Taína Page 19
The old man who had built the casita was wearing a white guayabera and a jíbaro hat. He was poor and never harmed anyone in his life. Santos Malànguez was his name, and he had known Peta Ponce since he was a boy back on the island.
The casita had no plumbing, but it was clean. There was a pullout sofa, a small dresser, and a bathtub by the corner. The walls were decorated with posters of different towns in Puerto Rico: Cabo Rojo, Fajardo, Bayamón, Mayagüez, Carolina, Loíza Aldea, Ponce, Aguadilla, Santurce, Guayama, the island of Vieques and its little sister of Culebra, and, of course, San Juan, the capital. There was a dirty map of the New York City subway system, where someone had scribbled, “El barrio más grande de Puerto Rico, Nueva Yol.”
Taína was inside, standing and breathing in and out. Peta Ponce instructed her to walk around inside the tiny casita.
“We should be at a hospital,” I said to Peta Ponce.
“No,” Peta Ponce said firmly in Spanish, “aquí, aquí está perfecto.”
“Fuck! Fuck, this shit sucks.” Taína kept cursing in between breaths and gritted teeth. Peta Ponce asked her if she wanted to go back outside for some fresh air. “Fuck, yeah,” she moaned as the pains were getting worse.
“Where’s Doña Flores?” I asked Peta Ponce. Peta Ponce said that just like when this began Inelda was asleep, so she needed to be asleep when it ended.
The weather was beautiful. New York City was quiet, like it was waiting for something wonderful.
“Peta,” Taína said, breathing in deeply, “I think I need to lay the fuck back down.” I helped Peta Ponce bring Taína back inside the casita.
Salvador helped me pull the sofa out into a bed. Once unfolded, it ate up most of the space inside the casita. Peta Ponce looked in the drawers and found clean sheets and a pillow and she made the bed. I helped Peta Ponce lay Taína on the sofa bed. Taína’s eyes were bulging and her moaning became louder and longer. Peta Ponce looked at a man’s watch she had on her wrist. “Mija, tus dolores están llegando ma’ y ma’ cerca,” she said, and gave Taína water. With the sofa bed now opened and the bathtub by the corner, the casita was crowded.
“ ’fuera! ’fuera!” Peta Ponce ordered Salvador and me to go outside.
“ ’Pera, Salvador,” Peta Ponce said to el Vejigante, “vete a buscar a Willie.”
Sal left to go find this person.
Taína was sweating.
“Y tú…” She ordered me to go to the bodega, buy a bottle of Coke, a gallon of milk, empty both, and bring them to her.
I rushed out to do as told.
I opened the fence, crossed the street, and went inside a twenty-four-hour bodega. When I returned, after having emptied both contents, Peta Ponce took only the empty Coke.
“Mira, así, ¿ve’?” Placing the hollow bottle to her mouth, Peta Ponce blew on it like it was a flute. “Así. Ve’, así, mija.” She handed the bottle to Taína, who began to blow inside the mouth of the bottle. The bottle began to whistle. The whistling was comforting, and it seemed never to rise but instead stay at a steady pace. Taína blew on the bottle, and it seemed to calm her down some.
I went back out to give Peta Ponce enough room.
“Mira, mijo,” Peta Ponce said through an open window. She told me to fill up the steel drum that lay by the fence with water and start a fire underneath it. I didn’t have a wrench to open the fire hydrant on the sidewalk or a lighter or anything.
Peta Ponce knew this because she went into her black purse and emptied it all out on the casita’s dirt floor. There was a cross, a picture of a saint, a toothbrush, a cigar, tissues, condoms, a cell phone, herbs, mints, and a cigar. She rummaged through the stuff till she found a lighter and a wrench. Through the open window she gave it to me.
With the wrench I opened a fire hydrant across the street. I filled and emptied the gallon of milk several times until the steel drum was full. The drum stood on top of two deftly spread-out cinder blocks in order to make a perfect nest underneath it for firewood. I gathered fallen branches on the ground and started a fire. I heated the water, and when the temperature was just right, Peta Ponce told me to transfer the hot water to the tub inside. Once again, I continually filled and emptied the milk gallon, making several trips inside the casita to empty the hot water into the tub. After a few trips, the tub was filled with hot water. Peta Ponce took away the bottle that a sweaty Taína had been blowing into. I joined Peta Ponce back inside the casita. I helped her in getting Taína up from the sofa bed. Peta Ponce helped Taína disrobe. Seeing Taína naked for the first time did nothing. All I wanted was for Taína to no longer be in pain.
Peta Ponce and I gently lifted and sat Taína’s naked body in the tub. “Coño, it’s fucking hot!” Taína yelled, tears flowing.
“Mejor, mija,” Peta Ponce said, sounding like our parents.
“Too fucking hot, Julio,” Taína pleaded, as if I could override Peta Ponce’s method. “It’s too hot. Son of a bitch, shit, it’s hot!” she cried. Though it hurt me, I stayed silent. I trusted Peta Ponce like my mother had trusted her and like all those other women had trusted Peta Ponce.
“It’s okay, Taína,” I said, “Peta Ponce knows what she’s doing.”
Taína couldn’t have cared less and continued to curse in pain. She sat in the bathtub in an upright position. Peta Ponce made her drink more water. Peta Ponce told her to open her legs more, más, más, más. Taína kept yelling the water was hot. Peta Ponce said, Open your legs, mija, more, more, so the heat of the water can penetrate your insides, relax your body, mija. Let the hot water open the door for Usmaíl to walk through.
The pains became stronger.
The contractions were more frequent, and Taína yelled.
“I’m gonna fucking die. Fuck, I’m gonna fucking die!”
“Nadie se muere, mi bella.” Peta Ponce reassured Taína that many claim to be midwives, but all they do is make angels. I do not deliver angels, she said. Taína kept cursing.
“¡Puñeta, me muero!” yelled Taína.
“Mea, mea…” Peta Ponce kept repeating to Taína to try to pee. “Can you pee? Pee, mija, pee in the water. It would be good if you could pee,” Peta Ponce said.
Taína moaned in between tears and breaths. It took a while, but Taína peed. Along with her urine were little strings of blood running out of her like entrails. Peta Ponce said this was a good thing. Her cervix was opening. Usmaíl was on the other side. Peta Ponce told me to find a twelve-inch stick from the many fallen branches out in the garden. When I gave it to her, she dipped it in water to clean it a bit and placed it in Taína’s mouth. She bit it hard, and it helped to calm her.
I then helped Peta Ponce carry Taína out of the tub. She dried Taína up and I helped to gently lay Taína back on the sofa bed. I emptied the tub, once again coming in and out of the casita, filling and emptying the plastic milk gallon. Once done I joined Peta Ponce and Taína back inside the casita. I heard the fence gate slam.
Salvador and a man with a fuzzy beard and droopy eyes walked in through the gate and into the garden. “Peta Ponce, I’m here.” From outside by the garden. “It is me, Willie. You need me, Peta?” With respect he bowed to the old woman.
“No sé,” Peta Ponce said. “Quizá.” She told Willie to stand by, that this birth was stuck in time.
“I got wha’ever you need, Doña Ponce,” Willie said. “I got it. I got needles, big ones, too. I got the street equal to Stadol. I got serious painkillers, too, or anything else you need to numb her. I got it.” Peta Ponce answered to this dealer that every labor had a beginning and an end but that Taína’s was stuck in the middle. And to just stand by.
“I’ll be outside,” Willie said calmly, and this told me that Peta Ponce and that guy had done this many times. Sal, too, waited silently next to Willie outside.
“Suave, suave, mija. Mira…” Peta Ponce softly
brushed Taína’s hair and told her that if the pain got to be too much, she might have to give her some drugs. Inject her, she told her. The big needle is going to hurt, but then Taína will feel nothing. But that they should wait, just a bit more.
Still biting the stick, Taína said, “Don’t fucking wait! I don’t give a fuck. Give me the drugs.” Taína wanted the pains to go away. “Give it to me. Just give me the fucking shot. Give me the drugs.”
But Peta Ponce did no such thing. That was only a last resort. She understood Taína’s pain, but it would be over soon. She ordered me to wait outside. And then in a soothing voice that resembled nothing coming out of her misshapen body, Peta Ponce whispered to Taína that this casita she built with Santos Malànguez many years ago, this casita was the last link to a time when old people like her were young. They arrived in a new country, in these new cities, on cold days. But in the summer they joined together in casitas. We built them on vacant lots to celebrate and dance, she said. The birth of your child is a celebration. And she kissed Taína’s sweaty face. “Este bohío es donde Usmaíl tiene que nacer, mija,” she said.
And then she spat the stick away, and during one of Taína’s loudest curses, a tiny skull covered in black fuzz appeared from Taína’s cervix.
“Ven,” Peta Ponce ordered Usmaíl. “Ven, sale, que el mundo es bello.” But it did not move any farther.
Me, Salvador, and Willie were looking in through the windows from outside the casita. Peta Ponce called for only me to come inside. I helped Peta Ponce get Taína out of the bed. We held her up. Peta Ponce told Taína to squat. To stand with both legs apart. To let gravity help you, mija. I held on to Taína from the right side and Peta Ponce held her from the left so she wouldn’t tip over while squatting.
Taína squatted and Peta Ponce told me to stand behind Taína and hold her tightly. I held a squatting Taína from behind, my arms around her pregnant waist. Peta Ponce then let go of Taína and lay on the floor, on her back, looking up at Taína’s cervix. From the floor and looking up to Taína’s womb, Peta Ponce reached out with both hands, placing one on each side between Taína’s legs, and Peta Ponce widened the passage. “Asi, puja, mija,” Peta Ponce said, and Taína pushed, and then with infinite delicacy, Peta Ponce took hold of the fragile, tiny crown and with very accurate skill and confidence brought Usmaíl’s little head out into the light of day.
“Así, así, así, muy bien, muy bien,” Peta Ponce said, still on her back, on the floor, looking up at Taína’s womb. She held the baby’s head and eased out the rest of Usmaíl’s body coated in Taína’s blood. Peta Ponce’s teeth bit the cord free and with one last push and a loud curse, Taína expelled the placenta.
Outside.
Willie heard the baby. He quickly took out his pocketknife and lighter. He placed the blade to the flame and then passed the hot knife to Peta Ponce through the opened window. Peta sanitized the cord she had bit free and tied it up with the knife’s tip. With a damp cloth she cleaned Usmaíl just a bit and handed the baby to Taína.
“Bien hecho, mija. ’Tá ma’ bella, tu nena,” she said to Taína, who took her daughter in her arms and smiled, laughed, and cried and laughed again.
Outside the dogs barked, the cats meowed, the raccoons looked through garbage, the red-tailed hawks flew, the rats and roaches rummaged, the whores hustled, the thieves stole, the drug dealers peddled, the cops walked their beats, the yuppies danced, ate, and drank, immigrants worked, and worked, and worked, fathers worked, mothers worked, kids went to school—all of Spanish Harlem wasn’t any different from any other night.
From outside by the garden, both Willie the dealer and Salvador Negron, the Capeman, bowed to me, and I returned their gesture as they made their way home and away from the light. Sal paused for just a second, as if he were going to tell me something, but picked up his pace again.
Peta Ponce wiped the sweat off her brow and whispered to herself or to the spirits that just as when we are born there are people waiting for us, there will be people waiting for us when we die. And for the first time that night, her eyes found mine and she said that it is easier to build good children than to fix broken adults.
And I understood her. Usmaíl was the greatest gift the inner universe could have given Taína and all of us. I will never forget the first time Usmaíl saw the light of day, how she cried so loudly, as if letting the inner heavens know that she had arrived. As if she wanted all the atoms in the universe to hear that the revolution was a success. It was a revolution. One that would not betray itself. Usmaíl cried and cried, and Taína drank more water, ate half a sandwich, breastfed Usmaíl, and later both mother and daughter stretched, yawned, and, exhausted, crashed into a deep inner sleep.
* * *
—
THE THREE WOMEN became a welcomed and sought-after sight in Spanish Harlem. Taína and her mother easily spoke to each other and to anyone who wanted to see Usmaíl. Who wanted to see the baby. You could easily find the women on the street, mother clutching daughter, daughter pushing stroller, making the necessary visits to the supermarket and the Check-O-Mate for welfare benefits or a movie theater, a bakery, or a beauty salon. The women were living among a sea of regular people doing their best to get by, and it seemed that even among crowds nothing could ever disturb their smiles. Not catcalls from the corner boys directed at Taína: “Mira, ¿to’ eso tuyo?” Fuck you, Taína would shoot back, and keep pushing her stroller. Nor gossip from laundromat women directed at Doña Flores.
When Taína did return to school, she sat alongside other teen mothers discussing baby bargains or baby clothes or just talking high school teenage stuff. Taína never cared for clothes, makeup, popularity, or anything. Like her mother, she would smile when smiled at, as if her smile were telling you she was not your enemy and it was up to you to be her friend, if you were nice. The boys liked her, they all fell in love, and I was no different. And like everyone else, I was waiting to hear Taína sing.
* * *
—
IT WAS THE summer night when the most powerful of meteor showers that have ever been recorded in New York City occurred. Not even the lights could darken those shooting stars. Their quick glows were long and lasting, as if hipster angels were being cast out of heaven and hurled down to earth. A tidal wave of heat had engulfed the city, too, and everyone just wanted relief and took to the streets.
On that same night, Carlito’s Café and Galeria on 107th Street and Lexington Avenue, which was owned by a kind Andean woman from La Paz, Bolivia, named Eliana Godoy, was the coolest place to be. She had named the café after her father and on the walls were paintings by local artists, but what everyone always came to Carlito’s for was to hear music. I’d heard Lila Downs at Carlito’s, Manu Chao, Susana Baca, Tania Libertad, Gaby Moreno, Raquel Z. Rivera, Las Lolas, and Totó La Momposina, too. But that night, the night of the shooting stars, was Taína’s night. Salvador installed me and my parents by a small table in the corner. My mother was happy, my father held her hand. The café was half-full. I spotted Taína reading some sheet music, in a tight red dress, all legs and curves, looking like nobody’s mother. She spotted me, kissed her hand, blew me a kiss, and went back to her thing. The musicians at the small stage were standing around one another, clowning, laughing, their drinks on the floor next to them. Usmaíl was out, in another world; she dreamed in her stroller next to Doña Flores sitting by a table across from us.
Soon.
All kinds of shuffles, coughs, the bartender getting in last drinks, followed by a slow silence.
Salvador strode up to the piano and sat down in front of the keys. There was a quiet stir before he firmly but gently ran his fingers over them. Taína stood alone in front of an old microphone. A humid light from the window framed Taína’s lovely face. When her first low and sad note was born, a great silence overtook the café like the first drop before the heavens opened. Taína began to sing sad wor
ds whose weeping was buried inside a melody. A song that we had been hearing all our lives, had grown up with, but it was only through her voice that we began to understand it. Taína’s song revealed that we suffer because we do not submit to one another’s love. When kissed, we pretend to be moved, but it’s really more a sense of duty. Taína sang that like children, like books, love has become the dust of the world. And when her voice sweetly hummed that all the kisses we did not give will one day be given, that’s when I knew that everyone in Carlito’s Café was seeing whom they loved. It was the dead everyone loved. It was the dead everyone missed. In the people’s eyes were images of faces that had once held their hands, taken their vows, changed their diapers, their clothes, or simply saw their first smiles and footsteps but were no longer living. Love is not a prisoner of time, Taína’s voice sang, love does not recognize death, it is not under its authority. Her voice sang that the unstoppable river that flows among us is not time but love. Taína was throwing it all to the fire so that it could be wholly consumed and, therefore, live forever. She was calm, composed, and older, and when her voice deepened, tightened, sailed higher, filling the air with an intense sense of triumph—everyone began to cry. Her voice contained all our suffering, all our failures, and all our joys. I saw Salvador Negron, el Vejigante, the Capeman, leader of the Vampires, the man who like shattered pieces of glass in a kaleidoscope had reappeared with new faces, but always sad, guilt-ridden, and suffering, was now transfigured into that of a sixteen-year-old kid. He struck the piano keys with a subtle bliss, as if the dead were whispering in his ear that it was okay, they understood.