When I Was Puerto Rican - Esmeralda Santiago [70]
“Too much work,” she said.
Abuela didn’t think they were too much work. Every Friday she made them and served them with a clear fish head broth on the surface of which floated fresh cilantro.
My grandfather had died the year before, of old age. When I came to Abuela’s house, I mourned the emptiness of his room, from which he had emerged dressed in his white long-sleeve shirt and pants, his feet bare, his platinum hair cropped to a stubble.
Once, while Abuela was in the kitchen, I stepped inside Abuelo’s room. Everything looked the same: the narrow cot, the colorful picture of Jesus’ bleeding head crowned with thorns, a palm frond nailed above it, the simple table and chair. The room was cold, its cement walls whiter than I remembered, the window shaded by a breadfruit tree, its large leaves shedding pale reflections against the ceiling. I touched the small pillow where Abuelo’s head had rested and had an image of him deftly peeling an orange in a long ribbon to his bare feet, which were brown, calloused, and delicately shaped.
“He’s in Heaven, with Papa Dios,” Abuela said behind me, startling me out of the brooding sorrow that pressed against my chest. I let her lead me to the table, where the hot broth and gritty cornmeal soothed the ache.
“I hope when your Mami is in New York you will come visit me,” she said as we washed dishes.
“Mami already went to New York ... last spring.”
“I think she’s going again. Generosa will stay with you for a few weeks.”
I dried my hands on the hem of my dress and leaned against the sink. I took the emptiness of Abuelo’s room inside myself, the cold, stippled walls desolate and hard.
“You know your little brother’s foot is still giving him problems.”
I knew that. But it didn’t matter. His pain meant he got to spend more time with Mami than any of us did. He got to travel to New York, a place Mami spoke of with reverence.
“You have to be a help to your Mami,” Abuela said. “You’re the oldest. She depends on you.”
I caved in to my misery. Mami was leaving, and once more she hadn’t told me, hadn’t included me in her plans.
“I don’t like it when she goes away,” I cried into Abuela’s shoulder, the only place where I could express my loneliness, my fears. To have told Mami would have been wrong. She was overwhelmed by what she called “the sacrifices I have to endure for you kids,” and my love, expressed in demands, added a greater burden. I was keenly aware that she wasn’t my mother: I had to share her with Delsa, Norma, Hector, Alicia, Edna, and Raymond. But it seemed that somehow my share was smaller because I was the oldest, because I was casi señorita, because I ought to know better.
I walked home from Abuela’s house feeling Mami’s absence as if she had already left. By the time I got home, I had wrapped myself in the blanket of responsibility she was about to drop on me. It felt heavy, too big for me, yet if I made the wrong move, I was afraid it would tear, exposing the slight, frightened child inside.
It wasn’t that when Mami was gone we misbehaved more. It was simply that I couldn’t muster her authority, couldn’t manage to keep my sisters and brother in line with her strict rules of behavior. Not when I, too, saw an opportunity to break them.
“What do you kids like to eat?” Titi Generosa asked us, her voice scratchy as a güiro.
“Oatmeal!” Hector sang.
“Oatmeal!” Delsa and Norma agreed.
“What else?” Titi Generosa asked.
“Pork chops and fried potatoes,” I said.
“I don’t like fried potatoes.” Edna pouted.
“And I don’t like the pork chops if they’re too crisp,” Alicia said, her blank-toothed grin an explanation.
“But you all like oatmeal.”
“Yeay!” we shrieked, as if she had just answered the question that won the jackpot.
“All right,” she mumbled. “Oatmeal it will be.”
I liked Titi Generosa. Her voice, which everyone said sounded as if she were hoarse, came forth in the rhythmic jíbaro dialect I loved.