When I Was Puerto Rican - Esmeralda Santiago [8]
Even when she was very angry, Mami rarely swore or used vulgar language. Papi knew this. It was a clue to how upset she was. He calmly got up and walked to the curtain separating our rooms. I ducked my head back inside my hammock.
“Monin, stop it. You’ll wake the children.”
“Now you’re worried about the children. Why is it that you don’t even think about them when it’s less convenient. When you’re partying with your women and your barroom buddies.” The bedsprings creaked violently as she got up. “Do those hijas de la gran puta know you have children in this Godforsaken hellhole? Do they know your children go barefoot and hungry while you spend the misery you earn on them?”
“Monin!”
“Don’t think just because I’m stuck in this jungle all day long I don’t know what’s going on. I’m not stupid.”
Hector woke up with a wail. Papi raised the flame on the lamp while Mami reached into Hector’s hanging cradle and lifted him out. Delsa and Norma whimpered from their side of the room. I didn’t have to pretend to sleep anymore, so I sat up and watched their silhouettes through the curtain. Mami changed Hector’s diaper with such rough movements, I worried she’d stick a pin into him. Papi stood at the window, looking at where a view would have been if the window were open.
“Look, I don’t know who you’ve been talking to, but I don’t want to hear it anymore.”
He dressed. Mami lifted Hector to her shoulder and paced, bouncing him up and down to get him to go to sleep.
“You don’t come home until after dark ... if you come home at all. And weekends, instead of working on this hovel you call a house, you take off with one excuse or another. You have no shame! I’m sick of it.”
“Well, I’m sick of it too! Do you think I like hearing you complain all the time? Or that I want to hear about how much you hate it here, and how much better life was in San Juan, and how backward Macún is? I’m sick of it! I’m sick of you!”
He stomped out, probably just to give Mami time to cool off, which was his way of fighting her. But I thought he was leaving us. “Papi!! Don’t go. Please, Papi, stay!” I shrieked. When they heard me, Delsa and Norma joined in, and Hector, who was almost asleep in spite of my mother’s yelling near his ear, screeched.
“See what you’ve done!” Mami hollered into the dark yard. “Some father you are, running off on your own children!”
She threw Hector into his cradle and tore Papi’s clothes off their hangers by the bed. “Sick of me? Well, I’m sick of you too.” She tossed his clothes out the door, grabbed a pitcher of water from the table, and splashed it on them. Then she bolted the door, took Hector out of his cradle, and sat on her rocking chair, nursing him. Tears streamed down her cheeks into the grooves at the corners of her lips. “You kids shut up and go back to sleep,” she yelled. None of us dared get out of our hammocks. We hunkered into them, stifling our sobs. For a long time I listened for Papi. For his voice asking Mami to forgive him, or for his footsteps outside the house. But I fell asleep to the sound of Mami’s rocking chair creaking, and her sobs, soft and low like the miaow of a kitten.
The next morning Papi’s clothes were scattered in the front yard. They were damp, stained with the muddy tracks of toads and iguanas. As she waited for the coffee water to boil, Mami picked them up and took them to the tub under the avocado tree. That afternoon, when Papi came home, they’d all been washed.
Another day they were arguing, and I heard Mami accuse Papi, as she often did, of seeing another woman behind her back when he said he was going to see Abuela.
“For God’s sake, Monin. You know I have no interest in Provi. But how can you object to my wanting to see Margie?” Papi asked.
“I know it’s not Margie you want to see. It’s her mother.”
“Monin, please. That’s been over for years.”
And on they went, Mami accusing Papi and Papi defending himself. When they’d reached a truce and I had a few moments alone with Papi, I asked