When I Was Puerto Rican - Esmeralda Santiago [23]
Let it rain, let it rain!
The Virgin in the cave.
Birds sing,
The Virgin rises.
Let it rain, let it rain!
Mami let go our hands and ran under the roof overhang, where water fell in a thick stream. She gave us each a turn at being massaged by the torrent, which banged against our skinny bodies and bounced off in silver fans onto the ground. She rubbed the water into our scalps, behind our ears, under our arms, then sent us to chase one another in the slippery mud. We squished our toes and fingers into it, rubbed it on our arms, our bellies, behind our knees, then let the rain wash it off in long streams of red and orange that dribbled back into the soft earth. We squealed and laughed and sang silly rhymes, until the first bolt of lighting broke open the clouds, and thunder sent us all scampering inside, shivering, to be dried off by a laughing Mami, her eyes bright, her face flushed.
For the rest of the month, the rains came, heavy, angry downpours called vaguadas that soaked into the ground, turning our yard into a slippery, muddy swamp. Thunder and lightning seemed to strike just over our heads, the sound magnified by the metal roof and walls. The low-slung clouds threw the valley into twilight, and we had to keep the quinqués lit all day so we could find our way in the shuttered house.
Papi couldn’t leave for work if the rains started early, and he passed the time reading magazines he retrieved from his special dresser. If the rains began after he’d left for work, however, we wouldn’t see him for days. Mami didn’t seem as bothered by his absence and fed us soups, or creamy rice with milk, or hot sancochos made up of whatever leftovers she could fit into the pot. When she wasn’t feeding us, she sewed, if she had fabric, or polished the bedstead and Papi’s dresser, or mended whatever was worn, ripped, or needed patching.
We slept long hours, the rain drumming against the walls, the angry rolls of thunder galloping over our zinc roof. We collected rain in barrels that filled up, topped off, overspilled, and still the vaguadas came like a once-welcome guest that couldn’t stay away, eroding the ground into deep furrows that the summer sun burned into long, dry scars, deep wounds that never healed.
THE AMERKAN INVASION OF MACÚN
Lo que no mata, engorda.
What doesn’t kill you, makes you fat.
Plito, chicken
Gallina, hen
Lápiz, pencil
y Pluma, pen.
Ventana, window
Puerta, door
Maestra, teacher
y Piso, floor.
Miss Jiménez stood in front of the class as we sang and, with her ruler, pointed at the chicks scratching the dirt outside the classroom, at the hen leading them, at the pencil on Juanita’s desk, at the pen on her own desk, at the window that looked out into the playground, at the door leading to the yard, at herself, and at the shiny tile floor. We sang along, pointing as she did with our sharpened pencils, rubber end out.
“¡Muy bien!” She pulled down the map rolled into a tube at the front of the room. In English she told us, “Now gwee estody about de Jun-ited Estates gee-o-graphee.”
It was the daily English class. Miss Jiménez, the second- and third-grade teacher, was new to the school in Macún. She looked like a grown-up doll, with high rounded cheekbones, a freckled café con leche complexion, black lashes, black curly hair pulled into a bun at the nape of her neck, and the prettiest legs in the whole barrio. Doña Ana said Miss Jiménez had the most beautiful legs she’d ever seen, and the next day, while Miss Jiménez wrote the multiplication table on the blackboard, I stared at them.
She wore skirts to just below the knees, but from there down, her legs were shaped like chicken drumsticks, rounded and full at the top, narrow at the bottom. She had long straight hair on her legs, which everyone said made them even prettier, and small feet encased in plain brown shoes with a low square heel. That night I wished on a star that someday my scrawny legs would fill out into that lovely shape and that the hair on them would be as long and straight and black.
Miss Jiménez came