El Proyecto de la literatura puertorriqueña

I remember what was said about Toño in the barrio.

See, after his mother’s death⎯my abuela⎯ 

he grew up alone, from home to home, from relative to relative. 

You see, he had smoothest tongue. 

You see, he was the ladies’ pretty boy. 

You see, he was the biggest fucker in the family. 

You see, he was daring and bold. 

You see, he was the king. 

You see. he took care of the Polo brothers at La Providencia

⎯the bar where the barrio bullies

would brag on being tougher that the downtown bullies. 

I remember the first time I saw him. 

I suppose he knew me since I was a baby. 

One time he told me saw me shortly after I was born

and that he told my mother,

“that kid is going to be the shit… something big.”

In my part, I only remember seeing him 

for the first time in New Yok⎯I mean, los niuyores. 

He came by our small apartment we rented in Manhattan. 

You see, this was the great city in the world. 

You see, here you can really live. That everyone knows me here. 

You see, there is no better bolitero here than me. 

You see, no one speaks better English than me. 

You see, the Bronx is the best thing over here. 

And he took me to the Bronx. 

Very impressive. He seemed to know everything. 

Everywhere we went, everybody knew him. 

For a seven-year-old boy, someone like that

was impressive, someone you wanted to be. 

I remember when he painted the apartment and decorated

the walls with his able barrio painter hands. 

It was the weirdest wall I recall from childhood: 

palm trees and beaches and mountains and whatchamacallit.

It was all so we could remember the little island we had left. 

I remember he also drank hundreds of beers

while painting, that my Old Man did not like 

having him in our apartment. (Among other things, 

my Old Man never forgave him the stone Toño threw at him

the night when he took his first serenade to Mamá.)

I didn’t see him until years later, in barrio Borinquen. 

He supposedly had trouble in NY and I don’t know what else

and had to come back to the island. 

What I never forget ever

was when I found him on the floor of the living room, 

rolling around and moaning like a wounded beast

and murmuring I don’t know what in English. 

I asked him if he was sick and remember

as if it were today his, “I’m fine, man… hey, I’m fine.”

Even so, I went over to Mami. She didn’t let me back in the living room with her. 

Then I saw her crying and begged me not to tell Papi anything. 

I was many years later that I finally found out

that his addiction to heroin was consuming him. 

Before disappearing from the barrio he gave me

a typewriter, one of those portable ones, 

of an English brand he brought from los niuyores. 

He told me he used it to write stories and poems. 

It was⎯I’m sure⎯the first typewriter in el barrio.

I remember I was on seventh grade at school and the

typewriter gave me “status” in el barrio. I don’t know how, 

but I learned to use it and soon I started to receive visits

from neighbors asking me to copy this or that on the typewriter,

as if I were a professional secretary. 

Almost ten years later I landed in Milwaukee and knew he was

in Waupun, state’s maximum-security prison. 

I went to visit him. 

You see, I became a weightlifting champion. 

You see, if I am here, it’s because I’m no pendejo. 

You see, I was here because of racism. 

You see, I was not allowed to marry my wife because she is American

⎯you know⎯ a “whitey.” But they’re fucked ‘cus I won my case

and was the first inmate to marry at Waupun. 

You see, “Chief Breier and the Milwaukee Police are shit,

you see, I knocked out about ten of those fucking Germans before they could

even arrest me… even the judge said that they are a piece of shit.”

You see, please take care of my boys and my girls if you see them around. 

(In Milwaukee he had six, I think, and I only knew three of them.)

Several years later, he got out of jail and immediately

broke his parole. They gave him an alternative: 

Go to Puerto Rico or return to Waupun. He went to the island. 

In a visit to the barrio, I knew that the was living with

a fourteen-year-old girl. He had two children with her. 

On another visit I knew that he spent his time drinking, trouble after trouble, 

and no one in the family wanted anything to do with him. 

But Mami always told me about him in her letters. 

Always worried about him. 

You see, one day they’re going to kill him. 

You see, it saddens me to see him drinking around. 

You see, I leave him food outside the balcony so he can eat

when he passes by at night… as if she were

leaving food outside for the house dog. 

You see, he sleeps wherever the night takes him. 

You see, he spends his time among the barrio junkies. 

You see, he owes money to the barrio gangsters

and they threatened to kill him. 

Me and Mami and the Old Man protected him, 

despite fearing what his enemies may do to him

in a barrio where life isn’t worth anything. 

The last time I saw him he looked old and finished,

his face swollen by alcohol. And he was only

in his mid-forties. 

I confronted him one afternoon, stating that his presence

at my parents’ house also puts them in danger.

With his Niuyorican barrio English

⎯which he spoke so well⎯

he gave me his typical sermon, inflated with confidence. 

You see, forget about it; you see, it’s all just nonsense. 

You see, nobody dares mess with me. You see, I am the king.

You see, you know I know more than that. 

You see, soon I’ll be leaving this shitty miserable barrio

where life ain’t worth living. 

You see, soon I’ll be going to Boston or New York or Chicago

and you know that over there I can hustle pretty well. 

While we were dinking a beer at my parents’ chinchorro bar

he explained his latest news: a mural painted al half-

wall representing the barrio and its musicians and trovadores. 

And he asked me to accompany him on guitar

so that we would sing a bolero together

like those that made him famous

among his old acquaintances at los niuyores. 

Because, among other things, he also sang. 

He asked me about his sons and daughters and, almost mercilessly,

in my anger at seeing that he could have contributed

to this world by helping to change this society that keeps

breeding Toños, that keeps destroying Puerto Rican lives

like the lives of those other groups as rejected as we are, 

I told him everything I knew about his progeny. 

The last thing I knew about his older son, 

he phoned me from some mountain in New Hampshire

to tell me that he was wounded in a shootout with Canada’s

border police while he smuggled guns for some

African American revolutionary group; that his partner

“had been wasted”; that they were looking for him like a needle, 

and that he did not know if he was going to make it out of there alive. 

His other son in is Waupun. He made it there by following

the same path as his father. He writes me constantly

to share his political vision and his readings 

on classical literature. I keep his letters because they are poetry. 

And two of his daughters allegedly abandoned their home, fleeing

from a stepfather that abused them sexually. I don’t know what became of them. 

He swallowed hard. He looked at me and tears sprung out. 

Mamá was close, but she didn’t know what was going on between us. 

Our exchange was in English. 

You see, I’m going over there. 

You see, I’m gonna change, coño!

You see, I’m gonna borrow some cash to get over there. 

You see, I’m gonna look form my children. 

You see, that son of a bitch was gonna pay for what he did to my girls. 

You see, my children are smart 

and don’t have to go through any of that, carajo!

He did not want to eat the food Mami served him. He threw down

a large gulp of rum and left. I was the last time I saw him. 

Las night there was a call from Puerto Rico. Toño is dead. 

They beat him to death and left him to die

under a neighborhood tree. 

And it all was⎯they say⎯because he owed some dollars

to a thug from the barrio. 

Coño, Toño, how the king got fucked up!