Bird of Paradise Page 10

  Weeks go by and nothing happens.

  * * *

  Somehow I receive a scholarship to a swanky tennis academy on Long Island. I hate the place. The kids I meet only talk about money and being something called a JAP. The first time I hear the acronym is on one of the indoor courts in the back.

  “I’d never be seen in public with any girl other than a JAP,” this kid says within earshot while we’re picking up balls after a drill.

  “Yeah, I hear you. My mother would kill me if she even thought I was interested in anyone else,” replies another kid, glancing over at me. “Those are the only girls I like, anyway.” One of the girls on the court tells me that a JAP isn’t short for Japanese but an acronym for Jewish-American prince or princess.

  I am not a JAP, but that doesn’t stop me from developing a crush on Simon Goldstein. He’s arrogant and temperamental on the court, like McEnroe, tall and wiry, with wild long hair. He’s not a cookie-cutter rich kid like the other boys. I think he may like me, too. He doesn’t ignore me. In his world, I exist.

  Simon’s mother is skinnier than a thirteen-year-old girl. She looks like she works out a lot, and her skeletal face is always done in shades of frosted makeup. Everyone notices Mrs. Goldstein from the moment she walks through the glass doors because she is more overstated than any of the other parents, even the rich ones. It looks as if Fendi, Louis Vuitton, and Gucci have thrown up on her all at once. A little girl, my future sister-in-law, usually runs in behind her.

  “Can you watch my sister when she goes to the bathroom in the women’s locker room?” Simon asks me.

  “Yes, of course,” I respond.

  He smiles warmly. “You know, you look like a younger version of my baby sister’s nanny,” he continues. “Are you from Central America or someplace like that?”

  “No,” I respond, deflated.

  “Anyway, you’re sort of hot in an exotic way. Maybe one day you’ll work for me and we can fool around.” He laughs.

  “You mean maybe you’ll work for me.”

  “Come on, let’s be realistic. You could be my cleaning lady.”

  “Fuck you. I’d rather be a cleaning lady than walk around with that stupid ugly-ass hook nose.”

  “You better watch it before I tell someone you’re anti-Semitic.”

  “What the fuck does that even mean?”

  “You don’t want to know, mami.”

  Simon and I never speak again. His mom and little sister don’t even glance my way when they walk past me anymore. They also begin to ignore Papi.

  “What happened with that nice boy?” Papi asks one afternoon on the car ride back to the city.

  “Nothing. I don’t know,” I respond.

  “You must have said something stupid. You always embarrass me.”

  I say nothing. One of the girls told me what it meant to be “anti-Semitic,” and I’ve realized nobody will ever take my word over a JAP’s in this place, not even Papi.

  * * *

  I start running into Marie Christophe at Carrot Top on Broadway that spring, after the yellow and gray snow melted away. She graduated from St. Thaddeus a year after I did. Like Claudine, whom I lost contact with after she moved to Hollis, Marie was born in New York City to Haitian parents.

  Visiting the Christophe family feels like entering a parallel universe. When I come over, which is almost daily, there’s almost always somber country music playing in the background. “Hello, Mr. and Mrs. Christophe,” I say. “I hope all is well this evening.” Marie’s dad is sitting in a chair talking to her mom, who is cooking dinner in the kitchen. “ ‘Allo, Raquel, you ar’ so well mannered,” he says to me in an accent I understand somewhat better than I did Claudine’s mom’s. “Marie should be mo’r like you.” Marie’s eyes roll to the back of her head.

  “Yo. I just saw my dad with that Cuban lady from across the street and her fat-ass daughter,” I say, entering Marie’s room.

  “You’re crazy, girl,” she greets me in, oddly enough, a heavy Dominican accent. “What chu’ got for me, mami?”

  I throw myself on Marie’s bed, covered with freshly laundered clothes, and open a bag to trade with her for the week. We pool together our wardrobe in order to look fresh to death when sneaking out to Greenwich Village. Sometimes we go to the park or walk by Unique Clothing Warehouse on West Broadway to check out the guys airbrushing T-shirts in the front window. On other days we just roam around, pretending to be drunk off of flavored Bartles & Jaymes wine coolers, and watch clans of white homeless teenagers with dreadlocks and tracks on their arms beg for money on the street.

  Our mutual homegirl Sheeba is the tallest girl both Marie and I know. She lives on the other side of Carrot Top with a mom I’ve never seen smile, in an apartment as dark as Papi and Alice’s. She has her own room and more gear than Marie and I put together. Her dad, whom I never met, is from some country in West Africa. That may be why Sheeba, despite those pimples that make her nose look way bigger than it is, looks as if she’s chiseled from an otherwise perfect slab of Champlain black marble.

  Marie and her friend Sabrina and Sheeba and I are people-watching on one of the concrete benches surrounding the water fountain at Washington Square Park. I glance over at Marie, noticing her red lipstick perfectly framing a set of full pouty lips. I wondered if we would have been friends had we been living in D.R. or Haiti. I imagined thousands of friendships disintegrating into the arid Caribbean air—POOF—before they could even begin. Teenagers, separated by an imaginary line, who will never laugh together or share fresh clothes. I can’t imagine it.

  All the bullshit Dominicans talk about Haitians rushes into the foreground of my mind. I am embarrassed by it. Marie finds it confusing that the plátanos over here spewing the worst venom about the prietos back on the island often look just like them. It’s part of the baggage our parents and grandparents lug over from the madre patria.

  “Oh my fucking God, that’s Plug One and Plug Two from De La Soul walking toward us,” I whisper loudly to the girls.

  No one responds or looks in their direction. I forgot for a moment that part of our thing was to look jaded. But I couldn’t play along. 3 Feet High and Rising recently dropped.

  “Yo, that ‘Buddy’ remix is the craziest song ever,” I tell Marie.

  She shrugs. “It’s cool, I guess,” she says.

  “They ain’t no Redhead Kingpin,” Sheeba says.

  “Are you crazy? He’s corny,” I say. “Fine like Malcolm X. But sounds like hip-hop fusion for elevators.”

  Sabrina offers nothing. As usual, she’s borderline lethargic.

  “Did you hear that girl with the English accent—Monie Love’s flow in it?” I say. “She’s so dope. I want to write lyrics for her one day.”

  “You’re smoking crack,” Sheeba says. “You’ll never write for any of them.”

  “Yeah, and when I do, you’ll be the first to catch the vapors,” I shoot back.

  Russell Simmons is trailing a few feet behind them, talking to someone who looks like Plug One, aka Posdnuos.

  They walk over to us and lean on the other side of the concrete bench. Sheeba’s long flawless legs and model-thin body must have Posdnuos open because he can’t stop staring at her and cheesing. “Hi, I’m Pos,” he says to us.

  Plug Two, aka Trugoy, hair styled into his signature high-top fade with a crown of dreads, smiles and nods hello, exposing a rotten tooth. He stands next to Pos until Russell Simmons makes his way over to our group, fixing himself between the two, totally ignoring our side of the concrete slab.

  “Hi, I’m Lucky,” says the guy who looks just like Posdnuos. They’re brothers.

  Soon Russell Simmons trails off toward Broadway. We are all left standing. “Where are you guys from?” I ask, pretending not to know they’re from Long Island.

  “My parents are Haitian,” says Trugoy.

  “That’s dope. Sabrina and I are Dominican,” I say, “and Marie’s parents are from Haiti, too.” Marie and Trugoy say
something to each other in Kreyòl. I try to follow, but only a few words are familiar.

  “You don’t look Dominican,” Lucky says. “I thought you were Puerto Rican and something, or, like, Black and white.”

  “Really?” I respond. “What about me isn’t Dominican?”

  “You’re hanging out with Haitians, for one,” says some tag along from the peanut gallery outside our cipher. “And the way you dress—you don’t dress like no hick.”

  * * *

  Angel looks even hotter now than he did last summer on the basketball court. He lost more inches around his waist and shot up to almost six feet in height. I floss on the tennis court, putting extra spin on my forehand and my one-handed backhand to get his attention. I can see him watching from my periphery. A well-dressed older woman who looks related to Rocío, with shoulder-length brown hair, is watching us. When I’m done playing for the afternoon, I rush off the tennis courts trying not to make eye contact with Angel. The older woman stops me. “Hola, ju sink he’s look cute?” she says, pointing at Angel. “He’ my son.”

  “No, señora, I was just saying hello.”

  “You look like a nice gu’l. I see you play tennis here a lot.”

  “Oh, yes, I do.”

  “Angel, come here.” She formally introduces us.

  “Yo, can you talk love if I call you tonight?” Angel asks me.

  “I can talk love, I can talk anything,” I respond, immediately regretting how silly I sound.

  “Your father isn’t going to freak out, is he? He’s really fucking loco,” Angel says.

  “We’re only talking, so it’s no big deal.” I’m lying.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Ave Maria, Morena

  Simultáneamente me miraba la cara desde distintos ángulos

  Y mi cara, como la realidad, tenía un caracter multíplice.

  Simultaneously, I saw my face from different angles

  And my face, like reality, had multiple characters.

  —GLORIA ANZALDÚA, BORDERLANDS

  A FEW WEEKS LATER, OVER A SINGLE SCOOP OF CHOCOLATE ICE cream, Angel says he wants to ask me a question. We walk into the small empty lobby at Apple Bank across the street.

  “I want you to be my girl,” he says. “I promise to be good to you.”

  “What do you mean by that?” I ask.

  “I’m falling in love with you—yes, it’s happening mad fast, but I can’t help it.” He leans in and whispers, “I’m not like these other Dominican assholes.”

  “I think I’m falling in love with you, too,” I say. Angel leans in closer until we are locked in a heated, lip-sucking first kiss.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Papi is screaming from the door, waving his oversize graphite tennis racket with his right hand like a madman. “What are you doing with this lousy Dominican?”

  “Papi, we were just talking.”

  Angel is frozen. He can’t move.

  “I saw the whole thing from there,” he says, pointing at Golden Rule, where Alice is sitting, frowning with her entire face, by the window. “You’re supposed to be practicing, but I find you here, acting like a cuero. You’re just like your lousy moth’a.”

  “But—”

  Papi raises his tennis racket up to Angel’s face. “Stay away, you and your lousy moth’a.” Still paralyzed with fear, Angel is unable to move or defend Maria’s honor. A crowd is beginning to gather by the door.

  “STOP! STOP IT!” I yell. “Leave him alone, or you’ll be asking for problems!”

  Papi grabs me by the forearm and drags me across the street. I look back at Angel. He hasn’t moved from the spot where Papi threatened to beat him down with his tennis racket.

  “She’s going to be on welfare with a bunch of kids, like her lousy moth’a,” Papi says to Alice.

  “Eduardo, please,” she says. If she frowns any further, Alice may morph into a Shar-Pei.

  “Go sit over there,” Papi screams at me, pointing to a single booth on the other side of the empty restaurant. “I can’t look at your face.”

  “I really hate you,” I yell back.

  “I’m going to fix you when we get home.”

  “If I don’t manage to fuck you up first,” I mumble to myself. I hate it when he compares me to Rocío almost as much as I hate it when Alice introduces me as her daughter to the people she works with.

  * * *

  When Papi and Alice aren’t around, Angel and I become inseparable. I see less of Marie and everyone else.

  Suddenly, freestyle music doesn’t taste like bubble gum anymore. I finally know what it’s like to yearn for someone. When Exposé sings “I’ll sacrifice tomorrow / Just to have you here today,” it takes on a whole new meaning. I can’t remember life before Angel. I can’t imagine a future without him.

  More than being Angel’s secret girlfriend, I become his mother Maria’s de facto daughter. And her man, Casimiro, becomes, by default or kismet, a father figure.

  There must have been hundreds of thousands of women from the Dominican Republic bearing her name, as many as there are stars strewn across the tropical night sky. Many Marias have found themselves in New York City, working in factories assembling hats and sewing buttons on shirts, as maids and home-care attendants, doing whatever to provide for their families here and back home with the bit of money they scrape together every other week.

  This Maria was no different from the others—that is, until I came into her life. Maria rescued me, una recogida, from Papi. To me, this made her extraordinary. She was hardly the wealthy person Papi pretended to be, but she took me in nonetheless, setting a place for me at the table whether I dropped in for dinner or not.

  Not since living with my grandparents in Santo Domingo had I felt wanted. Once trapped in a golden cage with Rocío and now living with Papi’s fury and Alice’s baffling indifference to it, I was little more than a street kid myself. Back in Santo Domingo, I used to see them running up and down El Malecón, barely surviving by cleaning windows, selling maní, newspapers, and their asses to European and American tourists if need be.

  Every day since moving in with Papi and Alice, I had prayed for a mother. And finally, Maria fell into my life. She came in a handsome package with a gift card from the universe that read: “You are meant to be, despite how you got here; you’ll see someday. In the meantime, handle this lady with care.”

  Maria looks young for her age. She never divulges exactly how old she is, but I guess by looking at her eldest son when he comes to visit, Maria must be somewhere in her early fifties. Her flowing skirts and dresses make her thin frame look elegant, and her lips are always stained in earth tones to match her thick and wavy reddish-brown mane. Maria stands out from the rest of the women living at 512 Isham in that she never wears the spandex shorts and super-tight jeans that give the other women severe cases of pan de agua. Their crotches—especially Charo’s on the fourth floor—look as if they are always crazy horny.

  Maria is as bitter a person as she is an attractive one. She was duped into having three sons with three different men. Her first love, she tells me, promised to marry her soon after she gave birth to his son in la capital. Months later, without warning, the older man married another girl around the corner from where Maria lived with her family. The son she bore from that man, Roberto, is studying to become a gynecologist. Pussy, he says, is the only thing he feels passionate enough to dedicate his life to. Maria brags about him to everyone in the building. “Mi querido hijo,” she says, “is going to help me retire while I’m young enough to enjoy life.” The fact that he keeps failing the board certification never comes up.

  Maria doesn’t talk about Chino’s father at all, and she barely talks to him, even when he’s sitting in front of her. He tries desperately to bond with Maria, sometimes leaving his girlfriend, Blanca—I forget her real name, but everybody in the building calls her Blanca as a joke, because she’s mad dark-skinned—behind in her small one-bedroom apartment on 137th Street, pissed off and al
one. Chino is a sensitive slender man in his twenties with soft curly hair and skin that looks like toasted cacao beans. Usually, I find him sitting in the kitchen drinking espresso and recounting his day to an apathetic mother who always changes the subject to one of her other two kids.

  “Hola, Chino, where’s your lady?” I greet him, expecting the usual wicked response at Blanca’s expense.

  “Tú lo sabé, I love women others find too ugly to be seen wi’s in público, because they never treat me bad,” he says, laughing.

  Angel’s father, Emilio, looks exactly like Angel before he lost his baby fat in Santo Domingo. I usually find him, Casimiro, and Maria sitting around the kitchen table, eating Casimiro’s bacalao with mangú and onions. The whole building knows when Casimiro is home because you can smell the onions, first soaked in vinegar, sautéing with the bacalao from the front door of apartment 1B.

  I let myself into the apartment—it’s rarely locked—and walk by an elaborate gold-framed painting of San Miguel slaying a dragon on the right side of the wall behind the door; it hangs there for protection. On the floor directly below the painting are a coconut, candy, a cigar, and a stone head with eyes and a tiny mouth made of cowrie shells resting on a small plate. Next to the stone head Casimiro calls Ellegua is a cigar and a tiny bottle of half-drunk Bacardi rum he sprinkles on the stone head every Monday.

  I steal a piece of caramel candy from Ellegua’s plate and proceed down the endless dimly lit hallway. The aroma of bacalao and onions guide me to the first opening on the right, the kitchen and center of Maria’s universe. Angel’s dad is sitting with his back to me, laughing like a jolly Buddha about something with his ex-wife and her current love. Casimiro is mashing the boiled green plantains with mounds of butter and hot water from the pot.

  “You remember Angel’s dad, Emilio?” Maria asks me.

  “Yes. Hello, sir,” I say. Emilio nods, making absolutely no eye contact with me. I don’t think he’s ever addressed me directly. I sit on the other side of the round wooden table.

  “Angel’s dad used to be a vegetarian when we were together, but now he eats fish,” Maria says. I can’t imagine someone with Emilio’s rotund stomach, protruding over his jeans, without a piece of pernil on his plate.