When I Was Puerto Rican - Esmeralda Santiago [17]
I walked the land from post to post, trying to place myself within its borders. Our house stood in the center, its shiny zinc roof splotched with rust at the corners. Next to the house was the kitchen shed, from which a thin curl of smoke wove into the air. Behind the house, under the breadfruit tree, there was a pigsty, now empty, the mud the pigs loved to bathe in dried into dusty ridges. The chicken coop squatted between the pigsty and the mango tree, a branch of which held one end of Mami’s laundry line, the other end stretched to the trunk of an acerola bush. Away from the house, near Doña Ana’s, the latrine with palm frond walls under a zinc roof was hidden from the road by hibiscus bushes and an avocado tree. The boundary between our land and Doña Ana’s was bordered by eggplant bushes, and between us and Doña Lola by annatto, oregano, and yucca.
Behind our house was Lalao’s finca, which stretched into the next town. Sometimes a herd of cows grazed on this land, or a man on horseback rode the borders, a sombrero shading his face, his shirt stained yellow with sweat. We were not allowed to go into Lalao’s finca, which was surrounded by a well-maintained barbwire fence. Not three feet from our backyard, on the other side of this fence, was a fragrant grove of grapefruit trees. The grapefruits weighed on the branches, huge and round, dark green speckled yellow. In the mornings, I heard them tumble from the trees, and it seemed a waste to let them rot under the branches when we could be enjoying them. But Mami and Papi made it clear that we were never to go into that grove, so I stood at the barbwire fence and stared at the fruits growing and ripening, then falling and rotting on the ground where they formed a pulpy wet mud, which I was sure was sour.
“Look, Negi,” Mami said one day. “Take a look at what I found!”
She was gutting a chicken. It looked naked without its feathers, which she’d yanked off in between dips into boiling water. Inside the bloody entrails were globes that quivered as she lifted them out.
“What are they?”
“Eggs that haven’t been laid yet. See? No shell.”
They looked like soft marbles, pink shooters striated with red, inside of which an orange/yellow liquid gleamed and threatened to ooze out if the outer membrane broke.
“They’re delicious in soup,” Mami said, and I believed her, because Mami never lied about food.
That night she served asopao with a solid dark ball floating on top of each of our bowls. I bit into the firm center with my front teeth. It tasted like hard-boiled egg yolks mixed with liver. It coated the inside of my mouth with a dry, sticky paste, and the smell of feathers rose from the back of my throat into my nose. I had to scrape my teeth with my tongue several times before the flavor dissipated into the familiar bittersweet oregano and garlic. Mami watched me eat and smiled at me with her eyes. I smiled back. It was delicious, just like she said.
“If you close your eyes while they’re crossed, they’ll stay like that!”
Juanita Marín was distraught. She stared at me, her eyes wide. She had long lashes that curled up to her eyebrows, which now formed a single wiggly line from one temple to the other.
I shut my eyes, trying to keep them crossed. She held her breath. I rolled my eyes around my lids and pictured her staring at me in wonder. Then I opened my eyes, still crossed. Two Juanita