Handbook for an Unpredictable Life: How I Survived Sister Renata and My Crazy Mother, and Still Came Out Smiling (with Great Hair) (3 page)

My cousins would put me in the middle of the floor to show off my dancing skills. I was too shy to do it if there were too many people. It would scare me, and I would stay close to Tia. But if it was just a few friends, or people I was familiar with, the ham and cheese would come out and I’d take center stage, doing my little ditty.

By the age of two, I was starting to complete full sentences (most two-year-olds only use two- to three-word sentences, thank you very much!) and pointing to words and saying them out loud while the very few children’s books Tia had around—like
Fun with Dick and Jane
—were read to me and to the new baby Lorraine by my cousins and our babysitter—a Jewish woman and friend of Tia’s named, of all things, Rosie. Lorraine’s arrival was another telenovela tale that will come later. And speaking of
telenovelas
, I’d walk up to the television and point to the familiar Spanish soap opera characters, saying their names too.

I loved watching movies with Tia. She loved classic American film noir and Westerns. She told me that when I was two and three I also loved musicals and comedies. She would lie on her side, rubbing her feet together, with me lying next to her—or, my favorite position, on top of her—watching Shirley Temple or Bob Hope. I loved Bob Hope. Singing was another favorite thing we’d do together, especially the Beatles and Shirley Temple tunes (“Animal
crackers in my soup, Monkeys and rabbits loop the loop …”). Tia had a horrible singing voice, but I thought she sang like a bird.

The best memory I have from that period is when I was three. It’s in bits and pieces, but Tia later filled in the parts I couldn’t remember. It was a hot Sunday in summertime, and all of the girls were out, hanging on the block with the other Puerto Rican and Hasidic kids. Tia was in the kitchen, making the early Sunday dinner, which was usually served at four o’clock. The house smelled like
pollo guisado
(a Puerto Rican criolla-style chicken stew made from a saucy red
sofrito
, a liquid blend of green peppers, garlic, onions, cilantro,
culantro
, and tomatoes), and it was so hot from all the pots boiling on the stove that the walls started to sweat. All the windows were open. Tia’s permed hair started to kink up. I was lying on the kitchen floor with just my diaper on, not making a peep. My behavior was disturbing her: I wasn’t sucking my thumb, like usual, and I was being strangely quiet.

Tia picked me up, took off my diaper, and washed me down in the kitchen sink with her hands. My eyes started to close from the relief of the cold water. She toweled me off and carried me into her bedroom to put on a new diaper. She went back into the kitchen, leaving the French doors open so she could still see me.

I slipped off the bed, wanting to follow her, but the room was so cool from the breeze crossing through the rooms. I stayed standing next to the edge of the bed with my head lying on top, sucking my thumb and rubbing my fingers on the little peach balls on her bedspread. My head was turned in a way so that I could still see her, over the stove, cooking. She turned to me and smiled. I was in heaven. I felt loved, safe, cool, and clean.

I felt like that most of the time in Tia’s house. Outside of my screaming fits, the only time that I had conflicted memories was when Tio Ismael would come around.

Tio Ismael, as I knew him when I was a baby, would visit the
house often. Well, often enough for me to remember him. He was always in a suit and tie, or in his army jacket—always clean. He was so curious to me. I was attracted to him like a magnet was pulling my attention toward him. I always had this urge to touch his big, brutal Taino nose, his coarse, curly hair, or his bottom lip that teardropped down whenever he smiled. And he smelled good, but different. There weren’t a lot of men around our house, so the male scent was perplexing and titillating.

Tio Ismael was always happy to see me, but would cry whenever he’d pick me up, which would then make me cry. Tia was always right there to scoop me up in her arms if I began to get upset by him. After a while, I became afraid of him. He was so jumpy and stared at me all the time. When he’d come into a room, I’d run on my tiny feet to Tia, quietly grabbing at her big, cottage-cheesy thighs, screaming, “Mommie! He scares me,” with my eyes still glued to his.

•   •   •

Three years had passed. I was happy and loved. Then my mother reappeared, out of nowhere. Millie, who was about twelve years old at the time, answered the door. Her mouth fell to the floor.

“Doña Lydia!” she gasped. “Mommie!” she screamed as she bolted down the hallway.

She ran to Tia. The house went quiet. Tia nervously picked me up and walked over to the door.

“
Hola
, Lydia.
Como tu tas?
” Tia nervously asked with a forced, polite smile.

Tia told me that when I turned and saw my mother’s face, I immediately reached for her. Unbeknownst to me, this broke Tia’s heart, but she concealed her pain. Lydia grabbed me up in her arms.

“I came for the baby,” she said nonchalantly, with a casual smile.
“Thank you for taking care of her, Minguita. I must go. I have a lot of things to do. Wave good-bye, say, ‘Bye, bye, Tia.’ ”

“Tia”? Who’s Tia? I immediately knew something was wrong. I saw Tia’s tears roll down from her eyes, and then she screamed a scream that jolted me to my core. I started screaming too. I reached back out to Tia. Tia reached for me too.

“Let’s go, Rosamarie,” my mom said as she snatched me away from Tia’s reach. “Come with Mommie.”

Mommie? She’s not my mommie—Mommie’s my mommie. Confusion flooded my head and frightened my heart. Lydia rushed with me down the hallway, while Tia and my cousins followed right behind her. At the door, my aunt fell to her knees, grasped her hands together, and pleaded.

“
Ay, por favor
, Lydia! Don’t take her. I beg you.
Yo te’dinero!
[I’ll give you money].
Algo! Algo!
[Anything! Anything!]
Por favor! Please! Don’t take my baby!
”

“My baby!”
That was the wrong thing to say to a crazy person. Lydia’s face contorted with hate, resentment, pain, guilt, and revenge. She quickly turned and was out the door, slamming it behind her. Tia screamed a scream that was heard throughout the building. She grabbed her heart, fell to her knees, and went into cardiac arrest—literally. My cousin Titi rushed to the neighbors’, banging and screaming on the door, pleading for someone to call an ambulance.

SAINT JOSEPH’S Catholic Home for Children in Peekskill, New York, was fifty miles north of the city. “The Home” was situated on the edge of the Hudson, along the Metro-North train tracks, right up the hill from the train station. The campuslike compound, consisting partly of medieval-looking stone buildings and partly of plain cement buildings, sat on eight sparsely green, hilly acres.

I don’t remember the ride up to the Home. I don’t remember how many days had gone by since Lydia took me from Tia. I don’t even remember if I went to Lydia’s house or if she took me straight up to the Home. I just remember finding myself sitting in the “Baby Girls” playroom, seated on Lydia’s lap across from an old lady with a funny scarf on her head. She looked like those church ladies in the old black-and-white movies Tia and I used to watch. Lydia was talking to the old lady—in a calm way, negotiating a deal, but also like a victim, acting as if she didn’t want it to happen.

I started to get scared. I was fidgeting, looking around at this unfamiliar place. There were other ladies with the same thing on their heads, along with some young women dressed in regular clothes, leading other tiny kids around who were formed into lines. Some stole glances at me. A couple of men with dark robes on came in. They made me more scared than I already was. I didn’t want to be there. Lydia kept bouncing me up and down on her legs, trying to calm me. I tried to wiggle out of her arms. Then she shook me, hard, and I went still. I had never been spanked,
punished physically, ever. That was the first time I began to fear her wrath.

All of a sudden, we were walking into another room, with an open door that led outside.
Oh
, I thought,
it’s all going to be over
. Next thing I knew I was being handed over to the old lady with the scarf on her head as Lydia continued out the open door, waving good-bye to me, with tears streaming from her eyes. Were the tears sincere? Who knows. I started to scream, reaching my arms out to her, pleading for her to take me with her.

“Don’t you worry, Mrs. Perez, we will take good care of her. Say good-bye to your mother, Rosemary,” Sister Mary-Domenica cheerfully said.

Mother? Who is this lady? And why is everyone calling her that? She’s not my mother. Mommie’s my mother. What’s going on? My heart started racing. The door shut behind Lydia, and she was gone. In that moment, I became a ward of the state of New York and the “property” of the Catholic Church.

•   •   •

“Shh! Now stop that crying. It’s all right,” Sister Mary-Domenica said as she was trying to wipe my tears away. “I said now stop that. You don’t want to get a spanking, young lady, now do you?” Her tone was seemingly nice yet I detected a tinge of meanness. I stopped crying—sort of, sniffling up my snot, still looking toward that door. The younger ladies with the scarves on their heads watched what was happening with reluctant pity.

One of them reached out and took me in her arms and said, “I’ll take her, sister.” “Thank you, Sister Ann-Marie,” replied Sister Mary-Domenica.

Sister? Why are they calling each other “sister”?

“Come on, Rosemary. Let me take you to your bed,” Sister
Ann-Marie said to me as she set me down on the floor. “Would you like to see where you’re going to sleep?”

Rosemary? Why was she calling me that?

Sister Ann-Marie was petite, with a hint of blond hair peeking out from her habit. Her voice was soft and high-pitched. She led me up three steps into a dormitory filled with small bunk beds, all in a row. The room was painted a kind of baby blue and was dark, as if the lights were dimmed, even though it was still midday afternoon. There were other girls in the dormitory, ranging from infants to five-year-olds. Some heads turned to take a look at the new kid. Others ignored me, as if the arrival of a new kid was routine.

Sister Ann-Marie pointed to the upper bunk. “This is going to be your new bed, Rosemary,” she explained. “Let’s get your sheets.” She led me to a large closet where all the linens and clothes were set up in bins with each of the girls’ names on them. “Do you know how to make your bed yet?” she asked.
Do I know how to make my bed? I’m three, lady!
“I’m going to show you the first time; next time you’re going to do it all by yourself.”

She showed me how to make a bed, military style, with the bottom sheet tight as hell and the top sheet folded in neat, tight, perfect angles at the corners. Are you kidding me? I have to do it the exact same way? Did you get that fact that I’m still just three years old? Haven’t aged yet the whole two hours I’ve been here.

I guess my feelings showed on my face because I caught this girl sitting on top of her bunk directly next to mine, snickering. I was in too much of a state of shock to snicker back.

“Cindy!” Sister Ann-Marie snapped. “Stop that right now or you will get a spanking, or be put on punishment again, right away!”

“Yes, Sister Ann. I mean, Marie, I mean, Ann-Marie, I mean—”

Sister Ann-Marie cut her off and snapped again. “Stop it, Cindy!”

She turned her attention back toward me. “Dinner will be in a few minutes. I’ll see you later,” she said quickly, and she was gone.

I climbed up on the bunk and just sat there, numb, shocked, eyes and nose swollen from crying. I couldn’t even suck my thumb. I didn’t know what was going on! I wanted Tia. I wanted Millie. I wanted Cookie and Lorraine and Titi. I wanted to lay my head on Tia’s peach bedspread with the little peach balls. Then I looked over at the other little girls, and for some reason I knew that I was here to stay. Maybe it was the way they looked back at me with such somber eyes. That’s when my heart really started to break.

“Hi! I’m Cindy. What’s your name?” the weirdo girl asked. She talked so fast too.

“Wosie,” I quietly replied. (I had a speech impediment, and that’s how I pronounced my name—cute for a while, not so cute past the age of six. And yes, for the record, it lasted to some extent until I was ten!)

“I’m four and a half. How old are you?” she asked.

I shrugged, looking down at my hands. “I’m three. Nice to meet you, Cindy.”

She cracked up in my face. I didn’t understand why she was laughing at the time. Tia always taught us proper manners. I later came to understand that her proper etiquette was only used around the nuns and priests. Kids interacted on a more casual level.

Cindy was strange, seemed mature for her age, but I liked her instantly. I couldn’t express it because I was too paralyzed with fear and confusion. Her kinky light brown hair was crazy, uncombed, and sticking up like a mad scientist’s. She was skinny as a bone, with knobby knees and a dirty face that could have been mistaken for a boy’s.

Two younger ladies came in. They both wore conservative knee-length dresses with conservative low-heeled shoes.

“Dinnertime! Line up!” one of the ladies announced loudly.

“Come on, Rosie, we gotta get in line or the nuns will spank the bejesus outta you,” Cindy said, in a happy panic.

Nuns? Is that what they are? Cindy grabbed my hand, pulling me off the bunk. I fell and hit my head. Cindy started cracking up again. “Oh my God, you hit your big forehead. You okay? Come on. Hurry!”

All the little girls quickly formed a straight line. “All right, girls, let’s go!” said the nicely dressed lady who looked much younger than the older nun. We started to march down the small steps, past the room where my mother had been with me, through a different door, into a dark, small hallway, through another door, down a long corridor, into a cafeteria filled with a bunch of round tables with tablecloths and place settings on each of them. We were led to two sets of tables. Cindy motioned for me to sit next to her. I did so. I was still stunned, not uttering a word. A bunch of ladies, some with white scarves on their heads, some without, placed plates of food at each setting.