When I Was Puerto Rican - Esmeralda Santiago [99]
Women with accents that weren’t Puerto Rican claimed they were so that they could reap the benefits of American citizenship. A woman I was translating for once said, “These gringos don’t know the difference anyway. To them we’re all spiks.”
I didn’t know what to do. To tell the interviewer that I knew the woman was lying seemed worse than translating what the woman said as accurately as I could and letting the interviewer figure it out. But I worried that if people from other countries passed as Puerto Ricans in order to cheat the government, it reflected badly on us.
I never knew if my translations helped, but once an old jíbara took my hands in hers and kissed them, which made me feel like the best person in the world.
“Where have you been?” Mami screamed one day when I came home after school later than usual.
“In the library.” I showed her the stack of books.
“You know I don’t want you out after dark. The streets are dangerous. What if something were to happen?”
“Nothing happened ...”
“Don’t you talk back!”
“I’m not talking ...”
My sisters and brothers scurried away. Tata, Don Julio, and Chico left their domino game in the kitchen to see what was going on.
“Monin, leave her alone,” Tata said, her hand on Mami’s shoulder.
“Don’t you tell me how to raise my children!” Mami screamed, backing away from her.
My knees shook. What if Mami knew that I hitched my skirt up so I wouldn’t look so dumb? What if she knew that I sometimes wore eye makeup and washed it off before I came home? What if some nosy neighbor had told her that a boy had once walked me halfway home from the library?
I stood by the door, arms laden with books, my winter coat still on, too terrified to move. I knew I must have done something to cause her rage, but I didn’t know what it could be. I wasn’t about to admit to anything before she accused me.
“You think just because you can speak a little English you can do anything you like!”
“That’s not true.”
She came at me, her hands raised, ready to strike. My books dropped to the floor, and before I knew it I was holding on to her hands, gripping the wrists tight. I didn’t know I was that strong, and Mami was surprised too, because she backed off, her face startled.
“Hit me, go ahead. You can kill me if that makes you feel better,” I screamed loud enough for the world to hear. I stood in front of her, shaking all over, hands at my sides, martyrlike, fully aware of the dramatic moment that might backfire but willing to take the chance.
“What?” she croaked and then came at me again. I didn’t move. She stopped just short of a blow. I kept my eyes on hers. She must have seen the fear in them, and the defiance. “Get out of my sight,” she snarled, and Tata grabbed me and dragged me into the kitchen.
Mami and I didn’t speak for days. But she never, ever, hit me again.
After we came to Brooklyn, all our time was spent indoors. We lived cooped up because our neighborhood was filled with “gente mala,” bad people. The little girl who was raped and thrown over the side of a twenty-one-story building in the projects was only one of the gory crimes I read about in El Diario. Every day there were murders, rapes, muggings, knifings, and shootings. In Puerto Rico the crimes had always happened somewhere else, in cities far from Macún. But in Brooklyn bad things happened on our block.
One day Don Julio, who already looked like a boxer who had taken too many hits, came home bloodied and bruised, his eyes lost behind swollen cheeks and nose.
“¡Ay, Señor, Dios Santo!” Mami cried. “What happened to you?”
“Some kids jumped me as I came out of the subway station.”
They had used bats, pipes, and chains. Once they had him on the ground, they stole his wallet, which Don Julio claimed had only four dollars in it, and his Timex watch, a gift from his oldest daughter.
“They didn’t see my gold chain with the medallion of the Holy Virgin.” He pulled it out from inside his shirt and kissed it. “I guess She was looking out for me,