Papi’s Dreams
I COULD HARDLY WAIT for school to let out. Slipping my assignment into my desk, I slid my butt across the smooth wooden bench beneath me until I could stretch one foot into the narrow aisle next to my seat. On the other side of the classroom I saw Lon and Ernesto preparing for our great escape, too. But I could run faster than either of them. I’d be the first one out the door and first to catch a glimpse of Officer Huertas’ Jeep coming up the road. The Yabucoa police department sponsored our league and Officer Huertas had the job of driving us boys to practice and games. About ten of us would crowd inside his Jeep, which looked like something left over from World War II. Because few families in the Yabucoa Valley owned cars in the 1950s, riding around in that Jeep was almost as much fun for a team of eight- and nine-year-old boys as playing baseball. Suddenly I noticed the classroom had turned silent. Briefly taking my eyes away from the doorway, I turned to the front of the room and directly into the gaze of our teacher. I could see she was prepared to hold the entire class hostage until she had my undivided attention. Moving back toward the center of my seat I gave her a timid smile. While I never saw her lips move even the slightest, I’m sure she smiled back at me. After only a moment that seemed more like several minutes, she finally pronounced those magic words, “Class dismissed.” It was time to play ball! Of course, I had played ball in my barrio or neighborhood ever since I could whittle a bat from the branch of a guava tree. I knew how to make a firm albeit lopsided ball by winding string and tape around a smaller ball, perhaps one “borrowed” from some girl’s set of jacks. When I could get a piece of heavy canvas—the kind used to cover truckloads of sugarcane—I could make a decent glove by stuffing it with newspaper. But on the league, the policemen saw that we boys had real gloves and bats and balls. Three of my brothers and I were especially good ballplayers, which pleased nobody more than our Papi (Pah-pee). Like a lot of fathers in Puerto Rico, Victor Millán dreamed of a son growing up to become a professional baseball player. As a boy he had been a good player himself, a catcher. While he may have briefly entertained the idea of a baseball career, standing little more than five feet tall, he was too short to take it seriously. Besides, as soon as he began working in the sugar mill and making a little money any such dreams quickly vanished. When Papi married Anastasia Martinez, they immediately started a family. There had been eleven babies in all but one died at birth and another died at a very young age. The remaining nine of us looked like stair steps when we stood next to each other: Victor, Ramonita, me (the one they called Nacho), Mercedes, Cecilio, Jesusa, Silverio, Domingo and Heriberto. Any of Papi’s dreams for himself gradually became his dreams for us. Above all he insisted that we finish school. He had not. A hot-tempered unruly child, he hated school and did not take to discipline to the point of instigating fist fights with his teacher. After attending first grade for three years, he gave up. My grandparents kept him home and as a result he never learned to read or write. My mother, affectionately called Mami (Mah-mee), took care of any tasks in our home that required reading or writing. Papi walked about five miles to and from work at the Central Roig sugar processing plant in the southeast corner of the island where we lived. The mill offered steady work for only six months a year. At thirty-five cents an hour he earned barely enough to support our family above the starvation level. It was a hot dirty place to work, especially when time came to burn the bagasse. That is the tough fiber left after the sweet juice is extracted from the cane. Papi tended a huge furnace called la caldera in which the bagasse was burned. Fridays were special whenever I had a ball game, but doubly so during sugarcane harvest because that was payday at the mill. With a little money in his pocket, Papi always stopped at the Panadería Ortiz, a bakery where for ten cents he could buy a special treat for us children. As soon as I finished playing ball, I ran all the way home to get there before Papi came from work. I’d wait in front of our house, watching for him to turn the corner and head toward home. His hair would be covered with large flakes of ash, his skin shiny with sweat and his face so black with soot he was barely recognizable. And in his hand he carried our treat, a long slender loaf of pan or bread, its golden crust still warm from the oven. Mami tore it apart in equal portions, making sure we each received our share. We were as poor as any family reliant on sugarcane for a livelihood in Puerto Rico in the 1940s and 1950s. But we were a big happy family—all living together under the roof of a little house that had no electricity. It was the only life I knew. I guess that’s why I was surprised the day Papi sent me to Juan Martin to live with my grandparents. I was ten years old. He said I was big enough to help with chores and I’d be good company for the older couple. It also meant I had to walk almost an hour to and from school every day. “What about baseball, Papi?” I asked. “Don’t worry, Nacho,” he said. “You can play at school.”
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