When I Was Puerto Rican - Esmeralda Santiago [14]
As Christmas neared, the walk to school took on a different tune. The songs floating out of jukeboxes were still about women and liquor, but they had a Christmas twist. A man sang that he would never forgive the ungrateful woman he once loved because she had abandoned him at what was supposed to be the happiest time of year. A woman sang that the man she loved had betrayed her, so she would spend the holidays dreaming of what might have been. And a group of men sang about what a sad Christmas it would be now that their love was away. I felt sorry for the people in those bars.
At home we listened to aguinaldos, songs about the birth of Jesus and the joys of spending Christmas surrounded by family and friends. We sang about the Christmas traditions of Puerto Rico, about the parrandas, in which people went from house to house singing, eating, drinking, and celebrating, about pig roasts and ron cañita, homemade rum, which was plentiful during the holidays.
Even though Papi didn’t live with us, he often came to see us and once showed up with strings of red and green electric bulbs, which we tacked around windows and doors.
From the beginning of December, Mami spent most of her time in the kitchen. For weeks the house smelled of crushed onions, fresh oregano, and cilantro. Relatives I’d never met appeared to sit for hours at the kitchen table with Mami and, if he were visiting, Papi, to eat rice with pigeon peas, pasteles wrapped in banana leaves, crispy fried green plantains, and boiled yucca. After dinner they drank anisette and I was given the crunchy diamonds that formed in the sugarcane strings inside the bottles. Aunts and uncles came up the alley trailed by girls in white patent-leather shoes and flouncy dresses, their hair rolled into finger curls. The boys hung back, their pomaded hair and scrubbed faces serious, their pressed pants making them look as stiff as paper dolls. Within minutes the girls were playing house with Delsa and Norma, while I chased the boys up and down the alley, getting good and dirty.
My mother’s brother, Tio Cucho, came by with a pretty woman named Rita. She was short and dark and wore tight dresses cut low to show the tops of her breasts. Long earrings dangled from her lobes, and bracelets jangled when she moved her hands. She was much smaller than Tio Cucho but made up for it with heels so high she walked on tiptoe. I could tell Mami didn’t like Rita by the way she screwed up her nose when Rita walked by or looked away when Rita bent over to rub her leg and her breasts almost tumbled out of her blouse. But Mami was polite and served Rita food and drink as if she didn’t mind, laughing at her jokes.
I liked Rita, especially the way she smiled, with bright red lips and large white teeth that reminded me of a billboard for Colgate toothpaste. As they left, Mami took Tío Cucho aside and told him she never wanted him to bring that woman into her house again. Tio Cucho was offended and said if Mami didn’t want Rita around, then she wouldn’t see him either. But the next weekend he came without her.
According to Mami, Rita was a terrible woman. She lounged in bars and went home with any man who bought her drinks. Mami didn’t say this to me. I heard her talking with our next-door neighbor while we were shelling pigeon peas.
“But doesn’t she have children?”
“Of course she does. Two boys. And she just leaves them alone to roam the streets like urchins while she’s out partying.”
“Doesn’t your brother care?”
“He’s always leaving her, only to come sniffing around her skirts after a few weeks.”
“Some women bewitch men.”
“Bah! That woman’s