My Beloved World Part 2

Our shopping trip would conclude with a final stop to pick up bread and milk at the bodega a few doors down from Abuelita's. The bodega, a tiny grocery store, is the heart of every Hispanic neighborhood and a lifeline in areas with no supermarkets in walking distance. In those days, the bread they sold was so fresh that its warm smell filled the store. Abuelita would give me la tet.i.ta, the crunchy end, even though she liked it too, I knew. The bodega was always crowded with the same guys having their daily party. They sat in the corner, reading El Diario and arguing about the news. Sometimes one of them would read the Daily News and explain to the others in Spanish what it said. I could tell when he was improvising or embellishing the story; I knew what news sounded like in English. Usually, they only read the Daily News for the horse-racing results, although they didn't actually follow the horses. The last three digits of the total bets taken at the track became the winning number for the illegal lottery they played.

Before Abuelita moved, when she still lived on Kelly Street, there was a bodega right downstairs from her apartment. Sometimes she would send me downstairs by myself with a dollar bill wrapped up in a napkin that had numbers written on it. I had to tell the man whether she wanted to play them straight or in combination, or fifty cents each way. My grandmother counted extraordinary luck among her many gifts. Sometimes she saw the winning numbers in her dreams. I've never dreamed of numbers, but I've inherited more than my share of luck at games of chance, winning many a stuffed animal, and I'm even better at games like poker, where skill mediates luck. Sometimes Abuelita would see bad luck coming too, and that brought fear to my family. Too often in the past she had been right.

The stairs up to the third-floor apartment were narrow and dark, and Abuelita didn't have an elevator to rely on as we did. But in the projects, the elevator was more than a convenience: Junior and I were absolutely forbidden to take the stairs, where my mother had once been mugged and where addicts regularly shot up, littering the scene with needles and other paraphernalia. I can still hear Mami's warning that we should never, but never, touch those needles or take that junk: if we did, we would surely die.

Mami and my aunts would often be at Abuelita's when we got back, crowded into the kitchen for coffee and gossip. Abuelita would join them while I joined Nelson and my other cousins at the bedroom window to make faces at the pa.s.sengers zipping by on the elevated train that ran just at the height of Abuelita's apartment. Gallego, my step-grandfather, would be busy with his own preparations for the party, choosing the dance music. His hands trembled slightly with Parkinson's disease, still in its early stages then, as he lined up the record alb.u.ms.

Once a month, my mother and aunts would help Abuelita make sofrito, the Puerto Rican vegetable and spice base that enhances the flavors in any dish. Abuelita's kitchen would turn into a factory, with all of the women cleaning and peeling, slicing and chopping. They would fill up jars and jars of the stuff, enough for a month's worth of dinners in each of their homes, and enough for the Sat.u.r.day parties too. On the table, waiting for their turn in the blender, were big piles of chopped peppers, onions, tomatoes: my target.

"Sonia, get your hands out of there!"

"Give me that! Te vas a enfermar! You'll get sick; you can't eat it raw!" Oh yes I can. I inherited adventurous taste buds from Papi and Abuelita, and I'll still happily eat many things more timid palates won't venture.

WHEN WE WENT to Abuelita's for the parties that happened most Sat.u.r.days, Mami made the hopeless effort to have me get dressed up. My dress would get wrinkled or stained almost immediately, and ribbons never stayed put in my hair, which Abuelita blamed on the electrodes the doctors had applied to my head. It's true that my curls disappeared about that time, but my hair had always been too thin for ribbons. Miriam by contrast always looked like a princess doll in a gla.s.s case, no matter the occasion. It would take me most of my life to feel remotely put together, and it's still an effort.

As soon as the door opened, I would catapult into Abuelita's arms. Wherever in the apartment she was, I would find her first.

"Sonia, careful!" Mami would say to me. "We just got here and already you're a mess." And then, to Abuelita, "Too much energy, too much talking, too much running around. I'm sorry, Mercedes, I don't know what to do with her."

"Para, Celina. Let the child be. There's nothing wrong with her except too much energy." Abuelita was on my side, always, and Mami was always apologizing to Abuelita. Sometimes even I wanted to say "Para, Mami!"

Next I would run to find Nelson, who would invariably be lying on the bed reading a comic book while waiting for me. Nelson was a genius, and my best friend on top of being my cousin. I never got bored talking to him. He could figure out how anything worked, and together we pondered mysteries of the natural world, like gravity. He was up for any game I could devise, including jousting knights, which involved charging at each other across the living room, each carrying on his or her back a younger brother armed with a broom or a mop. Miriam tried to stop us, but it didn't prevent Eddie, her little brother, from falling off Nelson and breaking a leg. When the screams of pain brought my aunt running, the blame was a.s.signed, as usual, before any facts were established: "Sonia! What did you do now?" Another walloping for that one.

Tio Benny, who was Nelson, Miriam, and Eddie's dad, was determined that Nelson would grow up to be a doctor. In my eyes, Tio Benny was the ideal father. He spent time with his kids and took them on outings, which occasionally included me too. He spoke English, which meant he could go to parent-teacher conferences. Best of all, he didn't drink. I would have traded fathers with Nelson in a heartbeat. But sadly, for all his brilliance, Nelson wouldn't live up to Tio Benny's dreams, and I would do well despite a less than perfect father.

Abuelita's apartment was small enough that wherever we settled down to play, the warm smells of her feast would find us, beckoning like cartoon ribbons in the air. Garlic and onions calling, still the happiest smells I know.

"Mercedes, you should open your own restaurant."

"Don't be shy, there's plenty."

The dominoes never stopped for dinner. The game was serious. Someone would have to lose the whole match and give up the seat before even thinking about food. "Tu estas ciego? It's right in front of your eyes!" They'd yell a lot and pretend to be angry.

"Benny, wake up and look at what you have!" Mami counters. She was good at this and could keep track of every bone played.

"Hey, no cheating! How many times are you going to cough? Somebody get this man a drink, he's choking!"

"Don't look at me, I'm honest. Mercedes is the one who cheats."

"I know you have that ficha, so play it!"

"Nice one, Celina."

Gallego's out of the game, calling foul as he goes. He picks up his guiro and strums a ratchety rhythm on the gourd, playing along with the record, as if he wishes someone would show up with a guitar. Instead, sooner or later someone would lift the needle off the record, cutting off Los Panchos mid-song. The voices in the living room would settle to a hush, and all eyes would turn to Abuelita, resting on the couch, having cleaned up and taken a turn at dominoes. When the music stopped, that was the cue for those in the kitchen to crowd in the doorway of the living room. Nelson and I would scramble to a spot under the table where we could see. It was time for poetry.

Abuelita stands up, closes her eyes, and takes a deep breath. When she opens them and begins to recite, her voice is different. Deeper, and vibrant in a way that makes you hold your breath to listen.

Por fin, corazon, por fin,

alienta con la esperanza ...

I couldn't understand the words exactly, but that didn't matter. The feeling of the poem came through clearly in the music of Abuelita's voice and in the look of faraway longing in the faces of her listeners.

Her long black hair is tied back simply and her dress is plain, but to my eyes she looks more glamorous than anyone trying to be fancy. Now her arms stretch wide and her skirt swirls as she turns, reaching for the whole horizon. You can almost see green mountains, the sea and the sky unfolding, the whole world being born as she lifts her hand. As it turns, her fingers spread open like a flower blooming in the sun.

... y va la tierra brotando

como Venus de la espuma.

I look around. She has the whole room mesmerized. t.i.ti Carmen wipes a tear.

Para poder conocerla

es preciso compararla,

de lejos en suenos verla;

y para saber quererla

es necesario dejarla.

Oh! no envidie tu belleza,

de otra inmensa poblacion

el poder y la riqueza,

que alli vive la cabeza,

y aqui vive el corazon.

Y si vivir es sentir,

y si vivir es pensar ...

The poems that Abuelita and her listeners loved were often in the key of nostalgia and drenched in rosy, sunset hues that obscured the poverty, disease, and natural disasters that they had left behind. Not that their yearnings were unfounded. As the poet says, "To know it, you need to see it in dreams from afar. To learn how to love it, you need to leave it." Even those of the generations following who were born here, who have settled decisively into a mainland existence and rarely have reason to visit the island-even we have corners of our hearts where such a nostalgia lingers. All it takes to spark it is a poem, or a song like "En Mi Viejo San Juan."

The parties always wound down late. The stragglers had to be fed; Charlie and Tony, t.i.ti Gloria's sons, might stop by after their Sat.u.r.day night dates. Most others would say their good-byes and go home, like Tio Vitin and t.i.ti Judy, who typically left carrying their kids, my cousins Lillian and Elaine, fast asleep, drooped over a shoulder.