Why Women Remain Jamona

WHY WOMEN REMAIN JAMONA
 La verdad, aunque severa, es amiga verdadera.
Truth, although severe, is a true friend.

 One Sunday Mami starched and ironed my white pique dress, packed a few changes of clothes in a small bag, and told me I was to spend a few days with Papi’s mother. “Your abuela is old, so you be a good helper,” Mami told me as she braided my hair. “How long will I be there?” “About a week. Papi will take you, and he’ll pick you up next Sunday. Don’t look so worried. You’ll have fun!” Papi dressed in his best clothes, and while the day was still cool, we set out for Santurce. The público made many stops on the way, to pick up and drop off passengers, most of them, like us, dressed for a journey. When we reached Bayamón, the closest city to Macún, we had to change públicos. We were early, so we walked to the plaza del mercado. It was a square cement building with stalls along the walls and in the middle, forming a labyrinth of aisles dead-ending into kiosks with live chickens in wire cages, shelves of canned food, counters stacked high with ñames and yautías, coffee beans and breadfruit. Colored lights swung from the rafters where pigeons and warblers perched, forcing vendors to put up awnings against bird droppings. “Are you hungry?” Papi asked, and I nodded, searching for the food stalls I smelled but could not see. We turned at the corner where a tall stack of rabbit hutches butted against a stack of dove cages. “I smell alcapurrias,” I said as Papi led me past a long table on which a tall gray woman arranged plaster heads of Jesus crowned with thorns, blood dripping into his upturned eyes, in an expression similar to the one Norma took on when she was annoyed. The woman set a Jesus down, her fingers caressing the thorns, and watched us, her long, mournful face horselike, her large eyes almond shaped, the corners pointing down as if weighed by many tears. The space around her felt cold, and I changed sides with Papi as we passed her on our way to the far end of the market, which was light and noisy with birds chirping overhead and a few well-placed speakers through which blared my favorite chachachá, “Black Eyes, Cinnamon Skin.” “What can I get you?” the counterman asked as he wiped in front of us with a rag that spread a thin film of grease on the Formica surface. “Let me have a couple of those alcapurrias and two Coca-Colas,” Papi said. “You do want a Coca-Cola, don’t you?” he asked, and I nodded my head as I whirled on the stool, which rattled as it spun me faster and faster. Colors blended into one another in streaks of red, yellow, brown, and orange. Music came in and out of my ears, a syncopated half song that was familiar and foreign at the same time.
“You’d better stop that, or you’ll hurt yourself.” I tried to brake the stool by sticking my leg out and hooking my foot on the one next to it. That threw me off balance and I fell, spinning to the ground. Papi was next to me in a flash. “Are you okay?” he asked, but I felt heavy and light at the same time. My legs were wobbly, and when I looked around, there were two of everything. Two Papis and two of the gray woman next to him like shadows. “She’s all right,” he said to her and drew me back to the stool. I was floating in a fog of colors and smells and warbling birds and voices singing, “I like you, and you, and you, and no one else but you, and you, and you.” “Jesus doesn’t love children who don’t behave,” the gray woman said. Her voice crackled like a worn record. “And he will punish them.” “Just ignore her,” the counterman said. “She’s crazy.” He set a hot alcapurria and a frosty Coca-Cola in front of me. “Leave my customers alone,” he shouted at her and waved the greasy rag the way Don Berto used to wave his sharp machete. “That’s what happens to women when they stay jamonas,” he said with a snort, and Papi laughed with him. The gray woman retreated to her bleeding heads. “Papi, what’s a jamona?” I asked as we left the market, our bellies full. “It’s a woman who has never married.” “I thought that was a señorita.” “It’s the same thing. But when someone says a woman is jamona it means she’s too old to get married. It’s an insult.” “How come?” “Because it means no one wants her. Maybe she’s too ugly to get married.... Or she has waited too long.... She ends up alone for the rest of her life. Like that woman in the mercado.” “She was ugly, that’s for sure.” “That’s probably why she stayed jamona.” “I hope that never happens to me.” “No, that won’t happen to you.... There’s our público. Let’s run for it.” We dodged across the street holding hands, avoiding cars, people, and stray dogs sunning themselves on the sidewalk. “What do they call a man who never marries?” I asked as we settled ourselves in the front of the público. “Lucky,” the driver said, and the rest of the passengers laughed, which made me mad, because it felt as if he were insulting me in the worst possible way. “¡Ay Santo Dios, bendicemela!” Abuela hugged me and crossed herself. “She’s so big!” Her hands were large-knuckled, wrinkled; her palms the color and texture of an avocado pit. She rubbed my hair back and held my chin in her strong fingers. “She looks just like you, Pablito,” she told Papi, which made both of us feel good. “Look at the line of her hair. The same shape as yours.... A large forehead,” she said as she led us into her house, “is a sign of intelligence.” “She’s the best student in her class,” Papi said, which wasn’t entirely true. Juanita Marin was much smarter. “And you should hear her recite poetry!” “Just like you, Pablito. You were always memorizing poems.” Abuela’s house was two stories high and made of cement, with a front garden on which grew medicinal herbs and flowers. She and my grandfather, Don Higinio, lived on the ground floor, and her son Bartolo and his family lived upstairs. Abuela’s Miami windows were draped with white crocheted curtains, as was the glass-topped table, the sofa, the doors to all the rooms, and all the beds and dressers. The tablecloth was bordered with yellow and brown pineapples. Red crocheted roses on bright green petals hemmed the doilies on the side tables. Abuela fed us sancocho, a vegetable stew thickened with mashed tubers, with cornmeal dumplings floating on top. Papi and I sat at the table, while she drifted in and out of the kitchen bringing us food, water, a chunk of bread, and finally, a steaming cup of sweetened café con leche.
As soon as we’d finished eating, Papi stood up from the table and stretched. “I’d better get going, Mamá. It’s a long way to Macún.” “But we just came, Papi. It doesn’t take so long to get home....” “I have to see some people on the way,” he snapped, his back to me. He unhooked his hat from the nail by the door, knelt in front of me, and pushed the hair off my forehead. His eyes had a peculiar expression, as if he were begging. He kissed and hugged me, and in his arms there was a plea. I was confused by the rage that thudded into my stomach like a fist. I was certain that he was not going home to Mami and my sisters and brothers and that somehow I had been used. I didn’t return his embrace. I stood stiff and solid, swallowing the bitter lump that had formed in my throat, and swore to myself I wouldn’t cry, wouldn’t beg him not to go, wouldn’t even miss him when he left. I pulled out of his arms. “Now, you be a good girl and do as Abuela tells you,” he said, trying to sound stern. “I’ll come get you next week.” I sat on the sofa, stuck my legs out in front of me, and studied the scabs on my shins, the brown scars of countless wounds and scrapes. “Sí.” I felt his eyes on me and knew he knew I knew. He kissed Abuela’s forehead. “Bless me, Mamá,” he said in a near murmur. She touched his shoulder and mumbled softly, “May the Good Lord keep you on your journey, Son, and may He watch over you.” She crossed the air in front of him and, without looking back, he left. She watched him go, her head shaking from side to side as if she felt sorry for him. “Come, let me show you where you’ll sleep,” she said as she led me to the back of the house. I followed Abuela into the room next to hers, where she had laid out fresh sheets and a pillow. The bed was large, covered with a crocheted spread on which two peacocks stood beak to beak. The drape covering the blinds also had peacocks on it, only they faced forward, their plumage spread into a thousand blue-green eyes that seemed to watch us. “Change into something comfortable,” she told me and showed me where to put my belongings. “I have some things to do in the kitchen.” When she was done, she sat on her rocking chair facing the door, took up a basket of crochet, and began working. She worked quietly. The needle flashed as her fingers flew in, around, and out. I could find nothing to do, so I sat on the sofa and watched, not daring to speak for fear I’d break her concentration. After a long time, she put the work in her basket, covered it with a cloth, and stood up from her chair, knees creaking. “I’m going to say my prayers,” she said. “If you get hungry, have some crackers from the tin.” She disappeared into her room. I sat on the stoop and watched the street beyond the garden fence. People came and went, dressed in their Sunday clothes, some looking as if they were going somewhere, others wrinkled and worn, as if they’d already been away and couldn’t wait to get home. Every so often a car or truck rumbled up the hill, chased by scrawny dogs whose barks sounded hoarse and exhausted. Next door was a shack not much better than ours in Macún. My Aunt Generosa lived there with my cousins, most of whom were older than I was. I had met Titi Generosa when we lived in Santurce and liked the sound of her loud, coarse voice and the way she moved her hands when she spoke, as if she were kneading words. As evening fell, the street slowed, and all life and sound came from inside, as if it were time for secrets. But nothing could remain private in the echoing treble of cement walls and ceilings. People talked, or fought, or sang boleros while they showered, and every sound was amplified in the cul-de-sac where Abuela’s house sat. Spoons clanked against pots, and the street filled with the steamy smells of garlic, hot oil, and spices. Radios blared frenzied merengues from one house, while from another, an Evangelist exhorted his listeners to abandon their sinful lives and seek salvation in the arms of Jehovah, Aleluya, Amen!
I wondered where Papi had gone, who he had to see on a Sunday afternoon in San Juan. I remembered Margie and her mother and imagined them in New York, wearing beautiful clothes and eating bright yellow eggs. I mulled over Mami’s words that men were always up to one pocavergüenza or another. That, Mami claimed in one of her bean-shucking discussions with Doña Lola, was men’s nature. And Doña Lola had nodded and then shook her head so that I wasn’t sure if she was agreeing with Mami or not. I wondered if it were true, as Mami claimed when she and Papi fought, that he saw other women behind her back. And if he did, was it because he didn’t love us? My eyes watered, my mouth filled with a salty taste, but if I cried, Abuela would hear me and think I didn’t want to be with her. From the stoop, I could hear the rhythmic clicks of her rosary beads and the soft hum of her voice reciting prayers whose music was familiar to me, but whose words I’d never learned. And I wished that I knew how to pray, because then I could speak to God and maybe He or one of His saints could explain things to me. But I didn’t know any prayers, because Mami didn’t believe in churches or holy people, and Papi, even though he read the Bible and could lead novenas for the dead, never talked to us about God. I determined not to cry, because if she asked me, I didn’t want to tell Abuela why. But the pressure was too much, and as the tears came, I looked around for something with which to hurt myself so that when Abuela asked, I could show her a reason for the tears. I put my hand in the doorjamb and slammed the door shut. The pain burned across my knuckles, through my fingers, and a scream, louder than I had intended, brought Abuela to my side. She hugged me, walked me to the sink, where she poured cool water over my hand, dried it with the soft hem of her dress, rubbed Vick’s VapoRub on the pain, and held me against her bosom. She half carried me to her chair, pulled me onto her lap, and rocked me back and forth, back and forth, humming a lullaby I’d never heard. Later Abuela wrapped my hand in a white rag and tucked me into bed. She shuttered the house and, after making sure I was settled, went into her bedroom, where I heard her moving about, the springs of her bed creaking as she sat on it and got up again, sat, got up, until it seemed as if she were rocking herself to sleep. My hand throbbed. I shushed the pain by rubbing the inside of my arm and told myself that next time I shouldn’t slam the door so hard. The chinks on the window slats changed color, from russet to an intensely dark blue that deepened into impenetrable darkness, until it didn’t matter if my eyes were open or closed. I dropped into a solid sleep unbroken by the distant sounds of cars and barking dogs, or the careful unlatching of the door when my grandfather came back in the middle of the night, fed himself from whatever was left in the kitchen, went into his own room, slept, and woke up and left before the sun rose. It was days before I realized he lived in the small room near the front door, the only room in the house unadorned by Abuela’s crochet.

 Abuelo slept in a narrow metal cot with a thin mattress wrapped in white sheets. There was a small table and a chair in his room, and on the wall a picture of Jesus wearing the same exasperated expression as the statues in the mercado, his wounded hands palm up as if he were saying, “Not again!” A coconut palm frond knotted into a cross was nailed above the picture. By comparison, Abuela’s room was opulent, with its double bed, thick mattress, four bedposts from which to tie the mosquito netting, pillows, and a small crocheted rug. Her dresser held a brush and comb, an altar to the Virgin and Child, a rosary, a Bible, candles, a missal, a small bottle filled with holy water, a picture of Papa Pio the Pope, and cards on which were printed prayers to saints with names like San Francisco, Santa Ana, Santa Bárbara, and San José. Papi had told me that Abuela didn’t know how to read, and I wondered what words looked like to her. Did she recognize any of them? Or were they just a pattern, like crochet stitches? After the first night, she closed the doors and windows right after supper but didn’t make me go to bed. I stayed up reading the day-old newspaper Abuelo left behind or traced the flower patterns on paper napkins with a ballpoint pen. One rainy afternoon Abuela pulled out her needlework basket. “Would you like to learn?” she asked timidly, as if she’d been working up the courage to ask. “Sí, I would!” I had looked closely at the elaborate motifs of her tablecloths and doilies and had tried to draw them on lined notebook paper or on flattened grocery bags. I had sat mesmerized in the almost holy silence in which she worked, as she wove the needle in and out of stitches, forming pictures with thread. She found a needle with a large hook and had me sit on the stoop, between her legs, so that she could look over my head and adjust my fingers as she helped me guide the thread in and out of the loops. She taught me how to count stitches, how to make chains that became rows, how to join rounds, when to fill in, and when to build space around stitches. After a while, I learned why the silence in which she worked seemed so magical. To crochet well, I had to focus on the work, had to count and keep track of when and where I increased or decreased stitches, and keep a picture in my head of what the finished cloth should look like, all the while estimating how much cotton thread it would take, and making sure when I ran out of one spool, that the other was joined in as seamlessly as possible. Sounds dwindled into dull, distant murmurs, backgrounds receded into a blur, and sensations waned as I slid under the hypnotic rhythm of a hook pulling up thread, the finished work growing into my palm until its very weight forced me to stretch it out on my lap and look, and admire, and be amazed at what my hands had made. Abuelo was a quiet man who walked with his head down, as if he had lost something long ago and was still trying to find it. He had sparse white hair and eyes the color of turquoise. When he spoke, it was in a low rasp, in the jíbaro dialect, his lips in an apologetic half smile. His hands were rough, the nails yellowed and chipped, the fingertips scarred. He left the house before dawn, pushing before him a cart he had fashioned from pieces of plywood and bicycle parts. At the produce market he stacked a pyramid of oranges on the top and kept two more sackfuls in the cabinet underneath. He spent his days at the corner of Calle San Cristóbal in Old San Juan, peeling oranges with his pocket knife and scooping out a triangular hole through which tourists could suck the sweet juice. Each orange brought him five cents. He slipped the nickels into his right-hand pocket, to jingle as he walked home at the end of the day, the pocket sagging against his thigh. Evenings when I heard the rattle of his cart I ran out to open the garden gate for him, and each time, he searched the lower cabinet to see if he had any oranges left. There was always one in the farthest corner, and once he’d secured his cart against the side of the house, he sat on the stoop and peeled it for me in one long ribbon that curled and whirled and circled on itself orange, white, orange.

 Sunday morning before breakfast Abuela handed me my pique dress, washed and ironed. “We’re going to Mass,” she said, pulling out a small white mantilla, which I was to wear during the service. “Can we have breakfast first, Abuela. I’m hungry.” “No. We have to fast before church. Don’t ask why. It’s too complicated to explain.” I dressed and combed my hair, and she helped me pin the mantilla to the top of my head. “All the way there and back,” she said, “you should have nothing but good thoughts, because we’re going to the house of God.” I’d never been to church and had never stopped to classify my thoughts into good ones and bad ones. But when she said that, I knew what she meant and also knew bad thoughts would be the only things on my mind all the way there and back. I tried to look as holy as possible, but the white mantilla tickled my neck and the sides of my face. I wished I didn’t have to wear it, and that was a bad thought, since all the women and girls walking in front of us wore theirs without any complaints. I love my mother, my father, all my sisters and brothers, my abuela and abuelo, all my cousins, the governor of Puerto Rico, Doña Lola, my teacher. A boy went by too fast and bumped into me, so I bumped him back, and that was bad, because Jesus said we should turn the other cheek, which seemed stupid, and there went another bad thought. I counted all the squares on the sidewalk up to the steps of the church, then I counted the steps, twenty-seven. No bad thoughts. The church was cool, dark, and sweet smelling. Abuela dipped her fingers into a bowl at the entrance and crossed herself. I dipped my fingers, and there was nothing but water. I tasted it, and she gave me a horrified look and crossed herself. She took my hand and walked me down the aisle lined with pews. When we came to the front, she half knelt, looking up to the altar, and crossed herself again before sliding in to take her seat. I did the same thing. We were early. Music came from somewhere behind us. When I turned around to see, Abuela leaned down and whispered, “Face forward. You should never look behind you in church.” I was about to ask why, but Abuela put her fingers to her lips and shushed me as everyone stood up. I couldn’t see anything except the back of the man in front of me. He wore a wrinkled brown suit that stretched into folds around his waist because he was so fat. That must have been a bad thought. The church’s windows were of colored glass, each window a scene with Jesus and his cross. The two I could see without turning my head were beautiful, even though Jesus looked like He was in a lot of pain. The priest said something, and everyone knelt. The altar had an enormous Jesus on his cross at the center, the disciples at his feet. Tall candles burned in steps from the rear of the altar to the front, where the priest, dressed in purple and yellow robes, moved his hands up and down and recited poetry that everyone in the church repeated after him. Two boys wearing white lace tunics helped him, and I was jealous, because their job seemed very important. Envy, I knew, was a bad thought. I counted the times people stood up, knelt down, stood up. That didn’t seem right. I shouldn’t be in church counting things. I should feel holy, blessed. But I got an itch in the space between my little toe and the sole of my foot. I scraped my shoe against the kneeling bench on the floor. The itch got worse. We knelt again, so I leaned back and took the shoe off to scratch my foot. But I had to get up, because the person next to me wanted to get through. And other people in the same pew got up and squeezed past me, kicking my shoe toward the aisle in the process. Abuela leaned down. “I’m going to take communion. You wait right here.” As soon as she was gone, I slid over to the end of the pew and looked up the aisle. No shoe. I felt for it with my foot all along under the pew but couldn’t find it. It was wrong to look back in church, so it seemed that it would be worse to look down. But I didn’t want Abuela to come back and find me with one shoe missing. The people who went up to the altar knelt in front of the priest so he could put something into their mouths. As soon as Abuela knelt, I dove under the pew and looked for my shoe. It was under the pew behind us so I crawled under ours, over the kneeling bench, and stretched to get the shoe. I crawled up just as Abuela came down the aisle. I knelt piously, my hands in prayer, and stared in front of me, trying to look like I was having nothing but the very best thoughts. Abuela went into the pew in front of me, looked over, seemed confused, got out, then knelt next to me. “How foolish. I thought we were one pew up,” she whispered. When everyone had come back, I realized the man with the wrinkled brown suit was two pews up, and I looked up at Jesus on his cross and prayed, “Please, Jesus, don’t let her find out I moved during the service.” Which I knew was a bad thought. I packed my clothes and put the doily I had made for Mami into a corner of my small bag. Abuela made fish head soup with plantain dumplings, and we ate some for lunch. “Don’t take your dress off,” she said. “When he comes to pick you up, Pablito might be in a hurry to get back.” But Papi didn’t come. Sunday stretched long and hot, through siesta time. Abuela made coffee in the late afternoon, and we sat at the table with a stack of soda crackers. “He’ll probably come for dinner,” she said. But the blue haze of evening shrouded the street, stifled sounds, and sent everyone indoors to their secrets, and Papi didn’t come. Abuela went in to say her prayers. “He must have been held up. Why don’t you change into something comfortable.” I took off my white pique dress, which was no longer clean and starched. I thought, The minute I change clothes he’s going to show up. But he didn’t, and when Abuela came out from her prayers, we sat by the door, working our needles in, around, up, and out, silently making patterns with thread that might have told a story had either one of us known how to transform our feelings into shape. Instead, she worked an altar cloth she’d promised Father David, and I added red flowers to the doily I’d made for Mami. And neither one of us said what we both knew. That Papi wasn’t coming. That perhaps the person he had to see the Sunday before needed him again, and he went there, and maybe that person needed him so much that he had forgotten about us, just like he sometimes forgot about Mami chasing after babies in Macún. We worked our crochet until it was too dark to see, until after Abuelo had brought his cart into the yard and tied it up against the fence, until he’d peeled an orange in one long ribbon, until we’d closed up the house and gone into our separate rooms and had wrapped ourselves in the white cotton sheets edged with crocheted scallops. And I thought about how many nights Mami had left food warming on the ashes of the fogón, how often she’d sat on her rocking chair, nursing a baby, telling us to be still, that Papi would be coming any minute, but in the morning he wasn’t there and hadn’t been. I thought about how she washed and pressed his clothes until they were new-looking and fresh, how he didn’t have to ask where anything was because nothing he ever wore stayed dirty longer than it took Mami to scrub it against the metal ripples of the washboard, to let it dry in the sun so that it smelled like air. I wondered if Mami felt the way I was feeling at this moment on those nights when she slept on their bed alone, the springs creaking as she wrestled with some nightmare, or whether the soft moans I heard coming from their side of the room were stifled sobs, like the ones that now pressed against my throat, so that I had to bury my face in the pillow and cry until my head hurt.

 Every night, right after dinner, Abuela slipped into her room, put on a faded green nightgown embroidered with small yellow flowers, and undid her hair. Two twisted ropes of hair fell past her knees, one over each shoulder. She combed first one side, then the other, loosening the ropes into strands of white, gray, and a few black hairs, her fingers weaving in and out of them until each side looked like a serene waterfall against a pale forest. “Our Father, who art in heaven ... ,” I repeated after Abuela. “Hallowed be thy name ...” “What does that mean?” She raked her fingers through her hair, fluffing it, untangling the knots. “It means His name is holy.” “Hallowed be thy name ...” “Thy kingdom come ...” Abuela fed me the prayer in short phrases that echoed the rhythm I’d heard when Papi led novenas and when she clicked her beads at night before bed. It was like learning a song. If I left something out, the rhythm didn’t work. “Give us this day our daily bread....” I imagined a long loaf of pan de agua, the kind the baker made with a coconut frond down the center of its crunchy crust. “And forgive us our trespasses ...” “What does that mean?” “We’re asking God to forgive any sins we might commit by mistake.” “Forgive us our trespasses ...” “And lead us not into temptation ...” She didn’t wait for me to ask: “That means we’re asking God to keep us from sinning.” When I’d repeated the prayer several times and could recite most of it without stumbling, she taught me how to cross myself. “Cross your thumb over your pointing finger, like this.... No, not with that hand.... You must always use your right hand,” she said, holding it out to make sure I knew the difference. “Why?” “Because the left hand is the hand of the Devil.” I wondered if that meant the Devil had two left hands but didn’t dare ask because just saying the word Devil made Abuela drop her voice into a near whisper, as if the Devil were in the next room. “Then you go straight down to your heart.... Then across ... No, this side first.” I’d seen women cross themselves so many times, it had never occurred to me there was a right way and a wrong way to do it. ”Then you kiss the cross on your fingers.” I did as she showed me. “You must always cross yourself before and after saying the Lord’s Prayer. Let me see if you can say the whole thing.” I tried to look grave, eyes down, face expressionless, the way people in velorios looked when Papi led them in prayer. I lowered my voice to a near mumble, quieted my lips until they barely moved, and let the rhythm guide the words out and up to the sky where Abuela said Papa Dios, my other Father, lived. “¡Hola, Negrita!” Mami wore a printed dress she called a muumuu, which stretched across her pregnant belly like a round plot of exotic flowers. I couldn’t get enough of her to hug, so I clung to her hand as she huffed up the three steps into Abuela’s house. “How are you, Doña Margara?” she asked cheerily, as if she knew the answer. “Oh, I’m fine, m’hija, just fine,” Abuela said, pulling out a chair for Mami to sit in. “How about some lemonade?” “Wonderful!” Mami’s cheeks were flushed, partly from the hot walk down the street, partly because she’d colored them. Her hair was twisted up and held with pins that she kept pushing in so they wouldn’t fall out. “I hope you don’t mind that I came to bring Negi home. I’ve missed her.” Now that she was sitting, I could hug her around the neck, kiss her soft, powdered face, smell the fruity perfume she put on for special occasions. “I missed you too, Mami.” I whispered, and she pulled me close and kissed the top of my head. Abuela brought in a pitcher of lemonade and three glasses. “I thought Pablito was coming on Sunday. We waited all afternoon....” Mami’s face flashed into the hard expression I’d come to expect when she talked about Papi. “You know how he is,” she said to his mother. Abuela nodded and poured us lemonade. “Who’s watching the children?” “My neighbor’s daughter.” “Who?” I asked. Mami turned to me as if she’d just remembered who I was. “Gloria.” She sipped her drink. “Guess what? We have electricity!” “Really?” “Yes! We only use the quinqués if the lights go out.” She turned to Abuela. “Which is every time the wind blows hard.” They laughed. I leaned against Mami and sipped my drink, listening to them talk about people whose names were familiar, but whom I hadn’t met—Flor, Concha, Chia, Candida, Lalo. They talked about whose daughter had run off with whose son, who’d had babies, who had died, the price of groceries, the hot weather, the rickety buses between San Juan and Santurce. They talked as if they were good friends, and I wondered how that could be since they seldom saw each other. They came back to the subject of Macún, how things seemed to be better now that we had electricity and running water was weeks away. “Of course,” Mami said, “with Pablo gone all the time it’s hard to know ...” Her face darkened again. She looked down at the floor, rubbed circles on her belly. The silence around her was total, not rich and full like Abuela’s when she crocheted, but empty and sad and lonesome. “Negi,” Abuela said, “go take a shower and get ready so that your mother doesn’t have to wait for you.” I didn’t want to leave Mami, but Abuela’s eyes were stern, and with her head, she signaled in the direction of the bathroom. I set my glass down and went. Although I leaned against the bathroom door, trying to hear what they said, I only caught snatches: “always been that way ... ,” “upsets the kids ... ,” “think of yourself .. ,” “alone with children ... ,” “make it work ... ,” “don’t know how....” And, in a louder voice, “Negi, why don’t we hear water running?” I opened the faucets and let cool water wash over me, wishing it could melt away the fear that made the thumps of my heart louder than usual. When I came out, my hair dripping, the tips of my fingers wrinkled, Mami and Abuela still sat across from each other. Abuela’s face was sad, and she looked older, as if years, rather than minutes, had passed since I last saw her. Mami’s rouge was streaked, and her eyes were swollen. She pretended to smile, and I pretended not to see it as I went by wrapped in a towel, stepping lightly, as if the floor would break under my weight. I dressed to their murmurs in the other room, their voices soft but strained, and I wondered if men ever talked like this, if their sorrows ever spilled into these secret cadences. I combed my hair, put on my socks, buckled my leather shoes. And still they talked, and I couldn’t understand a word they said. But their pain bounced off the walls and crawled under my skin, where it settled like prickly bristles. It seemed to me then that remaining jamona could not possibly hurt this much. That a woman alone, even if ugly, could not suffer as much as my beautiful mother did. I hated Papi. I sat on the bed in his mother’s house and wished he’d die, but as soon as the thought flashed, I slapped my face for thinking such a thing. I packed my bag and stepped into the room where Mami and Abuela sat. When they looked up at me, it seemed as if we were all thinking the same thing. I would just as soon remain jamona than shed that many tears over a man.