The day after I
came to the United States from Santo Domingo, I had a good job waiting for me.
This factory paid minimum wage but hey I needed the money and I know how to use
a machine and sew. I wanted to get away from Santo Domingo, not only because there
was no future there for me but because the past was stinging. To get away would
release me from my painful memory of my ex-husband who left me when I hadn’t
had a child after a year of marriage and his new girlfriend got pregnant. After
months of suffering humiliation and loss I decided I was ready for a change,
something to give me a future where I didn’t need a man. I could start fresh.
Have a new life!
There were no jobs
back home that suited me and as much as other Americans complain about this
type work, over where I came from I wouldn’t have a TV, or steady electricity
to keep the TV going so like other young girls I came here to Woodside Queens.
I’d had bad luck
before with men so I was looking forward to living independently. And I did
live independently for a very long time. I came to this country when I was 20 years old,
in 1962 and didn’t speak a word of English but I got along. The stores in my
neighborhood were bodegas and were run by Hispanics.
After living alone
for five years I met Jose. He seemed like a decent fellow and he pursued me. He
was a single Dad and he worked in a European Car repair shop. I liked being
with him and he liked the things I liked, good movies and good food. I never
met a man before who cleaned either but every Saturday Jose got up and worked
till the floors shone. Not to brag but I’m an excellent cook. We finally moved
into a decent building, a state subsidized Mitchell-Lama co-op and for the
first time, we owned something decent. Working in a sweatshop for thirty years
isn’t the greatest but now we could look forward to our golden years. I planned
to retire in five years and he said he’d wait an extra year to earn more and get a
better social security benefit. I helped him raise his two sons, and his ex
wife was grateful, occasionally sending gifts or presents and seeing her son
rarely. She was not very stabile and had enough sense not to look a gift horse
in the mouth.
The time had finally
come when we were rewarded and could enjoy the fruits of our labor like the
bible promises. First I retired and a
year late, according to plan, Jose retired. We were both retired and collecting social
security, plus had our savings. We’d always put money into an IRA plus saved
what we could, scrimping everywhere we could. His social security was much more
than mine. Mine was only $958 a month and his was $1469. That’s probably, God
forgive me, the one good thing about Jose being gone, is that now I collect his
social security, which makes life easier for me.
About a half year
before he died, he began to argue with me all the time, which had never
happened before. He accused me of looking over his shoulder when he was doing
his banking. I had always done so before. After all it was both of our
accounts. My looking over his shoulder had never bothered him before. We’d
always done these things together before, usually over his shoulder since it
seemed too much a bother to drag a chair over to the computer. We’d done
everything together, including two yearly vacations, one at his son’s house in
Cape Coral and the other week we spent with family in Santo Domingo, near
Puerto Plata, for two weeks every winter. These holidays were good times for us.
We didn’t have to pay for a hotel, and the basically the extras were only
gifts. After all, one eats wherever he goes so it didn’t come from our savings.
Thirty-nine years
we were married. It would have made forty years in two more months if he’d
stayed alive and hadn’t died. The pain and ridicule feel as strong today as
they did the day he died. Can you imagine falling for that young woman? Jose
was seventy years old and she is only thirty-eight years old. I am sixty four years old. The day he died I had grown very suspicious about what was going on
between Jose and Donora. Donora is the managing agent in our Co-op.
Six months is a
long time to go completely deceiving one’s self, but that’s been my entire M.O.
these past few years so in actually – in comparison – six months is short. It’s
been difficult to hide the truth from myself, but I gave it my damnedest. Now,
finally, I’m ready to accept the truth. I’ve lived with this secret so long and
been hiding it for over a year. The only other person who knows works here
still where I live plus my sister knows but she lives downtown. That’s it.
Today for the first time, a year from the day he died, I told another neighbor.
I know she will tell at least one other woman who she is close with, a
religious Jewish woman, but I need someone to help. I told my neighbor because
she is the one who always helps me when I need, like going to surrogates court
to fill out papers. Every time I share the truth of what really happened it
feels less painful. I’m not sure if this is really true or if I say it to
delude and justify myself from telling someone.
Married all these
years and Jose had never disrespected me before. I raised both his sons. His ex-wife
and their mother had been a ditz who really didn’t want to spend her time
bringing up children. I remember she said, “You can have them. I know they’ll
love you more than me because you’re more stable plus I know I’m not a great
mother. As long as I see them once a week or so is good enough for me.” Ava
always seemed grateful and appreciative. The children lived with us. I trusted Jose.
He was my life, and even more so since retirement.
I didn’t see what
was right in front of my eyes. He even brought Donora to my table to eat and I
cared for her two children for free, fed them while she worked late. I did it
for Jose, because he asked me. She and her children sat at my table and ate the
food I cooked. Black beans and rice, fried fish and salad with bread. I served
them too.
“What are you trying to see?” Jose
yelled! So cranky and short tempered, said in the same ill-mannered way, the
same way which characterized his tone and behavior towards me during the last year
of his life.
“Don’t you trust me anymore?” Jose
said exasperated with me, as he now always seemed. Jose continued, “We just discussed what I was
gonna do and I told you I was moving some money to our bank in Santo Domingo.
You said OK do it so we have money when we’re there. So what is the problem
now? Why are you looking over my shoulder? Don’t you believe that’s the truth? That
I’m doing what I say I’m doing? What are you standing over me for?”
I backed off. I retreated to the
kitchen or another place where he wouldn’t target me that I’m trying to spy on
him. I tried to show him the respect we’d become accustomed to before hoping
he’d return to his former ways with me.
I’d always allowed Jose to be man of our house. Do I have to say more
that that – you know what I mean – old –fashioned Latinos in spite of living
here in NYC. We’d both moved here in our teens from DR, and our neighborhood in
Washington Heights is like a little Santo Domingo.
Jose had last say and he seemed so
agitated. Not wanting to make matters
worse, I retreated to the kitchen to prepare rice and beans. Jose had to have
his fresh rice and beans every day. They had to be cooked the same way. It had
to have racaito, cilantro, onion and garlic plus one large spoon only tomato
paste. It was unusual for Jose to pick fights and be so aggressive. I wondered privately if it was due to the
sexual incident between us. I guessed it was the sex thing because the last
time we’d tried, he’d been embarrassed when he went soft. The following day, he
changed. He began to spend more time in the bedroom next to mine. I think he was
afraid of a repeat performance.
It occurred to me he could see a
doctor but Jose is so macho I feared humiliating him, so I thought I was
leaving well enough alone. I wish I’d thought twice and in retrospect, I wish I
wasn’t so old fashioned. You know pregnant and in the kitchen was familiar and
although I’d been barren I had fostered Jose’s two sons, from the time they
were four and seven years old respectively.
I admit I still had no clue why his
behavior to me had changed. Before, every morning he went to the gym at 6 a.m., then
return by 8 to make coffee for me. I’d cook and shop while he cleaned the
house. I liked our little domestic routine. Jose liked the floor to shine. He
was immaculate when it came to cleaning house. He’d shine those floors to a
spit. I still miss him. Jose was handsome, strong, enigmatic, cheerful and
outgoing with light skin. I’m dark and wouldn’t call myself anything but Negra.
Not so pretty but definitely not ugly. Standard I’d judge. Nothing special
except for homemaking skills, managing being a mother to two children who
weren’t mine plus working a full time job and cooking for all of us daily.
Serious stuff, women’s work is never done.
The past week, I’d noted he’d seemed
a little distant and came home around noon, kind of shamefaced to be so long, and
always with a new story. ‘I ran into Joe, (our local senator), and we had a
long talk,’ Jose said with a straight face. ‘Joe asked for help to get Nancy
Rodriguez on the ballet as house representative. I couldn’t just walk away. You
know I have to help him. This was one story, then there was, ‘I ran into Carol,
my sister at the big gym and we had coffee and she took forever she had so much
to tell.” I did notice that over the past two months he gradually stayed away
from home more and more and seemed more irritable, ready to pick a fight. When
I tried to reason with him he yelled at me and as he walked out the door, said
he was going somewhere. You fill in the blanks as to what.
The next day while vacuuming the run
I picked up a little blue pill. I wouldn’t have believed a word Irma had said
if I hadn’t found that pill on the floor the day before. I brought that little
blue pill to the pharmacist to identify.
Irma first brought
it to my attention. “Do you know he brings breakfast to the managing agent in
the office every day?”
I didn’t know so I
conspired to watch him more. I also got mad at Irma. You know what they say
about kill the messenger. In retrospect I understand she wasn’t to blame, but
it made me not trust her too. Over the next two weeks, every time Jose left the
house around 8:30 in the morning. I waited until I heard the elevator close and
took the next elevator down. I arrived in the lobby just in time to see him
enter the locked door where our managing agent worked. Then he’d go get coffee
and sandwiches and go back. I managed to watch undetected.
I bought the pill
to my local drugstore. “Viagra,” the pharmacist identified. “Generic kind.”
I accused Jose and
he said I was imagining things. He said,
“We have lots of neighbors drop by and one of them must’ve dropped the pill,
wasn’t me.” I wanted to believe him.
After
spending his morning out, Jose came home expecting his dinner. We eat early so
I had the rice and beans with roasted chicken ready at 4 p.m. He ate and said
his stomach hurt and he was going to take a nap. I left him alone. I called him a few hours later to see if he
wanted coffee. No responses, so I went to see if he was still sleep. I touched
him and his skin was cold. I started screaming and my neighbors began ringing
my bell to see what was wrong. The coroner’s office came and took his body. My
neighbors stayed almost all night. I sat there in disbelief crying.
When Jose was
buried, I went through all our papers and a friend helped me go on line to see
our bank accounts. Forty-two thousand missing from the last time I’d looked ten
months earlier. Yeah, I know it doesn’t sound like a lot if you have millions,
but to me – working all my life in a sweatshop - sewing stuff for others since
I am came to this country as a young girl, it seemed like my life.
Like
I said the only good thing is that now I get five hundred dollars more per
month but that doesn’t make up for my loss or the forty two thousand and who
knows what else he gave her.
The topping on the cake was Donora
sending me a card. The card read, “I am sorry for your loss, but your loss was
also my loss.” How gross and unfeeling can one get? Unless, I guess, she just
had an urge to share, throw it in my face.
