How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water (20)

Your little test is correct. I am an Organizer.

But I’m also a Pragmatist, and I understand that, even in organizing, not everybody cooperates and every secret plan has to remain secret until people can prove you can trust them. I am like the ducks that sleep with one eye open.

For example, María I didn’t trust. She wasn’t invited to the meetings. She had a mouth like a mop: picking up the dirt from all the corners. When el jefe David invited her to his office to talk about her hours, he squeezed the dirt out of her.

María was a flaca with little baby hands and hair that passed her butt, so heavy, her head leaned back from the weight. We knew she chupa chupa the boss’s lollipop for overtime hours. But I don’t judge. Women have to do what they have to do to survive. So we were good to María, and laughed with her at lunch—until she told el jefe that I was taking home the toilet paper.

OK, don’t look at me this way. I only took it because the extra step to go to the bodega after a long day of work, especially when it was snowing, was too much for me. María, green like a baby guineo, knows nothing about life.

One day, when I offered María a pastelito and she said no thank you, I knew I had to be careful. No one says no to my pastelitos. My neighbor Ana gave me all her secrets before she moved to Boston. When I tell you they’re good, I mean good. Even if you’re not hungry, you take it and save it for later. One day I will bring you one, so you understand.

So I didn’t take the toilet paper that day, just in case. When el jefe went to look in my things, my bag was clean. I knew it!

Anyways, why do they care? It’s toilet paper!



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But that’s not the point. The point is that I have many talents. More than appears in your test, if you can believe it. Like my nose, for example. Remember how I told you I can smell the cancer?

Write that down: Cara Romero can smell the sickness.

And the reason I know this is because, one time, my brother Rafa came to stay with me after his wife, Miguelina, threw him out. When Rafa drinks, he likes to hit, like my ex-husband, Ricardo. But Miguelina is slow to learn. The first time he hit her she fell and broke her forehead on the table and almost lost an eye. But did she leave him? No. She kept ironing the shirts and cooking the dinner, even when he was staying with some fulana that sold numbers. He liked to bet on the numbers, so he had a good excuse to go over there.

Every woman has a limit, and Rafa did something to Miguelina that she couldn’t forgive. What does this have to do with my nose? Wait, wait, I’ll get there. You’re very impatient.

One day, Miguelina was coming home late from Bronx Community College. It’s been forever that Miguelina’s been trying to get a nursing degree. She got the idea to go to school from ángela. It’s like saving money. A little bit of sacrifice. A little bit of patience. Every semester, she started those night classes, going far, far up there to the Bronx to study after working as a receptionist in the clinic. And some semesters she got those credits because, like ángela, she was determined to finish. But I told her by the time she finished, she’d be ready to retire.

You see, ángela finished her degree to be an accountant because she’s married to Hernán. If you’re lucky you find a man that you don’t fall in the hole with. Miguelina was married to my brother, a ship with many holes.

But anyways, there was that night where the bus was not in service. It was a Thursday. By Thursday even I’m exhausted. Even without night school, I feel like anything can break me. So, with good reason, Miguelina took a taxi home. But Rafa’s an ignorant. He’s my brother, but I’m sure he was dropped by my mother to the floor more than one time when he was a baby. That night she took a taxi and realized she didn’t have any money. She was sure she had put it inside the small pocket of her purse, but it was not there. When she arrived to the apartment, she told Rafa in the intercom to come down to pay for it.

You know what he did? He yelled, Woman, why are you bothering me? I’m sleeping! I have to work tomorrow! He had too much to drink to think correct. One or two drinks, fine. But when a person has too much, they only think about themselves—so selfish!

Poor Miguelina. Thank God they live down the street from me. She buzzed me and I felt so bad for her. The humiliation! Of course, I went down and paid for the taxi, and we never talked about it again.

When Miguelina found out that this fulana was driving around in a new car that Rafa was paying for every month, something broke in her. For more than a year, Rafa paid $229 a month for that woman’s car. And then, with another face, he called Miguelina a princess for taking a taxi after working all day and going to school in the night. Pfft!

I knew the day would come when she changed the locks. Left his clothes in a bag outside the door. That’s how it happens. Especially with quiet women like Miguelina.

So what was I supposed to do? Rafa’s my brother. I couldn’t let him sleep in the streets. ángela, who wore the T-shirt of YO SOY FEMINISTA, was on Miguelina’s side. Lulú told me it was a big mistake to accept Rafa in my apartment. She said, This is why men don’t change. When the women try to teach a man a lesson, here come the mothers and the sisters to save them.

But Lulú, what if it was your son, Adonis?

A few days of sleeping in the streets would not kill him, she said. Ha! This she said back then because she couldn’t imagine the trouble Adonis is in now.