Almost a Woman : A Memoir (9780306821110) (31 page)

“Regina lent them to me. They were her mother's.”

“Take them off,” she shrieked. She lurched toward me, about to remove them from my neck. I covered them with my hand. “Pearls bring tears,” she warned.

“Ay, Tata, stop with your superstitions.” The pearls felt warm against my neck.

“They bring tears,” she repeated, “especially if they're someone else's. And a dead woman's!” She came at me again. I ducked into my room and closed the door. The pearls felt lovely. There was no way I'd believe they brought tears. All I had to do was listen to the laughter on the other side of the door.

I thought it might be awkward to see Sidney the following week, but he was away for the first three days, and by the time he returned, I was in love with Otto.

Otto was a big man, with golden skin and hair, a deep voice that rumbled out of a barrel chest. We locked eyes when I went to deliver the mail in the International Department. For the rest of the morning, we exchanged glances across the blue-gray fluorescence of the office. He disappeared at lunch but was there when I came to pick up the outgoing mail from his desk.

“You are Esmeralda, yes?” he asked. The way he pronounced my name, the yes at the end of the sentence, was like a song that repeated in my brain for hours. “I am Otto,” he said. I stretched my hand to shake, and he held on to it, squeezed it gently before releasing it. I almost melted on the spot. He handed me a stack of letters addressed to Germany. I thanked him and continued my rounds, aware that he watched me. Although I'd always resented it when men brazenly scanned my body, I welcomed it from Otto, made sure to stay within his sight the whole time I picked up the mail. That night I fantasized about what it would feel like to be in Otto's arms and continued to dream about him over the days that he didn't return to the office.

Christmas blinked red and green in the neighborhoods of New York City. At home, we folded notebook paper into triangles, then cut out fanciful shapes to create snowflakes. Hector carried Raymond on his shoulders as he taped the snowflakes to a corner of the ceiling. Don Carlos lifted Franky up to impale a blonde angel atop the Christmas tree. Tinsel tears dripped over the plastic branches laden with fragile balls in brilliant colors.

It was an abundant Christmas. Everyone in our household old enough to work had a job. Sundays vibrated with the thump-thump-thump of relatives climbing the three flights of stairs to our apartment. Most of them carried wrapped boxes to be placed under the tree, near which the younger kids kept watch as if the bounty might disappear if left unguarded for a few minutes.

La Muda and Gury came up one day with a bag of clothes, which Delsa, Norma, and I divided among ourselves, since Mami was pregnant and couldn't fit into any of them. From the bottom I pulled out a pale pink chiffon and taffeta party dress, the cuffs of its long sleeves and modestly scooped collar dotted with pearly beads.

“Is it bad luck,” I grinned toward Tata, “to wear these pearls?”

“Not the fake ones,” she chuckled, and La Muda gestured snipping off the collar and sleeves of the dress to indicate that if the pearls were real, I'd have a sleeveless dress with a very low neckline.

“You can wear it to the dance at the Armory,” Mami suggested, and my sisters and I cheered, because we hadn't been dancing in months.

Sometimes I met Alma, and we spent hours on Fifth Avenue, among tourists who shoved and pushed each other before the elaborate displays the stores put on to lure us inside. When it came to spending our money, however, Alma and I went to Herald Square, where our salaries stretched further. One day, as we browsed the shoe bin in Ohrbach's basement, I looked up to a familiar face. I froze, struck by the sight of Greta Garbo bent over a stack of flat gillies at 30 percent off. She wore a black turtleneck and coat, her pale, angular face luminous under the brim of a soft black hat. When she felt me stare, she turned and disappeared in the crowd. By the time I signaled to Alma, Garbo was a memory.

That week I went to a hairdresser and had my shoulder-length hair cut blunt to chin level and parted in the middle, like Garbo's. I bought a black felt cloche, which I pulled over my ears, trying to duplicate the effect of Garbo's soft hat. It was useless, I looked nothing like her, and all the hat did was squish my hair. When I took it off, it looked as if I'd been wearing a bowl over my head.

The presents I bought were stored at Alma's, so that my family wouldn't discover what Santa Claus-Negi was to bring them. In Titi Ana's apartment, Christmas was observed quietly, with a few strands of colored lights around the windows, a small tree by the television set, a modest pile of gifts wrapped in bright paper. I spent the night in the small room off the kitchen thirty yards from the elevated train tracks. After Titi Ana, Alma, and Corazón went to bed, I stood at the window and watched trains rattle past. The people inside were ghosts, gray specters framed in darkness. Their anonymity made me homesick for the warmth of our noisy apartment. I crawled into bed, lonesome and invisible behind the lace curtain of Titi Ana's window.

The dance at the Armory was on a Sunday night. We stayed until the band played its last note, then had an early morning breakfast at a diner. Back home, I had just enough time to shower, change into daytime clothes, and head back into the city and my job at Fisher Scientific. Only half awake, I stumbled through the morning until Ilsa suggested I go home and get some rest. It was already dark as I walked to the subway station, strangely quiet for midafternoon. The cold air revived me just enough to keep me upright. My feet, sore from hours of
salsa
and
merengue
in high heels, throbbed with every step.

I was about to cross Hudson Street when someone grabbed me from behind and pulled me back to the sidewalk. I struck back with my elbow, hitting my attacker in the face, and started in the opposite direction, but stopped as a truck barreled past. Then I realized the man behind me was trying to keep me from being run over. When I turned around, there was Otto, his fingers pressed to his lips.

“Oh, my God, I'm so sorry!”

“I thought I was a hero.” He tried to smile but the cut on his lip hurt.

“There's a little blood on the side.” I offered a tissue, but he bent his face in my direction. I was too embarrassed to look him in the eye as I wiped the blood off the rapidly swelling lip. “You need ice.”

“There's a coffee shop,” he said, guiding me in its direction.

As we walked, his hand at my elbow, I wished the previous night hadn't been so much fun. My eyes were swollen from lack of sleep, my hair, in its Garbo cut, stuck out in frizzy curls because I hadn't had time to wash and straighten it. I'd worn no makeup, had grabbed the first thing I reached in my closet—the suit I'd worn on my date with Sidney—which made me look, I now realized, like a nun in street clothes.

But Otto didn't care. We sat across from each other at a window booth. “Charming,” he kept saying, and I had no idea how to respond except to stammer “Thank you,” which he found even more endearing.

Unlike Sidney, Otto wasn't easy to talk to, because his accent was heavy, his grammar confusing, and the pack of ice at his lips caused him to mumble. He liked restaurants or restoring, cooking or küchen, Audubon or autobahn. After many attempts, I understood he wanted me to go to a Christmas party with him at his sister's house in Long Island.

“I have to ask my mother,” I said, embarrassed that at eighteen I needed permission to go to a party.

“Charming,” he repeated.

He walked me to the train, and on the way to Brooklyn, I remembered his strong hands on my shoulders. He'd saved me from being run over by a truck. It was the most romantic thing that had ever happened to me.

“Not alone!” Mami said, when I asked her if I could go to Long Island with Otto.

“It's to his sister's house.”

“I don't care if you're going to see the pope. You can take one of your brothers with you, or one of your sisters. But you're not going that far alone with a man I've never met.” No argument could persuade her that I was old enough to take care of myself.

Regina sympathized with my problem and came up with the perfect solution. “I will come,” she suggested. Although Mami had never met Regina, she agreed that a young woman who had been so recently orphaned and had picked the unflattering navy blue suit as appropriate wear for a date was the perfect chaperone. Otto thought it was a wonderful idea that Regina come with us. His cousin Gilbert needed a date for the party.

“He will like your friend,” Otto assured me, and the date was fixed.

He offered to pick me up in Brooklyn, which I knew would impress Mami. The evening of the party, Don Carlos and Don Julio decided to stay home, doubtless at Mami's suggestion. Dressed in his black suit, Don Carlos sat across the kitchen table from Don Julio, also dressed up in a pressed shirt and new pants. They were joined by Hector and Raymond, the two oldest boys in
the family, their faces scrubbed, hair newly washed and combed back. I dreaded the moment Otto would walk into this pitiful attempt to protect my virtue.

I was ready twenty minutes before Otto was to arrive. My intention was to introduce him to everyone and then get out of there as fast as possible.

When Otto and Gilbert appeared at our door, however, it was clear that it would take longer to leave than I had planned. They dominated the room—two large, Teutonic men who spoke little English. They wore suits, which, rather than make them look respectable, added to their bulk, their maleness. Mami frowned and exchanged a look with Tata, who smiled vaguely and left the room to attend to a screaming Charlie.

Otto handed me an orchid in a plastic box. I pinned it on myself because there was no way I was going to let him get that close in front of Mami. The concern on her face was worrisome. I wished Otto and Gilbert had picked up Regina on the way so that Mami wouldn't envision me alone in a car with two men for so long as a second. But it was too late. Don Carlos, who spoke good English, managed to get a phone number and address for where we'd be. He handed Otto his business card, made him take down our phone number—as if I didn't know it—while Mami made sure I had identification on me.

“
Por favor
, Mami,” I pleaded, “you're embarrassing me.”

“What do you mean embarrassing you?” she asked, her voice rising enough for Otto and Gilbert to take their eyes off Don Carlo's green lenses and look in our direction. Mami smiled at them, then turned to frown on me.

“We better go,” I suggested, avoiding her gaze, “or Regina will think we're lost.” I hoped that mention of Regina would remind Mami I had a chaperone and that she'd relax a bit.

“Call when you get there,” Mami said, as she watched us trudge down the stairs in silence.

Otto and Gilbert spoke German to one another, laughed. I waited for a translation, but none came. Before climbing into
Gilbert's car, I looked up. My entire family was at the window, surrounded by blinking Christmas lights.

Maybe this was a mistake. These two men I barely knew could drive me somewhere, rape me, throw me off a bridge. I couldn't relax the entire drive to Lefrak City, where we were to pick up Regina. It didn't register when Otto mentioned that Gilbert and Regina had already been out on a date until we parked in front of her building and she ran out. She looked spectacular, dressed in a form-fitting dress under a fur, spike heels, her mother's pearls gleaming at her throat. Her perfume invaded the car, a flowery scent that lingered in the air.

“Wow,” I commented, and she laughed.

“Is not every day I go to party,” she said, and even the men were delighted with the happiness in her voice.

Otto's sister lived in a street of identical houses behind broad lawns. Santa Claus, reindeer, elves, and miniature carolers vied for attention with thousands of tiny lights on the roofs, eaves, and window shutters of almost every house. Something about the neighborhood was familiar. Then I remembered that Archie and Veronica, Betty, Reggie, and Jughead strolled along an identical street, without the decorations, in the comic books I'd devoured during my first year in Brooklyn.