Because I am a Girl (9 page)

1

ON THIS TRANSATLANTIC
flight from Spain, bile is keening in my guts as I await my arrival in my homeland with a mix of excitement and dread. I am returning to the Dominican Republic after an absence of almost eight years, bearing distressing news of my younger sister, Renata, with whom I had a chance and disturbing encounter in Madrid.

Now it was my duty to convey news of this awful confrontation to my mother, Christina, and to see my Grandmother Aida, as well as meet for the very first time two young half-brothers and nephew.

Mami and I had never enjoyed a good relationship. Christina Mary Rodriguez was a country girl from Cocoseco, a small
campo
in the impoverished south of the country. Cocoseco was the sort of place where girls will take up and have a child with the first motorcycle-riding, card-playing, beer-drinking
mujeriego
that comes their way. Then he will either leave them, or worse, stay and simply become another child to look after. The girl might,
usually
with his blessing, dump the kid with her mother and go to work in one of the tourist hotels in the east, or become a
viajera
in Europe, usually Spain.

Christina was liberated – albeit briefly – from such a fate by the amorous intervention of my urbane and educated father. Jose Santos, a civil engineer from Santo Domingo, was overseeing the construction of the bridge over the Rio Negra as it runs past Cocoseco. The river, like many of the locals, had been displaced by hurricane damage which caused it to burst its banks and re-route itself. Rather than set it back on its old path, the authorities had decided that it was better off where it was, calling in my father to make its new course permanent by shoring up its banks and building a bridge to reconnect Cocoseco with the road to the city of San Juan.

My father was a man of twenty-eight years, from a ‘good’ (translated as wealthy) family, who had studied his chosen profession in America. Despite his schooling, he was still very much a Dominican male, and deferred gratification in matters sexual was not his forte. When he saw the honey-skinned, lithe-limbed Christina with her dark, bewitching eyes walking home from school, Jose was instantly smitten. He moved to talk to her in the way of Dominican men, where a conversation can be practically indistinguishable from a seduction. Still only fifteen, Christina was green enough to be flattered by the attentions of this educated man, a supervisor of what was
regarded
in the
campo
as a work of great progress. I, Elena Rosa Rodriguez, was the product of their congress.

Though Christina’s fallen condition was a far from a rare occurrence in Cocoseco, young girls in our region were usually impregnated by local men, not sophisticated strangers from our capital city. Christina’s mother, my grandmother, Mama Aida Rodriguez, was nonetheless bitterly disappointed. But my father was nothing if not a man of honour. He decided that Christina – and their baby – would live with him back in Santo Domingo in a
union libre
until she was old enough to formally marry him. Mama Aida relented in her opposition when it became clear that a payment would be made to her from my father’s family.

I recall my Papi Jose as a warm and affectionate man, and I would like to think that there was a genuine love between him and the headstrong young Christina, at least at the start of their relationship. Jose found a small, comfortable house with a garden, near the centre of the city, and my mother gave birth to me. Despite the initial appeal of urban life and the challenge of motherhood, Christina soon found that she was isolated in Santo Domingo. She had no mother, grandmother or sisters around her to share the burden of childcare, and Jose’s family had little interest in assisting her on a day-to-day basis. It would be fair to say that they, and in particular his mother, my other grandmother, Mama
Monica
Santos, a poker-faced matriarch, believed Jose had fallen into circumstances beneath him, taking on a
campesino
and her child. Jose was absent too – his work with the transport authority frequently took him on many civil engineering projects outside of Santo Domingo, particularly to the east of the country, where the infrastructure for tourism was being developed.

As a child I have strong recollections of enjoying the days and weeks when Papi came home, only to cry in sorrow when he left us for his work. I commenced school at six, which I loved and was good at, making many friends. Just shortly before this, my sister, Renata Elisabeth, had arrived. What ought to have been a happy event proved a crushing blow for my mother. Christina could no longer cope with her loneliness in the city, and a couple of years later, she announced to my father that she was heading back out to Cocoseco with baby Renata and me. I was so unhappy and confused, as I was settled at my school and loved our life in Santo Domingo.

I cannot truly say how Jose responded to this news. I would hope his reaction was one of despair, and that he tried hard to convince her to stay. Yet honesty compels me to record that his relationship with Christina had severely deteriorated, and I was aware of the blazing rows between them. Later, Mami would claim that he had another woman in the east. I was certainly seeing less and less of him. When he did come home, he would take me to the
cinema
or a museum, then on to a seaside cafe to eat ice cream. ‘I don’t want to go to the south, Papi,’ I would whine.

He would silence me with his jokes and tickling, and say that if I were ever unhappy in Cocoseco or anywhere else, he would come and take me away. Besides, because of his work he would probably see more of me there than he did in the capital. This invariably appeased me as I loved him and never doubted his word.

Mami finally made good her threat to move us to Cocoseco, and I hated it with a vengeance. It sat in a beautiful lush valley, all those magnificent shades of emerald vibrant under a haze of a golden sun which poured down from the almost cloudless blue skies above. A mountain range towered overhead and the air was cool and sweet after the city. Yet this uplifting impression was instantly shattered when we came into the town itself and I felt myself sinking into despair though Mami pumped my hand with glee. It was a settlement of grubby old clay shacks with rusting tin roofs. Barefoot feral children were running around in squalor, along with untethered animals: pigs, goats,
perros
, hens and ducks. Scrawny evil-looking
gatos
lurked in the shadows. Groups of youthful men stood on the corners, fixing motorcycles, hanging around corner bars, drinking beer, playing cards and listening to loud
bachata
music.

Our house was an old broken-down hovel with a ruinous roof which leaked when it rained. Inside it was partitioned with sheets which hung pinned to the rickety overhead wooden beams holding up the creaking roof. My bed was an itchy wooden cot I shared with Renata, in which I sweated and twisted, as mosquitoes grew plump on my blood while the noise of motorcycle engines, music and laughter kept me awake into the small hours. When I drifted into a sick sleep, the shrill belligerent crows of the neighbour’s rooster would tear me into a flaky dawn consciousness. Worst of all, though, was the dirty floor of impacted earth covered by rough straw mats under my poor feet. Renata took to all this easily, she knew little else, but never a day went by that I did not pine for the luxury of our old house in Santo Domingo, with its water, electricity and toilet, and the city’s concrete pavements and tarmac roads.

In Cocoseco, there was one dwelling that stood out from the others in its affluence, and we had the misfortune to be situated right across the street from it, its proximity underscoring our penury. ‘This, of course, is all temporary,’ Christina would boast, ‘Papi is building a new house for us soon.’ I could not wait. I looked across to what we called ‘the good house’, owned by Freda Sanchez, a well-dressed, imperious woman whom Christina detested.

‘Will it be as good as Madame Sanchez’s house, Mami?’

‘Much, much better!’ she would snap as Freda sat on her porch, wearing a superior, self-satisfied expression. ‘Look at her, you know where the money comes from that she rubs in our faces,’ Mami would bark so that she would be heard across the street, ‘
Ella es una quita marido!
’

Freda reciprocated this antipathy, and sometimes they would exchange bitter insults across the street. ‘
Hija de puta!
’ she would shout at Christina.

‘
Mama guevo!
’ was Mami’s inevitable reply.

Mami’s ally in this constant duel was Maria Sosa, who lived next to us with her seven children. They would sit outside, numerous kids at their feet, making up stories about Freda and laughing like hyenas in response to their own wit.

Then, shortly after our departure to Cocoseco, we received news of a terrible event, which was to change our lives for ever. Papi was killed at work. Some say it was a freak accident, while others cited negligent and unsafe work practices. What is certain is that a bulldozer was building up the banking on the side of a road, following a storm which had caused the highway to subside. The machinery toppled over and crushed both Jose Santos and another civil engineer, Ramon Fernandez. My father was killed outright, while Ramon survived but required both his legs to be amputated. The driver of the tractor was
unharmed
. It was the bleakest day of my life: I truly felt as if I had lost everything. Seen through our grief, the smugness on the face of Freda Sanchez seemed more insulting than ever.

2

The weeks following my father’s death were bleak, but then I was to receive some unexpectedly heartening news. The early scholastic promise I had shown had not been lost on Papi, whom, I discovered in delight, had left a trust fund for my education. This was to be posthumously administered by his family, which meant Mama Santos. However, in only two years between her birth and my mother’s defection back to Cocoseco, he had neglected to set up any similar provision for Renata.

It was the news I’d needed to lift me from my debilitating gloom, having previously felt that I would be entombed in this place for ever. I had always tried to study hard, and I maintained a deep loathing for days when I was not in school. However, it was difficult to keep my focus. There was nothing in Cocoseco, or even in the closest city, San Juan, that came anywhere near to the amusements we
had
in Santo Domingo, with its cinemas, theatres, galleries and libraries which I had loved to visit with Papi. When everyone else is having fun, it is not easy to be a scholar. While other girls were thinking about boys, I daydreamed of a library, a place where you could sit all day in divine silence, surrounded by books. But at home there was nothing to do except hang around until Christina chased me from the house into the chaos outside, pronouncing me as abnormal when I got lost in the wonder of a book, usually given to me by my teacher Mina Gomez.

The school in Cocoseco was regarded as one of the best in the region, but to my mind it was primitive and tatty compared to what I had been used to. The students and staff were less motivated and did not attend regularly, though Mina Gomez was a great encouragement to me. Despite her help, I still might have given up, were it not for an extraordinary letter that I learned had been left to me by my father along with the trust fund details. The instructions were to pass it on to me when I graduated from the school, but as my father had died, Mama Santos and her lawyers thought I should receive it immediately.

My dearest Elena Rosa
,

Please believe that my love for you has no boundaries and that you will always be my Princess. Endeavour, always, to remember that education and learning are your friends and that books are your allies in this great journey of life
.

Do not think of Jesus as your friend, and please never believe that having a baby when you are still a child yourself can ever redeem a girl such as you. Do not think that a life of struggle in order to feed the many mouths you might be inclined to bring into this world is a virtue that will sanctify you. It is not and it will not. And please, never ever think of yourself as some sort of insurance policy for either of your parents
.

Be strong and proud, and go and live your life on your own terms
.

Yours always
,

Papi

This letter inspired me, but it caused me much sadness, as I took its existence to mean that Papi had been intending to go far away, perhaps back to the USA. It also presented me with a big problem as I had to keep it hidden from Mami. Had Christina known of it, she would almost certainly have destroyed it out of rage and jealousy. She had received nothing from Jose or his family, and her plans for a dream house were gone for ever. We were condemned to live in the horrible shack.

I buried the letter in a spot by the river, close to what I called Papi’s bridge, enclosing it in a red plastic bag to protect it from the rains. Although every line of it was stored in my head, I needed it as a keepsake. Sometimes my mind would play tricks on me and I’d ask myself, did
he
really say that? and I’d be compelled to go and dig it up to re-examine its contents for affirmation, before re-consigning it to the earth. I guarded my trips to the riverbank jealously – there was no such thing as privacy in Cocoseco.

While I sobbed most nights, Mami had never shown any real sorrow about Papi’s terrible fate. But one day, when I was coming home from school, I saw her standing on the bridge he had built, looking down at the river he had rerouted. I swear there were tears in her eyes. I went to her and hugged her, but she pushed me away, and it was never mentioned again. I suppose she had other things to occupy her with Renata and myself. My sister meanwhile had scant recollection of her father, and had little to remember him by. Unlike me, she thrived in the
campo
.

Although I now looked forward to my goal of university, my existence grew more torturous with every passing day. I seemed to sprout breasts overnight, and every time I ventured outside the boys wouldn’t leave me alone. I grew fearful and depressed by their gestures and remarks: I knew that only fraudulent intent lay behind their idiot grins and trickster words. I didn’t want to sleep with any of them and I certainly didn’t want a baby, unlike so many other girls. But then I learned to be clever: I pretended to be religious. I walked around with a distracted saintly air,
and
slept with a plastic figure of Jesus by my bed. This made me a favourite of Mama Aida, who pronounced me a girl of great virtue and grace. I loved my grandmother, but there was something slightly deranged about her. Sometimes when I went into the house, I would find her sitting alone in the dark, muttering like a lunatic in a thick country dialect I could barely understand.