America's Dream Read Online Free PDF Page B

have had this man with the black eyes, the slight paunch, the stubby, delicate hands. As children, they played to- gether in this very neighborhood, before it got built up, when every house was set back behind broad yards, surrounded by mango, breadfruit, and avocado trees. Before urbanization. They didn’t have running water then, or electricity. The road was a dusty path in winter and a treacherous, muddy trail when it rained.
    Correa had come to the barriada with the contractors improving the roads, stringing electric wires from tall poles, digging up ditches to lay pipes for running water and sewers. Correa was a man, Odilio Pagán a boy, and América a girl who hadn’t seen much. La conquista, the seduction, didn’t take long. She ran off with Correa, and even though eight months later she returned to her mother’s house, she is still Correa’s woman. He lives on the other side of the island, has other women, has, in fact, a legal wife and kids in Fajardo. But he always comes back to América, under the pretext of seeing his daughter. And when he does, he stays in her bed. And if any other man dares get too friendly, he beats her up. In the fifteen years Correa has been in her life, no other men have dared enter it, for fear he will kill her.

    Fuerza de Puños

I

    t rains all night, but she doesn’t realize it until the next morning, when she comes out of her windowless room and the air feels moist and new. The house is dark, but through the slats of the front windows a frail gray light seeps in like mist. América sets the coffeeinaker on brew, slips two slices of white bread into the toaster, goes to the bathroom to wash her face and mouth. The swelling on her lip has gone down, but her eyes still feel heavy, and the scratches on her arms and shoulders rub painfully against her nightclothes. When she returns to the kitchen, the coffee is ready, the toast crisp. She brings her cup and toast smeared with grape jelly into her room, switches on the light, changes into her uniform in between bites and sips. She doesn’t put on makeup, avoids the mirror. The radio is tuned to a station that plays salsa, and she hums the familiar rhythms absently as if her mind were empty and her heart light. Ester pads in, her greñas sticking out in every direction because last night she didn’t set her hair in
    curlers.
    “You going to work?” “Sí.”
    “Have you no respect? Your daughter is missing, and you’re going around like nothing’s happened.”

    “What am I supposed to do? Sit around all day waiting for them to show up?”
    “What will people say, with you running all over town…” “I’m not all over town, I’m at work. And I don’t care what they
    say.”
    “You say that—”
    “Since when are you so worried about the neighbors’ opinion?” Ester sniffs and retreats to the kitchen, pours herself some cof- fee. América brushes her hair into a ponytail held with a barrette in the shape of a colorful fish. She folds her white apron and stuffs it into her pocket, puts on white sneakers with short socks. Her movements are quick and determined, with the authority of years
    of practice. Ester appears at the door again.
    “When you left I ran all over town looking for you.”
    América looks up. Ester stares into the fragrant liquid in the brown-and-yellow mug she holds in her hands, the fingers laced around one another as if to draw warmth. Her face, still creased from sleep, has the softness of a child’s, but the deep diagonal lines from her nose to the corners of her mouth, the crow’s-feet scratched around her eyes, the furrows etched between the eye- brows are those of someone who has lived hard in her forty-five years. América turns her gaze from her mother’s face, walks past her to the front of the house.
    “Mami, you didn’t have a man to help you. Rosalinda has a father.”
    “Bah!” Ester responds, and scuffs back through the kitchen into her room.
    América stands at the door,