My Beloved World Read Online Free Page B

daughter—asked me what “prostitute” meant, I wasn’t sure either, but I knew it was bad and that they wore very short skirts and very high heels and lots of makeup. We would figure out more of what the occupation entailed by the time the look came into fashion in the late 1960s, distressing our mothers deeply. When Titi Gloria did take us to the movies, it was at a different theater, farther down Southern Boulevard, and usually to see Cantinflas, the brilliant Mexican comic actor whose humor was as deft verbally as Charlie Chaplin’s was physically.
    Our shopping trip would conclude with a final stop to pick up bread and milk at the bodega a few doors down from Abuelita’s. The bodega, a tiny grocery store, is the heart of every Hispanic neighborhood and a lifeline in areas with no supermarkets in walking distance. In those days, the bread they sold was so fresh that its warm smell filled the store. Abuelita would give me
la tetita
, the crunchy end, even though she liked it too, I knew. The bodega was always crowded with the same guys having their daily party. They sat in the corner, reading
El Diario
and arguing about the news. Sometimes one of them would read the
Daily News
and explain to the others in Spanish what it said. I could tell when he was improvising or embellishing the story; I knew what newssounded like in English. Usually, they only read the
Daily News
for the horse-racing results, although they didn’t actually follow the horses. The last three digits of the total bets taken at the track became the winning number for the illegal lottery they played.
    Before Abuelita moved, when she still lived on Kelly Street, there was a bodega right downstairs from her apartment. Sometimes she would send me downstairs by myself with a dollar bill wrapped up in a napkin that had numbers written on it. I had to tell the man whether she wanted to play them straight or in combination, or fifty cents each way. My grandmother counted extraordinary luck among her many gifts. Sometimes she saw the winning numbers in her dreams. I’ve never dreamed of numbers, but I’ve inherited more than my share of luck at games of chance, winning many a stuffed animal, and I’m even better at games like poker, where skill mediates luck. Sometimes Abuelita would see bad luck coming too, and that brought fear to my family. Too often in the past she had been right.
    The stairs up to the third-floor apartment were narrow and dark, and Abuelita didn’t have an elevator to rely on as we did. But in the projects, the elevator was more than a convenience: Junior and I were absolutely forbidden to take the stairs, where my mother had once been mugged and where addicts regularly shot up, littering the scene with needles and other paraphernalia. I can still hear Mami’s warning that we should never, but never, touch those needles or take that junk: if we did, we would surely die.
    Mami and my aunts would often be at Abuelita’s when we got back, crowded into the kitchen for coffee and gossip. Abuelita would join them while I joined Nelson and my other cousins at the bedroom window to make faces at the passengers zipping by on the elevated train that ran just at the height of Abuelita’s apartment. Gallego, my step-grandfather, would be busy with his own preparations for the party, choosing the dance music. His hands trembled slightly with Parkinson’s disease, still in its early stages then, as he lined up the record albums.
    Once a month, my mother and aunts would help Abuelita make
sofrito
, the Puerto Rican vegetable and spice base that enhances the flavors in any dish. Abuelita’s kitchen would turn into a factory, with allof the women cleaning and peeling, slicing and chopping. They would fill up jars and jars of the stuff, enough for a month’s worth of dinners in each of their homes, and enough for the Saturday parties too. On the table, waiting for their turn in the blender, were big piles of chopped peppers, onions, tomatoes: my