When I Was Puerto Rican

When she is four years old, Esmeralda and her family move to Macun, a Puerto Rican town. The new house is made of corrugated tin and the conditions are cramped. The children sleep in hammocks and there are many repairs to be done. Esmeralda tells the reader that she is called “Negi,” because of her dark skin. Her father is shown to be a handy, useful man, and he allows her to help with home repairs.

While she helps him, she reflects on her desire to become a jibara, the word for people who lived in the country. Her mother scolds her, even saying “Don’t be such a jibara” when she acts unsophisticated. But Esmeralda loves the romance of the country life and its simple style. The jibaros care about what truly matters, in her opinion.

When her father asks her to carry a sheet of wood during repairs, Esmeralda finds that it is covered in termites that swarm over her. They bite and sting her. Rather than feeling fear, she believes that she has been punished by some karmic force for disobeying her mother, who told her to stay out of her father’s way.

She and her sister, Delsa, check on a hen to see if it has laid any eggs. When they approach, the hen is frightened and cowers. Mami arrives and demands to know what they are doing. When they say they just wanted to see the hen, she says they have frightened it so much that it will no longer give them eggs. She raps Esmeralda on the head with her knuckles and scolds her. They go to complain to Papi, but he is not sympathetic. He says they knew better than to cross their mother. Esmeralda is angry at his indifference, and also at Mami’s harshness. She is especially upset that Mami was angry with Delsa, who is smaller and frightens easily.

At the chapter’s end, the girls awake to Mami’s moans. She says she is going to have a baby. Esmeralda and Delsa are told that they will be spending the day at Doña Zenas. For the first time, Esmeralda connects her mother’s “sickness” with the births of her other sisters. As she walks away, she looks out to the horizon and feels the inspiration of her favorite jibaro poetry.

The new baby’s name is Hector. One day while Mami is feeding him, Papi tells her that he has to go into town for some things for work. Esmeralda watches them argue as Mami says she needs him to stay home. He is gone for several days. When he returns, Mami makes him dinner and they are quiet, but Esmeralda can tell that her mother is furious. Later she hears them arguing. Her mother implies that he was off with another woman. He denies it, and gets up to leave. Esmeralda is terrified that he’ll disappear again. Delsa, Norma, and Hector all begin crying.

During another argument, Mami accuses him again of seeing another woman, and he again denies it. He asks how he can object to him seeing Margie. After the argument, when Esmeralda asks who Margie is, he says that she is his daughter. Later, Esmeralda is helping him with concrete work. He tells her that Margie is a year older than her, and that her mother does not get along with Margie’s mother. He then tells her that she can’t see Margie because she lives in New York. Mami was not aware of this, and for a time, the fact that “that woman” has left seems to help.

Esmeralda begins to see that her father is blamed for whatever unhappiness exists in her house. The other women refer to men as sinverguenzas, meaning “without shame.” Men are slaves to their longings, which they often indulge with putas, or “whores.” Esmeralda imagines all of the putas out there, dressing in scanty clothes, preparing to lure men to shame.

Esmeralda starts school in the middle of hurricane season. Now that she is getting older, she starts to see that other children, and their parents, have similar problems. She also sees a great deal of fighting, which makes more sense to her than the emotional barbs of her parents.

Her father leaves again. On the fourth day of his absence, she comes from school and sees that her mother has packed everything. She takes the children and they make the long walk to the highway, where they will try to hail a car. Her mother says that they are moving to the city, and that life is going to get better.