Fish Out of Agua:. Michele Carlo
like Titi Carmen. But the fat boy wasn’t smiling. He meant it to be a bad name. I could tell by the way he looked and sounded when he said it. I did know what a spic was though. That was another bad word to call what my family was. Some people in our building used to call us spics until my father made friends with them. Maybe I could make friends with this fat boy, and he wouldn’t say bad names anymore.
“My name’s Michele. Do you watch Batman? I like…”
“Your name is Spic. Nah, you’re too small to be a Spic. You’re a Speck.” He spit on the floor between us as if to point out just how small I was.
“Pasquale! Get ovah here right now! Where’s Ant’ny?” A tall woman like Titi Ofelia, with the same tan skin and black hair but a different way of speaking, was yelling from halfway down the block.
“Aw ma!” Pasquale wailed
“Don’t ‘aw ma’ me! Getcha brudduh and get ovah here…now!”
Right behind the woman was my mother. She was wearing a pink tweed spring coat and a short pink dress with dark red suede high heels. There was a flowered scarf tied around her head; she hadn’t wrapped her hair. Kevin was clutching one of her hands; I could see the other was balled up into a fist. The tall woman, who was wearing dungarees and a plain shirt and long sweater stopped to look at my mother. She smiled and I thought she was about to say something, but my mother brushed past her and went straight inside the gate to me. As she passed, I noticed she barely came up to the woman’s shoulders. My mother took my hand and we started walking home, going past the tall woman, the fat boy, and his brudduh. I could feel eyes in my back—they—or someone was watching us. I wished my mother had smiled back at the lady. Why was it so hard for people to be friends? I wondered if grown-ups ever did Bloodsisters.
“What happened to your thumb?” my mother asked. She walked fast, her heels going clickity-click as Kevin and I struggled to keep up.
“Nothing,” I said.
It had been the happiest day ever and now it was ruined. My book was gone, my thumb hurt, I was called bad names,…and I was confused. I looked like the kids at school, but that wasn’t good enough. I was smart, but that wasn’t good enough. I even had a Bloodsister, but that still wasn’t good enough—she was called names too. No matter what, it was never good enough. I wanted to tell someone all this, but who? Not my mother. How could she listen when all she did was talk?
I cried that night. “Pleasepleasepleasepleasepleasepleaseplease,” I thought, “let me wake up with a regular family where no one talked out windows and everyone looked the same and I would have regular straight brown hair and no freckles—a normal family.”
The next morning when I woke up, my mother was speeching. My hair was still red and curly; my face was still spotted. When I got to school, Darlinda was playing with a group of girls from her school bus who were all brown like she was. I wondered what would have happened if they’d heard the fat boy Pasquale saying those bad names. I started to run over to Darlinda, but stopped. What if those other girls didn’t want me there? What if they started calling me names? But when Darlinda saw me, she ran over. She stuck out her bandaged thumb and I bumped it with mine. We played “Giant Steps” until the bell rang, and we went into school. No matter what’d happened, we were still best friends. Bloodsisters.
In June Darlinda and I were skipped. That meant we weren’t going to third grade, but straight into fourth. And when we did, Pasquale Baleena, the fat boy, would be there.
11
TITI DULCE’S REVOLUTION
Dear Michele,
I just wanted to say I’m sorry for the way I left your mother’s house the other day. It’s just that I get so frustrated because she won’t talk to me. Well, she’ll tell me what she’s making for dinner or what good grades you’re getting or what new dress she bought, but she will never talk to me about the things that really matter, like peace and what is happening in the world. But then, the other day, well, I just couldn’t believe it.
I knew something was wrong. And not just from when your mother was sick, from way before that. I can see it in her face every time you come to Mami’s, your grandmother’s house.
But what she said? No. It can’t be. It’s not possible. It’s just impossible. But I wanted you to know I’m not angry with you. And I’m not angry with your mother either. I just think it’s best if your mother and I don’t see each other for a little while.
You are almost nine years old. Your whole life is ahead of you. You have nothing to regret. Nothing to wish you could do over. But I want you to know that sometimes things happen that are no one’s fault and no one knows why. Sometimes you love the wrong person, but you can’t help it. Sometimes life is not the way we wish it to be.
Don’t let someone else’s past be your future, Michele. If there is something you ever need to tell me, you can, you know. I love you. I love your mother, too, even though she doesn’t think so right now.
Love,
Titi Dulce
12
SPANISH ON SUNDAY (part 2)
There never was a letter like this from Titi Dulce. This time, it might have made a difference if there had been.
Until I was nine, Titi Dulce was my idol. She was twenty-four and everything I wanted to be when I grew up. Not that I wanted to be married, like she was or have babies like she did. What I wanted was to be was as beautiful and loving and universally loved as she was. Everything she said, did, or touched seemed to get nothing but praise, smiles, and attention. Everything I wanted to have.
It was Sunday afternoon. I hated Sundays. It was the day I had to pretend to be Puerto Rican, as opposed to the other six days of the week when I had to pretend I wasn’t. It was the hardest, scariest day of all. I was always afraid something bad was going to happen and my mother would have to go away again.
My abuelita, Ofelia, and Carmen were in the kitchen finishing enough pollo guisado, chicken stew, to feed five armies. Papa Julio walked in to complain that the food was taking too long and walked back out. My father and Titi Ofelia’s husband were in the living room watching the Mets game while Kevin and our cousins Benny and Ray-Ray played with G.I. Joes. I was sitting at the table in abuelita’s dining room, drawing.
I had a new obsession. I was drawing books with fashion models wearing beautiful clothes like on Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In, the comedy show that launched the careers of Goldie Hawn and Lily Tomlin. I was allowed to stay up for it; Kevin wasn’t, even though he was in love with the “Sock It to Me” girl and always tried to sneak out of bed to see her. I loved watching that show. It was one of the only times my mother would laugh for real, instead of with that bitter screech that would make me put a pillow over my head and call for the kittens.
Titi Dulce came into the room. She was very, very pregnant. She had been pregnant twice before Cousin Ray-Ray was born and once after. She had cut off all her dark brown hair into a pixie haircut and frosted it platinum blond. She looked like the “Boricua Mia Farrow,” which I only knew because I had heard Titi Ofelia say that. Under the frosted hair and swirl-printed minidress, her face was pale, but she still smiled and hugged me.
“What are you drawing?”
“I’m making a book,” I said and showed her the cover for Book One: The Mod-Mod World of the Go-Go Girls.
She picked up a drawing of a girl wearing long dangly earrings, a midriff blouse with a big peace-sign medallion and hip-hugger bell-bottoms.
“I wish I could wear that.” She pointed to her huge stomach and smiled again.
My mother was in the dining room with Titi Dulce and me, but she was staring out the big window that faced the Hudson River, from where you could see Palisades