When I Was Puerto Rican - Esmeralda Santiago [32]
“Now look what you’ve done!” she said, as if this were something I did every day of the week to annoy her.
“I couldn’t help it!” I cried. “That milk tastes sour!”
“How can it taste sour?” she yelled as she wiped me down with a rag. “It’s powdered milk. We made it fresh this morning. It can’t get sour.”
I remembered a word Mami used for food that made her gag. “It’s ... repugnante!”
“I suppose you’d find it less repugnant to go hungry every morning!”
“I’ve never gone hungry!” I screamed. “My Mami and Papi can feed us without your disgusting gringo imperialist food!”
The children gasped. Even Ignacio Sepúlveda. Mrs. García’s mouth dropped open and stayed that way. From the back, a loud whisper broke the silence: “Close it, or you’ll trap flies!” My face burned, but I couldn’t stifle a giggle. Mrs. Garcia closed her mouth and forgot about me for a moment.
“Who said that?” Everyone looked innocent, eyes cast down, lips fighting laughter. She grabbed me by the arm and dragged me to the door. “Get out! And tell your mother I need to speak to her.”
Before she could push me, I pulled my arm from her grip and ran, not sure where I should go because the last thing I wanted to do was go home and tell Mami I’d been disrespectful to an adult. I dragged my feet down the dirt road, leaving my body behind, burying it in dust, while I floated in the tree-tops and watched myself from above, an insignificant creature that looked like a praying mantis in a green and yellow uniform. By the time I got home, I had decided to lie to Mami. If I told her the truth, she was sure to hit me, and I couldn’t bear that humiliation on top of the other. When I came into the yard, my sisters and brother surrounded me, their curiosity comforting, as they pulled on my dirty clothes with remarks that I smelled bad.
“What happened to you?” Mami asked, all eyes. And all of a sudden I felt very sick. “I threw up in the lunchroom,” I said, before falling into a faint that lasted so long that by the time I woke up from it, she had taken off my soiled uniform and washed me down with alcoholado.
For days I lay sick in bed, throwing up, racked by chills and sweats that left the bedcovers soaked and sent Delsa to sleep with Norma and Hector, swearing that I was peeing on her. If Mrs. García ever talked to her, Mami never said anything. After what seemed like weeks, I went back to school, by which time the elections had been won, the breakfasts ceased, and my classmates had found someone else to tease.
WHY WOMEN REMAIN JAMONA
La verdad, aunque severa, es amiga verdadera.
Truth, although severe, is a true friend.
One Sunday Mami starched and ironed my white pique dress, packed a few changes of clothes in a small bag, and told me I was to spend a few days with Papi’s mother.
“Your abuela is old, so you be a good helper,” Mami told me as she braided my hair.
“How long will I be there?”
“About a week. Papi will take you, and he’ll pick you up next Sunday. Don’t look so worried. You’ll have fun!”
Papi dressed in his best clothes, and while the day was still cool, we set out for Santurce. The público made many stops on the way, to pick up and drop off passengers, most of them, like us, dressed for a journey. When we reached Bayamón, the closest city to Macún, we had to change públicos. We were early, so we walked to the plaza del mercado. It was a square cement building with stalls along the walls and in the middle, forming a labyrinth of aisles dead-ending into kiosks with live chickens in wire cages, shelves of canned food, counters stacked high with ñames and yautías, coffee beans and breadfruit. Colored lights swung from the rafters where pigeons and warblers perched, forcing vendors to put up awnings against bird droppings.
“Are you hungry?” Papi asked, and I nodded, searching for the food stalls I smelled but could not see. We turned at the corner where a tall stack of rabbit hutches butted against a stack of dove cages.
“I smell alcapurrias,” I said as Papi led me past a long table on which a tall gray woman arranged