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

who lingered near us holding two plastic bags with dresses as conservative and dull as the one Mami held. The yellow dress was luminous, made me feel special and pretty.
    â€œYou said I could wear any color,” I reminded Mami, whose shapeless black dress hung from her shoulders unadorned, skimming her bust and hips without accentuating their fullness. Her black clothes, her belly still swollen from childbirth, her legs striped with varicose veins made her appear solid and heavy, earthbound.

    The neckline of my yellow dress was cut above the gentle bumps of my growing breasts. The sash tied around a skinny waist, and the full skirt, made fuller by a built-in crinoline, appeared to lift me off my feet, off the dirty, scratchy rug in front of the narrow mirror in Dolores’s Ladies Shoppé. Standing next to each other, Mami and I looked like darkest night next to brightest morning, each determined to get her way, knowing one would have to cede to the other, waiting until the last possible moment of uncertainty before she surrendered.
    â€œFine, take the yellow dress,” she sighed, her voice brittle, exhausted, sad.

    â€œI don’t know what’s with you,” Mami muttered as we walked back to Ellery Street. “You’ve changed.”
    I hugged the plastic bag with my yellow dress. “I’m getting older, Mami.” I chuckled, to make light of it, so she wouldn’t accuse me of talking back.
    â€œOlder, yes,” she continued, unappeased. “And stubborn, and disrespectful.” She looked at me from the corner of her eye. “Don’t think just because you’re going to that school for blanquitos I’m going to put up with any pocavergüenzas from you.” She turned the corner, and I dawdled after, trapped between thoughts.
    When Mami and I went to the welfare or unemployment office, a box in the forms asked us to identify our race: White, Black, Other. Technically, Mami was white. Her skin was creamy beige, lacked the warm brown tones her children with Papi had inherited. My memory of my paternal grandparents was that they were white, but Papi and some of his sisters and brothers were dark brown, evoking a not-too-distant African ancestor. Franky, Mami’s son with Francisco, was lighter-skinned than the seven older brothers and sisters. He had his father’s pale complexion, dark eyes and hair.
    When I had to indicate my race, I always marked “Other,”
because neither black nor white was appropriate. Pretending to be white when I was clearly not was wrong. If I could “pass,” which I couldn’t, there was always the question Puerto Ricans asked when someone became too arrogant about the value of their white skin: “Y tu abuela, ¿donde está?” Asking “Where is your grandmother?” implied that in Puerto Rico no one really knew the total racial picture and claims of racial purity were suspect.
    I was not oblivious to race in Puerto Rico. I’d noticed that white skin was coveted by those who didn’t have it and that those who did looked down on those who didn’t. Light-skinned babies in a family were doted on more than dark ones. “Good” hair was straight, not kinky, and much more desirable than the tightly coiled strands of “bad” hair, which at its tightest was called pasitas, raisins. Blue or green eyes proclaimed whiteness, even when surrounded by dark skin.
    I was neither black nor white; I was trigueña, wheat-colored. I had “good” hair, and my features were neither African nor European but a combination of both. In Puerto Rican schools I had not stood out because of the color of my skin or my features. I never had either the darkest or the lightest skin in a room. But when we lived in the city, I was teased for being a jíbara from the country. When in the country, my city experience made me suspicious to others.
    At junior high schools 49 and 33 in Brooklyn, I was