When I Was Puerto Rican - Esmeralda Santiago [56]
Mami gave me a look. “He won’t go to Heaven.”
“Oh.”
She took a deep breath. “So Doña Cony asked me if you could close the baby’s eyes.”
“No way!”
“It will only take a minute. You’ll wear your white pique dress, and I’ll take you out for ice cream after.”
Something told me Mami had already said I would do it.
“Do I have to touch it?”
“Of course, but not for long. It only takes a minute.”
“What if when I touch it, it grabs me?”
“He’s dead. He can’t move.”
“But in all the stories the dead walk around and do things ...”
“That’s grown-up dead. This little baby couldn’t even walk yet. He’s going to be an angel. But only if someone closes his eyes.”
“Why?”
“Because his soul is trapped in his body. Once you close his eyes, it can fly up to Heaven.”
“Why do I have to do it?”
“Because the curandera saw you and picked you out from among many little girls for this honor. You should be proud you were chosen.”
“What curandera? When did she see me? Who is she?”
“Negi, if you don’t want to do it, I’ll tell her, and then she’ll have to find someone else. But if you want to do it, we have to be there in a few minutes.”
It sounded scary, but I’d never seen a dead baby. I hoped to see its soul trapped inside its head.
Mami pulled out my white pique dress. I was only allowed to wear it to visit relatives. She tied a white ribbon around my waist and held it with a safety pin so it wouldn’t slip.
“I look like I’m going to make communion.”
Mami chuckled. We never went to church. Maybe the Virgin Mary was not protecting me, like she did Catholic children.
Maybe when I went to close the baby’s eyes, the Devil would take both of us down into the black waters. Or maybe God Himself would strike me dead on the spot.
“Shouldn’t we go to church first? Maybe a priest should bless me or something, you know, to make me holy.”
“Turn around and let me fix this bow.”
She never listened. I asked her questions, and she pretended I hadn’t. It made me mad.
“Let’s go.”
My sisters and brothers were with Doña Andrea. She came out of her house and made me turn around so she could look at me.
“Oh, you look so nice,” she said, “so innocent.”
We walked along the dock connecting our house to the main pier from which many other piers and bridges stretched to houses in the water.
Mami pulled me along faster than I could walk. We’d never been this way. The barrio was bigger than I thought. An old man sat on the threshold of his house and waved at us. A woman hung laundry on a line stretched between her house and the next one. She leaned way out of her window, until it looked like she would fall in the water. When she saw us, she grinned and went inside.
My patent-leather shoes slipped on the rotting wood of the pier.
“Can you walk a little slower, Mami?”
She waited for me to catch my breath. She curled a loose strand of hair behind my ribboned braids.
“You look so pretty in white,” she said and hugged me.
She was soft, warm. Her arm heavy around my shoulders, she pointed to a house at the end of a long walkway stretching out from a pier.
“That’s where we’re going.”
The house was painted the same bright green as the lizards that hide in plantain leaves. A limp black bow hung by the open door.
Mami tugged on my dress here and there, pulled down her skirt, and grabbed my hand tight. She was as scared as I was. I took a deep breath.
“Okay,” I said, “I’m ready.”
My shoes tapped against the wood, as if I were dancing. It was disrespectful to make so much noise when death was so near. I wished I could float over the wood so I wouldn’t make so much noise. It was hard to do when I was scared. It took a lot of concentration. But by the time we reached the house, I was floating.
The baby’s coffin lay on a table draped in white cloth. Shirred white lace hung on the walls behind him and in a canopy above the coffin.
Two women met us at the door. They held long white rosaries with enormous silver crosses. One of them was dressed in mourning, the other in white, turbaned, her brown skin ashimmer. She had sparse eyebrows over protruding eyes; one