When I Was Puerto Rican - Esmeralda Santiago [0]
Title Page
Dedication
PROLOGUE: HOW TO EAT A GUAVA
JÍBARA
FIGHTING NAKED
SOMEONE IS COMING TO TAKE YOUR LAP
THE AMERKAN INVASION OF MACÚN
WHY WOMEN REMAIN JAMONA
MAMI GETS A JOB
EL MANGLE
LETTERS FROM NEW YORK
CASI SEÑORITA
DREAMS OF A BETTER LIFE
ANGELS ON THE CEILING
YOU DON’T WANT TO KNOW
A SHOT AT IT
EPILOGUE: ONE OF THESE DAYS
GLOSSARY
READERS GUIDE
Copyright Page
Also by Esmeralda Santiago
América’s Dream
Las Christmas: Favorite Latino Authors Share
Their Holiday Memories (coeditor)
Almost a Woman
Las Mamis: Favorite Latino Authors
Remember Their Mothers (coeditor)
The Turkish Lover
for Mami
El bohío de la loma,
bajo sus alas de paja,
siente el frescor mañanero
y abre sus ojos al alba.
Vuela el pájara del nido.
Brinca el gallo de la rama.
A los becerros, aislados
de las tetas de las vacas,
les corre por el hocico
leche de la madrugada.
Las mariposas pululan
—rubí, zafir, oro, plata...—:
flores huérfanas que rondan
buscando a las madres ramas...
Under its palm frond wings, the little house on the hill senses the freshness of morning and opens its eyes to the dawn. A bird flies from its nest. The rooster jumps from his branch. From the nostrils of calves separated from the cows runs the milk of dawn. Butterflies swarm—ruby, sapphire, gold, silver—orphan flowers in search of the mother branch.
from “Claroscuro”
by Luis Lloréns Torres
PROLOGUE: HOW TO EAT A GUAVA
Barco que no anda, no llega a puerto.
A ship that doesn’t sail, never reaches port.
There are guavas at the Shop & Save. I pick one the size of a tennis ball and finger the prickly stem end. It feels familiarly bumpy and firm. The guava is not quite ripe; the skin is still a dark green. I smell it and imagine a pale pink center, the seeds tightly embedded in the flesh.
A ripe guava is yellow, although some varieties have a pink tinge. The skin is thick, firm, and sweet. Its heart is bright pink and almost solid with seeds. The most delicious part of the guava surrounds the tiny seeds. If you don’t know how to eat a guava, the seeds end up in the crevices between your teeth.
When you bite into a ripe guava, your teeth must grip the bumpy surface and sink into the thick edible skin without hitting the center. It takes experience to do this, as it’s quite tricky to determine how far beyond the skin the seeds begin.
Some years, when the rains have been plentiful and the nights cool, you can bite into a guava and not find many seeds. The guava bushes grow close to the ground, their branches laden with green then yellow fruit that seem to ripen overnight. These guavas are large and juicy, almost seedless, their roundness enticing you to have one more, just one more, because next year the rains may not come.
As children, we didn’t always wait for the fruit to ripen. We raided the bushes as soon as the guavas were large enough to bend the branch.
A green guava is sour and hard. You bite into it at its widest point, because it’s easier to grasp with your teeth. You hear the skin, meat, and seeds crunching inside your head, while the inside of your mouth explodes in little spurts of sour.
You grimace, your eyes water, and your cheeks disappear as your lips purse into a tight O. But you have another and then another, enjoying the crunchy sounds, the acid taste, the gritty texture of the unripe center. At night, your mother makes you drink castor oil, which she says tastes better than a green guava. That’s when you know for sure that you’re a child and she has stopped being one.
I had my last guava the day we left Puerto Rico. It was large and juicy, almost red in the center, and so fragrant that I didn’t want to eat it because I would lose the smell. All the way to the airport I scratched at it with my teeth, making little dents in the skin, chewing small pieces with my front teeth, so that I could feel the texture against my tongue, the tiny pink pellets of sweet.
Today, I stand before a stack of dark green guavas, each perfectly round and hard,