Free Almost a Woman : A Memoir (9780306821110) by Esmeralda Santiago

final exams.”
    â€œWe should buy you a graduation dress.”
    I’d given up on anyone noticing that in less than a month I’d be graduating from junior high school. My fifteenth birthday came
and went during the sad times, and it seemed that the same would be true for the last day of school.
    â€œCan we come?” Edna asked.
    â€œNo. You stay here with Tata, we won’t be long.” Before Francisco’s death, Edna and Raymond would have argued, cried, offered to be the best children in the universe if Mami took them along. But now they just looked disappointed.
    â€œI’ll change.” I ran into the front room where two bunk beds, Franky’s crib, and Tata’s cot were lined up in rows. The windows that looked out on the street were open. Delsa, Norma, and Alicia were on the sidewalk jumping double dutch.
    Tata lay on her bed, cuddling Franky, and when I came in, she looked up with a smile. I grabbed a dress from one of the hooks Mami had screwed into the wall because the apartment had no closets. With two towels pinched under the mattress of the top bunk I created a private space in which to change out of my school clothes and put on the cotton dress.
    Mami was in her room, which served as a passage between the front room and the kitchen. Her bed was pressed against the corner under a window that opened to a dark air vent. Four mismatched dressers, with a drawer for each of us and a couple for Mami, lined the walls. She stood in front of the one with a mirror above it combing out her curls.
    â€œWe’ll be back in a couple of hours,” she told Tata as we went out. Edna and Raymond watched us wistfully.
    â€œBring us candy,” Raymond begged as Mami shut the door.
    Delsa, Norma, and Alicia stopped jumping rope when we came down the front stoop. Before they could ask where we were going, Mami scanned the street.
    â€œWhere’s your brother?”
    â€œHe went to the corner,” Alicia answered.
    â€œWhat corner, who said he could wander off like that?”
    â€œHector always does that, Mami. He goes off whenever he wants. . . .” Norma nudged Delsa before she could say more. “He’ll be back soon,” Delsa continued in a subdued voice.

    â€œDon’t stay out here too long,” Mami warned, and walked toward Broadway.
    â€œWhere are you going?” Alicia called.
    â€œTo buy me a graduation dress,” I called back, pleased to see my sisters’ envious expressions. I hurried after Mami, whose decisive steps had already brought her to the corner.
    It was the beginning of the month, when the welfare and social security checks came in the mail. Broadway was crowded with harried shoppers going in and out of stores, or standing at the bus stops with bulging bags at their sides. Overhead, the elevated train rattled by every few minutes, screeched to a stop at the station on Flushing Avenue. The beams holding up the train tracks divided the street into four lanes, the center two, where traffic moved in both directions, and the outside lanes for local traffic, always congested with double-parked cars, slow buses, and delivery trucks.
    I followed Mami into the check-cashing office, a storefront with a huge sign above the door and a group of men loitering on the sidewalk. This time of the month, they were always there, waiting for their women to hand them money from the checks they’d cashed. One kissed and hugged the woman when she gave him money. Another took it without looking at her, stashed the bills in a pocket, and walked away without so much as a thank you. A third started arguing with the woman the minute she came out. She said she needed the money to feed the kids and to pay the rent and electricity. But he wrested it from her, counted it, and took off, leaving her in tears and cursing him while passersby walked a wide circle around her.
    Inside, there were two long lines in front of two men behind thick glass. The