Distraendonos

We used to drive around. Around the city, around the crumbling
paint-peeling buildings, the uneven excuses of sidewalks, the hop-scotch
beats and chants of little girls with beads in their hair. A colorful
explosion of singing and skipping and ropes ripping against the grey hot
summer air. And we drove around the open fire hydrants, the makeshift
beaches of the city blocks. And the musky wonderful smell of jerk
chicken that escaped from the patches of green in seas of concrete...and
the sights of laughter and thundering voices from the people. For those
3 months they came out of their urbanized, welfare-driven hibernation.
They came out of the lead painted apartments, and boarded up windows, so
that boy Didey Clavio wouldn't accidently fall out. And they came out
laughing and singing, and dancing and skipping with a heart full of
hopes and a rejuvenated mind. Another summer, another food stamp card,
another year, here. We'd drive around "Para distraernos," my mother
would say. And my father would drive and drive, nowhere and everywhere,
with the windows rolled down, and that merengue blasting beats of pride.
And as much as I closed my ears, and hunched into the back seat, I
always managed to make a peak out the window and catch jerry riveras
lines. And my father with his cigarette hand out the window, pam pam
pa-ing on the side of the car and his obnoxious laughter displaying no
worries in this world. My mother would sit there, the 6 speed
transmission separating both of them. The wall between two worlds, two
minds, living the same life, going in the same direction in the same
place but still separated by inches. And one day, my father opened the
door, and left us in the middle of the 6 lane highway, surrounded by compensation agencies, mortgages and credit card debt...and only one parent on first days of
school.