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Chapter 1
Buttons. Brown buttons.
That's what was needed. The clear ones made this
shirt look like a dollar store special—which it was. Everything Clark wore was from a
discount store. It was all his mom could afford. But he didn’t mind. Mom had
a skill that few people in their neighborhood had—especially the white folks.
For unlike the black and Hispanic poor, the white people Clark knew dressed
in boring, cheap clothes. His mom, however, had been raised for most of her
life by a Puerto Rican neighbor, while Mom’s own mother had been running
around chasing men. Mom’s best friend back then, along with her family had
taught Mom what her mother hadn’t—being poor didn’t mean you had to live like
trash.
Now, Mom occasionally met
Hispanics who beat their kids or got high on drugs all day long, but Sally
had been a true example to Mom. While her own mother hardly kept groceries in
the house and never checked her homework, Sally insisted on feeding Mom good,
warm meals. She also dug through her backpack for teacher’s notes, and taught
her all about puberty. She taught Mom to cook and to sew, how to shop the
thrift stores, and—the oddest thing—to speak Spanish.
So Clark, a poor little white
boy from the Bronx, could speak excellent Spanish. Mom was sure that would mean
something someday. Right now, it meant that he was weirder than most other
kids, and he sometimes wished he hadn’t been so unique. That feeling of
wanting to be normal only lasted up until a friend started talking Spanish to
him. Then, they could cut the entire class out of their games, and at those
times, knowledge was power. Alone with his friends in the sea of humanity
that was New York, Clark felt good.
Clark didn’t use the language to make people feel excluded,
however. His was not the power to intimidate, but rather the power to escape.
For a while each day, his Spanish skills would take him away from his Florida
classroom to the “isla,” as his friend, Antonio,
called it. They would visit the cuchifrito
down the street and have the most delicious fried food on the planet—or so
Antonio said it was. And so, for a moment, Clark wasn’t poor
white trash, but a boy on an adventure, searching out new experiences and enjoying
the tropical warmth that didn’t oppress.
Now, Antonio knew very well
that life in Puerto Rico wasn’t all roses. It also had thorns. Because of the
difficulty of finding work on the island she so loved, his mother had brought
him to New York. Si, mi hijo, she said to him, tu
te vas a criar bien, y cuando regreses a tu patria, vas a regresar siendo un
hombre de valor. He believed it, too.
Antonio was on a mission to
be somebody, and the first step, he said, was to get his education. Clark had
no choice but to follow, since his mother insisted that he, too, make a mark in life. This was probably the biggest reason
the boys stayed out of temptation and didn’t fall in with the rough crowds
that surrounded them. Thus as outsiders, both boys eventually rose to the top
of their class.
Today, however, Clark’s excellent
grades had him in a bind. Mom had spent all the money she could afford, since
her desk job didn’t pay for much beyond the bills. Now, he needed a nice outfit
for an awards ceremony in school, and he wanted to look his best. Shrugging,
he pulled out his nicest brown pants, shined his patent leather shoes, and
waited for his mother’s key in the door.
When she finally arrived, Clark felt bad about
asking her for help. However, the urgent need to look special made him ignore
his discomfort and walk up to her. “Mom, this shirt needs brown buttons.”
Looking up from the pan in which she was cooking up a delicious mixture of
meat and seasonings, she said, “Well, get me my button jar.”
For years, neighbors and
friends had given them old clothes, most of which were not fit to wear.
However, in the interest of “making lemonade out of lemons,” Mom had saved
all the buttons and zippers from these castoff clothes, and each time he
needed something fixed or improved, she was ready. It had been a funny way to
find the up side of everything, and her optimism had made life in the
sometimes oppressive Bronx environment fun.
A lack of education had kept
Mom down, and because she couldn’t spell or put her sentences together very
well on paper, it was almost impossible to move beyond the lowly
receptionist’s desk. Her other talents, like sewing, however, helped to add
to her income. Still, with all the need that surrounded her, she mostly ended
up giving her custom-sewn creations away.
Today, for instance, even
though she was tired and she had to go to Clark's awards ceremony, she would
continue working into the night to finish a dress for little Molly, their
neighbor’s dirty little 3 year old daughter. The child was beautiful, blonde,
and covered in snot most of the time, while her pale and obese mother sat on
the couch all day watching television.
Talk about a stereotype! Clark laughed. He
had learned the word in school, where he discovered that while it was defined
differently by his textbook, often meant “the way things are.”
Clark didn’t see how considering Miss Roxanna white trash was
discrimination when Miss Roxanna had lived one way all her life--having
babies and watching television. So, Clark asked himself,
how was it wrong to say so? Teachers who spoke about how good and decent all
ghetto people are could not undo the reality of the living stereotype just
down the road from Clark’s cozy little apartment. Every stereotype, it seemed, was
played out daily in the Bronx for Clark’s young eyes.
And yet so many people lived
here that showed him that not all of the stereotypes were valid. Johnny, for
instance, was one of them. He was Clark's friend, and he worked in the bakery just below Clark’s apartment.
Although he was a floor-sweeping bakery assistant who never dressed in
anything but his uniform, this man knew more about the Bible—and people in
general—than most ministers. Even Mom said so.
Johnny and Mom had seemed to
be making friends during the first six months that Johnny lived in the
neighborhood. In fact, Clark had dreamed of becoming Johnny’s step-son. However, in his
enthusiasm with his then-newfound faith, he had told Victoria—Clark’s mother—that he believed that God wanted them to marry one
another. That was the last time Mom ever gave Johnny more than a curt nod or
a quiet hello.
Apparently, Johnny had scared
her off, and for the next three and a half years, Clark had been
unable to get her to budge on the issue. In fact, Mom often said that she had
her hands full with a son and had no need of a husband. It had sufficed to
convince him to drop the subject.
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