When I Was Puerto Rican - Esmeralda Santiago [52]
“There’s nothing there. Don’t be such a jibara.”
She shoved me gently towards the hole. “Are you going to pee or not?”
My bladder was bursting. “The hole is too big.”
Tears burned the back of my eyes, but if I cried she’d get mad at me.
“We can’t change the size of the hole.”
“Don’t they have an escupidera, like we do at home?”
“No.” She held my shoulders. “I’ll hold on to you until you get used to it.”
“Okay.” I stood over the hole again, trying not to look down. A tickle of cold air sent goose bumps up the small of my back. I pulled my panties down to my knees and had to step away from the hole because they got in my way when I tried to squat.
“Now what?”
“I can’t squat with my panties on. The hole’s too wide.”
“Take them off,” she said, pulling them down for me.
Someone down there can look up through the hole and see my private parts, I thought. There is someone down there. A dead person is in that water waiting for me to squat so that it can claw me in and drown me in turds and pee. There are eyes looking up from that black pool, seeing parts of me that even I can’t see.
“Just hold on to me,” Mami whispered. “Don’t be scared.”
I squatted slowly, holding on to Mami’s hands so that if the dead reached up for me, she could pull me back. I looked down to aim and saw something waving in the water. I couldn’t stand it anymore. I screamed, jumped back again, and crashed against Mami.
“What’s the matter!”
Doña Andrea stood at the door, her hair in curlers.
“She’s afraid of the bathroom,” Mami said, holding on to me.
“Do you think something’s going to float up and take you?”
She laughed. Mami laughed. I leaned against the wall, unable to stop crying. I wished Doña Andrea would leave. But she and Mami stood there laughing like it was the funniest thing in the world. My face burned.
“Stop laughing at me!” I screamed. I punched Mami in the belly, and she gasped. She clasped my hands in hers and held me against the wall.
“Stop that,” she growled. Her hands were firm around my wrists, hurting me. I squirmed, trying to get away.
“Ah, she’s got a temper,” Doña Andrea snorted.
I wished she’d shut up. Mami pushed me toward the hole.
“Now get over there and do what you have to do before I get mad.”
I’d embarrassed her in front of Doña Andrea, but I didn’t care. They shouldn’t have laughed. The water under the hole ran blacker and swifter, and there was no way I was going to squat. No way.
“Fine,” Mami said, letting go of me. “If you refuse to use the bathroom, then you’ll just have to hold it in the rest of the day, because there’s no other place to do it.”
No I didn’t. I didn’t have to hold it in. I didn’t.
She walked to the door. Doña Andrea nodded her approval. Mami looked back at me, not sure if she should leave. She seemed to be at the other end of the world, with Doña Andrea behind her, small as a cockroach, holding the door open. Mami took one step out, but before she could leave, hot urine trickled down my legs into a pool on the floor.
Doña Andrea poured cornflakes into blue plastic bowls. At home, we never had cereal in the middle of the day, but she was taking care of us while Mami went looking for work, and she didn’t know the rules.
“You know, if you hit your mother, when you die they won’t be able to bury you.”
The air was sucked out of me. Delsa’s eyes opened wide, and her mouth fell open.
“Why? Why can’t they?” I croaked.
“Because,” she sprinkled a spoonful of sugar into the bowl, “if you hit your mother, when you die, your arm sticks out in front of you, like this, and it stays like that, so you can’t fit in your coffin.”
“Can’t they push it down?”
“No. If they try, it springs right up.”
“Maybe they can tie it down, with a rope or something.”
She gave me a funny look. Delsa and Norma giggled.
“These are things God does to bad little children. You can’t do anything about them.” She slammed a bowl of cornflakes in front of me.
“She’s wrong. All they have to do is tie the arm down,” I whispered to Delsa and Norma. “And if that doesn’t work, they build a coffin that’s