When I Was Puerto Rican - Esmeralda Santiago [95]
I left the window and looked for Mami in the kitchen. She was in her at-home clothes, her hair not curled, her eyebrows not drawn in.
“What’s the matter?” she asked. “Why do you look so scared?”
“Nothing,” I said.
It had all been my fault. Somehow, my just being at the window had made it happen. I went back, opened the blinds all the way, and watched openly. He was having a great time, while I vacillated between fear and curiosity, between embarrassment and the knowledge that, like it or not, I was having my first sexual experience.
I smiled at him then, a wide, seductive, Marilyn Monroe smile that took him by surprise. His eyes veiled suspiciously, and he leaned over to see if anyone else was hanging out from the other windows in the building. But it was just the two of us, me smiling brazenly while inside I quaked in terror, and him, flustered beyond comprehension.
I wondered what I’d done, why he stuffed his now limp penis back into his pants, zipped himself up, leaned his left elbow on his window, and parked his chin on his hand, his eyes focused on the warehouse full of soft drinks, the bald circle on the back of his head as vulnerable as a baby’s soft spot. Whatever he’d wanted from me he didn’t want anymore, and I was certain it was because I’d been too willing to give it to him.
YOU DON’T WANT TO KNOW
Dime con quien andas, y te diré quién eres.
Tell me who you walk with, and I’ll tell you who you are.
At about the same time that Mami started looking pregnant Francisco was rushed to the emergency room with a stomachache. We thought he had appendicitis, but after many tests and operations Mami told Tata that Francisco had cancer. We moved, for the fourth time in twelve months, to a bigger apartment in the building next door, so that Tata could live with us again. Every day Mami went from work straight to the hospital. She stayed with Francisco until visiting hours were over then came home, exhausted, hungry, her eyes red. She was very thin, but her belly grew high and round, and everyone knew she was having a boy.
Francisco was in and out of the hospital. When he was home, Tata was nice to him, prepared him special broths, cooked him creamy rice with milk. But when she drank, she was still nasty.
We steered clear of the bedroom Francisco shared with Mami, kept the television low, and did our homework and fighting in the kitchen, where he couldn’t hear us as well. Every once in a while he came out of the room dressed in his pajamas, a cotton robe wrapped around his slight body, his hands large and bony, holding the front of the robe as if he didn’t trust the knot he had tied at his waist. Even with all those clothes on he looked like a skeleton. His elbows were pointy, and the skin on his face, hands, and feet was translucent. Bones stuck out of his back like truncated wings. His black hair, over which he couldn’t trouble as much anymore, grew long and lanky, so that it often covered his eyes, making him look younger.
Mami and Francisco’s baby was born in March. Francisco was in the hospital, but he came home the same day that Mami did. For days he lay in bed with Franky on his chest, singing jíbaro songs in a soft voice.
Francisco’s family didn’t want him living with us. Every time he went in for another operation, they argued with Mami that he should be with them. It was embarrassing to hear his family bickering right over his bed, as if he couldn’t hear them.
One time Mami and I went to see him at King’s County Hospital. He was in a huge ward with waxed floors, beds lined up against the walls, each with a small night table to its right and a pale yellow curtain to separate it from the other beds. There was a green metal chair next to his bed.
Mami sent me out to get water in a basin. She then bathed and powdered