*Non-Fiction — December 1, 2022
Cages
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Mamí mothered our appearances. How well we looked reflected her parenting, her state of existence. It was unspoken that it had to be pleasing to Papà. He ruled our world with an iron clad set of rules:
1. Mamí was not allowed to work. Period.
2. No staying over anyone’s house who wasn’t immediate family and approved by Papà, even if they were family.
3. Girls don’t ride bikes. Ever.
4. Leslie’s hair is not to be cut, ever. “Su pelo se volverá malo como el mío.”
5. Nicole’s hair stays short. “Let’s see if ese pelo matches las cara bella de ella.”
6. Mamí couldn’t wear skirts or shorts. No matter the weather.
7. Mamí’s hair stays short. She was to never let her hair grow past her neck. “Who you trying to get, Rose?”
8. No makeup. “For any of you.”
9. “I am God. Yo Soy Dios. “
Clothes were Mamí’s passion. She would spend hours in Gimbels, Bloomingdales, thrift stores, sales racks, searching for buried fashion treasure at a heavy discount. Old man Victor, Papà’s reliable worker, delivered envelopes of cash to Mamí weekly along with VHS tapes from Papà’s video store. Candy, live parrots, soda crates; we never knew what Papa’s deliveries would bring. Every week Mamí escaped Papà’s cage to shop, riding the train to her favorite haunts, looking for salvation in the racks of ropas.
Clothes were Mamí’s passion. She would spend hours in Gimbels, Bloomingdales, thrift stores, sales racks, searching for buried fashion treasure at a heavy discount. Old man Victor, Papà’s reliable worker, delivered envelopes of cash to Mamí weekly along with VHS tapes from Papà’s video store. Candy, live parrots, soda crates; we never knew what Papa’s deliveries would bring. Every week Mamí escaped Papà’s cage to shop, riding the train to her favorite haunts, looking for salvation in the racks of ropas.
At home, she modeled leather pencil skirts in various colors, paired with one of Papà’s silk shirts and crocodile flats, navy blue, that had come in one of Papà’s deliveries, her exact size. (Mamí never learned how to walk in heels, which were also forbidden.) Chains on her neck, red lips, kohl-lined eyes, her hair slicked down, the beautiful woman she was not allowed to be, her reflection.
Papà looked away from what didn’t please him. Everything he wanted to see was dressed, basted, seasoned just how he liked it or he discarded it. For twelve years, Mamí lived in fear of displeasing him, looking the other way from his other women and children. She accepted her Monday through Thursday shifts, Saturday pick-ups at Grandma’s house, weekly shopping trips for groceries and clothes. The dinners and monthly family gatherings he had used to sedate her began to fade. Papà, lost in his hedonism, was secure in the knowledge that Mamí was caged.
He didn’t notice that a new friendship rebirthed Mamí, another Puerto Rican mother in her thirties, Antonia. A married woman with a son, Antonia’s husband was a long-distance truck driver and was gone for weeks. A perfect hurricane grew: two souls, restless with few options, bonded. Antonia was outspoken to Mamí’s reservedness. She listened to Mamí, didn’t judge her choices. Mamí opened up to Antonia, a reservoir inside her broke, grief, resentment, rage, flowing out of her.
A Mary Kay rep, Antonia showed Mamí how to apply makeup. She refused to sell Mamí makeup from Mary Kay, calling it cheap shit. She took Mamí to Bloomingdales where Mamí spent a hundred dollars on Estée Lauder powders and lotions of color.
A Mary Kay rep, Antonia showed Mamí how to apply makeup. She refused to sell Mamí makeup from Mary Kay, calling it cheap shit. She took Mamí to Bloomingdales where Mamí spent a hundred dollars on Estée Lauder powders and lotions of color.
Antonia lived up the street from us, next to the Bodega. Antonia’s apartment was well maintained, a converted maid’s quarters from when there was wealth in our hood, an old tenement building carrying centuries of history in its walls. The linoleum on our floors had cracked wounds, never healed or repaired. Antonia’s floors were new linoleum, her bedroom floors dark wood. Our apartment was rotting before our eyes, caving in on us. The mold-stained walls, the living room carpet that flooded and never dried completely like foam when our feet touched it. Our history and trauma oozed into our floors, every footstep we walked.
Mamí dieted her extra belly fat away. She grew her hair, side-parting it, smeared blue eyeliner under her eyelids, war-painted rose-colored blush across her cheekbones on our dates with Papà. “You are wearing makeup, now Rose?” He interrogated her as soon she got in the car.
With full eye contact, Mamí told him, “Yes.”
“Then we ain’t going nowhere.”
He took us home, berating her in Spanish the entire way. Nicole and I sat in the back, understanding every word, our hearts sinking. Papà had promised to take us to Toys R Us. His tires shrieked as he dropped us off in front of our building. Mamí walked upstairs, not looking back. Within minutes she was on the phone, giggling with Antonia.
Arrested adolescence began to intoxicate Mamí. She gulped glasses of Bacardi, wrinkling her nose at the taste but needing the liquid courage in her veins. Papa had never hit us, he just needed to shoot us a direct look, his light brown eyes darkening to black pools, to get us to behave. Papa was an athlete, a trained boxer in his youth. Mamí had stepped into his fist once, when she found out about my brother Jason, born a year before Nicole. Her black eye told the tale of what would happen if she defied Papà.
Mamí sipped the Bacardi, drawing her sexy face on, humming to 107.5 WBLS, disco playlists, the soundtrack of her uprising.
Antonia’s husband’s schedule freed Antonia to roam, to explore her wild oats, a companion to Mamí’s rebellion. In her leather pencil skirts and pointy exotic-skinned flats Papà bought her, Mamí and Antonia went to clubs and parties, meeting and flirting with men. She stumbled home at one a.m., gargling with Listerine, scrubbing the makeup off her face, in case Papà came home.
Unknown to Mamí, Papà had acquired a new woman, a twenty-one-year-old. She demanded more of his nights and sometimes Papà only slept at our house once a week. His absence made Mamí reckless. He called Mamí before nine p.m. every night. Papà varied the call times, but never called after nine p.m.
Mamí had met someone, Walter. I heard her speaking softly to him at night after Papà’s nightly call. Walter wanted to take her to a Broadway play. They had to leave at six, he told her. It was her birthday. She went.
Papà called at eight fifty-nine. “Les, put your mother on, I want to wish her a happy birthday.” In the background I heard laughing voices, male and female.
“She’s sleeping Papà,” I lied to him.
“Les, stop playing. Put her on. De que sleeping.”
“She is Papà.”
“Wake her Les.”
“I can’t Papa.”
“Why the fuck not Les?” He was screaming on the phone; I imagined his toasted almond complexion turning sienna with rage.
“Yes Papà,” I responded calmly.
“Fuck your mother Les, tell her that. And when I see you… You don’t lie to me!” He slammed the phone in my ear.
In the morning, I told Mamí what Papà said. Distracted with the necklace Walter had bought her, she brushed off Papà’s rage. She talked about the musical Walter had taken her to, Dreamgirls. A lifelong New Yorker, Mamí had never been to a Broadway show. “You know I love Motown, Leslie.” Love had been absent in her life, and she devoured it, not taking time to digest. Walter was going to take her to Puerto Rico, she said as she headed to the bathroom.
A child of a colony, Papà was well versed in how to punish those who sought freedom. For three weeks, he sent us nothing. Mamí added further bruises to our tortured floors as she paced, sipping black coffee to quell her hunger. Our fridge was bare, an almost empty carton of milk and two eggs the only occupants. The last of the rice had gone to white rice and corn beef for us.
Our Catholic school tuition was due Friday. Her savings in the metal box hidden in her closet weighed down by heavy encyclopedias, Walter’s generosity, all weapons in an arsenal she wasn’t willing to fire yet. “Call your father.” She handed me the phone. “Tell him your tuition is due.”
I dialed Papà’s club’s number. He answered. “Hi, Papà. Our tuition is due Friday.” I kept my voice light, as if we had spoken this morning instead of three weeks ago.
Papà matched my light tone. “Les, how are you?” His sugary tone felt false. A trap was being laid.
“I am good, Papà, but we need the tuition money.” Mamí pinched my arm to hurry.
“So me llamas por dinero? Me llamas por dinero?” His anger made him an echo. “You remember who your father is? Ahora? I will see if I remember your money.” He slammed the phone down.
I threw the phone down in Mamí’s direction, missing her but wishing I had made contact. Hate filled in my lungs; I began to wheeze. Mamí came behind me, her arms raised to smack my disrespect, but she saw my wheezing. She threw my inhaler. It hit me on the forehead.
An hour later Victor came by with groceries and an envelope for Mamí, with our tuition.
That night Mamí stayed up late counting and writing figures in a composition notebook. Papà starving us out like rats hardened Mamí further. She got a job at our pediatrician’s office. Papà screeched at her daily that she was a bad mother for leaving us unattended. I walked with Nicole to her job two avenues away every day after school. For Mamí’s grave offense, he took to only sending us monthly envelopes for tuition and a grocery stipend. He came to get Nicole and me every Saturday, leaving us with one of our siblings until Mamí called for him to bring us back.
That night Mamí stayed up late counting and writing figures in a composition notebook. Papà starving us out like rats hardened Mamí further. She got a job at our pediatrician’s office. Papà screeched at her daily that she was a bad mother for leaving us unattended. I walked with Nicole to her job two avenues away every day after school. For Mamí’s grave offense, he took to only sending us monthly envelopes for tuition and a grocery stipend. He came to get Nicole and me every Saturday, leaving us with one of our siblings until Mamí called for him to bring us back.
As Mamí’s relationship with Walter intensified, she told Papà it was over, changing the locks. For three nights he banged at the door, kicking it for thirty minutes before Mamí threatened to call the police. “Puta,” he raged, his tires screaming his rage as he sped off.
Walter began to help her with the bills, our tuition. Walter was Ecuadorian. He was not handsome like Papà, but he worshiped Mamí. There was nothing Mamí would ask for that he would not buy or do.
Twinges of doubt plagued my head. Walter, like Papà, went missing days of the week. We never saw him on weekends. Two years later, we would find out Walter was married, his wife and daughter living in Long Island. His automatic shop provided a good cover for his affair with Mamí.
Drowning in a pool of being spoiled, Mamí ignored the warning signs. Walter’s cage was looser than Papà’s. But it was still a cage. Walter started his tightening with our time with Papà; Papà started taking us for dinners and shopping trips. We loved the time with him and the splurges. Papà had gotten credit cards: he plopped them down on store counters and restaurant tables. Unknown to us, the feds were on to his enterprise and it was crumbling. Papa knew his end was coming; he was a man headed to financial death row.
“Why are they going with him?” I heard Walter ask Mamí. “I don’t like it,” he told her. I knew what Papà was but he was still our father. Mamí was starved for love but we lived in a parent famine our whole lives. Even if deep down we knew Papà took us out to annoy Mamí, it made our day when he came and got us.
Walter’s mask came off when I overheard those conversations. Mami didn’t come with us, his jealousy was misplaced. Mamí tried to stop our trips with Papà to appease him but I fought her. “Walter can’t tell us we cant see our father. He’s not our father,” I raged, tired of her weakness with men. She let Papà control her and was repeating that pattern with Walter. Bitterness grew inside me and I began to direct it at Walter. I ignored him when he came to Grandma’s house on Saturdays. Mamí chastised me for rudeness when I wouldn’t answer his questions or comments. I pretended to be sick when he took Mamí and Nicole out. Mamí was domesticated from years of Papà’s control but a savage spirit was rising in me. It wouldn’t be caged.
Originally published in No Tokens Issue No. 10. View full issue & more.