“You don’t talk.”
My Tía Alicia looks at me as if I were a child and in a way I am. I only felt the eyes of a stranger. A stranger whose heritage has not only been told through the photos hidden in a memory box, and the old tales of her parents, she has had the best experience. She actually lived it. I had only seen her through mother’s Facebook smiling in her plastic chair in front of the palm trees. There are no palm trees in Delaware. A couple years make a big difference in travel and time.
In December of 2003, my passport picture held a girl with short, curly hair to resemble a Dominican boy inside the John F. Kennedy airport. I had just been promoted to riding a stroller and was open to a foreign world that was too new for my parents. English was a language far across the sea. My parents spoke with a cloth in their mouths, spitting out every word with the utmost effort. My sisters, Madeleiny and Rosalí also had a stutter.
“It's ‘girl’ not ‘gurr,’” our Long Island cousin Yanelin always told Made. She had the privilege of American English, while my sister had the thickened English she used to practice with her school friends at Claret, a Private Catholic School in Santo Domingo. They mumbled gibberish that they thought was English and the mispronunciations were already jokes within themselves. Life was simple fun. My sisters at five and six entertained themselves tampering with a garage door inside the house were its walls were the color of a fruit. They listened to Juan Luis Guerra overlooking the Caribbean coast. Everyone thought we were rich because of that view, but we just comfortable.
The view outside my window now is a pavement street and no one rides a moped.
Before, Father clasped hands with Mother dancing under the rapid ceiling fan to forget about the hot blocks of air. My father who called himself the “Capitaleño” and prided himself in his Merengue from Santo Domingo: Los Rosarios, La Familia Andre, Oro Solido. He loved music so much that he made it into his career. But music for Dominicans wasn’t just a soft tune for the radio. They didn’t just dance to Merengue, Bachata, or Salsa: they ate it. They ate it and let it run through their words and their hips, intertwining their fingers and circulating their wrists like it was a great probiotic shake. My parents don’t dance anymore, but they ate it with happiness, the same happiness that came from Mama’s birthday cakes.
Nevertheless, birthdays were celebrated as another national holiday. Rosalí and Made’s birthdays had the entire barrio run through the house. Everyone’s mother, sister, friend, cousin, daughter, and in law came. Tío Luis was there too even though he wasn’t technically an “uncle.” He was my father’s best friend. Most parents came with their drinks of Romo and El Presidente, pushing the kids to another room where we’d watched our muñequitos and there would be up to twenty kids piled on a king-sized bed. By around eight the birthday cake came out due to the children tugging at their mothers’ dresses. The invitees came into a lopsided circle and roared “Celebro tu cumpleanos...” right before the birthday girl was to blow out the candles. If you asked a Colombian or Mexican to sing this song, they wouldn’t know it, it’s Dominicanly patented.
But that was the 90’s, and now my parents are older, and no one is at door-step distance anymore.
My mother knew that too, and so then came the routine of phone calls. When I was child in ’09, she would go to the convenience store in Milford and buy the international calling cards in order to speak to her Mama or one of her hermanitas. She would sit on the sofa and talk to Tía Judy for what it seemed like hours; I probably would have done the same if my sister lived 1,448 miles away. I would hear her ask, “¿Como están las mellisas?” in a hyper voice from the kitchen, “How are the twins?” Tía has two daughters, Liliana and Jazmín. My mother would always get so excited when Tía would give her the latest. The last time my mother saw them they were in first year of Elementary School, and today they’re in their fourth year of university.
Their birthday just passed. I messaged them on Instagram. I texted “Feliz Cumpleanos!” and they replied with “Thank you honey <3” and “Thank you beauty,” and then the conversation ended; the thread is still there. I’ve never spoken to them on the phone. I would forget where to speak. My mother spent decades of her life with her sister, they go back to where they left off. They go back to Santo Domingo, the barrio. They converse about las mellisas like they’re coming to our porch soon. My mother was born in Tenares, Dominican Republic and left Santo Domingo at the age of thirty-two. She has a beginning she remembers. I was born in Santo Domingo, but I don’t have a beginning long enough to remember. A couple years make a big difference in travel and time.
My mother has this memory box at the top our coat closet under the Monopoly and Twister games. The lid reads “1994-” and it starts with my parents’ wedding photos. Then it’s me laying on my pink Cinderella bassinet sheet. After that, my padrino carrying me on my first birthday. Finally me with vanilla cake smeared on my face in my Dominican boy curls. I study these pictures with my life, my life before New York.
“You don’t talk.” She says sitting back a near chair.
Summer 2013. Tío and Tía were visiting for the first time with their children. When they dislodged from their car, I stood outside to help with their luggage. As an annoying twelve year old, I kept saying “Oh my gosh! Oh my gosh!” Next to Rosalí with our mouths wide and our arms half-way up the air. I had only seen them from a desktop screen; now this is real life! My cousin Aimee and I gave each other a sweet, awkward hug. When everyone came inside, speech followed like the wind. The immediate topic to talk about was DR.
“You don’t talk,” she says. I give a faint smile to be polite, and I am also shy.
Alicia has her arms crossed expecting for an answer. She sits in front of me on our sofa, the same sofa my mother always uses to speak with her mom. Her almond eyes pressed for an infinite second. She then looks away to speak to someone else.
That was first she spoke to me and we haven’t spoken again. I have yet to say a word to her. Therefore, I will wait as a child waiting for another story to be told.
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