When I Was Puerto Rican - Esmeralda Santiago [100]
It was still early, around 7:30 P.M., when Don Julio was attacked in the same subway station where Mami took the train every day. From that day forward I sat pretending to read by the window, watching for Mami to come down the street when she was supposed to. Every minute that went by and she wasn’t home added fuel to the images from the newspapers of women lying in pools of blood on cracked sidewalks, their handbags torn from their arms, split open, the contents spilled over them like garbage.
The men they beat up; the women, they raped. I couldn’t stop thinking about it as I walked to school, or home from the library: every man was a potential rapist, and every dark doorway was a potential hiding place for someone waiting to hurt me.
There were gangs, whose slogans and names were painted in bold letters on the sides of buildings or on sidewalks.
“Don’t ever walk down that side of the street,” a classmate told me once. “It’s not our turf.”
“What does that mean, turf?”
“It’s a part of the neighborhood that belongs to a gang.”
“But what if I have to visit someone on that side of the street?”
“Believe me, you don’t want to know anyone over there,” she claimed.
Mami said that at night gangs roamed the streets doing all sorts of mischief.
“Like what?” I asked.
“You don’t want to know,” she warned.
When the days became shorter and night came earlier, we were only allowed out to go to school. We couldn’t even go to the bodega across the street. When the weather was warm and people sat out on their stoops, Mami insisted we stay inside, unless she could come out to watch us. Not even Tata was trusted with keeping an eye on us, and least of all me, since I’d already proved an unreliable baby-sitter.
If I told Mami exactly where I was going, who I was going to see, how long I would be there, and when I’d be back, she’d sometimes let me go off alone on a Saturday afternoon.
“Don’t walk on any of the side streets,” she’d warn. “Keep to the avenues. Don’t talk to anyone. Don’t accept any rides. If there are too many people milling around a sidewalk, cross the street and walk on the other side.”
In Puerto Rico when Mami had laid out the same general rules, I’d found ways of, if not completely ignoring them, at least bending them to suit my curiosity. Her caution then seemed to have more to do with keeping us from hurting ourselves. Now it was directed at preventing other people from hurting us.
I couldn’t imagine why neighbors would harm me or my sisters and brothers. But I also couldn’t imagine how they could help us if we needed them. We lived separated by thick doors with several bolts, windows with iron grates, peepholes. No one dropped in unannounced to chat. An unexpected knock would set our hearts thumping, and we’d look at one another with questions in our eyes before peeping through the pinhole on the door, or opening it a crack, with the chain secured across the narrow gap.
“I can’t depend on anyone,” Mami often told us, and we knew that to be true. El Bosso could lay her off any minute. The welfare workers never believed a strong-looking woman like Mami couldn’t find work. Tata was sometimes dependable, but just as often she was incoherent, or laid up with aches and pains. Our neighbors were strangers, or worse, gente mala. There was an extended family, Mami’s aunts, uncles, and cousins, who dropped in and out of our lives with warm clothes, advice, and warnings. But Mami was too proud to ask them for more than they volunteered, and we were all developing the same stubborn pride, behind which our frightened selves hid, pretending everything was all right.
A SHOT AT IT
Te conozco bacalao, aunque vengas disfrazao.
I recognize you salted codfish, even if you’re in disguise.
While Francisco was still alive, we had moved to Ellery Street. That meant I had to change schools, so Mami walked me to P.S. 33, where I would attend ninth grade. The first week I was there I was given a series of tests that showed that even though I couldn’t speak English very well, I read