I hope to start a conversation with women who were sent away to a Catholic boarding school, especially if you attended St. John Villa Academy in Staten Island, NY. Ours was a unique experience. I can still summon myriad feelings of isolation, abandonment, loneliness, fear, etc., even though I was a boarder back in the Sixties. My time there for two years (1967-1969) and at St. Mary’s Academy (1966-67) in Lakewood, NJ, have stayed with me always. I loved attending grammar school, but hated being a boarder. I long dreamed of the day I would become a day student, someone who could go return to a real home every day after school and be greeted with love, not a stern nun, strict regulations and more regimentation.
October 19, 2008
Were you a boarder at a girls’ Catholic boarding school?
Posted by Delia under Uncategorized | Tags: boarding school, Catholic boarding school, girls' catholic boarding school, SJVA, St. John Villa Academy, St. John's Villa Academy, Staten Island |[10] Comments
November 7, 2008
New York Times ad, Sept. 10, 1933
Posted by Delia under Images | Tags: old boarding school ad, old New York Times ad, SJVA ad |Leave a Comment
March 8, 2009
Cats on Twitter
Posted by Delia under Writing Life | Tags: cats, cats on Twitter, Twitter |[3] Comments
My writing days, which is every day, are spent at my desk, sharing the real estate with my two cats, Clara and Sadie, who turn 3 in October. Either they’ve become especially interested in my writing, blogging or tweeting, or they like the warmth of my desk lamp.
I do know they like to follow the screen cursor around, their heads mirroring its movement as I click here and there, tapping the screen every so often with a paw. They are an important part of my writing life. They sit/sleep on my lap on cold days and keep me warm. They rest their paws on my laptop’s trackpad or the keyboard. One even printed a document by mistake once. Their typing skills are atrocious. I could never let them write for Girls Sent Away. Being part Siamese, they talk to me a lot while I write.
My lynxpoints are a source of inspiration and humor. Here are Clara and Sadie figuring out what to say in 140 characters on my Twitter account:
Clara & Sadie
Little do they know how many cats have Twitter accounts. Check out the fun site World Wide Whiskers, for news on cats around the world. You can follow the blogger’s cat on Twitter, too.
March 6, 2009
The Real Housewives of New York City: Boarding School Conundrum
Posted by Delia under Education, TV, boarding school | Tags: Real Housewives, Real Housewives of New York City |Leave a Comment
I’ve never seen this show, but happened upon this clip in a Google search using the key phrase “boarding school.” Not only is this world so far from my own in New York City, but the description of the boarding school by these two women makes my jaw drop. The place she’s sending her daughter to sounds like a country club. You couldn’t bring a horse to either of the schools I was sent to. Why, we weren’t even allowed to have as much as a dime in our possession. (I was punished for having money–one dime in each of my penny loafers.)
Ever notice that some boarding schools are always referred to as an “elite boarding school”–as if the words were inseparable? My boarding school certainly wasn’t elite. Mine was Dickensian. But elite or not doesn’t get to the essential question. Caffeine Court blogs about this particular episode of The Real Housewives of New York City and observes, “I have friends who went to boarding school, and they didn’t like going. Even though the schools were the “best of the best” they felt that their parents sent them away.” [her italics, not mine]
more about “Hulu – The Real Housewives of New Yor…“, posted with vodpod
February 22, 2009
It’s Not Just a Movie
Posted by Delia under Catholicism, boarding school, childhood, films, memoir | Tags: childhood, Doubt, emotional abuse, movies, Oscars |[5] Comments
Tonight, as everyone knows, is the Oscars ceremony. I have to admit that I did not see many of the movies, not because of time, but because I cannot watch films that involve some kind of trauma. It’s not an anti-violence thing with me. I used to see all kinds of movies.
But within the last 10 years, something inside me started reacting to scenes in which characters were emotionally or physically abused. I’d start shaking. I’d become extremely anxious. I’d sit in the darkness feeling as if smothered. At first, I tried to ride out the scenes, covering my eyes, putting my hands over my ears. Sometimes that strategy worked. Barely.
That defense failed me when I saw the excellent movie “Girls Don’t Cry.” The movie was well done-acting, directing, etc. I watched from beginning to end, trying to appreciate its artistry. The movie’s impact hit me suddenly–BAM!–when I got into my car and started driving. I couldn’t make it out of the parking lot. I pulled over and fell apart. My husband was with me, thank goodness, to hold me. I sobbed uncontrollably. My body trembled. It was as if I had experienced all the trauma in that movie. I knew that trauma–not the exact same kind-but just the feeling of it all. My mind and body had memories and responded automatically.
In subsequent movies that had any kind of emotional or physical trauma, I’d bolt from the theater mid scene, from darkness into the bright fluorescent light. To escape that claustrophobic atmosphere, to breathe, to make it stop. My husband would find me on a bench in the theater lobby, trying to calm down.
I’ve given up seeing such movies. I can’t even watch “It’s a Wonderful Life” any more. The last time I did, I threw up half way through. That was several years ago. In December, a New York Times writer explained the reason perfectly in the aptly titled “‘It’s a Wonderful Life’? It’s a Miserable Life!” Wendell James wrote,
“‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ is a terrifying, asphyxiating story about growing up and relinquishing your dreams, of seeing your father driven to the grave before his time, of living among bitter, small-minded people. It is a story of being trapped, of compromising, of watching others move ahead and away, of becoming so filled with rage that you verbally abuse your children, their teacher and your oppressively perfect wife. It is also a nightmare account of an endless home renovation.” [Check out New York Times critic A. O. Scott's take in this video.]
Now my husband and I joke about the fact that this Christmas classic made me vomit–and not because it’s sappy. But there you have it.
At least, I understand my limits now. Some movies are obvious ones to avoid. “The Wrestler?” Nope. “Slumdog Millionaire?” I wanted to see it until I found out about the flashbacks showing child beatings. “Frost/Nixon?” Yes, I love movies about politics. Then there was the movie “Doubt.”
As I wrote in a previous post, I was on the fence about seeing it for several reasons. I was intrigued because I had attended Catholic schools in New York City during the time period the movie takes place. The sexual abuse part was stopping me. After reading a friend’s review at her blog, Bagel and A Movie, I thought, “I can handle this one.” We finally saw it last Sunday.
I found the film moving and absorbing. I recognized instantly the Sr. Aloysius type and profoundly felt the innocence and tender spirit in the nun Amy Adams portrayed. What I loved most was that the movie was cerebral and explored what it means to be human, what it means to believe, what it means to doubt. You leave the movie not knowing for sure whether the priest sexually abused the child.
Some people in the audience, however, thought they knew. In fact, they arrived with that certainty. Their minds were made up: The priest is guilty. In scenes with the priest, played so well by Phillip Seymour Hoffman, audience members hissed and tsk-tsked. At times, their sounds made hearing the dialogue difficult. Granted, I was watching the movie in a theater in a suburb of Boston, practically ground zero for the clergy sex abuse scandals (chronicled by the Boston Globe in a series of articles that won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service in 2003).
Yet, they didn’t respond similarly whenever Sr. Aloysius (Meryl Streep) lashed out, punished, mistreated, and spoke with such venom toward the children–not to mention her behavior the priest, her fellow nuns and a student’s mother. She showed no empathy, no tolerance. She abused those children physically and emotionally.
I knew so well how those kids felt. I was one of those children in boarding school. Yet, for some reason, this one time I could watch the entire movie, though I did flinch a lot. Perhaps I was too distracted by the behavior of the audience.
What I did leave with was a reminder that although people understand the trauma and wrongness of sexually and physically abusing children, some fail to see that emotional abuse can be just as traumatic.
I’ve struggled for years doubting that I had suffered emotional abuse in boarding school and elsewhere because I lacked bruises, fractured bones, some STD or other physical evidence. I have no physical scars. Unlike Maria and others who were my fellow boarders, I don’t remember being hit by the nun overseeing the dorm. But the emotional abuse I endured was very real and is the reason that after all these years I relive it when I see it happening on the big screen.
I’ve thought a lot about those people in the audience and have felt tremendous compassion for those who have suffered from sexual or other physical abuse during childhood. Sometimes, though, I need to be reminded of the validity of my own emotional scars.
Today, as I considered how I’d approach writing about this very personal topic, I turned to the Childhood Welfare Information Gateway, a federal government clearinghouse for information on childhood trauma. There, on my screen, I read these words and felt oddly comforted:
“Emotional abuse (or psychological abuse) is a pattern of behavior that impairs a child’s emotional development or sense of self-worth. This may include constant criticism, threats, or rejection, as well as withholding love, support, or guidance. Emotional abuse is often difficult to prove and, therefore, child protective services may not be able to intervene without evidence of harm or mental injury to the child.
“Emotional abuse is almost always present when other forms are identified. Abandonment is now defined in many States as a form of neglect. In general, a child is considered to be abandoned when the parent’s identity or whereabouts are unknown, the child has been left alone in circumstances where the child suffers serious harm, or the parent has failed to maintain contact with the child or provide reasonable support for a specified period of time.”
February 13, 2009
Another Voice
Posted by Delia under St. John, boarding school, childhood, memoir | Tags: abuse, boarder |1 Comment
Earlier this week, I received an e-mail from a woman named Maria, who was a boarder about four years before I was. (To protect her privacy, I am not including her last name. In her note, she gave me permission to reprint it.) Since I started this blog, I have been searching online for women who had boarded at this school and contacted her through a social media site. As with any person who’s endured trauma and abandonment as a kid, I wanted to hear others’ stories, less out of a need for confirmation, more out of a need to connect with others and to give our experience a voice. I had buried those years for so long. I write for a living, and finally feel driven to tell this story.
As I read her e-mail, I had such a strong visceral reaction. I felt shaky and thought I would get sick. Her words brought back the terror and pain. For the rest of the day, I grieved for her as a little girl, the other little girls and, of course, myself. Her e-mail felt that powerful and so familiar, even the part about Ed Sullivan and the collie:
“I read your blog and I guess I was surprised but also kind of felt confirmed after all these years of bad memories. I don’t know why, but I never realized that there would be others that would have felt the same as I did. I think I always thought it must have been me. I know that there were older girls there and I remember them laughing and having a good time. For some reason I think of this in some sort of locker room – is that familiar at all?
“I hated the place and the memories that most stand out in my mind are of Sr. [X]. She was horrible – she must’ve been just absolutely hateful inside and took it out on the kids. But of course, through the eyes of a child, you always think it’s just you.
“One particular vivid memory is of her holding me just off the floor by my arm while she was beating me, all because my hair got wet on a day that we were not supposed to wash our hair. Do you remember that Thursday was hair washing day? (It may have been different when you were there.) Well, my shower cap had a tear in it and my hair got a little wet. So, I’m a little kid and she’s this huge black hulking figure (black habit) and she’s dangling me by my arm while she’s hitting me and yelling. I can still almost see the twisted expression on her face. I remember the absolute terror – I don’t know how she got away with it. I don’t remember any other nun doing anything to the kids but maybe I didn’t see it.
“Another time I was in bed (I remember the dormitory with 2 rows of beds), and the 2 girls on either side of me were talking and then got out of bed. Well, Sr. [X] came up and let us all have it even though I pleaded with her that I didn’t do anything. I also remember being punished or hit for not eating all the food on my plate – you know kids and string beans. Does yucky macaroni and cheese ring a bell? And getting hit for throwing up after eating something I didn’t like. Just normal kid stuff.
“My mom took me out after 6 months because of the bruises on my body. She says she couldn’t figure out what was happening and that I never complained. Scared I guess. So she took me to the doctor who she says looked at her as if she were a child abuser. Now this is through the memory of my 76 year old mom, so I don’t really know what to say. I spoke to her the other day about this again, because I’ve never really been sure why I was there. She tells me she had to work, but she was married and there was a Catholic elementary school right across the street. I suppose times were different and she tells me she thought she was sending me to a good school.
“I do know that I could never send my daughter away – she’s going to college in September and I’m having a hard enough time with that. But if the discussion goes too far with my mom, she’ll feel as if I’m accusing her and I don’t want to go there. But I do think about it sometimes.
“I do have a good memory of watching the Ed Sullivan show on Sunday nights. And also, there was a dog – a Collie. One of the nuns would hold up her fingers, and the dog would bark according to how many fingers she held up. You can use any of this on your blog if you like.
“I wonder if Sr. [X] is still alive. I looked on the St. John’s website – there’s an area that names nuns from the past but I didn’t see her name. I think I would like confront her, although the years of growing up and thinking of nuns as next to God might make that difficult for me to do. I’m an RN, and many years ago I had a nun as a patient. She was having knee surgery and I had to place a tourniquet cuff high on her thigh in preparation for the surgery. The thought of touching her in such a personal manner terrified me and I apologized to her. That reverence for nuns is so ingrained in us as children growing up Catholic.
…
“Sorry this is so long. I have really strong memories of that place – even as a 53 year old, I still cringe when I think of it.”
~ Maria, February 9, 2009
Thank you, Maria, for taking the time to write of your experience and letting me share it with others on my blog. I’m sure that your honesty will touch many. (P.S. The nun, now elderly, is still alive. She’s long since retired–the boarding school shut down in 1972 or so.)
February 8, 2009
Rescuing Catholic Schools?
Posted by Delia under Education, childhood | Tags: Brooklyn, catholic schools, charter schools |Leave a Comment
In a previous post, I wrote of the decreasing number of Catholic schools in the US. But perhaps one solution might help to continue the educational standards set at these schools. “Mayor and Bishop Propose a Plan to Save Schools,” in The New York Times, Feb. 8, 2009, provides details of a proposal to turn four Catholic schools in Brooklyn into charter schools. According to the Times, “It would be the first time such a plan was undertaken in New York and could serve as a model for converting other Catholic and private schools.”
I’ll be interested to see how this works. The proposal is in its early stages, with many decisions, etc., to be made. The best outcome would be one that ensures the best education for the children.
February 1, 2009
Scrubbed
Posted by Delia under Puerto Rico, childhood, memoir | Tags: lagartija, lagartijos, quarter, summer |[3] Comments
Bath time marked the start of the evening during my summer with my aunt and uncle. In Puerto Rico, most people shower before dinner. (I’ve always thought that savvy burglars could take this opportunity to slip in and out of houses all over the island, while everyone was showering.) You’d wash off the day’s sweat and put on a clean dress. Refreshed, you’d sit down to eat.
Most times, my aunt bathed me. I was barely six years old. Each late afternoon, I experienced a child’s version of the Psycho shower.
In the bathroom’s small space, largatijos—lizards—lurked, just as they did throughout the house. You had to share, and I didn’t want to.
Lagartija: http://flickr.com/photos/yasmapaz/1534540297/
Largatijos were like the cockroaches in our Manhattan apartment, only not nocturnal. At least roaches stayed in the kitchen. These three-inch green-brown largatijos, with slender bodies, appear quietly everywhere. These creatures stand as if frozen on the tile wall for long periods. Eyes wide open. No blinking. Silent. When he moves, he scampers and slithers. Such stealth. Such quickness. One moment he’s on the wall, the next by the door. Some might slip into the shower drain. Others hang out on the shower curtain or pole looking down at me. One might pop out of the medicine cabinet or from behind the toilet tank. Some settled into the folds of towels. Or on the soap, the faucet handle, the showerhead, toilet paper roll. Anywhere. I feared one would jump on me.
But more harrowing still was my aunt’s washing method. She scoured my skin like she did the kitchen floor. The washcloth felt like sandpaper. When washing my hair, she scraped my scalp raw with her nails. Shampoo burned my eyes. I would run out of the bathroom mid-wash, crying, screaming, in pain. Sometimes she’d catch my arm or hair before I fled and yanked me back into the shower. She scrubbed harder, now furious with me. I had no one to rescue me.
After several evenings of this, she opted for bribery. Before my shower, Titi Grace led me to her china cabinet in the dining room. On the shelf behind the sliding glass door, she placed a quarter. If I stood still—no whimpering, no fleeing—that quarter was mine. Fearing her wrath, I bit my lip and endured the pain. For twenty-five cents, I was hers.
1965 Quarters
January 21, 2009
Reunion
Posted by Delia under childhood, memoir | Tags: boarding school, friendship, reunion, St. John Villa Academy |[3] Comments
On late Monday afternoon, New York City was cold and gray, a light snow–picture the snow scenes in “A Charlie Brown Christmas”–dusted the streets. I wandered around a bookstore, bought a book and headed to the nearest Starbucks to read and warm up with a hot latte. Occasionally, I stared out the windows, watching the snowflakes drift to the ground and melt and people heading home for the evening. I had time to kill because Connie was held up at work. I’d waited for decades wondering when, if ever, we’d meet again. Another hour of waiting would be like a minute. I was excited and could barely concentrate on my book.
When the time came, I headed around the corner to a cozy bistro, Cafe Luxembourg, on the Upper West Side. (Excellent choice–intimate, great food.) My eyeglasses fogged up, and the lights were very dim. I searched for her familiar face. As soon as she walked in, we recognized each other and caught each other in a tight hug, despite our puffy down coats.
Our conversation flowed easily. Nothing felt awkward about it. The connection, after all this time, was still there. Other diners at the restaurant would never have guessed we hadn’t seen in each other in 39 years. We had a champagne toast, ordered the same entrees, shared dessert.
Birthday Gift
She looked the same, only grown up. Her eyes still sparkled, her skin translucent. For the occasion, I wore the earrings she had given me for my tenth birthday, when she’d come to my party. That was the last time we were together. By then we were both free from boarding school. I was in living on the Lower East Side with my mother, she in Queens with hers. I cherished those earrings, simple pink tourmaline stones. (Pink tourmaline is said to have these properties: inspire love and creativity, help one recover from emotional difficulties, provide wisdom and strengthen willpower.)
Connie and I talked fast, covering so much territory–the present, the past, the in between, politics–trying to make sense of so much. Those two years in boarding school haunt our thoughts to this day. The experience shaped our lives. But there is something more to that. It was what brought many of us to that particular place to begin with: being an only child of a single working parent in the sixties. Our parents couldn’t afford to spoil us, much less have the time to dote on us. We chatted about our mothers, their frame of mind, their needs, their neediness. Both of us admire them for what they did, overcoming sexism in the workplace, being the head of household, and so on.
And yet. We came back to one theme throughout our meal. Our childhoods were fraught with anxiety, which remains with us to this day. The adults around us weren’t taking care of us in some ways. We had to navigate so much on our own. We were lied to. We were alone.
In boarding school, we were punished for doing things that kids do. Ordinary things, not mischief. We were boarders ranging in age from 6 to 12. Connie remembered when I’d been punished for vomiting in the middle of the night in my bed. For a week after that, I was sent to bed earlier than all the other girls. There I was, at 7 pm, tucked into my bed among rows of beds. We all slept in one big room. I could never forget that incident and the aftermath. I took great comfort that Connie, too, remembered my ordeal, too.
Once, we were scolded and punished for showing fear during an intense thunderstorm. Our closets were inspected every day. Anything out of order could mean a punishment. I was caught with dimes in my loafers. We weren’t allowed to have any money at all. My mother had put dimes in my penny loafers instead of pennies, in case I needed to make a phone call. The dimes were taken away from me. I was punished. I was like an animal, always on alert, fearful that I could be attacked from any direction, for any reason, for no reason. I was never hit by the nun in charge of the boarders, but I have many scars.
Being on Staten Island adjacent to the Verrazano Bridge increased our sense of isolation and distance from any possible sense of love and security. Our mothers inadvertently added to that feeling of remoteness. Connie and I recalled that both of us had cats at home and that our mothers, without warning, got rid of them.
There was one event that I don’t remember at all: Robert Kennedy’s assassination. Connie described our dear second grade teacher, Sr. Raphael, wheeling in a cart with a TV for us to watch the news. How could I not recall something like that? That’s one of those events that you know where you were when it happened. Throughout our four-hour dinner–we were one of the last to leave–we tried to figure out where I’d been. Was it the time I had rubella and was absent? I am mystified that I have no memory of this. Connie felt so vulnerable to see that such a vibrant person had been gunned down, his life gone. When I got back to my hotel, I doublechecked the date of his assassination: June 6, 1968. We were definitely still in school. A puzzle.
Our reunion was a joyful one. We looked upon the past with awe. We had emerged from our difficult childhoods and managed to become successful. A therapist once told me that others who had experienced such traumas often become substance abusers, sex addicts, criminals. Connie and I toasted our resilience.
Throughout, the waiter, Matthew, humored us. We kept shooing him away when he came to take our order. We had been too busy talking to read the menu and told him this was our reunion dinner. Connie and I quizzed him about his own story. It turns out he’d gone to boarding school, only at age 16, in England, I think. When we told him that we had been boarders, too, only at a much younger age, he was astonished. People always are. He said something like, “even in the British system, where boarding school is not unusual, that’s almost unheard of.” (Awhile ago, I’d done a search of U.S. boarding schools. Fortunately none seem to take kids below sixth grade nowadays.)
Throughout the years, I had always thought about Connie and my other boarding school friend whom I’d last seen when I was 18. Thanks to the Internet, I found them last fall right around the time I was thinking of starting this blog. I had tried many times before, but both of them had different last names as adults. By coincidence, they had each signed up at classmates.com, which lists surnames–birth and marriage. Now that I had their correct last names, I found them on Facebook and e-mailed them. Our long-lost conversations were re-ignited. I needed to reconnect with them and that part of my life.
Connie and I said good night and hugged again at the 72nd St. subway station. Our dinner had ended, but our friendship renewed. I walked back to my hotel, careful not slip on the icy sidewalks. The lights from stores and streetlights made the wet asphalt glisten. The night air felt so crisp and clear.
January 18, 2009
Death Knell for Catholic Schools?
Posted by Delia under Education | Tags: catholic schools, Education, enrollment, orders of nuns, parish-run |[2] Comments
Classroom, Notre Dame School, Greenwich Village, NY
In “For Catholic Schools, Crisis and Catharsis” in today’s New York Times, reporters Paul Vitello and Winnie Hu write about the steady decline in enrollment that Catholic schools are experiencing–”more than half from its peak of five million 40 years ago.” They add:
“A series of major studies in the past few years, including one by the White House Domestic Policy Council, have described the dwindling presence of parochial schools as a crisis not just for Catholics but for society.
The losses have already been deeply felt in impoverished urban neighborhoods, where parochial schools have attracted poor and minority students — including non-Catholics — seeking havens of safety and order from troubled public schools. Roughly 20 percent of parochial school students are not Catholic, according to experts.”
I think this issue goes beyond the priest scandals. One reader commented on the NYT’s site: “It is well established that abuse of children is no more common among Catholic priests than ministers and rabbis, but the centralized Catholic system makes it more vulnerable to crippling lawsuits.” Other readers’ posts discuss possible reasons for decreasing enrollment, including financial woes, Americans’ break with the Vatican, marketing, declining number of people entering the priesthood or becoming nuns, etc. In the end, I think it’s some mix of all of the above.
My mother couldn’t afford to send me to private school in Manhattan, but Catholic school was better than going to public schools in the sixties and seventies. I’m a lapsed Catholic–a status I had pretty much by high school–but greatly appreciate the education I received. My last grade school lacked good faculty, but my high school was a superb nurturing environment. In fact, Notre Dame nearly shut down in the late eighties, but ended up selling its Upper West Side property (for a retirement fund for aging sisters) and relocating to Greenwich Village. With the help of alumnae, teachers and parents, the school found a way for it to continue operating. The grade school was run by a parish, while the h.s. was run by an order of nuns. I wonder whether that made a difference.
I’ll have to consider that question and others some more. What do you think?
January 12, 2009
Doubt
Posted by Delia under Catholicism, films | Tags: Doubt, Meryl Streep, movies, Philip Seymour Hoffman, priests, reviews, sex scandal |1 Comment
I haven’t seen the movie Doubt (based on the play Pulitzer Prize-winning play by John Patrick Shanley) yet, but a friend of mine whose taste I trust posted a review recently on her blog, Bagel and a Movie. I too had been reluctant to see it, but am a huge Philip Seymour Hoffman fan. I was torn. I agree with my fellow blogger: Great plays don’t always translate well on screen. I also was not interested in the story line–priest sex scandal. But Elizabeth found that this movie transcends its plot line. She writes, “But what I love most is that the story of the movie—Sister Aloysius’s accusations regarding Flynn, and the question of whether he abused a boy—are really just vehicles with which to make you ponder the nature of doubt.”
That’s what I love about great movies. Because of her review, I’ll definitely see it.
If you have seen the movie, I would love to hear your take, especially if you went to a Catholic school.
January 7, 2009
Flying Solo
Posted by Delia under Family, Puerto Rico, childhood, memoir | Tags: coqui, Paul Anka, San Juan, Trans Caribbean, Wooly Willy |Leave a Comment
At the end of my kindergarten year, my mother decided to send me to Puerto Rico for the summer, just as my grandmother had done with her when she was a child. My mother would spend part of the time with my grandmother’s parents or my one of my grandmother’s younger sisters, Graciela. Titi Grace, who ran a home daycare, agreed to take me. I also would stay with three of my grandmother’s other siblings—she had 11—and their families that summer. My mother remained in New York to work.
At JFK Airport, I boarded a Trans Caribbean flight to San Juan accompanied by a flight attendant. I was barely six years old and alone. On board, I was given playing cards, wing-shaped pin like the ones flight attendants wore and a postcard. The flight attendants knew my father and watched over me, a little thing—skinny with short brown hair. As for the flight itself, I don’t remember much.
My memory, though, doesn’t fail me when it comes to the details of my arrival in San Juan. Waiting for me at the airport was Titi Grace and her husband, Tio Pucho. Upon seeing him, I screamed. He looked like Mr. Clean, someone I’d only seen in commercials. Not only was he bald, Tio Pucho had no eyebrows, no lashes, no signs of a beard. His pink head shined in the bright afternoon sun. He looked odd—and to a six year old, frightening—without those thin lines of hair to frame his eyes to make him seem human. His face was an all pink landscape, acres of flesh.
He reminded me of a toy I had—Wooly Willy. See, Wooly Willy was a simple toy, just a drawing of a hairless face, no torso. Between the clear plastic covering and the cardboard that bore his bare face were iron 
shavings. With a magnet, you could drag the filings across the plastic to make Willy wooly. You could shape a moustache, some eyelashes and even a goatee. But that was just a plaything. Tio Pucho was standing before me, thin, tall and alive. He was Willy in 3-D and had a complete body.
I sat in the backseat of the car, my body pressed into the seat trying to be as far away from Tio Pucho as one could get in a compact. At their house, I was shown the room I’d share with their daughter, who was about my mother’s age. The two of them were close, because they’d spent summers together. At one point, Titi Grace, Pucho and their daughter lived in New York. Titi had worked in the same lingerie factory in the Garment District as my grandmother.
I didn’t want to leave that room. Tio Pucho was in the living room watching television. The first few days, I avoided him whenever I could. But I soon realized that Titi Grace was the one to fear.
I went to sleep each night to the sound of the coquis, their chirps filling the black sky, and wake up to the crows of roosters.
My days there followed Titi’s schedule. In the morning, Titi Grace made me breakfast—a bowl of oatmeal and a batida, a cold brew consisting of grape juice and a raw egg that she whipped until frothy in the blender. I didn’t want it. She’d stand over me and watch until I swallowed every bit of the sweet purple goo. I’d gag on lumps of egg white that hadn’t been broken up by the blades of the blender. Hints of raw egg smell drifted into my nose.
Meanwhile, parents on their way to work dropped off infants and toddlers in the converted carport, which was filled with toys, playpens, high chairs and other kiddie stuff. Titi spent the day changing diapers and warming bottles. In between, she’d wash a load of laundry, run it through the wringer and then hang them to dry. The woman was industrious and particular. She ironed everything—her husband’s boxer shorts, bed sheets—stopping now and again to blot the perspiration off her brow.
After lunch, I’d settle into the canvas hammock, which my aunt had sewn, for a nap. I slept deeply, suspended in that heavy cotton cocoon in the carport. My neck and back of my knees grew damp with sweat, my hair soggy, in the humidity. Once all the children were picked up, Titi moved everything out and mopped the linoleum tile lining the carport.
Then it was time for her other enterprise: selling a line of mops and brooms, like an Avon lady, only with cleaning supplies. This was no ordinary mop. Attached to it was a plastic ring that, when pulled over the fabric mop strands, twisted and squeezed it of excess water. On late weekday afternoons, we’d climb into her VW Beetle, the colored handles of mops and brooms bobbing in the front and back seat, plastic buckets and spare mop heads tucked away on the floor. I sat way back in the compartment underneath the rear window and behind the backseat. I fit perfectly in this little storage area covered in grey wool fabric that was like a flat weave carpet. The wool scratched my bare legs and arms. I enjoyed these rides. I had my own space. And Titi had hers.
On her rounds dropping off orders, Titi seemed less strict, almost carefree—as carefree as someone who is usually uptight can be. In her car, as we winded through San Juan’s suburbs, Titi Grace sang love songs. As she switched from first to second to third, she acted freer. She shifted gears, literally and figuratively. Her favorite song was Paul Anka’s “Put Your Head on My Shoulder.” Over the car’s motor sputtering in that characteristic VW Beetle sound, she’d sing like a teenager: “Hold me in your arms, bay-beeee,” lowering her voice on “baby” like Anka did. I grew to love her singing that song.
Stumble It!
