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By Root 611 0

A man came out of the house where “una gente rica” lived, his eyes shaded by a straw sombrero. He wore a yellow shirt tucked into white pants, and something about the way he moved reminded me of Jorge Negrete, the Mexican movie star. His broad shoulders tapered to a narrow waist, and he walked with the swagger of someone who wore a six shooter on each hip. He sat on a rock, dangled his hands between his knees, and stared at the quickly flowing water as if it held a secret. My heart thumped the name “Armando,” whispered hoarsely as in the radio soap operas, and I willed him to look up and fall in love with me at first sight. But he just stared numbly at the stream, his face invisible under his hat. I ran inside, combed my hair, washed my face, and tugged here and there so that the bodice of my dress lay flat against the bumps on my chest. With trembling fingers, I undid one of the buttons to show an inch more skin where the cleavage should have been.

When I returned, he was on his back, hands under his neck, sombrero over his face. The afternoon was quiet, disturbed only by the rushing stream and the buzzing of a colibrí around my gardenia bush. A flower now bloomed on the side of the bush facing the water, the first to bloom of hundreds of buds that studded the tree like pale gems. I nipped it, brought it to my face, and buried myself in its fragrance. He rose and looked across to where I stood. I felt dangerous, bold, older by years, inspired by all the Marianas and Sofias whose emotional ups and downs had fed my romantic fantasies. I looked at him, and my gaze was met by an amazingly blue pair of eyes against cinnamon skin and a faint smile tickling white teeth. He tipped his hat in greeting. I nodded then stuck the stem of the gardenia in the open buttonhole, where it flopped in the wide space between my soon-to-be breasts. He chuckled, but I didn’t mind. I took the gardenia out, pinned it behind my right ear, where, I thought, it accentuated my intensely black eyes. I felt beautiful, fragrant, warm as the morning sun. I leaned against the mango tree, throwing my chest up the way I’d seen Maria Félix do in movies when Jorge Negrete was about to kiss her. The man across the way folded his arms across his chest and smiled broadly. I closed my eyes.

“Negi, what are you doing?”

Mami stood outside the gate staring, with Edna and Raymond snickering behind her. She scraped open the gate against the cement walk, and I quickly buttoned my blouse. She stared at the man walking up the bank toward the big house on the corner.

“Who was that?”

“Who?”

“That man across the creek.” He’d gone into the house as quickly as he’d appeared.

“I don’t see anyone.”

“Get inside and help me with these bundles,” she said, dropping a shopping bag into my arms. “And I don’t want you out here again when that man is out.” On the rocking chair my Corin Tellado book flapped in the breeze. “I wish you’d stop reading this trash,” she said and flung it inside, where it fell under the sofa, to be retrieved later.

Mami and Papi’s arguments became unbearable. They screamed at each other, ruptured the night with insults and hate-filled words that echoed in my head for days. I lay in bed crying, afraid to step into the room where I heard things breaking, but the next morning there were no mismatched pieces, no chips or fragments, nothing to sweep away. We had breakfast in silence long after Papi left for work, Mami distant as another country, shrouded by something dark and grievous that we couldn’t break through. She served us, helped us dress, sent us off to school, and left for her own job in a fog of pain that obliterated all hope, all romance. I tried to disappear within the hallways of Ramón Emeterio Betances School, where children from happy homes crowded in cheery groups. The school library became a refuge from would-be friends, and I sat for hours reading fairy tales, diving into them as into a warm pool that washed away the fear, the sadness, the horror of living in a home where there was no love.

“Don’t be so dramatic!” Mami scolded