When I Was Puerto Rican - Esmeralda Santiago [45]
I was as good as he with both slingshots and painstakingly constructed bows and arrows, with which I could drop birds in flight. We had an uneasy, competitive friendship, made more special by the fact that Mami didn’t approve.
“You’re almost señorita. You shouldn’t be running wild with boys,” she’d tell me. But I didn’t have anything in common with the girls my age. Juanita Marin had found more kindred friendships at her end of the barrio, and Doña Zena’s daughters, who were about my age, were kept on a tight leash because of their parents’ religiosity, which didn’t allow for outside influences. My sisters close to my age were not as interesting as the neighborhood boys who ran and climbed and didn’t mind getting dirty.
Tato put his dish and spoon in the dishwater. “Let’s go play outside.” His small, dirty face betrayed no hint of what we were really going to do.
“Can I Mami?”
She cracked the tip off a pod, pulled the string, snapped the casing open, slid her thumb inside the slithery shell, and added the peas to the mound in the bowl between her knees. She looked at me with a warning. “Don’t go too far. We’re going home soon.”
I thought maybe she had read our minds, and for a minute I was afraid to go with him.
“Come on!” Tato called from the yard.
I backed out of the kitchen, but Mami and Doña Lola had gone back to their shucking. We ran around the yard a couple of times to throw them off then sneaked into the oregano bushes that grew thick and fragrant behind the outhouse.
“You first,” he said.
“No way! You first.”
He pulled down his shorts and just as quickly pulled them up. “Your turn,” he said.
“I didn’t see anything!”
“Yes you did!”
“I didn’t. And I’m not going to show you mine until I do!” Although I’d seen both Hector’s and Raymond’s penises when I changed their diapers, I’d never seen one outside the family. Tato had no sisters, so I was pretty sure he’d never seen a girl’s private parts. I, of course, had seen several of those, too.
“Well, I’m not pulling my pants down again!” Tato said walking away.
“Fine. I don’t have to see your silly old little chicken, I’ve seen my brothers’, and I bet they’re nicer than yours.”
“Those are baby pollitos. I’m already big. Mine has hair on it!”
“Oh, sure!”
“It does. And it gets so big, it can already go into a woman.”
“You’re disgusting!”
“I can get it into a woman and wiggle it around and around, like this.” He wriggled his finger in arches that circumscribed a space much larger than his hand, at the same time wiggling his hips in figure eights.
“You’re sick!” I ran into Doña Lola’s yard just as Mami came out.
“I was coming to find you,” she said, looking behind me. Tato watched us from the path into the bushes. “Grab that bag. We’re going home.”
Doña Lola handed me a sackful of pigeon peas.
“Tato, go and feed those pigs! They’ve been squealing all afternoon.” He ran off, and Mami led the way up the road to our house.
“What were you two doing in back of the outhouse?” she asked casually.
“Just playing.” I hoped she hadn’t heard us talking. She didn’t say any more, and I took the shortcut home, through the yucca plants, past the barren mango tree at the edge of Lalao’s finca.
Another day Tato and I were behind the latrine.
“I can see it better if you squat,” Tato said, crouching in front of me to get a better look at the smooth slit between my legs.
“Forget it!” I pulled up my panties.
“But it’s not fair. You saw mine real good!”
“Sí. And you lied. There’s no hair on it at all.”
“You didn’t look close enough.”
“There was nothing to see. It’s just as shrivelled and small as my baby brother’s.”
“You have to rub it to make it big.”
“No way am I touching your dirty little pollito!”
“It’ll grow big and long, you’ll see!”
“No way!”
“I’ll touch you if you touch me.”
“I don’t want you to touch me!”
“It feels good.” He rubbed his crotch as if he had an itch. He thrust his hips out toward