Cerro Las Mesas, Mayaguez, Puerto Rico, circa 1978

Our family had returned from Massachusetts, where my dad worked for one year in the nascent computer industry. Our return to the island, where I had lived since I was four, had been fragile, and choosing which group of kids to hang out with was difficult for me, as choosing a new home must have been difficult for my mom (Abuela was also old, sick and dying). The one year in Maynard had shown me what it was like to be an outsider. The kids would have never known I was from Puerto Rico if I had never said anything, as I am white, green eyes, with light brown hair. My mother's ancestry from Spain did not carry far into my appearance, although I am told I look like my grandfather Antonio. However no one mistakes me for my dad's son, of Celtic, Germanic, and Norman ancestry. But I boasted about where I grew up to the kids in the middle school, with pride, and this caused me problems. Their perception of anything foreign, that is, other than their 2nd and 3rd generation Italian, Irish, or Greek ancestries, was negative. They also couldn't spell "ancestry", and had no idea how to read a map. To them, anyone from Puerto Rico was dark skinned, carried a knife, and stole from everyone, probably precisely what their parents told them. Ironically, the few Puerto Rican kids in the middle school would walk away from me when I tried to speak to them in Spanish. They thought I was an odd bird. I returned to the island thinking there was something wrong with where and how I was brought up...


I was 14 and road in the back of my parents Volvo climbing the hill through a forested area dotted with old Spanish-style wood houses, many seemingly from a wealthy class from an earlier era; some of these estates came with carriage houses for servants or work staff. This was in contrast to what I had seen and lived in before on the island, where the prevalent construction for middle class families was simple, square-like one-story concrete homes, surrounded by many other lookalikes in urbanizaciones. This new neighborhood of ours could have been the 1920's, or 1950's, but it was the late 70's and early 80's, and it was not a planned settlement. It was more like inherited lands going back to the 18th Century, possibly much of it uninhabited at the time, or outright taken from any peasant farmers or Taíno Indians that remained.

The two floor house we rented was a mixture of wood, concrete and brick, perhaps representing different eras. The house was shaded by pine trees, perhaps not native, that would shed needles yearlong. Gardens saddled the house on the side and back. A rotting garage shack held the background, with plátano trees nestling one side and the neighbor's property line marked by barbed wire defining the other side. The remarkable first impression of the house might be its long front balcony of faded yellow hue. 

The house seemed elevated in an already steepened property. The front downstairs entrance - an open balcony held by yellow and white columns and red tile floor - could be accessed either through a short, cracked-concrete walk alongside low-lying dark green grass, dirt and tree roots, or via side steps from the drive way, now overtaken by grass. The drive way led under one part of the balcony toward the rat-infested garage. Only concrete pavement remained. An element of time might be the second hardest impression one might have felt.

A third impression might be the house' wood interior itself, held together with concrete and hints of hidden interior brick, evident mostly in the back. The interior possessed some symmetry, with an airy high-ceiling living room, study, dining room, kitchen and laundry/toilet downstairs. A dark room was built by a previous occupant outside the back door, which I later used as a chemistry lab. A crusty carpet stapled to the stairwell led upstairs, to where four evenly divided bedrooms shared the floor with a bathroom, the one large balcony in front, and a smaller balcony one in the back. 


Looking from the outside,one looked imperial atop the second floor balcony. From the balcony view looking outward, one felt hidden from public view by the columns and low hanging shading trees. The back balcony opened with doors like louvers to an applauding audience of plátano plants. Opening this door reminded me of Abuela's house in Lares the most.

Barbed wire extended across the entire property line, aided by vines and hibiscus to attempt closure of potential illicit entry points. Within the compound, a former badminton court and grassy area with tree cover and bush provided plenty of room for running with the dogs, reading in the sun or shade, or walking in circles under the mamey trees, although privacy was never felt in this spot. There was enough roadside view through the hibiscus and vine and barbed wire for the walkers-by and even the speeding cars. Only joggers that waived seemed non-threatening.

The fourth impression was the immense garden behind the house, not part of the rental property, but accessible. I wandered through the garden almost daily with two of our dogs. In the open air areas, it was planted with gandules, roses, and plátanos. The darker areas, shaded by older but still healthy trees, dropped so much aguacate, mangó, mamey, and other tropical fruits that the we and gardener-caretaker could not keep up, so they would rot on the ground, permeating the air with a sweet stench. The whiff intensified during the afternoon's summer rains that muddied the red clay surface. I would end up in that corner of the garden listening for music that our neighbor played. He was older, red bearded and skinny, with a four wheel drive truck, living in a sinking shack in the back of his grandmother's estate. He hosted a variety of visiting friends, girlfriends, artists, musicians and left-wing independentistas. He was our revolutionary neighbor.