. I had broken up with Victor. It was yet another sad ending, as with Alexi and Eric, but like them, I felt blessed by knowing him. Victor and I were unable to keep our hands off each other, but this papered over the cracks of two fundamentally incompatible sorts; I was a doer and he was a dreamer. All he talked of were his ideas for screenplays I knew would never be written, and films that would never be made. A new business partner, usually a producer or financer, would be put on a pedestal, only for the relationship to subsequently dissolve in bitter recrimination with unreturned phone calls. Our fights were as tempestuous as our love-making, and something had to give. Spain seemed to offer a change of scene and a new adventure.

7

I flew to Madrid to attend the interview. I was staying with Mariasela, a New York Dominican friend who had earlier relocated to that city. I took some summer leave during the college recess, planning to stay in Europe for three weeks. At the interview, the Spanish spoken sounded so formal and elegant that I felt more like an ignorant peasant speaking in my own tongue than I ever did talking English in America.

There were many Dominicans in Spain, the vast majority of them women. Mariasela’s boyfriend, Severiano, was a Spaniard, and he joked about the supposed sexual insatiability of Dominican girls. I did not take too kindly to this as I had known only three boyfriends, and had led a far from promiscuous life. I have a temper, and I was somewhat on edge after the interview, so I carried the argument on that night as we went to a bar. I grew increasingly annoyed with Mariasela; she seemed to be taking Severiano’s part, against her own countrywomen. While she said nothing in essence that I did not agree with, and she was inoffensive when compared to Severiano’s increasingly hostile taunts, I did not think it appropriate to focus only on the negative side of our society in front of foreigners. At North Carolina and NewYork, I would always stress the good things about my country: its intense natural beauty and the generosity and laughter of its people.

Suddenly Severiano looked out the big window and pointed across the street to two very young women who were going into an apartment block. He said in his teasing leer, ‘They are Dominican prostitutes who work from an apartment run by an escort agency. They take their tricks there!’

I was not concerned with his words, because all I could see was that one of them was my sister Renata! Here, in Madrid.

The fury and frustration welled in me and I rose and threw my rum-and-cola drink into Severiano’s face. It trickled down onto his silk shirt and his white jacket. He screamed abuse at me, shouting at the waiter to furnish him with a cloth. As he ranted, all I saw was the spoiled face of privilege. Later, I would speculate; was that the same emotion my mother grew to feel when she looked at my father? Had his affectations and those of his family really become so repulsive to her? Was it the humiliation of their rejection that compelled her to leave Santo Domingo for Cocoseco?

We all went home, still quarrelling, Mariasela in tears, and I took my belongings and left their apartment, checking into a modest hotel. Mariasela (and, I must admit, even Severiano) protested, trying to salvage our friendship as she implored me to at least stay the night and think it over once we had calmed down. But my own temper and
the
cruellest coincidence had soured everything, and I needed to be alone so that I could confront Renata without outsiders knowing of our family disgrace.

8

The next day I went back to the same bar, took the identical seat in the window that faced out onto the apartment, and waited. After less than an hour I saw Renata come back with a man, an old business type who wore fine clothes. He left about thirty minutes later. Then another man came to the apartment. I could see the lights go on and off. Then another. I went out onto the street to get a closer look at the comings and goings. I once saw Renata stare out the window, before an old
gringo
put his arms around her and pulled her back into the room. I was cold and there were all sorts of undesirables hanging around. One slimy creep with gold teeth and greasy hair looked at me and made a lewd proposition.

‘
Mama guevo! Hijo de puta!
’ I cursed at him.

The smile never left his face. I moved away and rang the bell to Renata’s apartment and was buzzed in without having to speak on the intercom.

To my surprise, the door in the apartment I judged to be hers was ajar. Inside it was sweet smelling and softly lit. Renata had evidently been expecting someone: no doubt another client. I could hear her disembodied voice, coming from the bathroom. ‘You’re early tonight, you bad boy. I’m just getting myself ready for you. You are so naughty, coming early and trying to catch me unawares like this!’

My heart sank at her words. It was true, she was more than just a
viajera
; she was a
cuero
.

Wearing a black negligee, and taking a swig from a bottle of Volvic, Renata stepped into the room. She was as slender as ever, and still looked like the teenager she was, but something had hardened in her eyes. She was shocked into silence when she saw me standing beside the white leather couch, no doubt looking chaste with my handbag in front of me.

Her eyes narrowed on me, ‘Who the fuck are you and what are you doing here? If you think you’re working this apartment you can think again. Call Geraldo at the agency and you’ll find out that we’re booked in here …’

I never expected that she would fail to recognise me. But it had been seven years, eighty pounds and several dress sizes. I smiled at her. ‘You sound so like Mami!’

Her face expanded in recognition. ‘Elena! My God! I don’t believe it!’

‘Hi, Sis,’ I said, but as I advanced towards her, I saw
that
distraction and calculation had already entered her mind, and I received only a tense, perfunctory hug.

‘You have to go.’

‘No way, we need to catch up, the emails I sent …’

‘I’m expecting company. You really must go. Now!’

‘Look,’ I averted my eyes from her briefly to let them stray around the apartment, taking in its sleek, minimalist furnishings; a brown leather settee, glass coffee table, plasma television set and a generously filled cocktail cabinet. ‘I know what you’re doing here.’

‘You know nothing,’ she spat with ferocity. ‘Just get out of here!’

‘Renata … it’s been so long … we have to catch up …’

‘There’s nothing to catch up with! Go! Get out of my sight!’ She pointed to the door.

I didn’t know what to say. I knew that my mother had deep grievances against me, but I never imagined that Renata felt the same. ‘Why are you rejecting me like this?’

‘What the fuck are you talking about? Me rejecting
you
, the trust fund girl!’

‘I only left in order to better myself …’ I faltered. She had never had that opportunity, and I was now realising just what that meant to her.

‘The letter,’ she smiled cruelly. I swear my heart fell into my stomach.

There was nothing I could say.

‘Your silly little letter. The one Papi left you. The one you buried.’

‘How … how do you know? …’

‘It’s gone. I burned it.’

I fought my anger down, trying to remember my drama training. Keep thinking in the abstract. It was only a piece of paper. What mattered were the sentiments contained in it, and these will stay with me until I die. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ I said sadly. ‘How did you find it?’

‘Remember your Rudy, with the stammer?’

Rudy. I wanted to say that he was never mine, or at least not in the way she thought, but I resolved to keep my silence.

‘He missed you when you left and started hanging around me when I came back to Cocoseco to visit Mami. He kept asking me for news of you. We chatted and he let slip about the letter. He wouldn’t tell me where it was at first,’ she smiled, briefly a teasing little girl again, ‘but I managed to persuade him.’

‘Renata, it doesn’t matter …’

‘Correct. It doesn’t matter at all. Now get the fuck out of here and go back to New York or North Carolina or wherever. Just because you’ve lost some weight and learned how to put on make-up, it doesn’t make you any less of a stuck-up frigid lesbian bitch. Now fuck off!’

I was shaken and physically trembling. I had been
totally
unprepared for this rejection and her spiteful whorish vitriol.

Just as I made to depart, a tall, middle-aged man with spiky but receding blond hair came in. He was well-dressed and spoke with a Dutch or German sounding accent.