The Revolution of Evelyn Serrano (17 page)

“Yes, I do.”

“Then why do you want people to be different from the way they are?”

“But she just waved good-bye.”

“Waved good-bye? Are you kidding? I saw her wave good-bye to me a million times when I was a girl. Every time she saw me, she waved good-bye!” Then she reached into her bag and pulled out a piece of
tapete
and dabbed my
cut. “You better get used to seeing her wave good-bye. It is what she does the best.”

My crying was harder than ever now.

“Look, not everyone can do everything you want, or be the way you like. She is what she is, and now she must be with the Young Lords, and I must be with you. That's it.
Eso es todo.
”

Mami took a deep breath. “Don't be like me. Don't expect her to do things she cannot do. Don't be like me when I was your age.”

By the time we got to the emergency entrance of the Flower Hospital, I knew I was being exactly like her.

I wanted my Mami.

T
he doctor told me that some hair on my eyebrow probably wouldn't grow back. The cut was one and a half inches long, about an inch of it over my eyebrow. The scar would remind me of the Young Lords for the rest of my life. I knew we would never know who threw that bottle. Probably some sorry Barrio maniac using his favorite way of communication.

When we got to the hospital we had to wait in the emergency room. Mami called my stepfather at the
bodega
, and he must've flown over to the hospital he got there so fast.

“¿Qué pasó, mija?”
he cried as soon as he saw me, crushing me in his arms, his eyes glistening.

“Papi, where's your coat? It's cold out there.”

“
¿Qué?
Huh?”

“She's okay,” said my mother, trying to calm him down.
“Una botella …”

Papi cursed the heavens silently by shaking his fist toward the sky.

“I'm okay, Papi, really, I don't hurt so much as before.” But I did hurt as much as before. I hurt more than before. I hurt that Abuela hadn't come to the hospital with us. But I put that hurt away so I could deal with what was happening to my face now.

After we calmed Papi down long enough for him to go back to the
bodega
and my head was sewn up tight, I was to be surprised one more time by the events of the day. My cheap Mami sprang for a cab to take us home.

The arrests were all over by that time. Just snow and litter flying around, making the streets of
El Barrio
seem empty, like the hollowness I felt inside.

Mami made me a hot chocolate as soon as we got in the door. I was so tired I practically fell asleep drinking it. She insisted I go to my room and take a nap, and for once, I listened to her. I wanted to talk about Abuela, but Mami stroked my brow, saying, “Go to sleep; we'll talk later.”

When I woke up, it was dark outside, though it was only four thirty in the afternoon.

“Mami?”

She rushed into my room.

“How are you feeling?”

“Good.” I yawned.

Mami noticed that a little bit of blood had seeped out of my cut and stained the pillowcase.

“I'll change the pillowcase.” Then, “You know — it's time to change the sheets anyway. You sleep better on nice fresh
sábanas
. I'll get them.”

Mami didn't really have to change the sheets; she just wanted to do something for me, so I let her. She liked doing stuff for me the way Abuela liked doing stuff for the world. I began to help her take off the old sheets, but she tried to stop me.

“Mami, let me. I want to help.”

“No, I can do this; don't worry.”

“But I want to.”

I could almost see her weighing the possibility of giving up her slave status, and then I thought about how what my stepfather had said was true. Except for throwing out the garbage, I barely helped Mami around the house. If I didn't want a slave mother, I had to stop treating her like one. Finally she said, “Okay.”

We each grabbed two corners of the clean sheet and flung it into the air, letting it land softly on the bed. Mami smiled at me as we tucked in the corners.

“Did Abuela teach you how to make a bed?”

“¡Muchacha, no!”
She laughed. “The few times she stayed a few days visiting me when I was little, I could see she was a terrible housekeeper.”

“You're right. Her house is always a mess.”

“That's okay, she's good at other things.”

“Like what?”

“A good teacher and a
gran patriota
.”

“A patriot? You mean like George Washington?”

“
Sí
, in a way. She cares so much about all the people.”

“How about caring about just one granddaughter?”

And as if Abuela had heard us talking about her and wanted in on the conversation, she appeared at my bedroom door, startling us both.

“You two left the door open.”

She was flushed, excited, waving around the latest edition of the
New York Times
. “I see you are all right! Thank goodness! Just a little cut on the head.”

“Ten stitches,” I said.

“Oh yes, but look in the paper. Look! It was so emotional when the buses came and took the Young Lords away. We all yelled,
‘Que viva Puerto Rico libre,'
and some of us sang
‘Qué bonita bandera.'
” At that, her eyes welled up with tears.

“¿Quieres café?”
Mami offered, putting her arm around her mother.

“No, no, I'm okay. Listen to this….”

“Come to the kitchen to tell us,” said Mami.

We followed Mami with Abuela reading all along:

“‘The eleven-day occupation of an East Harlem church ended early today as 105 members and supporters of the Young Lords organization submitted peaceably to arrest by eight unarmed sheriff's deputies.'”

Abuela looked so excited. “You should've seen those Young Lords. Proud. Defiant,” she said.

“I wish I could've been there with you, but I was too busy getting stitches on my head,” I said.

Mami shot me a look. My sarcasm was lost on Abuela, but at least she finally focused on me.

“Yes,
pobrecita
.”

“I'm going to have a scar on my eyebrow where the hair won't grow back.”

“That's not a problem. All you need is a little eyebrow pencil.”

She went on. “We can be twins.” Then she waved the newspaper around a little bit. “Listen. I love this part!”

“‘As their names and addresses were called off, the Young Lords rose, many of them correcting the reader by giving the Spanish pronunciation of their names.'”

Abuela was waving the newspaper. “Maybe you should go back to your full Spanish name,
mija
?” she suggested.

I hated to admit it to Abuela, but I was thinking that, too. “I think I
will
go back to being called Rosa.”

“Listen to what one of the Young Lords said,” she went on:

“‘The pressure on the church will not stop. This is going to happen all over the city until religious hierarchies respond to the needs of the people.'”

“Beautiful words, no?”

“Sí,”
I said.

Mami poured out two cups of coffee.

“Just like the Young Lord said in the newspaper, this is not over. And he is right. We are going to occupy Lincoln Hospital in the Bronx next. We have been talking about it for weeks. I cannot wait. You will help with your
amiguitas
, right?”

She filled the room with so much enthusiasm, there was no space left for me to be angry.

“Of course, Abuela,” I said. “As soon as these stitches come out. Not that they are as important as taking over a hospital.”

My mother stifled a giggle. By now, my feeling of sarcasm had turned into more like teasing. My cut
was
nothing compared to taking over a hospital in the South Bronx. Besides, Abuela's enthusiasm was contagious and as catchy as a song that stayed in your head no matter what.

I stirred my coffee and looked from one to the other. Yes, I looked like Abuela, but there was something in me of Mami, too. Not an obvious thing like hair or skin color — but more like a look or an expression.

“Okay, I'll go now.” Abuela waved good-bye and like a flash of mercury was out the door.

“That good-bye wave again,” I said.

Mami and I just looked at each other for a second, then we couldn't help it. We burst out laughing.

“Yes, but she will be back. Don't worry about that,” said Mami.

Just then Papi came home. “Hey, what's going on? How do you feel, Evelyn?”

“Call me Rosa.”

“What? I cannot keep up with you!” he said, rolling his eyes. “Okay, Rosa it is — since I am now Papi,” he added shyly. Then more seriously, “How are you doing?”

“Fine.”

“I just saw your
abuela
flying down the steps.”

“She'll come back,” Mami answered for me.

“I hope so,” I said.

He looked at Mami. “Do I have my
mujer
back?”

“You never lost me,” said Mami flirtatiously.

Papi sighed. “I'm going to lay down. I need to take it
easier. I hope now we can get back to normal, or whatever we were before.”

“Look,” said Mami, pointing to Abuela's
café
. “She did not even have her coffee.”

“You can have it, Mami.”

“I will.”

She picked up the cup and started to drink it standing up.

“Drink,
mija
,” she said to me.

“Only if you sit and have your
café
with me, Mami.”

Mami laughed, and we sat down at the table like two people at a restaurant.

“Here we are,” she said.

“Just where we should be,” I answered.

Growing up, I was not one to go on marches or hold up protest signs. In retrospect, I realize much of my time was taken up simply trying to survive the turmoil of my parents' life. Not only did we suffer the usual stresses of being poor, but my father's solution to our situation was to drink. My solution was to watch television. I escaped what was going on around me by losing myself in television shows like
I Love Lucy
and
The Honeymooners
. The only social event that shook me was seeing the Montgomery Bus Boycott on television when I was six years old. I secretly worried I'd be separated from my lighter-skinned relatives if we ever found ourselves in Montgomery, Alabama.

Further into the 1960s, when the country raged with people marching to protest the war in Vietnam, and students railed against authority by taking over their college campuses, I was content to watch from the sidelines. By 1968, I was in Pittsburgh, preoccupied with the new and strange phenomenon of attending Carnegie Mellon University. There, I got swept up in the Civil Rights movement, probably figuring I'd pass myself off as an African American and sneak into society
that
way. I did not
think of the plight of Puerto Ricans. Why would I? We seemed invisible even to me.

There weren't too many of us on television, salsa music was almost never heard outside of our own communities, and I wasn't aware of any books written about our experience. Like many, I accepted this as being the norm … that is, until the Young Lords put us on the map.

I could feel the upheaval in
El Barrio
when I visited my grandmother Guadalupe Serrano Manzano and cousin Evelyn, who lived on 111th Street and Lexington Avenue, right near the First Spanish Methodist Church. Suddenly, we were not people on the margin of society looking in; we were speaking out for recognition and rights just as loudly as everybody else! Still, I could not figure out where I fit in. What social change could I help implement? I wanted to be an actress and was barely in the habit of reading a newspaper.

In the early 1970s, I was part of a group of artists who were asked to create a skit in celebration of Three Kings Day for El Museo del Barrio. I met Pedro Pietri at that gathering. Consequently, it was reading his desperately funny poem “Suicide Note from a Cockroach in a Low Income Housing Project” that nudged my social consciousness awake. Social change through humor! Now, that was an idea I could get behind. Suddenly, I was obsessed with all things Puerto Rican, and now, I wonder if my newfound sensibility helped me land
the part of Maria on
Sesame Street
, a show dedicated to social change through humor! Maybe.

Evelyn Serrano's social awakening happens in a much more condensed manner. She makes all the realizations I made over the years during the Young Lords' eleven-day occupation of the First Spanish Methodist Church.

The Young Lords were real. They did set garbage on fire, have clothing drives, get kids checked for lead poisoning and tuberculosis, and offer political education classes; they both inspired and brought attention to an ignored segment of society.

Pietri's poem “Puerto Rican Obituary,” which is in his collection of the same name, was the inspiration for chapter twenty-four in this book. His family were members of the First Spanish Methodist Church and he did read “Puerto Rican Obituary” there.

But I want to be clear that this book is a work of fiction. Political education classes were taught by the Young Lords themselves, not by neighborhood grandmothers. I know that during that time the Young Lords were visited by many prominent people who included Jane Fonda, Donald Sutherland, Budd Schulberg (who did show the movie
The Battle of Algiers
), Pepe y Flora (who did entertain, though perhaps not on New Year's Eve), and Gloria Rojas and J. J. González (who were real television news reporters who covered the occurrences).

I have fictionalized the order of events during the eleven-day takeover to help tell Evelyn's story.

Also — though there
was
a singing group called Los Canarios who sang about the social conditions of Puerto Ricans in the Bronx, the group called Los Pajaritos who sing about the Ponce Massacre is also fiction.

The Ponce Massacre and El Grito de Lares were true events.

Those who know the geography of
El Barrio
will note that I have taken liberties with that as well, and I am assuming that there could have been a five-and-dime where I have placed it.

If Evelyn Serrano used some politically incorrect statements, she meant to offend no one. She is simply a product of her time.

Sesame Street
was indeed first aired in November 1969.

The term “Nuyorican” to denote a person of Puerto Rican ancestry born in the mainland was coined in the 1970s, a few years after the time this book takes place. It should also be noted that not every non-English word I use is Spanish! Some are Spanglish, some regional, and some, I think, are particular to my family.

Evelyn's mother is like all the mothers I knew who always ate last, usually standing up, and who seemed to work more hours than a day has. I admit I've never met anyone like Evelyn's
abuela
, but reading about the Ponce Massacre tells me that those women must've existed.

When we think of revolutions, we think of big public displays of violence, but revolutions come in all shapes and sizes. I've always been interested in people's internal revolutions because those are the ones that govern their everyday actions and, by progression, a community's life.