When I Was Puerto Rican - Esmeralda Santiago [48]
Papi seemed to have the same opinion about Mami’s job as the neighbors. He looked at her with a puzzled expression, and several times I heard her defend herself: “If it weren’t for the money I bring in, we’d still be living like savages.” He’d withdraw to his hammers and nails, to the mysterious books in his dresser, to the newspapers and magazines he brought home rolled up in his wooden toolbox.
I had worried that not having Mami around would make our lives harder, but at first it made things easier. Mami was happy with her work, proud of what she did, eager to share with us the adventures of her day in the factory, where she stitched cotton brassieres she said had to be for American women because they were too small to fit anyone we knew.
But her days were long, filled in the morning with the chores of making both breakfast and dinner, getting seven children ready for school or a day with Gloria, preparing for work, going there and back, returning to a basketful of mending, a house that needed sweeping, a floor that needed mopping, sheets that had to be washed and dried in one day because we didn’t have two sets for each bed. As she settled into her routine, Mami decided she needed help, and she turned to me.
“You are the oldest, and I expect you to be responsible for your sisters and brothers, and to do more around the house.”
“But isn’t Gloria going to take care of us?”
“I can’t count on anyone from outside the family. Besides, you’re old enough to be more responsible.”
And with those words Mami sealed a pact she had designed, written, and signed for me.
“Delsa, you’d better get in here and do the dishes before Mami gets home.”
Delsa looked up from the numbers she wrote in her composition book. Rows and rows of numbers, over and over again, in neat columns, in her small, tight script. “It’s not my turn.” She went back to her homework.
“Whose turn is it then?”
“Yours. I did it yesterday.”
The sink was full. Plates, cups, spoons, pot lids, the heavy aluminum rice pot, the frying pan, all half submerged in gray water with a greasy scum floating on the top. “Norma!”
“What!”
“Come here. I’m going to teach you to wash dishes.”
“I’m watching Raymond.”
“Well, let Hector watch him.”
“I don’t want to.”
“If these dishes aren’t washed by the time Mami comes home ...”
“You do them, then.”
I didn’t want to either. I didn’t want to do any of the things Mami asked of me: feed the kids an after-school snack; make sure they did their homework; get Raymond and Edna from Gloria’s; change the water on the beans and put them on the stove to cook over low heat; sweep the floor; make the beds; mound the dirty clothes in the basket; feed the chickens and the pigs. Delsa and Norma were supposed to help, but most of the time they refused, especially when I tried to get them to do the unpleasant tasks like changing Raymond’s diaper or scrubbing the rice pot. Almost every day just before Mami came home I scrambled around to do all the things she’d asked me to take care of that morning. And almost every day I received either a lecture or cocotazos for not doing everything.
“You’re almost señorita. You should know to do this without being told.”
“I just can’t ...”
“You’re lazy, that’s your problem. You think everything will be handed to you.”
“No I don’t,” I whimpered, my hands protecting my head from the inevitable blows.
“Don’t you talk back!” And she pushed me away as if I were contagious. “The least you can do is set an example for your sisters and brothers.”
I looked at Delsa, who at nine could already make perfect rice, and at Norma, who swept and mopped with precision, and at Hector, who dutifully changed out of his uniform into play clothes every day without being told. “What makes them so good and me so bad?” I asked myself. But there were no answers in Delsa’s solemn eyes, or in Norma’s haughty beauty, or in Héctor’s eagerness to please. Every night Mami told me how I had failed