Bird of Paradise Page 9

  Unlike me, Socorro could pass for a straight-up morena if she kept her mouth shut, but you couldn’t tell her that. The hair relaxers she uses are so strong they make her smell like she’s on fire all the time. She is the only girl I know who is as delusional as Papi, if not more so. Yesterday at lunch, I gave her dap for the fresh electric-blue eyeliner she wore to school.

  “Socorro, that blue makes your eyes pop,” I said.

  “Yes, thanks,” she said, “it brings out the blue around the edges of my eyes.” She angled her face in closer for me to see what she’d done. I laughed, thinking Socorro was joking because her eyes were almost black, but she wasn’t. She was serious. I didn’t understand people like her or Papi. Socorro went to another Catholic grammar school in our ’hood. I wondered if she believed the shit they preached in religion class about “savages,” and wanted to look more like the God-fearing missionaries who brought, with their Bibles, civilization to the New World. I leaned in a bit closer to see if I could find one speck of blue in her dark eyes, but I couldn’t.

  “Yeah, Socorro,” I said. “I think I can see it now.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Jesus Christ and the Freakazoid

  In all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order.

  —CARL JUNG

  ROCÍO IS ON THE PHONE.

  We rarely speak to each other unless she has major news to break or Papi calls her during one of his violent fits. I try to guess what kind of news she’s going to drop on me this time: the birth of child number seven; a new boyfriend or husband; someone is sick or, worse, dead. My stomach churns at the thought that something may be wrong with Mama or Papa. I feel light-headed.

  “’Ello, Raquel,” she almost whispers. “This is your moth’a. How are you?”

  “Life is beautiful,” I lie. “What happened—have another kid?”

  “Does something have to be wrong for me to call my own dau’hta—my firstborn?” she asks. Rocío sounds different from the last time we spoke. She’s now dragging her A’s and dropping her R’s while still failing miserably at shedding the weight of her Dominican accent.

  “Something usually is when you call. Why are—”

  “Oh, Raquel.” Pause. “I was wondering if you wanted to visit us fo’ a while,” she says. Her voice is grave, almost foreboding. “You never show any interest in your brothers and sisters.”

  “I don’t know them, remember?” I respond. “I didn’t even know about kids number three and four until they were three and four.” Since, she’s had a set of twin boys.

  “Well, anyway, I spok’ to your fa’tha, and he says you can come for a visit before school starts.”

  “But I don’t want to go to Boston.”

  I’m pissed. I don’t know when or how they ended up living there. It’s August 1988, and I want to spend my last month before school at the park, watching the hot boys run up and down the basketball courts.

  “It’s settled.”

  “This shit is wack, yo!”

  “Don’t speak to me like that—I am your moth-a,” she whispers.

  The following week I find myself sitting on a plastic-covered couch in a household brimming with small children, including the oldest, Giselle, who’s now nine. I hardly recognize her except for the remarkable likeness she bares to Papito, which turns me off. Her wide bright smile scares the shit out of me, like a circus clown or Dr. Bunsen Honeydew. I no longer feel compelled to protect or share a room with her, much less the other tiny strangers running around the house.

  I watch one of the girls play with dolls in the living room, fascinated by how much she looks like a Chinese boy. The girl has hair that’s thicker and straighter than any of the other kids’, and her eyes are small and slanted. Some of the other children entertain each other by playing tag until one dashes out the back door—the others stop what they are doing to follow—into the small backyard of Rocío’s rented house. I stay sitting, the back of my thighs are stuck to the plastic covering, and pretend to do my summer homework.

  There are words on the page I’m sure I should be memorizing, but I’m frozen in another dimension, one where I’m trying hard to feel something new, a warmth toward the people I’m visiting. I feel like I’m not normal. There’s a fuse that’s gone out in me, something I cannot turn on for any of them. I close my eyes and try to concentrate, but no matter how far I travel and tell myself, “This is your family, this is your mother, these are your brothers and sisters,” nothing happens.

  Rocío is sitting in the kitchen with a friend, talking about the poor health of her premature twins, who are about three. Her friend comforts her over what smells like a cup of Bustelo. She calls Rocío una santa for sacrificing so much for the boys while their father, a good-for-nothing comemierda, parties with other women. I assume they’re talking about the tall brawny guy dripping in gold with whom she showed up with last time Papi threatened to throw me out the window.

  Sometime since I last saw her, Rocío has chopped off her long wavy locks. She is noticeably heavier, and in this saintly incarnation looks too matronly to be a woman in her early thirties. Her eyes carry enough miseria to satiate a pew full of dolorous church ladies.

  A newspaper sticks out midway from a bin filled with Spanish- and English-language magazines in arm’s reach of the sofa. I pull out the paper, folded to a black-and-white photo of Rocío and her brood. If it weren’t for the children, I wouldn’t have recognized her at all: morbidly obese, curly hair styled like an unkempt poodle’s, and grinning from ear to ear like a scary cartoon character. I couldn’t believe it. Her twins were much smaller, and the girls were dressed like Rocío, in dowdy clothes. Below the photograph, the caption read: “Mother of the year . . . with her five children . . .”

  Rocío was being rewarded for the outstanding care she took of her preemies, for reasons I didn’t care to read. I was more awestruck by her ability to balloon to that size in the first place, and how she managed, in a relatively short period of time, to shed a whole person in fat. I placed the paper in my textbook, counting and recounting the number of children in the photograph. I read and reread “her five children” and nothing else, tracing the border of the image with my middle finger. Five children. She bore six.

  Rocío created a perfect world in that photo, one where children behaved perfectly and kept their Sunday best spotless. In this picture, good mothers were martyrs, caring for their children to the point of abandon. In this world, the child Rocío cursed and sent to hell on Arzobispo Portes simply didn’t exist.

  I want to go back home to New York City. I want to hear Exposé and Michael Jackson blasting from the handball courts, kids—not these kids—screaming in the playground. I want to see Angel Lizardo, especially now that the former chubster surprised everybody when he strutted onto the court taller and kind of muscular right before I had to come here. He must have worked out like a maniac when he visited his cousins in La Romana earlier in the summer.

  I’d do anything to escape Boston and go to Washington Square Park for just a few hours. It’s like church for baseheads, rappers, skateboarders, cult members, freaks, and super-straight folks I recognized from my ’hood, sitting in homosexual embraces on the surrounding park benches. When Papi and Alice went to work, I sometimes jumped on the A train and headed downtown when I was supposed to be practicing tennis in the park, or at home watching MTV or Video Music Box in their dingy-ass bedroom. The park downtown was way more interesting. From the benches, I could see everything. There were girls who looked like boys in ripped jeans, rubbing each other’s tetas and dry-humping on the lawn and against the trees. Sometimes I’d see someone I wanted to meet like Russell Simmons and Run-DMC cutting across Washington Square west to east. “I’m going to work for him one day, writing rhymes for his artists,” I said to myself.

  Once I saw a group of white boys with funny haircuts who called themselves Hare Krishnas circling the park, draped in matching uniforms like Mahatma Gandhi, but in shades of washed-out
orange and yellow with foreign letters. They appeared to be synthetically happy, almost lost. They danced around the fountain without paying any attention to rhythm while chanting “Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare, Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare,” until one by one they started looking like they were passing a santo. Sometimes, whoever was tripping off heroin on the benches got it together and joined in the dancing. Boston, in comparison, was corny beyond comprehension.

  I call Papi, but the phone just rings and rings. Rocío’s monotone voice is lulling me to sleep. I carefully place the newspaper back where I found it and start making my way upstairs.

  “Raquel, what’s wrong? Why aren’t you outside playing with your brothers and sisters?”

  “Maybe it’s because I’m fifteen and not interested. I’m sleepy.”

  “But i’s too early for bed—I was planning on taking you all in the ca- for a drive and ice cream.”

  Ice cream. Rocío thinks this is The Brady Bunch. “No, thank you. I’ll be up when you get back.”

  “Ay, she is so disrespectful, Rocío,” says her friend.

  “Oh, it’s okay,” she says. “Raquel is just angry because I was right about what would happen if she went to live with her father. God will open her eyes one day and deliver her back to me.”

  Rocío got it all twisted. Hell is right here in Boston in her suffocating and delusional universe. Everything about her is fake, especially that wack Boston gringo accent she struggles to speak in. I sit on one of the twin beds in the room and try focusing on my textbook, but after a few minutes, the humid air in the room drags me to sleep.

  * * *

  I wake up back in New York City but can’t figure out how I got here. I’m sitting on a swing in the 207th Street playground. Nobody is here. The sun above me is so radiant, I cannot see the seesaw I know is only feet in front of me. The tennis and handball courts have disappeared. The streets, the buildings to the east of me, everything has been absorbed by the light.

  As I hold on tightly to the twisted steel ropes suspending the swing and rock back and forth, I start to feel a presence. I can see the outline of a short round figure with long wavy hair making her way toward me.

  I immediately recognize Ercilia when she appears before the park gate.

  “Why—What are you doing here?” I ask, suspecting I must be dreaming.

  “I came to say goodbye and ask you something,” she says in Spanish.

  “Why say goodbye to me? Where are you going?”

  “I’m sorry for being so cold to you—”

  “Where are we?”

  “I am leaving. I want to go,” she says. We are in the hospital corridor. “I’m dying, and I want to walk into the sun, but I can’t go peacefully until you forgive me.”

  “Fine. I forgive you, but only if you promise never to come back to me for a visit. Are you afraid of dying?” I ask her. “Does it hurt?”

  “Not as much as I’m afraid of living. I was cursed at birth and tossed away like garbage.”

  “Are you Jewish? What’s that strange language Papi says you know how to speak? Why is he so damn mean?”

  Ercilia smiles. “Maybe one day you will want me to visit you again,” she says, walking out the gate and into the light.

  * * *

  I’m awakened by the giggling twins playing at the foot of my bed. They are scrawling in my textbook with the black pen I used as a bookmark. I am furious. I snatch the book from one of them and the pen from the other and stomp into the living room.

  “I had the craziest dream,” I tell Rocío. “Ercilia visited me in it.”

  “Oh, that’s something,” she says. “Do you want to go with me and your brothers to the hospital for their treatment?”

  “I think she wants to die,” I say.

  “You should get dressed while I put them in the ca’,” she says, only halfway listening to me. “You can’t imagine how stressful it has been for me to take care of my babies all alone.” I don’t want to go. I’m even more disinterested in Rocío’s litter of kids than I am in her.

  “Not really. I need to call Papi.”

  “Well, you ah’ coming,” she says. I don’t know what’s worse: Alice’s “Eduardo, please” or Rocío’s irritating monotone.

  Two weeks later, I’m back on Seaman Avenue for real. I rush up the stairs to drop off my stuff so I can race back down to Post Avenue and buy a number 1 fried chicken combo at John’s. Maybe I’ll eat it upstairs at Priscilla’s. I swear she thinks I had something to do with her grandmother dying, like I put a fukú on her or something. I dreamed that Priscilla was at a funeral several weeks before it happened and warned her, but now I wish I’d never said a word. She called me a bruja at school and has been acting like a bitch ever since.

  Thinking about the crispy skin and the aroma of fried and roasted chicken at John’s makes my mouth water. I’ll go upstairs and say hi to Priscilla’s mom, Milagros, afterward.

  I unlock the door and find Papi slumping in a chair and Alice standing over him.

  “Hi,” I say. There’s something in the apartment that feels more ominous than usual. “What’s wrong?”

  Alice says nothing, but her painted-on eyebrows furrow as if she has something heavy on her mind. Papi doesn’t look up at me. His eyes are red. I start to wonder if I did something wrong. I’m either getting a welcome-back beat-down, or he got caught cheating again and Alice has retaliated by speaking only in Finnish to him so he can’t understand her, driving Papi mad.

  “Ercilia died,” Alice says. I feel my organs drop down to the bottom half of my body; the weight is making my knees buckle.

  “What? How? When?” I ask.

  “Why are you asking me?” Papi says. “You don’t care.”

  “She died last week when you were in Boston,” Alice says, “during open-heart surgery.”

  The light. My head is spinning. The hospital corridor. Was this my fault? Would she have pulled through surgery had I not forgiven her and released her spirit? First it was Priscilla’s abuela and now Ercilia. What’s wrong with me?

  “I’m going to go eat at John’s,” I say. I can’t bring myself to offer any sympathy. I can’t tell Papi about my dream now that Ercilia’s dead. There’s something about the way he’s sitting, in agony, that I find gratifying.

  The day is beautiful. I walk up 215th Street to Park Terrace West and make a right, thinking about Ercilia’s visit, still not understanding why she chose me. I continue walking on the hill overlooking Seaman Avenue, taking the scenic route to fried chicken heaven.

  Why me? Why am I seeing the dead like some freakazoid? The only thing I know about Papi’s father is that he read cards when it moved him. He considered it a privilege to throw cards for people, to be able to see what so many others could not. It’s hard to believe any of it, because the only people I met on Papi’s side of the family were so hot for Jesus.

  I continue strolling down the hill, people-watching along the way. I spot a group of girls, including two I went to St. Thaddeus with, walking on Isham toward the park. Another girl who looks familiar is carrying a stickball bat. “Yo, Zenaida!” I scream. She doesn’t hear me.

  I arrive at John’s. I rush in and order an extra piece of chicken, sit down, and eat. I missed New York. I’m never going to Boston again, no matter what. From the window, I can see Priscilla crossing the street with her little sister. She’s gotten even fatter in the short time I’ve been away. It’s too bad; her face is so pretty in the summer, when freckles dot her topaz-colored face. Her legs look like tree stumps, and I can see the sides of her stomach moving in a sluggish side-to-side rhythm from the back.

  I decide to go upstairs and say hi to Milagros before going back to Papi and Alice’s prison.

  “What are you doing here?” Milagros asks me. “Come in, hurry up.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Did you see Zenaida and those girls outside?”

  “Yeah, I tried to say hello, but sh
e didn’t hear me—why?”

  “They were looking for you. I heard them downstairs in front of the building.”

  “But why? I was in Boston this whole time.”

  “I know, mi hija. They made a big deal about Pumpkin’s boyfriend looking at you in the elevator and you smiling back.”

  “Who’s Pumpkin?”

  “Una idiota. They said you think you’re better than them because you have money, living up there,” she says.

  My heart starts racing. “I’m going to have to kill somebody for them to leave me alone. Everybody wants the next person to be as miserable as them,” I say. Rage is running like an electrical current through my body. “My father’s mother died last week, when I was away—I dreamed it all the way up in Boston on the day it happened.”

  “I’m sorry, mi hija,” Milagros says, coming out of the kitchen with a glass of water from the faucet. “Go to my room and take a nap. Cry if you have to.”

  I wake up to Priscilla unlocking the front door; her chubby sister waddles in behind her. They look like pregnant penguins.

  “Did you hear about Zenaida and that other girl?” I ask Priscilla.

  “Yes. They also said something about you saying that Cielo’s apartment burned down, and you know that’s Zenaida’s prima hermana.” She smiles.

  “But I wasn’t here.”

  “Fucking sucks for you, then, right?”

  I put my sneakers on and leave.

  I stand in front of the building on Post Avenue, waiting for the girls to come back. I look up and see Cielo looking out her mother’s window.

  “Yo, I hope your fucking apartment burns down,” I scream up at her.

  “Fuck you, bitch, that’s why you’re going to get your ass kicked.”

  “We’ll see about that.”

  I put on my Sony Walkman headphones, cue LL Cool J’s “I Need Love,” and press Play.