America's Dream
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HarperCollins e-books
America's Dream
Esmeralda Santiago
Hija fuiste, madre serás, segú hisiste, así te harán.
You were a daughter, mother you will be as you did, so will be done to you.
The Problem with Rosalinda The Man She Could Have Had Fuerza de Puños
Correa’s Gifts Krazy Glue
It’s Not Forever Distant Thunder Five Days a Month I Could Kill Him No Balls
There’s a Phone Call for You Going Blind
I Wonder If He Knows Hungry
Learning Their Ways Asopao
He Likes You Homesick
Las Empleadas A Night Out
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A Walk to the Park Firm but Fair
Happy Bird Day 2 Ju How Correa Knows Margarita Guerra Everybody Has Problems No Coquís
Dingdong
What Happened? América’s Dream Acknowledgments About the Author Cover
Copyright
About the Publisher
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t’s her life, and she’s in the middle of it. On her knees, scrubbing behind a toilet at the only hotel on the island. She hums a bolero,
a love song filled with longing. She’s always humming, sometimes a ballad, sometimes a lilting cha-cha-chá. Often, she sings out loud. Most of the time she’s not even aware of the pleasing music that comes from her and is surprised when tourists tell her how charming it is that she sings as she works.
The tiles are unevenly laid behind the toilet, and she catches a nail on the corner of one and tears it to the quick. “Ay!” Still on her knees, she moves to the sink and runs cold water over her middle finger. The bright pink crescent of her nail hangs by the cuticle. She bites it off, drawing salty blood.
“¡América!”
The scream bounces against the concrete walls of La Casa del Francés. América scrambles up, finger still in mouth, and leans out of the bathroom window. Her mother runs back and forth along the path at the side of the hotel, peering up at the second floor.
“What is it?”
“Ay, nena, get down here!” Ester wails and collapses into a squat, hands over her face.
“What is it, Mami? What’s the matter?” From above, Ester is a circle of color on the path, the full skirt of her flowered housedress a ring around narrow shoulders, brown arms, and pink curlers on copper hair. She rocks from side to side, sobs with the gusto of a spoiled child. For an instant América considers a shortcut through the window. Seeing her mother from above, small and vulnerable, sets her heart racing, and a lump forms in her throat that threatens to choke her. “I’m coming, Mami!” she yells, and she runs through the guest room, down the stairs, around the courtyard, out the double doors of the front verandah, past. the gardenia bushes, through the gate to the side gar-den, and down the path, where Ester still squats, still wails as if the world were coming to an end.
Sleepy guests lean out of their windows or step onto porches, concerned expressions clouding their vacation faces. Don Irving, the owner of the hotel, runs heavily from the back of the building, reaching Ester at the same time as América.
“Whasgononere?” he bellows in English. “What’s all the screaming about?”
“Ay don no!” América kneels next to Ester. “Mami, please!
What’s the matter?”
“¡Ay, mi’ja!” Ester is hyperventilating and can’t get the words out. América’s breathing quickens, and a whirling pressure builds around her head.
“Please, Mami, what is it? What’s happened?”
Ester shakes her head, sprinkling the air with tears. She presses both hands against her chest, as if to control its rising and falling. She gulps air and, in a halting voice that rises to a final wail, gives América the news. “¡Rosalinda se escapó!”
At first she doesn’t quite understand what Ester means by Rosalinda has escaped. Her fourteen-year-old daughter is not a prisoner. But the words echo in her head, and the meaning be- comes clear. América covers her face, squeezes her fingers deep into her flesh, and sobs. “Ay, no, Mami, don’t say such a thing!”
Ester, who has gained some composure now that the problem is no longer hers, wraps her arms around América and rubs
her shoulders, her tears mingling with those of her daughter. “She went with that boy, Taino.”
América stares at Ester, tries to make sense of what she’s heard. But the words and images are distorted, go by too quickly, like a movie in fast-forward. And at the end there’s a pause, a soft- focus portrait of her daughter, Rosalinda, and pimpled Taino with his innocent brown eyes. She shakes her head, trying to erase the picture.
“What the hell’s going on here?” Don Irving stands over them, blowing great gusts of cigar-scented breath. Behind him, Nilda, the laundress, Feto, the cook, and Tomás, the gardener, run up from different directions. They surround América and Ester, and the men help them stand.
“Ees my dohter,” says América, avoiding Don Irving’s eyes. “She in trubel.”
“Rosalinda ran away with her boyfriend,” Nilda interprets, and América cringes with shame.
“Oh, fahcrysakes!” Don Irving spits into the oregano patch. “Geddadehere, c’mon.” He steers the sobbing América and Ester out of earshot of his guests, to the back of the building, where he leaves Feto and Tomás to escort them to the path behind the stables. Don Irving walks back to the front garden, mumbling. “Every day it’s something else. A damn soap opera. Jesus Christ!” He waves at the curious tourists at the windows and porches. “It’s okay, everything’s fine. Relax.”
Supported by Feto and Tomás, América and Ester go in the opposite direction. The tourists stare long after they have all dis- appeared behind the outdoor bar.
América and Ester shuffle home through the path at the rear of La Casa del Francés. Nilda accompanies them, rubbing the shoulders of one, then the other.
“Calm yourselves. If you don’t control your nerves, you won’t be able to help the child,” Nilda reminds them. Her voice vibrates with the joy of a busybody who has stumbled into the middle of the action.
“You can go back, Nilda,” América suggests between sniffles. “We can manage on our own.”
But Nilda is not so easily dissuaded. América is not like other women. She’s not willing to talk about her life, to commiserate with other women about how tough it is. She goes around hum- ming and singing like she’s the happiest person in the world, even though everyone knows different. No, Nilda will not leave her side. It’s not every day she can plunge into América Gonza- lez’s reserve.
“I’ll just get you home and make sure you’re all right,” she in- sists.
América doesn’t have the energy to argue. Her head feels stuffed with cotton. She wants to clear it, to enter into her own brain and figure out what to do. But it’s as if she were facing a door she doesn’t want to open.
Their house is a ten-minute walk from the back gate of La Casa. América walks this path five days a week, once in the early morning and again when her job is done in the late afternoon. It is so familiar, she’s sure she can get home blindfolded if necessary and won’t stumble or step into a ditch or crash against a mango tree or a telephone pole.
But today she’s on the path at a time when she should he mopping the tile floor of one of the guest rooms. Her uniform seems out of place at midmorning, on the way home. The sun is too bright for her to be out on the street. Curious neighbors come to their porches or stop watering their plants to stare, mocking her. She doesn’t look at them, but she knows they’re watching. She feels Nilda, bloated with consequence, between her and Ester, guiding them home, smiling kindly at one, then the other, mumbling worn sayings as if words, and not her legs, impelled her forward.
On the other side of Nilda, Ester whimpers like a hurt puppy. Fifteen years ago it was Ester who had to be found and told that América had run away with her boyfriend. They’ve never talked about that day, and América wonders where Ester was, what she was doing when told that her only child had run away with the handsome young man who had recently come to the barriada to lay pipes for a sewer system.
Thinking about Correa, América’s skin pimples into goose bumps. What will he do when he hears that Rosalinda has run away? She envisions his handsome face redden with anger, his green eyes disappear under thick eyebrows, his nostrils flare over his well-tended mustache. She raises her arms as if to ward off a blow or perhaps to cover her eyes from the sun, and Nilda strokes her shoulders and leads her through the gate Ester left open.
The thirty feet to the front steps are a fragrant gauntlet of roses, and as usual when she goes past them, América sneezes.
“¡Salúd!” Nilda wishes her, and she steers them up the walk, dodging the invading rose branches, whose spines catch in her clothes and hair. At the top of the steps she looks resentfully at the distance separating her from the sidewalk.
“Here we are,” she announces cheerfully, pushing the door open, making herself at home in their house as if she were a fre- quent visitor. “Have a seat, I’ll get you something to drink.” She pulls out chairs for them. América and Ester flop dumbly at op- posite ends of the dining table and stare at the tile floor. In the kitchen, Nilda opens and closes more cabinets than seems neces- sary to find a glass. “Here, this will help you feel better.” She places a tumbler of water over ice in front of each. América drinks in long, thirsty gulps. Ester eyes her drink suspiciously.
The cool water revives América. As she rises, the chair legs scrape angrily against the tiles, making Nilda grimace and cover her ears. Ester emerges from her silence with the attitude of someone who has been rudely awakened from a restful nap.
“Some people should mind their own business,” she says, lurching past Nilda into the kitchen, where she dumps her ice water down the sink.