Almost a Woman : A Memoir (9780306821110) (18 page)

The scariest thing to happen during that summer of 1964 was when whole neighborhoods like ours turned against themselves. We read about it in the papers, heard about it on the radio, saw the fuzzy, black-and-white images of people who looked like us running down streets that looked like ours, setting fires, beating each other, being chased by police—some of them on horses like the one that rescued Edna. The officers, all white men, dragged the dark-skinned rioters off the sidewalks littered with broken glass and garbage. They beat them with nightsticks, pushed them into police cars, then drove away followed by a crowd screaming and cursing, their faces twisted into grimaces.

Mami refused to go to work after news of a riot, and I didn't go to summer school. Our apartment was stifling, but we weren't allowed out. Don Julio, whose grown daughters lived in another part of Brooklyn, brought news of buildings set on fire, of crowds breaking store windows and taking whatever they could carry.

“I saw a man run off with a color television,” he said. “And a woman and three kids dragged a sofa out of a furniture store and then went in and got a table and chairs.”

We thought it was funny, but Mami didn't. “
Desordenados
,” she muttered. “If I catch one of you kids doing a thing like that . . .”

One hot night, we had just gone to bed when we heard screams, breaking glass, alarms going off.

“Get away from there! Turn out the lights!” Mami screeched when she saw us leaning out of the windows to see what was going on. A couple of blocks away a mob ran toward Rockaway Avenue, armed with bats and tire irons, banging everything in sight. She pushed us into the middle room, checked that the doors were locked, picked up the phone.

“Should we call the police?” I asked, ready to translate for her. “No,” she whispered, “I just want to make sure it's working.”

We huddled in the dark, listened for steps running up the stairs, or for the crack of splintering wood, or for an explosion, anything to indicate that the violence had reached our door. When we heard police sirens, Hector crept over to the window, peeked out, crept back.

“They stopped them down the street. Nothing's going on out there.”

After a while, Mami went to see. I followed, even though she whispered that we should stay where we were. The street was deserted. A block away, a couple of police cars were parked in the middle of the avenue, their lights flashing, their radios droning chatter. In the other direction there were more police cars, but no people. The sidewalks were littered with trash from upturned garbage cans and shimmering fragments of glass. Mami closed the windows, drew the curtains.

“Everyone back to bed,” she ordered.

It was impossible to sleep. For hours the shrill store alarms kept us awake. Also the waiting. I was sure if I fell asleep I'd wake up in the middle of a fire or of a mob looting the drugstore on the street floor. But daylight came and nothing more had happened. The merchants whose windows were broken placed plywood over them, scrawled notes, or spray-painted “OPEN FOR BUSINESS” or “CLOSED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE,” depending on the damage.
When we shopped, they watched us with distrustful eyes, as if we'd been part of the violence, and we stared back, resentful that no one was immune from their suspicions and anger.

“As soon as I save enough for two months' rent and a security deposit,” Mami sighed, “we're moving.”

The night before the summer school geometry Regents exam, Ray Barretto was playing at a club in El Barrio.

“You stay home and study,” Mami said.

“I don't need to. I have good marks in every exam I've taken.”

“But if you fail this one, you have to repeat the course again.”

“I won't fail. I know the stuff now.”

“Fine, then, if you're sure.”

“I'm sure.”

I danced until my feet hurt. I danced until my throat was hoarse from yelling to be heard above the music. I danced until my eyes smarted from the smoke in the room, and from the melted makeup that dripped into them. I danced until my eardrums throbbed like Ray Barretto's congas. When the music stopped, we followed the crowd outside and found ourselves in the middle of a riot.

Exhausted and still dressed in our party clothes, high heels, and inexpensive but showy jewelry, we pressed together against the wall of a building and watched a crowd of men run past with bats, sticks, the covers of garbage cans. The entrance to the subway was half a block away in the opposite direction, and when the crowd thinned, we ran toward it and made it down the stairs as another angry group turned the corner. People who were at the dance were down in the subway station, and there was talk that the mob would come after us. The men in their
guayaberas
and pastel suits formed a line in front of the women and children, who converged at the far end of the platform, anxiously searching the dark tunnel for signs of a train. Above us, alarms shrieked, people screamed and cursed, cars screeched to a stop, glass shattered, and
heavy objects thudded to the ground. After a long time, sirens wailed. When the train finally came, we ran into it, pushed into the farthest corners, and didn't feel safe until the doors closed. As soon as the train moved, everyone relaxed, laughed at the foolishness of running from a crowd with no interest in us. But it was lame laughter; our fear was real; and although Mami, Delsa, Norma, and I made jokes and laughed along with everyone else, we didn't mention what had happened at home. It was too close an escape to joke about.

Three hours after we came home from our night of Ray Barretto and its aftermath, I chewed on a pencil trying to remember what postulates were and why
x
equaled
z.
But it was no use. The formulas, theorems, and hypotheses had fled. I failed the Regents exam for a second time, which meant I'd have to repeat geometry for the third time in two years.

Once school started, our dancing weekends came to an end. There was a lot of work and expense in getting seven children ready for school. We wore one another's clothes and received hand-me-downs from relatives, but Mami always bought each of us a new outfit and shoes for the first day of school. The girls got new book bags and new hairstyles. The boys got cropped haircuts, new pants, white shirts, and ties for Assembly. But clothes weren't the only expense. Pencils and pens had to be purchased, as did ruled pages, binders, construction paper, crayons, adhesive tape, glue. Teachers sent home lists of other supplies: gym suits and sneakers, maps, protractors, rulers, sketchbooks, dictionaries. Then there was carfare for me and Delsa, who had started high school, and a small allowance for us to buy a soda or a cup of coffee. As the weather cooled, we needed coats, gloves, boots, hats.

Sometimes, even with a full-time job and whatever overtime
she was able to put in, Mami wasn't able to cover all the back-to-school costs. Besides giving up our dancing weekends, we gave up the telephone, canned food, sweets. When we still fell behind, we went to welfare to request an emergency allowance for winter clothes, electricity, or to meet a couple of months' rent until things went back to normal. Mami had to take a day off work, lose that day's wages, then be told that welfare didn't help unless she had no job. Once, a welfare worker asked me why I didn't help my mother.

“I'm in high school,” I responded, taken aback.

“You can work part-time.”

“I don't have time. The school is an hour and a half from our apartment....”

“What's going on?” Mami asked, when she noticed the welfare worker had lost interest in her to argue with me.

“He says I should get a job.”

“She job school,” Mami informed the welfare worker. Every once in a while she spoke a few phrases in English that were very effective. When she did, and if the person she was speaking to understood, she beamed with pride but didn't push her luck by trying any more.

On the way home, I told Mami that maybe I should get a job after school.

“I don't want you out on the street after dark.”

“But Hector has a job . . .”

“He's
casi un hombre.
It's different.”

Hector was twelve, long and scrawny and not “almost a man” from what I could see. But he was male and I was female, and that was the difference. As much as we could have used whatever money I might be able to bring in, it wasn't worth the risk of my being away from home after dark.
Algo
could happen.

I wanted to play Scout in
To Kill a Mockingbird,
Eliza in
Pygmalion,
Laura in
The Glass Menagerie,
Sophocles' Antigone. But again I was cast as Cleopatra, this time with William as Julius Caesar.

Harvey, my first Caesar, played the character as a soldier, all macho bluster and strut. William played Caesar as an emperor used to being obeyed. I dug out the yellow tablecloth costume, tried to find a different approach to the same part. My first Cleopatra was kittenish and flirtatious; this one I decided to play as a cunning queen meeting an equally duplicitous opponent.

It was hard to get into character. The few times I tried to get away with what I wasn't supposed to, I was caught, so cunning didn't come easily.

“That's where acting comes in,” Laura Figueroa affirmed when I explained my dilemma. She was one of the best actresses in the class, capable of any role, any accent, classic to contemporary. Her specialty, however, was old ladies. Not that she preferred playing them, but every time we were cast, I was Cleopatra and she was old. “Maybe you can model her character on someone you know.” I shook my head. “Well, then, a combination of people.”

“I wish I'd seen Elizabeth Taylor's Cleopatra.”

“It might help, but she's not exactly Method.”