“Mama, these girls at school—you don’t know what these girls are like,” I said. “And you told me I couldn’t shave. You never said anything about Nair.”
She laughed. See, she did know what those girls were like. Mean girls are a force of nature that transcends geographical and cultural boundaries. I was an easy mark, because I was different, and not just because of the color of my skin. I was that kid who always got hit in the face by the dodgeball ball. Instead of going to cheerleading practice and after-game parties, I went to ballet and ballet. And ballet. Jan, meanwhile, was that girl who could play anything—volleyball, basketball, or soccer—and quickly attract a posse of friends wherever she went. I felt more alone with each passing day.
Jan and I really didn’t interact with my mother’s boyfriend at all, so I was surprised to hear him rap his knuckles on my door one afternoon. I think his intention was probably some inexpert attempt to be what in his mind was fatherly.
“Mayte, this room is a mess,” he said. “It’s not acceptable.”
My dad was a military guy, too; I understood the concept of “shipshape,” but Jan and I had never been made to clean and do laundry as if we were in boot camp. I wasn’t open to the idea that I should care whether my personal space was acceptable to someone else, so this didn’t start well, and it quickly went downhill from there. I wasn’t about to discuss things with him in low tones. Things escalated to a real confrontation, and I went a little Puerto Rican chica in his face. Apparently not used to being disagreed with in this way, the guy bellowed back at me, shoving me with the heel of his hand. I staggered back, stunned, and then stood in the middle of my pink room, shaking and furious. I was thinking, Oh, he’s in trouble now. I was too afraid to say it out loud, but there was not a shadow of doubt in my mind. Mama always had my back.
He slammed the door and stormed down the hall. When I knew he was gone, I crept down to the kitchen and called my mother at work, tearfully telling her, “He put his hands on me. He is not allowed to put his hands on me.” She took the story in with surprising calm, and I don’t know what went on between them after that, but I never saw the guy at the house again. Within days, Jan and I were on a flight to Germany. I never even had the chance to retrieve my ballet shoes and towel bag from my locker at WSB.
Mama packed our things, closed up the house, and joined us a week or two later in Hainerberg, an ungated American community on a hill in Wiesbaden, where we would all live together for six years. Mama and Daddy’s unorthodox relationship didn’t seem odd to Jan and me at all. We didn’t give it much thought, really. We were old enough to understand that Mama had made a huge mistake, and while we may not have had the security every child fantasizes about, we learned that mistakes aren’t necessarily forever. Second chances happen. This belief stayed with me, a blessing and a curse. Thinking my husband and I would eventually remarry kept me from feeling bitter toward him, but it also prevented me from fully moving on as long as he was alive.
The summer after we moved to Germany, Jan and I went to see our grandmothers in Puerto Rico. A few weeks later, our parents showed up for the customary family visits, and while we were all hanging out one afternoon, they casually announced that they had gotten remarried.
Jan and I were surprised, to say the least. “What… why? When? How could you do that without telling us?”
On the one hand, we were delighted that the typical child-of-divorce fantasy was happening to us—our parents were back together!—but the memories of the war zone were still pretty fresh. We worried that things were going to go back to the way they used to be. Mama and Daddy explained that it was just so she could be in Germany on his benefits. And weirdly, that made it okay. We knew they were never going to have the fairy-tale romance; it was a relief for everyone that they didn’t feel the need to pretend. They cared deeply for each other, and the piece of their relationship that worked—our dysfunctionally functional family—was worth preserving. They were willing to sacrifice some pride for it and let go of the pieces that didn’t work.