You’ll go out when I say you’re ready.
I looked over at Rafa, who sat quietly in front of the TV. Back on the Island, the two of us had taken guaguas clear across the capital by ourselves. I looked up at Papi, his narrow face still unfamiliar. Don’t you eye me, he said.
Mami stood up. You kids might as well give me a hand.
I didn’t move. On the TV the newscasters were making small, flat noises at each other. They were repeating one word over and over. Later when I went to school I would learn that the word they were saying was Vietnam.
—
SINCE WE WEREN’T ALLOWED out of the house — it’s too cold, Papi said once but really there was no reason other than that’s what he wanted — we mostly sat in front of the TV or stared out at the snow those first days. Mami cleaned everything about ten times and made us some damn elaborate lunches. We were all bored speechless.
Pretty early on Mami decided that watching TV was beneficial; you could learn the language from it. She saw our young minds as bright, spiky sunflowers in need of light, and arranged us as close to the TV as possible to maximize our exposure. We watched the news, sitcoms, cartoons, Tarzan, Flash Gordon, Jonny Quest, The Herculoids, Sesame Street—eight, nine hours of TV a day, but it was Sesame Street that gave us our best lessons. Each word my brother and I learned we passed between ourselves, repeating over and over, and when Mami asked us to show her how to say it, we shook our heads and said, Don’t worry about it.
Just tell me, she said, and when we pronounced the words slowly, forming huge, lazy soap bubbles of sound, she never could duplicate them. Her lips seemed to tug apart even the simplest vowels. That sounds horrible, I said.
What do you know about English? she asked.
At dinner she’d try her English out on Papi, but he just poked at his pernil, which was not my mother’s best dish.
I can’t understand a word you’re saying, he said finally. It’s best if I take care of the English.
How do you expect me to learn?
You don’t have to learn, he said. Besides, the average woman can’t learn English.
It’s a difficult language to master, he said, first in Spanish and then in English.
Mami didn’t say another word. In the morning, as soon as Papi was out of the apartment, Mami turned on the TV and put us in front of it. The apartment was always cold in the morning and leaving our beds was a serious torment.
It’s too early, we said.
It’s like school, she suggested.
No, it’s not, we said. We were used to going to school at noon.
You two complain too much. She would stand behind us and when I turned around she would be mouthing the words we were learning, trying to make sense of them.
—
EVEN PAPI’S EARLY-MORNING noises were strange to me. I lay in bed, listening to him stumbling around in the bathroom, like he was drunk or something. I didn’t know what he did for Reynolds Aluminum, but he had a lot of uniforms in his closet, all filthy with machine oil.
I had expected a different father, one about seven feet tall with enough money to buy our entire barrio, but this one was average height, with an average face. He’d come to our house in Santo Domingo in a busted-up taxi and the gifts he had brought us were small things — toy guns and tops — that we were too old for, that we broke right away. Even though he hugged us and took us out to dinner on the Malecón — our first steaks ever — I didn’t know what to make of him. A father is a hard thing to compass.
Those first weeks in the States, Papi spent a great deal of his home time downstairs with his books or in front of the TV. He said little to us that wasn’t disciplinary, which didn’t surprise us. We’d seen other dads in action, understood that part of the drill.
My brother he just tried to keep from yelling, from knocking things over. But what he got on me about the most was my shoelaces. Papi had a thing with shoelaces. I didn’t know how to tie them properly, and when I put together a rather formidable knot, Papi would bend down and pull it apart with one tug. At least you have a future as a magician, Rafa said, but this was serious. Rafa showed me how, and I said, Fine, and had no problems in front of him, but when Papi was breathing down my neck, his hand on a belt, I couldn’t perform; I looked at my father like my laces were live wires he wanted me to touch together.
I met some dumb men in the Guardia, Papi said, but every single one of them could tie his motherfucking shoes. He looked over at Mami. Why can’t he?
These were not the sort of questions that had answers. She looked down, studied the veins that threaded the backs of her hands. For a second Papi’s watery turtle eyes met mine. Don’t you look at me, he said.