The Revolution of Evelyn Serrano (9 page)

I
didn't have to wait long to find out who took the pictures. Mami and Abuela were going at it first thing in the morning.

“Why did you do that?” Abuela asked Mami.

“Because I am sick of hearing about something that happened a long time ago. He was a policeman. It was his job to do what he was told to do. Like a policeman in this country.”

“Tearing up old newspaper pictures does not make it go away.
Tapando el cielo con la mano como siempre
.”

My mother paused with a deeper exhaustion than usual. “I am not trying to cover the sky with my hand.”

“You always did,” said Abuela.

“This is my house,” Mami said.

“That's right, it
is
your house,” Abuela said slowly.

Mami and Abuela each slipped into their respective rooms, closing doors behind them.

I dressed in the emptiness, then went downstairs. I walked toward Migdalia's stoop. It was as if she were waiting for me. We hadn't seen each other since the Young Lords set the garbage on fire and here it was, already Labor Day weekend. I didn't tell her about all that was happening between Mami and Abuela. “Miggy, did you see the article about Young Lords in the newspaper?” I asked.

“No, but I saw us on television. I mean not
us
, but all the people and our neighborhood.”

“But I guess a revolution has to come to
El Barrio
.”

I was eager to share Abuela's stories.

“You know — it's not really the first time Puerto Ricans have stood up for themselves,” I began carefully. I told her everything Abuela had shared with me about the Ponce Massacre. Everything except the stuff about my grandfather being one of the shooters.

Migdalia listened. “Wow, Evelyn, your grandmother is some lady. No wonder she's brave enough to sweep up garbage — and wear eye shadow the color of the sky.”

The sun rose high above us. It was hot but felt good on my face.

“Let's try and find señor Santiago,” I said. “I need a cold
piragua
.”

“Me, too,” said Migdalia, and we walked, looking for señor Santiago's cart, which was parked just a few blocks uptown. We got our ices and made our way back toward my place. When we approached, there were two police cars parked in front of the
bodega
.

Mami was crying.

Pops was trying to comfort Mami.

Abuela was nowhere in sight.

Wilfredo was in handcuffs.

Migdalia tried to make her way to Wilfredo.

“Hey — kid — step back,” a policeman yelled.

“Sis, do what he says,” said Wilfredo helplessly.

“What happened?” Migdalia yelled.

“Quiet, everyone,” the policeman said.

My mother hugged me. “Mami,
¿qué pasó?
” I said.

“Who are you?” the policeman asked.

“I'm their daughter.”

He eyed me suspiciously and then turned back to my father.

“Sir, tell me what happened.”

“Okay — we closed around three o'clock today because it's the start of the Labor Day weekend.”

“And that young man over there, who is he?”

“That's our friend Wilfredo Menéndez,” I piped in. “He —”

“Just a second. How old are you?”

“I'm fourteen years old.”

“Where were you between noon and now?”

“Just hanging out with my friend!”

Was he accusing me?

The policeman turned back to my father. “Let's go into the store.”

We went into the store. It was a mess. Candy and cigarettes were all over the floor. The television was missing.

“What happened?” the detective asked again.

Pops halted nervously, then trudged on.

“I came back to check on the store around seven o'clock, and the door was wide open. When I go inside, I saw Wilfredo, and I saw that the safety bars had been broke off the back window. Look — Wilfredo — we know him. He —”

But my mother didn't let him finish. “Why was he inside the store?” she asked him.

“
Mujer
, I am sure he had nothing to do with it!”

“How do you know? He was hanging out with those Young Lord people — who knows what they do?”

I couldn't believe she was saying that. “Mami, what do you mean? We know Wilfredo didn't have anything to
do with this.” But even as I defended him, I thought about how he had wanted me to make an illegal key and how he had bought a crowbar.

“All right. All right. If he didn't — he didn't. We'll find out at the station house.” The detective was sick and tired of talking to us. He wanted to get out of there.

We followed him back outside in time to see a cop putting Wilfredo into a squad car. Wilfredo was protesting: “I'm telling you, I was walking up the street, and I seen the store was open so I went in to see what was happening.”

“Yeah, yeah, tell us at the station house,” the cop was saying.

Migdalia started to cry. “What am I going to tell my mother?” she said, tearing off down the street.

The detective got into his squad car and drove off.

Walking home was like going to a funeral.

All of us were silent.

T
he next day, Abuela and Mami were in the kitchen arguing again.

Abuela was saying, “I don't know how you can think I could have anything to do with that robbery.”

“I know that you will do anything for your causes. Maybe you wanted money for those crazy Young Lords!”

“They clean up the street!” said Abuela, flabbergasted. She stopped for a second, then added, “Ignoring them will not make them go away — just like tearing out the pictures of the Ponce Massacre will not make
it
like it never happened.”

I walked in. They fell silent.

“Go to your room,” said my mother.

“What room?” I said. “I don't have a room.”

“Don't worry,
mija
. You will now,” said Abuela.

“What?” I turned to my mother. “What is she talking about?”

“I'm moving out,” said Abuela.

I looked to my mother. “Mami …”

She didn't say anything. Then, “Maybe it's the best thing.”

Abuela turned on her heel and went into her room.

“Mami, you're going to let her go?”

Mami ignored me.

I could hear Abuela rummaging. She came back into the kitchen with a small packed bag.

“I will come back for the rest of my things later.” She slammed her way out of the door.

“Mami …”

But Mami had her head in the oven as if she thought she could hide there. But I knew she was getting ready to bake. She turned it on and lit it. As I watched the roaches making their getaways, Mami went to the refrigerator and took out some butter.

“Mami, why are you and Abuela fighting all the time?”

Mami didn't answer. Instead she kept poking around the cupboard, bringing out loaves of old bread and crumbling it into a bowl.

“Do you really think Abuela had something to do with the break-in?”

“
¿Esa? Sabrá Dios.
She loves violence. She loves revolution.
¿Y pá qué?
For what?”

Mami took some milk out of the refrigerator and started pouring it over the bread.

A sickening wave of anger swept over me. She was on automatic all the time. A bomb could go off next to her, and she'd react by making bread pudding.

“Mami, stop!”

But she didn't stop. She began mashing up the bread with her hands, letting it squeeze through her fingers like she was a robot. Seeing her thick calloused hands working the bread made me nauseous and angry. I studied her wide back funneling down her legs, all the way to her big flat feet. So ugly.

“Mami!”
I shouted.

“Don't you dare yell at me!”

She slapped me. I almost laughed as bits of bread flew through the air before creating a cushion between her doughy wet hand and my cheek. At least I got a reaction out of her. I couldn't look at my fat mother. I decided right then that I wasn't going to be like my mother the slave.

Mami rinsed her hands before breaking some eggs over a bowl, then hesitated, holding the shells for a moment as if she didn't know what to do with them. Suddenly remembering where the trash was, she dumped them,
reached for a spoon, stirred up the goop, slathered the pan with butter, poured the whole mess into the baking pan, and finally put it all in the oven.

She sat down. With an empty look in her eye, she sighed.

“Ya se acabó,”
she said. “It's finished.”

What was finished? The baking? Our relationship? The Young Lords?

I looked at the grease stains on the walls and at my mother's pathetic attempts to make everything pretty with plastic and roses.

I stormed out the door to find Abuela. But she was nowhere.

It was as if
El Barrio
had swallowed her up.

W
ho can tell what is the very beginning of a storm?

Not a weather storm but a storm of ideas that grows like a flame.

I wondered,
What was the very beginning of the Young Lords' storm?
Was it the garbage on fire? Or was it when they opened a storefront office in the neighborhood? Was their office the first flutter of things to come?

Walking by their workplace after school, I could see them, all long-haired and wearing jeans and eating take-out rice and beans and laughing and pointing and arguing.

Watching them became a habit. Did they see me walking back and forth? Me — pretending I had something to do and somewhere to go, when all I really wanted was
to see what made the Young Lords so passionate about whatever they were doing.

I tried to guess what the tall one with the dark glasses was saying, but he loped across the room too fast.

Was there a motor in the heart of the Young Lord with the kinky hair and blinding smile, or was strutting the only way he knew to get from one end of the room to the other?

And why did that other Young Lord look as sad as if he carried the world's problems on his shoulders? His eyes as dark as
la esperanza de un pobre
— as sorrowful as the hope of a poor person.

Even with that sad expression, he and the others looked strong and powerful and full of meaning.

Observing them, I realized sweeping the streets and passing out flyers weren't the beginning of the Young Lord storm. Neither was getting a storefront office. They were just signs that something was coming.

The storm began when the Young Lords started to go to church. The First Spanish Methodist Church. Our church.

They had asked the church elders if they could use space in the church for a free-breakfast program for Barrio kids.

It was like the whole world groaned in protest. You would've thought they had asked for the sun and the moon. When the church elders recovered long enough from the audacity of this outrageous request and came
back with a resounding no, the Young Lords decided to go to the people.

And so the eight-week campaign of trying to win over the people in the congregation began.

The Garbage Offensive had warmed the people's hearts toward them, and though some of the older worshipers were scared, they couldn't help but align themselves with the Lords, even if only in their hearts.

The Young Lords would wait until the end of the service. Then, one of them would get up and state his case, saying that the church was only open one day a week, that the space could be used for social programs, that the church should serve the people, and what better way of serving the people than having a free-breakfast program for the children of
El Barrio
?

Parishioners walked out or countered with “No, this is our church, we have to worship the way we want, you cannot tell us what to do, you are not members of this church.” And the Young Lord would quietly walk away from the altar until the next time.

Being told no did not stop them any more than being told no stopped me when I first asked permission to work at the five-and-dime.

Weeks had passed. Summer was over, and now autumn was filling our neighborhood with its chill. Thankfully the
garbage didn't stink as badly, but there was still a fight for equality going on.

After several Sundays of peacefully persisting, the Young Lords were starting to win the confidence of the congregation. Soon there were more and more church people willing to go along with them. Good people who cheered them on and wanted them to persuade the pastor to see things their way.

The Young Lords said that we deserved better medical care by getting tested for tuberculosis and for lead in our blood, that we could have education classes that would make us proud to be Puerto Rican, that society was keeping us poor and that we didn't deserve it.

These ideas started to get through. People started to listen.

My mother was not convinced. When the Young Lords spoke to church members, Mami interpreted their attempts as:

We are taking over.

We are Communists because we dress like Fidel Castro.

We are wild.

We will change the world as you know it.

The Young Lords scared Mami and our pastor. The sight of them in their green army jackets and purple berets and buttons that said P
UERTO
R
ICO IS IN MY HEART,
T
ENGO A
P
UERTO
R
ICO
E
N
M
I
C
ORAZÓN,
made Mami and the pastor quiver.

“The very clothes you wear tell me you are not part of this congregation,” the pastor proclaimed.

The more I agreed with the Young Lords, the more my mother disagreed. The split between us grew stronger and we began sitting on different sides of the church each Sunday.

It began slowly. First I sat a few seats away from Mami. Then a row away. And soon I was sitting with Angel and Migdalia and Wilfredo and the other people who liked what they were hearing and didn't head for the door the minute a Young Lord made his way to the podium.

Mami sat tight with her group of the old and frightened.

Then one Sunday, Abuela showed up.

She appeared as suddenly and unexpectedly as she had in my kitchen weeks before. We were leaving the church and practically bumped into her as Young Lords handed out flyers.

“Abuela!” I went to hug her and reached for a flyer at the same time.

Mami slapped the leaflet out of my hand.

Mami barked at Abuela, “Why are you helping these people?”

“They are trying to help the community,” Abuela said.

“They are
not
helping,” Mami hissed. “They are demanding things from the church.”

Abuela looked different. Now her hair was a beautiful shade of brown, and the makeup that formed her eyebrows was softened, too.

“Evelyn, let's go.” Mami grabbed my wrist. I twisted my way out of her grasp, knowing she would be too worried about what people thought to fight me in public. Turning on her wide feet, she walked away.