I looked down from the second floor of my apartment. Even through the rusted metal bars of the fire escape, her ethereal beauty was evident. She wore a brown fur coat, skin tight leggings and a V-neck deeper than the Caribbean Sea. It was as though the street lamps were all centered towards her. Her long blonde hair looked golden, her hazel eyes were a river of honey, her body was a perfect hourglass, and her smile resembled your stereotypic Latina on a Colgate commercial. I guess you could say that she was la rubia that they sang about in typical bachata songs. She stood there, eyes gazing up at me, and all the criticism about her I had endured from family members disappeared. She’s my mom nonetheless, and no matter all the wrongs she’s done to me, and how seldom I see her, it’s a bond that you can’t shake off. The warm orange street lamps casted shadows over her newly done breasts, and they were inviting of the motherly love she was trying to present by calling my name.
"Shirley!" I heard the raspy, alcoholic voice scream my name. I was ten at the time, or ten and a half as I liked to emphasize. Eager to see her after not having been able to for months, I threw my homework on the white pull-out couch my aunt bought me. By comparison, my aunt wore an innocent look on her face that made her look younger, which was emphasized by her freckles. She has long black hair, pale skin and a slightly rounder body compared to my mother’s voluptuous one by cause of liposuction. I was living with her due to the fact that my mother enjoyed going to la discoteca more than she did being my mother. Though I didn't know that at the time, I always assumed she was at work. With no one willing to answer my questions, I assumed it to be better for her to be at work than for me to be with bad company. I shot up from the couch after I heard the familiar voice in the distance. My green, plaid kilt uniform skirt lifted as I left my student responsibilities behind me. I felt my smile forming on my face the second I saw her. “Mami, come down! Te tengo un regalo,” she yelled up to me. I ran away from the window and towards my closet near the entrance. I looked for my favorite sneakers, Air Jordans 3, stuffed my foot inside and was halfway out the door when I heard my aunt yelling behind me.
“Where do you think you’re going?” She demanded
“Mami is downstairs!” I said innocently, “I think she got me the Sidekick ‘08 that I asked her for.” As I said it I pictured myself flipping the green and black phone, playing the famous Bob’s Journey to the Center of the Earth. “No, you’re staying right here, go do your homework.” I frowned and retreated back to my designated place, where my fifth grade math homework awaited for me. There were only two flights between us, but the distance seemed immeasurable. It was as if she was dangling off a cliff, and I couldn’t save her from herself. If it were up to my aunt she would have stepped on her fingers and let her continue falling in the abyss that she had created for herself.
Two hours passed and I could still hear her yelling my name, begging me to come down. Her voice was raw, pain stricken. It was almost as though she could feel the pain of me being pulled from her umbilical cord where I would then be casted down a cliff and into a body of water in the same way that Mayan children were sacrificed. Surely the neighbors checked their windows to see what all the ruckus was about, where they then came to the conclusion “Oh, it’s only Yarina.”
As I tried to return to my homework, my teardrops stained the existence of my answers with that of its own. Finally my aunt’s husband, who looked more Dominican than he did Indian, gave in and told me it was okay for me to go down. I ran down the two flights of stairs, through the poorly illuminates lobby and out the door to where she stood. It didn’t take long for me to notice her new boyfriend at the time, a Mexican man who she was probably dating because he made good enough money and owned an Escalade. He was leaning on said Escalade, and while short, his lack of height was emphasized by the size of his car. He wore the, barely-smiling, Mona Lisa smirk on his face, and it was evident that he was tired of waiting around for my mother. Before I could say anything to my mom, my aunt poked her head out the window.
“Shirley, get back inside.” She started. “My house my rules. Yarina, tu sabes que yo no te quiero ver. I’m taking care of your daughter, the least you can do is have some respect and not show up around here, you do nothing for her. Siempre andas por tu cuenta.” My mom yelled back at her, saying a few words that were not quite so nice. The back and forth between them startled me. The only thing that really separated them were the two flights of stairs, but had they been in the same room, they would have lashed at each other, two female lionesses trying to assert their dominance. My mom is two years older than my aunt, but one would think she isn’t. She is brash, loud, and the majority of her vocabulary consists of swear words.
My aunt, usually a delicate off-pink flower, always had to compete with the more dangerous, deceiving, thorn filled rose. Seeing them argue only brought more tears to my eyes. My tears traced the rounds of my nose and the outline off my face, falling off the edge of my chin. I hated being in that environment, it only brought memories from when I was younger and we all lived in the same apartment. My mom would beat my aunt and pull her hair, as my aunt tried to protect me from experiencing my mother’s lashes for my own.
This was always the case. At the age of fifteen my aunt would take care of me while my mom was out and about chasing new boyfriends, fake friends, and the next party. Ten years later she still made me her responsibility, and like she said, her house, her rules. Needless to say I wasn’t able to keep the Sidekick ‘08, and I had to get over the fantasy off holding the phone in my hand and flipping it.
I went upstairs, leaving my mother under the street lamps that now painted her under dark shadows instead of a vibrant glow. I couldn’t understand the negative portrayal of her because of how much I idolized her. But I understand it now. She’s still not mother of the year, and I highly doubt she ever will be. The only medal I can give her is one for ethics because she chose to not have an abortion even though she got pregnant with me at seventeen, the stretchmarks on her stomach stretching more than the distance between Villa Tapia and Dyckman.
If there’s any reason why she’s a failure as a mother is because she had me too young. She was driven by the party life, tormented by middle child syndrome, and sought validation from men. To be thrown a responsibility like motherhood unexpectedly left her defenseless. But at thirty-six years old this shouldn’t still be the case. Even though I’m the darkest one in the family, she is the black sheep, ostracized because of her life choices and unbalanced priorities. During gatherings she sat alone because the only person that could stand the sight of her bleached blonde hair is my grandfather. She would come dressed in her best clothes that she bought with the money she made bartending (at least that the job I was told she had). She wore her perfectly tattooed eyeliner, more precise than the Pharos, expensive makeup and bougie clothing. Her heals stretched longer than the distance between Haiti and our pueblito. Despite her forceful attempt to fit in and look her best, the discomfort evident in her face. She would sit with a fake smile on her face as she tried to combat the fact that no one in the family ever wanted to see her. She had to compete with her two sister who were married with good professions and a stable life. Her attempts of making it look like she had everything together was by always looking the best that she could, slimmest body, most expensive name brand clothing and hair straighter than the rulers used by Dominicans teachers to punish their students.
Over time my family got to convince me about her worthlessness, such that the mere sight of her, or the utterance of her name infuriated me. Every characteristic of her was animalistic. Ella es una bestia, my grandmother would assure. Soon enough she stopped showing up at family functions. She sent Christmas gifts, but they were all returned to her. She lived alone in her own misery, and her validation seeking shifted from men to anyone who could give her attention.
Her insesent need for validation lead a string of domestically violent relationships. She would get her boyfriend imprisoned only to bail him out with the money she made bartending, or whatever other means she went through. She would lay in bed crying about the man she just lost, show up at the precinct and beg for his forgiveness. A woman as brash, angry and as selfish as she was docile in the presence of who she was in love with at the time. The lion tattoo she carries on her back spoke nothing to her fierceness when she was helplessly falling over the next nigga.
When I was seven, we all lived in the same apartment, before everyone moved out to either Jersey or the Bronx and left it to my aunt and her husband.I stood at one end of our hallway and my mom stood at the other. She was fighting off the blows that Tony, my younger sister’s father, was directing her way. The hallway stretched before me like an endless tunnel, and I couldn’t do anything to reach and save my mother. The sound of the smoke detector signaling that the batteries were dying was masked by the yelling in Spanish and the constant exchange of curse words between the two of them. He threw a knife that missed her and barely missed me. Memories like this trouble me and lead me to understand that the reason my mother is the black sheep is because she seeks validation in harmful men rather than caring for her family. She can disappear for months on end, and abandon all responsibilities without ever second guessing that she has three daughters that need to be cared for.
When I was fifteen, and my mother was thirty-one, she had taken my sister and I to the beach. I expected it to be a time for the family to bond, something I always yearned for and would scribble countless journal entire on whenever I would visit her in the Bronx on the weekends. When we arrived, all her friends from the block, Ellwood, were there. They sat around a cooler filled with Heineken and Coronas, pansas out and bachata blasting. She walked up to them and said, “Llego la caballota!” dancing her way into the group. Her tattoos, the lion tramp stamp and the naked lady riding a bull under her neck, danced under sun. She proceeded to inform them about her nineteen year old boyfriend in the Dominican Republic when she thought I wasn’t listening. She said he was tall, built, packing, and had a sleeve of tribal tattoos on his right arm, he was “the best she ever had.”
Not being able to deal with the situation anymore I went into the ocean. The water was so dark and dirty that I couldn’t see my own hand the second I submerged it. I swam a few laps in my one piece bathing suit and pink shorts, as I tried to hide the body my mother had given me and men would praise. After a few minutes of solitary, Steven, an old family friend, disrupted my peace. He approached me and asked me to be his girlfriend, but I smiled awkwardly and said no. I know now it was he wanted to “hit it and quit it,” but when he asked I couldn't help but blush. He was only a year older than me, but we hadn't seen each other since I was eight and he was nine, and even then I was attracted to him. By the end of the day, I told my mom that while I was swimming Steven asked me to be his girlfriend. Steven and I grew up together, but now that my body had blossomed into that of a woman, his interest in me peaked. My mother looked at me as if I had claimed that Jesus Christ was not God. “Tu no vas ser novia de un maldito tiguere,” She warned. The word tiguere automatically brings the image of hood niggas. Just a bunch of good for nothing Dominicans from the block that are womanizers with no goals. I looked down in shame. I was finally happy that a cute boy had shown interest in me, but it came from sexualization. She looked away from me and looked out into the road, lost in her thoughts. Was she lost in her history, or looking out in the distance hoping she doesn't see me going down the man-chasing road that she took?
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