A Memory

The following remembrance is inspired by the terrific and prolific writer Odilia Rivera Santos who as part of her People for the Ethical Treatment of Puerto Ricans project at http://peopleforpuertorico.blogspot.com has asked writers to - among other suggestions - address their experiences as a Puerto Rican. As such, I'd say the next piece describes more a coming-to-awareness than a coming-of-age.

A Memory
by Richard Torres

I was ten years old and wearing my dark blue Easter suit in the middle of July. The reason? My parents had been invited by friends of theirs to a celebration of their daughter’s christening being held at a community center in what the tabloids at the time referred to as Spanish Harlem but what my family – who all hailed from and/or still lived there – lovingly called El Barrio. So we gift wrapped presents purchased from Alexander’s department store – which I carried in an Abraham & Straus shopping bag – got dressed up in our finest going-out garb and made the lengthy trek from Bushwick, Brooklyn to the aforementioned Barrio. While the summer air was predictably warm, it was nothing compared to the heat inside the windowless community center. I remember instinctively raising my right hand – the one not carrying the gifts – to loosen my blue and yellow striped tie. When my father saw what I was about to do, he quickly grabbed my hand. Shaking his head, he quietly but firmly informed me that ‘we don’t do that.’ He then pointed at the people already in the center. I looked and noted that every man was wearing a suit and tie. (Even the Joe Cuba Sextet which was setting up in the far corner.) Not one had removed his jacket nor had they loosened much less taken off their tie. Understanding, I nodded. My father smiled and lifted me onto a nearby stool in front of a makeshift bar. The bartender smiled at me as I ordered a cream soda on the rocks. The hostess of the evening - and proud mother - came over to us. At my mother’s urging, I handed her the shopping bag. She thanked me with a kiss on my forehead. I smiled my Kool-Aid smile while my mother remarked that I obviously enjoyed that very much. ‘Very much,’ my father repeated with a smile of his own. I realized his smile was a lot like mine. Then Joe Cuba and his band began to play. The song was “A Las Seis.” My father reached for my mother’s hand and they strode to the dance floor. It was an action repeated throughout the community center by every couple. Within seconds of Joe’s first downbeat, the dance floor was as crowded as Times Square on New Year’s Day. Out of the corner of my eye, I could spot an old man making his way to the bar. I instantly put up the invisible barrier I’d been taught to whenever an adult stranger entered my airspace. (Basically, this consisted of mimicking my father’s do-not-mess-with-me posture.) I could tell by his unsteady gait that the old man was drunk. He ordered a Bacardi and Coke. The bartender warily gave it to him. The old man quickly gulped down half of it then looked at me. I made sure not to look away. (After all, I wasn’t a kid; I was ten years of age.) After a brief staring match, he smiled at me and gestured to the dance floor. I carefully turned my head making sure to keep sight of him in the corner of my eye. The moment was magical. It was as if it were choreographed. Well-dressed men in their suits and ties turning their beautiful women in their dresses and heels as the band exhorted them to move even faster. (To my ten-year old eyes, it was like watching folks of various hues wearing various colors becoming an iridescent dancing rainbow.) And they did, wiping out whatever woes they had with each step, shake and shimmy. The Kool-Aid smile returned to my face. The old man smiled back at me and said before he walked away: “Now, aren’t we a fucking elegant people?” I looked back at the dance floor with my parents in the epicenter of it and proudly agreed that yes, we are. Yes, we are.