When I Was Puerto Rican - Esmeralda Santiago [28]
He chuckled. “Being American is not just a language, Negrita, it’s a lot of other things.”
“Like what?”
He scratched his head. “Like the food you eat ... the music you listen to ... the things you believe in.”
“Do they believe in God?”
“Some of them do.”
“Do they believe in phantasms and witches?”
“Yes, some Americans believe in that.”
“Mami doesn’t believe any of that stuff.”
“I know. I don’t either.”
“Why not?”
“I just ... I believe in things I can see.”
“Why do people call Americanos gringos?”
“We call them gringos, they call us spiks.”
“What does that mean?”
“Well,” he sat up, leaned his elbows on his knees and looked at the ground, as if he were embarrassed. “There are many Puerto Ricans in New York, and when someone asks them a question they say, ‘I don spik inglish’ instead of ‘I don’t speak English.’ They make fun of our accent.”
“Americanos talk funny when they speak Spanish.”
“Yes, they do. The ones who don’t take the trouble to learn it well.” He pushed his hat back, and the sun burned into his already brown face, making him squint. “That’s part of being an imperialist. They expect us to do things their way, even in our country.”
“That’s not fair.”
“No, it isn’t.” He stood up and picked up his hammer. “Well, I’d better get back to work, Negrita. Do you want to help?”
“Okay.” I followed him, holding the can of nails up so he wouldn’t have to bend over to pick them up. “Papi?”
“Yes.”
“If we eat all that American food they give us at the centro comunal, will we become Americanos?”
He banged a nail hard into the wall then turned to me, and, with a broad smile on his face said, “Only if you like it better than our Puerto Rican food.”
The yard in front of the centro comunal teemed with children. Mrs. García, the school lunch matron, opened the door and stepped out, a bell in her hand. We quieted before she rang it. She beamed.
“Good.” There was whispering and shoving as we crowded the door to be the first in for breakfast. Mrs. García lifted the bell in warning. We settled down again.
“Now,” she said in her gruff voice, “line up by age, youngest first.”
The smaller children, who had been pushed to the back of the crowd by bigger ones, scurried to the front. I took my place halfway between the younger and the older ones, who scowled at us and jammed the line forward with rough shoves.
“Stop pushing!” Mrs. García yelled. “There’s enough for everyone.”
She opened the double doors and we rushed ahead in a wave, goaded from behind by boys who crushed against us with their chests and knees.
The centro comunal had been decorated with posters. Dick and Jane, Sally and Spot, Mother and Father, the Mailman, the Milkman, and the Policeman smiled their way through tableau after tableau, their clean, healthy, primary-colored world flat and shadowless.
“Wow!” Juanita Marín whispered, her lips shaped into a perfect O.
People who looked like Mother and Father held up tubes of Colgate toothpaste or bars of Palmolive soap. A giant chart of the four basic food groups was tacked up between the back windows. In a corner, the Puerto Rican seal, flanked by our flag and the Stars and Stripes, looked like a lamb on a platter. Above it, Ike and Don Luis Muñoz Marin faced each other smiling.
“What’s that smell?” I said to Juanita as we shuffled closer to the counter lined with steaming pots.
“It’s the food, silly,” she giggled.
It was a sweet-salty smell, bland but strong, warm but not comforting, lacking herbs and spices.
“It’s disgusting!”
“I think it smells good.” She pouted and took a tray, a pale green paper napkin, and a spoon.
The server picked a blue enamel tin plate from a stack behind her and scooped out a bright yellow blob from the pot in front of her. She dumped a ladleful on Juanita’s plate and slid it onto the tray.
“You’d like some eggs too, wouldn’t you?” she asked me with a smile.
“Those are eggs?”
“Of course they’re eggs!” she laughed. “What else could they be?” She heaped a mound of it in the middle of my plate, where it quivered, its watery edges green