Signing in Puerto Rican: A Hearing Son and His Deaf Family

14. Border Crossings

220 14 Border Crossings IVISITED MY PARENTS a few times during 1976, their first year in Puerto Rico. Their two-bedroom cement home was in an area where houses lined up a few feet from each other—technically unattached , but so close as to render the space between irrelevant. Housing in Caguas, Puerto Rico’s third largest city, was inexpensive compared to New York City, so with their modest savings and a lot of help from the Ayala brothers, Mom and Pop were able to buy their very first home. The Ayalas were delivering on Don Catalino and Doña Eufrasia’s last request to keep an eye on las mudas. Between Social Security and the pension from Pop’s last job with the Paulist Press, they covered their bills. The permeability of their new living quarters would amuse anyone. The windows, to the extent you could call them such, consisted of adjustable tin slats that kept out the rain, but not heat, noise, or odors. Even shut tight, I was privy to the next-door family’s every movement: the wailing pleas of their toddler, the plaintive ballads of the young mother and, at dinnertime, the crackling grease in a frying pan. These sounds, however, never disturbed Mom and Pop. Looking around, I saw familiar props that reminded me of the past: our old TV, the two vinyl-covered living room chairs with the blue and red floral designs, the mahogany frame and headboard that had been my bed since 1960, which Mom took over when I left apartment 43. Mom, ever the frugal one, had held onto all her kitchenware and cutlery from Manhattan. I ate with the same worn silverware I had used growing up. There were no phones to interrupt the serenity. Everything felt comfortable and secure, just the three of us together. I was back in the Highbridge section of Washington Heights, at 514. After years of disappointment punctuated by episodic bursts of rage, Mom was resigned to the life she now had. My parents seemed to have found security in their new setting and relative comfort from decades spent with a familiar face. There was still no intimacy or passion between them, as they each had their own bedroom. But in the circumscribed world of the Puerto Rican deaf one is not likely to find a life partner that satisfies every need. They were so demonstrative and physical with their hands and arms and body language; how sad it was that these emotion-filled gestures had never carried over into expressions of love between them. We visited the Ayalas often and also Pop’s brother Miguel who lived in the beautiful countryside around Cayey. I was “reunited” with many relatives, including the three children of Miguel. Aidita, Blanca, and Mickey Jr. were the only Torres cousins who had not been born in New York City. Aside from the warm affection they always shared with me, they were strangely important to me because they validated my identity . Knowing I had cousins still living on the Island made me feel like a more “authentic” Puerto Rican. To reach Tío Miguel’s house we had to traverse the Cordillera Central, the central highlands. Even then, in my late twenties, I didn’t drive so it Border Crossings 221 222 Border Crossings was always Andrés Sr. driving Mom and me around, in his flashy used, two-door Camaro. Pop seemed unaware of the irony: a man in his sixties cautiously maneuvering his amber sports car through the tricky twists and turns of an old mountain roadway. Every five minutes we were confronted with a speeding truck careening around a turn right at us. One miscue and the three of us would have plummeted into an abyss. An automotive illiterate, I was blissfully ignorant of the danger. It was only years later, when I was behind the steering wheel and dodging maniacal truck drivers, that I could nervously laugh in retrospect. Pop showed me off to his friends and neighbors. “Explain what you do in the PSP,” he’d say when socializing with an independentista friend. “Talk about your work in the New York City government,” he’d prompt, alluding to my position as a policy analyst at the Community Service Society (CSS). This was a “straight” job I took when Vivian and Pop working with sign language interpreters in Puerto Rico, 1981. Border Crossings...