When I Was Puerto Rican - Esmeralda Santiago [35]
As evening fell, the street slowed, and all life and sound came from inside, as if it were time for secrets. But nothing could remain private in the echoing treble of cement walls and ceilings. People talked, or fought, or sang boleros while they showered, and every sound was amplified in the cul-de-sac where Abuela’s house sat. Spoons clanked against pots, and the street filled with the steamy smells of garlic, hot oil, and spices. Radios blared frenzied merengues from one house, while from another, an Evangelist exhorted his listeners to abandon their sinful lives and seek salvation in the arms of Jehovah, Aleluya, Amen!
I wondered where Papi had gone, who he had to see on a Sunday afternoon in San Juan. I remembered Margie and her mother and imagined them in New York, wearing beautiful clothes and eating bright yellow eggs. I mulled over Mami’s words that men were always up to one pocavergüenza or another. That, Mami claimed in one of her bean-shucking discussions with Doña Lola, was men’s nature. And Doña Lola had nodded and then shook her head so that I wasn’t sure if she was agreeing with Mami or not.
I wondered if it were true, as Mami claimed when she and Papi fought, that he saw other women behind her back. And if he did, was it because he didn’t love us? My eyes watered, my mouth filled with a salty taste, but if I cried, Abuela would hear me and think I didn’t want to be with her. From the stoop, I could hear the rhythmic clicks of her rosary beads and the soft hum of her voice reciting prayers whose music was familiar to me, but whose words I’d never learned. And I wished that I knew how to pray, because then I could speak to God and maybe He or one of His saints could explain things to me. But I didn’t know any prayers, because Mami didn’t believe in churches or holy people, and Papi, even though he read the Bible and could lead novenas for the dead, never talked to us about God.
I determined not to cry, because if she asked me, I didn’t want to tell Abuela why. But the pressure was too much, and as the tears came, I looked around for something with which to hurt myself so that when Abuela asked, I could show her a reason for the tears. I put my hand in the doorjamb and slammed the door shut.
The pain burned across my knuckles, through my fingers, and a scream, louder than I had intended, brought Abuela to my side. She hugged me, walked me to the sink, where she poured cool water over my hand, dried it with the soft hem of her dress, rubbed Vick’s VapoRub on the pain, and held me against her bosom. She half carried me to her chair, pulled me onto her lap, and rocked me back and forth, back and forth, humming a lullaby I’d never heard.
Later Abuela wrapped my hand in a white rag and tucked me into bed. She shuttered the house and, after making sure I was settled, went into her bedroom, where I heard her moving about, the springs of her bed creaking as she sat on it and got up again, sat, got up, until it seemed as if she were rocking herself to sleep.
My hand throbbed. I shushed the pain by rubbing the inside of my arm and told myself that next time I shouldn’t slam the door so hard. The chinks on the window slats changed color, from russet to an intensely dark blue that deepened into impenetrable darkness, until it didn’t matter if my eyes were open or closed. I dropped into a solid sleep unbroken by the distant sounds of cars and barking dogs, or the careful unlatching of the door when my grandfather came back in the middle of the night, fed himself from whatever was left in the kitchen, went into his own room, slept, and woke up and left before the sun rose. It was days before I realized he lived in the small room near the front door, the only room in the house unadorned by Abuela’s crochet.
Abuelo slept in a narrow metal cot with a thin mattress wrapped in white sheets. There was a small table and a chair in his room, and on the wall a picture of Jesus wearing