The First Day of the Rest of My Life
In which Teófilo reminisces about the day he first saw the love of his life, and how events - or angels - conspired to make it happen.
In on about the morning of August 14th, 1980, I found myself at one of la Academia’s inner courtyards. It was the start of the school year. I was awaiting the rollcall that would send me to my new home room. I was about to start my sophomore year in high school. I already knew I was to become part of the group led by Mr. Jesús Echevarría. He was an able mathematics teacher and of fearsome temper until you he got to know you. Because of my last name, waiting for my named to be called dragged to almost the end of the roll call.
Mr. Echevarría then called a name I'd never heard before. I looked and saw a new girl. I was standing behind and to her left. The heavens opened, and light from heaven shone upon her. The surroundings darkened a little. I heard a triumphant choir from heaven singing Alleluia. I also heard a voice saying: "Behold, your wife and the mother of your children." I fell to the ground, gasping for air, with tears in my eyes, not knowing how else to react. She looked back at me, saw me on the ground, our eyes locking for the first time. It was love at first sight.
Well, no, it didn't happen quite that way.
Everything I've said is true up to the point when Mr. Echevarría called her name from the roster. The supernatural phenomena I've just described didn't take place — as if you didn’t know already. I'm sure, though, our Guardian Angels did see us. In fact, they must've high-fived themselves. They patted each other on their backs for their success at getting us together. It was their plan all along, decreed by God before the dawn of creation, that they should bring us together.
As Mr. Echevarría called my Mercie, she stepped forward. Her eyes were downcast. She collected her hands before herself, her fingers interlaced. Her long, brown, braided hair flowed down into a small paintbrush-like tip. She looked at no one. Those were my first impressions of her.
Anyway. I took note of this new arrival to our class and proceeded to get into my school business. My sophomore year would become my best year in high school. I even say it was the year I peaked in high school. You’ll be the judge.
My Mercie's Life Arc
Of her background story I can't say much at her request. There are things she wants us to keep only between ourselves. Ther are other things she would rather forget. And, there are other things that, she says, "are nobody's business."
She allows me to share the following: she too came from an “imperfect,” unconventional family setting. Her father, Don Roberto, was the same generation as my father's. Like my father, Don Roberto was a Korean War Era veteran, though I don't know in what capacity he served or if he did at all. He did take his veteran identity with great seriousness.
His paternal ancestry dead ends in 1900, when his grandfather, Félix, died in Ponce, alone. A neighbor reported his death to the health department according to his death certificate.
On her father's mother's side, Mercie descends from various Puerto Rican founding families. But they were poor by the time the generations reached her grandmother's.
My Mercie's mother, Doña Doris, lived in poverty. She'd mothered three children already when Roberto met her. At that time Roberto was the husband of Doña Elba. His relationship with Doris ended Roberto's marriage with Elba. Roberto would also father another daughter with Doris years later. She is my Mercie's sister, Vanny, a near-contemporary of my little brother. Roberto married Doris after Vanny’s birth and would divorce her a couple of years later.
An accident that happened early in my Mercie's babyhood terrified Roberto. A baby carriage with my Mercie in it had rolled down some stairs. The extent of her injuries remain unclear to us, but they might be to blame for her deafness in one ear. Roberto blamed Doris for the accident. He took the baby girl to Elba for rearing. My Mercie wouldn't speak to her biological mother until her late teens. I know because I was there when it happened.
Elba belonged to my grandmother Mamá Ana's generation. She was not old school; she was ancient school. She was the eldest sister of a large brood, born out of wedlock. She mothered a lot of her younger half-siblings. She had no formal studies, but she knew how to sign her name and also basic arithmetic. Elba was a seamstress by trade and for a while operated a boarding house for college students. She ceased boarding students when Mercie reached adolescence.
Elba and Mercie lived at first in the Bélgica (BEHL-hee-kah) neighborhood of Ponce's Fourth Ward. They occupied a large, wooden-frame gabled home, typical of the area. Roberto was very short-tempered and not a warm father figure. But he would visit my Mercie daily. She had that going for her, at least.
Don Roberto had a sister who happened to live two doors from us. She was Doña Margarita, known as "Margot." Her husband, Don José "Chito" Gutiérrez also happened to be an acquaintance of Papi. As a small girl Mercie would visit her aunt often. Some early pictures taken at her aunt's also show my own home in the background. But, I never got to meet her there.
Elba and Mercie became acquainted with a middle-age couple that lived nearby. They were Don José "Pepe" Carreras and Doña Moraima Escudero. Pepe came from a large family in Ponce while Moraima had been born in the northern town of Manatí (mah-nah-TEEH). They were childless, and soon became surrogate parents to little Mercie.
From Moraima, Mercie learned to carry herself with dignity and poise. Moraima, though of Papi Pedro's generation, was independent minded. She was a reader, a writer, and an Episcopalian. All her siblings were Episcopalian. The local Episcopal Church wasn't much different from the Catholic Church back then. Their doctrines and rituals were very similar. The Episcopal Church provided a haven from lapsed Catholics, and a familiar liturgy. For Moraima her membership in the Episcopal Church highlighted her independence of thought.
My Mercie came up with her own nickname for Moraima. She called her "Madma" and that remained Moraima's codename for us until her death at 101.
The relationship between Mercie and the Carreras couple was a consequential event. Soon, Madma would register Mercie at Colegio Santísima Trinidad. Santísima, as everyone called it, was the K-9th grade school for the Episcopal church of the same name. Once she graduated from 9th grade, Mercie had wanted to follow some friends into a public high school. But a family friend who also happened to be an aunt of my classmate Juan Carlos Rodríguez ran interference. She suggested la Academia instead as the best school for Mercie. Everyone agreed. Elba and Mercie moved from the 4th Ward to Villa Grillasca, closer to the school. That's how my Mercie landed on la Academia's schoolyard that August morn. She was new, and was only acquainted with a couple of her neighbors who were also our classmates.
Random Events or God’s Will?
You can see how see how these seemingly serendipitous events brought us together. Had Mercie's mother raised her, or had she gone to public instead school we would have never have met. I call that Providence.
Though the business of talking to her and getting to know each other and falling in love was yet to happen, one thing was certain. Though we didn't know it yet, from that moment on neither of us would be alone ever again.