When I Was Puerto Rican - Esmeralda Santiago [65]
“Come on,” Tio Lalo muttered, “don’t make it hard for your Mami.”
Mami had never needed anyone to defend her, and all of a sudden it was as if she were the child and I the grown-up who was exacting justification for something that should have been obvious.
“I’ll come for you as soon as I get back,” she said.
“When?”
“A couple of weeks.”
“But when? Which day?” I didn’t care if they all thought I was a spoiled, disrespectful, impertinent brat.
Mami took in a long, deep breath that doubled the size of her chest and cleared the flush from her cheeks. “Sunday after next.” She was embarrassed by my behavior, but she wasn’t going to do anything about it in front of her uncle.
“What time?” I pushed.
“One-thirty in the afternoon,” she said through her teeth.
“Your beans are getting cold,” Angelina murmured, her voice a miaow.
I ate the tasteless beans, the sticky rice, the greasy fried chicken. To my right Mami felt tense and tight, but she talked to Angelina and Tio Lalo as if nothing special was happening, as if disappearing into the sky for weeks was something she did all the time, like killing chickens and washing her hair. Across from me, Angie toyed with her food, dispersing it over her plate so that it would look as if she’d eaten it. Gladys munched as slowly and deliberately as a cow, her huge black eyes fixed on me, her lips curled into a slight smile.
That night I lay next to Gladys, unable to sleep.
“If I ever talked to Mamita like that,” Gladys whispered,
“Papito would beat me until I had no skin left.”
I felt no sympathy, no desire to accept hers.
“Once I talked back, and Papito took me behind the kitchen and beat me with his belt.”
I had no idea where my sisters and brothers were, who was watching them while Mami took Raymond to New York. I wondered if Papi had to stay home from work. Why couldn’t I stay with him and the kids? After all, I was the oldest.
“Angie talks back all the time, but they never hit her.”
Mami probably didn’t trust me with my sisters and brothers. After Raymond’s accident she never left me alone with them for more than an hour. Maybe she knew his accident was my fault.
“Papito favors her because she’s named after Mamita. I don’t know why they didn’t give me her name. I’m the oldest. I should have my mother’s name.”
Mami was probably planning to stay in New York and leave us in Puerto Rico. Maybe she had given us away, the way people who couldn’t take care of their kids did. Maybe she gave me away to Tio Lalo and Angelina because they were so strict.
“They make me peel all the potatoes. She always has an excuse. Now they’ll probably make you peel her potatoes while she sleeps late.”
“What potatoes? What are you talking about?”
“For the stuffed potato balls. Papito is famous around here for them.”
“What does that have to do with me?”
“You’re here to peel potatoes. Every morning he boils two sackfuls, and we can’t do anything else until they’re clean, or Papito gets mad.”
“Why do we have to do it?”
“Who else? He has to tend the store, and Mamita has to clean the house.”
It wasn’t fair. Mami had given me away to Evangelicals who would make me peel potatoes all day long. I scrunched the pillow over my head and let the sobs out. It seemed like more punishment than I deserved for letting Raymond have an accident.
Tio Lalo set the potatoes to cook as soon as he woke up, and he had drained them by the time Gladys and I sat down to breakfast. No sooner did we finish eating than he called us into the room behind the store.
“Show her how it’s done,” he said to Gladys.
She speared a steaming potato with a fork and showed me how to peel it until there wasn’t a spot on it. “If there are any peels left,” she said, “the balls come out gritty and the customers complain.”
The potatoes had to be peeled while they were hot, she explained, because the skin stuck if they got too cold. Papito, she said, didn’t want a lot of waste.
Every so often, Tio Lalo came and stood behind me to see how I was doing. Whenever he did,