Because I am a Girl (12 page)

‘Aha … it is my lucky day, yes Angelina?’

I winced at the mention of Renata’s whore name. I felt sick to my core at the notion of my sister giving her body to all those strangers.

‘Two ladies for the price of one … but, it
will
be the price of one,’ the visitor added emphatically.

‘It’s only me, Ronald. My friend is just leaving,’ Renata looked hatefully at me.

‘OK,’ I conceded, beaten and cowed, feeling for the first time in years like the fat, stooping girl in Cocoseco, and now just wanting to be out of this nightmare and back into the sane life I had built for myself. ‘You know my email if you want to get in touch,’ I said meekly.

Renata remained silent, but her blazing eyes ushered my departure.

‘It’s a shame you are going,’ the oily Dutchman or German purred as I exited.

The next day at the hotel, I rose miserably and after breakfast checked my emails. I learned through Mariasela that the college where I had been interviewed had got in
touch
, and I was to call them. A departmental secretary informed me that I was regrettably unsuccessful on this occasion. This no longer concerned me; I did not want to be in Madrid if my sister was here, earning her living in this vile way. My Spanish dream was now hopelessly tainted. I cursed her and the whores like her who had given Dominican women like myself a bad name in Spain; I even managed to blame her for my failure at the interview. All I thought about was my precious letter. It represented what I loved most about Cocoseco, and she had destroyed it through spite and jealousy.

I was able to change my flight tickets and was planning to head back to New York early. It was then I had the inspiration: I still had time left before returning to work and I would use it to go back home to the Dominican Republic. Mami needed to know about Renata.

9

Santo Domingo airport had changed for the better; it was tidier and more ostentatiously wealthy. I rented a car and drove into the city. As I sat in Panavi, a chic pastry café on Gustavo Mejia Ricart, I could have been somewhere
fashionable
in Madrid or NewYork City. It was evident that alongside the poverty, there was a growing sophisticated professional class, and I even toyed with the notion that there might be a place for me in my home country.

I had felt the obligation to visit my grandmother Santos although we had no relationship beyond that of the sponsored and the fund administrator. In her eyes, I was not the last remnant of her dead son, but rather the living evidence of the ‘whore that had destroyed him’. Grandmother Santos believed that my mother was some kind of jezebel, who, by getting together with my father, had determined that his fate would be a grizzly one. Then she’d sealed this by abandoning him, his subsequent grief making him careless, causing him to be under the path of that tumbling bulldozer. Sometimes this passive marital distraction was refined into something more sinister; a positive curse by this country witch. This led her to another obsession, with that of the Haitian construction workers whom my father supervised. They were also candidates for culpability in his demise, especially as one of them was driving the upturned bulldozer, and survived unharmed. ‘Filthy African cannibal pigs,’ she spat, ‘let them stay in their own cesspit of a country!’

Some things never changed: no matter how bad circumstances were here, Haitians would always be worse off and the targets of our fear and loathing. Experience had taught me that every nation in the world seemed to need
a
detested neighbour as a scapegoat. Living in NewYork, I had learned that Puerto Ricans often entertained similar prejudices about us Dominicans.

I stayed one tense and desperate night at the home of this embittered woman before heading to what we call‘the south’ (though, for the first time I realised, I was actually travelling west) in the modest car I’d rented at the airport. The road to Azua was teeming with workmen, just as it was when I left over seven years ago. I recall this as Papi had taken me out there. In this time the work seemed to have progressed little, though my mind might be playing tricks on me.

I made progress onto the San Juan road, the country as beautiful as I remembered it, and got to Cocoseco just as the light was beginning to fade. The town was also very much the same, or so I thought until I got to my mother’s house. There I could scarcely believe the evidence of my eyes. The old clay and tin-roofed shack was gone, and instead, there was a stucco mock-colonial house with pillars, gate, railings, patio, with the walls painted a mustard colour. There was further evidence that it was a piecemeal development with construction work to the rear still very much ongoing. It had pride of place on this side of Cocoseco.

My head made a brief, involuntary turn across the road to Freda’s home, and yes, our place was grander. As I
looked
back to confirm this, I noticed that my mother was sitting on the porch, with a woman who looked familiar and a man who sparked no recognition in me. They appeared very relaxed in their moulded white plastic chairs. Christina was fuller of face and body, and she wore a green tank top and side button-up jeans, which stopped at her calves. Her thighs had taken the biggest hit of fat; they looked meaty, encased in that tight denim. Her hair was pinned back and had been newly straightened, and she wore gold-hooped earrings. I suddenly recognised the smiling woman next to her. I could not believe that Freda Sanchez, Mami’s formerly detested rival, was sitting with her on the porch drinking iced mango juice.

Mami smiled wanly at me but made no attempt to rise. Instead she simply said to the others, ‘My daughter has returned. Look at her!’Then she turned to me, ‘Do they not feed you in America?’ And as she broke into a tight grin, I found myself fighting back tears that were welling in my eyes.

‘Please excuse us, Freda,’ Christina said, somewhat haughtily. ‘Federico, bring the boys to see their sister and aunt, and tell her grandmother Aida that our Elena Rosa has finally graced us with her presence.’

I now almost had to stifle a laugh. It was as if Christina was playing a villain in a James Bond movie. It made me realise, for the first time, what a master of manipulating her emotions and those of others she was. My actress
dreams
may have perished, but it was Mami who had the real family talent in this direction.

Freda Sanchez rose and greeted me with a hug; she was still a graceful, bird-like woman. I could feel her small bones, and I smelt a pleasing fragrance on her. The man Federico came forward, slightly shyly, and extended his hand. ‘It’s good to meet you,’ he said. It seemed that Christina had at last found a man who delighted in being dominated by her.

‘You’ve done well, Mami,’ I said, taking one of the seats,‘the house … it’s beautiful.’

She accepted the compliment with a smug, affirmative nod, before a pang of melancholy burst in her. ‘You know, your father once said he’d build me a big house here. It was all I ever wanted.’

‘Then I’m glad the money I sent was of good use.’

Christina looked quizzically at me.

‘In a sense Papi did pay for this big house,’ I explained, with a growing sense of foreboding. ‘After all, he bequeathed me the money to go to college, and with my academic job I was able to send you the money …’

Mami laughed and shook her head, brushing a fly from her face.‘Your money … it could not have paid for all this,’ she said, her humor dissolving into tones low and pitying.

‘What?’

‘Renata. It was her
remesa
that paid for this. She sends me the money every week: as regular as clockwork. Lots
and
lots of money. Yes, Renata’s money built this.’ Christina ran her hands over one of the ornate railings in front of the window. ‘She is a success,’ she declared, turning away from me and raising her glass to her lips with a slight smile on her face.

I felt my blood starting to boil in my veins. I had intended to convey my grim news as diplomatically as possible. That urge had now left me. ‘Do you know what she does to make her money?’

‘She is children’s nanny to a very wealthy family in NewYork City.’

‘Nonsense!’

‘It is the truth!’

‘But I have seen her selling herself in Madrid, mother.
Ella estra cuereando en Espania!
’

My mother merely shrugged, as if acknowledging this terror was a minor concession, and looked at me with sunken eyes. She glanced around furtively before dropping her voice.‘If she’d stayed here she would just have given it away for nothing. Which is the greater crime?’

I felt deflated; I would never replace Renata in my mother’s affections. ‘Do you wish for me to keep sending the money?’

A big fake smile spread across Christina’s face. ‘Of course. It all helps.
El dinero de alli rinde aqui
. You are a good girl. A good girl to come home and see your old
mother
! Not like your sister, living
el vida alegra
.’

‘It’s good to see you, Mami,’ I smiled weakly, taking her hands in my lap. It was the most intimate I can recall us being since I was an infant.

Christina whispered to me, ‘You must say nothing of Renata to your Mama Aida: nor to Freda Sanchez. They think she is in NewYork, working hard in a restaurant.’

‘Yes …’ I couldn’t help teasing, ‘… how strange that you’re now such good friends with Freda!’

‘She’s a decent woman,’ Christina said sincerely, and then looked tetchily next door, where children, black pigs and ducks ran around the same tin shack, and a sly, low-belly
viralata
skulked under the feet of Maria Sosa and her sister as they took in some washing, averting their eyes from Christina’s harsh gaze. ‘She is not the problem in this community!’

Federico came back like the pied piper, leading a large group of children. I could see Aida, hobbling behind them, trying to keep up. Christina gleefully pointed out three small boys from the crowd, and introduced them to me. ‘Meet your brothers and nephew!’

Three pairs of ravenous eyes glared at me from the dusky twilight. One half-brother had a harelip and I saw him pinch a young girl with braided hair and a bite mark on her face. The other, a runny-nosed runt, climbed onto my lap, as if on cue. Luis, my father’s grandson, interests me
more
. He stands back, and I can see Papi in him, his big sad eyes ensuring my donations will not stop. I’m not my parents’ insurance policy, my father said, and he was right. But what about those mites, one of whom is his grandson, and who eerily has his look?What insurance will they have?

Mama Aida greeted me; lame from a collision she had with a youth who lost control of his
motoconcho
. I took more greetings then, exhausted from the travel, went inside to lie down in a proper room, on a bed which has been vacated by two of the boys. On the walls in the living room I had been shocked but moved to note framed pictures of me in various graduations; school, bachelors degree and master’s. There were pictures of the children, and some of Renata, but mine took pride of place.

With cool tiles replacing the filthy mat-covered floors under my feet, I fell into bed and the best sleep I have ever had in Cocoseco.

10

Some things will never change: the crowing of the neighbour’s rooster wakes me up. I lie in bed for a while, stretching out, luxuriating, drinking in my new surroundings.
When
I get up and dress, I find that Mami has prepared scrambled eggs for breakfast. She now has a kitchen area with a proper
American
cooker, and the house has a generator. In the dining area, as well as the chairs and tables, there is a television set, DVD player, music system and many CDs. I cannot help but think about Renata, being used like a toilet by filthy strangers, in order that her family can enjoy those luxuries.

After breakfast I take a walk and find myself down by the river. I walk over Papi’s bridge and look down on the slow, muddy Rio Negra trickling down towards its delta, and find it inconceivable that something so puny can wreak such havoc in the rainy season. I am close to the spot where I buried the letter, and my mind races back to that Madrid apartment and Renata’s cruel boasts of her despicable deed. I am moved to investigate. When I remove the big stones and dig, I see some red plastic exposed. Inside the filthy, crumpled bag, I am astonished to find that the letter is still there! Renata did not destroy it. Instead, written as a footnote at the bottom of the page, in big, black capitals are the words:

I WAS HIS DAUGHTER TOO.

And so she was. The child Papi never had much time for, the one who was just an imposition on his busy life.
The
girl of Cocoseco, who would lead a different life to the one from Santo Domingo.

I head into the car and drive to San Juan, spending the day looking around, and then sending emails back to friends in New York and to Mariasela in Madrid, with a heartfelt apology for my behaviour. As I send the last one away, a new correspondence jumps into my inbox. My heart almost stops, as I immediately see that it’s from Renata.

Dearest Elena
,

I beg you to please forgive my terrible behaviour yesterday. I was just so ashamed to be seen by you in the horrible and foul circumstances of what has become my life. I really would like to see you again, but not until I have stopped doing what I am doing
.

I also want you to know that I did not destroy your letter, though I fear that in my anger I may have defaced it. Once again, please forgive me
.

I have sent money back for Mami and for Ramon, Caesar and Luis. But I have kept some money back for myself and I am to marry a Dominican boy who has American citizenship. I hope to see you in NewYork City soon
.

Yours in love
,

Renata
.

I write back immediately, and then she follows, and the communication floods between us for most of the day. Then she has to go back to what she does and, drained, I climb into the car and drive home to Cocoseco.

As the hot sun starts to drift towards the horizon, I see that they’re all gathering around, filling the porch and front yard; producing bottles of Presidente. The men are complimenting me as only Dominican men can, welcoming me home. I’m ensnared in genuine love and affection, and my mother looks at me, then sobs, falling into her own mother’s arms. And I have say that as much as I doubt I can stay here, with Papi’s letter burning in the pocket of my jeans, part of me has been waiting for this moment all of my life. Now I have more letters; those precious emails between the scholar and the prostitute, documenting the remittances that can never be made good.