The Time It Snowed in Puerto Rico (12 page)

“Zuck—zuck—zuck.” This time he crossed his eyes, and I laughed myself to tears.

Blake told me things I’d never known, and it wasn’t like with Omar. He wasn’t trying to be better than me. I could tell because I told him things too, and he listened. Like how to eat a passionfruit by cutting the top off and using a slice of sugarcane to spoon out the slippery seeds. Nothing tasted better in the world. Crunchy and smooth, sweet and sour. Blake and I ate almost the whole tree by ourselves. Omar didn’t like them, which suited us just fine.
I liked being with Blake, just Blake. In my journal, I wrote down every story he told me so I could read it later and remember.

“Y
OU WANT TO
go swimming in the creek?” Omar asked one sticky afternoon.

Blake and I sat on the porch, licking passionfruit jelly off our fingers. Papi worked the farm, and Mamá lay inside, fat and lazy, watching the
telenovelas
with her feet up. That’s all she did anymore.

“Yeah, let’s go,” I said.

Omar rolled his eyes. “I didn’t ask you, skunk-girl.” He turned to Blake.

There weren’t any skunks in Puerto Rico, but Papi took me to see the movie
Bambi
at the
cine
hall a few years back. I knew what Flower looked like, and I tried to smooth back the black fuzzies at my temples, the blond ones in my ponytail. I didn’t care if Omar called me a skunk, but when he said it in front of Blake, it stung.

“I don’t know.” Blake eyed me. “Why can’t we all go swimming?”

Omar turned to me and narrowed his eyes under the lip of his cap. “I don’t want to swim with Verdita. She’ll make the water smell like
caca
. Skunk-girl.”

“Shut up. I don’t smell like
caca
. Butthead,” I said. Blake had taught me English curse words, and I liked being able to use them with Omar—so he’d know I knew a thing or two.

“You do. All skunks stink! And you sure do look like a skunk to me.” He laughed and gave Blake a punch to the arm.

“You stupid.
Idiota,”
I said. He deserved both the English and the Spanish version.

Omar leaned forward like he was going to lay into me. I dug my heels into the ground, ready for it, but Blake interrupted, “My sister, Patsy—she bought a box of color from Safeway and dyed her hair exactly like Verdita’s, only opposite—black at the end and blond at the top. I liked it. She’s a beatnik. My ma and pa said she had to dye it back, so she left. That way she don’t have to do what they say.”

Omar pulled his cap over his eyes and picked the brown edges of a scab.

“You have a sister?” I asked. It was strange to think of him as a brother.

“She says she ain’t never coming home ‘cause she hates my pa,” he went on. “He calls her a slut. I ain’t seen her in three years.” He stuck a piece of gutted passionfruit in his mouth and chewed.

Omar and I looked at him, but neither one of us said anything. The air moved through my nose, through the blades of grass across the yard, through the palm trees, through the whole island.

We had sluts in Puerto Rico, but I didn’t know anybody that had one for a sister. Once in San Juan, a woman asked Papi for the time. She had rosy cheeks and red lips and her
hair was curled in ringlets around her face. Mamá called her a
puta
and told her that she’d burn in hell. I thought she was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen, an angel, and I nearly cried when I pictured her wings on fire.

I wanted someone to shut up the loud breeze. So I did. “Maybe Puerto Rico can make you forget, too.”

Omar looked up, cocked his head to the side. Blake spat out the pinky rind.

“Huh? Don’t be stupid, Verdita,” said Omar.

“I’m not! If the States make you forget Puerto Rico, then maybe Puerto Rico can make you forget stuff in the States,” I explained, but I could tell they didn’t understand.

It made sense to me. Omar shook his head and rolled his eyes. Blake smiled.

“Come on. I’m hot,” said Omar. He hopped off the porch and started across the lawn. Blake and I followed.

“I think you’re right, Verdita,” Blake said when Omar was far enough ahead and couldn’t hear.

I nodded. I knew I was. He put his hand on my shoulder and squeezed it hard. It hurt a little, but I liked the way his sticky fingers pressed into my skin. Cold chills spilled down my back. I wished he would do it again, but he didn’t. We walked barefoot through the tangled grass, the sun making his skin buttery, and I wished the yard would go on forever. I wished we could stay there, in between places—between the leaving and the coming.

We marched into the brush behind the chicken coop and lay belly-down in the shallow creek, our stomachs suctioned
into the gooey mud, the waters running over our backs, the conversation roving like the current.

Blake couldn’t stop talking about the day before, when Mamá took the boys with her to buy boxes of
con-flei
and cans of powdered milk at the
tienda
. It was Blake’s first time in the main plaza of Florilla.

“It was crazy,” he said. “A man walked right down the street with a sword!”

“A machete,” Omar corrected. He yanked a fern blade from the bank, placed it between his thumbs, and blew fart sounds.

“Papi has a machete,” I said, and dug a hole in the mud with my finger. The dirt puffed into a cloud and swirled off on the current.

“Everybody at home has a gun, and everybody here has a machete,” Omar said. He flipped over and leaned against the creek bank. The water filled his shorts like a giant blue jellyfish. He lifted his arm and craned his neck around. “Hey, I got a couple more.” He ran his fingers beneath his armpit. “See?” He pulled it close to Blake.

“Cool, man.” Blake laughed. His voice rippled my skin.

Omar leaned his pit toward me, holding his arm over his head like a gorilla.

“Get that out of my face.” I smacked him away.
“Ay Dios
. You think you’re so grown up. Everybody’s got hairs on their body.” I flipped over and propped up on my elbows. The water cleaned the mud off my front, tickling my stomach and thighs. “I got them too. So
what?” I scissor-kicked the water; it made little
pu-plunk
sounds, but no splash.

“You don’t have hairs. I’ve seen under your arms.” Omar crossed his arms over his bare chest, like he knew so much. “Besides, girls don’t get hairs. Only men.”

“My sister Patsy had hair on her arms and legs. She shaved it off with Pa’s razor every morning,” said Blake. He sat up in the creek, his waist and legs swallowed by the water, his chest slick and sand-colored.

“See! That’s how much you know.” I stuck out my tongue at Omar.

“Liar. Show us, then,” Omar said. He lay back in the creek and let the water lift his body to the surface, weightless.

“I’m not a liar,” I said, but Omar couldn’t hear. His ears were underwater. I grabbed his leg and pushed it so his face dipped beneath the surface. He bobbed back up, surprised and angry.

“What are you doing? You could have drowned me!”

“I’m not a liar,” I repeated.

I knew I shouldn’t, but I stood, unlooped my arms, and in one quick motion rolled my bathing suit off. It slid down my thighs and over my knees into the water. I stood naked before them, my legs apart, my hands on my hips. “See.” I eyed my private parts. The wet kinks seemed darker in the outdoor light, and even I was a bit surprised. My body was entirely different now that someone else saw it. There were the two guava berries I’d felt in Titi Lola’s
salon, swollen and brown-nippled, my navel and the patch of coarse curls. The rest of my body seemed to disappear.

My eyes met Blake’s.

“Verdita!” Omar yelled. “Cover yourself!”

He reached his hand across Blake’s face. Blake turned away. And then I felt what Papi spoke of. The guilty apple. I felt Eve’s sin. But I didn’t want to be like Mamá and all the other women in history, so I fought against it.

“I don’t have to do what you say,” I told Omar. My hands and legs ached to cover up, to shield myself, to run into the brush and hide, but I wouldn’t. Not yet. Not until I decided and not because Omar told me to.

“Slut! That’s what they do—take off their clothes.” Omar splashed his way out of the creek and up the bank. “Come on, Blake!”

Blake followed behind, his eyes downcast. He wouldn’t look at me.

I didn’t know that about sluts. And I wondered if Mamá was a slut, bare-chested on the couch with Papi. My arms shook as I pulled my bathing suit up. I still felt naked even after I was dressed. A hot sob caught in my throat. I thought I might throw up.

They’d gone toward the house. I panicked, climbed up the bank, and ran after them. If Omar told Mamá and Papi! I ran as fast as I could, the branches scratching my skin, my toes squishing in jungle mud and moss, until I reached the grass of our yard. There I stopped. Mamá would be yelling already if Omar had told. The only sound was a
chicken squawking. I wondered how long we’d been gone. Were the
telenovelas
still on, or was Mamá making dinner? The chicken shrieks grew louder than usual. I circled the coop and, coming around the side, found Mamá with a black hen on her lap, her fingers around its neck.

“Pollo
, stop fighting me,” she said. The chicken pecked and scratched, squawked and flapped, but Mamá held it firm. She gave a hard twist, and its wings slowed like an angel landing. “There,” Mamá sighed, and jiggled the neck to make sure it was broken. She looked at me.
“Arroz con pollo
. This chicken’s all grown. Ready for my pot.” She stood and wiped her forehead. Her eyes narrowed on me.

My knees shook. I wrapped my arms around my body. I knew she could see right through the material, right through to my nakedness and shame. There was no place to hide.

“Verdita?” Mamá held the limp chicken on her hip; its wings flapped in slow motion.

The hen’s eyes were wide and unblinking, like the roosters in Papi’s study. Mamá came closer with it. I backed away. The black wings moved up and down, up and down. The red comb flopped to the side. The dark eyes watched me. They knew what I’d done.

“What’s wrong?” Mamá set the dying chicken on the ground and took my hands in hers. They were soft, like I remembered.

“Mamá …” I let her hold me. I held her too, pulling her close and burying my face in her neck, hidden in the
familiar smell and darkness. For that moment, nothing else mattered.

She rubbed my back. “Tell me,” she said. And I wanted to. If this was Eve’s sin, then Mamá would understand.

“I—I was naked and they saw me,” I whispered. The shame sliced my throat and I pushed my face harder against her skin.

Mamá stopped rubbing and went stiff, then lifted my face to hers. Her eyes were flat, like stale cups of coffee. “Go dry yourself and dress. I’ll come soon.” She let go of me before I was ready and turned back to the hen in the grass thumping in a circle, dying with every moment.

I
NSIDE
, I
DRIED
myself, braided my hair, dressed, and waited. The house was silent. Empty. I hated being that alone. And I began to wish that I hadn’t told Mamá what I’d done. Omar and Blake hadn’t told her. She would never have known. I sucked on the wet curlicue at the bottom of my braid.

The door hinges squeaked when she entered. The secret way she slipped into my room made my hands shake. I balled them up and dug my fingernails into my palms. She took a seat beside me on the bed.

“We were swimming,” I began, but then stopped. I didn’t want Eve’s guilt, even if I had it.

“Verdita,” Mamá said. She unballed my fist and stroked it like she was saying good-bye. My fingertips went numb.

“What I am about to tell you is very important.” Mamá sighed. “You can’t let boys touch you, or see you uncovered. Being with a boy like that is a sin. Have you heard the word
puta?”
She whispered it even though I’d heard it before. That’s what she’d called the redlipped angel in San Juan, what Omar called me in the creek.

I nodded.

“Do you know what a
puta
is?”

A slut. A prostitute. Women who wore bright makeup and curled their hair and took off their clothes.
“Sí
, Mamá,” I said.

“They are sinful. They let men see them uncovered. If you let boys do that to you, people will think you are one of them. And, even worse, you could get pregnant. You will be a
señorita
soon, once the monthly bleeding starts.”

Bleeding? I tried to take in a breath, but my lungs cramped. Mamá stroked my fingers.

“There was a woman many years ago, before I was a
señorita
. All the men liked her because she was the most beautiful
señorita
in the
barrio
. She was engaged to a handsome, wealthy man and everyone admired the couple. But then, on her wedding night, the truth was revealed. The white sheets were not stained. Do you know what that means?”

I didn’t.

“When you get married, your wedding sheets will be stained with a little blood from your private parts. It
proves to your husband that you are pure. That no other man has seen you under your clothes.”

I remembered Blake’s wide eyes at the creek.

“There was no stain. The woman was not pure. Her husband was furious, and that very night he took her back to her father’s house. He did not want her. When her father discovered that she was not a virgin, he threw her out too.”

I felt sick to my stomach. I didn’t want Papi to throw me out.

“She was a
puta
in the slums of San Juan. She was pregnant seven times, each with a different man, until she died of sickness. It was terrible.” Mamá crossed herself. I did too.

“I tell you this so that you do not make these mistakes—to you don’t end up like your cousin Delia with a bastard child inside of you and the man responsible run off.” She patted my hand and shook her head.

My chest tightened. Delia was pregnant? I thought about her and Carlos, pictured Carlos’s hands around her waist, his face black against her neck. I wondered if Teline had told.

“Whatever you were doing at the creek,” Mamá continued, “you must never do again. I won’t tell your papi if you promise.”