Issue #20 (2011) PDF - myweb - Long Island University

We were all in the water now. I was trying to play with my sister the games we played at our
neighborhood public pool, but the waves were just too high and they were coming one right after
another. I managed to hold my breath and let the waves pass over me. But one caught me off guard
and knocked me down. I felt the sand with my hands as the wave rolled me under the water. I
struggled to my feet and carefully waded out of the water before the next wave could reach me. I sat
and watched the others have a good time. As I sat, I thought of my mother sitting out on our
apartment buildings stoop talking to neighbors or reading a book completely unaware of where we
were or what could happen to us out here. My uncle‘s wife, who was really too fat for her bikini
came out of the water laughing with my uncle running right behind her. They paused as she
adjusted her bikini then they passed right by me and said nothing as if I wasn‘t there.
I knew then that I hated her. Later that year in the fall, I would overhear my parents talking.
I knew my aunts didn‘t like my uncle‘s wife but I didn‘t know why. My father told my mother that
she took my uncle out dancing, while his mother, my grandmother who I never met was dying from
cancer. Gold-digger, social climber was what the called her. As a result, neither of my father‘s sisters
spoke to either of them. I wouldn‘t fully understand what type of man would leave the side of his
dying mother for a woman for many years. But on that beach, I blamed her, for all the hardships my
sister and I endured so far, but didn‘t know there were more to come.
That evening in the house, we had dinner of fresh fish. The fish were served whole with
their heads still on. I can‘t remember if my sister ate it but I didn‘t, and still wouldn‘t, not with its
head still on and the eyes looking up at me. I must have eaten some rice or fruit and vegetables,
because after dinner we took our plates out to the back porch, which was part of the kitchen. There
my uncle‘s wife and the village woman who had cooked the meal were sitting. The woman was
washing dishes in a bucket. My uncle‘s wife watched us as Rosa and I tried to put our plates in the
bucket.
―Tomorrow night, you two will wash all the dishes.‖ She said.
―Why‖ My sister said boldly.
―If you eat, you wash the dishes.‖ My uncle‘s wife said.
I played deaf mute again and didn‘t look at her. I looked at Rosa and her at me. We never
washed dishes at home, and I wouldn‘t wash dishes until I was sixteen at my college dormitory. And
my sister, well she‘s fifty now and uses paper plates whenever she can. We didn‘t cry. Rosa didn‘t
because she had already cried enough, and me I don‘t know why, perhaps I was too dehydrated
from the heat of the day or too dried up from all the saltwater still on my skin to have any tears. I
didn‘t eat any more dinners and I lost almost twenty pounds in those fourteen days.
The rest of the night was just as bad if not worse. It wasn‘t bad enough that we were
expected to work for food and there was no electricity and no running water. We were allowed only
enough rainwater from the collection barrels to rinse the sand off our hair and feet when we came in
from the beach. Frustrated and for the lack of anything else to do I had gone to bed early. As I lay
on the hard bumpy bed, I became aware that there were birds flying around the wood rafters.
Where my sister was at that moment, I fail to recollect. I do remember the other children were all
together in the boy‘s room playing some games that they had brought with them and we weren‘t
invited to. I ran to the front porch where the adults were drinking enjoying the evening breeze.
―Ah, there are birds or something flying around in the room.‖ I said.
They laughed and he and Angelo went to the room with me.
―They are murciélagos.‖ My uncle said. I didn‘t understand the word in Spanish and they
didn‘t know the word in English. By then I had seen for myself that they weren‘t birds, but bats
when I saw one hanging from its feet. I stood there shocked with my mouth open.
―They‘re bats.‖ I said. ―Do they bite‖
99