Resemblance

This is a personal essay that I had to write for my freshman class. It's about my deceased grandfather. If you've read my other blog you might notice some overlapping themes or even descriptions.

Resemblance

My mother always told me that I came out like a ballerina, gracefully, yet with purpose. No one else could verify this information except for the doctor who birthed me, so I was always skeptical. She was alone when I danced into this world.  My father was in Florida, probably reporting. By then he had already moved out. My grandfather, the other man in her life, had died four months before. My mother always reminded me that I was his legacy, ending each rollicking story with,

“Ai, Marisita he would have loved you so much”.

            We visited her family in Puerto Rico twice a year since I was three months old. I was the only grandchild who had never met him, the only grandchild with a gringo father, the only one who was born out of wedlock, my cousins wouldn’t let me forget everything that separated us. My mother would stroke my hair as I cried and tell me another story about abuelito. That he was in my blood and it didn’t matter what they said. 

            Next to them in my family portrait, I looked frail and translucent. I envied the rich copper color of their skin. I longed to be darker, to look like them so that perhaps they would accept me. Yet at the same time, in San Juan, I always received extra attention from store clerks and fruit sellers because of my lightness.

            “ Que preciosa” they would say to my mother “ que cosa blancita, linda”, such a pretty little white thing.

            The older generation of my family seemed to prize my skin as well.

            “Don’t stay out in the sun” my great aunts would warn every time I walked outside “you don’t want to get too dark”.

            They would show me off to friends and acquaintances, as if I was some kind of trophy.            I was thrust in the middle of the island’s racial double standards every time I would visit. One could imagine that this would be confusing for a child. So when I was there I retreated into my own world. I found solace in the fact that my grandfather couldn’t judge me, he couldn’t exclude or idolize me because of my coloring.  When I went to my grandmother’s house I would creep into his study, the leather-bound books and Napoleonic busts sheathed in a layer of dust. I would sit in his imposing leather chair and soak in the must of the room.

             I found him everywhere, in the kitchen behind my grandmother’s pans and cazuela’s, in the ashes of the backyard barbeque. I would spin and twirl for him, I was sure he was proud of my pirouettes.  I couldn’t climb the stairs without stopping to look at his black and white portrait. I would stand on my toes, our eyes level, searching for bits of myself in the frame.

            The first time I saw a picture of him in color, I thought we looked nothing alike. His hair was black and curly in his youth. It glistened with the kind of grease men used to wear. His eyebrows were thick and masculine. I realized that all this time my mother had been lying. I was nothing like him. When I confronted her with his photo she brought me to her bosom like she always did.

            “Marisita, how many times do I have to tell you, it doesn’t matter whether you look like him, or me, or anyone else, he is inside of you, just like this place.”

            As I grew older I would practice Spanish with her at home in New York. My mother would gently correct me when I used the wrong tense or muddled a word. I danced twice a week. My posture growing straighter, each step becoming more deliberate and refined. My mother fed me rice and beans, pastelon and picadillo. I always asked for them when I felt sick or lonely.  Every time I returned to Puerto Rico I saw myself more and more in the roughness of the sand, the fluidity of the music. I waited for the coquis to sing me to sleep and the mourning doves to wake me. Slowly I started speaking Spanish with my cousins. At first I just quietly retorted their insults and teasing. They were surprised, thrown off guard not only by the fact that I was standing up for myself but that I understood what they were saying.

             In the second family portrait, thirteen years later, although my skin was just as pale as it had always been, I noticed that my aunt and I had the same lips, that my cousin and I both had round cheeks, that we all had similar dark arching brows. When my mother saw the photo she gasped

“Marisita, your smile here looks just like your grandfather’s,”

This time I believed her.