Introducing Boricua City, Forthcoming Novel
If you had told me six months ago my life was gonna end up like this, in witness protection out in bum fuck middle of nowhere surrounded by a bunch of crackers, I would’ve laughed my big fat boricua ass off and said así tú estás loco papi but here I am, stuck in a city I never heard of where the cable package doesn’t even offer univisión and the people at the grocery story look at me like I’m Mexican when I ask where the plátanos are. They’re like regular bananas, but green. So when my case manager Julie asks me how come I lost another job, I just tell her straight up – them crackers ain't never met a chica from the ghetto and they scared. So anytime I say something like trying to relate and shit like how I understand losing a grandma cuz my family is all locked up or dead they look at me like I’m gonna hit them, or rob them, or try and sell them drugs. And then my case worker reminds me that I was a drug dealer and I say I know that but it doesn’t mean they got to look at me that way. I mean even if they haven’t seen a Puerto Rican before, haven’t they at least seen a J-lo video? Everyone knows J-lo. And she went out with Puff Daddy and was at a shooting and no one looks at her like a criminal. I mean I grew up on the 6 too. So then my case worker says that maybe they’re reacting to my attitude and I say what FUCKING attitude, the street attitude that kept me alive or the attitude that made me strong enough to take down the drug dealer that sold my lil bro the bad coke that made him overdose at 15 and landed me in this program so I could make their federal case. So then she just sighs and says I wish you would just leave the ghetto behind and why aren’t I happy to be outta the ghetto? And I just get up and walk away. Bitch. How can I be happy about leaving the ghetto? It’s my home. It’s who I am. |
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Pero first things first. My name is Yris Colón Romero and I grew up on 114th and 2nd Ave. That’s what the white people call Spanish Harlem or East Harlem. Yeah, where the spics are, not the niggers. Nosotros, well we just call it El Barrio and it’s everything you probably think it is – littered sidewalks, rundown buildings, fried food spots, bodegas, street venders, drug dealers, welfare, and public housing. But it’s more. It’s cultura. When I was growing up, you could eat the best boricua food up in el Barrio – pollo rostizado, mofongo, pasteles – it felt as if my family had never left the island. Not that I’ve ever been to the island, but that’s what my mami always said. See my mami got knocked up and ran away with my papi, and never looked back. Por qué? It’s not like abuelito was every gonna talk to her again, apparently his grudges were legendary and the mofongo here was almost as good as abuelas, or at least that’s what she told herself. So as far as my brother and me knew growing up everything boricua here was just like the island, but better – think West Side Story I like to live in America, landia of opportunity mentality.
Now the neighborhood’s changed a bit, new people coming in, some of the old timers leaving but I don’t really mind. I am definitely not Mexican, but the tamales la Señora sells on 116th. She gets me every time and she knows it. I can still see her chuckling every time I came back a second time in one day - wrapped up in her bright rebozo, a kaleidoscope of oranges, yellows, pinks and greens, her little cart steaming from the tamales and atole, her wrinkled hand fumbling around in her pockets for change. Te lo dije que regresaras para lo dulce. She knew I would come back for the sweet pineapple kind. Some days I just give in to la dieta T – Tacos, tamales, tortas – those damn Mexicans. But cultura is more than food you know. My mother still wakes up and plays Tito Puente, Willie Colon and Celia (nunca puedes olvidar la reina she sings), as if she was still going to the Copacabana on Saturday nights with my father. She would take her broom out and slide across the floor like all the other middle aged women in the towers who have lost their husbands to drugs, jail or just to having kids like my father who one day just packed up and walked away. Nunca quería todo esto, esta responsabilidad. As if she had wanted two children before the age of 21. Yeah that’s right, she followed my no good father pregnant at 16.
Up in El Barrio, we got two kinds of men. We got the men who come home every night and kiss their wives and play with their kids and we got the men who hang out in the streets. For them la calle is everything. I know this first hand, cuz my baby bro, Luciano, we used to call him Luce for short was one of those home boys that became a street man and I couldn’t do nothing to stop it. Nada. I didn’t even know it happened. All I know is I was 20 and I’d finally moved away from home, yeah it was just two blocks up but it didn’t matter I was still on my own and I was so wrapped up in my first semester, you see somehow this ghetto sister got into Pratt for my drawings. I’d been doing them since I was a kid, but I’d never thought they’d take me anywhere until Mrs. Stevens in the 11th grade told me I had talent. Even then I didn’t listen to her but later on, after I’d been barely making ends meet working in one clothing store or the next I stopped by my old school, Park East over on 105th. Art class with Mrs. Stevens was the same as always – see Art class was hoochie central. All the girls there were pregnant, delinquent or other and took that class because they knew Mrs. Stevens was a softie and would pass them all cuz art is subjective. That means they can’t tell you it’s bad, even if it’s a stick figure. So anyways I roll up and the class is going crazy cuz there’s a new cutie up in there and they all trying to have his baby and Mrs. Stevens is a mess, her dark brown hair tangled and dry and in need of my girl Thalia’s magic split-end conditioner and she’s trying to clean some paint off her dress, another in a long line of floral print dresses I swear my abuelita used to mass produce in some sweatshop. The entire time I’m just laughing to myself, but funny thing is she looks happy to see me, even though I wasn’t much better than these hoes.
Yris! She says it’s so good to see you. And I say it’s good to see you too, Mrs. Stevens and then we’re quiet. And then I ask her if its really true that you can go to college to draw and she says yes you can, that’s what she went to school for. And so I say could I go to college to draw and she smiles so big I think she’s the one who’s applying to college and she says she thinks I could. And then I say but I don’t want to be an Art teacher. And she says that’s ok. If Mrs. Stevens knew how I didn’t even finish my first year after she spent a whole year trying to help me get into Pratt, I don’t know if she’ll ever take a chance on a hood rat again, much less a boricua hood rat. I think the word is that I went to jail for dealing, or died. But you can still check me out if you’re around El Barrio. I got that mural on 117th and 2nd – the big one with la virgen surrounded by every color you could imagine and the word esperanza. Yeah I had hope then. And I also drew the girls on 122nd and Pleasant. What a sucka I was. All those little girls of different colors holding hands and playing peacefully in the hood. Not a care in the world, like I used to be before Luce.
That one took us two months to sketch and then paint at night. Yeah, Luce was always my assistant growing up, handing me my brushes, mixing the paint and keeping look out for the five-o. But even outside painting, it never bothered me to have my baby brother follow me around. We didn’t have familia or primos or any one else to form a group with so we formed our own. Me, Luce and my girl Thalia. How funny was that though when he started crushing on her? I think that lasted ni un minuto before she slapped him upside the head for pendejo. But anyways you better believe we watched out for each other, like the time when Luce stepped in to protect me from Johnny Rivera cuz I didn’t want to go out with his ghetto, low life gang banging ass. Everyone knew he had sex with girls and then passed ‘em on to his friends like a used pipa.
What you gonna do bout it school boy, Johnny said, pushing Luce back. I was so scared then cuz I was only 16 and Luce was 11 and barely over 100 pounds trying to man up to three boys each twice his size. Leave him alone! I screamed and Johnny comes back to me and grabs my wrist. And then Luce whips out a can of spray paint and catches Johnny in the eye, who drops my wrist before we book it over to the Laundromat where my mom worked a few blocks away.
Damn Luce. Even then you were quick on your feet and wise beyond your years. The man of the house and half the Colón Squad. I swear most of the graffiti you see around the hood was us beautifying our surroundings. Coño Luce! You’re the one who told me I should pursue art, that Mrs. Stevens wasn’t crazy when she said I could go to college that I had to ignore mami when she said it was a waste of time. Coño, we were in it together.
Pero eso se acabó. You see, it went down like this. I’m at school – Pratt, not the hoe class - in figure drawing. But wait, can I just tell you how crazy them crackers is again? They actually pay someone to stand there naked so we can draw them. Damn, if I had that kinda money to spare… Ni te puedes imaginar… Bueno, problamente lo puedes imaginar – BBQ y baile y cervezas all the way! But listen, I’m sketching and my phone blares up Wisin and Yandel and it’s my mami and I know it’s gotta be important because she never even used the cell phone I gave her before. When I would try and show her how to use it she’d just say aye mija porque desperdicias tu dinero en estas cosas. And I try and tell her it’s not a waste what if she has an emergency, but she just says that’s why she has Luce with her. But Luce isn’t there anymore and neither am I so I hope she finally learned how to use it. Just in case. Hazme caso mami, una vez, hazme caso. When I saw my mom’s number on my phone my heart stopped beating cuz I’d been paying for the family plan for six months and she’d never used it, I didn’t even care that the entire class was looking at me like crazy and my teacher was starting me down. I would have put the stuck up bicha in her place, but I didn’t have time. I just answered the phone, right then and there. Mami que pasó. Silence. Mami que paso dime que pasó. Es tu hermano. Está en el hospital. Pero que pasó mami? No sé, Yris. No entiendo. La enfermera me dijo que fue un sobredosis. An overdose? Mami, voy p’alla. Just stay there. By then, everyone’s really looking at me and I turn and scream mind your own fucking business! I left my easel, supplies, everything and ran out of the room. That was the last time I ever went to art class too. I grabbed a cab but by the time I got to 120th they were pulling a sheet over his head and my mom was still asking me what a sobredosis was. I told her I didn’t know, because I didn’t know how my 15 year old baby brother got such a fucked up mix of heroin and coke that his heart gave out. My little brother who’d never been in trouble once, who always minded my mother, who always went to school. He was one of the home men. The good ones. Uno de los buenos.
Now the neighborhood’s changed a bit, new people coming in, some of the old timers leaving but I don’t really mind. I am definitely not Mexican, but the tamales la Señora sells on 116th. She gets me every time and she knows it. I can still see her chuckling every time I came back a second time in one day - wrapped up in her bright rebozo, a kaleidoscope of oranges, yellows, pinks and greens, her little cart steaming from the tamales and atole, her wrinkled hand fumbling around in her pockets for change. Te lo dije que regresaras para lo dulce. She knew I would come back for the sweet pineapple kind. Some days I just give in to la dieta T – Tacos, tamales, tortas – those damn Mexicans. But cultura is more than food you know. My mother still wakes up and plays Tito Puente, Willie Colon and Celia (nunca puedes olvidar la reina she sings), as if she was still going to the Copacabana on Saturday nights with my father. She would take her broom out and slide across the floor like all the other middle aged women in the towers who have lost their husbands to drugs, jail or just to having kids like my father who one day just packed up and walked away. Nunca quería todo esto, esta responsabilidad. As if she had wanted two children before the age of 21. Yeah that’s right, she followed my no good father pregnant at 16.
Up in El Barrio, we got two kinds of men. We got the men who come home every night and kiss their wives and play with their kids and we got the men who hang out in the streets. For them la calle is everything. I know this first hand, cuz my baby bro, Luciano, we used to call him Luce for short was one of those home boys that became a street man and I couldn’t do nothing to stop it. Nada. I didn’t even know it happened. All I know is I was 20 and I’d finally moved away from home, yeah it was just two blocks up but it didn’t matter I was still on my own and I was so wrapped up in my first semester, you see somehow this ghetto sister got into Pratt for my drawings. I’d been doing them since I was a kid, but I’d never thought they’d take me anywhere until Mrs. Stevens in the 11th grade told me I had talent. Even then I didn’t listen to her but later on, after I’d been barely making ends meet working in one clothing store or the next I stopped by my old school, Park East over on 105th. Art class with Mrs. Stevens was the same as always – see Art class was hoochie central. All the girls there were pregnant, delinquent or other and took that class because they knew Mrs. Stevens was a softie and would pass them all cuz art is subjective. That means they can’t tell you it’s bad, even if it’s a stick figure. So anyways I roll up and the class is going crazy cuz there’s a new cutie up in there and they all trying to have his baby and Mrs. Stevens is a mess, her dark brown hair tangled and dry and in need of my girl Thalia’s magic split-end conditioner and she’s trying to clean some paint off her dress, another in a long line of floral print dresses I swear my abuelita used to mass produce in some sweatshop. The entire time I’m just laughing to myself, but funny thing is she looks happy to see me, even though I wasn’t much better than these hoes.
Yris! She says it’s so good to see you. And I say it’s good to see you too, Mrs. Stevens and then we’re quiet. And then I ask her if its really true that you can go to college to draw and she says yes you can, that’s what she went to school for. And so I say could I go to college to draw and she smiles so big I think she’s the one who’s applying to college and she says she thinks I could. And then I say but I don’t want to be an Art teacher. And she says that’s ok. If Mrs. Stevens knew how I didn’t even finish my first year after she spent a whole year trying to help me get into Pratt, I don’t know if she’ll ever take a chance on a hood rat again, much less a boricua hood rat. I think the word is that I went to jail for dealing, or died. But you can still check me out if you’re around El Barrio. I got that mural on 117th and 2nd – the big one with la virgen surrounded by every color you could imagine and the word esperanza. Yeah I had hope then. And I also drew the girls on 122nd and Pleasant. What a sucka I was. All those little girls of different colors holding hands and playing peacefully in the hood. Not a care in the world, like I used to be before Luce.
That one took us two months to sketch and then paint at night. Yeah, Luce was always my assistant growing up, handing me my brushes, mixing the paint and keeping look out for the five-o. But even outside painting, it never bothered me to have my baby brother follow me around. We didn’t have familia or primos or any one else to form a group with so we formed our own. Me, Luce and my girl Thalia. How funny was that though when he started crushing on her? I think that lasted ni un minuto before she slapped him upside the head for pendejo. But anyways you better believe we watched out for each other, like the time when Luce stepped in to protect me from Johnny Rivera cuz I didn’t want to go out with his ghetto, low life gang banging ass. Everyone knew he had sex with girls and then passed ‘em on to his friends like a used pipa.
What you gonna do bout it school boy, Johnny said, pushing Luce back. I was so scared then cuz I was only 16 and Luce was 11 and barely over 100 pounds trying to man up to three boys each twice his size. Leave him alone! I screamed and Johnny comes back to me and grabs my wrist. And then Luce whips out a can of spray paint and catches Johnny in the eye, who drops my wrist before we book it over to the Laundromat where my mom worked a few blocks away.
Damn Luce. Even then you were quick on your feet and wise beyond your years. The man of the house and half the Colón Squad. I swear most of the graffiti you see around the hood was us beautifying our surroundings. Coño Luce! You’re the one who told me I should pursue art, that Mrs. Stevens wasn’t crazy when she said I could go to college that I had to ignore mami when she said it was a waste of time. Coño, we were in it together.
Pero eso se acabó. You see, it went down like this. I’m at school – Pratt, not the hoe class - in figure drawing. But wait, can I just tell you how crazy them crackers is again? They actually pay someone to stand there naked so we can draw them. Damn, if I had that kinda money to spare… Ni te puedes imaginar… Bueno, problamente lo puedes imaginar – BBQ y baile y cervezas all the way! But listen, I’m sketching and my phone blares up Wisin and Yandel and it’s my mami and I know it’s gotta be important because she never even used the cell phone I gave her before. When I would try and show her how to use it she’d just say aye mija porque desperdicias tu dinero en estas cosas. And I try and tell her it’s not a waste what if she has an emergency, but she just says that’s why she has Luce with her. But Luce isn’t there anymore and neither am I so I hope she finally learned how to use it. Just in case. Hazme caso mami, una vez, hazme caso. When I saw my mom’s number on my phone my heart stopped beating cuz I’d been paying for the family plan for six months and she’d never used it, I didn’t even care that the entire class was looking at me like crazy and my teacher was starting me down. I would have put the stuck up bicha in her place, but I didn’t have time. I just answered the phone, right then and there. Mami que pasó. Silence. Mami que paso dime que pasó. Es tu hermano. Está en el hospital. Pero que pasó mami? No sé, Yris. No entiendo. La enfermera me dijo que fue un sobredosis. An overdose? Mami, voy p’alla. Just stay there. By then, everyone’s really looking at me and I turn and scream mind your own fucking business! I left my easel, supplies, everything and ran out of the room. That was the last time I ever went to art class too. I grabbed a cab but by the time I got to 120th they were pulling a sheet over his head and my mom was still asking me what a sobredosis was. I told her I didn’t know, because I didn’t know how my 15 year old baby brother got such a fucked up mix of heroin and coke that his heart gave out. My little brother who’d never been in trouble once, who always minded my mother, who always went to school. He was one of the home men. The good ones. Uno de los buenos.