When I Was Puerto Rican - Esmeralda Santiago [104]
I had dreamed of this moment for several weeks. More than anything, I wanted to impress the panel with my talent, so that I would be accepted into Performing Arts and leave Brooklyn every day. And, I hoped, one day I would never go back.
But the moment I faced these three impeccably groomed women, I forgot my English and Mrs. Johnson’s lessons on how to behave like a lady. In the agony of trying to answer their barely comprehensible questions, I jabbed my hands here and there, forming words with my fingers because the words refused to leave my mouth.
“Why don’t you let us hear your monologue now?” the woman with the dangling glasses asked softly.
I stood up abruptly, and my chair clattered onto its side two feet from where I stood. I picked it up, wishing with all my strength that a thunderbolt would strike me dead to ashes on the spot.
“It’s all right,” she said. “Take a breath. We know you’re nervous.”
I closed my eyes and breathed deeply, walked to the middle of the room, and began my monologue.
“Ju bee lonh 2 a type dats berry cómo in dis kuntree, Meessees Felps. A type off selfcent red self pee tee in sun de boring tie gress wid on men shon ah ball pro klee bee tees on de side.”
In spite of Mr. Gatti’s reminders that I should speak slowly and enunciate every word, even if I didn’t understand it, I recited my three-minute monologue in one minute flat.
The small woman’s long lashes seemed to have grown with amazement. The elegant woman’s serene face twitched with controlled laughter. The tall one dressed in beige smiled sweetly.
“Thank you, dear,” she said. “Could you wait outside for a few moments?”
I resisted the urge to curtsy. The long hallway had narrow wainscotting halfway up to the high ceiling. Single bulb lamps hung from long cords, creating yellow puddles of light on the polished brown linoleum tile. A couple of girls my age sat on straight chairs next to their mothers, waiting their turn. They looked up as I came out and the door shut behind me. Mami stood up from her chair at the end of the hall. She looked as scared as I felt.
“What happened?”
“Nothing,” I mumbled, afraid that if I began telling her about it, I would break into tears in front of the other people, whose eyes followed me and Mami as we walked to the EXIT sign. “I have to wait here a minute.”
“Did they say anything?”
“No. I’m just supposed to wait.”
We leaned against the wall. Across from us there was a bulletin board with newspaper clippings about former students. On the ragged edge, a neat person had printed in blue ink, “P.A.” and the year the actor, dancer, or musician had graduated. I closed my eyes and tried to picture myself on that bulletin board, with “P.A. ’66” across the top.
The door at the end of the hall opened, and the woman in beige poked her head out.
“Esmeralda?”
“Sí, I mean, here.” I raised my hand.
She led me into the room. There was another girl in there, whom she introduced as Bonnie, a junior at the school.
“Do you know what a pantomime is?” the woman asked. I nodded. “You and Bonnie are sisters decorating a Christmas tree.”
Bonnie looked a lot like Juanita Marín, whom I had last seen in Macún four years earlier. We decided where the invisible Christmas tree would be, and we sat on the floor and pretended we were taking decorations out of boxes and hanging them on the branches.
My family had never had a Christmas tree, but I remembered how once I had helped Papi wind colored lights around the eggplant bush that divided our land from Doña Ana’s. We started at the bottom and wound the wire with tiny red bulbs around and around until we ran out; then Papi plugged another cord to it and we kept going until the branches hung heavy with light and the bush looked like it was on fire.
Before long I had forgotten where I was, and that the tree didn’t exist and Bonnie was not my sister. She pretended to hand me a very delicate ball, and just before I took it, she made like it fell to the ground and shattered. I was petrified that Mami would come in and yell at us