The Things We Didn't Know, page 8
Why was my mother calling Papá a son of a bitch?
Florencia looked at me and pointed to my mother. “No sé como. Your mother doesn’t have a car. Carros públicos cost money. How’s she going to get here every day?” Then she turned to my mother. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep.”
Mamá looked enraged. “Stop. I’m doing the best I can.”
Mamá gave me another piece of bread. “Go give this to your brother.”
As I approached the door, my aunt’s angry voice cracked.
“I told you, I can’t take care of them. This backache is killing me. I can’t even take care of myself.”
I handed Pablo the bread and he leaned against the side of the house, his face as white as a bone.
“I’m starving. What’s for dinner?”
“I dunno.”
“Is this where we’re staying?”
Under the dim light of streetlamps everyone glowed, and the smoke from cigarettes and cigars gave the place a mysterious aura. A jukebox at a corner store a few houses away played a song by the incomparable Felipe Rodríguez. I recognized his voice from hearing my mother’s records in Woronoco.
Mamá brought me a cup of coffee and told me to share it with my brother. Pablo took a few sips and gave me the rest. I watched Teodoro and the way he looked at my mother. He was skinny, with tight dress pants and a long-sleeved shirt. When he didn’t have a cigarette dangling off the side of his mouth, he was chewing bubble gum. He grabbed my mother often, embraced her, ran his hands through her hair, and pulled her close. She pushed him away as soon as she noticed my stare, but I had seen enough to know that Teodoro was the man Machi and Florencia called the married bum. He was the reason why we were in Gurabo.
I couldn’t help but feel shame and embarrassment. Was he her boyfriend? But how could she have a boyfriend if she was married to my father? I was nine years old and didn’t know how to interpret what I was seeing. I didn’t know the rules of this new reality.
All I wanted was to be with my titi Machi, or in Woronoco with my father, but I couldn’t imagine how I would see either one of them again. I sat on the curb. The only thing my mother paid attention to was this Teodoro. The only thing everyone else wanted was the bottles in their hands. Pablo and I sat there watching everyone, hungry.
“I hate that guy.”
“I hate everything.”
“Are we going to sleep in that house?”
“That’s what she told Florencia.”
Later that night, Teodoro took a mattress that was leaning up against a wall in the bedroom and placed it on the floor in the middle of the living room. It didn’t leave much space for my aunt to walk between the front door and kitchen. Pablo and I took off our shoes and hopped in bed with our clothes on. With the door open, we were so close to the street that anyone could walk in and sit next to us.
“See? They already like it,” Mamá told Florencia. “Kids are kids.”
A guy crouched down in the doorway, right next to me. His breath made me sick. I didn’t want to fall asleep surrounded by a crowd of drunks.
Mamá sat on the mattress. “When I find a job and we have our own home, you’ll have your own room, just like before. But this is what we have for now, so go to sleep. I’ll be back in the morning.”
My brother sat up straight. “Mamá, I want you to sleep with us.”
“Don’t start with the crying,” she said, and walked out of the house.
We watched as she joined Teodoro. They got in his old red car, the motor revved, and then it disappeared down the street.
“Do you think she really is coming back tomorrow?” Pablo asked.
“I don’t know.” Unfamiliar songs played on the vellonera alongside laughter washed out by alcohol coming from the people in the street. Stars in the night sky moved through holes in the zinc ceiling, and I cried for my titi Machi and my father as my brother drifted into dreamland.
When I woke up the next morning, the doors and windows were closed, and I was damp from morning dew, or perhaps from a light rainfall that had come in through the holes in the roof. Florencia stood at the back door with a cup of coffee in her hands, staring at a river that ran along the backyard.
* * *
She smiled. “You’re awake.”
I stared at the floor, shying away from her eyes.
She handed me a cup covered in stains.
“¿Quieres café?”
I took the cup to the sink and scrubbed it with my bare hands rather than with the dish rag that must’ve been there since the day she was born. The whole sink was gray from never being scrubbed, and a foul odor in the air made me queasy.
“Where’s my mother?”
Florencia gazed at the river.
“Over at El Cinco.”
“Is that far?”
“A barrio between San Lorenzo and Caguas.”
There was a long silence. My aunt filled my cup with black coffee and offered me sugar. “Your mother is looking for a job, but I don’t think there are any. Things are difficult for her, and I don’t have room here for all of you.”
I looked around. There was a chair near the door where my aunt had sat the night before while all the neighbors hung out drinking. The mattress on the floor where my brother and I slept took up most of the room and entryway. Toward the back of the room was a small table with two chairs and a wall hanging of The Last Supper. I presumed my aunt slept behind a flower-print curtain that hung in a doorway on one side of the kitchen. She was right, there wasn’t much space.
Every corner of Florencia’s face creased as if it were gathered by thread.
“I don’t know what she’s going to do.”
She stepped out to the backyard and wobbled over a slimy stone pathway leading to a hut. When she opened the door, it creaked like it might fall off and the malodor smelled as if a toilet had never been flushed. It was an outhouse.
In an effort to avoid the smell, I went in her bedroom. On top of her dresser there were candles burning in tall bottles, a bust of a Native American wearing a headdress, images of Jesus, and a small bowl of water full of pennies. Her bed’s yellowish wrinkled sheets looked like they’d never been washed. A pan of urine under her bed burned my nose all the way up to my brains. I dashed out of the room, bumped into her, and screamed. She laughed. “I’ll give you my palangana if you want it. I’m too old to walk out there at night.”
I hated everything in that house. Her spooky laughter, her outhouse, her piss pot. She went into the living room and opened the double-paned front doors. A breeze came through, and what a relief it was to breathe clean air. Pablo moved around but continued sleeping. Someone on the street yelped, “¡Hola!”
My aunt dragged the same chair as the night before to the doorway and sat with her old cup of coffee in her hands. I sat on the mattress next to my brother, with my cup of coffee.
“You’re intelligent,” she said. “How old are you now, eight?”
“Nine.”
There was a long silence.
“Your mother has known Teodoro since they were kids. No sooner she’s in town he finds her, or she finds him. You understand, mija, don’t you? She was too young when our father died. Mamá married el viejo Erasmo, moved to Aguas Buenas, and had Cecilia. I was busy raising my son, dealing with problems of my own. Your mother spent her childhood between our mother over there in that mountain in Aguas Buenas and over here with me. Over there, over here, know what I mean?”
A few big kids wearing wine-colored uniforms walked by and waved.
My aunt waved and smiled at them. “Everyone knows me here. I’ve lived in this house for over thirty years. Same house, same husband, good or bad but in one place. When Raquel married your father, I thought she’d settled down too, but I guess it’s an unstable spirit that follows her.”
* * *
For days, my brother and I moped around with little food and nothing to do. My aunt had chickens in the backyard, and she gave us hard-boiled eggs with bread and coffee in the mornings. But we didn’t have anything to eat again until late in the evenings, when she gave us a fried plantain with another egg. We were always hungry.
Around midday, we washed under an outdoor faucet on the side of her house that you could see from the street. Because of this, I washed fully dressed, then shivered in the sun until my clothes dried, refusing to use an old grungy towel my aunt offered. We only had what we were wearing, and never found the two bags of clothes we’d brought from Machi’s house. Throughout the day we sat at the doorstep next to Aunt Florencia and watched neighbors walk by on their way to and from the town center. Then the drunks arrived one by one and started their daily imbibing. At nightfall, we slept with our clothes on, tossing and turning until late into the night when she closed the doors.
Her husband, Gonzalo, showed up late one night, a thin old guy with tan rolled-up pants. He worked in sugarcane fields throughout the island, following the zafra seasons.
When he first walked in, he stared at the mattress on the living room floor with a surprised look on his face. Florencia told him who we were, and he smiled. He hadn’t seen us since we were infants.
For a few days, his brothers came by to pick him up before sunrise in an old green pickup that you could hear approaching a mile away. They returned late in the afternoons, their catch in plastic buckets next to them in the back of the truck. They knocked down panas from the breadfruit trees in the backyard and fried fish, and we had a feast. But I longed for a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
* * *
It must have been two weeks later when Pablo and I were on the doorstep having coffee and saw our mother at the corner store. Pablo screamed, ran, and grabbed on to her waist. Minutes later, they came out of the store with bags of groceries. I helped carry them to the dining table.
Pablo clung to Mamá. “Mamá, oh, Mamita, you came to get us. Mamá, I want to go with you and sleep where you sleep.”
Mamá stood in the middle of the living room and gave me a long, hard stare.
“Aren’t you going to hug me?”
I walked up to her and leaned my body into her embrace. That was all I had left.
“Mamá, are we going with you today?” Pablo asked.
Mamá smiled at Florencia. “I brought some things for you and the kids.”
Florencia took bottles and cans out of the bags.
“Qué bueno. We need this. She’s upset because she’s not in school. And you never brought them any clothes.”
Mamá lit a cigarette.
“You mean, they’ve been wearing the same clothes for two weeks? ¡Ay bendito! Andrea, what did you do with the bags of clothes?”
I didn’t move from the doorstep.
Florencia carried groceries into the kitchen. “Thank God I have good neighbors, and someone gave them a spoonful of food.”
Mama puffed on her cigarette.
“I got a check from Luis today. I’ll be back every week with groceries.”
“And where’s—”
“Waiting in the car.”
“Should’ve told him to come in. You’re not hiding anything. They know what’s going on.”
“He’s going to set me up in an apartment.”
“If he hasn’t left his wife by now, he’s not leaving her. You’re wasting your time. When are you putting them in school? They’re going to lose the year if you keep waiting for that apartment. They could be eating free lunch every day. You have money from Luis now, why don’t you get it yourself?”
Mamá grabbed her purse.
“I can’t give you an exact date.”
“Your kids should come first, mija.”
“I brought food. See you next week.”
Pablo clung to her.
“Don’t leave us Mamá, por favor, take us with you, Mamita.”
Mamá kissed him.
“I’ll find a place for us, Pablito, don’t cry.” She headed out the door. “Andrea, aren’t you going to kiss me? I’m your mother, sabes?”
Pablo sobbed and ran after her as she walked away from the house. I noticed a neighbor watching from her porch. Mamá knelt on the street, hugged Pablo, and wept.
“I don’t want to be away from you either, mijo, but it will be a short time. Andrea, come get your brother.”
I embraced Pablo as she walked away, and we heard Teodoro’s car start up around the corner. Pablo pushed me away and disappeared down a stairway at the end of the street. I ran after him.
There was a river at the bottom of the stairway, but it wasn’t like the one in Aguas Buenas. Murky suds in stinky puddles lined the riverbank, and there was a burnt car on our side of the river.
Pablo wiped his nose. “I came here the other day. You were washing under that faucet. There’s rotting fish in those puddles.”
I didn’t respond.
“Tito’s probably over there in the river. Why can’t we go back with Titi Machi? Or maybe we can find Papá. We have to do something, Andrea.”
“Find him? But he’s not even in Puerto Rico.”
* * *
After Gonzalo’s visit, Aunt Florencia had money to send us to the corner store every few days. Sometimes she added a marrayo candy to the list. But when her money ran out, we went back to stale bread and boiled eggs. Weeks passed, and we didn’t see our mother.
Every so often Aunt Florencia complained. “Your mother said she was coming every week to bring us groceries, and see that? Where is she? I knew she’d do this. You know that saying ‘where one eats, three eat’? That’s not true.”
The days we were hungry were when I most wondered why she wouldn’t visit more often or take us with her. There were houses along the street between my aunt’s house and the corner store. Wood huts with paint peeling off and rusty, flat zinc roofs crisscrossed by electric wires in every direction. The few cement homes were nicer. Their paint seemed to hold on better. They had front porches surrounded by iron grates my aunt called rejas, and you could tell they had bathrooms because people showed up on their porches with hair dripping, drying themselves with a towel, looking refreshed, the smell of shampoo filling the air.
Pablo and I sat on the curb in front of the corner store and gazed down a street. Engines accelerated, cars honked, buses filled the hot streets with diesel fumes. People scurried from one sidewalk to another between traffic, some carrying packages, others getting in and out of cars.
The first few times we went to the corner store, Aunt Florencia’s next-door neighbor, a woman called Doña Nereida, waved from a rocking chair on her porch. I’d seen her speaking with my aunt many times before. One day, she called us over and asked if we could do her a favor. She sent us around the corner to the local panadería for a loaf of pan de agua and mortadella. When we returned, she gave us each a penny. From then on, she sent us to the pharmacy, the shoe repair, and the mercado to buy things like green plantains, cilantro, and recao, and always gave each of us a penny.
One day, she invited us inside for a bowl of food. My brother and I stepped back onto the sidewalk.
“No, that’s okay,” Pablo said, and nudged me to leave.
Nereida smiled. “Go ask permission and I’ll wait right here.”
Pablo ran to our aunt’s house. Nereida invited me to sit on a chair, but I smiled and waited for my brother on the street.
“How long has it been since Raquel has come around?”
I shrugged.
“Raquel and I used to play right on this street when we were little girls. I couldn’t wait to see her on Sundays when she came to visit Florencia with your grandmother. That was a long, long time ago, when my mother was alive and owned this house.” She pointed to Pablo. “Here he comes.”
My brother yelled from the street. “She gave us permission.” As soon as he reached me, we ran up the stairs and sat on the porch.
Nereida always wore a black A-line skirt with a white linen blouse, and sometimes she wore a mantilla veil over her shoulders on her way home from church. Florencia told me she wore medio luto, which meant that she no longer wore all black clothing since her husband had passed away a year ago, but still wore dark colors. She sat on her big porch with four wrought iron chairs all by herself most of the day.
When we stepped onto the porch of her cement home with its light-green criollo tile floor, she locked a padlock behind us and slipped the key into her apron pocket. All of her windows and the porch had iron grates.
“They’ll take the food out of your mouth here if you’re not careful. You have to watch out for thieves.”
She went into her house and left us with the aromas of refried sofrito, pork skins, and all the delicious spices of Puerto Rican cuisine. I heard her banging a metal spoon against the rim of a caldero, the way Puerto Rican women do when they stir rice, and imagined her serving big spoonfuls into two bowls.
When Doña Nereida came out with two bowls of rice, bean stew, and fried chicken, I choked up. She surely knew we had not eaten like this since we moved in with our aunt Florencia a month before. As we ate, I thought of my poor aunt drinking coffee out of an old cup at the back door and was relieved when Nereida told us she was sending a bowl with us for our aunt.
“Eat whatever she gives you,” Aunt Florencia said when we returned. “She’s a good person, just a little nosy, poor woman, doesn’t have anyone to talk to.”
A few days later Doña Nereida invited us into her home for a warm bath and gave us each a set of new clothes, which I hated because the pants were baggy, but still, they were something new and clean to wear. From then on, she often fed us such meals.
We usually ran her errands in the morning when the town was bustling. There were vendors selling all kinds of things and services on the streets, some of them announcing over speakers: “Amolao. Se amuelan cuchillos grandes y pequeños, tijeras y machetes. Amolao.” That was definitely the guy to call if you needed to sharpen anything. Right behind him another one sold vegetables and fruits: “Vendo piña, batata, cilantro, repollo y maíz.”
A man sold doughnuts from a red glass cart that filled the street with the aroma of warm sugar. One day, he called us over and gave us each a doughnut. They were delicious, but afterward, we always waved from a distance so he wouldn’t think we were beggars.
