When I Was Puerto Rican - Esmeralda Santiago [69]
Until then Mami had used the excuse that I was almost pubescent to warn me against playing with boys, to insist that I do something useful like housework or cooking, and to remind me to sit with my legs together. But now she was using the familiar phrase as a warning to Papi, not to me, as if it were he who had to do something about my semistatus. It excited me that being “casi señorita” meant my piano teacher saw me as more than a gifted student. The next time I went for my lesson I wore the sleeveless scoop-neck dress, which until then had been a favorite only because it kept me cool, and its broad skirt made it possible to sit cross-legged without my panties showing.
“So pretty,” Don Luis said as I came in. “So nice.”
We began the lesson with my tortured scales, but he interrupted to put his arm around me, to demonstrate, he said, the proper position of my wrist. He was as fragrant as the flowers outside his window, as slight, but he trembled with a warmth I’d never felt before, an almost imperceptible tremor that somehow transferred to me. I nudged him, respectfully, as if by accident. He returned his arm to his own body and slid over.
“Ahem,” he said and straightened his collar.
I continued playing but was unable to concentrate because I kept the corner of my eye on his restless hands, the elegant fingertips that danced against the pale blue fabric of his pants.
“No, no, no!” He took my fingers into his left hand and, with the right, slapped me hard.
I hopped off the bench, humiliated. “Why’d you do that?”
“You’re striking the keys like they’re conga drums. This is a very delicate instrument. The touch has to be light, light....” He wiggled his fingers in the air. “Now sit down and try again.”
I sat as far away from him as possible without falling off the bench, elbows butterflied to give me even more room. He stood up, walked behind me, bent over, and gently pushed my arms close to my ribcage, held them there.
“Better,” he said softly.
He hovered above me, his fingers on my elbows as light as flour, his skin shivering against mine. I pounded my unease into the keys, hoping the discordance would drive him away, but he held on. His breath fanned my hair as he bent closer. I hunched away from him and saw how the neckline on my dress puffed out for a clear view, to anyone standing above, of the slight mounds, like egg yolks, that had recently begun to ache on my chest. I jumped up and pulled the neckline of the dress up until my fists were against my chin. He stepped back, hands in front of him in a position similar to the one I used to keep Mami from striking me. His eyes were wide, his skin mottled pink and white, his mouth invisible behind his mustache.
“¡ Viejo asqueroso!” I screamed in a voice and tone borrowed from my mother. “Filthy old man!”
Shame rose from the ground and wrapped me in a hot, turbulent funnel that I wished would lift me out of this room, away from my school principal’s startled blue eyes and quivering, elegant fingers. I shuddered with fear and rage. I felt soiled, as if his gaze had branded my naked chest. He spoke, but I couldn’t make sense of what he said, nor did I stay to listen. I backed out of his house, confused, arms wrapped around myself, head heavy, as if it had grown until I felt I had no body.
That night, when I told them what happened, Mami and Papi had a loud fight. I was not to study piano anymore, and Papi was to have a talk with Don Luis. As if she didn’t trust Papi to do it right, Mami went to school the next day to have her own discussion with the school principal. And for the rest of the year, whenever we passed in the hall, Don Luis sought the distance directly above and beyond me, as if I had become invisible as dust.
If I stepped out of our new house on Calle Castro Viña, up the block and to the left, I could walk through a quiet, shadowy street that curved in and out of unpaved alleys and, within minutes, be sitting