When I Was Puerto Rican - Esmeralda Santiago [47]
Gloria laughed so hard she almost dropped the knife she found near the fogón.
“What’s so funny?” I was embarrassed and pleased. Clearly there was a lot more to this señorita business, and Gloria knew what it was. I laughed with her, sensing she was about to tell me something my mother was supposed to but hadn’t.
“Do you know where babies come from?”
“Everybody knows that!”
“Do you know how they’re made?”
I’d seen roosters chase hens, catch up, climb on top of them, and dig sharp beaks into the hen’s head as she cackled and screeched and he flapped his wings. I’d seen male dogs chase females, the male climb on top of the female, ride her while she tried to shake him off, and dig his narrow pink penis into her backside. I’d seen bulls ride cows, horses hump mares, pigs rolling in mud, their bodies connected under the female’s tail. And I’d seen eggs laid, bloody puppies wet and shimmery, calves encased in a blue bubble, slippery wet ponies thin and vulnerable, and hundreds of pink piglets suckling engorged teats. But until Gloria asked, I’d never put it together that in order for me and my four sisters and two brothers to be born, Papi had to do to Mami what roosters did to hens, bulls did to cows, horses did to mares. I shuddered.
“Yes, I know how babies are made.”
Gloria slit a plantain from tip to tip, peeled the casing back, and cut diagonal slices which she dipped in the salted water.
“Before you can make babies, you have to be a señorita, which means you bleed once a month.” Gloria then explained what a period was, how long it lasted, what a woman had to do so her clothes wouldn’t get soiled. “Very soon you will be a señorita,” she said, “and then you have to keep your legs crossed, just like your Mami says, all the time.” She laughed at her own joke, which didn’t seem so funny to me. “Ay, you’re so solemn! I must have scared you. Don’t worry, it’s nothing. Just a nuisance you learn to live with. Every woman does.”
But I wasn’t worried about my period, which couldn’t possibly be worse than the worms I’d found in my panties. I imagined Mami and Papi, in bed, stuck together in the middle. I remembered Tato’s words that he could stick his penis in a woman, and I realized that’s what Papi did to Mami after we’d all gone to sleep and the springs on their bed creaked in rhythms that always ended in a long, low moan, like a moo, or a hoarse whimper.
Mami was one of the first mothers in Macún to have a job outside the house. For extra money women in the barrio took in laundry or ironing or cooked for men with no wives. But Mami left our house every morning, primped and perfumed, for a job in a factory in Toa Baja.
The barrio looked at us with new eyes. Gone was the bland acceptance of people minding their own business, replaced by a visible, angry resentment that became gossip, and taunts and name-calling in the school yard.
I got the message that my mother was breaking a taboo I’d never heard about. The women in the neighborhood turned their backs on her when they saw her coming, or, when they talked to her, they scanned the horizon, as if looking at her would infect them with whatever had made her go out and get a job. Only a few of the neighbors stood by Mami—Doña Ana, whose daughter watched us, Doña Zena, whose Christian beliefs didn’t allow for envy, and Doña Lola, who valued everyone equally. Even Tio Cándido’s wife, Meri, made us feel as if Mami was a bad woman for leaving us alone.
I was confused by the effect my mother’s absence caused in other people.
“Why, Mami? Why is everyone so mean just because you have a job?” I pleaded one day after a schoolmate said Mami was not getting her money from a factory but from men in the city.
“They’re jealous,” she said. “They can’t imagine a better life for themselves, and they’re not willing to let anyone else have it either. Just ignore them.”
But I couldn’t close my ears to their insults, couldn’t avert my eyes quickly enough to miss their hate-filled looks. I was abandoned by children who until then had been friends. The neighbors on the long