When I Was Puerto Rican - Esmeralda Santiago [22]
At dusk Doña Ana and her daughter Gloria came to get us, and we walked through the path that connected our yards, Hector on my hip, Delsa carrying Alicia, Norma dragging a change of clothes for us bundled into a pillowcase, just in case we had to spend the night.
Mami’s screams got louder and more shrill as we walked away from the house, as if she could feel us leaving. Norma whimpered; Hector’s eyes darted back and forth, and a solemn expression was on his usually smiling face. Alicia happily sucked her thumb and pointed at everything we passed, chirping, “What’s that? What’s that?” Delsa tried to comfort everyone, or perhaps just herself. “Don’t worry,” she repeated over and over. “It’s just Mami having a baby, that’s all. It’s just a baby. Mami will be all right.” But none of us were comforted that easily, although by now we had learned not to make a fuss.
We ate Doña Ana’s rice and beans with stringy fried chicken and waited in the yard, huddled together. I told stories learned from Don Berto or made up some of my own, none so scary as to chase away sleep. The next morning we were herded back to our own yard, into our house, where Mami was propped up on pillows nursing our new baby sister, and Papi, in the kitchen, installed a kerosene cookstove.
“Everybody, take off your clothes!” It was the middle of the afternoon, the first week in May. The air had cooled in a matter of seconds. A whisper of rain was beginning through a sunny sky, distant black clouds not close enough to throw the valley into darkness. Mami ran from the window, her face glowing, to the basket of house clothes and slipped out of her flowered dress into a faded shift.
“Quickly! Keep your panties on, girls, just take off your shirts. Hurry!” She helped us undress one by one while we laughed and asked her why. She didn’t answer just giggled and took our clothes and stacked them on her rocking chair. She carried Edna, who was a few days old, to the threshold, and let a few sprinkles of rain dot her forehead, and rubbed them over the baby’s face and shoulders before returning her to her cradle.
“Come. Follow me.” She ran and stood in the middle of the yard smiling. The black clouds raced across the valley, but where she was standing, it was still bright. Light rain fell like dew on her, moistening her dress against her shoulders, her rounded belly, her hips. She raised her head to the sky and let the rain fall on her face, and she pushed the drops into her hair, down her neck, into the crevice between her breasts. We clustered on the threshold.
“What’s she doing?” Delsa whispered.
“She’s taking a bath,” Norma answered, her yellow eyes enormous.
“What are you waiting for?” Mami sang to us from the yard.
“But it’s raining, Mami,” Delsa said, sticking her hand out as if to prove her point.
“Yes,” Mami said. “It’s the first rain in May. It’s good luck to get wet by the first May rain.”
She took Delsa’s hand, and Héctor’s; he was holding on to the door frame as if glued there. She waltzed them to the yard then danced them around in circles. The rest of us stepped out gingerly, watching the black clouds crest the mountain and drop into the valley. Rain fell in thick drops now, exploding craters in the dry earth, banging against the zinc walls.
We held hands because it seemed the right thing to do, circled around as the ground became mud and the rain fell harder, cascading down our faces, into our mouths. We circled and sang a school yard rhyme:
¡Que llueva, que llueva!
La Virgen en la cueva,
los pajaritos cantan,
la Virgen se levanta.
¡Que llueva,