The Time It Snowed in Puerto Rico Read Online Free

me. I tried not to talk to her at all. That was easy. I just spoke English. She didn’t understand. It was a language only Papi, Omar, and I shared, and that suited me perfect. For a little bit she tried to learn, using words that Omar taught her: “Verdita, please.” “Verdita, come.” “Verdita, need.” But I didn’t want her to learn, so I laughed at her pronunciation and told her in Spanish that she was saying it all wrong, even though she wasn’t. I did that until she finally gave up. I told Omar to stop teaching her or I’d put hot peppers in his bed.
    When Mamá spoke to me in Spanish, I answered in English. It made her so mad. She stomped around in a stream of Ay, Dios Mio -es and pleas to God to help her deal with her burdens. I ignored her. Papi was working on the finca a lot and staying out late at the jíbaros bar, talking politics. When he was home, I played innocent, pretending not to understand why Mamá was so upset. She insisted I was misbehaving and should be punished, but I made my eyes real big and said, “No, Papi. I’ve been good.” I even sounded more “good” in English. Papi, confused, simply threw up his hands and said he didn’t understand women.Then he told me, “I have my eye on you,” and it made me nervous because I knew he did.
    One afternoon the heat forced Omar and me outside, where there was a little bit of an island breeze. Omar pulled out the dominoes and lined them up on their ends. There was nothing else to do, so I helped him. But after a while I got bored with the lines of black and white dots, their neat rows forming mazes on the terra-cotta tiles.
    “Hey,” I whispered. The windows were open to the kitchen, where Mamá was already making a mixta of arroz con pollo for dinner. Olive oil and cilantro sofrito simmering with the chicken in the pot. It made me hungry. “You want to get some sesame seed candy at the bar?” I asked Omar, and jingled the coins in my pocket. The jíbaros bar down the road sold it, but Papi forbade us to go there.
    Of all the stuff Omar forgot about Puerto Rico, he hadn’t forgotten Papi’s rules. “Tío Faro said we can’t.”
    Obviously he only forgot the everyday stuff, like that you eat the slippery seeds in passionfruit, you don’t spit them out, and of course, what con-flei was. Sometimes I wondered if he was just pretending, but couldn’t understand why anybody would do that.
    “I dare you.”
    “Tío said no.”
    “I know. Pero, soy aburrido” I whined.
    “Huh? What’d you say?”
    “This is boring” I repeated in English, and pushed over a domino, sending a part of his column into a cascade.
    “Ay! Verdita! I was setting them up.”
    I stood and kicked over the rest. “Careculo.” Buttface.
    “What did you call me?” Omar asked.
    “What? You forgot your name? Ay Dios mio, lo siento .”
    “Maybe I’ll just go inside and ask Titi Venusa what you said.”
    Through the horizontal window slats, slivers of Mamá moving around the kitchen gathering ingredients for supper. “Mamaguebo,” I whispered under my breath.
    “You suck balls too,” said Omar.
    “Oh! You do know what I’m saying. I’m glad to see you’re remembering again.”
    Down the gravel road from our house, the Lopezes’ purple-painted home bordered the tarred main street. Señora Lopez had just finished peeling her plantains on the porch and had gone inside. There was no one around to see us. Omar stood up and followed my gaze. “Candy, huh?”
    “Sí. Sometimes Papi brings sesame bars home when he stops for a drink after work. It’s the best. Better than the stuff we buy in town. Crunchy. Sweet.” I almost had him. “And, you know, I dared you.”
    The brown edges of his eyes glinted gold.
    “They don’t have them in D.C.,” Omar admitted. “Well, not the good kind. There’s one Latino store that sells them, but they’re always stale.”
    “Stale!” I shook my head for effect. “Not ours. They’re fresh here.”
    “Okay.