I’d only seen him fight once, rolling around on the sidewalk with a much bigger fellow — I don’t recall who won, think some cop broke it up — but in any event, he had a quick temper, and on that street, where just an attitude or a derisive glance—“What the fuck are you looking at?”—could instigate a confrontation, he always held his own and carried himself as someone not to be messed with.
So when it came to those brothers, he would not let me off the hook; not a week after he’d jammed that butter knife into my arm, while we were standing around on the stoop and they came walking up the other side of the block, my brother told me, “Now get over there and show me what you can do!” Then: “Vete!” With that came the implication, I knew, that he would take it out on me if I didn’t. I don’t exactly know what possessed me — adrenaline along with fear perhaps — but I ran charging across the street and in my gleeful madness, caught those brothers completely unaware, flailing at them with wild punches. I think they didn’t know what to make of me, and the meaner one, Bobby, whom I’d caught good on his jaw, his head thrown back, ran off crying, the other soon following. What was it but a few minutes of my life? And no big deal — I’m not even sure if I should bother mentioning it now — but the truth is that I kind of enjoyed it, and along the way, on that afternoon, so meaningless to the world, I discovered that I had, without knowing, a lot of pent-up rage inside of me, an anger over a lot of things I could have been aware of, that would continue to simmer under my benign surface, only to suddenly bloom, as it did with my brother, at a moment’s provocation.
Afterward, José seemed to feel quite proud of me, and those brothers never bothered me again and, to some cautious extent, eventually became my friends.
But was I a tough guy myself? That same summer, when I accompanied some kids from my block on an outing to the Steeplechase Amusement Park in the Far Rockaways of Brooklyn, no sooner did we arrive than I, riding some dinky roller coaster, somehow got separated from the group. Once I realized that I couldn’t spot anyone I knew, like the nice older girl, Angie Martinez, who had persuaded my mother to let me come along, I began to feel an awful despair, as if roaming through those crowds, something bad would happen to me. The longer I walked up and down that park, teeming with people, the more I felt my guts tightening and a heaviness gathering in my legs, my knees going weak — eleven years old, I felt like crying. I remember thinking that as much as my family seemed overbearing (well, my mother), I might never see them again, and just the notion of not being able to make it back home left me feeling miserable. At the time, I didn’t even have a token with me, just one of those circular Steeplechase punch-hole cards good for about ten rides; after about half an hour, I became so desperate that I approached a gang of black kids, all of them towering over me, to whom I offered my card in exchange for my fare home. And while they could have easily taken me off, they flipped me a fifteen cent token anyway, and I soon found myself standing on the platform of the Brighton Beach station, about four blocks away, asking people how to get back into Manhattan; no matter what they told me, I still remained anxious; on the D train for Manhattan, I sat on the edge of my seat, looking at every station sign, until that subway finally rolled into the Columbus Circle stop. Years later, when I’d work in a job involving the MTA, I could never walk through that station without remembering that day. Finally, catching another train, I rode up to 116th Street and Broadway, thrilled to see that its station tiles read COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY.
I can remember feeling, bit by bit, a release of my tensions as I crossed the campus toward Amsterdam, all the while swearing to myself that once I reached my block, I’d kiss the sidewalk.
Of course, when I finally came home to our hot apartment, and my mother asked me what the hell had happened, I just shrugged: I don’t recall what she made of the fact that I had come back alone, but by the time I ran into Angie the next day, though I had probably ruined the group outing—“You can’t believe how we went crazy looking all over the place for you!”—I had started to feel rather proud of myself, if not so tough or self-assured.
In those days I remained a reticent soul, especially with Spanish-speaking folks, around whom, fearing the inevitable exchanges, I always piped down. Whenever I went into a bodega other than Freddie’s, and my pop and I would head over into Harlem, I had to put up with people — young tough kids mainly — checking me out, and with suspicion (though old ladies were always nice to me). I’d try to shrink into the walls in such places, always felt like I stood out like a leper.
At home, when Cuban and Puerto Rican visitors I’d never seen before came into the apartment, there always seemed to come a moment when one of them would look at my father, his soft voice intoning a slangy, sometimes beer-slurred Spanish, and then at me, whose awkward Spanish was halting, at best, and ask incredulously, “He is really your son?” (“De verdad, es tu hijo?” My father, in those instances, always answered: “Of course”—“Cómo, no?”—but along the way, his eyes always met with mine, his pupils misting over with a contemplation of genetic mysteries and as well with an awareness of my own history within the family. Though we certainly looked alike, that seemed to make no difference to his friends, for whatever being Cuban was about, I just didn’t have it. I got used to that, but I always felt a little ashamed, and generally learned to nod and smile when questions were asked of me, more often than not looking for any excuse to leave the room. (Though some, I might add, became more understanding, especially once my mother said, “My son, el pobrecito, was sick.”)
I also had some bad luck. At Corpus, during my fifth year there, the school had decided to allow an hour out of the week for Spanish lessons. Our teacher was the school secretary, a certain Mrs. Rodríguez, and while she was a very pleasant lady, her classroom manner seemed hardly soothing, in my case at least. From pupil to pupil she’d go, asking each to repeat certain words and phrases, and while the other Spanish-speaking kids, mostly Puerto Ricans and Cubans, had no trouble at all, when it came to me, I simply froze, my throat tightening along with my gut, and the words I managed to squeeze out, particularly when rolling my rs, were so badly pronounced that Mrs. Rodríguez, out of the kindness of her heart, would go on and on about how I, as the son of Cubans, with a name like Hijuelos, should hang my head low for speaking Spanish so badly.
“Even the Irish kids, que no saben español, do better than you!” she’d say. Then: “Don’t you even want to try?”
I’d look down, shrug, and she would ignore me for the rest of the lesson, averting her eyes from my glance any time she’d pass along the aisle, each session ending with a coup de grâce, for as she’d leave the classroom, she’d cast a disappointed look my way and, shaking her head, disappear into the hall, mumbling to herself, I was certain, about me. I came to dread those lessons, and after a while, she simply carried on as if I were not there, as if I were somehow beneath her attentions and the worst kind of Latino, who didn’t care about his mother tongue, which is to say that at such a delicate time, when a different approach might have made some difference (I really don’t know) to my development along those lines, she quite simply made my own wariness about learning it even more intense.