When my grandmother eventually realized she had been abandoned, she moved her daughter, Luz, whose name means “the light,” and her mother, Mami Marisol, from their finca—the little farm where my mother drank fresh goat’s milk every morning and my great-grandmother swung chickens by their necks before slicing their heads off—to the city of Old San Juan. There, my Grandma Mari met a man named Julio who wanted to marry her and move to Nueva York. It was the 1930s, the Great Depression. Jobs and food were scarce.
Julio said to my grandmother, “You have to leave the child and your mother behind.”
“I will not,” my grandmother countered. “You want me, you take all of us.”
My grandmother had a plan. Once in Nueva York she would track down Beltran, who, last she heard, was living in El Barrio, Spanish Harlem, the place where everyone from the island went to live—where they were going to live. It would only be a matter of time until she found her lost love. And when they reunited and Beltran saw his then five-year-old daughter’s ivory complexion, Roman nose, and tightly spiraled jet black hair, the exact reflection of his, he would, without any doubt, immediately fall in love with both of them all over again and they would all live together in bliss. At least, that was the way she imagined it. I do not know if Grandma Mari ever bothered to actually get divorced from the long-gone Beltran or not, but back then, who checked? No one cared about the details of yet another deserted mother, child, and vieja, elderly woman.
In December of 1938, after a week on a boat (a large, clean, and nice one, according to my mother), Grandma Mari, Papa Julio (as he insisted on being called), Mami Marisol, and my mother arrived at their new railroad apartment on East 103rd Street between Park and Madison Avenues in El Barrio, New York City. In most ways they were a family, though Papa Julio would never replace the father my mother had never really known. On the contrary, as my mother’s half sisters were born: quiet, heavy Carmen; sharp, willful Ofelia; and the affectionate, inquisitive Dulce, my mother was seldom allowed to play in the Conservatory Garden in Central Park anymore, her refuge where she climbed trees and read books about faraway places; she had to help Mami take care of them. She would now often find the kitchen cabinets locked to her because she ate too much, taking food away from Papa Julio’s real daughters.
And worst of all, she’d endure the unspeakable shame, the vergüenza, the thing that happened here and there in the night that my mother could tell no one. The thing her Mami should have known and should have stopped from happening. Did her Mami not see? Or did she not care? Why didn’t Mami leave that monster and take her and abuela away? But, by now, Mami was plagued with health issues: asthma, migraines, mal de estomago, and distracted,…by her own mother’s withering health,…and by her other three daughters. Maybe, and it made my mother cry to think of this, maybe Mami didn’t want to know. The vergüenza would eventually stop, but my mother never ever forgot she was not Papa Julio’s daughter.
In 1951, when my mother (her Spanish name long replaced by the Americanized “Lucy”) turned eighteen, the age where a girl today is planning her prom outfit and matching her pedicure to the upholstery in the limo, she had been working for three full years. In ninth grade, when she turned fifteen, she was told she would have to leave school to work, when what she had dreamed of doing after graduation was becoming an interpreter at the brand-new United Nations offices and traveling the world. She managed a compromise by entering Julia Richman High School’s co-op program, where she worked one week and went to school the next. It took longer to graduate that way, but Papa Julio got what he wanted, her income, and my mother got what she wanted, a high school diploma.
On a Saturday evening in early December, Lucy and her best friend, Daisy, went to the holiday bazaar at St. Lucy’s Church. It was the Catholic Church and school around the corner on East 104th Street that almost the entire neighborhood attended but not my mother or her half-sisters. My grandmother had grown to prefer the immediacy and intensity of storefront iglesia worship to the restrained hierarchy of the Catholicism in which she was raised.
My mother was naturally shy and cautious and didn’t have a lot of friends. But Daisy Varela, who lived in the building next door and had been my mother’s one close friend since grade school, had no trouble meeting people and dragging my mother out with her. The two were opposites in every way. Daisy was tall, flat, and outgoing; my mother short, curvy, and reserved. Their friendship worked because my mother kept Daisy from getting into “too much” trouble, and Daisy had the unique talent of being able to make my mother laugh.
Daisy’s motive for going to the bazaar was to look for boys; my mother’s, to be out of the apartment. The bazaar took place in the school’s gymnasium, decorated chock-full of post-World War II over-abundance including loads of pine-bough garlands with icicles and red velvet bows; a life-size panorama of a Christmas crèche (with actual livestock); and the main attraction, an entire aisle devoted to holiday food, drink, and lesser gambling games like “Under and Over.” Daisy and Lucy ignored the tables selling treats like pasteles and coquito (virgen, of course, since this was a church), and pushed their way toward the end of the row where Daisy had spotted a group of cute boys.
On their way, they passed two priests selling raffle tickets for five cents each, twenty for one dollar, with prizes of bottled wine, boxed chocolates, various trinkets—and a grand prize that stopped them dead in their tracks. Daisy and Lucy stared in awe at the item sitting on the floor.
It was a massive, carved, dark wood piece of furniture holding a Philco black-and-white TV with a built-in AM radio and Hi-Fi record player, which made even Daisy momentarily forget about boys. It was the pinnacle of entertainment technology, whose offerings, presence, and status could transform the poorest railroad flat into a middle-class temple of conspicuous consumption. No one in the neighborhood could afford to buy it. Hardly anyone in El Barrio could afford any TV. As far as Lucy and Daisy knew, there wasn’t a single one on East 103rd Street at all—yet.
“Let’s get it,” Daisy said. “Let’s try! If I win you can come over all the time and if you win I’ll come over all the time. We can invite boys!”
My mother told me her first reaction was to say no. It was her initial response to everything. Say no and you can never be disappointed. But as she stood in front of the block of wood, glass, and tubes, her mind turned to one thought: This is something Papa Julio could never afford.
“Yes,” she said. “Let’s.” Daisy bought two tickets. Lucy had her weekly co-op pay of $32.50 in her pocketbook and traded an entire dollar for the chance to win.
An hour later my mother’s number was called. Daisy leapt at her screaming, “We won! Lucy, we won!” My mother, who was just as jubilant as Daisy but as usual held her feelings inside, extricated herself from her friend’s embrace, smoothed her hair, and brought her winning ticket to the priests. The TV was delivered that night.
Two days later the priests from the bazaar, one young, one old, knocked on my mother’s apartment door. Both were tall, bespectacled Irishmen straight out of The Bells of St. Mary’s, and both wore their best vow-of-poverty faces. When my mother answered, they said they’d come because she, the petite, baby-faced girl who presented them with the winning ticket, was obviously underage and therefore disqualified from the raffle. They hadn’t wanted to make a scene at the bazaar where everyone seemed so genuinely happy for her, so they decided to allow her to keep the TV over the weekend before taking it back.
My mother said, “I’m not underage. I won.” The priests moved to Plan B.
They then told my mother there had been a terrible mistake. The TV had been meant for the church all along; it should never have been raffled at all. “Don’t you want to donate it to St. Lucy’s so that the poor and indigent can enjoy it, instead of just your family?”
“No,” my mother said. “I won it. We’re poor. It’s mine.”
The priests looked down at my mother, who, after a brief adolescent growth spurt, had remained just a shade over five feet tall.
“But you’re just a child. Children aren’t allowed to gamble; it’s a sin. Let us speak