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El Rio Entre Tu Y Yo

Comenzó como un charco
Un derrame de mis pensamientos
De todas las palabras
Que no sabíamos decir

Continúo como un pozo
De aguas enlodadas
Llenándose de todas nuestras lagrimas
Tapada por todas las cartas que no te pude escribir

El piso se tapo
Y de mi dolor, nació un rio
Sus corrientes son rápidas
Y suenan como nuestros llantos
No sé si debo llorar o reír

The River Between Me and You (Translation)

It began as a puddle.
A slight spilling of my thoughts,
And all the words
That we didn’t know how to say.

It continued into a spring
Of muddy waters,
Filling itself with our tears,
Covered by all the letters I wasn’t able to write

The floor was covered.
And from my pain, a river was born
One with deadly currents
That sound like our sobs.
I’m not sure whether to laugh or cry.

Window

During the last weekend of August, I was in an airport in Orlando, waiting to be on standby for an earlier flight to JFK airport in New York. Hurricane Issac had announced itself on the radar the night that I had arrived to Florida with my brother and father. The huge, swirling splotch on my uncle’s television screen scared my mother enough to skip church and have my uncle and father escort us to the airport early.

Since we had arrived almost 3 hours before the first afternoon flight would leave for New York, we had to kill time at the airport’s food court. After purchasing spinach rolls, mushroom slices of pizza and finding the one table that wasn’t occupied, my uncle was bored enough that he started talking about every topic that came to mind. According to family legend, he was almost labeled as a mute when he was a child. My uncle used to refuse to speak and usually had to be coaxed into conversation by relatives. He makes up for it now as an adult by being the first to begin an entertaining conversation whenever family members happen to congregate around him.

After my father and uncle reminisced a few long gone family friends from the Dominican Republic, my father decided to throw in a story of his own.

“This happened before I started school, so I think I was about four years old,” my father began as he dug his fork into some steamed vegetables.

“Mami had taken me with her and Papi to a wake in town after a family friend had passed away. I remember that the man who died had several daughters and they were all kind of weird. They probably had issues,” My father added.

He then continued to say that once he arrived to the wake with his parents, his mother had him seated right next to the coffin on a small chair. My grandfather had went back outside to chat and smoke with the other men as my grandmother had joined a group of gossiping women near the kitchen as they discussed who had done this or that. From his seat, my father was able to look into a room that was partially closed by a curtain. Inside, the dead man’s daughters were getting dressed for the funeral.

“Soon after that, they announced that everyone should give the dead guy their final goodbyes. And that’s when all hell broke loose,” my father laughed.

“What do you mean?” my mother asked.

“I bet some crazy old woman clung to the coffin and screamed for the poor dead guy to wake up,” my uncle commented.

“Worst than that,” my father said shaking his head, “the man’s daughters ran out of the room screaming and hollering. One of them ended up tackling the chair I was sitting in and I ended up flying across the room along with that woman and my seat.”

I laughed into my palms and tried to imagine a tiny version of my father catapulting across a room full of mourning and gossiping women.

“By then the whole place began to sound like an asylum. I was howling, the man’s daughters were screaming, and other relatives were weeping and clawing at the coffin.”

My mother giggled into her spinach roll and wiped the tears that formed at the corner of her eyes.

“What happened next?” she asked.

“Mami returned from her group of gossiping biddies and tried to get me out of the door, which turned out to be impossible thanks to all the crazy women there. She ended up having to hand me over to Papi through a window,” my father laughed “I was freaked out because I thought she was going to drop me, but Papi caught me and made me stop crying.”

"How did they get the coffin out of the house then?" my uncle asked.

"Through the same window I was dropped out of, the coffin wouldn't fit through the porch so I guess the family members had no other choice."

By the time my father had finished saying all that, we were all laughing and ignoring the curious glances of a German family that was seated at the table next to ours.

“Funerals were cooler way back in the day, now I understand why so many old people like to hang out at wakes,” My father concluded.

As he ended his tale, I looked down at my watch and realized that I only had an hour left before it was time for my mother and me to head towards airport security. My mother then began to start a story of her own, aided by my uncle and I started to wish that it would be a very long hour.

Mud

I had always known that my father grew up during hard times. The middle child of 12 children is bound to have it rough. Sharing, hand-me-down shoes and having to hear out the older siblings, while being obligated to help out the younger siblings. He had told me before, that it was common for a southern Puerto Rican family to be large, especially if they lived in the countryside as farmers.

But I never knew how his lifestyle affected his grades. I learned about that one morning while I was standing at the counter in my kitchen pouring almond milk over my cereal. My father was sitting at the table talking to my mother’s friend about how he had never done homework growing up.

“There wasn’t any time since I had to help out in the fields.”

My father proudly told my mother’s friend that he did however manage to pass the majority of his classes by just paying attention in class and attending during exam days. He elaborated that he had to use his memory all the time in order to make sure he wouldn’t have to attend summer school.

“I’m sure participating in class helped your grade as well,” My mother’s friend commented.

“No, I was too embarrassed to participate.”

My mother’s friend was confused as to what he meant by that.

“If I would volunteer to answer a question on the board, everyone would look at my dirty shoes and laugh. They’d know that I was a farmer’s kid.”

The walk from where my father used to live as a child to his school was a very long walk that was only made longer if the weather was bad. And since Puerto Rico is an amazingly humid island, the weather is usually very fickle. Severe rain fall would cause mud slides from the mountains to cover several roads and the rivers would swell, making it so that my father and his siblings had to trudge through several miles of muck in order to make it to class.

So to preserve what his child-like mind understood as dignity, my father would sit at the very last row of his classroom. He wouldn’t raise his hand and he didn’t receive any extra credit. My father went on to explain that his shoes had always been an issue for him when growing up. On top of being the middle child and having to wear worn out, hand me down clothing, my father had to put up with all the town kids hurling the word jibaro at him. Though that word technically means “forest person” or “hill farmer/peasant” and is also found in indgenous dialect, over the years, people had manipulated it. And instead of saying the word, certain individuals began to spit it out as an insult. Pronouncing it as if it meant ignorant and dirty, instead of hardworking and humble.

“Whenever a class mate would call me or my siblings a jibaro, we’d end up fighting after class or during lunch,” my father laughed, “but now I like to joke around that I’m a jibarito stuck in New York.”

As my father recalled his worn out shoe days with my mother’s friend, some of my father’s quirks began to make sense. Growing up, my father was always shocked when ever we would all go shopping and I refused his offer of buying new shoes or a new sweater. Whenever I felt that I needed that particular article of clothing, I would ask for it, but I avoided asking too many times.

Another strange habit that came to light was my father’s excessive purchases right before he went to visit family in Puerto Rico. Even though he still had plenty of clothing that were practically new, my father would go shopping and buy several new outfits for his trip. It was as if he had a phobia of repeating an ensemble from one of his previous visits to his home town. That habit infuriated my mother. She would look at his receipts and show them to me.

“Look at this one, over a hundred dollars in shirts, pants and shoes,” she would grumble, “honestly; does he think that his relatives are going to shun him if he wears the same pants twice?”

After the conversation about his muddy shoes, I understood that my father had long rejected the idea of having to wear hand-me-downs and being made to feel insignificant due to the condition of his clothing. I remember all the arguments he had with my mother whenever she made my brother wear someone else's worn out sneakers.

“Don't I work hard so that he can get new shoes?”, my father had exclaimed ,“I’ll just buy him new ones; it’s not that big of a deal to pay for shoes.”

As I sat on the counter listening to my father’s conversation, I looked down at my worn out moccasins. I’ve had them for a few months now and since I walk just about everywhere, they look as if I’ve owned them for years. One of the seams is splitting, the bottoms are a bit worn out and the color of the leather is fading slightly. But I think I’ll keep them for a little bit longer. After all, I’m a farmer’s kid.

Ojos

Ojos

Cuando cierras los ojos
Te ves lindo, y tranquillo.
Como un gato que no quiere casar.
Pero quizás
Te ves raro,
Y te debo describirte como
Un niño sonámbulo
Que suena con volar
Y despierta enzima de
Una mesa redonda.
No hay remedio
Que esperar que te despiertes
Y me digas algo chistoso.
Porque cuando cierras los ojos
Pienso que tu estas
Muy
Lejos de mí.
Prefiero que me mires
Y te ríes de mi cabello
Despeinado.
No estoy acostumbrada a nuestra
Unión
Pero ya basta de
Una eternidad de soledad.
Abre tus ojos.

Eyes (Translation)

When you close your eyes
Eyes

You look lovely and calm
Like a cat that refuses to hunt.
But maybe,
You look strange
And I should describe you
As a sleepwalking child
Who dreams of flying
And wakes up on top
Of a round table.
And I can’t do much else
But wait for you to wake up
And tell me something funny.
Because when you close your eyes
I feel as if you are
Very
Far away from me
I would rather you open your eyes
And laugh at my messy
Hair.
I’m not accustomed to our
Union
But I’ve had enough of
An eternity of loneliness.
Open your eyes.

Dictator

Ever since I could remember, my mother’s mother, whom we all called mama Susa, would talk to me about Trujillo. As a child he was just a name and the reason behind everyone’s troubles. By middle school, it registered that he was once the dictator of the Dominican Republic. Stories like “How the Garcia Girl’s lost their Accents” and “In the Time of the Butterflies” made it clear that he had made the lives of many Dominicans difficult, and for those that he disliked the most, impossible.
“He didn't like the Fiallos, so it’s lucky your grandfather wasn't a target,” my grandmother always reminded me “the Fiallos were political and some of them were educated.”
Since my grandfather was the bastard child between a poor country woman and a wealthy architect, he wasn't exactly qualified to be on the dictator’s radar all the time. But that’s a more complicated story.
“Being a woman was difficult during that time,” she told me “my mother was afraid of sending my sister or me into town for too long.”
“Why?”
“Because the dictator and his soldiers made the rules, if they wanted to take someone’s daughter or sister, they could. Everyone was too afraid to tell them no.”
The fact shocked me. But then again, she had first told me this in middle school. That was back when I teachers and textbooks were obligated to tell me that I lived in a utopian state of equality. Women were supposedly able to play on the same field as men. And according to my grandmother who grew up with a 3rd grade education and still held a mentality were men had to be in leadership, women had progressed. I liked to remind her that we still had a few more barriers. I also reminded her that I would try my best to break past a few of them.
“Did they ever try to take you?” I asked.
“No, thankfully I was married early, so that helped.”
I have never liked the idea of an early marriage. So it didn't really register why it would be beneficial to her. But my grandmother saw my raised eyebrow and understood.
“If you were married, then they couldn't really take you away.”
“Did they ever try to?”
“There was this one time that a solder approached me,” she began.
That instantly perked my interest.
“Did he try to drag you off like in those old movies were the woman screams but doesn't fight back?”
I was really hoping that it wasn't the case. My grandmother was probably the type to fight back, but then again, she freaked out over barking Chihuahuas and the sound of plates falling.
“No, he didn't drag me off you dummy. He just saw me standing alone one day and came over.”
“Where were you?” I asked.
“Masimo and I were just out at a dance or something one night and he went to go speak to someone. And the soldier just came and asked where my husband was so I pointed him out.”
“Did he keep asking you for more information, like were you lived?” I pressed on.
“Na, he just left me alone after that.”
“Oh.”
I wanted to hear about a love triangle, or a bar fight between my grandfather and a soldier.
“So I guess no one had to really fight for your honor then.”
My grandmother just laughed and began to talk about other family stories.

I tried to imagine a soldier, hair combed back, his uniform pressed in a way that only a non electric iron could. Sun dusked cheekbones from standing at attention in the Caribbean sun before a demanding leader. Burning their skin for El Jefe. Swallowing their rum shots after sundown in the middle of a dingy side of the road bar, the kinds I curled my lips at whenever I had seen them in the Dominican Republic. It must have been worst back during El Jefe’s reign. Before proper plumbing and electricity, but then again, you can’t say that my mother’s country has proper plumbing today. Two weeks of no water one summer, two days of on and off electricity, but flourishing tourist centers. How ironic.
I suppose I should be grateful that El Jefe himself didn't spot mama Susa. Her long, dark, thick, black hair would have drawn him in. From all the books that I read, I realized that the dictator liked women with “white” features, such as straight hair, which is rare in some women in the central part of the country. The older he became, the younger he wanted his women. By the late 50’s, Trujillo was practically babysitting teenage girlfriends. Plus he liked women from the region of El Cibao, coincidentally the region were my mother’s hometown is. Both my grandparents were also born and raised in el Cibao. My grandmother would have been the ideal candidate. Thank God for my grandfather proposing marriage at an early age. Had something gone wrong, I wouldn't have been here. And had my grandmother lived longer, I would have had so many more stories to tell.

dedicated to Jesusita Fiallo Leonardo

Tan

I have always been told by many people that for a person who comes from a Caribbean Hispanic background, I’m not very tan. Being the darkest person in my household, I have always found that hard to believe. My Dominican grandmother has always given my complexion names such as “India”, “trigueña” and “caramelo”. And my Puerto Rican grandmother was just plain pale as were many of her children. As a child who noticed many comments of the adults around me, I felt strange. One minute my straight hair was praised, but then random comments about my nose being a bit wide and how dark I became during the summer slipped into my ears somehow. At first I didn’t care. So what if I was tan like my mother. It wasn’t even all that tan to begin with according to a lot of other Latinos.

For a few years, I began to hate it. Mass media and advertising didn’t seem to have room for many different shades. And it came with stigmas. Such as what that one girl in middle school blatantly told me during homeroom. It was something about how Latinas became pregnant early in life and didn’t seem to want to graduate from high school at all. She had the audacity to wish me luck. I didn’t have a witty come back at the time, I was practically a mute. I don’t suppose I do now, but then again, I hope in an alternate universe, I kicked the crap out of her.

But this isn’t about teenage pregnancy, or about how I did or didn’t like my tan. But it’s more about how I realized that although my mother didn’t pay any mind to anyone’s skin color, someone had paid mind to hers, and in turn mine. She told me the story while standing at the counter in the kitchen. I was sitting fact checking one of my articles that was due for publication in a few days. It wasn’t the first time she had told the story, but the first time I wasn’t paying attention. But I did this time, I don’t know why. I should have been fact checking.

“I have always tried to reach out to your father’s family, anyways; I wish he would do the same sometimes.”

“How did they react to you at first?” I asked.

“Well, most of them were nice, but one of his uncles was rude.”

“How?”

Most of my dad’s uncles, at least the ones I had met in his hometown had been very sweet. The kind of old men whose hands trembled slightly when I handed them a glass of water or when they slipped me a few dollars.

“For ice cream,” one of them had told me in English.

He beamed brightly at me when I responded in Spanish. They were a group of sweet, old men, some white haired, some speckled, always dolling out hugs and blessings. I don’t remember ever meeting a rude uncle.

My mother explained with saying that it was around the time when I was less than a year old. She and dad had gone to visit family in Puerto Rico. My brother was still being incubated inside my mother, I was a few months old and my sister was a bit over a year old. I was feeling sick and so my mother was tending to me in my aunt’s room while dad was watching Ively out on the porch.

“I was there with you in the room and that uncle walked by, took a look at you in the crib, took a look at me and said ‘this one’s going to be trigueña like her mother’ and then walked away.”

“That’s all he said?”

“Yeah, no hello how are you, no offer to carry you. Nothing.”

“Was he from grandma’s side of the family, all pale and with my type of hair?”

“No. He was dark. He wasn’t even a good looking man. He probably thought I was one of those Dominican women who married a Puerto Rican for papers because the two islands are right next to each other.”

I remember my mother complaining that during her first few years of marriage, some family friends or distant relatives had referred to her simply as "la dominicana", the Dominican.

“Why don’t I remember a rude uncle?”

“He died a few months later,” she scoffed, “Cancer did it. Apparently it ate him from the inside out.”

She paused.

“He’s been dead for about as long as you’ve been alive, and I continue killing him by telling the story.”

She laughed as she glanced out the kitchen window.

“I kill him dead every time”.

By then I had guessed that she didn’t mind that my dad’s uncle had was out of the picture. Mom scoffed, turned back to whatever it was she was doing at the counter. That scoff pounded the last nail in that uncle’s coffin. He probably didn’t like the coffin anyway, because coffins are usually made out of wood, wood is tan, and so am I.

Driver

I have a love hate relationship with taxi drivers. Most New Yorkers do. Probably anyone who lives in a major city around the world has that same relationship with taxi drivers. They get us from point A to point B when the buses and trains are delayed and when we have a few extra dollars in our pockets. But then again, they fly by in yellow (and now some in an eco friendly lime green), as we’re trying to cross from Union Square Park onto Broadway. They also try to get away with not giving you change sometimes. And every once in a while, you’re standing in the cold with your arm outstretched and they don’t bother to pick you up. We can’t live with them. And we can’t live without them.

Expect for the independent cabs that are all over Queens and Brooklyn. Many of them are organized by ethnic groups and have names like Cibao, where most of the taxi drivers there actually hail from that region of the Dominican Republic. Others sport country names like Peru, Mexico, Honduras, Italy and Poland to say a few. You can usually tell who is who by the music playing from inside the car, or what little flag hangs from the mirror.

Last weekend, I hailed a cab that was on the other side of the road and he did a U-turn and screeched to a halt on the curb. Bachata spilled out gently from the windows and I was certain that it was a Dominican cab driver. But he wasn’t. The moment I entered the cab and said “good evening” the sing song of his accent made it clear that he was not Dominican.

First, he was instructed to drop off my boyfriend at his house, since it was higher up in Queens and closer to the restaurant that we had been in. I said a quick goodbye; I always do when someone is watching. I gave instructions to my address and then sat back into the seat.

“Your night ended early, hun,” the driver began.

“Na, I’m a student so I don’t exactly get late nights very often,” I responded, “work and study usually holds me down.”

“That’s good actually; at least you had some fun today I take it.”

“Yeah,” I responded, “I really needed to get out today.”

He thought for a bit after he came across an intersection and tried to decide which way would be best.

“How long have you two been together?” he asked.

I flushed red in the backseat. He noticed the string of kisses that had been given when I thought he wasn’t looking. He had also seen the random forehead kisses, hugs and intertwined fingers. Damned mirror.

“A little bit over a year.”

“That’s real cute, have you known him for very long?”

“Since I was 14, we had a language class together in high school; we didn’t become friends until after he graduated high school though.”

The driver laughed.

“How did he convince you though?”

His phone rang, and so he stopped on a corner and answered. He kept driving after the call ended.

“Sorry about that, love. So how did he convince you? ”

“Well…he didn’t exactly convince me. For over a year before we dated, mutual friends kept pushing for the idea of us dating,” I laughed, remembering how mad I used to become, “I completely rejected the idea.”

“He must be a really nice guy then.”

“He really is, that and all the nagging did help plant the idea in my head. I didn’t know it at the time, but in the end we agreed to give it all a try,” I explained.

“But didn’t you try to get at him a little bit. Like no flirting or anything?”

I couldn’t help but laugh.

“In English there’s a phrase that says ‘friend zone’, I saw him mostly as a great friend meanwhile he’s trying to flirt and get me to notice him,” I responded.

The driver howled into the steering wheel.

“How did you not notice? That poor boy,” he said as he wheezed out another laugh.

“The things that he had to put up with the summer of 2012.”

I also explained to the driver that I felt like things seemed to be going in a decent direction. My overly strict parents liked my boyfriend, and if they liked him from the beginning, then that was one less thing to worry about.

“My mother is one of those overbearing Dominican moms, so if she likes him, then you know he’s a nice guy.”

The driver paused and peered at me though his mirror.

“You’re Dominican?”

“Half, I was born here but my dad is from Puerto Rico.”

“Has anyone ever told you that you look South American?”

It was my turn to laugh.

“I get that a lot,” I told him.

“I saw you and I thought you looked South American, you’re not that dark. And your boyfriend is obviously Mexican.”

“There are lighter Dominicans, I’m dark compared to some of them,” I explained.

“I guess I’m used to seeing Caribbean Hispanics as being really dark or having curly hair all the time.”

That’s when I had to give a quick lesson on how south Puerto Ricans are mixed with indigenous people and Europeans. And central Dominicans came in every variation possible.

“If I ever get married and have a child, I have no guarantees on what he or she will look like. It’ll be like some sort of roulette.”

The driver ended up laughing all over again. I prayed that the poor man wouldn’t accidentally lose control of the wheel because of his chuckling.

“What would really suck is if your kid looks really different from either of you and someone accuses you of secretly dating the mailman,” he chuckled.

We both laughed this time.

And then the conversation turned to future jobs and my studies.

“So journalism and creative writing, huh. You like reading?” he asked.

“Love it.”

“What are some of your favorite writers, as in Latin American writers?”

“ Marquez, Lorca, Neruda and Fabio Fiallo. Have you heard of him?”

“I actually have. His poetry is amazing.”

We discussed literature as he drove closer to Ridgewood. He was a treasure trove of knowledge and opinions regarding Latin American literature. We laughed together at the irony of “Poesias Negroides”, and discussed the beauty of sleep walking romances. He mentioned a recent Nobel Prize in literature winner who was also Latino.

“Wait so you’ve never heard of that guy winning the Nobel Prize?”

“No. Wish I did, most of what I know about Latin American literature is what I’ve been able to find on my own. Or hear about from my parents,” I explained.

“That’s a shame, look him up.”

I promised to. But then I forgot the writer’s name. I’ll have to look him up soon.

It was about a quarter to one and the driver pulled up to my house.

“That would be a million dollars, please.”

I laughed and rummaged through my bag in attempts to find the million dollars. Or a lottery ticket.

“Just kidding, for you, twenty-four dollars.”

I counted the bills and handed them to his outstretched hands.

“Thank you for everything,” I said, smiling at the mirror.

He smiled back into the mirror.

“Thanks for the talk. Good luck, love.”

I stepped out and he drove off.

I wonder what his name is.

Condom-onium

My twin nephews were born on my 16th birthday, which was May 1st 2008. Joseph, my oldest nephew was given two younger brothers, Justin and Joshua. 6 months in and my sister-in-law was as big as a house and rounder than those huge cookies in the mall. A few months later, she was sore and her feet were swollen. Despite the fact that she has always wanted a daughter, she refused to get pregnant after the second pregnancy.

“The ultrasound lady told me ‘damn, you’re making a soccer team’”, my older brother laughed one afternoon.

“How many more kids are going to come along then?” I asked.

“None,” my sister in law yelled.

“Not even one?” I teased.

“Hell no,” she responded as she propped up her feet.

Once the twins were born, my siblings and I chipped in on helping organize feeding times, diaper changes and chasing after Joseph as he toddled around while my older brother and sister-in-law tried to tradeoff on the twins.

That led to my younger brother and I wearing the twins one day on our chests with the aid of kangaroo pouches and walking a few blocks up for the twins doctor appointment.

We sat in the molded plastic chairs of the clinic’s play/wait area and waited for my sister-in-law and older brother to bring Joseph. About half an hour later they arrived and immediately my sis-in-law noticed the huge fishbowl of condoms that were placed near the entrance. As we sat, she kept glancing over at them.

Soon after my older brother went over to take one of the children into the room for their check up, my sis-in-law grabbed the diaper bag, and stuffed it with more than half the condoms in the bowl.

A little girl wearing shorts that would fit an adult waddled over and attempted to reach into the bowl and tried to bring one to her mother.

“Put that back,” her mother snapped, “those aren’t for you.”

She reprimanded the woman in scrubs behind the desk for placing them in such a readily available place.

“That’s kind of the point,” the lady in scrubs responded.

The condoms were there for being used.

“Why’d you take so many,” I asked my sis-in-law.

“When I said no more kids, I meant no more freaking kids,” she said, organizing the condoms to fit into her bag.

That night in their apartment, my siblings and I blew up some of the condoms into balloons. We smacked each other over the head with the oval balloons and laughed. I stared in wonder at how much they stretched and tried to figure out how the heck something that could become a balloon could actually prevent a pregnancy.

Days later, my younger brother and I were watching the kids as my older brother went out for dinner with my sis-in-law. She came back with a purse filled with condoms.

“It was like the best thing ever,” she exclaimed, “they have this thing with a slot where you can just take condoms out.”

She poured out the condoms on her bed and added them to the ones from the clinic.

“I stood at that slot for over 5 minutes and people walked by laughing,” she continued, “but I don’t give a damn, I’m not having any more kids.”

“Are you going to try to get more?” I asked.

“Yup, I even told your brother that the slot was a sign from God,” she rambled, “Condoms are Jesus’ gift to couples that have twins.”

“Can’t you just get your tubes tied?” I asked.

“No, those things are going to be burned.”

We laughed and counted. Over 200 condoms were stuffed into a drawer.

My sis-in-law eventually had her tubes burned and has not stopped praising modern science since.

Taco

I am a pushover. My heart rate triples whenever I have to tell someone “no”, or redress any grievances I have against friends and family members. An argument is started and more often than not, I allow the other person to bring up my flaws as well, I let them dominate the argument or stop talking whenever it suits them. I do not have the last laugh and I do not call customer service to complain.

But I like to think that some part of me is kind. Embedded between layers of anxiety, assignments, cooking tomorrow’s dinner, workouts, bitterness, and hyperactivity. Not unlike how geologists look at sheets or rock for the sediments, they’ll peel me back and say: “This is where Angely is kind, this is were Angely is patient, and this is where Angely has time for that.”

It’s an interesting quality to have. Scripture and many other texts elaborate on how one must put others before themselves; you’re encouraged to treat others like you would like to be treated. And then other aspects of culture encourage you to “do you”, to go for what you want regardless of what others around you think. Which makes it so that the geologists will dig down and find a layer that will make them say: “this is where Angely is really freaking confused.”

I don’t think it was being a pushover that made me bump into that tiny elderly woman two blocks away from my college. It was probably the Friday before holy week and spring break. I was with my boyfriend Rod and our friend Kevin; I had just shared an order of fries and custom made salad (pinkies up). I think we were going to head to Central Park for a bit. That’s when a tiny woman with a cane, coral shot glass circles of blush in each cheek, and sakura flower pink lipstick on her slowly sinking lips, stopped me and asked, “Can you help me get to Chipotle.”

Chipotle was on the same block we were on; I figured it wouldn’t take forever. But the woman had a limp and so I held her arm, and her bag and we slowly made our way towards the restaurant. She babbled the entire way.

“A really nice French fellow helped me across the street,” she began.

She noticed the blue and white patterned scarf I had pilfered off my mom that morning. The woman held it, turned it this way and that and asked a million questions.

“This is so lovely, where did you get it, I’m really into fashion and stuff like that,” she went on.

“I think my mom bought it in her hometown or in Downtown Manhattan,” I responded.

“What’s her hometown?”

“Bonao.”

“That doesn’t sound familiar,” she said frowning.

“It’s not in the US.”

We inched towards Chipotle while Rod and Kevin followed along laughing, because they knew I would put up with anything the old woman did.

We finally made it to Chipotle eventually and I hustled to find the woman a seat. She began to tell me what she wanted and then hesitated.

“Can you get me a menu?”

I asked at the register and then found one of the takeout pamphlets. She wanted a taco. Just one instead of the 3 for 10-dollar deal that was always offered. And so I told her all the things she could get on it and she wanted some of everything. I expected to have to go up and order for her, but she hesitated.

“Oh I don’t know, I don’t trust you with my money,” she said.

She had let me hold her bag, she felt up my scarf and she even leaned on me while walking up the block, and she couldn’t entrust me with her 10 dollars. I didn’t argue, I took my phone out of my sweater and draped it over the seat so that it wouldn’t be taken, and walked her through the line where she pointed out all the toppings she wanted on her taco.

“I’d like a drinking cup for water please,” she told the tattooed young man behind the counter.

She handed me the cup and I proceeded to fill it with diet Coke, or Dr.Pepper with some ice. I handed it to her and sat for a bit and made sure she made it up her seat.

“Do you live far?” I asked.

“I’ll probably get someone else to help me, I live across the street,” she said pointing.

She wanted to know if I was a Hunter student, I told her yes. She seemed excited when I said I was majoring in Journalism and Creative Writing. I think she had done public relations or publicity as a career before. All the while she took a sip from her drink and left a ring of pink lipstick on the straw. I was almost in awe of her, most days I’m too scared to put makeup on because I think someone will see me and laugh while thinking “makeup won’t fix her, who is she trying to fool?” Yet this tiny elderly woman had enough spunk to ask strangers for help in fulfilling her taco craving, all the while wearing face paint that was brighter than a may breeze.

“I’m Angely by the way,” I told her before I turned to leave.

I’m Adele!” she said back, smiling over her taco.

“Pleasure meeting you.”

I turned and walked out to Rod and Kevin who had waited for me for over 10 minutes.

“We were talking about you,” Kevin laughed, “that’s such an Angely thing to do, you even talked to her and everything.”

“Not the first time I’ve done that.”

“Obviously not,” he laughed.

Rod and Kevin joked about how nice I am, reminding me of a friend who had told me that if I was ever desperate enough to rob someone, I’d apologize to them before I took their money.

I don’t think helping Adele came from the push over layer, it didn’t come from the proximity to holy week that reminded me to remain devout. It came from that part of me that’s still very patient and very kind. I hope that layer will be there in 5 years, in 10 and even in 50 years. Because I never know when I’ll bump into another Adele, and I never know when I’ll one day be Adele, limping along a street, determined to get to my taco, or my frozen yogurt, or my cat. I’m hoping there’s good karma involved.

Impressum

Texte: Angely Mercado
Bildmaterialien: Photograph taken and edited by Angely Mercado
Übersetzung: Spanish poems written and translated by Angely Mercado.
Tag der Veröffentlichung: 28.08.2012

Widmung:
Dedicated to Angel Mercado David and Amarante Maria Mercado Fiallo. I know we argue but I love you both so very much. To Luisa Mercado and Antonio Mercado...I hope you both rest in peace together. Please don't forget me mama, I still miss you very much. Tell papa that I said hello.

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