When I Was Puerto Rican - Esmeralda Santiago [80]
“But it’s true,” I sobbed. “Nobody loves me. I have no friends. Kids tease me all the time. And you and Papi ...” My throat closed.
The chicken flapped its wings wildly; downy feathers floated around Mami like a nimbus. “Oof! This one doesn’t want to be eaten!” She tugged hard, and the chicken’s neck cracked. She grinned. “There!” The bird’s wings slowed as if it were flying through water.
“You’re not even listening,” I whined.
She sighed deeply, hung the chicken on the side of the house, and wiped her hands on her dress. “Negi, we love you. But what goes on between me and your Papi is our business. We have our problems, just like every other couple.”
“I don’t hear all the neighbors yelling and screaming at each other like you do!”
“Now you’re being disrespectful.” The warning in her voice made me back down.
“It’s not fair,” I mumbled.
“What’s not fair?”
“Nothing’s fair. Life’s not fair!” I wailed in a fresh fit of tears.
She sat next to me on the steps and draped her arms around me. Her body jiggled, and when I looked up, tears streamed down her cheeks, but her mouth was curled into a smile that she was trying hard to conceal.
“What’s so funny?” I cried, on the verge of catching her giggles.
“Nothing,” Mami said, laughing and kissing the top of my head. “Nothing’s funny.”
We sat on the steps holding each other, laughing and crying at nothing, the chicken’s wings thumping against the side of the house.
“Next week you will be a teeneyer,” Papi said as we sat on the porch smelling the night air.
“What’s that?”
“In the United States, when children reach the age of thirteen, they’re called teeneyers. It comes from the ending of the number in English. Thir-teen. Teen-ager.”
I counted in English to myself. “So I will be a teeneyer until I’m twenty?”
“That’s right. Soon you’ll be wanting to rock and roll.” He laughed as if he had told a very funny joke.
“I don’t like rock and roll,” I protested. “Too noisy. And it’s all in English. I don’t understand the songs.”
“Mark my words,” he said. “When you’re a teeneyer it’s like something comes over you. Rock and roll sounds good. Believe me.” He laughed as if I knew what he was talking about. I hadn’t seen him this happy in a long time.
“Well, it’s not going to happen to me.” I pouted and ignored his chuckles at my expense.
“Just wait,” he said. “Once you’re in New York, you’ll become a regular teeneyer Americana.”
“I’m not going to New York.”
“Your mother’s talking about moving there.”
My stomach fell to my feet. “What?!”
“Didn’t you tell them, Monin?” He called into the house, where Mami and the kids watched a program on our very own black-and-white television set.
“Tell them what?” She came out to the porch, hands on hips.
“That you’re moving to New York.” He didn’t look at her; he just spit out the words like phlegm into the night.
“Pablo ...,” she said as one might murmur a prayer.
“Is it true Mami?” Laughter came from the living room where my sisters and brothers watched Don Cholito’s slapstick.
“How can you be so cruel?” She said to Papi. “You know I have no choice.”
“You have a choice,” he growled.
“Stay here? Put up with your pocavergüenzas?”
“I’ve given you a home. I’m not a rich man, but we’ve always had enough to eat.”
“Do you consider that enough?” Her voice was tense and rising in pitch.
“I don’t know what you want from me, Monin. I just don’t know.”
“I’ve lived with you for fourteen years. We have seven children together. You won’t marry me. You won’t leave me alone.”
“Is that what you want? Marriage? What would that do? I’ve recognized them all. They all have my last name ...”
“Mami, Papi, please ...”
Rage transformed them; a red fury choked the good in both of them and bottled the love they once felt into a dark place where neither could find it.
“Please stop ...”
Their hands formed into fists; their eyes squinted into slits that sent out invisible daggers.
“Please, Mami and Papi ...”
They growled words that made no sense, echoes of all the hurts and insults,