Bodega Dreams: Book I

After a few months, the City of New York would send a crane with a ball and chain to wreck the gutted tenements.

You would bemoan Freddy’s death whether you knew him or not, say you were sorry and ask what had happened, like you really cared.

To the white teachers we were all going to end up delinquents.

The whole time I was at Julia de Burgos, I had no idea the school was named after Puerto Rico’s greatest poet, had no idea Julia de Burgos had emigrated to New York City and lived in poverty while she wrote beautiful verses.

Nancy exuded a purity rarely found among the church girls.

I knew that if I went to Sapo and said some guys wanted to jump me, he’d round up a crew for me, a clique from 112th and Lex or from another block.

The Futurists had been a malcontent group of artists at the beginning of the century who loved speed and thought war was good, the “hygiene of humanity.”

And for a small while, those dreams seemed as palpable as that dagger Macbeth tried to grab.

And when that short-lived light went supernova, it would leave a blueprint of achievement and desire for anyone in the neighborhood searching for new possibilities.

When I asked her to marry me, her pastor, Miguel Vasquez, had warned her that if she married me—a worldly person, a mundane—she’d lose the privilege of playing the tambourine in front of the congregation.

When I asked her to marry me, her pastor, Miguel Vasquez, had warned her that if she married me—a worldly person, a mundane—she’d lose the privilege of playing the tambourine in front of the congregation.

When I asked her to marry me, her pastor, Miguel Vasquez, had warned her that if she married me—a worldly person, a mundane—she’d lose the privilege of playing the tambourine in front of the congregation.

And in obtaining it, he took shortcuts and broke some laws, leaving crumbs along the way in hopes of one day turning around and finding his way back to dignity.

He was a child of AM radio’s Top Forty heyday.

They said we had no ingenuity because we were Puerto Ricans.

And Mayor Lindsay, the biggest fraud this...city has ever known, but with enough charisma to charm Hitler...

Even old ladies started to smuggle things for us, b’cause Mayor Lindsay’s dogs would never think of frisking them.

I run the most humanitarian housing management company in New York City.

“I’m only half Rican, my father is from Ecuador,” I felt compelled to tell Bodega.

And, Chino, don’t talk to me cuz you got leprosy, ma man.

I could picture Bodega in an Armani suit, all legal and respectable, his renovated buildings in the background, his name no longer Bodega but something else, something politicians want on their side, a commodity of goodwill.

Even though it was a small, dingy place, dark and crowded, people still went there because they made the best pastries, coffee, rolitos (flat oven bread with butter), empanadas, and sanwiches cubanos among other things.

Sapo finished his flan real quick, his big Sapo mouth engulfing every spoonful.

On the walls were cheap religious pictures depicting the Devil being slain by the angel Michael.

It was a place that knew hunger and desperation.

Then Dona Ramonita emerged dressed in white, with a rosary wrapped around her waist and some beads dangling down her side.

Then with deft precision she cornered the goose, leashed its head, and dragged it to a corner where she tied it to a table.

On the Upper East Side an apartment facing the East River would be priceless, but this is Spanish Harlem, where most rents are subsidized by Section Eight.

Regardless, the panoramic scenes are the same from any neighborhood: red-orange sunrises, blue-black moonlit nights.

Her face seemed less angry and I thought I even detected some remorse.

I knew he was reluctant to pull his hand away from his stomach, but he agreed, nodding his head and grimacing in pain.

There was no response for a little while and I could just picture Negra mulling this over as she lit a cigarette.

“This girl,” I asked, “is she from some country where they persecute Pentecostals or something?”

Blanca laughed and then preached to Negra about fidelity, which meant Negra was thinking of getting back at Victor in yet another way.

As she spoke with Negra, I listened to her sweet, earnest voice in the darkness of the bedroom and I felt happy.

Blanca and I were walking back from the subway after our night classes at Hunter, commiserating about how much work we both had.

Nazario beckoned with his hand for Bodega to join him so they could talk in private.

That was okay, because it was a hot spring night and El Barrio had turned into a maraca and all the people had come out transformed as seeds.

Once I’d done that, I could continue my life with Blanca in total clarity.

Sapo was bemused.He walked in and started to look around. “Like I ain’t never been all the way in here and I haven’t exactly missed much.”

There were racially segregated tenements that never rented to blacks or Latinos.

Back then when Bodega was a teenager, the Young Lords were an urban guerrilla group that had its origins in Chicago, but they made all their noise in El Barrio.

They wrote up a manifesto called the “Thirteen Point Program and Platform.”

She liked his ideas, his conviction, his optimism.

The wood was old and the paint was cracking, giving the Nativity scene a poignant look of absolute poverty.