My Beloved World Part 9

And here, less confident but still hopeful, is what Sister Mary Regina wrote:

This girl's ambitions, odd as they may seem, are to become an attorney and someday marry. Hopefully, she wishes to be successful in both fields. We predict a new life of challenges in Cardinal Spellman, where she will be attending High School, we hope she will be able to meet these new challenges.

I RECENTLY RETURNED to Blessed Sacrament for a visit. It has many fewer students and much smaller cla.s.ses than when I attended. It is also clear that the teachers, now more laypeople as well as nuns, subscribe to a more nurturing approach since abandonment of the rod. Every generation has its own way of showing it cares.

CHAPTER Eleven

CARDINAL SPELLMAN HIGH SCHOOL WAS a good hour's ride from the Bronxdale Houses, a.s.suming the trains and buses were running on time. The school building was divided right down the middle by a crack in the wall, girls on one side and boys on the other. On each floor, a nun stood guard at the crack to make sure that neither s.e.x crossed over into the other's side without a teacher's permission slip. The nuns were Sisters of Charity, the same as at Blessed Sacrament, but by the time I entered high school in 1968, many had shed the black bonnets and long black habits, looking a lot less menacing than they used to.

Girls and boys were allowed to mix in the lunchroom, but we had separate cla.s.ses, except for religion and a very few upper-level courses, mostly Advanced Placement. Another exception was freshman Spanish. All the kids who spoke Spanish at home were in one accelerated cla.s.s, taught by a nun recently arrived from Spain. It was her plan, she told us, to condense three years of high school Spanish into one month of "review" and then start teaching us literature.

We were only a week into the semester when the cla.s.s was on the verge of mutiny. A desperate mob surrounded Eddie Irizarry and me-the two biggest mouths-asking us to plead the cla.s.s's case.

"Tell her we aren't Spanish, we're American."

"Forty-five minutes and n.o.body understood a word that she said!"

Our teacher was totally unaware that Puerto Rican kids raised in the Bronx would have had no formal instruction in their native language. As for the acquired tongue, many of us had struggled in earlier years through a sink-or-swim transition in schools that had provided no support for kids who'd first enrolled speaking little or no English. And so I started high school having never studied Spanish grammar, conjugated a verb, or read more than a few sentences at a time: an advertis.e.m.e.nt, or a newspaper headline, maybe a very short article. I had certainly never read a book in Spanish. None of us could understand the teacher's proper Castilian accent or her elegant diction. We looked on blankly, unable even to follow her instructions, let alone do the a.s.signments.

My Spanish was so deficient that I wasn't even p.r.o.nouncing my own name properly. She called me on it. "You have the most regal of Spanish names," she said. "Don't you ever let anybody misp.r.o.nounce it. You are Sonia Sotomayor-Soh-toh-mah-yor-and anything less is disgraceful. Say it correctly, and wear it with pride."

I could tell that her heart was in the right place. And sure enough, when Eddie and I explained the situation, she was very understanding and accommodating. The very next day she came back with a gentle apology and a new plan that was much more realistic: we would still go twice as fast as the regular Spanish cla.s.s, but we'd cover the basics and learn grammar first, then start Spanish literature the second year. It was a good lesson in the value of learning to express your basic needs and trusting you will be heard. Teachers, I was finally realizing, were not the enemy.

Not most of them, anyway. There was the geometry teacher nicknamed Rigor Mortis. Word had it she'd been at Cardinal Spellman since before the invention of the triangle, standing before eons of freshman cla.s.ses, like a prehistoric scarecrow, skinny and wrinkled with a bright thatch of red hair.

I was shocked when she called me into her office and accused me of cheating. The basis for her accusation was my perfect score on the Regents geometry exam. No one in all her centuries of experience had ever scored a hundred on the Regents.

"So who did I cheat from?" I asked indignantly. "Who else got a hundred that I could have copied from?"

She looked flummoxed for a moment. "But you've never scored higher than eighties or low nineties on the practice tests. How could you get a hundred?"

The truth, as I explained, was that I'd never once got an answer wrong on the practice tests; points had been deducted only because I hadn't followed the steps she had prescribed. I had reasoned out my own steps, which made sense to me, and she had never explained what was wrong with them. On the Regents exam we only had to give the answer; no one was checking the steps.

What happened next truly amazed me. She dug out my old tests and reviewed them. Acknowledging the validity of my proofs, she changed my grades. Even Rigor Mortis, it turned out, wasn't quite as rigid as all that.

PERHAPS THE MOST IMPROBABLE turn of events in those first months: my cousin Miriam and I signed up to be maritime cadets. On Friday nights, we went to P.S. 75 at Hunts Point and marched around the gym. We wore uniforms. We memorized nautical terms and learned how to tie knots. We would never actually set foot on a boat, but we did march in the Puerto Rican Day Parade.

Our ulterior motive for joining the cadets was to chaperone her brother Nelson, who played trumpet in their marching band. Nelson, my childhood accomplice, my genius sidekick, had grown into a girl magnet. He was incredibly handsome, as smart as ever, with a wicked sense of humor. He'd also become an impressively talented musician. In fact, he was desperate to pursue this love, even though Tio Benny had always wanted him to be a doctor. He'd only agreed to let Nelson join the marching band because he thought the discipline was good for him and it would keep him off the street.

The seductions of girls and music weren't the only reasons Tio Benny felt someone had to keep an eye on Nelson. Nelson had started at Bronx Science the same year I entered Cardinal Spellman, and already he was struggling. There was no question of his scientific apt.i.tude. By the time he got to high school, he'd won several prestigious awards for his science fair projects, and his teachers had recognized him as a prodigy, equally talented at science and music. No, Nelson's real difficulties were not intellectual but emotional: Tio Benny and t.i.ti Carmen were breaking up.

I myself couldn't bear to hear people gossiping about it. I'd cover my ears against any talk of who had wronged whom. And I certainly didn't subscribe to the theory of Abuelita and my other aunts, who were convinced that a hex put on the couple by means of some chicken guts left on their doorstep had caused the breakup. It was heartbreaking enough whatever the reason, and I couldn't imagine what it was doing to Nelson, Miriam, and little Eddie, too.

Especially Nelson.

When we were little, Miriam always found a thousand reasons to say no to any new game or plan that I suggested. Eventually, she would agree, but it was such an effort cajoling her. We would have a lot of fun together in high school, but she'd been one prissy little kid growing up. Nelson, on the other hand, never said no to me. He was game for anything, sticking his neck out for a friend without thinking twice. Those were qualities that I loved in him when we were little, but those same qualities would leave him vulnerable to the worst temptations, especially in a neighborhood that was drowning in drugs.

Sometimes when I watched Nelson practice for the band, I'd imagine him standing on the bow of a boat, blowing his trumpet with all his heart, only for that boat to drift slowly out to sea and leave me standing on the dock.

THE SUMMER VACATION between freshman and soph.o.m.ore years, I was working my way through the summer reading list when Lord of the Flies brought me to a halt. I wasn't ready to start another book when I finished that one. I'd never read anything so layered with meaning: it haunted me, and I needed to think about it some more. But I didn't want to spend the whole break doing nothing but reading and watching TV. Junior was happy shooting baskets all the daylight hours, but there wasn't much else going on around the projects if you were too old for the playground and not into drugs. Orchard Beach still beckoned, roasting traffic and all, but getting there was a trek you couldn't make every day. Besides, without Abuelita's laugh and the antic.i.p.ation of her overgenerous picnic in the trunk, without Gallego gunning the engine of a car packed with squirming kids, somehow it just wasn't the same.

So I decided to get a job. Mami and t.i.ti Carmen were sitting in Abuelita's kitchen over coffee when I announced my plan. There were no shops or businesses in the projects, but maybe I could find someone to hire me in Abuelita's old neighborhood. t.i.ti Carmen still lived on Southern Boulevard and worked nearby at United Bargains. The mom-and-pop stores under the El wouldn't hire kids-leaning on family labor rather than paying a stranger-but the bigger retailers along Southern Boulevard might. I proposed to walk down the street and inquire in each one. "Don't do that," said t.i.ti Carmen. "Let me ask Angie." Angie was t.i.ti Carmen's boss.

My mother meanwhile looked stricken and bit her lip. She didn't say anything until t.i.ti had gone home. Then, for the first time, she told me a little bit about her own childhood: about sewing and ironing handkerchiefs for t.i.ti Aurora since before she could remember, for hours every day. "I resented it, Sonia. I don't want you to grow up feeling like I did." She went on to apologize for being unable to buy us more things but still insisted it would be even worse if I blamed her one day for depriving me of a childhood.

I didn't see that coming. n.o.body was forcing me to work. Sure, a little pocket money would be nice, but that wasn't the main motivation. "Mami, I want to work," I told her. She'd worked too hard all her life to appreciate that leisure could mean boredom, but that's what I knew I'd be facing if I sat home all summer. I promised never to blame her. In that moment, I began to understand how hard my mother's life had been.

t.i.ti Carmen reported back that Angie was willing to hire me for a dollar an hour. That was less than minimum wage, but since I wasn't old enough to work legally anyway, they would just pay me off the books. I would take the bus, meet t.i.ti Carmen at her place, and then we'd walk over to United Bargains together. That became our routine. It wasn't a neighborhood where you walked alone.

United Bargains sold women's clothing. I pitched in wherever needed: restocking, tidying up, monitoring the dressing rooms. I was supposed to watch for the telltale signs of a shoplifter trying to disappear behind the racks, rolling up merchandise to stuff in a purse.

Junkies were especially suspect. They were easy to spot by the shadow in their eyes, though the tracks on their arms were hidden under long sleeves even in summer. There was never an argument, never a scene. Once in a while I had to say, "Take it out." Most of the time I didn't need to utter a word. She would pull the garment out of her bag, put it back on the hanger, or maybe hand it to me, our eyes never meeting as she slinked out. We always let them go. There wasn't much choice: in a precinct that had come to be known as Fort Apache, the Wild West, the cops had their hands full dealing with the gangs. Besides, the management understood that the shame and pity were punishment enough, and I naturally agreed. I abhorred feeling pitied, that degrading secondhand sadness I would always a.s.sociate with my family's reaction to the news I had diabetes. To pity someone else feels no better. When someone's dignity shatters in front of you, it leaves a hole that any feeling heart naturally wants to fill, if only with its own sadness.

On Sat.u.r.day nights the store was open late, and it was dark by the time we rolled down the gates. Two patrol officers would meet us at the door and escort us home. I don't know how this was arranged, whether it was true that one of the saleswomen was sleeping with one of these cops, but I was glad of it anyway. As we walked, we could see the SWAT team on the roofs all along Southern Boulevard, their silhouettes bulging with body armor, a.s.sault rifles bristling. One by one the shops would darken, and we could hear the clatter of the graffiti-covered gates being rolled down, trucks driving off, until we were the only ones walking. Even the prost.i.tutes had vanished. You might trip on tourniquets and empty gla.s.sine packets when you got into the courtyard area at t.i.ti Carmen's, but you wouldn't run into any neighbors. I would spend the night there, talking the night away with Miriam. I wished Nelson were there too, but he was never home anymore.

I remember falling asleep thinking again about Lord of the Flies. It was as if the fly-crusted sow's head on a stick were planted in a crack of the sidewalk on Southern Boulevard. The junkies haunting the alley were little boys smeared with war paint, abandoned on a hostile island, and the eyes of the hunters cruising slowly down the street glowed with primitive appet.i.tes. The cops in their armor were only a fiercer tribe. Where was the conch?

The next morning, in daylight, Southern Boulevard was less threatening. The street vendors were out, shop fronts were open, people were coming and going. On the way home I stopped at a makeshift fruit cart to buy a banana for a snack. I was standing there peeling my purchase when a police car rolled up to the curb. The cop got out and pointed here and there to what he wanted-there was a language barrier-and the vendor loaded two large shopping bags with fruit. The cop made as if to reach for his wallet, but it was only a gesture, and the vendor waved it off. When the cop drove away, I asked the man why he didn't take the money.

"Es el precio de hacer negocios. If I don't give the fruit, I can't sell the fruit."

My heart sank. I told him I was sorry it was like that.

"We all have to make a living," he said with a shrug. He looked more ashamed than aggrieved.

Why was I so upset? Without cops our neighborhood would be even more of a war zone than it was. They worked hard at a dangerous job with little thanks from the people they protected. We needed them. Was I angry because I held the police to a higher standard, the same way I did Father Dolan and the nuns? There was something more to it, beyond the betrayal of trust, beyond the corruption of someone whose uniform is a symbol of the civic order.

How do things break down? In Lord of the Flies, the more mature of those lost boys start off with every intention of building a moral, functional society on their island, drawing on what they remember-looking after the "littluns," building the shelters, keeping the signal fire burning. Their little community gradually breaks down all the same, battered by those who are more self-indulgent, those who are driven by ego and fear.

Which side was the cop on?

The boys need rules, law, order, to keep their worst instincts in check. The conch they blow to call a meeting or hold for the right to speak stands for order, but it holds no power in itself. Its only power is what they agree to honor. It is a beautiful thing, but fragile.

When I was much younger, on summer days I would sometimes go along with t.i.ti Aurora to the place where she worked as a seamstress. Those must have been days when Mami was working the day shift and, for some reason, I couldn't go to Abuelita's. That room with the sewing machines whirring was a vision of h.e.l.l to me: steaming hot, dark, and airless, with the windows painted black and the door shut tight. I was too young to be useful, but I tried to help anyway, to pa.s.s the time. t.i.ti Aurora would give me a box of zippers to untangle, or I'd stack up hangers, sort sc.r.a.ps by color, or fetch things for the women sewing. All day long I'd keep an eye out for anyone heading toward the door. As soon as it opened, I'd race over and stick my head out for a breath of air, until t.i.ti saw me and shooed me back in. I asked her why they didn't just keep the door open. "They just can't," she would say.

Behind the closed door and the blackened windows, all those women were breaking the law. But they weren't criminals. They were just women toiling long hours under miserable conditions to support their families. They were doing what they had to do to survive. It was my first inkling of what a tough life t.i.ti Aurora had had. t.i.ti never got the schooling that Mami got, and she'd borne the brunt of the father Mami was spared from knowing. Her married life would have many challenges and few rewards. Work was the only way she knew to keep going, and she never missed a day. And though t.i.ti was also the most honest person I knew-if she found a dime in a pay phone, she'd dial the operator to ask where she should mail it-she broke the law every day she went to work.