The Poor Grass In The New Place Essay, Research Paper
I am strangely idealistic early in the morning. I almost feel like singing sometimes. There is something about Times Square at 7:30 AM. You notice a lot. The desolateness. The workers in their blue jumpsuits, loading and unloading. And the calm in a place not usually known for calm. This is where I wake myself up most mornings with a walk from 42nd to 56th St when I opt to get off the train a little early. The few I run into with some regularity smile at me with an unspoken friendship.
I find pleasure in the view of skyscrapers reaching up to the blurry skies. So different from the reality that is the near-ghetto landscape of Bushwick, the place where I had been only an hour before. The place where I live. I can almost feel everyday on the L, the second I leave Bushwick, like I?m leaving to another world. That second brings back the memory of another world I left. The small island where I was born, the place I can barely even remember anymore. I think sometimes with a smile and sometimes with self-pity of those first months in an alien place.
I was six that year. My parents never explained anything to me. Mi mami dressed me up one day in a little flowery dress and it was really hot and we all went in a long taxi drive to this huge place with lots of people and we had all these bags and then everyone was crying and then we went in this thing and we were flying and I got scared and I was crying and we got here and that?s it. That was all I understood. And we had to start our lives in an incredibly alien place.
I was very unhappy. I hated the other girls at school before I could even understand them. I envied their smiles and their new shoes and their Mickey Mouse book bags. How I lived my days with envy. It was my companion on the way to school and on my lonely way back. That big, red brick, building loomed intimidating in the distance that first day as I neared the corner of Wilson Av. But it really never stopped looking that way. School was a blur of pointing fingers, impatient faces and bored, droning voices who mispronounced my name. I was always so silent, staring at the ground. I noticed how worn the tiles in my house were and how old my sneakers were and how poor the grass looked. And how poor everything looked.
Because we were immigrants and she could not speak English, my mother always felt a little bit at a disadvantage with the other mothers of the world. She felt that she could not protect us and feared rapists and murderers and terrorists and psychopaths and drug addicts and kidnappers and just about any stranger. Being the youngest, I was especially protected. My whole life had to be lived in the 5 rooms of our tiny apartment. The only people I knew were the five members of my family. I was never allowed to leave the house except to go to school. I never went anywhere or did anything.
Except with my family. Sometimes we went to the beach, during the summer. While most families would have brought sandwiches, my mother would cook an entire meal complete with plantains and rice and bistec and a salad. We would take our food and sit under a huge beach umbrella close to the water and spend the whole day there. My Mom and Dad would be lying on blankets. My sister and I would spend most of the time in the water and my older brother would disappear and not return until we had to leave.
Often it was Coney Island that we went to where the water was freezing. My sister and I would stare at each other on the sand and giggle and laugh in anticipation of the sharp coldness. When we had built up our courage, we would hold hands and run into the water together. Screaming all the way and then screaming louder when we got there. Immediately we would submerge and the cold water would be terrible and wonderful when it touched our sensitive heads.
It was a long trip in the car on the way back to Brooklyn. We would make up stories of really beautiful princesses with strange names that fell in love with dashing heroes. Nothing ever happened in them that we did not want to happen. On TV or in books there was always that silly doubt that good would not win out in the end. But with our stories there was none. We never finished them. My sister would say, ?Jeniffer, why don?t we start a new story?? I would agree and that would be the end of Princess Dagelle?s adventures with Prince Vales and the beginning of Princess Naijie?s romance with Prince Telos.
When we were home, which was almost always, the three of us would watch American TV. I remember when I couldn?t understand English. I would sit up close to the TV with the volume up high. Until my mother yelled at me. I thought that if I stared at the TV enough and heard it loud enough, maybe I would absorb the meaning. It was horribly frustrating. Their mouths would open and sounds would come out but I couldn?t understand what they were saying. I would look up at my mother and ask, ?Que estan diciendo? What are they saying??
She would just shake her head and turn off the TV telling me that it didn?t matter. Eventually, I started laughing when the audience laughed even though I had no idea what they were saying. Sometimes my sister and I would hold conversations with each other, speaking in fake English and laughing hysterically at what each other had supposedly said.
I was incredibly unhappy. Here the skies where always gray even when they were blue for it seemed a cheap, gaudy blue that hurt your eyes and scared away the birds and couldn?t produce sunsets. A blue stabbed by scary buildings. I hated it. Where were the endless empty green fields and the coconut trees that I was never allowed to climb? Or my shy aunt who always covered her mouth when she laughed. The aunt whose name I couldn?t even remember anymore.
And at night that first year, I would lie in my bed and cry. I only had a vague idea of why. I just wondered where I was and where everyone I knew was. I would see the face of my grandmother, the one I had left behind in the Dominican Republic, and wonder when I would see her again. Where were the dirt roads and the sloping hills and green fields and endless blue sky that I remembered? Why did it get so cold? Why did I have to wear that bulky coat? Why did everyone sound so different? What is this new place? Donde Estoy? Where am I?
I struggled a lot. But one day I found my place and learned to live with the change. I learned English fairly quickly and discovered my love for reading. Once I hated New York but now I love it. And after a good day, walking back across the now, horribly crowded Times Square, I feel like singing again.