When I Was Puerto Rican - Esmeralda Santiago [71]
She lived next to her mother, my abuela, whose every other word had God in it, was sister to my father, who wrote poems, and to Tio Vidal, who recited poetry as he clipped men’s hair in his barbershop. But Titi Generosa wasn’t inclined toward elegant speech, nor toward euphemisms. She spoke her mind in the most crude language I’d ever heard, as if there were nothing shameful in it, as if calling a woman a puta were not embarrassing. I loved that about her and wished for the courage to express myself in the hard language she used. But just thinking such words made me look around guiltily, as if Mami were standing behind me with a hot pepper, set to rid me of the habit of vulgar speech.
The other thing we liked about Titi Generosa was that even though she was a mother herself, she believed everything we told her, no matter how farfetched. We told her Mami didn’t mind if we wandered around the neighborhood, when in fact Mami didn’t allow us out of the front gate without permission, instructions for the exact route we were to take, and a promise to return at a strictly enforced time. We told Titi Generosa we didn’t have to bathe daily, that we had no chores, that we could eat candy for lunch, and that we could wear whatever we wanted whenever we felt like it.
Delsa and Norma, who liked to dress like princesses whenever possible, wore out their three good dresses in no time. Hector, who had a gift for talking people into doing things they weren’t sure they wanted to do, ingratiated himself with the candy store owner down the street and spent most of his day “helping” the owner and himself. Affable, placid Alicia whiled away her days in bed, playing with dolls in tents constructed from Mami’s sheets. And Edna tagged along with whoever seemed to be having the most fun. I disappeared on long walks through forbidden streets, free of Mami’s vigilance.
A couple of blocks from our house, on busy Avenida Roosevelt, I came upon an enormous round building, its zinc roof bright red, its walls adorned with murals of fierce fighting cocks with sharp beaks and murderous round eyes. It was ringed by hurricane fencing; a padlock sagged from a chain wrapped around the gate. From the rear of the building cocks screeched furiously, their cries mingling with the roar of the avenue, their cries interrupted every so often by the lilting quiqui-ri-quí of the roosters they once were. I felt sorry for those trapped birds, whose skinny legs were plucked to reveal spurs sharpened into lethal spikes.
Across the avenue, which was so busy I was afraid to cross to the other side, a development was going up. From backhoes, cranes, cement-mixing trucks, and men in hardhats came a roar of clanging metal, grinding gears, sliding gravel—and the occasional whistle at a passing woman.
Further down, behind a new shopping center with FOR RENT signs in the plate-glass windows, a neighborhood of parcelas, little farms, slept within the rustle of mango and avocado trees. Skinny dogs lay in the sun of the unpaved road; open sewers at either side obliterated the spicy smells wafting from cooking fires.
Boys played stickball in dusty yards, while girls strolled in giggly groups of two and three. I heard them whisper at the impropriety of my roving about unaccompanied, but I didn’t care. Unlike them, I had no one to whom I needed give account. The freedom I had gained from Titi Generosa’s ingenuousness was usually given only to boys, and it set me apart from any friends I might have had at the time, whose mothers were as cautious as mine. I savored it, as I might savor an expensive piece of candy given only at Christmas.
Behind Titi Generosa’s back we called her Titi Avena, Auntie Oatmeal, because oatmeal was all she cooked for us. Papi once asked why it was that there was never any food in the house, and we told him. He rubbed his chin and looked at us suspiciously but didn’t say anything.
Another day he gathered us on