When I Was Puerto Rican - Esmeralda Santiago [93]
Every night that first winter we gathered in the kitchen around the oven door, and I embellished fairy tales in which the main characters were named after my sisters and brothers, who, no matter how big the odds, always triumphed and always went on to live happily ever after.
“Come kids, come look. It’s snowing!” Mami opened the window wide, stuck out her hand, and let the snow collect on her palm. It looked like the coconut flakes she grated for arroz con dulce. The moment it fell onto our hands, it melted into shimmering puddles, which we licked in slurpy gulps.
“Can we go down and play in it, Mami?” we begged, but she wouldn’t let us because it was dark out, and the streets were never safe after dark. We filled glasses with the snow clumping on the fire escape then poured tamarind syrup on it to make piraguas Brooklyn-style. But they tasted nothing like the real thing because the snow melted in the cup, and we missed the crunchy bits of ice we were used to.
The next day schools were closed, and we went out bundled in all the clothes Mami could get on us. The world was clean and crisp. A white blanket spread over the neighborhood, covering garbage cans and the hulks of abandoned cars, so that the street looked fresh and full of promise.
When schools opened again, kids ran in groups and made snowballs, which they then threw at passing buses, or at each other. But as beautiful as it was, and as cheerful as it made everyone for a while, in Brooklyn, even snow was dangerous. One of my classmates had to be rushed to the hospital when another kid hit him in the eye with a rock tightly packed inside a clump of snow.
Every day after school I went to the library and took out as many children’s books as I was allowed. I figured that if American children learned English through books, so could I, even if I was starting later. I studied the bright illustrations and learned the words for the unfamiliar objects of our new life in the United States: A for Apple, B for Bear, C for Cabbage. As my vocabulary grew, I moved to large-print chapter books.
Mami bought me an English-English dictionary because that way, when I looked up a word I would be learning others.
By my fourth month in Brooklyn, I could read and write English much better than I could speak it, and at midterms I stunned the teachers by scoring high in English, History, and Social Studies. During the January assembly, Mr. Grant announced the names of the kids who had received high marks in each class. My name was called out three times. I became a different person to the other eighth graders. I was still in 8-23, but they knew, and I knew, that I didn’t belong there.
That first winter, Mami fell in love with Francisco, who lived across the street. He had straight black hair combed into a pompadour, black eyes, and very pale skin. He looked at Mami the way I imagined Prince Charming looked at Cinderella, and she blushed when he was around. When he came to visit, he brought us candy, and once he brought Mami flowers.
We teased her. “Mami has a boyfriend. Mami has a boyfriend.”
“Stop that nonsense,” she’d say. “You’re being disrespectful.” But there was a secret smile on her face, and we knew she wasn’t angry.
Tata didn’t like Francisco. “He’s younger than you are,” she told Mami. “You should be ashamed.”
But Mami wasn’t. Evenings, after work, she visited across the street, where Francisco lived with his parents and brother. After dinner they played cards around the dining room table. Mami never stayed long, but she always came back from his house happy. That put Tata in a dark mood, especially when she’d been drinking.
“Everyone’s talking,” she’d say.
“I don’t care,” Mami would answer. “It’s my life.”
Once, Tata and Don Julio had been drinking all afternoon. We knew to stay away from the kitchen, where they argued about politics, the