When I Was Puerto Rican - Esmeralda Santiago [64]
I looked around her room, the only decoration in it a framed copy of the Lord’s Prayer. Soft music came from Angie’s door so faintly that it could have been in the house next door.
“Don’t you have a radio?” I asked.
“No. My mother is Evangelical. She doesn’t like the radio, unless it’s preachers.”
A wave roiled inside my stomach, and my fingertips and toes felt cold. In Macún many of our neighbors were Evangelicals. The men dressed in neat white shirts and ties, and the women wore sleeved blouses and long skirts in solid, dull colors year-round. They never cut their hair and didn’t wear makeup, shorts, or jewelry. They didn’t dance, drink, or read popular novels. Every other word out of their mouths was “Blessed be the Lord” or “Aleluya,” and they went around door-to-door every Sunday selling religious magazines. From what I could see, they lived dull, inhibited lives. But they lived them with a fervor that was frightening. Our family never went to church, and I worried that people who did were infallible and we were wrong in our willful resistance to religious guidance. Mami had not told me Uncle Lalo and Angelina were Evangelicals, and I worried that she didn’t know and that they would try to convert me. Then I wouldn’t be any fun and would spend the rest of my days selling The Watch Tower and brushing my long hair into a single braid that dangled down my back.
“I want to see my mother,” I said to Gladys and stepped through the curtain. Mami and Angelina were in the kitchen cooking. “Mami can we go now?”
“No, silly. You’re spending a few days here.” She said it with an edge to her voice, letting me know I was being disrespectful by asking to leave when we hadn’t even eaten. Angelina smiled.
“And you haven’t seen your Tio Lalo’s store yet. Come, and you can choose a dessert for after dinner.” She led me through a door into a room with a long table and a sink on either end. There were shelves along the wall, and a refrigerator. Against a corner there was a stack of burlap sacks with fancy black lettering: POTATOES. We stepped down twice into another room dominated by glass-front refrigerator cases that served as the counter for the store. On either side of the narrow center aisle there were more refrigerated cases for ice cream and sodas, and the walls of the store were dappled with candy in shiny cellophane wrappers clipped to metal skeletons.
Tio Lalo stood behind the counter. Every second we were there he was serving people lined up to buy his stuffed potato balls or his creamy tembleque.
“Hello!” he murmured, his solemn face not giving any hint that he was happy to see me. “Pick any sweet you like,” he said. I looked around, unable to decide, until he pulled a Hershey’s Milk Chocolate Bar from the wall. “Take this one,” he said, “and get back to the house.” Even though I wouldn’t have chosen that one, I took it and scrammed, sensing that the store, with all its colors and things to make a child happy, belonged to Tio Lalo alone, and not even his family was allowed to go in there.
Angelina’s cooking was bland and colorless. Before we could eat, she offered a prayer, and we had to bow our heads to hear it. At the end, Mami elbowed me so that I would say “Amen” along with everyone else.
“So how long will you be in New York?” Tio Lalo asked.
Everyone looked at me. Mami wore a frightened expression. “A couple of weeks,” she said.
“You’re going to New York?” I couldn’t believe she hadn’t told me. Now I knew why I had to spend time in this quiet, cheerless house.
“Your grandmother made an appointment for Raymond to see a specialist. Maybe they can save his foot.” It was an apology, not a reason.
“But why didn’t you tell me?” I couldn’t help the whine in my voice, the tightness that closed my throat, making it difficult to speak without pain. “Why can’t I go with you?”
“Your Mami can’t afford to take both of you,” Angelina said. “It’s very expensive to go to New York. Besides, we’re so happy to have you. You’ve