Bart: “This is the worst day of my life.” Homer: “The worst day of your life so far.”
– The Simpsons Movie
I turned eight years old in 1973. Though this year made a slow, peaceful start for me, albeit some people and events had been rising all along during the prior year. Their convergence would be causing a lot of pain to everyone. The conflict would mark the end of our family as I had come to know them. We became a group of people that barely tolerated each other. A tunnel loomed behind the fading light.
Papi retired from his job at the refinery in this year. He’d wanted to buy a finquita (a small plot of land for cultivation) in the countryside and retire there with Mamá Ana. He had even purchased a Jeep and had it repainted bright yellow for the occasion. With Mamá Ana gone in 1971, he sold the Jeep and purchased a station wagon. He also started looking for a possible mate. Tío Pin shooed away Papi’s first contender, a lady I only remember as “Carmen.” Tío Pin told me he did so because the woman wasn’t an “appropriate mate” for Papi.
Papi then started courting a lady named Esperanza. It appears her Victorian morays, soft speech, and excellent cooking passed muster with Tío Pin. Little trinkets belonging to her began appearing in our house: cooking implements here, table decorations there... It seemed that Papi had the intention of bringing Esperanza to live with us.
The Big Bang
The big bang came when Mom became pregnant in mid-spring. She had been having a relationship with one of her college professors. I would come to know later he was also a renowned lawyer in the western town of Mayagüez (mah-jah-WEHZ). He became the father of my beloved little brother whom I’ll call “H” from here on.
I don’t remember when Mom told me she was expecting. However, somewhere along the way a big fight took place between her and Papi. I wasn’t privy to it. As Mom told me the story, Papi had kicked her out of the house. Later, Mom would tell me that Papi’s move was Esperanza’s calculated attempt to seize Mom’s place in the house. Esperanza became Mom’s object of hatred and Papi became a target for her anger. As the eight-year-old I was, I began reflecting Mom’s own attitudes views.
However, the hatred cascade didn’t happen overnight. Mom moved to a boarding house in nearby Villa Grillasca (BEE-jah gree-JASS-kah), an earlier suburban development of duplex homes. I would still go to la Academia as Titi Gloria would take me, and I would spend my weekends with Mom. The school year came to an end with no further incidents I can remember.
Then, in the summer, Mom executed her “evacuation” plan.
It was Saturday. Mom’s best friend at the time and I don’t know who else came in a pick-up truck to the house. They parked up front and started moving some of our things and loading them into it. We were moving. I was moving, with no warning, no preparation, nothing. The move was a total surprise to me. After Mamá Ana’s death, this day became the worst day of my life. (Or at least, the worst day of my life so far…).
The Shack
We continued to Mom’s boarding house where she was expecting us. Titi Gloria went nuts, jumped into her car and started to follow us to see where we would end up. I don’t think either Titi Gloria or Papi expected my departure and Titi Gloria was stricken with concern for me.
But Mom’s ultimate destiny wasn’t the boarding house, but an L-shaped, cinderblock and concrete cabin built in someone’s backyard, one block away. It had not permanent partitions, maybe an improvised curtain. It was dark and gloomy, lit by yellow lightbulbs hanging from wires. There might’ve been one florescent lamp. It had no partitions. The floor was also made of poured concrete. It had a standing shower and a toilet.
By Puerto Rican standards the place was big enough to house a single person of low economic resources. By American standards this place was just a small, damp, miserable shack. Mom made me call it “la casita.”
The shack was the place where my innocence came to die. Overnight I had become dirt poor and its conviction dawned into my innermost psychology. School, “la Academia,” would become my only stable, peaceful environment in my life at the time.
Sour lemonade can only come from sour lemons
The circumstances only bred further divisions in my mind. I didn’t stay in the shack after school. Rather, Doña Rosa, the lady who repurposed her station wagon as a school bus, would drop me off at the old house. I would remain there, having become a “latch-key kid” as many others in my generation. Later in the evening I would walk toward the alleyways connecting our neighborhoods where Mom would meet me. Then, the shack, which lied right beside the second alleyway.
Mom tried to paint the situation with bright colors. “We are on our own” she would say. “We depend on each other. You must be a grown-up. You’re going to be like the little father of this baby.” I took it all in.
Mom had purchased a small black-and-white TV for us to watch a couple of channels when reception was good. I think the shack came with its own refrigerator-freezer, the kind that made frost on its freezer section. She would cook for us in an electric stove with two burners. I think she had a friend nearby who allowed us to use her washer. Her name was Doris Rangel. She would iron my school uniforms too.
The nights would become dreadful and not friendly towards Mom. This was the time she would cry, bawl, scream, curse, and swear all sorts of profanities. I would be terrified. It didn’t help either that the shack was mice infested. Also small, nocturnal reptiles would creep in through the small, Miami-style windows and flying cockroaches. Mom was terrified of all of them. I would sleep with an eye half-open.
Such was the situation when I started on my third grade in August 1973.