Somos Latinos I

I had a happy childhood. We were poor (and I didn’t know it) but most of memories from childhood (minus some dark and damaging secrets which I will write about at another time) are ones that bring a smile to my face. I am the middle child. My parents had three girls. Jessica, Jennifer (me) and Danielle. My father is an old-school central American Latino–he doesn’t cry in front of us, doesn’t show pain, and says “likewise” when I tell him that I love him. One thing about my dad though, he loves his girls more than anything in the world. And like the old-school, no matter what was happening, no matter how hard things were he never let it show, he always kept us close, warm, fed, and clothed. He never wanted a son or at least didn’t act like it, but I was enough of a tomboy during my adolescent to make up for that.

I now realize that the person I most want to be like to be like is my father. And he could dance, he was one of the premier dancers in the New York City salsa scene. Both my parents emigrated here from Panama with their first born daughter. She was about 5 years old. They got here by way of my maternal grandmother, Violet Russel (or poncey as she is known).  My sister Jessica was known throughout the neighborhood as being the most beautiful black baby. The name of the town where she grew up is called Paraiso (Paradise), it’s in the province of Panama. My maternal grandmother had six girls and was born in Panama. She worked very hard for many years, a single mother most of the time to get all of her children, their children and their husbands to the United States–to search for the American Dream–in search of un nuevo camino. I know now that it is impossible for them to find it here because the American Dream is not available to us–but my grandmother has gained more here than she could ever imagine in Panama.

I was born in Harlem hospital. My father began his work in a mailroom with some company called Henry Donegar or something like that. They were on 6th aveune, something to do with fashion. He spoke no English. My mother was a stay at home mom. She had never even finished the second grade so there was very little work that she could do. But she spoke English and learned to read basic Spanish & English from her sisters as a child. I recognize now my mother’s inadequacy outside of the Latino community. Initially, we lived in Washington Heights–upper Manhattan. Living in Washington Heights is like living in the Dominican Republic. For 3-4 years my parents lived there in my grandmother’s apartment with me and my older sister, my 5 aunts, their (combined)  six children and my grandmother in a NYC-sized 3-bedroom apartment. 12 people, 4 beds, 2 married couples, 2 infants, 2 toddlers, 2 young children. Somos Latinos, pues.

The first apartment we moved to, my immediate family and I, was just a few blocks away from my abuela’s - 161 between St. Nicholas and Broadway. The apartment was two bedrooms and I remember very clearly my father walking arond the house in white briefs always with a cigar in his mouth, his neatly groomed mustache and salsa or calypso playing on the tape deck. We didn’t stay at that apartment too long because the rodent and roach problem became dangerous for our health. When my youngest sister was born, rat droppings were regularly found in her crib. Her crib sat in the middle of my parent’s bedrooom and was not attached or leaning on anything which a rat could climb. The last draw for ma, she later told me, was when she found 3 large roaches at the corners of the baby’s mouth while she slept eating the residue of milk at the corners of her mouth.  In that apartment, we had some good times. My cousins would sleep over and every week my father would broil a rat over the stove and stink up the apartment. He always said that if the other rats smelled it they would leave. What a bush man my daddy is. It never worked.

 (Dad Napping with my baby sister)

In the next installment of “Somos Latinos” I will write about my father’s life as a child and young man growing up in the jungles of Bocas del Toro, Panama. This picture is of him and his brothers, sisters, nephew and mother. My father is the cute one with the shovel.