When I Was Puerto Rican Read Online Free PDF Page A

her. She’s just a kid.”
    “I think she can do it,” he shot back at her.
    He turned the block so that I could hold it along the sides, where there was a place to grab onto. The rough edges scraped against my legs and belly. It was heavy and awkward, but I managed to carry it over next to the wheelbarrow and drop it.
    “Can I bring another one?” I asked, rubbing my hands against my teeshirt. They smarted from the weight and the grooves that the block had dug into my skin.
    “No, I can manage.” He carried two blocks stacked one atop the other, set them down carefully, then stood with hands on hips, his back arched, eyes closed, head thrown back so that his Adam’s apple bulged from his neck.
    “I can’t bring Margie to see you because she’s moved to Nueva York.”
    Mami took in a breath. “When?”
    He lifted his arms over his head, stretched up, and floated them slowly to his hips, where they stayed as if he were posing for a picture. Mami watched him for a while then took her sewing inside the house.
    “You didn’t say she was leaving,” I whined, and it seemed that Papi finally realized that all our talk about Margie was not just my natural curiosity but something more. He turned sad eyes on me, kneeled, and hugged me. As he grieved on my shoulder, I wanted nothing more than for Papi to go on losing people he loved so that he’d always turn to me, so that I alone could bring him comfort.

    Margie and “that woman’s” disappearance from Puerto Rico didn’t mark the end of my parents’ fights. They were locked in a litany choked with should have’s, ought to’s, and why didn’t you’s. Their arguments accomplished nothing, as far as I could see, except to make everyone miserable. After they fought, Mami was sullen and irritable, and Papi disappeared into himself like a snail into a shell. We children tiptoed around them or else played in the farthest reaches of the yard, our voices dulled lest they incite our parents. To make things more confusing, it was clear that there were moments of tenderness between them. Sometimes I came upon them standing close, arms encircling waists, heads close, as if they shared secrets that transcended the hurt and resentments, the name-calling and deceit.
    Almost as soon as Hector started to gum on mashed-up yucca and boiled sweet plantain, Mami’s features softened, her body filled out, and her belly rounded into a soft mound that got in her way whenever she tried to lift one of us into the tub for one of our baths.
    I couldn’t figure out when or how Papi asked Mami to forgive him and what he did so that she would. But it was clear to me, from their arguments, the conversations I’d overheard between Mami and her female relatives and friends, and from boleros on the radio, that Papi, being a man, was always to blame for whatever unhappiness existed in our house.
    Men, I was learning, were sinvergüenzas, which meant they had no shame and indulged in behavior that never failed to surprise women but caused them much suffering. Chief among the sins of men was the other woman, who was always a puta, a whore. My image of these women was fuzzy, since there were none in Macún, where all the females were wives or young girls who would one day be wives. Putas, I guessed, lived in luxury in the city on the money that sinvergüenza husbands did not bring home to their long-suffering wives and barefoot children. Putas wore lots of perfume, jewelry, dresses cut low to show off their breasts, high heels to pump up their calves, and hair spray. All this was paid for with money that should have gone into repairing the roof or replacing the dry palm fronds enclosing the latrine with corrugated steel sheets. I wanted to see a puta close up, to understand the power she held over men, to understand the sweet-smelling spell she wove around the husbands, brothers, and sons of the women whose voices cracked with pain, defeat, and simmering anger.
     
     
    I started school in the