In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

By Love Betrayes As a little girl I imagined my father was a genie that came out of a magic bottle at night. It wasa green bottle ofcologne that he splashed on his face before leaving the house. I thought it wasthe strong smell that made my mother cry. I loved him more than anyone. He was beautiful to me with his dark, shinyblack hair combed back like one ofthe handsome men on the telenovelas my mother watched while she waitedfor him to come home at night. I was allowed to stay up for the early one: Traicionado por el amor:By Love Betrayed. My papi had a mustache like a thin brush that tickled me when he kissed me. If they had not been shouting at each other, he would sometimes come into my room and say good-night before he left for his job at the nightclub. Then his perfume would get on my blanket and I would hold it to my face until I fell asleep. I dreamed of him and me walking on a beach. I had never been to the ocean, but he told me stories about growing up in a house on the beach in Puerto Rico. It had been blown away by ahurricane. When my mother got angry at my father, she made me think of a hurricane. Blowing him away from us with her screams and her tears. Once, she scratched his cheek. He covered it with her makeup before he left for work. Another time I heard a sound like a slap, but I did not know who hit whom, because my mother always cried, and he always left. Sometimes I would hear her saying the rosary aloud, the dozens of Hail Marys and Our Fathers was a song that would put me to sleep better than any lullaby. She had come back to the church after leaving it when she had run away with Papi. My mother said that Tito had taken her away from God but that now she wasback to stay. She had the priest come to our apartment and sprinkle it with holy water, which doesn't smell likeanything. 24 My mother made our apartment look like a church too: she put a cross with Christ on it over their bed and mine—Papi liked to say that one day it would fall on their heads and kill them, and my mother would answer, "Well, Tito, I'm ready to go to my Dios any time, are you?" He would just laugh. She hung a picture of the Holy Mother and Baby Jesus on the wall facing my bed, and one of Christ knocking at a door in the hallway. On her dresser she had a painted statue of the Virgin Mary crushing a black snake. When you saw it on the mirror it looked as if she was a real little person who was about to trip over a snake because she wasn't looking where she was going. I used to play pretend and try to take the snake out. But it was glued on under her little foot. My mother did not like me to play with the saint dolls, though, and I had to sneak into their room when she was busy in the kitchen or watching TV. My parents argued a lot. Our apartment was small, and I heard them sayingthe same things over and over in as many different hurting words as was possible. I learned my fighting words in Spanish then: the words to hurt and also the words of the church that my mother taught me so that I would not turn out a sinner like my father. "Who made you?" "God made me." "Why did He make you?" "To glorify His Name and to obey His commands and those of His Church." We said this lesson over and over in our catechism class with Sister Teresa who was preparing us for First Communion. When I got older, I tried to ask my mother questions about my father. Her answerswere always the same: "Where does Papi go at night?" "To his job." "But he has a job during the day. He's the super of our building , right?" "He has two jobs. Finish your cereal. It's getting late for school." When she made up her mind not to talk about my father, I could not make her say a word. For many years I could not talk to...

Share