When I Was Puerto Rican (4 page)

I drifted into a dream in which I climbed a tall tree whose lower branches disappeared the moment I scaled the higher ones. The ground moved farther and farther away, and the top of the tree stretched into the clouds, which were pink. I woke up sweating, my arms stretched over my head and gripping the rope of my hammock. The
quinqué’s
flame threw orange shadows onto the curtain stretched across the room.

Mami and Papi lay in bed talking.

“You haven’t given me money for this week’s groceries.”

The bed creaked as Papi turned away from Mami. “I had to buy materials. And one of the men that works with me had an emergency. I gave him an advance.”

“An advance?!”

Mami had a way of making a statement with a question. From my hammock on the other side of the curtain I envisioned her face: eyes round, pupils large, her eyebrows arched to the hairline. Her lips would be half open, as if she’d been interrupted in the middle of an important word. When I saw this expression on her face and heard that tone of voice, I knew that whatever I’d said was so far from the truth, there was no use trying to argue with her. Even if what I said was true, that tone of voice told me she didn’t believe me, and I’d better come up with a more convincing story. Papi either couldn’t think of another story or was too tired to try, because he didn’t say anything. I could have told him that was a mistake.

“You gave him an advance?! An advance??”

Her voice had gone from its “I don’t believe you” tone to its “How dare you lie to me” sound.

“Monin,” the bed creaked as Papi turned to her. “Can we talk about this in the morning? I need to sleep.”

His voice was calm. When Mami was angry, she argued in a loud voice that reached higher pitches the more nervous she became. When Papi argued, he put all his energy into holding himself erect, maintaining a steady calm that was chilling to us children but had the opposite effect on Mami.

“No, we can’t talk about this in the morning. You leave before the sun comes up, and you don’t show up until all hours, your clothes stinking like that
puta.”

Even when she was very angry, Mami rarely swore or used vulgar language. Papi knew this. It was a clue to how upset she was. He calmly got up and walked to the curtain separating our rooms. I ducked my head back inside my hammock.

“Monin, stop it. You’ll wake the children.”

“Now you’re worried about the children. Why is it that you don’t even think about them when it’s less convenient. When you’re partying with your women and your barroom buddies.” The bedsprings creaked violently as she got up. “Do those
hijas de la gran puta
know you have children in this Godforsaken hellhole? Do they know your children go barefoot and hungry while you spend the misery you earn on them?”

“Monin!”

“Don’t think just because I’m stuck in this jungle all day long I don’t know what’s going on. I’m not stupid.”

Hector woke up with a wail. Papi raised the flame on the lamp while Mami reached into Hector’s hanging cradle and lifted him out. Delsa and Norma whimpered from their side of the room. I didn’t have to pretend to sleep anymore, so I sat up and watched their silhouettes through the curtain. Mami changed Hector’s diaper with such rough movements, I worried she’d stick a pin into him. Papi stood at the window, looking at where a view would have been if the window were open.

“Look, I don’t know who you’ve been talking to, but I don’t want to hear it anymore.”

He dressed. Mami lifted Hector to her shoulder and paced, bouncing him up and down to get him to go to sleep.

“You don’t come home until after dark ... if you come home at all. And weekends, instead of working on this hovel you call a house, you take off with one excuse or another. You have no shame! I’m sick of it.”

“Well, I’m sick of it too! Do you think I like hearing you complain all the time? Or that I want to hear about how much you hate it here, and how much better life was in San Juan, and how backward Macún is? I’m sick of it! I’m sick of you!”

He stomped out, probably just to give Mami time to cool off, which was his way of fighting her. But I thought he was leaving us. “Papi!! Don’t go. Please, Papi, stay!” I shrieked. When they heard me, Delsa and Norma joined in, and Hector, who was almost asleep in spite of my mother’s yelling near his ear, screeched.

“See what you’ve done!” Mami hollered into the dark yard. “Some father you are, running off on your own children!”

She threw Hector into his cradle and tore Papi’s clothes off their hangers by the bed. “Sick of me? Well, I’m sick of you too.” She tossed his clothes out the door, grabbed a pitcher of water from the table, and splashed it on them. Then she bolted the door, took Hector out of his cradle, and sat on her rocking chair, nursing him. Tears streamed down her cheeks into the grooves at the corners of her lips. “You kids shut up and go back to sleep,” she yelled. None of us dared get out of our hammocks. We hunkered into them, stifling our sobs. For a long time I listened for Papi. For his voice asking Mami to forgive him, or for his footsteps outside the house. But I fell asleep to the sound of Mami’s rocking chair creaking, and her sobs, soft and low like the miaow of a kitten.

The next morning Papi’s clothes were scattered in the front yard. They were damp, stained with the muddy tracks of toads and iguanas. As she waited for the coffee water to boil, Mami picked them up and took them to the tub under the avocado tree. That afternoon, when Papi came home, they’d all been washed.

Another day they were arguing, and I heard Mami accuse Papi, as she often did, of seeing another woman behind her back when he said he was going to see
Abuela.

“For God’s sake, Monin. You know I have no interest in Provi. But how can you object to my wanting to see Margie?” Papi asked.

“I know it’s not Margie you want to see. It’s her mother.”

“Monin, please. That’s been over for years.”

And on they went, Mami accusing Papi and Papi defending himself. When they’d reached a truce and I had a few moments alone with Papi, I asked him, “Who’s Margie?”

He looked at me with a scared expression.

“She’s my daughter,” he said after a pause. My heart shrank. Having to share my father with Delsa, Norma, and Hector was bad enough. I waited for him to say more, but he didn’t. He sat on a stump and stared at his hands, calloused where the hammer and saw handles rubbed against his skin. He looked so sad, it made me want to cry. I sat next to him.

“Where does she live?”

He seemed to have just remembered I was there. “In Santurce.”

“How old is she?”

“Just a year older than you.”

An older sister! I’d wondered what it would be like not to be the oldest, the one who set an example for the little ones.

“How come she’s never been to see us?”

“Her mother and your mother don’t get along.”

That much I’d figured out. “You can just bring her sometime. Her mother doesn’t have to come.”

Papi sighed then chuckled. “That’s a good idea,” he said and stood up. “I have to get some work done. Can you help me mix concrete?”

I poured the water for him while he stirred cement and sand together. I asked him many questions about Margie, and he answered them in short phrases that didn’t tell me much. If we were talking about her and Mami came near, he’d put his hand to his mouth so I’d quiet, and we’d work in silence until she was out of earshot.

At night I tried to imagine what Margie looked like. I envisioned her skin the same carob color as my father’s, her eyes as black and her lips as full as his. Her hair kinky like his, not lanky like mine. I imagined her voice to be musical, lilting, the way his was when he read poetry to us.

What times we could have if we were together! She’d be someone I could have fun with, not be responsible for. She’d be able to keep up with me when we ran across the field. She’d climb a tree without being helped. We could play hide-and-seek in the jungled back yard. We’d climb the fence behind the house and steal into Lalao’s grapefruit grove to fill our faces with the bittersweet pulp while juice dribbled down our chins and our fingers got sticky. I swayed in my hammock dreaming about Margie, determined to talk my mother into asking Papi to bring her to live with us.

The next day I stood on a stool while Mami pinned the hem on my school uniform.

“Mami, why don’t you like Margie’s mother?”

“Who?”

“Provi, my sister Margie’s mother.”

“Negi, I never want to hear you mention that woman’s name again, you hear me?”

“But Mami ...”

“I mean it.”

“But Mami ...”

“Stand still or I’m going to have an accident with these pins.”

I stood still as a statue while she finished.

Papi dipped his trowel into the cement mud in the wheelbarrow by his side and slapped the mud onto a foundation block.

“Papi, are you going to bring Margie to see us?”

“I don’t know.”

He stacked another cinder block and scraped the ooze that came out the sides and bottom.

“She can sleep with me.”

“Negi!” Mami sat just inside the door of the house sewing. “Leave your father alone.”

“I was just asking a question.”

“Get away from there and go play with your sisters. Now!”

Papi looked at Mami from the shadow of his straw hat. He tipped the brim up and pointed to the pyramid of cinder blocks by the front gate. “Can you bring me one of those?”

I looked at Mami. She stared at Papi, not at me, her needle suspended above green fabric.

“Can you try it?” Papi said softly.

It was heavy and slipped from my fingers, almost crushing my toe.

“Ave María,
Pablo, don’t abuse her. She’s just a kid.”

“I think she can do it,” he shot back at her.

He turned the block so that I could hold it along the sides, where there was a place to grab onto. The rough edges scraped against my legs and belly. It was heavy and awkward, but I managed to carry it over next to the wheelbarrow and drop it.

“Can I bring another one?” I asked, rubbing my hands against my teeshirt. They smarted from the weight and the grooves that the block had dug into my skin.

“No, I can manage.” He carried two blocks stacked one atop the other, set them down carefully, then stood with hands on hips, his back arched, eyes closed, head thrown back so that his Adam’s apple bulged from his neck.

“I can’t bring Margie to see you because she’s moved to
Nueva York.”

Mami took in a breath. “When?”

He lifted his arms over his head, stretched up, and floated them slowly to his hips, where they stayed as if he were posing for a picture. Mami watched him for a while then took her sewing inside the house.

“You didn’t say she was leaving,” I whined, and it seemed that Papi finally realized that all our talk about Margie was not just my natural curiosity but something more. He turned sad eyes on me, kneeled, and hugged me. As he grieved on my shoulder, I wanted nothing more than for Papi to go on losing people he loved so that he’d always turn to me, so that I alone could bring him comfort.