In my rush to escape from my parents and their influence, I attached myself to anyone who could give me the stability and structure that they’d been unable to provide. Chendo Perez was a grade ahead of me at the Rhodes School. He was tall and good-looking, with dark eyes and wavy brown hair. We connected with a teenage intensity that convinced both of us we’d be together forever.
Chendo’s family lived in a small house in Queens with a tiny kitchen that was the hub of the home—the place where the entire family gathered, talking over one another in Spanish, making food, breaking bread. Chendo was born in Cuba, where his parents had been wealthy jewelers, but when Fidel Castro came to power, they were forced to leave. Now his father ran a jewelry business on Forty-seventh Street in the Diamond District, while his mother stayed home to take care of the family. There was no tension between Chendo’s parents, just a sense of pride for the life they had built together in a new land. Marina, the mother, had a kind of fierce love for her three children. She was so connected to her son and two daughters, always talking, hugging, encouraging, laughing with them; this was the complete opposite of my own silent, withdrawn, and withholding mother. I had never learned how to cook, so Marina taught me how to make picadillo (a Cuban dish made from ground beef, onions, and peppers) and frijoles negros (black beans) and rice in a pressure cooker. Chendo’s sisters, Marina and Marta, were so young and innocent, guided and protected by their strict parents, something I had never experienced in my own childhood. The Perez family embraced me, took care of me, and showed me what a happy, functioning family looks like. Yes, I’d fallen in love with Chendo, but I loved his family, too.
I slipped happily into the role of surrogate daughter and sister.
* * *
MY MOTHER STAYED in Philadelphia for some months after leaving the house on Long Island. Then, toward the end of my first year at the Rhodes School, she moved to Manhattan, to an apartment in the Seventies on the Upper East Side. The apartment had barely any furniture, but what little furniture there was, my mother kept covered in white sheets or plastic wrap. She had developed a terrible fear of germs; she needed everything around her to be white and pure, including her clothing. When I visited, I had to make sure to wash my hands before touching anything.
After she moved to the city, I confess, I didn’t see my mother all that much. The more time I spent away from her, the more I began to realize that Robin had been right. I hadn’t been sick. I didn’t have internal bleeding or a weak heart. I didn’t have tuberculosis or rheumatic fever or pneumonia either. There was nothing I needed to be “cured” of in Lourdes. My mother had kept me home all those years without any valid reason. Away from her, I did well in school, doing my best to move on from my childhood in order to survive.
When I turned sixteen in November, Jill threw a surprise sweet sixteen party for me at our apartment. Both my parents came. Robin traveled in from Philadelphia. My half sister, Patricia, Chendo, and a few of our friends from the Rhodes School were there. I remember I wore a floral skirt and dusty-rose-colored scoop-neck shirt, my hair parted in the middle and ironed flat so that it swung at my shoulders. It was a wonderful night for me. I remember how important it felt that my sisters and I were together as family. We had survived the divorce and leaving the house on Long Island. We were adjusting. I felt buoyed up by the support of the people who cared about me. At some point in the evening, someone took a photograph of my father with his four daughters—the only one that was ever taken. My mother wasn’t in the picture. She sat in one spot for most of the night, not saying a word.
It was not long after my sixteenth birthday that my father announced he had run out of money. He told me that he could no longer afford to pay for my tuition and that I was going to have to leave the Rhodes School. I was finally experiencing educational success, and now it was being taken away from me. I was heartbroken.
I went with my mother to visit the local public school, but all I remember is the yellow-tile walls covered in graffiti and being terrified of such a big school and so many students.
At the same time, Chendo had been offered a job on the Caribbean island of St. Thomas, managing a jewelry store for a family friend. He wanted me to go with him. His new employers promised me a job as a counter manager for Clinique in the same store. The choice was so simple: my boyfriend and I were in love, and I wanted to make my life
