When I Was Puerto Rican - Esmeralda Santiago [18]
Juanita was my best friend in Macún. She lived down the road from us, past Doña Lola’s house, almost at the funnel end of the barrio. Every day we walked home from school together, chatting about what we were going to be when we grew up, and whose father could saw the most wood in the least amount of time. I had an advantage over Juanita. I had lived in Santurce, and I could tell her about things like electric light bulbs and shower nozzles. But Juanita, who had lived in Macún all her life, could tell me about the secret places in the barrio that even our mothers didn’t know about. Places like the caves at the narrow end, and the breaks in Lalao’s fence, and the shortcuts through the woods that led to the next barrio where all sorts of pocavergüenzas took place. A pocavergüenza was something you should be ashamed of but weren’t.
It was in Jurutungo that all the women who seduced all the men in Macún lived. At least, that’s the way it seemed to us, because every time we heard our mothers, or our mothers’ friends complaining about their husbands’ pocavergüenzas, they had happened in Jurutungo. It was there that their sinvergüenza husbands went when they’d just been paid and wanted to get drunk. It was there that their teenage sons disappeared when they reached a certain age and couldn’t be controlled any longer. It was to Jurutungo that women who’d had a bad life retreated with bastard children. Juanita and I never wanted to go there. But we often staked out the secret path, hoping someday to catch someone in the act of sneaking into that ill-reputed barrio.
Don Berto, Juanita’s grandfather, lived in a shed behind Juanita’s house, and every time I saw him he was sitting on its front steps sharpening his machete. His skin was so black and wrinkled that it seemed to absorb light into its crevices, to be let out again in the most glorious smile I’d ever seen on anyone with no teeth. I was fascinated by his pink gums, the tongue spotted with white, the lips almost the same color as the rest of his skin. His gnarly hands stuck out of his shirt like gigantic hairless tarantulas, always moving, always searching for someplace to land. His palms, as pink as his gums, were calloused, and his fingertips were stained with age and soil.
We would sit at his feet listening to his jíbaro tales of phantasms, talking animals, and enchanted guava trees. While he spoke, he ran the tip of his machete back and forth, back and forth, over a stone, and we knew that if any of the creatures he talked about came to life, he would take care of it with one well-placed machetazo.
One morning, while I snapped on my uniform, Mami told me not to wait for Juanita because she wouldn’t be coming to school.
“Why not?”
“Don Berto died last night, may he rest in peace.”
“How do you know?” I was astonished at the way news travelled in the barrio. No neighbors ever appeared at the door to bring us up-to-date. It was as if whatever happened in the barrio was conveyed in the breeze to be picked up by whom-ever was alert enough.
“Never mind how I know! Hurry up and get ready or you’ll be late for school.”
I scrambled out, irritated, wondering why parents never answered questions but seemed to have all the answers. In school many of my classmates’ seats were empty, and the teacher explained that Don Berto had died, and the children who were not there were his grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and that we must be extra nice to them when they returned because it was a very sad thing to lose a grandparent. She also said that she hoped we had all been nice to Don Berto when he was alive, because now we would never get another chance. I tried to remember if I’d ever been rude to him, or if I’d ever been in some small way disrespectful to Don Berto, but, to my relief, I couldn’t come up