When I Was Puerto Rican - Esmeralda Santiago [49]
I wished I could trade places with my cousin Jenny. She was an only child who ran her parents with tantrums and demands that, had they come from me, would have got me a swift slap or a cocotazo from Mami’s sharp knuckles. Jenny was so spoiled that even Papi, who never criticized anybody, complained that Jenny had no manners and no respect for her elders. She was so bad that we were not allowed to play with her.
Jenny was a year younger than I was, but I’d heard Mami tell Doña Lola that Jenny was already señorita. Her body had developed into a petite figure like her mother’s, with round hips and pointy bumps on her chest. While it had been a long time since I’d seen her sitting on her mother’s lap sucking her breast, I assumed that becoming señorita had rid her of that habit. But it hadn’t changed very much else about her. She still boasted about the clothes and shoes, dolls, games, and jewelry that her parents bought for her. She slept in her own bed, in a room decorated with dolls that had never been played with, with a closet full of pretty dresses and shiny patent-leather shoes.
Envy, Doña Lola had once said, eats at you from the inside and turns your eyes green when you look at the person of whom you’re jealous. If so, my eyes must have turned the color of the lizards that lived inside banana leaves every time I passed Jenny’s house. I hated the fact that even though she was a brat, she got whatever she wanted. She had no chores around the house, no sisters or brothers with whom to share her clothes and toys, no limits as to where she could go, whom she could go with, or how long she could stay out. She didn’t have to do her homework, didn’t have to do anything she didn’t want to, and her parents, the quiet, patient Tio Cándido and the tinny-voiced Meri, wouldn’t say a thing, wouldn’t beat her or yell at her or call her humiliating names. I was so jealous of Jenny that I couldn’t stand to be with her. Mami and Papi had forbidden that we fight anyone for any reason, yet every time I came near Jenny, I wanted to beat her up, to wipe the smirk off her face, to quiet her boasting once and for all so that she would see what it was like to hurt.
“Jenny got a bicycle!” Delsa’s eyes shimmered, her little hands fluttering in front of her as they drew a picture in the air of a girls’ bike. “And she’s giving everyone a ride.”
I dropped the mop in the middle of the floor and ran after her. Up the road, past Doña Zena’s house, Jenny straddled her two-wheeler. She wore shorts and sneakers, and a tight white shirt that displayed the bumps on her chest.
Children clustered around Jenny while she showed off the shiny fenders, the thick tires, the handlebars with multicolored streamers.
“Who else wants a ride?” she asked, enjoying the attention, the voices clamoring her name. I was choking with rage. I gathered my sisters and brothers, who clustered possessively around Jenny.
“Come on, let’s go. We have to get home.”
“Aw, come on, Negi,” Jenny cried. “They want a ride on my new bike.”
“I don’t care. Mami doesn’t want us playing all the way up here.”
“I’ll ride the bike down closer to your house. Then you can all get a turn.”
“Forget it.”
“But why, Negi?” Hector whined.
“Just forget it, okay?”
Jenny followed us on her bike as I shoved the kids in front of me toward the house. “You’re not their mother. You can’t tell them what to do!” she cried.
“Yeah!” Delsa yelled. “You’re not Mami. You can’t order us around,” and my sisters and brothers backed away from me, pushing against each other to be next to Jenny’s bike.
“You’re always so bossy,” Norma yelled. “You think you’re a grown-up or something.”
I wanted to cry that no, I didn’t think I was a grown-up, and it wasn’t fair that they all got to ride on the bike and I didn’t. I wanted to remind them that Mami didn