Almost a Woman : A Memoir (9780306821110) (36 page)

“Don't be like me,” she insisted, “learn a profession, don't depend on factories for your livelihood.”

The more time I spent at home, the more confused I became. We never went to church, but I should marry in a cathedral. A good girl, I should not be too good or my goodness was suspect. If I was too anxious to leave home, my life could turn to tragedy. If I lingered under Mami's protection, I was sure to be deceived by those more knowledgeable in the ways of the world.

There were times I left the house for school or work with the intention of never coming back, but I didn't have the courage to run away. Sometimes I stared at the shiny subway tracks, at how easy it would be to throw myself upon them, but the thought of being mangled by tons of moving metal made me step back when the train rumbled near.

The home that had been a refuge from the city's danger was now a prison I longed to escape. I was exhausted by the intensity of my family life, by the drama that never ceased, the crises that rose out of nowhere, subsided, made way for others that in their turn were mere preludes. I was tired of the constant tug between the life I wanted and the life I had. I dreaded the loneliness that attached itself to me in the middle of my raucous family. I didn't blame them for my unhappiness, but neither did I want to contaminate them with it. I wanted to be, like Garbo, alone. I wanted to become La Sorda, deaf to my family's voices, their contradictory messages, their expectations. I longed to cup my hand to my mouth, the way singers did, and listen to myself. To hear one voice, my own, even if it was filled with fear and uncertainty. Even if it were to lead me where I ought not to go.

The second semester at Manhattan Community College, Shoshana and I signed up for Fundamentals of Mathematics. The course was not required of business majors, but in the fall of 1967, it was taught by gorgeous Mr. Grunwald. Shoshana was thrilled, because he was not only the handsomest man she'd ever seen but also Jewish. She reasoned that since the class met three times a week and Mr. Grunwald had office hours for extra help, there would be many opportunities for him to fall in love with one of us.

“But what if he falls in love with you and I get jealous?”

Shoshana considered this a moment. “Let's not do that. Let's say that what's good for you is good for me and vice versa. That way there's no jealousy.”

Shoshana had no sisters, and I did. Her proposal was noble but unrealistic, and I told her so.

“All right then. If he chooses me over you, then you have to promise to back off. I'll do the same.”

“That sounds better,” I agreed.

The first day of classes, Shoshana and I took seats side by side in the front row of the room, which was filled with females dressed, like us, in our best outfits. When Mr. Grunwald walked in, we sighed as one. Not too tall, not too short, perfectly proportioned from head to toe, Mr. Grunwald was as gorgeous as Shoshana had promised. His dark blue, nearly violet eyes were
intelligent and gentle. His sandy hair curled around his ears and below the collar of his shirt. He was clean shaven, with a wide, chiseled jaw, sensuous lips, a perfect nose. He wore a light brown corduroy jacket with suede elbow patches, tight jeans, a button-down indigo shirt with a subtly patterned tie. When he wrote his inscrutable formulas on the chalkboard, his handwriting was crisp, the numbers perfectly formed, the x forceful and mysterious. He claimed he wasn't teaching us math, that he taught logic; but it looked like math to me.

“He's good-looking and everything,” I said to Shoshana, “but the course looks too hard. I'm dropping it.”

Shoshana would have none of that. “All you need is a C—to pass,” she said. “I'll help you.”

After class, Shoshana consulted her careful notes and repeated almost everything Mr. Grunwald had just said. Twice a week, I went to his office, and he corrected my dismal quizzes and tests in front of me. He wore cologne, a fruity scent that filled my nostrils as he leaned in to show me how the sine and cosine related to the tangent. He spoke with a drawl, the vowels long, soothing as a siesta. I wanted to live in his diphthongs, engulfed by his os and us, caressed by his
is
. But Mr. Grunwald's passion was in convex regions and the vertex of a parabola. Just as it didn't occur to Shoshana that Mr. Grunwald wouldn't fall in love with any of us, it didn't seem to occur to Mr. Grunwald that I, and every other girl in his class, was in love with him.

One day, as he tried to help me understand what would never make sense, Mr. Grunwald leaned back in his chair. “Let's not work on this anymore,” he suggested.

Humiliated that he should give up on me, I apologized. “Math has never been my subject.”

He rubbed his face with both hands. “What is it that you hope to do with your college education?” he asked from inside his fingers.

“Get a good job,” I answered.

He dropped his hands, glared at me. “Doing what, exactly?”

“Advertising, I guess.” Sweat collected on my forehead, my upper lip. “Or marketing . . .”

“You have no idea, do you?” The tone of his voice, its low register, the soft look that accompanied his words, made tears come to my eyes. I shook my head. “What would you like to do?” he asked, and I wanted to say kiss you all over, which was what I was thinking, but I shrugged my shoulders instead. “Shoshana mentioned you're a dancer,” he added. “Are you any good?”

No one had asked me that, and it took a few seconds to decide to answer honestly, without false modesty. “I'm very good,” I said. “Considering how late I started.”

He smiled. “Modern dance? Ballet?”

I smiled back. “I'm probably the only Puerto Rican Indian classical dancer you've ever met.”

The rest of the extra help period was spent describing to Mr. Grunwald the subtleties of Bharata Natyam. He was attentive, made comments that let me know he was listening.

“Indian music progresses mathematically,” he interjected once, and I stopped talking to consider it. He watched me think, as if it were a new experience.

“I . . . I guess so,” I finally said. Mr. Grunwald chuckled, which made me feel stupid for coming up with such a dumb response.

When I told Shoshana that I had spent my extra help session talking to Mr. Grunwald about dance, she was ecstatic. “He likes you! Now he'll probably ask you to a musical.”

“That's not the kind of dancing I do,” I protested.

Shoshana was over her infatuation with Mr. Grunwald now that she was dazzled by the Principles of Advertising teacher. Mr. Delmar was older than most of the professors at Manhattan Community College. He had salt-and-pepper hair, gray eyes, features embellished with wrinkles deliberately placed to enhance his handsome face. He wore expensive, fitted suits that accentuated an elegant physique, slim and long legged. Mr. Delmar strolled the halls of the college as if he owned the place and drew admiring
glances from males and females alike, young or old. I disliked him instantly, found his finished air too self-conscious and calculated. But Shoshana said that was because I'd never been anywhere. “He's so sophisticated, so European,” she sighed.

With each of us mooning over a different teacher, there was no jealousy. Our conversations focused on how far we'd go if one of them asked us out. We were both willing to give up our virginity if Mr. Grunwald or Mr. Delmar gave us the slightest hint that they wanted it. After repeated attempts to gain his attention, Shoshana decided Mr. Delmar wouldn't date her while she was still his student. She gave up on him for the fall semester and set her hopes on the spring. As for me, the only way to impress Mr. Grunwald was to become immersed in reflection symmetric figures. I wasn't about to do that, even with the promise of a night of passion as its outcome. I continued my long, rambling letters to Otto, whose responses were shorter and less frequent.

“You should break up with him before he breaks up with you,” Shoshana suggested. I stopped writing, and I could almost hear the relief all the way from Switzerland.

Just down the hall from our lockers at Manhattan Community College was a student lounge. Shoshana and I never went in there to study, because loud music came from behind its heavy, closed doors. We liked music, but we also liked to hear ourselves talk. Between classes, we preferred to walk to a nearby coffee shop or to the Automat, or we'd meet our page boys at the NBC commissary. But one day I needed coffee in a hurry and made my way to the lounge. The room was big, with a few battered chairs, a sagging couch, a row of vending machines that offered candy, soda, pastries wrapped in plastic. Under the lone window was a small table with a coffee maker, packets of sugar, a stack of paper cups, a jar of Cremora.

As I entered, it felt as if I had strayed into another country. To my left, the room vibrated with Motown music from a portable
record player. Black students sat or stood in small groups arguing politics as the Supremes sang about “The Happening.” To my left, at an equally loud volume, Eddie Palmieri's rhythms punctuated the sounds of Spanglish. The center of the room was nearly empty, except for a few white students adrift between the two lively continents. Most of the people in the room were familiar to me because we saw one another in classes or in the halls. One of them, Gloria, waved me over to the mambo side of the room.

“Are you Puerto Rican?” she asked. When I said yes, she turned to the group. “You see!” She turned to me again. “These guys here didn't believe me.” One of the boys, Felix, was in a class with me.

“You knew I was Puerto Rican,” I chided him.

“I told them,” he chuckled, then turned his hand palm up toward another guy, who slapped it.

“You were in that movie about the school, right?” another girl asked.

I flushed with pleasure at being recognized. “
Up the Down Staircase
, yes I was.”

“Told you!” another round of palm slapping. The bell to signal the start of a period rang, and all of them scrambled to gather their belongings.

“See you later,” I said. No one responded. I left, surprised that there was talk about me but that the minute they met me, no one cared. I wondered if I had left a poor impression and replayed the scene several times. Was I friendly and open enough? Did I appear too proud of having been in a movie? Was there anything I could have done to make them like me? They had stood close together in a semicircle as we talked, as if I were being interviewed. But then they dispersed, dismissed me.

Perhaps I was oversensitive, Shoshana suggested later, because most of the students at Manhattan Community College were black or Puerto Rican and my best friend was Jewish.

“Maybe deep down inside you feel you should be friends with them and not me,” she pouted.

“Remind me to skip Psychology next semester,” I responded.
Since she had started that course, everything anyone said or did was open to interpretation. But it did bother me that Shoshana fclt that way and that a part of me—a tiny, hidden part—agreed.