Daring to Write

Contemporary Narratives by Dominican Women

Erika Martínez

• Publisher: University of Georgia Press
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9780820349275
• Topic: Literatura
• Subtopic: Colecciones literarias

With this new Latino literary collection Erika M. Martínez has brought together twenty-four engaging narratives written by Dominican women and women of Dominican descent living in the United States. The first volume of its kind, Daring to Write 's insightful works offer readers a wide array of content that touches on a range of topics: migration, history, religion, race, class, gender, and sexuality. The result is a moving and imaginative critique of how these factors intersect and affect daily lives.

The volume opens with a foreword by Julia Alvarez and includes short stories, novel excerpts, memoirs, and personal essays and features work by established writers such as Angie Cruz and Nelly Rosario, alongside works by emerging writers. Narratives originally written in Spanish appear in English for the first time, translated by Achy Obejas. An important contribution to Latino/a studies, these writings will introduce readers to a new collection of rich literature.

1

THE PEOPLE WHO LOVE ME

WRITING TOWARD FORGIVENESS

NONFICTION BY ANGIE CRUZ

For years, my father drunk dialed me from the Dominican Republic, often late at night.

—Do you love me? he would ask.

—Are you eating well? I would say.

That I learned from my mother. When someone asked me something I didn’t want to answer, I changed the subject to food.

I bought an answering machine to save me from talking to him. But then he called, the machine answered, and fifteen minutes later my mother would call urging me to tell my father what he wanted to hear. That way we could all sleep.

—Make peace with him, already. Your father’s dying.

For over a decade my father was about to die. He was an overweight, diabetic alcoholic who loved to eat.

—I don’t want you to regret anything, she said.

When I asked my mother about how she forgave him after everything he put her through, she said that she forgave but didn’t forget.

—Why hold rancor toward someone when so much time has passed, especially after all he did for our family, she said.

A few months before he passed away, I traveled to the Dominican Republic and interviewed him. I called it research. For what, I wasn’t sure, but calling it research helped me to create a frame for my trip. I listened to him talk about his life, his choices, his childhood, and my mother. I then interviewed family members who were present when my parents had married—my grandmother, my uncle, my aunt, my mother’s two sisters-in-law. I thought that listening to their version of the story would help me make sense of my feelings toward my father. But none of their stories corresponded to each other. My father claimed to have fallen in love at first sight. My mother said she didn’t know she was being married off until a few days before her departure to the States. My grandmother spoke of the love letters my mother wrote to my father. My mother said she never wrote such letters. She did, however, remember the bright red lipstick she was forced to wear so she could look more mujer.

My father was one of the few Dominicans who traveled to New York in the sixties as a seasonal laborer. He stood on lines hoping for some day work at hotels like El Waldorf Astoria and El Sheraton, where he washed dishes and cleaned toilets during twelve-hour shifts. My grandmother assumed that my father would move my mother into a big house with una trabajadora to tend to all her needs. He was one of los hermanos Cruz. There were fourteen of them, all well respected.

When my father first asked if he could take my mother with him, she was eleven years old. He was twenty-eight. My grandfather told him to wait until she was of age. For years he stopped by my grandfather’s shack on the narrow road in Los Guayacanes to get beers, to eat, to serenade las pajaritas, the little birds. City men like my father had a thing for country girls like my mother. They were not caliente. They were humilde. They made good wives. My mother said she was una mosquita muerta, a dead little fly. When she turned fifteen, my father asked for her hand again, and my grandmother, who according to my mother was muy interesada, insisted that the promise he made to my mother be sealed immediately. My mother had no choice in the matter. She was lucky that a man like him, who was already working in Nueva York and making dollars, had chosen her, because according to my grandmother, she was just una pobre diabla from el campo.

My father didn’t show up the day of the wedding. When my grandmother called his eldest brother for answers, he covered for him and said he had an emergency trip to the States. My father was so drunk when he asked for my mother’s hand in marriage that he had forgotten he was leaving for New York. On the wedding day, he was with Caridad, his lover of many years.

The eldest brother made my father honor his promise to my mother’s family, because they were decent people, and his irresponsible behavior would hurt all the brothers. Although my father’s family wasn’t rich, people counted on their word. My mother married my father in a hot-pink dress with a small piece of white lace ruffled around her neck. She married my father because my ambitious grandmother would have it no other way.

I asked my mother how she felt about marrying a man against her will that was twice her age.

—Things were different back then. Besides, look how well we’re all doing now, she said.

By “we” she meant my grandparents, her brothers, and those of us who were American-born Dominicans. In her mind, without her sacrifice her younger siblings would have been peddling homemade dulces on the roads of San Pedro de Macorís, I would have been knocked up by some old man at the age of thirteen, just like many of my cousins who couldn’t get out of the D.R., and none of us, not even her, would have been able to go to college.

When I asked about Caridad, the woman my father continued to be with throughout the seven years my parents were married, she said:

—I wish I could find this woman to thank her. Caridad saved my life. And often I think about what she did for me.

According to my mother, Caridad had two children with my father.

—They wore your father’s face, she said.

When I asked her if his affairs upset her, she responded:

—What was I going to do? I was a child. I didn’t think about those things. What did I know about what was right? In the end, she was a good woman.

The day my mother arrived home from the hospital with me in her arms, my father invited all his friends and family to celebrate my birth. When they all took off, including my father, who worked nights, my mother was left alone to clean up the mess and care for me. Exhausted and still recuperating from the labor, she began to hemorrhage, and just when she was going to lose consciousness, Caridad called. She was calling my father like she usually did, except on most days she hung up when my mother answered the phone. But that night my mother, out of breath, told her that she was going to die and needed help. Soon after, Caridad, who had keys to my father’s apartment, arrived with her two children. She wrapped a bedsheet around my mother like a diaper, placed me, a newborn, in the hands of her daughter, and walked everyone across the street to the hospital.

My mother remembers Caridad in the hospital room looking after her, keeping her company, her children waiting with her. Caridad holding me, feeding me, soothing me. As a woman in my thirties, I think about what it must have been like for Caridad, who was a woman in her thirties having an affair with a man married to my mother, who was just sixteen years old. What must my mother have looked like to her? A child? How did finally meeting my mother change the relationship between my father and her? I fictionalized the character of Caridad and began writing to answer some of these questions.

In the last interview I did with my father, he said:

—You always ask me the same questions. And I always tell you the same thing.

But he didn’t. Every time I asked him a question, he provided a new piece to the puzzle of the familiar story. He told me one more detail he had previously left out about when he met my mother, what it was like for him as a new immigrant in New York, and what my mother was like when he met her.

—Your mother was the best. There was nothing she wouldn’t do for me. Even after we couldn’t be together, when I called your mother she was there to help me, to resolve any problems. Do you know what a lucky man I am? Look at all the people who love me, that take care of me. Look around.

He was right. In the other room, there were four women who waited to attend to him. They waited until I turned off my video camera so they could do what they did on a daily basis. My godmother prepared a fresh-cooked meal with all his dietary specifications; his second ex-wife held a bag filled with his medicines that she picked up on the way back from work; my mother brought him some new pajamas because she couldn’t stand to see him wearing anything with a stain. And there was also my half sister who moved in with him when she was sixteen to care for him twenty-four hours a day.

—You know, Angie, when you were born . . .

My father’s eyes glassed over, and then he said:

—It was better than winning the lottery. When you were born, I never loved anything more in my life.

My heart was caught inside my throat. I knew it would be the last time I would visit with him, that he had very little time left.

—Do you believe me when I say how much I love you?

—Thank you, Papi. Now it’s best if you rest.

When he died, his funeral was standing-room only. Comments about him usually started like this:

—If it wasn’t for your father . . .

My father began to travel to New York right before the big boom of Dominicans in Washington Heights. He helped many newly arrived Dominicans bribe their way into nice rent-stabilized prewar apartment buildings. He provided short-term, high-interest loans that helped people get established, and when they couldn’t pay him back, he didn’t break anybody’s legs. He kept their jewelry, their property titles, their passports, et cetera in a safe. He was the go-to man for papers, money, housing. If he couldn’t do it, he knew who would.

—If it wasn’t for your father . . . my son wouldn’t have been able to go to school . . . my husband wouldn’t have found a job . . . we would still be living in the D.R. . . . we wouldn’t have found a decent place to live. Your father, your father, your father . . .

Soon after he died, I was in Italy and went to a psychic who read natal charts. In Italian and in the few words she spoke of English, the psychic asked me for my birthday and my parents’ birthdays, and then after a long pause of silence she said:

—You were always very angry at your father. Even as a small child.

She went on to explain that my father had very important work to do in his life. But, like every man, he had to make a choice to be great or to destroy himself.

—Does your father do addiction?

—Yes, drinking killed him. He was diabetic.

—Do not worry for him. He’s very present now in your life. He wants your forgiveness. When you were born, he gave you all his responsibility. He was too cowardly to be a great man. You have been angry at him. Does what I say sound familiar?

I don’t remember a time I wasn’t angry with my father.

—When you were six, something important happened in your life?

When I was six, my mother left him because he hit her. As soon as she had gotten her papers straight, she applied for visas to bring my grandmother and her brothers to the United States so they could also work and make dollars. When they arrived and moved into the apartment next door, my mother gave my father an ultimatum: If you hit me again, I’ll leave you.

He hit my mother and almost hospitalized her. She waited a few days for the bruises to heal. She waited until he was good and drunk and his body was too heavy to get out of bed. The day she left, he called her name over and over. My brother and I, wearing our pajamas, hid inside the closet in our bedroom; the hems of our coats brushed against our foreheads. My mother pulled us out by our wrists and asked us to hush. Our bags were packed and waiting for us in the other apartment where my grandmother and uncles stood guard. For a very long while, my father banged on the door of our new home begging my mother to return to him. Each time, she called the police. She did this until he stopped banging on the door.

The psychic continued to talk about my father. I tried to change the subject by asking about my mother, who was alive and well and who I projected was a more important figure in my future. She answered me:

—You look toward your mother for answers, but your father is your guide. When you were about fifteen, something important happened in your life, no?

Although my mother left my father when I was six, my father never gave up on my mother. In fact, when he was in New York, when he was not working, he stood in front of our apartment building waiting to make sure my mother arrived home alone. He tried to charm my brother and me to let him inside, and at times he succeeded. My father then waited inside my mother’s bedroom wearing only his boxers.

My mother had to call her brothers to help her get him out. That was after she prepared him dinner, and he drank half a bottle of rum.

—Why did you feel the need to feed him when he was making your life impossible? I asked her on many occasions.

—Because he’s your father. And I want you to love him, despite everything.

Every day, my father waited for my brother and me to arrive from school. He waited for my mother to arrive from work. He stood in front of our building as if holding up the walls. One day, when I was fifteen, I walked toward him. My friend David walked in the same direction. When I saw my father, I moved away from David, slowing down so he walked ahead of me. He, like everyone else on my block, knew about my father, the man with a restless fist who heated up quickly. Like me, they feared him. But it was too late. When my father got close enough to me, he grabbed me by my ponytail and flung me toward the building. My face smacked against the wall.

—You whore! he yelled out in front of the crowd that quickly formed around us. You’re a whore, just like your mother!

My aunt swept me into her arms and took me to safety, into our apartment where she could treat the place where the skin had scraped off from my face.

The next day, he left carnations in front of our apartment door. He telephoned every few hours asking to speak to me. My aunt and my mother took turns picking up the phone and told him to call later, another day.

—I’m never speaking to him again, I told my mother.

For once she didn’t insist. He had gone too far.

For years I kept the videotapes I made of my father in a drawer. When I decided to transfer the footage to DVDs, I watched them for the first time. I noticed how with each visit, each interview, there was physically less and less of him. In the end, my father could no longer walk on his own, he had lost four toes, he was completely blind in one eye and legally blind in the other. With each transcription, I was less certain how I felt about him. I also no longer wanted to be angry with him.

When I was a teenager, my mother’s insistence that my brother and I spend time with my father despite his violent behavior was infuriating. My mother continued to assist and care for my father up until the day he died. She did this even after they were divorced, living in separate apartments. She defended herself by saying:

—He’s a sick old man. When you’re well and have your wits about you, people will always come by to look for you. But when you’re like your father, who’s falling apart, no one visits with him now. It’s the least we can do.

Having my mother as a role model—a woman who can find compassion for someone like my father by putting his actions in context and also by creating boundaries with him (not letting him inside our house) while still being open to the possibilities of change in their relationship—has made me realize that she was right when she said:

—He’s your father, and you’ll regret not knowing him.

Even though I can’t remember a time when I was close to my father, he said that when I was two years old, I would sit on his fat belly and never ever want to leave his side. He bragged about the trip we took together when I was six months old. He flew with me to the Dominican Republic all by himself.

—By yourself, really?

Now that I have a child and understand what it takes to travel with a baby on my lap, I can’t imagine my father carrying me, changing my diapers, feeding me when I was hungry, soothing me when I cried. When I asked my mother if he did all those things, she said:

—He wasn’t all bad.

My father has been the elephant in the living room of my work. The more I tried to push him out of my life, the more present he became in my imagination and fiction. For four years I’ve been working on my third novel, In Search of Caridad. The first few drafts of the book characterized my mother as a saint and condemned my father. With each revision, the process of turning my father into a full-fledged character with his own struggles and ambitions has allowed me to sympathize with him, as a writer and, ultimately, as his daughter.

MARIBEL AND EL VIEJO

FICTION BY JINA ORTIZ

Saturdays are baseball day...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Foreword
• Introduction
• 1. THE PEOPLE WHO LOVE ME
• 2. I’M NOT FROM HERE AND I’M NOT FROM THERE
• 3. THAT’S NOT ME ANYMORE
• 4. THE COUNTRIES BEYOND
• Contributors
• Permissions
• Acknowledgments