Mamacita is
the big mama of the man across the street, third-floor front. Rachel says her
name ought to be Mamasota, but I
think that´s mean.
The man saved his money to
bring her here. He saved and saved because she was alone with the baby boy in
that country. He worked two jobs. He came home late and he left early. Every
day.
Then one day Mamacita and the
baby boy arrived in a yellow taxi. The taxi door opened like a waiter´s arm.
Out stepped a tiny pinky shoe, a foot soft as rabbit´s ear, then the thick
ankle, a flutter of hips, fuchsia roses and green perfume. The man had to pull
her, the taxicab driver had to push. Push, pull. Push, pull. Poof!
All at once she bloomed.
Huge, enormous, beautiful to look at from the salmon-pink feather on the tip of
her hat down to the little rosebuds of her toes. I couldn´t take my eyes off
her tiny shoes.
Up, up, up the stairs she
went with the baby boy in a a blue blanket, the man carrying her suitcases, her
lavender hatboxes, a dozen boxes of satin high heels. Then we didn´t see her.
Somebody said because she´s
too fat, somebody because of the three flights of stairs, but I believe she
doesn’t come out because she is afraid to speak English, and maybe this is so
since she only knows eight words. She knows to say: He is not here for when the landlord comes, No speak English if anybody else comes, and Holy smokes. I don’t know where she learned this, but I heard her
say it one time and it surprised me.
My father says when he came
to this country he ate hamandeggs for three months. Breakfast, lunch, and
dinner. Hamandeggs. That was the only word he knew. He doesn’t eat hamandeggs
anymore.
Whatever her reasons, whether
she is fat, or can’t climb the stairs, or is afraid of English, she won’t come
down. She sits all day by the window and plays the Spanish radio show and sings
all the homesick songs about her country in a voice that sounds like a seagull.
Home. Home. Home is a house
in a photograph, a pink house, pink as hollyhocks with lots of startled light.
The man paints the walls of the apartment pink, but it’s not the same, you
know. She still sighs for her pink house, and then I think she cries. I would.
Sometimes the man gets
disgusted. He starts screaming and you can hear it all the way down the street.
Ay, she
says, she is sad.
Oh, he says. Not again.
¿Cuándo, cuándo, cuándo? she asks.
¡Ay caray! We are home.
This is home. Here I am and here I
stay. Speak English. Speak English. Christ!
¡Ay! Mamacita, who does not
belong, every once in a while lets out a cry, hysterical, high, as if he had
torn the only skinny thread that kept her alive, the only road out of that
country.
And then to break her heart forever, the baby boy, who has begun to
talk, starts to sing the Pepsi commercial he heard on T.V.
No speak English, she says to the child who is singing in the language
that sounds like tin. No speak English, no speak English, and bubbles into
tears. No, no, no, as if she can’t believe her ears.
