"What Herrera-Anderson has done is lay bare the alma, the Latin soul. Her stories show how such nurture, encouragement and affirmation, at critical moments of childhood, help the human transcend the forces that could have kept one down. " - L. Griffiths, East Valley Tribune "This gem of a book manages to be as tender as it is devastating.Herrera's disarming honesty draws readers into her world, a world where pain and love share equal time. Many will see themselves in these stories, others may, for the first time, gain an inside look at into the ravages of poverty and the survival of the human spirit."- Dr. Ursula Casanova, Arizona State University

Puerto Rican Goldilocks

A Lyrical Journey Through El BarrioBy Marisel Herrera-Anderson

AuthorHouse

Copyright © 2010 Marisel Herrera-Anderson
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4520-2449-3

Contents

Acknowledgements......................................................................ixIntroduction..........................................................................xiRhythm................................................................................1Daisies That Grow In Cement Ground Are Daisies Still the Same ........................3Papi Love.............................................................................7Tapando la Olla/Covering the Pot......................................................9La Bodega.............................................................................11Ni Comas Ni Puntos....................................................................15La Trapera/Thrift Store...............................................................17Luchadoras............................................................................19Rhyme.................................................................................21Dirty Pigeons &Traffic Jams...........................................................23The Day Mami Realized I Would Not Be Miss America.....................................25Barbie Dreams.........................................................................29Welfare...............................................................................31Deep Sockets, Empty Pockets...........................................................33Puerto Rican Goldilocks...............................................................35Schoolgirl............................................................................39If I Had Met You When I Was Five......................................................41Bilingual Girls Wear Tube Socks and High Heels........................................43Las Hijas de Mara....................................................................47Our Father............................................................................51Rosario...............................................................................53Agua Florida Love.....................................................................55Chuleta/Pork Chop.....................................................................59To...................................................................................61Girl Scouts in the 'Hood..............................................................67A Conversation Between My Educated and Inner Self.....................................71Reason................................................................................75Nice - N - Sweet......................................................................77Poverty...............................................................................79El Banco..............................................................................81Improvise Mi'ja.......................................................................83Singing My Life with Her Words........................................................85A Parade of Birth.....................................................................87Bendiciones/Blessings.................................................................89Luminaria.............................................................................91Safe Passage..........................................................................93Need A Speaker?.......................................................................97

Chapter One

Rhythm

Daisies That Grow In Cement Ground Are Daisies Still the Same ...

Birthdays in the barrio were the best especially if you were a girl. For that one day, you felt like a princess as the sun shone down through the towering project buildings that cut the rays making a beautiful prism all for you. First Mami would take us, the twins, to "1a 149" - 149 street in the South Bronx to buy us new clothes a few days before. The ride on the crowded BX15 (Bronx 15 bus) toward Alexander's Department Store and the store lined streets was so full of anticipation. I would go over and over in my head the many different ways I could spend my half of the budget. We would select outfits and always a new pair of panties - usually the ones embroidered with the appropriate day of the week, and we would head back to El Barrio.

Then we would walk over to order our cake from the Valencia bakery and my favorite, select our corsages from the corner pharmacy owned by a Judo. The bakery was a tiny storefront on the corner facing La Marqueta that was always packed and in demand. I don't know if the owners were from Valencia, Spain, but even the suggestion made us feel a certain class and restraint was required upon entering. Mami would order their classic cake - made with the best white frosting and moist pineapple-filled yellow cake known to mankind. I couldn't wait until we blew out the candles so I could savor all this as it melted in my mouth and to roll my tongue over Valencia's signature touch - silver bolitas - little round silver balls sprinkled on each cake - till none remained.

Once the cake order was taken care of, we would make our final stop at the farmaca owned by a Jew that everyone in the community knew and no one bothered. We would lean over his dusty glass shelves, pouring over the different designs and colors of his corsages - each with different candies and ribbons depending upon your age. Tootsie rolls, Lifesavers, those fruit candies wrapped in strawberry paper, all marking your coming of age on some symbolic food chain. After much indecision, we would select the ones we wanted prompting Mami to then haggle with the owner for no tax added or some sort of twin discount.

All accessories in place, we would head to school on the big day in our coordinated Sunday finest, adorned with brightly colored corsages that elicited smiles and silent birthday wishes from passersby. We would be doted on by our teachers who treated us special because we were twins, and perhaps because they sensed the effort and sacrifices revealed in our attire. In the middle of the fenced in school yard, as recess came to a close, I would steal away a moment of perfect silence. In that perfection, the project's prism of light would shine upon me, upon the tenderness of coming of age and erase all of the awkwardness and acne of adolescence. That warm sun would leave instead a budding, gentle flower full of all its glory, a royal flower growing strong in the fertile cement of the barrio.

Papi Love

What I miss most about not having had a father growing up is the protection they offer, and no I don't mean the Papi-I'm-scared-and-you're-my-hero-kind-of-protection. I mean the kind of quiet security a father offers his daughter, that silent love - strong and stoic enough to permeate his daughter's memory even as adult. The kind that slips into a day when the world has beat you up, when your womanhood has been reduced to a little girl's muffled hiccup as you drive home.

The Papi love I miss is one made up of countless images of worn, male hands, the protruding veins that are landmarks of his pain, borders between the virility of his youth, the reflective-ness of his old age. Those fingers filled with power, tenderness as they reach over, and rest on your shaking hands. That Papi love that becomes present when your passion, your hurt is too great for the one who bore you to bear, that sneaks into his lowered, darkened eyes and says to you what even a poem could not, moves you as you sit entranced by its nurturing.

What I miss most about Papi love is not hearing a thick, hoarse voice sing songs of la tierra to you. A voice that carries your soul on the smooth curves of its melody, that embraces you in its warmth as it mouths "mi hija, mi cielo" so often you believe it is your name. I long for that Papi love reflected in his graying hair, in the ball of his wrinkled neck as it bends to read a book; reflected in the movement of his shoulders as he kneels to teach his nieta how to walk. What I miss most about Papi's love is that it came too late, it came as he left this world to be with his Father, and now it is just a bittersweet memory that tugs like a needy child at my soul.

Tapando la Olla/Covering the Pot

cada noche like clock work se levanta a tapar la olla de comida and I hear her matres creak, or is it her tired soul?

her handmade bata is eslipping and esliding over her caramel coated apple skin, fluid drops of yellow rain clinging hopelessly on her alma de sol

con su barriga peg' a la estufa y her cucharn in hand, Mami raspa el pega'o, saborea una vez ms su deliciosa creacin

y yo, in the darkness pretending to be la comida sonriendo me quedo dormida con esa imagen tan bella que nutre mi corazn

La Bodega

I can still remember the rays of the sun that poured through the sticky bodega panes, warming the nape of my otherwise cold six-year-old body. Our Sunday ritual was sacred for me and Mami; primero bamos a las mquinas to wash a mountain of clothes neatly packed in floral print pillowcases. Every Sunday we walked down the empty streets of El Barrio at 7:00 AM to beat the crowds. Somehow, amidst the destitute poverty marring the project windows, those walks made the world seem like it belonged only to us.

Primero bamos a las mquinas and then to Junior's bodega to which our walk led. The visits to the bodeguero (who in my child's mind knew my mother from the beginning of time or at least, since she lived back in la isla), also proved in their simplicity, to be wonderful. As we walked through the front door, Mami would contar su dinero y sus cupones - the food stamps always looked like monopoly money and my favorites were the purple ones - as I would run to the cheap toys and penny candies protected in the makeshift, Plexiglas display cases which also housed the out of tune radio tocando soothing boleros-triste, mournful cries of love lost.

On that day, unbeknownst to me, all of that simple childhood wonder would leave me, like a kite that has lost the hand of its owner, floating away, leaving me for many years to come, wondering where did it go. Where did my innocence go? Without regard for the human dignity that poor people hold on to when nothing else is left, Junior, the bodeguero humiliated my mother, and set fire to a flame in my soul, en el alma de esa nia, a flame of rage and injustice that still burns inside of me. A Junior se le olvid lo que era pasar hambre, no tener dinero, lo que es tener ocho hijos y ni siquiera un vaso de leche para darles.

Junior forgot that even the poor deserve respect as he raised his voice to my mother for needing, not wanting, to buy on credit. With each octave his arrogant voice rose, Mami's shoulders slumped further, with each set of piercing neighborhood eyes that looked onto the scene, in Mami's eyes grew lgrimas. What Junior did not know in his pathetic, broken English ego-tripping, during the little show put on at the expense of my mother's dignity, was that there was a ball of fire forming in my lanky, solemn, six year old body. What he did not know was the hatred he fed with every word spewed my hatred for him, for a world that made so many people like me poor by no choice of our own. What he did not know was that my mother was not just a meaningless customer who bought on credit- that she was at once the backbone and soul of mi familia, she was my hero, su risa nos llenaba los estmagos cuando la comida no daba.

"Junior that's mi mam, m reina you are whipping with you revil, loose tongue!" Didn't you know Junior that if my little hands had been able to they would have reached over the counter and ripped your throat out for doing this to us in front of everyone? Didn't you know Junior that not only are you humiliating her in front of the bochincheras, the neighborhood gossips, but you are tearing her down in front of me, her hija? Didn't you know that it is a mortal sin to tear down a mountain in the presence of flowers that depend on it? Junior, didn't you know that even little flowers that grow in Spanish Harlem need mountains to feed on, need mothers, who in spite of their pobreza, stand strong y con dignidad? Didn't you know?

Ni Comas Ni Puntos

Mi mam no usa ni comas ni puntos. In fact, when my mother writes not only doesn't she use commas or periods, she uses no punctuation marks at all. Perhaps, this might prove troublesome for some, but for me it is part of her beauty. Commas are for people with a lot of educacin, but very little corazn. You see, what Mami has to say in those litany of short letters that take on so much value now that I am far away, is too urgent, too immediate. It is like her bendiciones, her words coated with a mother's love, flows from inside her corazn - a corazn refusing to adhere to the confines of grammar.

Mami, en vez de pensar con su mente, thinks with her soul, con su alma profunda. Mami doesn't need punctuation to tell her when to stop or pause. Her strength, su espritu, belongs to a freer world. The cortesas of el Americano, of the English language are verbal prison cells. Only in Spanish, in her lengua, does the world take on meaning.

For some this might seem a problem, a sign of poor education. But for me it evokes indescribable joy. The way her cario flows por dentro. The magical way her palabras come alive and smell of arroz con gandules. La manera en que a letter from her transforms my loneliness instantly into a fiesta, or her carefree laughter makes me smile for the day.

You see educacin has nothing to do with a B.S., M.S., or Ph.D., it has to do with the way you live each day. The way que t perdonas. The way que Mami sonre cuando fueron muchas las cosas que trataron de robarle su risa. Mi mam no usa ni comas ni puntos and she never will, pero vive con fe. Her actions not her words, will keep her legacy, her extraordinary humanity alive forever.

La Trapera/Thrift Store

I hate to admit it but even though I loved my Sunday rituals with my mother that took me to wherever her errands, her manda'os led her, I hated going to the trapera, the neighborhood thrift shop. It's not that I was ashamed to be there. I, along with my seven brothers and sisters, proudly sported the used name brand clothes Mami so painstakingly picked out for us; blouses, coats, and skirts adorned with the fancy IZODs, and Kleins, donated by rich White people who barely wore them and then tossed them aside.

In fact, when Mami would describe the expensive fabrics, el chiffn o la tela de hilo o seda china (the chiffon, linen or Chinese silk), when she would excitedly explain the intricate embroidery on a lapel or "lo bien hecha que est esa falda" with her seamstress expertise, I could not wait to wear it to school the next day. In my mind, it was as if these high priced, high quality labels would unsuspectingly spring forth at my middle class teacher, proving to them that I was not as poor as I often felt. I was not ashamed of shopping at the trapera with Mami, it was more like I was overwhelmed by the potent scents of the clothes, the oldness of the building, the age, and the death that seemed to cling to everything and everyone in the store.

I vividly remember piles of pastel colored slips mixed together on one of many wooden, makeshift counters. For me, the blend of sky blues, baby pinks, and lemon yellow slips was inviting, their soft cotton and satiny textures pulled me. I wanted to bury my face in their silkiness, dive into their softness, but while it enticed me, this image also repelled me. I was afraid of the strong stench of the fabrics; it was forbidding and seemed to stick unto my flesh. I was afraid that by moving one slip out of its haphazard place, I would stir up and set free a whirlwind of dead people who must have once owned them. Dead people who were happily disguised in the slip's softness, muertos, who preferred to stay lying undisturbed among old shoes, carteras, abrigos, and toys. I hated the trapera because back then I could not see that all things, even used clothes, recycle themselves. I could not see the life inherent in death.

Luchadoras

it's the extremities that give a survivor away the way her worn hands perpetually reach hacia el cielo, her callused feet growing races in barren terreno; the sun beaten earth clay abuela in her pupils moving slowly across the soul-eyes meciendo su niita,

(brinca la tablita que ya la brinqu brinca la t ahora que ya me cans)

meciendo the sweating little girl en su falda urging her forward, armed with her calor

it is in the extremities where she gives it away the risa, which abounds freely in her hips and legs, childlike carcajadas que vibran convirtiendo a msica todo alrededor

it is in the llanto en su alma, the incarcerated grief forming the punishing cell bars of her disguise, of her fragmented soul-face,

(si sigues haciendo caras, Dio' te va castigar si sigues haciendo caras, as te vas a quedar)

it is the extremities that give a survivor away the way she makes too much of everything the way she makes too much of nothing her gut, her swollen belly, la cocina where de sus propio senos agridulces she hungers and is fed where en su propio cuerpo sangrienta muere mil veces y renace para luchar otra vez, para luchar otra vez ...

Chapter Two

Rhyme

Dirty Pigeons & Traffic Jams

No one can seem to understand That thing that draws me back to you The push-pull of our seemingly different lives

What they don't know is that before my words were crisp, Or I sat upright in this uptight, White light of mobility I ran free

In sun-soaked sticky New York summer days Through fire hydrants combusting like a lover lost control Drenched in the urban debris of bottle caps, kitchen scraps and Miss Mary Mack hand claps

Close to the street, the musical pulse of Erik B. Rakim I was wild, I was free, my heart thumped err-a-tically among sistas and double-dutch beats

Before this bourgeois straitjacket took a hold I was Bold, Fearless, Sassy, Teeth-sucking, Eye-rolling and yes, all that ...

Lo que no entienden es que ese fuego, all that fire smolders, smolders with nostalgia, undressed by your "ay Papi" Chulo eyes, your "pero Mami's" until it ignites and I lie exposed, so wonderfully exposed, so barrio, so pulsating, so free.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Puerto Rican Goldilocksby Marisel Herrera-Anderson Copyright © 2010 by Marisel Herrera-Anderson. Excerpted by permission.
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