When I Was Puerto Rican

For me, the person I was becoming when we left was erased, and another one was created.

What doesn't kill you, makes you fat.

I dressed to their murmurs in the other room, their voices soft but strained, and I wondered if men ever talked like this, if their sorrows ever spilled into these secret cadences.

Envy, Doña Lola had once said, eats at you from the inside and turns your eyes green when you look at the person of whom you’re jealous.

There were more fights, more arguments, more yelling in the night, more long absences. Until it seemed as if anything would be better than living with these people who hated each other.

I would just as soon remain jamona than shed that many tears over a man.

It seemed too complicated, as if each one of us were really two people, one who was loved and the official one who, I assumed, was not.

...and the shortcuts through the woods that led to the next barrio where all sorts of pocavergüenzas took place.

El bohío de la loma, bajo sus alas de paja, siente el frescor mañanero y abre sus ojos al alba. Vuela el pájara del nido. Brinca el gallo de la rama. A los becerros, aislados de las tetas de las vacas, les corre por el hocico leche de la madrugada. Las mariposas pululan —rubí, zafir, oro, plata...—: flores huérfanas que rondan buscando a las madres ramas...

We came to Macun when I was four, to a rectangle of rippled metal sheets on stilts hovering in the middle of a circle of red dirt.

They think we're taking their jobs.' 'Are we?' 'There's enough work in the United States for everybody, but some people think some work is beneath them. Me, if I have to crawl on all fours to earn a living, I'll do it. I'm not proud that way.

I scrambled out, irritated, wondering why parents never answered questions but seemed to have all the answers.

The silence around her was total, not rich and full like Abuela’s when she crocheted, but empty and sad and lonesome.

He’s younger than you are,” she told Mami. “You should be ashamed.

Ay Dios Mío Santo, help me make it through their puberties!