When I Was Puerto Rican (30 page)

I rushed home from school every day to sit by the radio for hours listening to the romantic tales of women with names like Mariana and Sofia, and men such as Armando and Ricardo. The more convoluted the story lines, the more I liked them, and I imagined that all the long-suffering heroines looked like me, or rather, that I looked like them. At night I played out the fantasies, seeing myself race across a flower-strewn field, hair blowing wild, arms outstretched toward the waiting arms of a tall, dark Armando or Ricardo who kissed me passionately in a frenzy of violins. I always fell asleep just as Armando or Ricardo touched my lips, and mornings, I woke to the same embrace, and a warm feeling between my legs that I savored until it faded like morning mist.

According to the soap operas, someday I would fall in love at first sight, but my love and I would suffer before we could be happy. There would be illnesses, from which I would recover just at the point of death. There would be evil women who would lie, cheat, and try to maim me just to get their claws into my sweetheart. There would be wars and earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, epidemics, which I would survive by nursing those less fortunate, only to discover my beloved among the dying and revive him with the power of my brown eyes. All this I dreamed during those restless nights in my own room.

At the same time, Mami and Papi battled each other, intruding into my fantasies with their real-life love-hate relationship. Even though they’d lived together for fourteen years, they weren’t married, but it hadn’t been an issue in our lives until Mami returned from New York. All of a sudden, it seemed important to her that she and Papi be legal. They fought about it constantly. One minute they were just like any other couple, doing things together, playing with us kids, boasting about our virtues to the neighbors. The next they called each other names, spewed out ugly lists of offenses on both sides, with the recurrent theme of Mami’s uncertain status as a common-law wife.

I disappeared into my room the minute the air tensed and wrapped myself in a thin sheet that didn’t silence their insults but made me invisible to the hate that clouded their eyes. I called up the images of Armando or Ricardo, and with Papi and Mami’s shrill fights as background, I imagined a man and woman touching one another gently, discovering beauty in a stubbled cheek or a curl of hair, whispering adoring words into each other’s ear, warming one another’s bodies with love.

Johannes Vélez noticed me, even though Maritza Ortiz said I was so ugly that no boy would ever want me. She was the most popular girl in seventh grade. I was nobody. Her reasons for picking on me were as mysterious as Johannes’s reasons for catching up with me one day after school and offering to carry my books.

“I can carry them myself,” I snapped.

“Aw, come on, Esmeralda,” he mumbled, standing closer.

“Don’t make me look bad.”

A group of boys leaned against the wall of the school, pretending not to watch us. Maritza and her retinue giggled near them. I had not fallen in love at first sight with Johannes Vélez, but his eyes on me felt good, and I wanted very much to give him my books to carry. But I felt as if by handing them over I would be relinquishing something more precious than my math homework, only I didn’t know what that something might be.

“You can do it tomorrow,” I said and walked off in a haze of fear and anger at my own stupidity. That night Armando and Ricardo blended into the mournful face of Johannes Vélez. I replayed our encounter, only this time I was charming, confident, able to carry on a conversation that dazzled him while Maritza and her friends watched enviously.

“Mami, what should I do if a boy wants to carry my books?” I asked the next morning.

“Let him,” she said as she flipped an egg. She went to the door, pan in hand. “Delsa, Norma, Hector, you’d better get dressed fast or you’ll be late for school.” She slid the egg on my plate. “Who wants to carry your books?”

“Johannes Vélez.”

“What kind of a name is that?”

“I don’t know.”

“Is he American?”

“He’s from around here.”

“Who’s from around here?” Delsa asked hopping to her chair.

“Negi’s boyfriend,” Alicia said from across the table.

“He’s no such thing!” I yelled. Norma and Hector pushed each other to sit near the window.

“Stop that!” Mami hollered. She broke three eggs into the pan, “Uhmm ... Vélez.... I don’t know a Vélez family.” As if everyone in the world had to check with her before moving to town.

“There’s a Vélez in my class. Sarita Vélez. She’s a pest.” Norma turned up her nose.

“Not the same family,” I bit back, possessive all of a sudden.

“Negi has a boyfriend!” Hector sang.

“I do not!”

“Do so!” Delsa and Norma joined in the chant, and Edna and Raymond appeared out of nowhere to torture me.

“Mami, make them stop!”

“You kids leave your sister alone.”

But they just lowered their voices to a whisper when Mami turned her back. “Negi has a boyfriend!”

“Mami!” I was embarrassed by their teasing and would have bopped them on the head if Mami hadn’t been right there.

“You kids get ready for school. Scram!” They left the table one at a time, Mami taking threatening steps toward them each time they stopped to look back with mischievous expressions and a mouthed “Negi has a boyfriend.”

I was humiliated. Tears formed in my eyes, making Mami’s face look out of focus.

“If there’s a boy who likes you,” she rubbed my hair, “and you like him, ask him to visit you at home. That’s the proper thing to do.”

“It’s not like I’m getting married or anything. He just asked to carry my books.”

“I know ... But you’re
casi señorita,
and boys are interested. The thing is, no boy will respect you if you don’t bring him home to meet your parents.”

I should never have asked her. She had no clue about my feelings. All she cared about was the boy, not me.

“Why do you keep saying I’m
casi señorita?
When am I going to be a
señorita,
without the
almost?”

“Negi, don’t take that tone of voice with me.”

“But when, Mami? You keep saying I should do this, I shouldn’t do that, I should do the other. All because I’m almost a
señorita.
What does that mean? What does it have to do with anything?” I heaved out sobs so full they scared me. She held me for a few minutes then sent me to my room.

“Take off your uniform before it gets wrinkled.”

“But I have to go to school,” I wailed as if she’d just given me awful news.

“You can be a little late. Lie down for a while, and I’ll send a note that you weren’t feeling well.”

I unsnapped my skirt and unbuttoned my shirt, tears streaming down my cheeks, sobs racking my chest so that I had to lean against the wall as I undressed. The world was a terrible, cruel place, a dark pit jawing open to swallow me in perpetual despair.

Mami sent Delsa, Norma, Hector, Alicia, and Edna to school, their protests proving my point, making me cry even harder. Raymond rubbed my leg gently, but I kicked him away, unwilling to accept pity. In the kitchen Mami scrubbed the dishes, sighing,
“Ay Dios Mío Santo,
help me make it through their puberties!”

Our house sat on concrete stilts that allowed enough headroom underneath for us to stake out play areas with clearly defined boundaries. Discarded pieces of zinc, chicken wire, cardboard, torn sheets that Mami had given us, and dried palm fronds formed the walls of our very own
barrio
under the house. My spot was on the back corner nearest the kitchen, where the land sloped toward Papi’s shed. I couldn’t quite stand up, but I could crawl in and kneel or squat comfortably. I had swept the ground smooth and placed mismatched tiles in the center for a colorful mosaic floor. It was there that I went when I was sick and tired of everybody, which was most of my twelfth year.

Through a hole in the burlap bag that served as the door of my hideaway I had a view of the creek, the
malanga
and bananas growing on the slope, and the gardenia near the porch. The more I looked at it, the more I loved that bush that had never flowered. It was oval shaped, with branches sticking out here and there like a woman who had not combed her hair.

“Papi,” I asked one night as he sat on the porch reading the paper, “how come the gardenia never blossoms?”

“It probably needs water,” he said.

So every day I filled an old coffee can two or three times and watered around the roots of the bush, moistening the earth until it became spongy. The bush grew rounder, taller, its leaves thick and green.

“If you prune the tips,” Mami said, “it will grow faster and fuller.”

With a rusty pair of scissors, I trimmed the branches. “I’m sorry, little tree,” I murmured so no one else could hear, “but I want you to grow and give us flowers.” Whatever I cut off, I put under the bush, to feed the roots.

“I’ve taken real good care of it,” I said to Papi, “but it still won’t bloom.”

“It takes patience. You’ve only been doing it for a week. Give it time.”

“It won’t flower when you want it to,” Mami said. “Keep taking care of it and you’ll see. One day it will surprise you.”

I stopped asking the bush to give me gardenias but continued watering it and clipping its branches. The leaves grew larger, greener, veined underneath in pale chartreuse, the blades thick and full of liquid that I kept expecting to smell like gardenias, but it didn’t.

“It’s probably a
macho
tree,” Papi said. “It needs a female to blossom.”

“There’s no such thing, Pablo,” Mami chided. “Gardenias are not like people.”

“But some plants need a male and a female before they can give fruit. Plantains, for instance.”

“Yes, plantains. But not gardenias!” She laughed, and Papi didn’t say any more.

Johannes Vélez didn’t ask to carry my books after I brushed him off, but during math class he stared at me. I smiled, but he looked at his notebook and seemed to be concentrating on the problems Mrs. Nuñez had given us to solve. Every day for a week I stopped to buckle my shoe, or to drink from the hall fountain, so that Johannes Vélez would have enough time to catch up. But he didn’t, and I couldn’t bring myself to be the first to speak. One Saturday, as I watered my gardenia bush, he showed up.