When I Was Puerto Rican - Esmeralda Santiago [31]
“I know, but you also have to write, ‘I hope when you receive this letter you are feeling well. We are all well here, thank God.’ You can abbreviate ‘A Dios Gracias’ by writing ‘A.D.G.’ if you want to.”
“Why does it have to start that way?”
“All letters start that way.”
“But why?”
“I don’t know!” she said, exasperated. “That’s how I learned it. And every letter I get starts that way. If you don’t have a salutation at the beginning, it’s not a real letter.... Besides, it’s rude not to wish the reader good health, and God has to be thanked first thing.... You’d better write it again.”
“I don’t want to write it again.”
“You have to.” She set it down on the table. “Finish it and I can take it to the post office tomorrow.” She walked away.
“I’m not doing this stupid letter over,” I mumbled.
“What was that?” She’d whirled in her tracks and was at me before I could blink my eyes, her left hand gripping my arm.
“Nothing! I didn’t say anything.”
Mami stood over me, crushing my arm, right hand at her side, the fingers trembling. I wanted to grab her fingers, to bite into them, to make them hurt, those fingers that sometimes soothed but so many times splayed against my skin in smacks, or, fisted, knuckled my head in cocotazos that echoed inside my brain. She slammed me against the chair. The rungs dug into my bony back.
“Finish it.” I could almost touch the heat she gave off, the faint sweaty smell of her anger. Hot, quiet tears dribbled down my cheeks in a steady flow, like the faucet at the public fountain. The drone inside my head was louder, my ears felt warm, red, too big for my head. Mami stood there watching, as I picked up the pencil, carefully tore a sheet from my notebook, and, in labored script, wrote, “Dear Tata, I hope when you receive this letter ...”
My bonee lie sober de o chan,
My bonee lie sober de si,
My bonee lie sober de o chan,
O breen back my bonee 2 mi, 2 mi ...
“What’s that smell?” The breakfasts at the centro comunal had fallen into a pattern of huevos Americanos alternating with hot oatmeal, which at least tasted like oatmeal, except it was not as smooth, sweet, and cinnamony as the oatmeal Mami made.
“They must be giving us something new today,” said Juanita Marin.
The steaming pots were gone. Instead, there was a giant urn in the middle of the table and a five-pound tin of peanut butter. One of the servers scooped a dollop of peanut butter into the bottom-heavy glasses, and another filled them with warm milk from the urn.
“Here’s a spoon so you can stir it,” she said as she put the glasses on our trays.
I carried my tray to the usual table Juanita and I shared. Even she, who loved the breakfasts, had a suspicious expression on her face. We faced each other, looked down at the glass full of milk with the brown blob on the bottom, looked at each other again, then at the milk.
“Are you going to taste it?” I asked her.
“Sure,” she said, unconvinced. “Are you?”
“Sure.” I stirred the milk, and beige pellets floated up from the bottom, like sand encased in a shimmery oil that skimmed the top and bubbled around the whirlpool I made with my spoon. Juanita stirred hers too. I took a sip from the spoon but couldn’t really taste much except the milk. Juanita spooned a dribble into her mouth. She smiled.
“Yum!” But it wasn’t her usual happy “Yum!” It was more of an “I’m going to pretend to like this in case it’s good” kind of “Yum!”
I wrapped my hands around the glass, lifted it to my lips, and drank. A consoling warmth compensated for the milky smell, and the gritty, salty-sweet taste. The peanut butter, which was supposed to dissolve in the milk, broke off into clumps, like soft pebbles.
I gagged, and the glass fell out of my hand, spilled over my uniform, and crashed to the tile floor where it broke into large chunks that gleamed in the pebbly milk. I threw up what little I’d swallowed, and children around me jumped and receded into a tittery circle of faces with milky mustaches. Mrs. García pushed through the crowd and pulled me away from the mess, while one of the servers dragged a dirty